228 REV. G. E. WHITE, ON THE SHIA TURKS. 
raising a cry of remonstrance that will be heard than has his 
Bedhead Turkish neighbour. Bedheads lead the simple life, 
a life often very hard and coarse, but many of them seem to be 
quite clean, wholesome persons, men whom I am glad to count 
among my acquaintance. They claim the Mohammedan right 
of practising polygamy for those who can support more wives 
and households than one, but plural marriages are not common, 
and they disallow the right of divorce. They know little of 
commerce, and have little of luxurv in their houses of stone or 
of sun-dried brick. The men, often assisted by the women in 
the fields, raise most of what appears on their tables, and the 
women, often assisted by the men, weave and sew and knit 
most of what they wear. But for a table grateful to a 
traveller, or lodging refreshing to a weary man, commend me 
to the patriarchal establishment of a well-to-do and hospitable 
Bedhead Turkish bey, albeit I have sat at such a table on 
which was neither knife, nor fork nor spoon. 
One is almost startled to recall how much of the life of these 
people is under religious prescription or prohibition, and then 
to form a picture of what their religion really is. Part of their 
faith and practice with regard to superhuman beings is 
evidently Mohammedanism, but part, varying with the locality 
and the individual, is pure paganism, some of which in historic 
origin antedates either Mohammedanism or Christianity. They 
regularly have no mosques, though in recent years the govern- 
ment has been compelling some villages to build them. The 
mosques often remain unopened, however, unless in the sacred 
month of Bamazan a preacher is sent to instruct an unresponsive 
congregation in correct Mohammedan form. I have been in 
a Shia village for days together without hearing the call to 
prayer more than once, and that one time it was given because 
there happened to be present then an orthodox believer. In 
the clear dawn of a summer morning a company of us were 
once mounting our horses for a journey, after having spent the 
night in a Shia village, when one of our number, an orthodox 
Mohammedan, was heard muttering that he had not yet said 
his prayers that morning. “ What does the Almighty need of 
your prayers,” said our host ; “ He knows what you are without 
your telling Him. It is the clean heart God wants, the clean 
heart.” In general, Shias greatly dread the ill will of their 
Sunnite masters, and endeavour to observe the set forms as to 
prayer, fasting, and other worship with care enough to keep 
from becoming a public scandal, but secretly they hold to their 
own peculiar views with great tenacity. Strict Mohammedans 
