acrossasiaminoro00chiluoft

390 ACROSS ASIA MINOR ON FOOT
Armenians, the other half fanatical Moslems. If
Kaisariyeh is called the most fanatical city in Asia
Minor, Marash is generally accounted second.
I witnessed a scene here one day which well bore
out the reputation. At an early hour the Moslem
inhabitants, the greater number dressed in white,
began to fill the streets and make towards the lower
part of the town. They filled windows and stood
on roofs and at street corners and other points of
vantage. The garrison paraded in review order, and
marched out in the same direction as the people.
By every sign the day was being kept as a Moslem
festival, and yet not as a joyous one. There was no
laughter, not even smiles ; men went quietly with
faces shining, speaking in low voices, and filled with
a spirit which seemed familiar to me and yet not
quite explicable. Few Christians were in the streets,
and all Armenian doors were shut. And noticing
that, I put my camera out of sight when I got into
the crowd as the safer thing to do. For these sober,
w^aiting Moslems had mustered, in their cleanliness
and white garments and look of exaltation, upon the
greatest occasion which Mohammedan Marash had
seen, and were in no mood to be photographed. Today
was to arrive from Constantinople a relic of the
holiest—nothing less than a true hair of the Arabian
prophet's beard, which influence in high places and
just recognition of a faithful population had secured
for the city against great competition.
It was brought in procession accompanied by
sheikhs and mullahs and theological students, and
troops, and members of the Ottoman Parliament,
and received with prodigious reverence. Seeing these
crowds with their suppressed fervour, I recognised
what a volcano it was on which Christians of the
city lived. I felt that a sudden insult offered to
the relic, a sudden raid upon it like a Nationalist
rush upon an Orange banner, and such fury would
be let loose that a fight between Orange and Green
would be a pleasant garden party by comparison.