Читать книгу Around the Black Sea. Asia Minor, Armenia, Caucasus, Circassia, Daghestan, the Crimea, Roumania онлайн

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The other first-class Mohammedan passengers paid no attention whatever to the hours for devotions, which gave me a disagreeable shock, because I have always understood that a Moslem is so conscientious that he will say his prayers five times a day at the proper moment, no matter what he happens to be doing or where he happens to be.

Many of the third-class passengers, who are compelled to sleep on the open deck, performed their duties regularly. They spread their prayer rugs carefully down in the first open place they could find, and, turning their eyes toward Mecca, went through with the genuflections which are a part of the Mohammedan ritual, and cried in loud voices that there is no God but Allah. Several of the private soldiers, and we had a large number on board, said their prayers regularly, regardless of their surroundings, but the majority of them did not and probably not more than one out of five of the Moslem passengers paid any attention to the hours of prayer.

Two of the mullahs in the first-class end of the ship had handsomely bound books from which they read aloud, as is their custom. Turkish students always study aloud. When you are riding along through country villages in the East you can locate the school-houses by the murmur of the voices of the pupils learning their lessons. If you go into a mosque that is used for educational purposes you can always find groups of students squatting on the floor, rocking their bodies back and forth with a motion as regular as that of a rocking chair, and repeating the lines of their lessons in loud voices.