A skin of Nile water---------1--------0
Sundries. 	Tobacco[FN#25]---------------1--------0
Hammam (hot bath)------------3-------20
Oil and clarified butter-----1--------2
—        —
Total-------------------------------12-------50

        Equal to about two shillings and sixpence.

[p.66]In these days who at Cairo without a Shaykh?  I thought it right to conform to popular custom, and accordingly, after having secured a servant, my efforts were directed to finding a teacher; the pretext being that as an Indian doctor I wanted to read Arabic works on medicine, as well as to perfect myself in divinity and pronunciation.[FN#26] My theological studies were in the Shafe’i school for two reasons:  in the first place, it is the least rigorous of the Four Orthodox, and, secondly, it most resembles the Shi’ah heresy, with which long intercourse

[p.67]with Persians had made me familiar.[FN#27] My choice of doctrine, however, confirmed those around me in their conviction that I was a rank heretic, for the ’Ajami, taught by his religion to conceal offensive tenets[FN#28] in lands where the open expression would be dangerous, always represents himself to be a Shafe’i.  This, together with the original mistake of appearing publicly at Alexandria as a “Mirza” in a Persian dress, caused me infinite small annoyance at Cairo, in spite of all precautions and contrivances.  And throughout my journey, even in Arabia, though I drew my knife every time an offensive hint was thrown out, the ill-fame clung to me like the shirt of Nessus.

It was not long before I happened to hit upon a proper teacher, in the person of Shaykh Mohammed al-Attar, or the “Druggist.”  He had known prosperity, having once been a Khatib (preacher) in one of Mohammed Ali’s mosques.  But His Highness the late Pasha had dismissed him, which disastrous event, with its subsequent train of misfortunes, he dates from the melancholy day when he took to himself a wife.  He talks of her abroad as a stern and rigid master dealing with a naughty slave, though, by the look that accompanies his rhodomontade, I am convinced that at home he is the very model of “managed men.”  His dismissal was the reason that compelled him to fall back upon the trade of a druggist, the refuge for the once wealthy, though now destitute, Sages of Egypt.

His little shop in the Jamaliyah Quarter is a perfect gem of Nilotic queerness.  A hole, about five feet long

[p.68]and six deep, pierced in the wall of some house, it is divided into two compartments separated by a thin partition of wood, and communicating by a kind of arch cut in the boards.  The inner box, germ of a back parlour, acts as store-room, as the pile of empty old baskets tossed in dusty confusion upon the dirty floor shows.  In the front is displayed the stock in trade, a matting full of Persian tobacco and pipe-bowls of red clay, a palm-leaf bag containing