motions where water was not to be had, now pressed forward towards the mountain of Arafat, and covered its sides from top to bottom. At the appointed hour, the cadi of Mekka took his stand on a stone platform on the top of the mountain, and began his sermon, to which the multitude appeared to listen in solemn and respectful silence. At every pause, however, the

assembled multitudes waved the skirts of their ihrams over their heads, and rent the air with shouts of Lebeyk, allahuma lebeyk !' here we are at thy commands, O God!' During the wavings of the ihrams,' says Burckhardt, 'the side of the mountain, thickly crowded as it was by the people in their white garments, had the appearance of a cataract of water; while the green umbrellas, with which several thousand hadjis, sitting on their camels below, were provided, bore some resemblance to a verdant plain.' The assemblage of such a multitude,-to every outward appearance, humbling themselves in prayer and adoration before God,-must be an imposing and impressive spectacle to him who first observes it, whether Mahommedan, Christian, Jew, or pagan, 'It was a sight, indeed,' says Pitts, able to pierce one's heart, to behold so many thousands in their garments of humility and mortification, with their naked heads, and cheeks watered with tears, and to hear their grievous sighs and sobs, begging earnestly for the remission of their sins.' Burckhardt mentions the first arrival of a black Darfoor pilgrim at the temple, at the time when it was illuminated, and from eight to ten thousand persons in the act of adoration, who was so overawed that, after remaining prostrate for some time, he burst into a flood of tears; and in the height of his emotion, instead of reciting the usual prayers of the visiter, only exclaimed-"O God! now take my soul, for this is paradise!"

As the sun descended behind the western mountains, the cadi shut his book,-instantly the crowds rushed down the mountain, the tents were struck, and the whole mass of pilgrims moved forward across the plain on their return. Thousands of torches were now lighted; vollies of artillery and of musketry were fired; skyrockets innumerable were let off; the pasha's bands of music were played till they arrived at a place called Mezdelfé,-when every one lay down on the bare ground wherever he could find a spot. Here another sermon was preached, commencing with the first dawn and continuing till the first rays of the sun appear, when the multitude again moved forward, with a slow pace, to Wady Muna, about three miles off. This is the scene for the ceremony of throwing stones at the devil;' every pilgrim must throw seven little stones at three several spots in the Valley of Muna, or twenty-one in the whole; and at each throw repeat the words, In the name of God; God is great; we do this to secure ourselves from the devil and his troops.' Joseph Pitts says, as I

was

was going to throw the stones, a facetious hadji met me; saith he, "you may save your labour at present, if you please, for I have hit out the devil's eyes already." The pilgrims are here shown a rock with a deep split in the middle, which was made by the angel turning aside the knife of Abraham, when he was about to sacrifice his son Isaac. Pitts, on being told this, observes, it must have been a good stroke indeed.' The pilgrims are taught also to believe that the custom of stoning the devil' is to commemorate the endeavour of his satanic majesty to dissuade Isaac from following his father, and whispering in his ear that he was going to slay him.

This stoning' in the Valley of Muna occupies a day or two, after which comes the grand sacrifice of animals, some brought by the several hadjis, others purchased from the Bedouins for the occasion, the throats of which must always be cut with their faces towards the Kaaba. At the pilgrimage in question, the number of sheep thus slaughtered in the name of the most merciful God,' is represented as small, amounting only to between six and eight thousand. The historian Kotobeddyn, quoted by Burckhardt, relates, that when the Khalif Mokteder performed the pilgrimage, in the year of the Hejira 350, he sacrificed on this occasion forty thousand camels and cows, and fifty thousand sheep. Barthema talks of thirty thousand oxen being slain, and their carcases given to the poor, who appeared to him 'more anxious to have their bellies filled than their sins remitted.' One is at a loss to imagine where, in such a miserable country, all these thousands and tens of thousands of camels, cows, and sheep can possibly be subsisted; the numbers may be exaggerated, but there is no question of their being very great. The feast being ended, all the pilgrims had their heads shaved, threw off the ihram, and resumed their ordinary clothing; a large fair was now held, the valley blazed all night with illuminations, bonfires, the discharge of artillery and fireworks; and the hadjis then returned to Mekka. Many of the poorer pilgrims, however, remained to feast on the offals of the slaughtered sheep. At Mekka the ceremonies of the Kaaba and the Omra were again to be repeated, and then the hadj was truly performed. Burckhardt makes no mention of any females becoming hadjis by a visit to Arafat, though Ali Bey talks of two thousand. There is no absolute prohibition, but from what follows, no great encouragement for the fair sex to go through the ceremonies :

