[FN#126] This scene is perfectly true to Badawi life; see my Pilgrimage iii. 68.

[FN#127] Arab.  “Durraj”:  so it is rendered in the French translation of Al-Masudi, vii. 347.

[FN#128] A fair friend found the idea of Destiny in The Nights become almost a night-mare.  Yet here we suddenly alight upon the true Johnsonian idea that conduct makes fate.  Both extremes are as usual false.  When one man fights a dozen battles unwounded and another falls at the first shot we cannot but acknowledge the presence of that mysterious “luck” whose laws, now utterly unknown to us, may become familiar with the ages.  I may note that the idea of an appointed hour beyond which life may not be prolonged, is as old as Homer (Il. ??? 487).

The reader has been told (vol. vii. 135) that “Kaza” is Fate in a general sense, the universal and eternal Decree of Allah, while “Kadar” is its special and particular application to man’s lot, that is Allah’s will in bringing forth events at a certain time and place.  But the former is popularly held to be of two categories, one Kaza al-Muham which admits of modification and Kaza al-Muhkam, absolute and unchangeable, the doctrine of irresistible predestination preached with so much energy by St. Paul (Romans ix. 15-24), and all the world over men act upon the former while theoretically holding to the latter.  Hence “Chinese Gordon,” whose loss to England is greater than even his friends suppose, wrote “It is a delightful thing to be a fatalist,” meaning that the Divine direction and pre-ordination of all things saved him so much trouble of forethought and afterthought.  In this tenet he was not only a Calvinist but also a Moslem whose contradictory ideas of Fate and Freewill (with responsibility) are not only beyond Reason but are contrary to Reason; and although we may admit the argumentum ad verecundiam, suggesting that there are things above (or below) human intelligence, we are not bound so to do in the case of things which are opposed to the common sense of mankind.  Practically, however, the Moslem attitude is to be loud in confessing belief of “Fate and Fortune” before an event happens and after it wisely to console himself with the conviction that in no way could he have escaped the occurrence.  And the belief that this destiny was in the hands of Allah gives him a certain dignity especially in the presence of disease and death which is wanting in his rival religionist the Christian.  At the same time the fanciful picture of the Turk sitting stolidly under a shower of bullets because Fate will not find him out unless it be so written is a freak i.e. fancy rarely found in real life.