336 



PARSEES. 



zibar ; two were carpenters, and the third was a 

 watchmaker, dishonest as his craft usually is. 

 To the general consternation of Europeans, two 

 Parsee agents lately landed on the Island, sent by 

 some Bombay house whose name they concealed. 

 These will probably be followed by others, and if 

 that most energetic of commercial races once 

 makes good a footing at Zanzibar, it will pre- 

 sently change the condition of trade. They are 

 viewed without prejudice by the Arabs and the 

 Wasawahili. The late Sayyid was so anxious to 

 attract Parsees, who might free him from the 

 arrogance and the annoyance of 'white mer- 

 chants,' that he would willingly have allowed 

 them to build a 6 Tower of Silence,' and to per- 

 form, uninterrupted, all the rites of their re- 

 ligion. 



The Indian Moslems on the Island and the 

 Coast were numbered in 1844 at 600 to 700. 

 Besides a few Borahs and Mehmans, Zanzibar 

 contains about 100 Khojahs, who are held to be 

 a 6 generation of vipers, even of Satan's own 

 brood.' Here, as in Bombay, they are called 

 Ismailiyyahs, heterodox Shiahs, who take a name 

 from their seventh Imam Ismail, son of Ja'afar 

 el Sadik, while orthodox Shiahs believe the 

 seventh revealed Imam to have been Musa el 



