Near the house was the principal mosque, to which the sultan and the Christian party went every Friday, as a matter of course, and every other day they found it necessary to appear there once or twice.  It is a low building, having a shed projecting over the door, which, being raised on a platform, is entered by a few steps.  A small turret, intended to be square and perpendicular, is erected for the Mouadden to call to prayers.  One of the great lounges is on the seat in front of the mosque, and every morning and evening they are full of idle people, who converse on the state of the markets, and on their own private affairs, or in a fearful whisper canvass the sultan’s conduct.

In Mourzouk there are sixteen mosques, which are covered in, but some of them are very small.  Each has an imaum, but the kadi is their head, of which dignity he seems not a little proud.  This man had never, been beyond the boundaries of Fezzan, and could form no idea of any thing superior to mud houses and palms; he always fancied the Europeans to be great romancers, when they told him of their country, and described it as being in the midst of the sea.

They had many opportunities of observing the fighi and their scholars sitting on the sand.  The children are taught their letters by having them written on a flat board, of a hard wood, brought from Bornou and Soudan, and repeating them after their master.  When quite perfect in their alphabet, they are allowed to trace over the letters already made, they then learn to copy sentences, and to write small words dictated to them.  The master often repeats verses from the Koran, in a loud voice, which the boys learn by saying them after him, and when they begin to read a little, he sings aloud, and all the scholars follow him from their books, as fast as they can.  Practice at length renders them perfect, and in three or four years their education is considered complete.  Thus it is, that many who can read the Koran with great rapidity, cannot peruse a line of any other book.  Arithmetic is wholly put of the question.  On breaking up for the day, the master and all the scholars recite a prayer.  The school-hours are by no means regular, being only when the fighi has nothing else to do.  Morning early, or late in the evening, are the general times for study.  The punishments are beating with a stick on the hands or feet and whipping, which is not unfrequently practised.  Their pens are reeds—­their rubber sand.  While learning their tasks, and perhaps each boy has a different one, they all read aloud, so that the harmony of even a dozen boys may be easily imagined.

In the time of the native sultans, it was the custom, on a fixed day, annually, for the boys who had completed their education, to assemble on horseback, in as fine clothes as their friends could procure for them, on the sands to the westward of the town.  On an eminence stood the fighi, bearing in his hand a little flag rolled on a staff; the boys were stationed at some distance, and on his unfurling the flag and planting it in the ground, all started at full speed.  He who first arrived and seized it, was presented by the sultan with a fine suit of clothes, and some money, and rode through the town at the head of the others.  These races ceased with the arrival of Mukni, and parents now complain that their sons have no inducement to study.