[525]. Vulgarly pronounced “Jahannum.” The second hell is usually assigned to Christians. As there are seven Heavens (the planetary orbits) so, to satisfy Moslem love of symmetry, there must be as many earths and hells under the earth. The Egyptians invented these grim abodes, and the marvellous Persian fancy worked them into poem.
[526]. Arab. “Yájúj and Majuj,” first named in Gen. x. 2, which gives the ethnology of Asia Minor, circ. B.C. 800. “Gomer” is the Gimri or Cymmerians, “Magog” the original Magi, a division of the Medes; “Javan” the Ionian Greeks; “Meshesh” the Moschi; and “Tiras” the Turusha, or primitive Cymmerians. In subsequent times, “Magog” was applied to the Scythians, and modern Moslems determine from the Koran (chapt. xviii. and xxi.) that Yajuj and Majuj are the Russians, whom they call Moska or Moskoff from the Moskwa River.
[527]. I attempt to preserve the original pun; “Mukarrabin” (those near Allah) being the Cherubim, and the Creator causing Iblis to draw near Him (karraba).
[528]. A vulgar version of the Koran (chapt. vii.), which seems to have borrowed from the Gospel of Barnabas. Hence Adam becomes a manner of God-man.
[529]. These wild fables are caricatures of Rabbinical legends which began with “Lilith,” the Spirit-wife of Adam: Nature and her counterpart, Physis and Antiphysis, supply a solid basis for folk-lore. Amongst the Hindus we have Brahma (the Creator) and Viswakarmá, the anti-Creator: the former makes a horse and a bull and the latter caricatures them with an ass and a buffalo, and so forth.
[530]. This is the “Lauh al-Mahfúz,” the Preserved Tablet, upon which are written all Allah’s decrees and the actions of mankind good (white) and evil (black). This is the “perspicuous Book” of the Koran, chapt. vi. 59. The idea again is Guebre.
[531]. i.e. the night before Friday which in Moslem parlance would be Friday night.
[532]. Again Persian “Gáw-i-Zamín” = the Bull of the Earth. “The cosmogony of the world,” etc., as we read in the Vicar of Wakefield.
[533]. The Calc. Edit. ii. 614, here reads by a clerical error “bull.”
[534]. i.e. lakes and rivers.