Page:A Moslem seeker after God - showing Islam at its best in the life and teaching of al-Ghazali, mystic and theologian of the eleventh century (IA moslemseekeraft00zwem).pdf/116



back oozed through the material of his sack and stained the precious manuscript, which was long preserved and shown to visitors in one of the libraries of Bagdad." The Persian poet Sa adi was left an orphan at an early age, went to Bagdad to attend the Nizamiyya University course, made the Mecca pilgrimage several times over, acted, out of charity, as a water-carrier in the markets of Jerusalem and the Syrian towns, was taken pris oner by the Franks, and forced to work with Jews at cleaning out the moats of Tripoli in Syria; he was ransomed by an Aleppan, who gave him his daughter in marriage. He himself mentions his visits to Kashgar in Turkestan, to Abyssinia, and Asia Minor. He even travelled about India, pass ing through Afghanistan on his way.

We have a picture of such a dervish (a dishonest one, however) in Hamadhani’s forty-second Maqamat: " So I started wandering, as though I was the Messiah, and I journeyed over Khorasan, its deserted and populous parts, to Kirman, Siji stan, Jilan, Tabaristan, Oman, to Sind and Hind, to Nubia and Egypt, Yemen, Hijaz, Mecca and al Ta if. I roamed over deserts and wastes, seeking warmth and the fire and taking shelter with the ass, till both my cheeks were blackened. And thus I collected of anecdotes and fables, witticisms and traditions, poems of the humorists, the diversions of the frivolous, the fabrications of the lovesick, the saws of the pseudo-philosophers, the tricks of