text: " The perverse abandonment by the Feringhis of the time-honoured system of Ptolemy in favour of the new-fangled theories of Copernicus by which the earth is degraded from its recognised and respectable station in the centre of the universe to a subordinate grade in the solar system seems to have been a source of great scandal and perplexity to the Khan; "since " as he remarks "the former doctrine is supported by their own Bible not less than by our Koran