[519] This title is more particularly applied to Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammed.
[520] According to some rabbins and to some Muselmans, wheat was the forbidden fruit which Adam eat.—(See upon this subject, Les Oiseaux et les Fleurs, allégories d’Azz-eddin el Mocadessi, publiées en arabe avec une traduction française par M. Garcin de Tassy, p. 167, notes.)
[521] Muhammed, in the fifty-second year of his age and the twelfth of his preaching (A. D. 621), whilst lying asleep between the mountains Al Safa and Merva, in the vicinity of Mecca, had a vision in which he proceeded from earth through the seven heavens to the throne of God. Muhammed himself alludes to it twice in the Koran, the seventeenth chapter of which is entitled “the night journey;” but he mentions nothing else but a vision: it was the fanaticism of his followers which wrought the most strange circumstances into an absurd fable, according to which their prophet was visited by the angel Gabriel, and in his company carried first from Mecca to Jerusalem, and then, upon a ladder of light, to the presence of God.
[522] For the just mentioned miraculous journey, Gabriel had brought with him the sacred animal on which the prophets used to ride when executing a divine command; it was called Al borak, “flashing as lightning,” in shape resembling an ass of a larger size, with a face like that of a man, the eyes brighter than the star Aldebaran, the ears of an elephant, the neck of a camel, the body of a horse, with the tail of a mule and hoofs of a bull; the breast of the animal shone like rubies, his legs like pearls, and a silken caparison of Paradise bedecked his back.—(See hereafter on the Borak, in chapter XI, the section “on the miracles of the prophet.”)
[523] Surah means a chapter of the Koran.
[524] See note, vol. I. pp. 99-100.]
[525] These ten personages are the four khalifs: I. Abubekr; II. Omar; III. Osman; and IV. Ali; then V. Talha; VI. Zohair ben Awam; VII. Saad ben Abu Wakkas; VIII. Abdur rahmen ben Auf; IX. Abu Obaida ben Jarrah; and X. Saad ben Zaid. These are called the ten evangelists, to whom the Muhammedans add Hamzah and Jafar, and account them the twelve apostles of Muhammed.—(See Eucologe musulman, par M. Garcin de Tassy, Paris, 1840, p. 200.)
[526] كوثر Kawser is a river of paradise, mentioned in the Koran (chap. CVIII). According to a tradition of Muhammed, the water of this river is whiter than milk or silver, sweeter than honey, smoother than cream, and more odoriferous than musk; its banks are of chrysolithes. This river supplies in two pipes the pond of the prophet, who describes it to be an exact square of a month’s journey in compass. The cups to drink this water are of silver, and are set around as numerous as there are stars in the firmament.—(See Sale’s Koran, vol. I. Prelim. Disc., p. 126; vol. II. p. 514.)
[527] See pp. 334-335, [note 1.]
[528] Kersi: this is the crystaline or the empyrean heaven, as being supposed the throne of God.