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Updated: June 11, 2025
Correspondence. The prisoners are allowed to write three times a week, and a certain number of them get more educated comrades to write for them. Correspondence is practically impossible for those who belong to nomadic tribes. Religion. Except one Copt, all the prisoners are Mahometans. There are many imaums among them. Religious exercises are practised freely and regularly.
At the moment of the Grand Vizier's arrival, Haroun Alraschid was seated on his throne in the splendid chamber of audience, holding a public reception of the Imaums, Viziers, Emirs, Governors of Provinces, and other great functionaries of his kingdom.
Few money orders come to the camp. Religion and Amusements. The prisoners have every chance of worshipping according to their own creed. The imaums can use a building arranged as a mosque and lighted by electricity. There is one mosque inside the camp enclosure. The camp contains 40 musical instruments; a piano has been hired for the officers. The prisoners play football, tennis, cards and chess.
I am well pleased when I break no commandment of the Koran; and trouble my head little about the sayings of those babbling greybeards, the twelve holy Imaums." "But the nooses," expostulated Hassan, not a little scandalized by his companion's words. "You have nothing to do but to sleep all night without awaking," replied the young Turk laughing. "Then you will have no need either to wash or pray."
I said merely that we were the friends of the Mussulmans, and that I respected Mahomet their prophet, which was true; I respect him now. I wanted to make the Imaums cause prayers to be offered up in the mosques for me, in order to make the people respect me still more than they actually did, and obey me more readily.
The Imaums replied that there was a great obstacle, because their Prophet in the Koran had inculcated to them that they were not to obey, respect, or hold faith with infidels, and that I came under that denomination. I then desired them to hold a consultation, and see what was necessary to be done in order to become a Musselman, as some of their tenets could not be practised by us.
It is no less skilful at causing a solution to spring forth from the reconciliation of ideas, than a lesson from the reconciliation of facts, and we may expect anything from that mysterious power of progress, which brought the Orient and the Occident face to face one fine day, in the depths of a sepulchre, and made the imaums converse with Bonaparte in the interior of the Great Pyramid.
But he never committed the folly of ordering any solemnity. He neither learned nor repeated any prayer of the Koran, as many persons have asserted; neither did he advocate fatalism, polygamy, or any other doctrine of the Koran. Bonaparte employed himself better than in discussing with the Imaums the theology of the children of Ismael.
He extends the privilege to Catholic priests, and, what in him is more surprising, to Dissenting preachers. This, however, is a mere trifle. Imaums, Brahmins, priests of Jupiter, priests of Baal, are all to be held sacred. Dryden is blamed for making the Mufti in Don Sebastian talk nonsense. Lee is called to a severe account for his incivility to Tiresias.
I said merely that we were the friends of the Mussulmans, and that I respected Mahomet their prophet, which was true; I respect him now. I wanted to make the Imaums cause prayers to be offered up in the mosques for me, in order to make the people respect me still more than they actually did, and obey me more readily.
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