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Updated: June 22, 2025
The houses were humble ones, such as grow up in the cracks of a wealthy quarter, and their inhabitants doubtless small folk, but in the enchanted African twilight the terraces blossomed like gardens, and when the moon rose and the muezzin called from the minaret, the domestic squabbles and the shrill cries from roof to roof became part of a story in Bagdad, overheard a thousand years ago by that arch-detective Haroun-al-Raschid.
The Tarasconian muezzin gathered himself up for the effort during a space, and then, raising his arms, he set to chanting in a very shrill voice: "La Allah il Allah! Mahomet is an old humbug! The Orient, the Koran, bashaws, lions, Moorish beauties they are all not worth a fly's skip! There is nothing left but gammoners. Long live Tarascon!"
The iron tongue of the bell uttered the summons, as well as the resonant voice of the Muezzin, who to-day did not call the worshippers to devotion from the top of a minaret, but from the masthead of a ship. On both sides of the narrow seagate, thousands of Moslems and Christians thought, hoped and believed, that the Omnipotent One heard them.
But the cycles spin away down "the ringing grooves of change." From Egypt has passed away that decreed Christianity. Now from the minaret the muezzin cries, and in palm-shaded villages I hear the loud hymns of earnest pilgrims starting on the journey to Mecca. And ever this painted chamber shelters its mystery of poetry, its mystery of charm.
They both drew into a corner. "I'm afraid it was too late. He saw me," added Dicky. "I'm afraid he did," said Renshaw. "Never mind. It's all in the day's work. He and I are all right. The only danger would lie in the crowd discovering us in this holy spot, where the Muezzin calls to prayer, and giving us what for, before he could interfere."
As I descended I heard, thin and faint and beautiful, like the cry of a wild bird, the muezzin from the minarets of Erzerum. When I dropped through the trap the others were awake. Hussin was setting food on the table, and viewing my descent with anxious disapproval. 'It's all right, I said; 'I won't do it again, for I've found out all I wanted.
In short, I have only to fill my skin, to empty it again, and I daily realise so handsome an income, that I have thrown care to the dogs, and spend in jollity every night what I have worked hard for every day. As soon as the muezzin calls to evening prayers, I lay aside my skin, betake myself to the mosque, perform my ablutions, and return thanks to Allah.
I apologised for my intrusion; but he welcomed me with serene cordiality, and invited me to share his carpet and touch his pipe. Some time elapsed in answering those questions respecting European horses and European arms, wherein the Easterns delight. At length, the solemn and sonorous voice of the muezzin, from the minarets of Jaffa, came floating on the air.
About 3 A.M., with a light head but a heavy foot, our good Tarasconian was returning from seeing his friend the captain off when, in passing the mosque, the remembrance of his muezzin and his practical jokes made him laugh, and instantly a capital idea of revenge flitted through his brain. The door was open.
Being a city of extremes, the visitor may be brought to his front windows by the warning cries of the footmen of a sojourning maharajah driving in state to a function, while through the rear windows float the plaintive notes of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayers from the minaret of a Mohammedan mosque close by.
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