Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: JERUSALEM: THE TEMPLE. One of the earliest convictions impressed upon the mind of the traveller to Palestine is that the Turk is a nuisance. The gigantic absurdity, to call it nothing more, of leaving all these holy places, the centre of veneration to all Christendom, in Mohammedan hands, produces a natural feeling of irritation, which is constantly freshened and revived by some vexatious regulation or piece of official red-tapeism, causing the most peaceable pilgrim to regret that the period of holy wars is past, and consider seriously the advisability of preaching a crusade himself on his return from the parts of the infidel. It is sufficient to talk with any resident who has ever had any serious business with that hopeless Government – especially those who are trying tointroduce any kind of progress or improvement in Palestine – to find a good solid foundation for this feeling against the Turkish rulers; the ordinary traveller is exasperated by their mere presence. Here we find, in the first place, the unspeakable Turk occupying for his own purposes the site of the Temple, and raising beautiful buildings thereupon for his own worship. This, we consider, is bad enough; but when he comes to celebrating his own religious festivals there, and consequently excluding all but Mohammedans from the whole area during the time that we are at Jerusalem, the enormity is still more remarkable. This is not even a coincidence. The benighted paynim does not want for worldly wisdom, and, having no confidence whatever in the doctrine of peace on earth and goodwill towards men, as understood by enthusiastic pilgrims, he has established a feast of his own, which attracts a sufficient number of Mohammedans to counterbalance the Christians. To these latter the whole of the Haram-esh-Sherifl …
