[p.359]quoting a saying of the deceased that prophets and martyrs are always interred where they happen to die.  The Apostle was placed, it is said, under the bed where he had given up the ghost, by Ali and the two sons of Abbas, who dug the grave.  With the life of Mohammed the interest of Al-Madinah ceases, or rather is concentrated in the history of its temple.  Since then the city has passed through the hands of the Caliphs, the Sharifs of Meccah, the Sultans of Constantinople, the Wahhabis, and the Egyptians.  It has now reverted to the Sultan, whose government is beginning to believe that, in these days when religious prestige is of little value, the great Khan’s title, “Servant of the Holy Shrines,” is purchased at too high a price.  As has before been observed, the Turks now struggle for existence in Al-Hijaz with a soldier ever in arrears, and officers unequal to the task of managing an unruly people.  The pensions are but partly paid,[FN#33] and they are not likely to increase with years.  It is probably a mere consideration of interest that prevents the people rising en masse,

[p.360]and re-asserting the liberties of their country.  And I have heard from authentic sources that the Wahhabis look forward to the day when a fresh crusade will enable them to purge the land of its abominations in the shape of silver and gold.

The Masjid al-Nabi, or Prophet’s Mosque, is the second in Al-Islam in point of seniority, and the second, or, according to others, the first in dignity, ranking with the Ka’abah itself.  It is erected around the spot where the she-camel, Al-Kaswa, knelt down by the order of Heaven.  At that time the land was a palm grove and a Mirbad, or place where dates are dried.  Mohammed, ordered to erect a place of worship there, sent for the youths to whom it belonged, and certain Ansar, or Auxiliaries, their guardians; the ground was offered to him in free gift, but he insisted upon purchasing it, paying more than its value.  Having caused the soil to be levelled and the trees to be felled, he laid the foundation of the first Mosque.

In those times of primitive simplicity its walls were made of rough stone and unbaked bricks:  trunks of date-trees supported a palm-stick roof, concerning which the Archangel Gabriel delivered an order that it should not be higher than seven cubits, the elevation of Moses’s temple.  All ornament was strictly forbidden.  The Ansar, or men of Al-Madinah, and the Muhajirin, or Fugitives from Meccah, carried the building materials in their arms from the cemetery Al-Bakia, near the well of Ayyub, north of the spot where Ibrahim’s Mosque now stands, and the Apostle was to be seen aiding them in their labours, and reciting for their encouragement,

“O Allah! there is no good but the good of futurity, Then have mercy upon my Ansar and Muhajirin!”

The length of this Mosque was fifty-four cubits from North to South, and sixty-three in breadth, and it was hemmed in by houses on all sides save the Western.  Till the seventeenth