Page:Ossendowski - The Fire of Desert Folk.djvu/144

128 "Perhaps we shall meet one of the professors, as we are visiting the university," I observed.

"Alas, that cannot be, for here the law of horm, forbidding men of another faith to enter its holy precincts, is strictly observed."

However, that favor of Chance which always seems to help me in life did not desert me in Fez, as the proprietor of an antique-shop which we later visited presented me to one of these very professors, who was with him at the time. My knowledge of the souls of Eastern men and some little acquaintance with the various questions of religion succeeded in winning the confidence of the Moslem scholar, so that he not only remained and indulged in a long conversation but also helped me to purchase a very old and beautiful copy of the Koran. To buy a sacred Moslem book is not an easy or an entirely secure performance—but this all occurred some days later.

In the meantime, Hafid, guiding us through labyrinthine streets that encircled the place, gave us an opportunity to survey the walls and to look through the various gates and doors affording vistas of the great Moslem temple and seat of learning. But we could only gaze in and listen to the stories of Hafid and of a very intelligent muezzin, with whom I established a useful credit-balance by the gift of a silver franc, which at once converted him into a talkative rival of Hafid for our favor. His account of the place ran thus:

At the time of the Idrises, Fatma ben Mohammed el-Fehri, a rich and God-fearing woman who belonged to a Berber tribe from Kairwan, erected in 859 a small mosque