The Mohammedan law prescribes that no unmarried woman shall perform the pilgrimage; and that even every married woman must be companied by her husband, or at least a very near relation (the Shafay sect does not even allow the latter.) Female hadjis some

times arrive from Turkey for the hadj; rich old widows, who wish to see Mekka before they die; or women who set out with their husbands, and lose them on the road by disease. In such cases, the female finds at Djidda, delyls (or, as this class is called, Muhallil) ready to facilitate their progress through the sacred territory in the character of husbands. The marriage contract is written out before the Kadhy; and the lady, accompanied by her delyl, performs the pilgrimage to Mekka, Arafat, and all the sacred places. This, however, is understood to be merely a nominal marriage; and the delyl must divorce the woman on his return to Djidda: if he were to refuse a divorce, the law cannot compel him to it, and the marriage would be considered binding: but he could no longer exercise the lucrative profession of delyl; and my informant could only recollect two examples of the delyl continuing to be the woman's husband. I believe there is not any exaggeration of the number, in stating that there are eight hundred full-grown delyls, besides boys who are learning the profession. Whenever a shopkeeper loses his customers, or a poor man of letters wishes to gain as much money as will purchase an Abyssinian slave, he turns delyl. The profession is one of little repute; but many a prosperous Mekkawy has, at some period of his life, been a member of it.'-vol. i. pp. 359, 360.

Burckhardt remained at Mekka a whole month after the conclusion of the hadj, at which time it appeared like a deserted

town:

Of its brilliant shops, one-fourth only remained; and in the streets, where a few weeks before it was necessary to force one's way through the crowd, not a single hadji was seen, except solitary beggars, who raised their plaintive voices towards the windows of the houses which they supposed to be still inhabited. Rubbish and filth covered all the streets, and nobody appeared disposed to remove it. The skirts of the town were crowded with the dead carcases of camels, the smell from which rendered the air, even in the midst of the town, offensive, and certainly contributed to the many diseases now prevalent.'-vol. ii. p. 84.

That a semi-barbarous set of people should believe in the efficacy of this hadj is not in the least surprising-not half so much so as that in enlightened Germany at this hour there should be found believers, persons of high rank and station too, in the miraculous performances of Prince Hohenlohe; to say nothing of not a few besotted expectants, nearer home, of a young Shiloh from the rotten carcase of old Johanna Southcote. There is no rational account to be given as to the extent of human credulity; and we see no good reason why a Mussulman should not believe, as he is in duty bound to do, that Mahomet was conducted from Mekka to Jerusalem, and ascended from thence into the seventh heaven, under the guidance of Gabriel, and came back to his bed in the same night, as readily as a good catholic believes, as his church

demands,

demands, in the flight of the chapel of Loretto; or that the statues of saints and angels take a walk on particular occasions from one church to another, which everybody knows frequently happens. At this moment there is a regular hadj performed every year by, on an average, some twelve or thirteen thousands of our own poor ignorant Irish peasantry to that scene of miserable imposture and quackery, in the north of their island, known by the name of St. Patrick's Purgatory; and as Mekka is visited by pilgrims from Morocco and Caubul, so is this Catholic Kaaba by true believers from the utmost recesses of Maryland.*

