DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11636#0270
AND LOWER EGYPT. 24I
Rossetta not having, like Alexandria, an imme-
diate communication with the sea, you do not find
it swarming with those multitudes of foreigners, of
adventurers, of dangerous men, whose agitation,
tumult, and uproar are their element, and which
render a residence at the city last named, so very
disagreeable. Remote from the bustle of sea-ports,
and from the frequent political convulsions of
Cairo, its inhabitants were abundantly peaceable.
Not that the European was there secured entirely
from insult: he had, at times, disagreeable cir-
cumstances to encounter, but they were slight in
comparison with those which persecuted him at
Alexandria, and which absolutely oppressed him at
Cairo. The silly and ridiculous pride which per-
suades the Mahometans that they alone of man-
kind are adopted by the Deity, that they are the
only persons to whom he ought to open his bo-
som, a pride which the doctors of the law or the
priests, the vainest and most intolerant of all men,
took great care to foment, was the principal source
of those unpleasant attacks. The Turk describes
the European by no other epithet than that of infi-
del ; the Egyptian Mussulman, still coarser, treats
him merely as a dog. With him, Christian and dog
were two terms so exactly synonimous, and in such
frequent use, that no attention was paid to the dif-
ference, and that they were indiscriminately em-
ployed by persons who had no intention to offer an
vol. x. r insult.
Rossetta not having, like Alexandria, an imme-
diate communication with the sea, you do not find
it swarming with those multitudes of foreigners, of
adventurers, of dangerous men, whose agitation,
tumult, and uproar are their element, and which
render a residence at the city last named, so very
disagreeable. Remote from the bustle of sea-ports,
and from the frequent political convulsions of
Cairo, its inhabitants were abundantly peaceable.
Not that the European was there secured entirely
from insult: he had, at times, disagreeable cir-
cumstances to encounter, but they were slight in
comparison with those which persecuted him at
Alexandria, and which absolutely oppressed him at
Cairo. The silly and ridiculous pride which per-
suades the Mahometans that they alone of man-
kind are adopted by the Deity, that they are the
only persons to whom he ought to open his bo-
som, a pride which the doctors of the law or the
priests, the vainest and most intolerant of all men,
took great care to foment, was the principal source
of those unpleasant attacks. The Turk describes
the European by no other epithet than that of infi-
del ; the Egyptian Mussulman, still coarser, treats
him merely as a dog. With him, Christian and dog
were two terms so exactly synonimous, and in such
frequent use, that no attention was paid to the dif-
ference, and that they were indiscriminately em-
ployed by persons who had no intention to offer an
vol. x. r insult.