[204] Thamood was another tribe of the ancient Arabs who fell into idolatry. They dwelt first in the country of the ´Ádites, but their numbers increasing, they removed to the territory of Ḥejr.—S.
[205] This extraordinary camel frighting the other cattle from their pasture, a certain rich woman, named ´Oneyzeh Umm-Ghánim, having four daughters, dressed them out, and offered one Ḳudár his choice of them, if he would kill the camel. Whereupon he chose one, and with the assistance of eight other men hamstrung and killed the dam, and pursuing the young one which fled to the mountain, killed that also, and divided his flesh among them. Others tell the story somewhat differently, adding Ṣadaḳah Bint-El-Mukhtár as a joint-conspiratress with ´Oneyzeh, and pretending that the young one was not killed.’—S. (A.F., B.)
[206] Defying the vengeance with which they were threatened; because they trusted in their strong dwellings hewn in the rocks, saying that the tribe of ´Ád perished only because their houses were not built with sufficient strength.—S.
[207] Like violent and repeated claps of thunder; which some say was no other than the voice of the angel Gabriel, which rent their hearts. It is said that after they had killed the camel, Ṣáliḥ told them that on the morrow their faces should become yellow, the next day red, and the third day black; and that on the fourth God’s vengeance should light on them: and that, the first three signs happening accordingly, they sought to put him to death; but God delivered him by sending him into Palestine.—S. (A.F., B.)
[208] In the Mir-át-ez-Zemán it is stated that there are various opinions respecting the age in which this person lived: 1. That he lived in the first century after the Deluge, and was of the sons of Japheth, and was born in the land of the Greeks: so said ´Alee; 2. That he was after Thamood: so said El-Ḥasan; 3. That he was of the lineage of Esau, the son of Isaac: so said Muḳátil; 4. That he lived between the times of Moses and Jesus; 5. That he lived between Jesus and Moḥammad; and 6. That he was of the lineage of Yoonán, son [as some say] of Noah, in the days of Abraham; and this, adds the author, is the most correct.—But some suppose him to be the same with Alexander the Great.—Respecting his surname of ‘Dhu-l-Ḳarneyn,’ the most obvious signification of which is ‘the two-horned,’ the more judicious in general are of opinion that he received it because he made expeditions to the extreme parts of the east and west, and therefore that it signifies ‘Lord of the two extreme parts of the earth.’
[209] Who were clothed in the skins of wild beasts, and lived upon what the sea cast on shore.—S. (B.)
[210] The Arabs call them Yájooj and Májooj, and say they are two nations or tribes descended from Japheth the son of Noah; or, as others write, Gog are a tribe of the Turks, and Magog of those of Geelán, the Geli and Gelæ of Ptolemy and Strabo.—It is said these barbarous people made their irruptions into the neighbouring countries in the spring, and destroyed and carried off all the fruits of the earth; and some pretend they were man-eaters.—S. (B.)
[211] The Eastern authors unanimously agree that he (Ázar) was a statuary, or carver of idols; and he is represented as the first who made images of clay, pictures only having been in use before, and taught that they were to be adored as gods. However, we are told his employment was a very honourable one, and that he was a great lord and in high favour with Nimrod, whose son-in-law he was, because he made his idols for him and was excellent in his art. Some of the Rabbins say Terah was a priest and chief of the order.—S.
[212] Some tell us that Nimrod, on seeing this miraculous deliverance from his palace, cried out that he would make an offering to the God of Abraham; and that he accordingly sacrificed four thousand kine. [B.] But, if he ever relented, he soon relapsed into his former infidelity: for he built a tower that he might ascend to heaven to see Abraham’s God; which being overthrown [Ḳur. xvi. 28], still persisting in his design, he would be carried to heaven in a chest borne by four monstrous birds; but after wandering for some time through the air, he fell down on a mountain with such force that he made it shake, whereto (as some fancy) a passage in the Ḳur-án [xiv. 47] alludes, which may be translated, ‘although their contrivances be such as to make the mountains tremble.’—Nimrod, disappointed in his design of making war with God, turned his arms against Abraham, who, being a great prince, raised forces to defend himself; but God, dividing Nimrod’s subjects, and confounding their language, deprived him of the greater part of his people, and plagued those who adhered to him by swarms of gnats, which destroyed almost all of them; and one of those gnats having entered into the nostril, or ear, of Nimrod, penetrated to one of the membranes of his brain, where, growing bigger every day, it gave him such intolerable pain, that he was obliged to cause his head to be beaten with a mallet, in order to procure some ease, which torture he suffered four hundred years; God being willing to punish, by one of the smallest of His creatures, him who insolently boasted himself to be lord of all. A Syrian calendar places the death of Nimrod, as if the time were well known, on the eighth of Tamooz, or July.—S.
[213] They tell us that Gabriel thrust his wing under them and lifted them up so high that the inhabitants of the lower heaven heard the barking of the dogs and the crowing of the cocks; and then, inverting them, threw them down to the earth.—S. (B.)