Ethiopians, and of course a good many Greeks. There are numerous Indians here as

  well, dark lithe people with conspicuous luminous eyes, and also some Hebrews,

  these being a people who live mainly over in Aiguptos, just on the other side of

  the Red Sea from Arabia. They have been resident in Aiguptos for thousands of

  years, though evidently they were originally a desert tribe from some country

  much like this one, and they are not in any way Aiguptian in language or culture

  or religion. These Hebrews have in modern times begun to spread from their home

  along the Nilus into the lands adjacent, and there are more than a few of them

  here. Nicomedes has spoken of them to me.

  They are unusual people, the Hebrews. The most interesting thing about them is

  that they believe there is only one god, a harsh and austere deity who cannot be

  seen and who must not be portrayed in images of any sort. They have nothing but

  contempt for the gods of other races, deeming them wholly imaginary, mere

  creatures of fable and fantasy that possess no true existence. This may very

  likely be the case, certainly: who among us has ever laid eyes on Apollo or

  Mercury or Minerva? Most people, however, have the good sense not to make a

  mockery of the religious practices of others, whereas the Hebrews apparently

  cannot keep themselves from trumpeting the virtues of their own odd species of

  belief while denouncing everybody else most vociferously as idolaters and fools.

  As you can readily imagine, this does not make them very popular among their

  neighbors. But they are an industrious folk, with special aptitudes for the

  sciences of agriculture and irrigation, and a notable knack, also, for finance

  and trade, which is why Nicomedes has paid such attention to them. He tells me

  that they own most of the best land in the northern part of the country, that

  they are the chief bankers here in Mecca, and that they control the markets in

  weapons, armor, and agricultural tools everywhere in the land. It seems

  advantageous for me to get to know one or two important Hebrews of Mecca and I

  have made attempts to do so, thus far without any success, during the course of

  my ramblings in the marketplaces.

  The markets here are very specialized, each offering its own kind of

  merchandise. I have visited them all by now.

  There is a spice-market, of course: great sacks of pepper both black and white,

  and garlic and cumin and saffron, sandalwood and cassia, aloes, spikenard, and

  an aromatic dried leaf that they call malabathron, and hosts of other things I

  could not begin to name. There is a camel-market, only on certain days of the

  week, where those strange beasts are bought and sold in heated bargaining that

  goes to the edge of actual combat. I went up to one of these creatures to see it

  better and it yawned in my face as though I were the dullest of rogues. There is

  a market for cloth, which deals in muslins and silks and cotton both Indian and

  Aiguptian, and a market where crude idols of many kinds are sold to the

  credulous -- I saw a Hebrew man walk past it, and spit and glare and make what I

  think was a holy sign of his people -- and a market for wines, and one for

  perfumes, and the market of meat and the one of grains, and the market where the

  Hebrew merchants sell their iron goods, and one for fruits of all kinds,

  pomegranates and quinces and citrons and lemons and sour oranges and grapes and

  peaches, all this in the midst of the most forbidding desert you could imagine!

  And also there is a market for slaves, which is where I encountered the

  remarkable man who called himself Mahmud.

  The slave-market of Mecca is as bustling as any slave-market anywhere, which

  illustrates how great a degree of prosperity lies behind the deceptively shabby

  facade this city displays to strangers. It is the great flesh-mart of the land,

  and buyers sometimes come from as far away as Syria and the Persian Gulf to

  check out the slavemongers' latest haul of desirable human exotica.

  Though wood is a luxury in this desert country, there is the usual platform of

  planks and timbers, the usual awning suspended from a couple of poles, the usual

  sorry huddle of naked merchandise waiting to be sold. As usual, they were a mix

  of all races, though with a distinct Asian and African cast, here: Ethiops dark

  as night and brawny Nubians even darker, and fiat-faced fair-skinned Circassians

  and Avars and other sinewy northern folk, and some who might have been Persians

  or Indians, and even a sullen yellow-haired man who could have been a Briton or

  Teuton. The auctions were conducted, quite naturally, in the Saracen tongue, so

  that I understood nothing of what was said, but I suppose it was the customary

  fraudulent gabble that fools no one, how this buxom sultry Turkish wench was a

  king's daughter in her own land, and this thick-bearded scowling Libyan had been

  a charioteer of the highest distinction before his master's bankruptcy had

  forced his sale, and so forth.

  It so happened that I was passing the auction-place at noonday three days past

  when three supple tawny-skinned wantons, who from their shameless movements and

  smiles must have been very skilled prostitutes indeed, came up for sale as a

  single lot, intended perhaps as concubines for some great emir. They wore

  nothing but jingling bracelets of silver coins about their wrists and ankles,

  and were laughing and thrusting their breasts from side to side and winking at

  the crowd to invite active bidding on behalf of their seller, who for all I know

  was their uncle or their brother.

