Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/262

154 passed out at the south gate of the town, into the first small sandy plain. A very little to our left, there are a number of tomb-stones with inscriptions in the Cusic character, which travellers erroneously have called unknown language, and letters, although it was the only letter and language known to Mahomet, and the most learned of his sect in the first ages.

Cusic characters seem to be all written in capitals, which one might learn to read much more easily than the modern Arabic, and they more resemble the Samaritan. We read there—Abdullah el Hejazi el Ansari—Mahomet Abdel Shems el Taiefy el Ansari. The first of thefe, Abdullah el Hejazi, is Abdullah born in Arabia Petrea. The other is, Mahomet the slave of the sun, born in Taief. Now, both of these are called Ansari, which many writers, upon Arabian history, think, means, born in Medina; because, when Mahomet fled from Mecca, the night of the hegira, the people of Medina received him willingly, and thenceforward got the name of Ansari, or Helpers. But this honourable name was extended afterwards to all those who fought under Mahomet in his wars, and after, even to those who had been born in his lifetime.

of whose tombs we are now speaking, were of the army of Haled Ibn el Waalid, whom Mahomet named, Saif Ullah, the 'Sword of God,' and who, in the califat of Omar, took and destroyed Syene, after losing great part of his army