[343]. A thick beard is one which does not show the skin; otherwise the wearer is a “Kausaj;” in Pers. “Kúseh.” See vol. iii., 246.
[344]. Arab. “Al-Khutnah.” Nowhere commanded in the Koran and being only a practice of the Prophet, the rite is not indispensable for converts, especially the aged and the sick. Our ideas upon the subject are very hazy for modern “niceness” allows a “Feast of the Circumcision,” but no discussion thereon. Moses (alias Osarsiph) borrowed the rite from the Egyptian hierophants who were all thus “purified”; the object being to counteract the over-sensibility of the “sixth sense” and to harden the glans against abrasions and infection by exposure to air and friction against the dress. Almost all African tribes practise it but the modes vary and some are exceedingly curious: I shall notice a peculiarly barbarous fashion called Al-Salkh (the flaying) still practised in the Arabian province Al-Asír (Pilgrimage iii. 80). There is a difference too between the Hebrew and the Moslem rite. The Jewish operator, after snipping off the foreskin, rips up the prepuce with his sharp thumb-nails so that the external cutis does not retract far from the internal; and the wound, when healed, shows a narrow ring of cicatrice. This ripping is not done by Moslems. They use a stick as a probe passed round between glans and prepuce to ascertain the extent of the frenum and that there is no abnormal adhesion. The foreskin is then drawn forward and fixed by the forceps, a fork of two bamboo splints, five or six inches long by a quarter thick, or in some cases an iron like our compasses. This is tied tightly over the foreskin so as to exclude about an inch and a half of the prepuce above and three quarters below. A single stroke of the razor drawn directly downwards removes the skin. The slight bleeding is stopped by burnt rags or ashes and healed with cerates, pledgets and fumigations. Thus Moslem circumcision does not prevent the skin retracting.
[345]. Of these 6336 versets only some 200 treat on law, civil and ceremonial, fiscal and political, devotional and ceremonial, canonical and ecclesiastical.
[346]. The learned young woman omitted Ukhnúkh = Enoch, because not in Koran; and if she denoted him by “Idrís,” the latter is much out of place.
[347]. Some say grandson of Shem (Koran vii. 71).
[348]. Koran vii. 63, etc.
[349]. Father-in-law of Moses (Koran vii. 83).
[350]. Who is the last and greatest of the twenty-five.
[351]. See Night ccccxxxviii.
[352]. Koran ii., whose 256th Ayah is the far-famed and sublime Throne-verse which begins “Allah! there is no god but He, the Living, the Eternal One, whom nor slumber nor sleep seizeth on!” The trivial name is taken from the last line, “His throne over-stretcheth Heaven and Earth and to Him their preservation is no burden for He is the most Highest, the Supreme.” The lines are often repeated in prayers and engraved on agates, etc., as portable talismans.