The Minarets At Meccah Are Far Inferior To
Those Of Her Rival, And Their Bands Of Gaudy Colours Give Them
An
appearance of tawdry vulgarity.
[FN#59] Two minarets, namely, those of the Bab al-Salam and the Bab
al-
Safa, are separated from the Mosque by private dwelling-houses, a
plan neither common nor regular.
[FN#60] A stranger must be careful how he appears at a minaret window,
unless he would have a bullet whizzing past his head. Arabs are
especially jealous of being overlooked, and have no fellow-feeling for
votaries of “beautiful views.” For this reason here, as in Egypt, a blind
Mu’ezzin is preferred, and many ridiculous stories are told about men who
for years have counterfeited cecity to live in idleness[.]
[FN#61] I have illustrated this chapter, which otherwise might be
unintelligible to many, by a plan of the Ka’abah (taken from Ali Bey
al-Abbasi), which Burckhardt pronounced to be “perfectly correct.” This
author has not been duly appreciated. In the first place, his disguise
was against him; and, secondly, he was a spy of the French Government.
According to Mr. Bankes, who had access to the original papers at
Constantinople, Ali Bey was a Catalonian named Badia, and was suspected
to have been of Jewish extraction. He claimed from Napoleon a reward
for his services, returned to the East, and died, it is supposed, of
poison in the Hauran, near Damascus. In the edition which I have
consulted (Paris, 1814) the author labours to persuade the world by
marking the days with their planetary signs, &c., &c., that he is a
real Oriental, but he perpetually betrays himself.
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