at Al-Madinah, but confined to the lowest classes at Meccah.  The boy Mohammed always spoke of it with undisguised disapprobation.  During my stay at Meccah, I saw no such costume amongst respectable people there; though oftentimes there was a suspicion of a disguise. [FN#29] Burckhardt (Travels in Arabia, vol. ii., p. 268) remarks that Al-Madinah is the only town in the East from which dogs are excluded.  This was probably as much a relic of Wahhabi-ism, (that sect hating even to look at a dog), as arising from apprehension of the Mosque being polluted by canine intrusion.  I have seen one or two of these animals in the town, but I was told, that when they enter it in any numbers, the police-magistrate issues orders to have them ejected. [FN#30] The “Mubariz” is the single combatant, the champion of the Arabian classical and chivalrous times.

[p.304]Chapter xvi.

A visit to the prophet’s tomb.

Having performed the greater ablution, and used the toothstick as directed, and dressed ourselves in white clothes, which the Apostle loved, we were ready to start upon our holy errand.  As my foot still gave me great pain, Shaykh Hamid sent for a donkey.  A wretched animal appeared, raw-backed, lame of one leg, and wanting an ear, with accoutrements to match, a pack-saddle without stirrups, and a halter instead of a bridle.  Such as the brute was, however, I had to mount it, and to ride through the Misri gate, to the wonder of certain Badawin, who, like the Indians, despise the ass.

“Honourable is the riding of a horse to the rider,
But the mule is a dishonour, and the donkey a disgrace,”

says their song.  The Turkish pilgrims, however, who appear to take a pride in ignoring all Arab points of prejudice, generally mount donkeys when they cannot walk.  The Badawin therefore settled among themselves, audibly enough, that I was an Osmanli, who of course could not understand Arabic, and they put the question generally,

“By what curse of Allah had they been subjected to ass-riders?”

But Shaykh Hamid is lecturing me upon the subject of the Mosque.  The Masjid Al-Nabawi, or the Prophet’s Mosque, is one of the Haramayn, or the “two sanctuaries” of Al-Islam,

[p.305] and is the second of the three[FN#1] most venerable places of worship in the world; the other two being the Masjid al-Harim at Meccah (connected with Abraham) and the Masjid al-Aksa of Jerusalem (the peculiar place of Solomon).  A Hadis or traditional saying of Mohammed asserts, “One prayer in this my Mosque is more efficacious than a thousand in other places, save only the Masjid al-Harim.[FN#2]” It is therefore the visitor’s duty, as long as he stays at Al-Madinah, to pray there the five times per diem, to pass the day in it reading the Koran, and the night, if possible, in watching and devotion.