invaded this valley, and, with great amazement, beheld the apes stone a
female which had been taken in adultery. And when they would conquer the
valley, an aged ape came before them bearing a parchment letter. This
they were unable to read; so they sent it to the Calif Omar, who was
also unable to decipher the writing; but a Jew at his court read it, and
it was an assurance given to the apes against invasion by King Solomon.
Therefore Omar sent orders that they were to be left unmolested, and
returned to them their parchment.[673]
7. SOLOMON MARRIES THE DAUGHTER OF PHARAOH.
The throne of Solomon had four feet. It was of red ruby, and of the ruby
were made four lions. None but Solomon could sit upon the throne. When
Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem and sought to ascend the throne, the
lions rose and struck at him, and broke his legs. He was given remedies,
and his legs were reset. No one after that ventured to sit on the
throne.[674]
Djarada was the daughter of King Nubara, of an island in the Indian Sea,
according to the Arabs; of King Pharaoh of Egypt, say the Jews.
Solomon marched against the king, on his carpet, with as many soldiers
as it would accommodate; defeated him, and slew him with his own hand.
In the palace of King Nubara Solomon found the Princess Djarada, who was
more beautiful than all the ladies in Solomon’s harem, surpassing even
the beautiful Balkis.
Solomon made her mount the carpet, and he forced her, by threats of
death, to share his faith and his couch. But Djarada saw in Solomon only
the murderer of her father, and she recoiled from his embrace with
loathing, and spent her nights and days in tears and sighs. Solomon
hoped that time would heal these wounds and reconcile her to her fate;
but as, after the expiration of a year, her sorrow showed no signs of
abating, he asked her what he could do which might give her comfort. She
replied that at home was a statue of her father, and that she desired
greatly to have it in her chamber as a reminder of him whom she had
lost. Solomon, moved with compassion, sent a Jinn for the statue, and it
was set up in the apartment of Djarada. Djarada immediately prostrated
herself before it, and offered incense and worship to the image; and
this continued for forty days.
Then Asaph heard of it, and he ascended the pulpit in the temple and
preached before the king and all the people. He declared how holy and
pure had been the ancient prophets from Adam to David, how they had been
preserved clean from all idolatry. Then he turned to Solomon, and
praised his wisdom and piety during the first years of his reign; but he
regretted that his latter conduct had not been as full of integrity as
at first.
When Solomon heard this, he called Asaph to him, and asked him wherefore
he had rebuked him thus before all the people. Asaph answered, “Thou
hast suffered thy passions to blind thee, so that idolatry is practised
in thy palace.”
Solomon hastened to the room of Djarada, and found her in prayer before
the image of her departed father. Then he cried out, “We are the
servants of God, and to Him shall we return.” Then he broke the image
and punished Djarada.
After that he put on him garments which had been woven and sewn by
virgins, strewed ashes on his head, and went into the wilderness to
bewail his sin. God forgave him, after that he had fasted and wept for
forty days.[675]
Another sin that Solomon committed was this. He was very fond of horses.
One day, when the hour of prayer approached, the horses of Saul were
brought before him; and when nine hundred had passed, Solomon looked up
and saw that the hour of prayer was passed, and he had forgotten to give
glory to God. Then said Solomon, “I have cared for the things of this
world, instead of thinking of my Lord;” and he said, “Bring back the
horses;” and when they were brought back, he cut their throats.[676]
Some commentators on the Koran object that this was an act of injustice,
for Solomon had sinned, not the horses; and they explain away the
passage by saying that he dedicated the horses to God, and that he did
not kill them.[677]
8. HOW SOLOMON LOST AND RECOVERED HIS RING.
One day that Solomon retired to perform the necessary functions of
nature, he placed his ring in the hand of Djarada; for on such occasions
he was wont to remove the ring from his finger. For the first time he
forgot the advice of the queen of the ants, and gave no praise to God as
he committed the signet to other hands.
Sachr, the mighty Jinn,[678] took advantage of this act of
forgetfulness, and, assuming the form of Solomon, came to the Egyptian
princess and asked her for the ring. She, nothing doubting, restored it
to him; and Sachr went to the hall of audience, and ascended the throne.
