can, to the hidden depths of the Persian heart. The Sunni may object to the
choice of Hasan and Husain as the martyrs most worthy of lamentation,
putting forward in their stead Omar, companion of the Prophet himself, who
lingered for three days in the agony of death, or Othman, the third
Khalifa, who died of thirst, or "the Lion of God," whose life came to so
disastrous a close. But the Shia, while admitting that the death of the
first martyrs may have wrought severer loss to Islam, cannot admit that
their end surpasses in pathos the tale of the bitter tenth of Mohurrum when
the stars quivered in a bloodied sky and the very walls of the palace of
Kufa rained tears of blood as the head of the Martyr was borne before them.
He cannot also approve the Sunni practice of converting a season of
mourning into one of revelry and brawl, for he does not realize the
influence of the local Hindu element upon the Mohurrum and cannot
comprehend that the Indian additions to the festival have their roots in
the deep soil of Hindu spirit-belief. For to the Hindu, and to the Sunni
Mahomedan who has borrowed somewhat from him, all seasons of death and
mourning act as a lode-stone to the unhoused and naked spirits who are ever
wandering through the silent spaces of the East. Some of these spirits we
can appease or coax into becoming guardian-angels by housing them in
handsome cenotaphs; others we can lodge in the horse-shoe or in that great
spirit-house, the tiger, letting them sport for a day or two in the bodies
of our men and youths, who are adorned with yellow stripes symbolical of
their role; while other more malevolent spirits can only be driven away by
shouting, buffeting and drumming, such as characterize the Mohurrum season
in Bombay. The Indian element of nervous excitement might in course of ages
have been sobered by the puritanism of Islam but for the presence of the
African, who unites with a firm belief in spirits a phenomenal desire for
noise and brawling; and it is the union of this jovial African element with
the sentimentality of Persia and the spirit-worship of pure Hinduism which
renders the Bombay Mohurrum more lively and more varied than any Mahomedan
celebration in Cairo, Damascus or Constantinople.

Although the regular Mohurrum ceremonies do not commence until the fifth
day of the Mohurrum moon, the Mahomedan quarters of the city are astir on
the first of the month. From morn till eve the streets are filled with
bands