[FN#337] "The whole earth (shall be) but His handful on the Resurrection day and in His right hand shall the Heaven be rolled up (or folded together)."-Koran xxxix. 67.
[FN#338] See Night lxxxi.
[FN#339] Koran lxxviii. 19.
[FN#340] Arab. "Al-Munαfik," technically meaning one who outwardly professes Al-Islam while inwardly hating it. Thus the word is by no means synonymous with our "hypocrite," hypocrisy being the homage vice pays to virtue; a homage, I may observe, nowhere rendered more fulsomely than among the so-called Anglo-Saxon race.
[FN#341] Arab. "Tawakkul alα 'llah": in the imperative the phrase is vulgarly used="Be off!"
[FN#342] i.e. ceremonial impurity which is sui generis, a very different thing from general dirtiness.
[FN#343] A thick beard is one which does not show the skin; otherwise the wearer is a "Kausaj;" in Pers. "Kϊseh." See vol. iii., 246.
[FN#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-Asνr. (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.
[FN#345] Of these 6336 versets only some 200 treat on law, civil and ceremonial, fiscal and political, devotional and ceremonial, canonical and ecclesiastical.
[FN#346] The learned young woman omitted Ukhnϊkh=Enoch, because not in Koran; and if she denoted him by "Idrνs," the latter is much out of place.