THE PRINCE OF INDIA (Historical Novel). Lew Wallace

Kaliphs, the Christians might visit Jerusalem as pilgrims. A palmer’s staff in place of a sword! For shield, a beggar’s scrip! But the bishops accepted, and then ushered in an age of fraud, Christian against Christian…. The knoll on which the Byzantine built his church of the Holy Sepulchre is not the Calvary. That the cowled liars call the Sepulchre never held the body of Christ. The tears of the millions of penitents have but watered a monkish deceit…. Fools and blasphemers! The Via Dolorosa led out of the Damascus gate on the north. The skull-shaped hill beyond that gate is the Golgotha. Who should know it better than I? The Centurion asked for a guide; I walked with him. Hyssop was the only green thing growing upon the mount; nothing but hyssop has grown there since. At the base on the west was a garden, and the Sepulchre was in the garden. From the foot of the cross I looked toward the city, and there was a sea of men extending down to the gate…. I know!—I know!—I and misery know!… When I went out fifty years ago there was an agreement between the ancient combatants; each vied with the other in hating and persecuting the Jew, and there was no limit to the afflictions he endured from them…. Speak thou, O Hebron, city of the patriarchs! By him who sits afar, and by him near unto thee, by the stars this peaceful night, and by the Everlasting who is above the stars, be thou heard a witness testifying! There was a day when thou didst stand open to the children of Israel; for the cave and the dead within it belonged to them. Then Herod built over it, and shut it up, though without excluding the tribes. The Christian followed Herod; yet the Hebrew might pay his way in. After the Christian, the Moslem; and now nor David the King, nor son of his, though they alighted at the doors from chariots, and beat upon them with their crowns and sceptres, could pass in and live…. Kings have come and gone, and generations, and there is a new map from which old names have been dropped. As respects religion, alas! the divisions remain— here a Mohammedan, there a Christian, yonder a Judean … . From my door I study these men the children of those in life at my going into exile. Their ardor is not diminished. To kiss a stone in which tradition has planted a saying of God, they will defy the terrors of the Desert, heat, thirst, famine, disease, death. I bring them an old idea in a new relation— God, giver of life and power to Son and Prophet—God, alone entitled to worship—God, a principle of Supreme Holiness to which believers can bring their creeds and doctrines for mergence in a treaty of universal brotherhood. Will they accept it?… Yesterday I saw a Schiah and a Sunite meet, and the old hate darkened their faces as they looked at each other. Between them there is only a feud of Islamites; how much greater is their feud with Christians? How immeasurably greater the feud between Christian and Jew?… My heart misgives me! Lord! Can it be I am but cherishing a dream?”

      At sight of a man approaching through the dusk, he calmed himself.

      “Peace to thee, Hadji,” said the visitor, halting.

      “Is it thou, Shaykh?”

      “It is I, my father’s son. I have a report to make.”

      “I was thinking of certain holy things of priceless worth, sayings of the Prophet. Tell me what thou hast?”

      The Shaykh saluted him, and returned, “The caravan will depart to-morrow at sunrise.”

      “Be it so. We are ready. I will designate our place in the movement. Thou art dismissed.”

      “O Prince! I have more to report.”

      “More?”

      “A vessel came in to-day from Hormuz on the eastern shore, bringing a horde of beggars.”

      ” Bismillah! It was well I hired of thee a herd of camels, and loaded them with food. I shall pay my fine to the poor early.”

      The Shaykh shook his head.

      “That they are beggars is nothing,” he said. “Allah is good to all his creatures. The jackals are his, and must be fed. For this perhaps the unfortunates were blown here by the angel that rides the yellow air. Four corpses were landed, and their clothes sold in the camp.”

      “Thou wouldst say,” the Prince rejoined, “that the plague will go with us to the Kaabah. Content thee, Shaykh. Allah will have his way.”

      “But my men are afraid.”

      “I will place a drop of sweetened water on their lips, and bring them safe through, though they are dying. Tell them as much.”

      The Shaykh was departing when the Prince, shrewdly suspecting it was he who feared, called him back.

      “How call ye the afternoon prayer, O Shaykh?”

      “El Asr.”

      “What didst thou when it was called?”

      “Am I not a believer? I prayed.”

      “And thou hast heard the Arafat sermon?”

      “Even so, O Prince.”

      “Then, as thou art a believer, and a hadji, O Shaykh, thou and all with thee shalt see the Khatib on his dromedary, and hear him again. Only promise me to stay till his last Amin.”

      “I promise,” said the Shaykh, solemnly.

      “Go—but remember prayer is the bread of faith.”

      The Shaykh was comforted, and withdrew.

      With the rising of the sun next day the caravan, numbering about three thousand souls, denied confusedly out of the town. The Prince, who might have been first, of choice fell in behind the rest.

      “Why dost thou take this place, O Prince?” asked the Shaykh, who was proud of his company, and their comparative good order.

      He received for answer, “The blessings of Allah are with the dying whom the well-to-do and selfish in front have passed unnoticed.”

      The Shaykh repeated the saying to his men, and they replied: “Ebn-Hanife was a Dervish: so is this Prince—exalted be his name!”

      Eulogy could go no further.

      Chapter IV.

       El Zaribah

       Table of Contents

      “I will be their Arbiter in Religion,” said the Indian Mystic in his monologue.

      This is to be accepted as the motive of the scheme the singular man was pursuing in the wastes of Arabia.

      It must be taken of course with his other declaration—“There can be no reform or refinement of faith except God be its exclusive subject; and so certainly it leads to lopping off all parasitical worships such as are given to Christ and Mahomet.”

      Fifty years prior, disgusted with the endless and inconsequential debates and wars between Islam and Christianity, he had betaken himself to Cipango,3 wherever that might be. There, in a repentant hour, he had conceived the idea of a Universal Religious Brotherhood, with God for its accordant principle; and he was now returned to present and urge the compromise. In more distinct statement, he was making the pilgrimage to ascertain from personal observation if the Mohammedan portion of the world was in a consenting mood. It was not his first visit to Mecca; but the purpose in mind gave the journey a now zest; and, as can be imagined, nothing in the least indicative of the prevalent spirit of the Hajj escaped him. Readers following the narrative should keep this explanation before them.

      From El Derayah the noble pilgrim had taken the longer route by way of Medina, where he scrupulously performed the observances decreed for the faithful at the Mosque of the Prophet. Thence he descended with the caravan from Damascus.

      Dawn of the sixth of September broke over the rolling plain known as the Valley of El Zaribah, disclosing four tents pitched on an eminence to the right of a road running thence south-west. These tents, connected by ropes, helped perfect an enclosure occupied by horses, donkeys, camels and dromedaries, and their cumbrous equipments. Several armed men kept watch over the camp.

      The Valley out to the pink granite hills rimming it round wore a fresh green tint