Note 46 — HISTORY OF AL-HAJJAJ BIN YUSUF AND THE YOUNG SAYYID.[42]
Richard Francis Burton translation · Edition 2
Perfectly true even in the present day. The city was famed for intelligence and sanguinary fanaticism; and no stranger in disguise could pass through it without detection. This ended with the massacre of 1840, which brought a new era into the Moslem East. The men are, as a rule, fine-looking, but they seem to be all show: we had a corps of them in the old Básh-Buzuks, who, after a month or two in camp, seemed to have passed suddenly from youth into old age.