conformed to by every good and orthodox Moslem. [FN#83] The reader will bear in mind that I am quoting from Burckhardt.  When in Al-Hijaz and at Cairo, I vainly endeavoured to buy a copy of Al-Samanhudi.  One was shown to me at Al-Madinah; unhappily, it bore the word Wakf (bequeathed), and belonged to the Mosque.  I was scarcely allowed time to read it. (See p. 102, ante.) [FN#84] In Moslem law, prophets, martyrs, and saints, are not supposed to be dead; their property, therefore, remains their own.  The Olema have confounded themselves in the consideration of the prophetic state after death.  Many declare that prophets live and pray for forty days in the tomb; at the expiration of which time, they are taken to the presence of their Maker, where they remain till the blast of Israfil’s trumpet.  The common belief, however, leaves the bodies in the graves, but no one would dare to assert that the holy ones are suffered to undergo corruption.  On the contrary, their faces are blooming, their eyes bright, and blood would issue from their bodies if wounded.  Al-Islam, as will afterwards appear, abounds in traditions of the ancient tombs of saints and martyrs, when accidentally opened, exposing to view corpses apparently freshly buried.  And it has come to pass that this fact, the result of sanctity, has now become an unerring indication of it.  A remarkable case in point is that of the late Sharif Ghalib, the father of the present Prince of Meccah.  In his lifetime he was reviled as a wicked tyrant.  But some years after his death, his body was found undecomposed; he then became a saint, and men now pray at his tomb.  Perhaps his tyranny was no drawback to his holy reputation.  La Brinvilliers was declared after execution, by her confessor and the people generally, a saint;-simply, I presume, because of the enormity of her crimes. [FN#85] note to third edition.-I have lately been assured by Mohammed al-Halabi, Shaykh al-Olema of Damascus, that he was permitted by the Aghawat to pass through the gold-plated door leading into the Hujrah, and that he saw no trace of a sepulchre. [FN#86] I was careful to make a ground-plan of the Prophet’s Mosque, as Burckhardt was prevented by severe illness from so doing.  It will give the reader a fair idea of the main point, though, in certain minor details, it is not to be trusted.  Some of my papers and sketches, which by precaution I had placed among my medicines, after cutting them into squares, numbering them, and rolling them carefully up, were damaged by the breaking of a bottle.  The plan of Al-Madinah is slightly altered from Burckhardt’s.  Nothing can be more ludicrous than the views of the Holy City, as printed in our popular works.  They are of the style “bird’s-eye,” and present a curious perspective.  They despise distance like the Chinese,-pictorially audacious; the Harrah, or ridge in the foreground appears to be 200 yards, instead of three or four miles, distant from the town.