[383]. Arab. “Mukri.” “Kári” is one who reads the Koran to pupils; the Mukri corrects them. “With the passage of the clouds” = without a moment’s hesitation.
[384]. The twenty-first, twenty-fourth and eighteenth Arabic letters.
[385]. Arab. “Hizb.” The Koran is divided into sixty portions, answering to “Lessons” for convenience of public worship.
[386]. Arab. “Jalálah,” = saying Jalla Jalálu-hu = magnified be His Majesty!, or glorified be His Glory.
[387]. Koran, xi. 50.
[388]. The partition-wall between Heaven and Hell which others call Al-‘Urf (in the sing. from the verb meaning he separated or parted). The Jeus borrowed from the Guebres the idea of a partition between Heaven and Hell and made it so thin that the blessed and damned can speak together. There is much dispute about the population of Al-A’aráf, the general idea being that they are men who do not deserve reward in Heaven or punishment in Hell. But it is not a “Purgatory” or place of expiating sins.
[389]. Koran, vii. 154.
[390]. A play on the word ayn, which means “eye” or the eighteenth letter which in olden times had the form of a circle.
[391]. From misreading these words comes the absurd popular belief of the moon passing up and down Mohammed’s sleeves. George B. Airy (The Athenæum, Nov. 29, 1884) justly objects to Sale’s translation “The hour of judgment approacheth” and translates “The moon hath been dichotomised” a well-known astronomical term when the light portion of the moon is defined in a strait line: in other words when it is really a half-moon at the first and third quarters of each lunation. Others understand, The moon shall be split on the Last Day, the preterite for the future in prophetic style. “Koran Moslems” of course understand it literally.
[392]. Chapters liv., lv. and lvi.