When Solomon returned, he asked Djarada for the signet.
“I have already given it thee,” said she; and then, contemplating him
with attention, she exclaimed, “This is not the king! Solomon is in the
judgment-hall; thou art an impostor, an evil spirit who has assumed his
shape for evil purposes.”
Then Solomon was driven, at her cry, from the palace, and every one
treated him as a fool or rogue. He begged from door to door, saying, “I,
Solomon, was king in Jerusalem!” but the people mocked him. For three
years he was an outcast, because he had transgressed three precepts of
the Law—“The king set over thee ... shall not multiply horses to himself
... neither shall he multiply wives to himself; neither shall he greatly
multiply to himself silver and gold.”[679] And this is what befell him
in that time. He went into the land of the Ammonites, and there he fell
into great want; but the master cook of the king’s house took him to
serve as scullion in the kitchen. After he had served for some time, he
one day cooked some meats for the king; and when the king tasted the
meats Solomon had baked, he was well pleased, and sent for Solomon and
asked him if he would be his head cook.
Then Solomon consented, and the king of the Ammonites dismissed the
master cook, and placed Solomon in his room, and Solomon excelled
greatly in cooking, and pleased the king more and more with the variety
and excellence of his dishes every day.
Now it fell out that Naama, daughter of the king, saw Solomon from day
to day, and she conceived an ardent passion for him, and she went to her
mother and said, “I shall die of love, unless I am given the head cook
to husband.”
The queen was astonished and ashamed, and said, “There are kings and
princes and nobles in Ammon; take to you which you will.” But Naama
answered, “I will have none save the head cook.”
Then the queen went and told the king, and he was exceeding wrath, and
would have slain both Solomon and Naama; but when the first fury of his
anger was cooled down, he bade one of his servants take them, both
Solomon and Naama, and conduct them into the desert, and there leave
them to perish.[680] The command of the king was executed, and Solomon
and Naama were left in the wilderness without food. Then they wandered
on till they came to the borders of the sea, and Solomon found some
fishers, and he laboured for them, and every day they gave him, in
payment for his services, two fish.
Thus passed the time, till one day Solomon’s wife, Naama, on cleaning
one of the fishes, found in its belly a ring, and she brought it to her
husband; and, behold! it was his signet which he had put in the hands of
Djarada, and which had been taken from her by subtlety by the evil
spirit. And this was how he recovered it: on the ring was engraved the
Incommunicable Name, and this the Jinn could not endure; therefore he
could not wear the signet, and he had cast it into the sea, where the
fish had swallowed it.
Now when Solomon recovered his ring, he was filled with joy, and the
light returned to his eyes; he went back to Jerusalem with great haste,
and all the people recognized him, and bowed before him; and when the
Evil Spirit saw Solomon, and that he had the signet upon his hand, he
uttered a loud cry and fled. Solomon refused to see again Djarada, the
author of his misfortune; but he visited Queen Balkis every month, till
the day of her death.[681]
When Balkis died, he had her body conveyed to Tadmor in the desert, the
city she had built; but her grave was known to none till the reign of
the Calif Walid, when, in consequence of a heavy rain, the walls of
Tadmor fell. Then was found an iron sarcophagus which was sixty ells
long and forty ells wide, which bore this inscription:—“Here lies the
pious Balkis, queen of Sheba, wife of the prophet Solomon, son of David.
She was converted to the true faith in the thirteenth year of the reign
of Solomon; she married him in the fourteenth, and died in the
three-and-twentieth year of his reign.”
The son of the Calif raised the lid of the coffin, and beheld a woman,
as fresh as if she had only been lately buried.