Mahomet disclaimed all power of performing miracles, and when taunted by the people of Mekka for not being able to do what Jesus, and Moses, and other prophets had done before him, be told them that as men would not believe, nor be obedient after the miracles they had witnessed, God had given him the sword, that by it and his revelations mankind might be compelled to believe and obey; and sure enough by the sword and the Koran together he and his successors have but too well succeeded in disseminating their false doctrines in Africa and Asia, where now may be counted, at the very least, one hundred millions of Mussulmans. The Arabians, before the time of Mahomet, were idolaters, and, like the other branch of Abraham, were led away to the worship of every object, animate or inanimate. Every house, every hill, and every valley, had their gods of sticks or stones, and so numerous were their objects of worship that the Kaaba is reported to have contained three hundred and sixty idols, one for every day in the year, and that both men and women assembled to perform the ceremony of walking round it seven times, not clothed with the ihram, but in a state of perfect nudity, in order that their sins might be thrown off with their garments. The superstitious rites, therefore, that are now performed are few, if any of them, the invention of Mahomet; indeed, they bear the stamp of a far more remote antiquity. From the earliest periods of mankind to the present time, and throughout the whole of the eastern world, the odd numbers, and particularly that of seven, have been marked as potential for good or evil. The throwing off the garments, even to nakedness, was sometimes the symbol of penitence and sometimes of joy; in the ceremonies of the pilgrimage it would seem to indicate both; and we may perhaps consider the linen ephod, which David put on when he threw off his garments and danced before the ark, to be symbolic of the same intention as the ihram of the Mahommedans. The well of Zemzem is the spring of water which burst forth in the wilderness, at the moment See Sketches in the North of Ireland—an interesting volume, published some three or four years ago.

when

when Hagar was witnessing her infant son Ishmael ready to perish of thirst; and the alternate running and walking between Szafa and Merua, sometimes running back and sometimes stopping, like one who has lost something, is supposed, according to Arab authorities mentioned by Sale, to represent Hagar seeking water for her unfortunate child. The rite of circumcision moreover does not belong to Mahomet; and it is remarkable enough, that as Isaac was circumcised on the eighth day, which the Jews still observe, Ishmael was thirteen years old when he was circumcised, and it is about this age that the Arabians still perform the rite.

Though Mahomet, while keeping up, in deference to popular prejudices, a modification of these silly and superstitious ceremonies, abolished idolatry-it was probably to constitute himself the only idol. The worship of images was, however, inconsistent with the grand principle of the new religion, which, says Gibbon, consisted of an eternal truth, and a necessary fiction. 'There is no God but God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God.' Though, under this character, he set up no pretensions to exhibit overt miracles, yet his fictions were of so bold a nature, that nothing but the most determined impudence, or the most ardent enthusiasm, could have ventured to utter them. The most extraordinary part of his character is, that he could not write, nor, as it would appear from several passages in the Koran, read his own code of civil and religious ordinances, propounded for the future guidance of his countrymen. Gibbon calls him an illiterate barbarian,' but states, on the authority of Abulfeda, that he was an eloquent speaker, distinguished by the beauty of his person, and that before he spoke he was sure to engage on his side the affections of those he addressed. They applauded his commanding presence, his majestic aspect, his piercing eye, his gracious smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that painted every sensation of the soul, and his gesture that enforced each expression of the tongue.' Gibbon, indeed, who never loses an opportunity to launch a sarcasm at the Christian religion, treats that of Islam and its founder with great tenderness; it is a creed too sublime for our present faculties; it is free from suspicion or ambiguity, and the Koran is a glorious testimony to the Unity of God.' He finds an apology for all his lies and impostures,-for his fraud, perfidy, cruelty, and injustice,because in the support of truth, the arts of fraud and fiction may be deemed less criminal.' The excessive debaucheries and licentiousness of the false prophet are touched on with a delicate hand; 'perfumes and women were the two sensual enjoyments which his nature required, and his religion did not forbid; and Mahomet affirmed that the fervour of his devotion was increased by these innocent pleasures.'

Though