Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 552 pages of information about Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1.

Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 552 pages of information about Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1.
“science of K,” so called from the initial letter of the word “Kimiya.”  Of the state of therapeutics I have already treated at length.  Aided by the finest of ears, and flexible organs of articulation, the Egyptian appears to possess many of the elements of a good linguist.  The stranger wonders to hear a Cairene donkey-boy shouting sentences in three or four European dialects, with a pronunciation as pure as his own.  How far this people succeed in higher branches of language, my scanty experience does not enable me to determine.  But even for students of Arabic, nothing can be more imperfect than those useful implements, Vocabularies and Dictionaries.  The Cairenes have, it is true, the Kamus of Fayruzabadi, but it has never been printed in Egypt; it is therefore rare, and when found, lost pages and clerical errors combined with the intrinsic difficulty of the style, exemplify the saying of Golius, that the most learned Orientalist must act the part of a diviner, before he can perform that of interpreter.  They have another Lexicon, the Sihah, and an abbreviation of the same, the Sihah al-Saghir (or the lesser), both of them liable to the same objections as the Kamus.  For the benefit of the numerous students of Turkish and Persian, short grammars and vocabularies have been printed at a cheap price, but the former are upon the model of Arabic, a language essentially different in formation, and the latter are mere strings of words.  As a specimen of the state of periodical literature, I may quote the history of the “Bulak Independent,” as Europeans facetiously call it.  When Mohammed Ali, determining to have an “organ,” directed an officer to be editor of a weekly paper, the officer replied, that no one would read it, and consequently that no one would pay for it.  The Pasha remedied this by an order that a subscription should be struck off from the pay of all employes, European and Egyptian, whose salary amounted to a certain sum.  Upon which the editor accepted the task, but being paid before his work was published, he of course never supplied his subscribers with their copies. [FN#33] Would not a superficial, hasty, and somewhat prejudiced Egyptian or Persian say exactly the same thing about the systems of Christ Church and Trinity College? [FN#34] And when the man of the world, as sometimes happens, professes to see no difference in the forms of faith, or whispers that his residence in Europe has made him friendly to the Christian religion, you will be justified in concluding his opinions to be latitudinarian. [FN#35] I know only one class in Egypt favourable to the English,-the donkey boys,-and they found our claim to the possession of the country upon a base scarcely admissible by those skilled in casuistry, namely, that we hire more asses than any other nation. [FN#36] The story is, that Mohammed Ali used to offer his flocks of foreigners their choice of two professions,-"destruction,” that is to say, physic, or “instruction.” [FN#37] Of this instances abound.  Lately an order
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Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.