And who held East and West ✿ In mine awfullest reign.
He preached me salvation ✿ Whom God did assain,[[174]]
But we crossed him and asked ✿ “Can no refuge be ta’en?”
When a Cry on us cried ✿ From th’ horizon plain,
And we fell on the field ✿ Like the harvested grain,
And the Fixt Day await ✿ We, in earth’s bosom lain!
Al-Sa’alibi also relateth:—It chanced that two men once entered this cave and found steps at its upper end; so they descended and came to an under-ground chamber, an hundred cubits long by forty wide and an hundred high. In the midst stood a throne of gold, whereon lay a man of huge bulk, filling the whole length and breadth of the throne. He was covered with jewels and raiment gold-and-silver-wrought, and at his head was a tablet of gold bearing an inscription. So they took the tablet and carried it off, together with as many bars of gold and silver and so forth as they could bear away. And men also relate the tale of
[165]. The Bresl. Edit. (vii. 171-174) entitles this tale, “Story of Shaddád bin Ad and the City of Iram the Columned;” but it relates chiefly the building by the King of the First Adites who, being promised a future Paradise by Prophet Húd, impiously said that he would lay out one in this world. It also quotes Ka’ab al-Ahbár as an authority for declaring that the tale is in the “Pentateuch of Moses.” Iram was in al-Yaman near Adan (our Aden) a square of ten parasangs (or leagues each = 18,000 feet) every way; the walls were of red (baked) brick 500 cubits high and 20 broad, with four gates of corresponding grandeur. It contained 300,000 Kasr (palaces) each with a thousand pillars of gold-bound jasper, etc. (whence its title). The whole was finished in five hundred years; and, when Shaddad prepared to enter it, the “Cry of Wrath” from the Angel of Death slew him and all his many. It is mentioned in the Koran (chapt. lxxxix. 6-7) as “Irem adorned with lofty buildings (or pillars).” But Ibn Khaldun declares that commentators have embroidered the passage; Iram being the name of a powerful clan of the ancient Adites and “imád” being a tent-pole: hence “Iram with the numerous tents or tent-poles.” Al-Bayzawi tells the story of Abdullah ibn Kilabah (D’Herbelot’s Colabah). At Aden I met an Arab who had seen the mysterious city on the borders of Al-Ahkáf, the waste of deep sands, west of Hadramaut; and probably he had, the mirage or sun-reek taking its place. Compare with this tale “The City of Brass” (Night dlxv.).
[166]. The biblical “Sheba,” named from the great-grandson of Joctan; whence the Queen (Bilkis) visited Solomon. It was destroyed by the Flood of Márib.