The sun rode high above the Holy City, but a freshness of the dawn still
lurked in the shade of her rough walls, in the gloom of her covered
ways, which swarmed with people in all kinds of raiment representative
of every nation under heaven. To anyone threading that crowded labyrinth
of whitish stone, ancient and coherent, glimpses of the pure blue sky
became welcome as a flower on rocks. For Shems-ud-dìn, accustomed through
so many years to wide horizons and an open road, the overshadowing walls
made a prison. The hubbub of the bazaars dazed him, and he felt hurt by
the careless shouldering of other wayfarers.
He had been to visit Alia, and was making his way, under guidance of the
faithful Zeyd, to the Sacred Area, when he met Shibli walking with Hassan
Agha and his attendant Circassians amid the throng in a long, dim market.
“How is the health of our dove this morning?” cried Hassan, speaking for
them all. “In sh’ Allah, the poor one is much better?”
“If not better, her frame has rest—for which Allah be praised!” returned
Shems-ud-dìn. “The people of the house are very kind, as I learn from the
mouth of Mâs. The Lord reward them!... O Shibli, son of my hope, unless
thou hast some grave business, come with me to the Dome of the Rock,
whither I go to pray. It is long since I spoke with thee in private. Come
and let thy voice comfort me, O my dear.”
Shibli obeyed, as in duty bound; but his face often turned to gaze
wistfully after the Circassians, and the lines of his mouth expressed
grievance.
“Is the health of the beloved indeed no better?” he felt it incumbent on
him to ask.
“I know not how to answer thee, O my son. I fear hope as a friend
untried. It is enough to desire. Notwithstanding, if Allah wills that she
be made whole, there appears to my mind a possibility which yesterday I
could not discern.”
“Praise be to Allah!” murmured Shibli very properly.
The quiet of the Muslim quarter brought refreshment to Shems-ud-dìn,
after the clamor of the motley throng in the bazaars. Old walls rose
high on either hand. Jutting lattices, with here and there an arch,
encroached on the jewel sky. In the shade of one ancient portal, ornate
but crumbling to decay, sat a breadseller asleep behind two tiers of
flat, brown loaves. A man with a water skin on his back turned in at the
doorway of a house before them. A grave notable, in apparel sober but
rich, passed them without a glance, one hand in his breast. Everything
in that dim, once splendid quarter told of a proud reserve, of a dignity
that needs no trump for its assertion. The air was sad with the sadness
of great things past.
They entered what seemed a disused bazaar of rare magnificence, a huge
corridor with a lofty vaulted roof, which got light from the far end
where its tall arch framed the sky. The place was deserted and ruinous,
its floor uneven and strewn with the brash of masonry. Shems-ud-dìn
quickened step instinctively to gain the light which picked out the faces
of his companions from the shades wherein they had walked so long.
The outer sunshine crashed on their sight with the splinter of a thousand
lances. The great mouth of the passage yawned black as night behind them.
On either side of it ran a high irregular wall, bearing here and there a
lattice, the end of the houses in this direction. They stood on a strip
of clear ground, on which a few old trees cast blots of shadow; a place
waste, save for patches of wrought pavement and certain small, domed
shrines as delicate as toys of ivory.
Before them, at no great distance, rose a flight of wide steps leading
up on to a terraced plateau, and at a point farther off up sprang a
sister flight exactly similar. On the top of either stairway, in the
gate of the Haràm, stood three slender columns, light and graceful as
flower stems, supporting arches. At one end of the plateau, seen through
cypress trees, crouched a mosque of many aisles; and numberless small,
domed buildings—shrines and cells and pulpits—capped the terrace walls.
But what drew and absorbed their gaze to the forgetting of all else, the
sun and center of all, was a mighty dome, in form and color somewhat
resembling a ripe fig, springing from the roof of an octagon of two kinds
of marble, wrought together into cunning patterns. Not a foot of the
great building but had been treated minutely, curiously, by the hands
of forgotten craftsmen. In the full light of morning, there in that
sand-hued place, it bloomed a wondrous iris of the hills, a thing to
wring a shout from the dying.
