3 ms·
> He spent a month or so in Alexandria learning all over again the right ways to eat, drink, sit, sleep, and of course, pray. The tiniest misstep might be a bet
by elashri 2y ago
> He spent a month or so in Alexandria learning all over again the right ways to eat, drink, sit, sleep, and of course, pray. The tiniest misstep might be a betrayal—literally: the proper way to enter a mosque was with the right foot first. According to Burton’s account, most Muslims who ran into him thought he was certainly Muslim, but “not a good one like themselves, but, still better than nothing.”
I understand the idea of practicing prayer to look like a Muslim. But what is the need to practice going to sleep, eat or sit as a Muslim. Yes there will be a problem with some food (that he would not find anyway in his journey) but muslims do sit, eat and sleep like any other one. They are not aliens from another planet.
Even if they mean cultural ways of life, they are very diverse as muslim world represents the whole world. The pilgrimage is where people understand they are meeting with people from the whole world.
- moomin 2y agoI can’t speak to all of this, but I imagine very few English people of the time could sit on a carpeted floor for long periods of time in a way that suggested they did it all the time the way most Egyptians can.