Studies in a Mosque - The Search For Mecca

THE PEESIAN MIRACLE PLAY. 209
on their heads. There is a sound of lamentation
ringing through the town, and every man is dressed
in a sombre garb of mourning. There are no joyous
revels, no feasts of delight; but the night is filled
with the voices of praying men and the chant of
funeral rites. As we push our way onward—at some
risk of a mischief from the bands of savage fellows
who parade the streets, bare-headed, stained with
their own blood, brandishing clubs, and shouting,
king of martyrs "—we ! come to the
" Hoseyn !
great open court of a palace, whence issue dolorous
cries, as though some horrid deed were a-doiug
within. We enter a square enclosure, tented over,
and see a plain raised platform, whereon a few men
and children stand gesticulating and reciting. Around
are all the people of the place, crowded together, in
dense lines from wall to platform, from the nobles in
the shut-off boxes at the wall, to the street urchins
crushed against the platform. "Women are there,
apart, seated each on a little bench. The men are all
squatted cross-legged on the ground. A vast amphi-
theatre of faces, all bent eagerly on the group in the
centre, and all showing the marks of grief and intense
sympathy with what is doing there. Every now and
then some one in the crowd lifts up his voice and
groans aloud ; then the rest take up the sound, and
the whole place rings with cries of "Fa Hasan I
Ya Hoseyn! Ay Hoseyn shdh!'^ till the groaning and
the shouts fall away into silence as suddenly as they
arose. At last there comes a pause : the group in the
midst have relaxed their efforts, the people's paroxysms
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