Transcriber's Note
This book contains some Hebrew text, e.g.קב״ה. If itdoes not display correctly, you may wish to adjust your browser or device settings.
The
Weird Orient
Nine
Mystic Tales
BY
HENRY ILIOWIZI
Author of “In the Pale,” “Jewish Dreams
and Realities,” etc.
PHILADELPHIA
HENRY T. COATES AND COMPANY
1900
Copyright 1899 by HENRY ILIOWIZI.
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All rights reserved.
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ENTERED AT STATIONERS’ HALL,
LONDON.
PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE.
IN introducing to the general public a writerwho has heretofore been known chieflyamong the people of his own race, his publishersmay perhaps be permitted to saya word. Rabbi Iliowizi is a Hebrew of purelineage, the son of a zealous member of theChassidim, a Kabbalistic sect numbering overhalf a million members in Russia, Roumaniaand Gallicia, but rarely met with in this country.He passed his infancy and boyhood inthe Russian provinces of Minsk and Moghileff,and in Roumania, growing to manhood andreceiving his education at Frankfort-on-the-Main,Berlin and Breslau, where he qualifiedhimself for a theological career. After sixyears of study in Germany, he spent somefour years more perfecting his training inmodern languages and in Arabic and Hebrewin London and Paris, under the auspices of theAnglo-Jewish Association and the AllianceIsraelite Universelle, as a preparation to takecharge of one of the outlying mission stationsmaintained by these affiliated societies in theOrient, where they support some fifty schoolsfor the benefit of their oppressed co-religionists.After a prolonged service in Morocco, engaged[Pg iv]in the educational work of the two societies,Mr. Iliowizi lived for a year at Gibraltar, andthen came to America to devote himself to theministry of the Jewish Church, and is now thespiritual head of a large congregation of hisown people.
Mr. Iliowizi has hitherto contributed principallyto the literature of his race, being knownamong Jews by several works; most widely,perhaps, by a volume of stories of Russian life,under the title of “In the Pale,” recentlypublished by the Jewish Publication Societyof America for its subscribers. In the seriesof Eastern tales, comprising the present book,which appeals to a larger audience, he has thespecial advantage, not only of a lengthenedresidence among Eastern peoples, but that heis himself of an Oriental race, of a heredityhighly tinctured by the tenets of one of its mostmystical sects, and personally is of a stronglySemitic type of mind, tempered by the maturingof his powers in the clear atmosphere of theNew World intellectual life. He has