The proposition tempted me; it is not every
day that one is invited in such gentlemanly fashion to wallow on all fours
with young Arabs. I made one or two strokes, not amiss, that called forth
huge applause; and then returned, rather regretfully, to my sand-heap, to
meditate on my own misspent youth, a subject that very rarely troubles me.
There is a tall, round building that stands within a hundred yards of
where I sat; they call it the "Roman" tower, and the foundation-stones,
though not _in situ_, are probably of that period; it was a Byzantine
bell-tower, then a minaret, now a ruin. And here, confronting me, lie a
few stones, that are all that remain of a pagan temple which became a
Christian basilica and afterwards a mosque. In the fifth century
Tisouros--this slumberous Bled-el-Adher--was a dependency of the Greek
"Duke of Gafsa" (how strange it sounds!); Florentinus, its bishop, was
executed by the king of the Vandals; Christian churches survived, side by
side with mosques, as late as the fourteenth century. There seems to have
been no great religious intolerance in those days.
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