“In the Name of Allah and in the faith of Allah’s Apostle!  O Lord, cause me to enter the Entering of Truth, and cause me to issue forth the Issuing of Truth, and permit me to draw near to Thee, and make me a Sultan Victorious[FN#15]!” Then follow blessings upon the Apostle, and afterwards:  “O Allah! open to me the Doors of Thy Mercy, and grant me Entrance into it, and protect me from the Stoned Devil!”

During this preliminary prayer we had passed down two-thirds of the Muwajihat al-Sharifah.  On the left hand is a dwarf wall, about the height of a man, painted with arabesques, and pierced with four small doors which

[p.310] open into the Muwajihat.  In this barrier are sundry small erections, the niche called the Mihrab Sulaymani,[FN#16] the Mambar, or pulpit, and the Mihrab al-Nabawi.[FN#17]

The two niches are of beautiful mosaic, richly worked with various coloured marbles, and the pulpit is a graceful collection of slender columns, elegant tracery, and inscriptions admirably carved.  Arrived at the Western small door in the dwarf wall, we entered the celebrated spot called Al-Rauzah, after a saying of the Apostle’s, “Between my Tomb and my Pulpit is a Garden of the Gardens of Paradise.[FN#18]” On the North and West sides it is

[p.311] not divided from the rest of the portico; on the South runs the dwarf wall, and on the East it is limited by the west end of the lattice-work containing the tomb.

Accompanied by my Muzawwir I entered the Rauzah, and was placed by him with the Mukabbariyah[FN#19] behind me, fronting Meccah, with my right shoulder opposite to, and about twenty feet distant from, the dexter pillar of the Apostle’s Pulpit.[FN#20] There, after saying the afternoon prayers,[FN#21] I performed the usual two bows in honour of the temple,[FN#22] and at the end of them recited the hundred and ninth and the hundred and twelfth chapters of the Koran-the “Kul, ya ayyuha’l-Kafiruna,” and the “Surat al-Ikhlas,” called also the “Kul, Huw’ Allah,” or the Declaration of Unity; and may be thus translated: 

“Say, He is the one God! 
“The eternal God! 
“He begets not, nor is He begot!

[p.312] “And unto Him the like is not.”

After which was performed a single Sujdah (Prostration) of Thanks,[FN#23] in gratitude to Allah for making it my fate to visit so holy a spot.

This being the recognised time to give alms, I was besieged by beggars, who spread their napkins before us on the ground, sprinkled with a few coppers to excite generosity.  But not wishing to be distracted by them, before leaving Hamid’s house I had changed two dollars, and had given the coin to the boy Mohammed, who accompanied me, strictly charging him to make that sum last through the Mosque.

My answer to the beggars was a reference to my attendant, backed by the simple action of turning my pockets inside out; and, whilst he was battling with the beggars, I proceeded to cast my first coup-d’oeil upon the Rauzah.