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/119



the conjurors, the artifices of the artful, the rare sayings of convivial companions, the fraud of the astrologers, the finesse of quacks, the deception of the effeminate, the guile of the cheats, the devilry of the fiends, such that the legal decisions of al Sha abi, the memory of al-Dabbi and the learning of al-Kalbi would have fallen short of. And I solicited gifts and asked for presents. I had re course to influence and I begged. I eulogized and satirized, till I acquired much property, got posses sion of Indian swords and Yemen blades, fine coats of mail of Sabur and leathern shields of Thibet, spears of al-Khatt and javelins of Barbary, excel lent fleet horses with short coats, Armenian mules, and Mirris asses, silk brocades of Rum and woolen stuffs of Sus."

To the honest traveller, like Al-Ghazali, however, it was not so easy a life. Not only were there the hardships of travel and its loneliness, but the asceticism of the beggar and the wayfarer. "And to such a pass did we come," says Hariri, " through assailing fortune and prostrating need, that we were shod with soreness, and fed on choking, and filled our bellies with ache, and wrapped our en trails upon hunger, and anointed our eyes with watching, and made pits our home, and deemed thorns a smooth bed, and came to forget our sad dles, and thought destroying death to be sweet and the ordained day to be tardy."

" The Maqamat."