ISLAM'S DAY OF SORROW.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8311, 9 May 1905, Page 2

ISLAM'S DAY OF SORROW.

ORIENTAL MARTYR MOURNEQ IN THE WEST END. In an upper room of the Indian Restaurant, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, West, a small company of Mahommedans, members of the Pah-Islamic t Society, met last month to mourn over the death of Husain, the grandson of the Prophet and the great martyr of the Islamic faith. I The mourners, after taking off their boots, ranged themselves crossrlegged in a semi-circle in the incense-laden chamber. Seated in a crape-covered chair, Mirza Muhammad Javad, a lineal descendant of the Prophet, read' first in Persian and then in Arabio the : tragic story of Husain, the Prince of Martyrs. . -. ■, Inveigled in Nineveh by the usurper Yarid, IJusain and his followers, after being kept without food or drink for three days, were cruelly murde'.cd. As the reading proceeded tha little company of Indians and Persian* pwayed backward and forward in their grief. Some sobbed with a vehemence which shook their frames,, and others, groaned aloud. * The ceremony over, rose water was handed to the mourners that they might remove the signs of grief, and then, following the dictates of Eastern hospitality, sherbet and curried rice were dispensed. The yearly period of mourning for "Thf Prince of Martyrß, our Lord, ittusaiiy" lasts a month.^ J