g value, is it? But for four of these coins
the poorest boy in Muscat can buy a complete gospel of Matthew. The
shopkeeper must take in a great many of them, for last year one thousand
four hundred and thirty-three such gospels and other portions of the Bible
were sold in this part of Arabia and paid for by these coppers.

Another interesting fact to notice is that part of the inscription on the
coin is English. Coming events cast their shadows before. England's power
in checking the cruel slave trade and rooting out piracy on the coasts of
Arabia has made its influence felt. An English primer is sure to follow a
penny with an English motto, and some day our mission will have a school
at Muscat for Arab boys and girls, as well as for rescued slaves. Your
American pennies and your prayers will help to bring it about. Moreover,
do you not think that if they keep on buying gospels and reading them,
Jesus Christ will some time be the true _Imam of Muscat and Oman_?

[Illustration: HASSA COINS.]

The other coin is the only _old_ coin that is at present current in
Arabia, and I leave you to decide whether it is not the oddest and
queerest penny you have ever seen. The first time I saw these queer
blacksmith-nail coins was in 1893, when I made a visit to Hofhoof, the
capital of the province of Hassa, in Eastern Arabia. The people used them,
as we do pennies, for all small purchases, but I fear such a _pointed_
coin must have been harder on their pockets than our round coins. It is
called the _Taweelah_, or long-bit, and consists of a small copper-bar of
about an inch in length, split at one end and with the fissure slightly
opened. The coin has neither date nor motto, although one can yet
occasionally find silver coins of like shape with the Arabic motto:
_"Honour to the sober man, dishonour to the ambitious."_ The coin,
although it has no date, was undoubtedly made by one of the Carmathian
rulers about the year 920 A.D. This was more than five hundred years
before Columbus discovered America! The Carmathians were a very fanatical
sect of Moslems. You remember reading in chapter three how they took the
black stone from Mecca?

Well, these people had this province as the centre of their power and here
they struck these peculiar coins. I have heard it said that they were so
opposed to images and faces on money that their leader devised this long
bar-like shape for his coins to prevent any one from making images on
them!

At