ILLUSTRATION OF SCRIPTURE. 
265 
one who appeared absorbed in a book, and who would not stir, not¬ 
withstanding the orders of our Mehmandar, but when it was found 
that he was reading the Koran, he was permitted to continue un¬ 
molested. 
The most conspicuous building in Hamadan is the Mesjid Jumah, a 
large mosque now falling into decay, and before it a maidan or square, 
which serves as a market place. Here we observed every morning be¬ 
fore the sun rose, that a numerous body of peasants were collected with 
spades in their hands, waiting as they informed us, to be hired for the 
day to work in the surrounding fields. This custom, which I have 
never seen in any other part of Asia, forcibly struck us as a most happy 
illustration of our Saviour’s parable of the labourer in the vineyard, 
in the 20th chapter of Matthew ; particularly when passing by the same 
place late in the day, we still found others standing idle, and remem¬ 
bered His words. Why stand ye here all the day idleP as most applicable 
to their situation; for in putting the very same question to them, they 
answered us. Because no man hath hired us. 
Near to the Mesjid Jumah, in a court filled with tombs, stands a 
building called the Sepulchre of Esther and Mordecai. It is built of 
brick, and consists of two chambers, one of which is merely an entrance 
or anti-room to the other, and appears to be modern, compared with the 
rest of the structure. But the whole does not look of greater antiquity 
than the first ages of Mahomedanism. It is crowned by a cupola, which 
partakes of the elliptical form of those erected at the present day in 
Persia, and its architecture in other respects has all the features of an 
origin, not earlier at the farthest than the Saracen invasion. Sir Gore 
Ouseley copied and translated an Hebrew inscription rudely carved on 
* nn ’□ *iynn n: trn 
TV'^ painnp’D ohm nnoNi oiqa it 
“I 
M M 
