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The merchant who, riding a dromedary of the choicest breed, conducted this caravan, was a lean Moslem of mature age, robed in soft silk. A vast turban covered his small head and cast a shadow over his delicate and venerable features.
It seems a little unfair that we should take the very title of decay from that Christian city, for surely it was yet more stiff and sterile when it had become a Moslem city. I am not so exacting as to ask any one to popularise such a word as "Constantinopolitan." But it would surely be a better word for stiffness and sterility to call it Stamboulish.
By dawn the camp would be on its way to its objective, the hills beyond the outline of the lost "City of the Horizon." Abdul, the visionary and the pious Moslem, was as keen about reaching Akhnaton's treasure as Pizarro was obsessed with the reports of the wealth of Peru. For half of that short night Michael tried unsuccessfully to sleep.
He watches over the infant, he observes it, he looks for the first feeble glimmering of intelligence, as the Moslem looks for the moment of the moon's rising in her first quarter. We are born capable of learning, but knowing nothing, perceiving nothing. The mind, bound up within imperfect and half grown organs, is not even aware of its own existence.
To adduce slavery and concubinage coupled with polygamy and divorce as further evidence against Arabia is crass absurdity; slaves are far better treated anywhere in Arabia than they were in the States or the West Indies; concubinage and polygamy, as practised by the patriarchs of Holy Writ, are still legal in that part of the world; there is nothing sinful about them in themselves a Moslem might as well rebuke Western society for being addicted to whisky and bridge.
At length, with a sigh, he said, almost inaudibly: "So it was and so it is: The Greek oppressed my people with arbitrary cruelty as if we were dogs; the Moslem, too, is a stranger, but he is just. That which happened it was out of my power to prevent; and it is well, it is very well that it turned out so.
The Moslem pilgrims from far and near came to this spot, and walked seven times round it, the marble pavement being visibly worn by the bare knees of devout Mussulmans. Just outside of this large alcove, which is very similar to a side chapel in a modern cathedral, there was pointed out to us the finest piece of mosaic in the world.
This, at first, we attributed to their Moslem prejudices; but when they saw the cooking process of the others nearly complete, they came, sat beside them, and ate the portion offered without ever remembering to return the compliment when their own turn came to be generous.
The sober prose of the Parsees presents, as usual, an amusing contrast with the highflown rhapsodies of the Moslem; their remarks on the same lady are comprised in the pithy observation "We should not have taken her for more than twenty-six years of age; but we are told she is near fifty."
Thus far concerning the Moslem; but as regards King Afridun, Lord of Constantinople and Sovran of Roum, and Zat Al-Dawahi, they assembled the Emirs of the host and said to them, "Verily, we had worked our will and solaced our hearts, but our over confidence in our numbers, and that only, defeated us."
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