Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/46

40 the evening prayers of the fasting month and the morning prayers of the Great Festival days are expected to be performed in the mosque.

At prayer Kabeh, the sacred temple of Mecca, must be faced. If a traveler confuses the directions he may face any direction by uttering "My intention is the Kabeh." Shoes must be taken off, but hats kept on. The various positions during the worship are standing erect, the eyes fixed low upon the ground, then partial bending of the body and kneeling, then touching the floor with the forehead, which is repeated several times. While in these attitudes the worshiper will repeat certain passages from the Koran in a low, muttering way. The very act of looking around, talking, laughing, coughing, spitting, sneezing, or rubbing the flesh in consequence of a fly-bite, renders the unfinished prayer null and void and obliges the worshiper to begin his devotion anew.

The Mohametans never pray in a place where any picture may be found. You can not see pictures or photographs in Moslem houses, except in those of a very few liberal minded officers. Mohamet used to say that "the angels would not enter a house in which pictures are found, and that those who made them would be commanded in the last day to give souls to them, or be punished in the fire of hell." Some carry this piety to the degree that they scratch the necks of the pictures on foreign coins with a knife, as if to kill or nullify them. There are Napoleons, Victorias, czars, kaisers and Austrian emperors—all intimate friends of the Sultan and protectors of his throne—that