Page:Wanderings of a Pilgrim Vol 1.djvu/558

 "The Jacbir: God is greatest, God is greatest; I bear witness there is no God but God, I bear witness there is no God but God; I bear witness that Mohammud is the messenger, I bear witness that Mohammud is the messenger. Hasten to prayer, hasten to prayer; hasten to redemption, hasten to redemption. God is greatest, God is greatest; there is no God but God."

"Verily, Friday is the chief of days in the estimation of God, and it is greater than either the festival of sacrifice, or that of Ramdān. Why do they call Friday Jumâh? or the assembly? Because, on that day the clay of thy father Adam was collected, and on that day will be destruction, and rising from the dead; and on it resurrection, and in the last three sáâts of Friday there is one in which the requests of a servant are granted.

"Pronounce ye many blessings on me on Friday, because the angels are present. There is not a Musalmān that dies in the day or night of Friday, that God doth not preserve from the punishments of the grave.

"He who visits the graves of his father and mother, or one of them, on every Friday, his faults will be pardoned: and there will be written, in the register of his actions, a doer of good to his father and mother. Visiting and seeing graves dispels worldly wishes and gives disgust to them, and reminds of futurity."

The efficacy of prayer is greatly enhanced by the use of the miswác, a kind of tooth-brush made of the twig or the root of a tree, beaten at the end into a brush. When the prophet stood up to prayer in the night he rubbed and washed his mouth with the miswác. The Musalmanī ladies regarded our European tooth-brushes with horror, and considered them unfit to be used, as being formed from the bristles of the unclean beast. "When you hear a cock crow, then supplicate God for an increase of his beneficence, because the cock sees an angel and crows at the sight; and when you hear an ass bray, seek protection with God from the devil and say, 'I take protection with God from the cast-out devil, because the ass has seen the devil.'"