Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 4.djvu/506

 The Saracens, who over-ran this country, were bigots in their religion, as their posterity continue to be at this day. They have preserved the language of the Koran in its ancient purity, and adhere rigidly to the letter of its precepts. They either extirpated the Pagans, or converted them; but this power and tyranny of the Saracens received a check, both in Egypt and Arabia, about the i6th century, by Selim, who established Turkish garrisons in all their principal places on the frontiers of Beja, or Barbaria, and in the Ber el Ajam, or ancient Azamia, along the well coast of the Red Sea.

These Turks were all truly atheists in their hearts, who despised the zeal of the Arabs, and oppressed them so, that Paganism again ventured to shew its head. The Shillook, as I have said before, made an eruption into Beja, and conquered the whole of that country. They became mailers of the Arabs, and embraced their religion as a form, but never anxiously followed the law of Mahomet, which did not hold out to them that liberty and relaxation by which it had tempted the Jews and Christians. These the law of Mahomet had freed from many restraints upon pleasures and pursuits forbidden by the gospel, and thus made their yoke easier. But it was not so with the Pagan nations. The Mahometan religion diminished their natural liberty, by imposing prayers, ablutions, alms, circumcision, and such-like, to which before they were under no obligation. The Pagans therefore of Sennaar, and all the little Hates to the westward, Dar-Fowr, Dar-Sele, Bagirma, Bornou, and Tombusto, and all that country upon the Niger, called Sudan, trouble themselves very little with the detail of the Mahometan religion, which they embraced merely for the fake of per-