He announced the fact to his father, and asked what should be done with
the sarcophagus. Walid ordered him to leave it where it had been found,
and to pile blocks of marble over it, so that it might not again be
disturbed by the hand of man.[682]
Solomon, when he was again on the throne, placed a crown on the head of
Naama, and seated her beside him, and sent for the king of Ammon. And
when the king came, he was filled with astonishment, and wondered how
his daughter had escaped from the desert and had found favour with the
greatest of monarchs. Then said Solomon, “See! I was thy head-cook, and
this is thy daughter; bid her come to thee and kiss thee.” Then the king
of Ammon kissed his daughter, and returned, glad of heart, to his own
land.[683]
9. THE DEATH OF SOLOMON.
When Solomon had recovered his throne, he reigned twenty years. His
whole reign was forty years, and he lived in all fifty-five years.[684]
He spent these years in prosecuting the building of the temple. Towards
the end of his life he often visited the temple, and remained there one
or two months plunged in prayer, without leaving it. He took his
nourishment in the temple. He even remained a year thus; and when he was
standing, with bowed head, in a humble attitude before God, no one
ventured to approach him, man or Jinn; if a Jinn drew near, fire fell
from heaven and consumed him.
In the garden of Solomon grew every day an unknown tree. Solomon asked
it, “What is thy name, and what are thy virtues?” And the tree answered
him, “I am called such and such, and I serve such a purpose, either by
my fruits, or by my shadow, or by my fragrance.”
Then Solomon transplanted it elsewhere; and if it were a tree with
medicinal properties, he wrote in books the kinds of remedies for which
it served. One day Solomon saw in his garden a new tree, and he asked
it, “What is thy name, and what purpose dost thou serve?”
The tree replied, “I serve for the destruction of the temple. Make of me
a staff, whereon to lean.”
Solomon said, “None can destroy the temple as long as I am alive.” Then
he understood that the tree warned him that he must shortly die. He
pulled up the tree, and of it he made a staff, and, when he prayed, he
leaned on this staff to keep himself upright.
Solomon knew that the temple was not completed, and that if he died, and
the Jinns knew of it, they would leave off building; therefore he
prayed, “O Lord! grant that the event of my death may be hidden from the
Jinns, that they may finish this temple.”
God heard his prayer, that the temple might be completed, and that the
Jinns might be humbled. Solomon died in the temple, standing, leaning on
his staff, with his head bowed in adoration. And his soul was taken so
gently from him by the Angel of Death, that the body remained standing;
and so it remained for a whole year, and those who saw him thought he
was absorbed in prayer, and they ventured not to approach.
The Jinns worked night and day till the temple was finished. Now, God
had ordered, the same day that the soul left Solomon, a little white
ant, which devours wood, to come up out of the earth under the staff,
and to gnaw the inside of the staff. She ate a little every day; and as
the staff was very strong and stout, she had not finished it till the
end of the year. Then, when the temple was finished, at the same time
the staff was eaten up, and it crumbled under the weight of Solomon, and
the body fell. Thus the Jinns knew that Solomon was dead. Now, wherever
the white ant eats wood, the void is filled up with clay and water by
the Jinns; and this they will continue to do till the day of the
Resurrection, in gratitude to the little ant which announced to them the
death of him who held them in bondage. If the clay and the water are not
inserted by the Jinns, whence can they come?
The sages assembled and enclosed an ant in a box, with a piece of wood,
for a night and a day; then they compared the amount devoured in that
time with the length of the staff, and thus they ascertained how long a
time Solomon had been dead.[685]
Footnote 658:
Solomon was twelve years old when he succeeded David. (Abulfeda, p.
43; Bartolocci, iv. p. 371.)
Footnote 659:
Weil, pp. 225-231; Eisenmenger, p. 440, &c.
Footnote 660:
Weil, pp. 231-4.
Footnote 661:
The story of the building of the temple, with the assistance of
Schamir, has been already related by me in my “Curious Myths of the
Middle Ages.”
Footnote 662:
The Rabbinic story and the Mussulman are precisely the same, with the
difference that Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, instead of the Jinns,
lies in ambush and captures Sachr or Aschmedai (Asmodeus).
(Eisenmenger, i. 351-8.) As I have given the Jewish version in my
“Curious Myths of the Middle Ages,” I give the Arab story here.
Footnote 663:
Weil, pp. 234-7; Talmud, Tract. Gittin. fol. 68, cols. 1, 2.
Footnote 664:
Jalkut Schimoni, fol. 90, col. 4.
Footnote 665:
Tabari, i. p. 435.
Footnote 666:
Tabari, i. p. 436.
Footnote 667:
Koran, Sura xxvii.; