As we found every place fastened when we visited it, we went first to the court of the MoUah who lives in the neighbourhood. Here we found as many vehicles and horses as in an inn -yard. The Tartars he e, as in St. Petersburg, where they are so frequently employed as coachmen, are almost all of them charioteers of some kind. Driving seems to be their only business. In the court a number of little shaveHngs were playing about ; for these people shave the heads even of children of three and four years old, leaving them as bald as dead skulls, at an age when with us they appear adorned with a beautifid profusion of curls. The dwelling appointed by the Mohammedans of Moscow for their cliief, sufficiently indicated their poverty, of which the Mollah complained bitterly.
" There is no pubhc spirit in the body," said he, " for there are no settled residents here. The community is in constant motion ; the people do not look upon Moscow as their native land ; and Hke better to adorn their mosques in the Crimea, or at Kasan, than one to which they are bound by no endearing associations." Every thing that surrounded the little thin-bearded Tartar Mollah fully justified his complaint. His house looked so ruinous, that we stood some time hesitating on the threshold before we accepted his friendly invitation to enter. On the walls nothing was to be seen but his thick white tm-ban, for he was a Hadji, and had accomplished his pilgrimage to Mecca successfully. A little girl, whom he had been teaching to read, rose from the divan, and placed herself with her Arab A-i3-C-book at the door. The Mollah told us that he depended on the Mufti of Orenburg, who, like the Crimean Mufti, stood directly under the authority of the emperor. These two Muftis, he said, were gi-eat personages, and held the rank of generals, while the Mollah was one of the most insignificant of the Mo^iammedan lights. A mono his hooks there were several interesting oriental manuscripts, so much the more interesting here, as they lay about uion the sofa and the table, like familiar household gods to be daily consulted. His Koran he took first from a covering of Russian fabric, then from a second covering of silk, and showed the book itself in a binding of real Cashmere shawl stuff. The less literature the Asiatics possess, the more valuable they esteem, and the better they are acquainted with it. He told us, there were about one hundred-and-twenty Tartars who are Sunnites, living in Moscow, and twenty-five or thirty Persians (Shiites). The latter have a small place of prayer in the house of a merchant, as the Sunnites have in St. Petersburg, and keep up no intercourse with the Tartars,
The assistant of the MoUah, his sacristan, who took us to the mosque, offered us some dressing-gowns for sale by the way. He was he said, a " dressing-gown" Tartar. He made use of the German word Schlafroch, and we wondered not a little, that a thing coming so far from the east as the Bokharian dressing-gowns, should have met its appellation from so far west : the word is in use throughout Russia.
The little building erected here to the honour of Allah, and whose priests are obliged to deal in dressing-gowns, which they must not wear themselves, had a predecessor which in 1812 met with the same fate from the French fire, in which so many Russian churches shared. The flock were long unable to get together the necessary funds for a new temple, till about twelve years ago, when a wealthy Tartar erected the walls that are now standing. It was not, however, quite completed, and has still only a temporary roof. It is not even whitewashed within, and so totally without decoration, that it must be called even uncomfortably simple. It is incomprehensible to me, that it has not yet occurred to any wealthy Christian here to perform the really Christian work of putting the temple of these poor Mohammedans into decent condition. The Tartars do not yet know, by experience, under what a noble religious influence they live. On the contrary, those who should be most imbued with Christian principles, have even robbed them of something — a beautiful carpet. The only point on which these poor people could not resist the inclination to incur expense, was for the carpets that cover the floor of the mosque. There are some of Russian fabric, but one came from Egypt over Constantinople, that cost them 3000 rubles, and had a fellow equally beautiful, which some Russians stole.