James Justinian Morier

“ You will frequent the caravanserais, watching the arrival of merchants and other strangers, to whom you will propose marriage, upon easier terms than the chief priest can offer, and according to the riches of the bridegroom you will exact a proportionate fee. I shall not give you any wages, because you will have opportunities of acquiring such knowledge from me, that in time you may become a mollah yourself, and show the road to all true believers in the practices of their duty. ”

“ But although I do not myself marry, yet I assist others in doing so; and it is in that particular branch of my duty in which I intend more especially to employ you.'
'By my eyes,' said I, 'you must command me; for hitherto I am ignorant as the Turk in the fields.'
'You must know then,' said he, 'that, to the scandal of religion, to the destruction of the law, the commerce of cowlies, or courtezans, had acquired such ascendancy in this city, that wives began to be esteemed as useless. Men's houses were ruined, and the ordinances of the Prophet disregarded. ”

“ None pray more regularly than I. No one goes to the bath more scrupulously, nor abstains more rigidly from everything that is counted unclean. You will find neither silk in my dress, nor gold on my fingers. My ablutions are esteemed the most complete of any man's in the capital, and the mode of my abstersion the most in use. I neither smoke nor drink wine before men ”