  The spectacle was so lively that I paused to observe it a moment. Hardly had I

  taken my place in the crowd, though, than the man standing just to my left

  surprised me by turning toward me and muttering, in a vibrant tone of intense

  fury powerfully contained, "Ah, the swine! They should be whipped and turned out

  into the desert for the jackals to eat!" This he said in quite passable Greek,

  uttering the words in a low whisper that nonetheless was strikingly rich and

  captivating, one of the most musical speaking voices I have ever heard. It was

  as though the words had overflowed his soul and he had had no choice but to

  utter them at once to the man closest at hand.

  The power of that extraordinary voice and the violence of his sentiment had the

  most singular effect on me. It was as though I had been seized by the wrist in

  an irresistible grip. I stared at him. He was holding himself taut as a

  bowstring when the archer is at the verge of letting fly, and appeared to be

  trembling with wrath.

  Some sort of response seemed incumbent on me. The best I could do was to say,

  "The girls, do you mean?"

  "The slavemasters," said he. "The women are but chattel. They are not to be held

  accountable. But it is wrong to put chattel out for pandering, as these

  criminals do."

  And then, relaxing his stance a bit and looking now somewhat abashed at his

  forwardness, he said in a far less assertive tone of voice, "But you must

  forgive me for pouring these thoughts into the unwilling ears of a stranger who

  surely has no interest in hearing such things."

  "On the contrary. What you say interests me greatly. Indeed, you must tell me

  more."

  I studied him with no little curiosity. It had crossed my mind immediately that

  he might be a Hebrew: his horror and rage at the sight of this trifling bit of

  flesh-peddling seemed to mark him as a kinsman of that dour man who had made

  such a display of irate piety in the marketplace of idols. You will recall that

  I had resolved to seek contact with members of that agile-minded race of

  merchants here. But a moment's closer examination of his look and garb led me

  now to realize that he must be pure Saracen by blood.

  There was tremendous presence and force about him. He was tall and slender, a

  handsome dark-haired man of perhaps thirty-five years or a little more, with a

  dense flowing beard, piercing eyes, and a warm and gracious smile that quite

  contradicted the unnerving ferocity of his gaze. His princely bearing, his

  eloquent manner of speech, and the fineness of his garments all suggested that

  he was a man of wealth and breeding, well connected in this city. At once I

  sensed that he might be even more useful to me than any Hebrew. So I drew him

  out, questioning him a little on the reasons for his spontaneous outburst

  against the trade in easy women in this marketplace, and without the slightest

  hesitation he poured forth a powerful and lengthy tirade, fierce in content

  although stated in that same captivating musical tone, against the totality of

  the sins of his countrymen. And what a multitude of sins they were! Mere

  prostitution was the least of them. I had not expected to encounter such a Cato

  here.

  "Look about you!" he urged me. "Mecca is an utter abyss of wickedness. Do you

  see the idols that are sold everywhere, and set up piously in shops and homes in

  places of respect? They are false gods, these images, for the true god, and He

  is One, cannot be rendered by any image. --Do you observe the flagrant cheating

  in the marketplaces? --Do you see the men lying shamelessly to their wives, and

  the wives lying as well, and the gambling and the drinking and the whoring, and

  the quarreling between brother and brother?" And there was much more. I could

  see that he held this catalog of outrage pent up in his breast at all times,

  ready to issue it forth whenever he found some new willing listener. Yet he said

  all this not in any lofty and superior way, but almost in bewilderment: he was

  saddened rather than infuriated by the failings of his brethren, or so it seemed

  to me.

  Then he paused, once again changing tone, as though it had occurred to him that

  it was impolite to remain in this high denunciatory mode for any great length of

  time. "Again I ask you to pardon me for my excess of zeal. I feel very strongly

  on these matters. It is the worst of my faults, I hope. --If I am not mistaken,

  you are the Roman who has come to live among us?"

  "Yes. Leontius Corbulo, at your service. A Roman of the Romans, I like to say."

  I gave him a flourish. "My family is a very ancient one, with historic ties to

  Syria and other parts of Asia."

  "Indeed. I am Mahmud son of Abdallah, who was the son of--" well, the son of I

  forget whom, who was the son of so-and-so, the son of someone else. It is the

  custom of these Saracens to let you have their pedigrees five or six generations

  back in a single outburst of breath, but it was impossible for me to retain most

  of the barbarous outlandish names in my mind very long. I do recall his telling

  me that he was a member of one of the great mercantile clans of Mecca, which is

  called something like the Koreish.