Even Shibli forgot his dudgeon, and joined reverently with Zeyd ebn Abbâs
in reciting the prayer of first approach, after Shems-ud-dìn.
Then, having gazed all about them, they crossed the waste ground and
mounted the steps. Discarding slippers, they passed along a time-worn
pavement to the place of washing. With the exception of two middle-aged
men in dark robes and white turbans, who sat disputing gravely beneath a
tree and gave but one look to the pilgrims, they seemed alone in the vast
inclosure.
When, having purified their bodies, they ventured to approach the Noble
Sanctuary, Shems-ud-dìn thought well to remind them of its claims to
reverence.
“Within, beneath this admirable dome,” he said, “we shall behold the
rock whereon Neby Ibrahìm, the Friend of God, prepared to sacrifice his
beloved son Ismaìl, at the bidding of the Most High. Hither also, in an
after age, was our lord Muhammed, the Apostle of God, borne by night on
the celestial beast, Burac; and from that same rock was he transported to
the seventh heaven, being yet mortal. Surely there is no stone in all the
world, save only that of Mekka, more worthy of our reverence than this
rock, which God has hallowed from of old. And the Khalif, Omar El Khattab
(peace to him), did well to raise this splendid dome above it.”
Zeyd ebn Abbâs devoured those high words greedily. Shibli heard them
with respect. At the entrance to the Dome of the Rock, Shems-ud-dìn
ceased speaking, and they passed into the tinted gloom of the sanctuary.
While Shibli and Zeyd ebn Abbâs paced the ring of pavement, studying the
texts worked in mosaic upon the walls and above the arches, looking on
the natural rock so gloriously enshrined, Shems-ud-dìn knelt and made
prostration, praying:
“O Allah, pardon! Grant to thy servant faith on the pattern of El Khalìl,
who in this place offered his dearest freely unto thee. Am I not the very
opposite of Neby Ibrahìm El Khalìl? When all reasonable means failed
to restore my child, and prayer had been made in vain, Thy Will was
manifest to me. Yet I presumed to seek other aid, I sought to procure
her health by man’s exertion. I followed the contrivance of my own mind.
Am I not impious, therefore? Am I not abominable? What am I that Thou
shouldst hear me, or my deeds upon the earth to make a claim upon Thee?
Nevertheless, Thou deignest to give ear to the prayers of men, and hast
ordained prayer unto us as an offering pleasing in Thy sight. Hear me, O
Lord, in this my extremity! Oh, have mercy on my daughter, the innocent;
and smite me rather, for I am sinful! And whatever Thy Will concerning
her, teach me to resign myself to it utterly. Subdue my mind and my soul,
and lead me in the way of the upright.”
He rose at length from off the pavement, and went and sat crosslegged,
his back against the wall. Tears blinded him. The footsteps of Shibli and
Zeyd echoed in the vast dome, and their whispering made a hollow murmur.
But Shems-ud-dìn heard nothing save the clamor of his inward strife.
All at once a voice near his ear said, “Why weepest thou, O my brother?”
With a start, as one awakes out of sleep, he looked and beheld one in
flowing raiment standing before him, a very old man who leaned upon a
staff. His face was deeply furrowed where the white hair grew not, and
his lips were shriveled and sucked inward as when the gums beneath have
shrunken, being toothless. Shems-ud-dìn sat amazed by the apparition, for
he had not heard the old man’s steps approaching nor the tap of his staff
along the stones. He saw the forms of Zeyd and Shibli afar off, standing
watching as men smitten with dismay.
“What ails thee, O my brother? Wherefore weepest thou? I cannot discern
thy likeness, for my eyes grow dim; but I see thy beard white as my own,
and I hear thy sobs. What dire distress is thine, an old man inured to
human griefs, that thou so lamentest?”
“A long story, O my brother.”
“A long story is the best of stories, and I like it none the worse for
promising to be sad. At my age one is impatient only of abruptness, the
inconsequence of the merry and light-minded. Lend me the help of thy
hand, O my brother, that I may compose my limbs to sit beside thee.”
