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Updated: June 21, 2025
"For my part I would have a young Englishwoman cultivate her agreeable talents, in order to please her future husband, with as much care and assiduity as a young Circassian cultivates her's, to fit her for the Haram of an Eastern bashaw."
It has been related, that in the kingdom of Yemen there was a sultan who had three sons, two of whom were born of the same mother, and the third of another wife, with whom becoming disgusted from some caprice, and having degraded her to the station of a domestic, he suffered her and her son to live unnoticed among the servants of the haram.
A contest unparalleled in elections of this description followed between Mr. Shipp and Mr. Haram, who, with a certain class, was the favourite candidate, though the popular voice was for Mr. Shipp. The town was canvassed in every quarter, and placards covered the walls in all directions, as at a parliamentary election. At the close of the first day, Haram was upwards of 140 ahead of his opponent.
In the background, up far in the sky, the garniture of the sacred places is visible: here the Haram, with its graceful dome; yonder the stalward remains of Hippicus, defiant even in ruins.
He could see the houses of dark stone, clustering together on the slopes like swallows' nests, the unpaved streets, the Mesjid el Haram, or sacred square, enclosed by a great wall and a colonnade surmounted by small white domes.
Down, swiftly down, to raid the Bayt Ullah, the sacred Ka'aba, holy of holies to more than two hundred million Moslem fanatics, each of whom would with joy have died to keep the hand of the unbelieving dog from so much as touching that hoar structure or the earth of the inviolate Haram. Down, swiftly down with picks and crowbars.
The Aga el Haram keeps about sixty or eighty soldiers, a motley crew of Turks, Arabs, Moggrebyns, and people of Medina; and all ecclesiastical affairs, and the pecuniary business of the mosque, are left in his hands. Next to him in importance stands the Kadhy, who, in the time of the Wahabys, had been obliged to retire.
"Faith, but this is some proposition!" grunted the major, as the seven men trampled over the prostrate bodies, without any delay whatever to peer at the Haram or the Ka'aba. "The stone's there, men, at the south-east corner! Get busy!" No exhortation was necessary. Every man, nerved to the utmost energy by the extreme urgency of the situation, leaped to work.
On the second day, Shipp brought up his lee-way, and at the close of the poll on Monday he was upwards of 300 ahead. On Tuesday morning Haram resigned the contest; and thus the election terminated in favour of Mr. Shipp, whose majority was 352. We now find Mr. Shipp in a position of comparative affluence, which unfortunately he did not live long to enjoy.
It happened, by divine decree, that the sultan's daughter looking from a window of the haram, beheld the combat, and, stricken with the manly beauty and prowess of the prince, exclaimed, "Who can withstand thy courage, or who resist thy all conquering charms?" But he did not see the princess, or hear her applause.
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