plain, producing grain and cotton in plenty—the
latter crop having just been gathered. We passed
endless strings of two-wheeled oxen wagons, creaking
under their heavy load, but their progress also was
so slow that the only moving thing appeared to be
numerous flights of wild geese, even they scarcely
stirring the air.
Lucknow, one of the oldest cities in India, has a
right to boast of its picturesque bazaars, although
often so narrow as to make it difficult to escape the
sharp teeth of a camel as he shuffles along under a
pile of vegetables or other equally necessary articles
of consumption. Elephants can only pass through
the broader streets, of which there is one at least,
the Chinka, or Chinese bazaar, with a handsome gateway
at each end. The natives here are very clever
at moulding those pi’etty figures in clay representing
the different trades and occupations of the lower
orders.
The State religion of Oude is Mahomedan, its
rulers having extirpated the Brahmans in the beginning
of the fourteenth century, and the sect is
th a t of the Shiites or Shiahs, whose strength lies
in Persia, whilst the inhabitants of Turkey and her
dependencies are Sonnites, the former being the
partisans of Ali and his wife Fatima, Mahomed’s
daughter, and the latter those of the three preceding
caliphs, Abu-Beker, Omar, and Othman, both
adopting the Kalma, or dogma, “ Mohamed kebir,
Allah akhbar ”—“ Mohamed is great, God is greater,”
or, as popularly interpreted, “ There is but one
God, and Mohamed is His prophet.”
These two sects are again subdivided, the most
important and energetic of which is that of the
Wahabees, founded towards the end of the seventeenth
century, whose mission was to purify Maho-
medanism. They are very fanatical, and their stronghold
is in the Nejed, a central province of Arabia,
where, under the cloak of religion, they committed
great excesses and often gave trouble to their sove-
reign, the Sultan of Turkey, until at last, in 1818,
Ibrahim, Mahomed-Ali’s eldest son and commander-
in-chief, completely defeated them by land, whilst,
in the following year, a British naval force, aided by
their ally, the Sultan of Muscat and Zanzibar, was
equally successful against the Wahabee pirates of
Ras-el- Khymah. Since that time their dominion in
Arabia has undergone many changes. Anarchy at one
time nearly exhausted their strength, when the late
Emir of Nejed—famous, by the by, for his breed of
horses—became their leader, and embued the sect
with fresh vitality.
E