  It seemed to me that a strong rapport had arisen between us in just these few

  moments, and, such was the power of his personality, I was reluctant to leave

  him. Since it was the time for the midday meal, I proposed that we take it

  together, and invited him to come with me to my villa. But he responded that I

  was a guest in Mecca and it was not fitting for him to enjoy my hospitality

  until I had partaken of his. I didn't try to dispute the issue. The Saracens, I

  had already begun to learn, are most punctilious about this sort of thing.

  "Come," he said, beckoning. And so it was that for the first time I entered the

  home of a wealthy merchant of Mecca.

  The villa of Mahmud son of Abdallah was not unlike that of Nicomedes, though on

  a larger scale -- walled courtyard, central fountain, bright airy rooms, inlays

  of vividly colored tile set in the walls. But unlike Nicomedes, Mahmud was no

  collector of antiquities. He appeared to have scarcely any possessions at all. A

  prevailing austerity of decoration was the rule in his house. And of course

  there was no sign anywhere in it of the idols that other Meccans seemed to

  cherish.

  The wife of Mahmud made a fleeting appearance. Her name was something like

  Kadija, and she seemed considerably older than her husband, a fact soon

  confirmed from Mahmud's own lips. A couple of daughters passed to and fro in

  equally brief manner. But he and I dined alone, seated on straw mats in the

  center of a huge bare room. Mahmud sat crosslegged like a tailor, and appeared

  to be entirely at ease in that posture. I tried but failed to manage it, and

  after a time fell into the normal reclining position, wishing mightily that I

  had a cushion for my elbow, but not willing to give offense by asking for one.

  The meal itself was simple, grilled meat and a stew of barley and melons, with

  nothing but water to wash it down. Mahmud did not, it seemed, care for wine.

  He spoke of himself with complete openness, as though we were kinsmen from

  widely distant lands who were meeting for the first time. I learned that

  Mahmud's father had died before his birth and his mother had lived only a short

  while thereafter, so he had grown up in impoverished circumstances under the

  guardianship of an uncle. From his tale I received the impression of a lonely

  childhood spent wandering the cheerless rocky hills beyond town, pondering from

  an early age, perhaps, the great questions of eternity and the spirit that

  plainly have continued to obsess him to this day.

  In his twenty-fifth year, said Mahmud, he entered into the service of the woman

  Kadija, a wealthy widow fifteen years his senior, who soon fell in love with him

  and asked him to be her husband. This he told me with no trace of embarrassment

  at all, and I suppose he has no reason to feel any. A look of happiness comes

  into his eyes when he speaks of her. She has borne him both sons and daughters,

  though only the daughters have survived. The prosperity that he enjoys today is,

  I gather, the result of his skillful management of the property that his wife

  brought to their union.

  About Roma, Constantinopolis, or any other place beyond the frontiers of Arabia

  Deserta, he asked me nothing whatever. Though his intelligence is deep and

  questing, he did not seem concerned with the empires of this world. It appears

  that he has scarcely been outside Mecca at all, though he mentioned having made

  a journey as far as Damascus on one occasion. I would think him a simple man if

  I did not know, Horatius, how complex in fact he is.

  The great preoccupation of his life is his concept of the One God.

  This is, of course, the idea famously advocated since antiquity by the Hebrews.

  I have no doubt that Mahmud has had conversations with the members of that race

  who live in Mecca, and that their ideas have affected his philosophy. He must

  surely have heard them express their reverence for their aloof and unknowable

  god, and their contempt for the superstitions of the Meccans, who cherish such a

  multitude of idols and talismans and practice a credulous veneration of the sun

  and the moon and stars and planets and a myriad of demons. He makes no secret of

  this: I heard him make reference to an ancient Hebrew prophet called Abraham,

  who is apparently a figure he greatly admires, and also a certain Moses, a later

  leader of that tribe.

  But he lays claim to a separate revelation of his own. He asserts that his

  special enlightenment came as the result of arduous private prayer and

  contemplation. He would go up often into the mountains behind the town and

  meditate in solitude in a secluded cave; and one day an awareness of the Oneness

  of God was revealed to him as though by a divine messenger.

  Mahmud calls this god "Allah." A marvelous transformation comes over him when he

  begins to speak of him. His face glows; his eyes take on the quality of beacons;

  his very voice becomes such a thing of music and poetry that you would think you

  were in the presence of Apollo.

  It is impossible, he says, ever to understand the nature of Allah. He is too far

  above us for that. Other people may regard their gods as personages in some kind

  of story, and tell lively fanciful tales of their travels throughout the world

  and their quarrels with their wives and their adventures on the battlefield, and

  make statues of them that show them as men and women, but Allah is not like

  that. One does not tell tales about Allah. He cannot be thought of as a tall man