Visits to Monasteries in the Levant by Robert Curzon

Author:Robert Curzon [Curzon, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781602063754
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Cosimo
Published: 2007-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

The interference of a Mahometan in such a case as this would only have been held as another persecution of the Christians; and the miracle of the holy fire has continued to be exhibited every year with great applause, and luckily without the unfortunate results which accompanied it on this occasion.

Ibrahim Pasha, though by no means the equal of Mehemet Ali in talents or attainments, was an enlightened man for a Turk. Though bold in battle, he was kind to those who were about him; and the cruelties practised by his troops in the Greek and Syrian wars are to be ascribed more to the system of Eastern warfare than to the savage disposition of their commander.

He was born at Cavalla, in Roumelia, in the year 1789, and died at Alexandria on the 10th of November, 1848. He was the son, according to some, of Mehemet Ali, but, according to others, of the wife of the great Viceroy of Egypt by a former husband. At the age of seventeen he joined his father's army, and in 1816 he commanded the expedition against the Wahabees—a sect who maintained that nothing but the Koran was to be held in any estimation by Mahometans, to the exclusion of all notes, explanations, and commentaries, which have in many cases usurped the authority of the text. They called themselves reformers, and, like King Henry VIII., took possession of the golden water-spouts and other ornaments of the Kaaba, burned the books and destroyed the colleges of the Arabian theologians, and carried off everything they could lay hold of, on religious principles. An eye-witness told me that some of the followers of Abd el Wahab had found a good-sized looking-glass in a house at Sanaa, which they were carrying away with great difficulty through the desert, the porters being guarded by a multitude of half-naked warriors, who had neglected all other plunder in the supposition that they had got hold of the diamond of Jemshid, a pre-Adamite monarch famous in the annals of Arabian history. Some more of these wild people found several bags of doubloons at Mocha, which they conceived to be dollars that had been spoiled somehow, and had turned yellow, for they had never seen any before. A "smart" captain of an American vessel at Jedda, who was consulted on the occasion, kindly gave them one real white dollar for four yellow ones—an arrangement which perfectly satisfied both parties. After three years' campaign, Ibrahim Pasha retook the holy cities of Mecca and Medina; and in December, 1819, he made his triumphant entry into Cairo, when he was invested with the title of Vizir and made Pasha of the Hedjaz by the Sultan—a dignity more exalted than that of the Pasha of Egypt.

In 1824 he commanded the armies of the Sultan, which were sent to put down the rebellion of the Greeks: he sailed from Alexandria with a fleet of 163 vessels, 16,000 infantry, 700 cavalry, and four regiments of artillery. Numerous captives were made

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