Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah, vol 1 | Page 3

with the permission of
the author, two highly interesting communications from Dr. Aloys
Sprenger, the well-known Orientalist and Arabist, concerning the
routes of the Great Caravans. My friend supports his suspicions that an
error of direction has been made, and geographers will enjoy the
benefit of his conscientious studies, topographical and linguistic.
The truculent attacks made upon pilgrims and Darwayshes call for a
few words of notice. Even that learned and amiable philanthropist, the
late Dr. John Wilson of Bombay ("Lands of the Bible," vol. ii., p. 302)
alludes, in the case of the Spaniard Badia, alias Ali Bey al-Abbasi, to
the "unjustifiable fanciful disguise of a Mohammedan Pilgrim." The
author of the Ruddy Goose Theory ("Voice of Israel from Mount Sinai")
and compiler of the "Historical Geography of Arabia" has dealt a foul
blow to the memory of Burckhardt, the energetic and inoffensive Swiss
traveller, whose name has ever been held in the highest repute. And
now the "Government Chaplain" indites (Introduction, p. xxvii.) the
following invidious remarks touching the travels of Ludovico di
Varthema-the vir Deo carus, be it remarked, of the learned and laical
Julius Caesar Scaliger:
"This is not the place to discuss the morality of an act involving the
deliberate and voluntary denial of what a man holds to be truth in a
matter so sacred as that of Religion. Such a violation of conscience is
not justifiable by the end which the renegade (!) may have in view,
however abstractedly praiseworthy it may be; and even granting that
his demerit should be gauged by the amount of knowledge which he
possesses of what is true and what false, the conclusion is inevitable,
that nothing short of utter ignorance of the precepts of his faith, or a
[p.xxi]conscientious disbelief in them, can fairly relieve the Christian,
who conforms to Islamism without a corresponding persuasion of its
verity, of the deserved odium all honest men attach to apostasy and
hypocrisy."
The reply to this tirade is simply, "Judge not; especially when you are

ignorant of the case which you are judging." Perhaps also the writer
may ask himself, Is it right for those to cast stones who dwell in a
tenement not devoid of fragility? The second attack proceeds from a
place whence no man would reasonably have expected it. The author of
the "Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia"
(vol. i., pp. 258-59) thus expresses his opinions:-
"Passing oneself off for a wandering Darweesh, as some European
explorers have attempted to do in the East, is for more reasons than one
a very bad plan. It is unnecessary to dilate on that moral aspect of the
proceeding which will always first strike unsophisticated minds. To
feign a religion which the adventurer himself does not believe, to
perform with scrupulous exactitude, as of the highest and holiest import,
practices which he inwardly ridicules, and which he intends on his
return to hold up to the ridicule of others, to turn for weeks and months
together the most sacred and awful bearings of man towards his Creator
into a deliberate and truthless mummery, not to mention other and yet
darker touches,-all this seems hardly compatible with the character of a
European gentleman, let alone that of a Christian."
This comes admirably a propos from a traveller who, born a Protestant,
of Jewish descent, placed himself "in connection with," in plain words
took the vows of, "the order of the Jesuits," an order "well-known in
the annals of philanthropic daring"; a popular preacher who declaimed
openly at Bayrut and elsewhere against his own nation, till the
proceedings of a certain Father Michael
[p.xxii]Cohen were made the subject of an official report by Mr.
Consul-General Moore (Bayrut, November 11, 1857); an Englishman
by birth who accepted French protection, a secret mission, and the
"liberality of the present Emperor of the French"; a military officer
travelling in the garb of what he calls a native (Syrian) "quack" with a
comrade who "by a slight but necessary fiction passed for his
brother-in-law[FN#2]"; a gentleman who by return to Protestantism
violated his vows, and a traveller who was proved by the experiment of
Colonel (now Sir Lewis) Pelly to have brought upon himself all the
perils and adventures that have caused his charming work to be
considered so little worthy of trust. Truly such attack argues a sublime
daring. It is the principle of "vieille coquette, nouvelle devote"; it is
Satan preaching against Sin. Both writers certainly lack the "giftie" to

see themselves as others see them.
In noticing these extracts my object is not to defend myself: I recognize
no man's right to interfere between a human being and his conscience.
But what is there, I would ask, in the Moslem Pilgrimage so offensive
to Christians-what makes it a