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Updated: May 9, 2025
Missionaries would have us judge Islam by the open improprieties and abuses which occur at Mecca, Kerbela, and other great Moslem centres. How should we like Christianity to be judged by the public behaviour of certain classes in London or other big towns? Remember, it is always the scum which floats on top and the superficial vice or indecorum that strike a foreign observer.
The prayer-stone is reverently touched to lips, cheeks, and forehead at the finish of prayers, and then carefully wrapped up and stowed away until praying-time comes round again. To a sceptical and perhaps irreverent observer, these praying-stones would seem to bear about the same relation to a pilgrimage to Meshed or Kerbela as a package of prepared sea-salt does to a season at the sea-side.
Ali was assassinated near Nejef, which city is sacred to his memory, and his son Husein was killed at Kerbela; so these two cities are the greatest of the Shiah shrines. The Turks belong almost without exception to the Sunni sect, whereas the Persians and a large percentage of the Arabs inhabiting Mesopotamia are Shiahs.
This conference, called to draw up a definite scheme for effective Moslem co-operation the world over, was attended not merely by the high orthodox Moslem dignitaries and political leaders, but also by heterodox chiefs like the Shiah Emir of Kerbela, the Imam Yahya, and the Zaidite Emir of Yemen leaders of heretical sects between whom and the orthodox Sunnis co-operation had previously been impossible.
These praying-stones are obtained from the sacred soil of Meshed, Koom, or Kerbela, and are placed in position on the ground in front of the kneeling devotee during his devotions, so that, instead of touching his forehead to the carpet or the common ground of his native village, he can bring it in contact with the hallowed soil of one of these holy cities.
It is probable that in ancient days each of these huge cemeteries had priests and superintendents told off to watch over them, to assign his place to each new comer, and to levy fees like those paid in our day to the mollahs attached to the Mosques of Nedjef and Kerbela.
The dead are often conveyed hundreds of miles to be interred in Nejef and Kerbela. Peters' Nippur, ii. 325, 326. See below, p. 597. Koldewey, Zeitschrift für Assyriologie, ii. 406 seq. Ib. Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana, chapter xviii. Peters' Nippur, ii. 234. Other mounds examined by Peters between Warka and Nippur bear out the conclusion.
It has been conjectured, with some show of reason, that the Assyrians, in the time of their power, may have made the sacred land of Chai the general depository of their dead, much in the same way as the Persians even now use Kerbela and Nedjif or Meshed Ali as special cemetery cities, to which thousands of corpses are brought annually.
For example, a Meshedi values a prayer-stone from Kerbela, and a Kerbeli values one from Meshed, neither of them having much faith in the efficacy of one from his own city; familiarity with sacred things apparently breeds doubts and indifference.
His fears were just: Obeidollah, the governor of Cufa, had extinguished the first sparks of an insurrection; and Hosein, in the plain of Kerbela, was encompassed by a body of five thousand horse, who intercepted his communication with the city and the river.
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