They strip the place of its suburb Al-Manakhah, in order to show the enceinte, omit the fort, and the gardens north and south of the city, enlarge the Mosque twenty-fold for dignity, and make it occupy the whole centre of the city, instead of a small corner in the south-east quarter.  They place, for symmetry, towers only at the angles of the walls, instead of all along the curtain, and gather up and press into the same field all the venerable and interesting features of the country, those behind the artist’s back, and at his sides, as well as what appears in front.  Such are the Turkish lithographs.  At Meccah, some Indians support themselves by depicting the holy shrines; their works are a truly Oriental mixture of ground plan and elevation, drawn with pen and ink, and brightened with the most vivid colours-grotesque enough, but less unintelligible than the more ambitious imitations of European art.

[p.343]Chapter xvii.

An essay towards the history of the prophet’s
mosque.

Ibn Abbas has informed the world that when the eighty individuals composing Noah’s family issued from the ark, they settled at a place distant ten marches and twelve parasangs[FN#1] (thirty-six to forty-eight miles) from Babel or Babylon.  There they increased and multiplied, and spread into a mighty empire.  At length under the rule of Namrud (Nimrod), son of Kanaan (Canaan), son of Ham, they lapsed from the worship of the true God:  a miracle dispersed them into distant parts of the earth, and they were further broken up by the one primaeval language being divided into seventy-two dialects.

A tribe called Aulad Sam bin Nuh (the children of Shem), or Amalikah and Amalik,[FN#2] from their ancestor Amlak bin Arfakhshad bin Sam bin Nuh, was inspired

[p.344]with a knowledge of the Arabic tongue[FN#3]:  it settled at Al-Madinah, and was the first to cultivate the ground and to plant palm-trees.  In course of time these people extended over the whole tract between the seas of Al-Hijaz (the Red Sea) and Al-Oman, (north-western part of the Indian Ocean), and they became the progenitors of the Jababirah[FN#4] (tyrants or “giants”) of Syria, as well as the Farainah (Pharaohs) of Egypt.[FN#5] Under these Amalik such

[p.345]was the age of man that during the space of four hundred years a bier would not be seen, nor “keening” be heard, in their cities.

The last king of the Amalik, “Arkam bin al-Arkam,[FN#6]” was, according to most authors, slain by an army of the children of Israel sent by Moses after the Exodus,[FN#7] with orders thoroughly to purge Meccah and Al-Madinah of their Infidel inhabitants.  All the tribe was destroyed, with the exception of the women, the children, and a youth of the royal family, whose extraordinary beauty persuaded the invaders to spare him pending a reference to the Prophet.  When the army returned, they found that Moses had died during the expedition, and they were received with reproaches by the people for having violated his express command.  The soldiers, unwilling to live with their own nation under this reproach, returned to Al-Hijaz, and settled there.