105 
Fasting in the month of Ramadan is the fourth sacred 
precept. It consists in neither eating nor drinking, nor 
smoking, nor even inhaling the odours of spices or of 
fruit, and in observing perfect continence during the 
twenty-nine or thirty days of the month of Ramadan, 
from the moment of the Fejer, or dawn before sun- rise, 
to the moment of its setting. 
This fast must be observed by all men and women, 
except the sick, travellers, pregnant women, or those in a 
state of legal impurity; nurses, minors, insane, old weak 
people, or such whose health might be impaired by the 
abstinencej and foreigners. If it happen that the fasting 
is interrupted by some mistake or forgetftilness, or by 
ill health, a journey, or any other legal cause, it be- 
comes a debt which must be satisfied at some other op- 
portunity, at the option of the believer, by fasting 
as many days as he has omitted; but if the trespass 
has been committed voluntarily, and without any legal 
cause, such a fault can only be expiated by a fast of 
seventy- one days. 
From sun -set to the hour of prayer in the morning, 
they are allowed to eat, drink, smoke, and amuse them- 
selves, as much as they please, during the night. But 
people of a strict conscience employ their time in re- 
citing prayers at home or at the mosques, in reading 
the Koran, or in performing acts of charity, or in meet- 
ing at a fraternal agreeable but decorous society. Up- 
on those occasions all differences cease, families re-unite, 
and the poor are more abundantly supplied by the rich 
than at other times. 
All the time of Ramadan the mosques are open, and 
illuminated during .the night; and a crowd is continu- 
ally passing to and from them. The shops are open* 
and frequented by both sexes. Coffee houses are also 
vol. i. p 
