_ 106 _ on Sundays, and each day gave religious instruction to the male and female slaves and the children, and attended to the litanies at night and the indeed, you have finally wounded my simple feelings and mind, my spouse. You have wounded my heart, my sister(A), because it resembles the beauty of purity. And charity covers a multitude of sins(B), the mantle of God in Majesty. So, run that you may attain it(C). The earth supplies us with it. From there we came to Muscat(D), another place on the coast of Arabia Felix, where I met a lot of Portuguese (A) Cf. Song of Songs 4, 9. (B) Cf. James 5, 20. (C) 1 Corinthians 9, 24. (D) Mascate (Masquat), a town and port between Ras el-Hadd and Sohar (cf. Tomaschek, Mohit tab. XI). Correia refers to it: “Muscat... is a large town located on a beach in a small bay. It makes an ideal port, because, on its left side it has hills. Thus, the port is circular and sheltered on all sides. The territory on both shores is hemmed in by tall peaks on both flanks and the zone extending inwards among the mountains, forms a clearing where there are vegetable gardens, date palms and wells of clean water which the people drink. The town has seven hundred inhabitants, many stone houses, plots of land and mosques. It is a place inhabited by many foreign merchants, who come here to ship horses, dates and salted fish” (I 802). The sheikh or Mohammedan ruler lived here. During the Portuguese year 1507, the town was partly destroyed by fire (cf. Correia I 802-08). Today it is the capital of the Sultanate of Oman (cf. Encyclopaedia Italiana 22, 481).
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