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Updated: May 6, 2025
India Minor is from Ziambo to Murfili , in which are eight kingdoms and many islands. The second or Middle India is called Abascia , of which the chief king is a Christian, who has six other kings subject to his authority, three of whom are Christians and three of them Mahometans; there are also Jews in his dominions.
It is inhabited by Mahometans, who are subject to the lieutenant or governor of Syria under the Soldan. The soil of the neighbouring country is very fertile, and as it carries on great trade this city abounds in all things.
We have not portioned out Bengal and the Carnatic into parishes, and scattered Christian rectors, with stipends and glebes, among millions of Pagans and Mahometans. We keep, indeed, a small Christian establishment, or rather three small Christian establishments, Anglican, Presbyterian, and Catholic.
India is, as you perhaps know, a huge country made up of different nations, some of whom are Mahometans, or followers of the prophet Mahomet, and worshippers of one God, while most of the rest have a number of gods and goddesses.
It contains a population of four thousand souls, one thousand eight hundred being Jews occupied with commerce, whilst the rest cultivate the land. This is a division of labour amongst Mahometans and Israelites not unfrequent in North Africa. But, as in Europe, the Jew is the trader, not the husbandman.
The consequence is that whole villages of Tcheremiss and Votiaks, officially inscribed as belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church, have openly declared themselves Mahometans; and some of the more remarkable conversions have been commemorated by popular songs, which are sung by young and old. Against this propaganda the Orthodox ecclesiastical authorities do little or nothing.
They are not sufficiently advanced in civilization to accept a pecuniary fine as the price of a wife's dishonor; but a stroke of the husband's sword or a stab with the knife is generally the ready remedy for infidelity. Although strict Mahometans, the women are never veiled; neither do they adopt the excessive reserve assumed by the Turks and Egyptians.
In such circumstances the coffee houses were the chief organs through which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself. The first of these establishments had been set up by a Turkey merchant, who had acquired among the Mahometans a taste for their favourite beverage.
The hostility of the Mahometans, who possessed the north of Africa, to Christians, presented as serious an obstacle to travels in that quarter as the barbarism and ferocity of the native tribes on the west coast did to discoveries into the interior in that direction.
The Mahometans allege that these birds come from Paradise, and therefore call them the birds of God. Besides cloves, the Molucca islands produce ginger, rice, sago, goats, sheep, poultry, popinjays, white and red figs, almonds, pomegranates, oranges and lemons, and a kind of honey which is produced by a species of fly less than ants.
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