re time be taken to Karballa. As a reward for this
service, the relatives will be blessed of God and made rich. The dead
are buried in a box so that at some appointed time the remains may be
exhumed and transferred to a new box and strapped to the back of a
horse and carried to the holy city. It matters not if the body has
decayed. If the bones remain it is not too late for the pilgrimage. If
the deceased has been very poor and his friends cannot take him in
person, they hire strangers to do it. Thus one may see the caravans
with hundreds of horses--sometimes thousands--with the boxes of dead
strapped to their backs on their way to the holy places.

MOTIVE IN PILGRIMAGES FOR THE DEAD.

The object of these trips is to secure heaven for the dead. Their
religion teaches that all who die in a holy city or who are buried
there find a home in heaven. Some say God has a multitude of spiritual
camels with riders who will come and carry the dead bodies to heaven.
If you say to them, "Flesh and bones cannot inherit the holy place of
God," they will answer, "Their spirit is taken to heaven, not their
body." Others will say, "The bones are not the original ones but
likenesses of them." Others say, "it is an honor to the prophets who
are buried in the holy city for other dead men to be buried there." At
an appointed time after burial it is believed that the dead will rise
and bow to the tombs of the prophets. This is the manner of their
worship: Those who go to Medina must arrive before a certain day
because on that particular day their worship is commenced. For two or
three days various ceremonies are performed such as fasting, prayer,
purification and washing of their bodies. When these are concluded, on
the fourth day they array themselves in a special robe for worship.
Without any covering on their feet they walk around the mosque seven
times. When they enter the mosque they bow themselves before the tomb
of Mohammed. After this bowing they walk seven times around the tomb of
the prophet. They then kneel down and kiss the tomb at the same time
placing such money upon it as they can spare. Upon leaving the mosque a
ram is killed as a sacrificial offering. On that day more than one
hundred thousand sheep are killed in that small city. This together
with the warm sun beating on the blood of the victims gives rise to the
most fearful of all scourges, cholera. In Karballa, Medina and Mashhad
worship is conducted in this manner.