Shems-ud-dìn reached forth his hand and the old man grasped it, steadying
himself therewith while he tucked his staff beneath his left elbow. He
was about to subside upon the bare stones, when Zeyd ebn Abbâs darted
forward and spread his ragged cloak upon the ground beneath him. The old
man smiled vaguely, exposing his toothless gums.
“May Allah requite thee, O my son! May this thy courtesy be counted to
thee for righteousness! Thy cloak is old and of poor material, as my
hands perceive. May a rich mantle fall upon thee from the hand of Allah!”
Zeyd bowed his head to the blessing, and rejoined Shibli with a face of
great elation.
“Now deign to impart thy story, O my brother!” said the old man, when
fairly seated.
Shems-ud-dìn complied straightway. He abated nothing of his own
frowardness, but confessed it throughout the story, speaking much of his
soul’s uneasiness on that account.
At the end, there was silence for a little space. Then that old man spoke:
“During all the years that I have been Chief of the Learned in this
place, never—Allah witness!—never heard I such a tale as this thou hast
related. Beloved, I see not with thy eyes; I see goodness everywhere
in thy conduct, save only in the one point of thy recourse to the
unbeliever, of which thou madest naught in the telling. This Frank is not
an infidel like another infidel. He is of those who openly oppose the
faith. Is there not a korân concerning such an one: ‘The worst beasts in
God’s sight are those who are obstinate unbelievers’?”
“But, on the other hand, there is also this korân: ‘Allah is our Lord
and your Lord; unto us our works, and unto you your works; no quarreling
between us and you; for Allah will gather in us both, and unto Him we
shall return.’”
“Good. But that word is abrogated in the judgment of all the learned!”
“Not of all, by thy leave! There be many who assert that no word from
Allah can be rendered null, that this has its season, and that its
season, but all are eternally valid. I was ever of the party of these
last. As to the degree of intercourse permissible with unbelievers, and
more especially with the People of the Book, it is nowhere fixed for us.
I could quote a hundred traditions in support of either argument, and the
best precedents are in like manner at variance. For instance, if we refer
to the Sûnna——”
“Stay! Hast thou studied the Sûnna?”
“Assuredly; and all our commentators and, I verily believe, every
scripture relevant to the subject.”
“O happy day for me! Welcome, and again welcome, O my soul! Deign now to
dispute a little! It is seldom I can exercise my learning; very seldom I
am able to confer with a man like thee. The lamp of knowledge does but
smoke nowadays.”
It was long since Shems-ud-dìn had enjoyed conversation with his equal
in learning. The two sheykhs held long conference, while Zeyd sat on his
heels watching them, and Shibli wandered to and fro, yawning frequently
and viewing the wonders about him with a growing disenchantment.
At last the old man rose by the help of Shems-ud-dìn and the attentive
Zeyd. He said:
“My peace on thee! Thou art a prince of scholars, and a man most
righteous. If I perceive any fault in thee, it is that thy mind exalts
small matters, and overlooks or belittles points of real importance—a
common failing among us learned in the Law, professed quibblers. This
matter of thy going to the Frank is, to my thinking, no trifle. I hope to
convince thee of the wrong in it at some other time. Come hither whenever
thou art so minded; it is a boon I crave of thee. Ask for Mahmûd Ali,
which is my name. And if ever thou desirest to pray alone, there stand
cells enough within our precincts, empty, for the most part, save in
Ramadan, which is not yet. They and all I dispose of are thine to use, O
my soul’s brother!”
With a parting benison the old man hobbled away, bowed upon his staff.
Shems-ud-dìn said one last prayer, then went out with his companions into
the blinding sunlight.
Zeyd, the son of Abbâs, raised his hands on high, toward that sapphire
dome which has the world for pavement. In a loud voice he praised Allah,
and blessed the day on which it had been given him to witness the meeting
of two most holy men, and garner in his imagination a drop or two of the
celestial wisdom that had gushed in rivers from their mouths.
Shibli drew breath of relief, and looked upon the heaped-up, whitish city
with a lover’s eyes.