Genre:

Essay, Travelogue

Subjects:

History of Science, Declinism, Religion, Medical Practitioners, Status, Exploration, Race, Physiognomy

    Reflects that the 'Arabs who, at the height of their powers, were the progressists of Europe, and had, if not advanced, at least saved science from the darkness and the barbarism of the Middle Ages, have to-day no sciences except that which they call the science of God' (831). Relates: 'I had brought a travelling case of medicine' and this 'character of physician, the best passport in Arabian countries, allowed me to see and observe closely many things which, without it, fanaticism would have hidden inexorably from Christian eyes' (836), including the 'Grand Mosque' which 'only a single traveller had entered [...] before me; this was Mr. A. M. Broadley, the Times correspondent, whose article on Kairwan had already made a sensation' (833). Also discusses the unappealing 'regularity' of the 'physiognomies' of 'Kairwanese women', noting that 'One seeks in vain in their almost classic faces something to reveal the individual, something of the deeper experience of life which discloses itself in the harassed faces of Northern races. Their large eyes, surrounded by a thick dark circle, have the fixed placidity of expression of the animal' (842).