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Updated: May 16, 2025
"Swear, therefore, on the Alkoran that you will respect them, and swear it in the names of your comrades likewise. The Padishah is resolved that if you refuse to take this oath he will blow up the Seraglio and every living soul within it into the air with gunpowder." The rebels were impressed by this message, only Halil Patrona smiled.
I know that the cellars of the Seraglio are full of gunpowder, and I would not that the blossoms of the Sheik-ul-Islam and the descendants of the Prophet should perish. Behold, I am ready, and my comrades also, to swear on the Alkoran to do no harm either to Sultan Achmed, or his sons, or his daughters, or his daughters' husbands.
The Sultan opened the book at the last page, pricked through by the needle, and these were the words he read: "He who fears the sword will find the sword his enemy, and better a rust-eaten sword in the hand than a brightly burnished one in a sheath." "La illah il Allah! God is one!" said Achmed bowing his head and kissing the words of the Alkoran. "Make ready my charger, 'tis the will of God."
At the foot of a sofa placed on an elevated daïs glistened a coverlet of pure pearls. On each side of this sofa stood a little round writing-table inlaid with gold. On one of these tables lay an open portfolio encrusted with precious stones and writing materials flashing with rubies and emeralds; on the other lay a copy of the Alkoran, bound in black velvet and studded with rose brilliants.
"Well said!" cried Achmed, and thereupon he ordered the chief mufti to bring him the Alkoran which, in all moments of doubt, the Sultans were wont to appeal to and consult by plunging a needle through its pages, and then turning to the last leaf in which the marks of the needle-point were visible.
On reaching the pavement he remained standing by the side of the throne, and cried in a hollow tremulous voice: "I have ceased to reign, let a better than I take my place. I demand but one thing, let those who are at this moment the lords of the dominion of Osman swear that they will do no harm to my children. Let them swear it to me on the Alkoran.
Do not here produce ancient examples of the paragons of paillardice, and offer to match with my testiculatory ability the Priapaean prowess of the fabulous fornicators, Hercules, Proculus Caesar, and Mahomet, who in his Alkoran doth vaunt that in his cods he had the vigour of three score bully ruffians; but let no zealous Christian trust the rogue, the filthy ribald rascal is a liar.
Theists of every class would do well to calmly and fully consider this rule of philosophising, for it involves nothing less than the destruction of belief in the supernatural. The Jupiter of Mythologic History, the Allah of Alkoran, and the Jehovah of 'Holy Scripture, if entities at all, are assuredly entities that baffle human conception.
Theists of every class would do well to calmly and fully consider this rule of philosophising, for it involves nothing less than the destruction of belief in the supernatural. The Jupiter of Mythologic History, the Allah of Alkoran, and the Jehovah of 'Holy Scripture, if entities at all, are assuredly entities that baffle human conception.
Whatever words on this last page happened to be pricked were regarded as oracular and worthy of all obedience. On every table in the council-chamber stood an Alkoran ten copies in one room. The binding of one of these copies was covered with diamonds. This copy the Chief Mufti brought to the Sultan, and gave into his hands the needle with which the august ceremony was to be accomplished.
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