Crossword-Solution: HADJIS 6 letters, 7 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 17

The Turks have a maxim which, like most cynical apophthegms, carries with it the buzzing trumpet of falsehood as well as the small, fine “sting of truth.” “If your friend has made the pilgrimage once, distrust him; if he has made the pilgrimage twice, cut him dead!” The caution is said to be as applicable to the visitants of Jerusalem as to those of Mecca, but I cannot help believing that the frailties of all the hadjis, {28} whether Christian or Mahometan, are greatly exaggerated.

There were eighty or a hundred men, no women, and five or six ‘Hadjis’, draped in beautiful Eastern dresses, and looking very supercilious.

Whence such strangely incorrect opinions could have arisen it is difficult to understand, unless they are derived from Arab priests, or hadjis returned from Mecca, who may have heard of the ancient prowess of the Turkish armies when they made all Europe tremble, and suppose that their character and warlike capacity must be the same at the present time.

However, I reflected that it would be a just and righteous thing to go down and write a kind word for the Hadjis--Hadjis are people who have made the pilgrimage--because parties not interested could not do it so feelingly as I, a fellow-Hadji, and so I penned the valedictory.

The Mussulmen of the village, several of them being Hadjis, were assembling for worship, lounging outside the mosque till the call to prayer came.