Icon - ResearchSpace@Auckland - The University of Auckland

[….]Gloom is gathered o’er the gateNor there the Fakir’s self will wait;Nor there will wandering Dervise stay,For Bounty cheers not his delay;Nor there will weary stranger haltTo bless the sacred ‘bread and salt’.[…]For Courtesy and Pity diedWith Hassan on the mountainside. –His roof – that refuge unto men –Is Desolation’s hungry den. –[…]Since his turban was cleft by the infidel’s sabre! (G 280-1, 338-43, 46-9, 51).The Fakir and Dervise beggars (McGann 3.417:339) have lost a sanctuary, and thevirtues of charity, hospitality, courtesy and pity are no longer able to be practisedbecause of Hassan’s death. Within an Islamic values-system, this is a particularlygreat loss because, as Byron notes,Charity and Hospitality are the first duties enjoined by Mahomet; and to saytruth, very generally practised by his disciples. The first praise that can bebestowed upon a chief, is a panegyric on his bounty; the next, on his valour.(McGann 3.417-8:351).In this case, for the beggars, who are themselves innocent of any of the crimes in thetale, the pathos within the fisherman’s narrative coincides with Western values, and soa Western reader can empathize with the Eastern narrator over the damage suffered.When the injured are not as innocent, the situation operates differently, as is mostclearly exemplified in what ought to be the pathos-generating reference to Hassan as aboy:175