Page 55 - Demo

51and trained pace with the purpose of performing a religious festival of rejoicing and chanting. In the East the Christians still practise what they call higga either during their festival days or at weddings. Consequently, this word has nothing to do with pilgrimage, which is derived from the Italian Pellegrino, and this also from the Latin peregrinus - meaning a “foreigner.”Abraham (pbuh) during his sojourns frequently used to build an altar for worship and sacrifice at different places and on particular occasions. When Jacob (pbuh) was on his way to Padan Aram and saw the vision of that wonderful ladder, he erected a stone there, upon which he poured oil and called it Bethel, i.e. “the house of God”; and twenty years later he again visited that stone, upon which he poured oil and “pure wine,” [!] as recorded in Genesis xxviii. 10-22; xxxv. A special stone was erected as a monument by Jacob (pbuh) and his father-in-law upon a heap of stones called Gal’ ead in Hebrew, and Yaghar sahdutha by Laban in hisAramaic language, which means “a heap of witness.” But the proper noun they gave to the erected stone was Mispa (Gen. xxxi. 45-55), which I prefer to write in its exact Arabic form, Mispha, and this I do for the benefit of my Muslim readers.Now this Mispha became later on the mostimportant place of worship, and a centre of the national assemblies in the history of the people of Israel. It was here that Naphthah -a Jewish hero- made a vow “before the Lord,” and after beating the Ammonites, he is supposed to have offered his only daughter as a burnt offering (Judges xi.). It was at Mispha that four hundred thousand swordsmen from the eleven tribes of Israel assembled and “swore before the Lord” to exterminate the tribe of Benjamin for an abominable crime committed by the Benjamites of Geba’ and succeeded (Judges xx. xxi.). At Mispha all the people were summoned by the Prophet Samuel, where they “swore before the Lord” to destroy all their