Others, As We Did, Pray Alone In The
Garden, And Many Authors Prefer This Conclusion To Visitation, For The
Reason
Above given.
[FN#67] This has become a generic name for a Well situated within the
walls of a Mosque.
[FN#68] As might be expected, the more a man pays, the higher he
estimates his own dignity. Some Indians have spent as much as 500
dollars during a first visit. Others have "made Maulids," i.e., feasted
all the poor connected with the temple with rice, meat, &c., whilst
others brought rare and expensive presents for the officials. Such
generosity, however, is becoming rare in these unworthy days.
[FN#69] This gate was anciently called the Bab al-Atakah, "of
Deliverance."
[FN#70] Most of these entrances have been named and renamed. The Bab
Jibrail, for instance, which derives its present appellation from the
general belief that the archangel once passed through it, is generally
called in books Bab al-Jabr, the Gate of Repairing (the broken fortunes
of a friend or follower). It must not be confounded with the Mahbat
Jibrail, or the window near it in the Eastern wall, where the archangel
usually descended from heaven with the Wahy or Inspiration.
[FN#71] By some wonderful process the "Printer's Devil" converted, in
the first edition, this "ball or cone" into "bull or cow."
[FN#72] Belal, the loud-lunged crier, stood, we are informed, by Moslem
historians, upon a part of the roof on one of the walls of the Mosque.
The minaret, as the next chapter will show, was the invention of a more
tasteful age.
[FN#73] This abomination may be seen in Egypt on many of the
tombs,-those outside the Bal al-Nasr at Cairo, for instance.
[FN#74] The tale of this Weeping Pillar is well known.
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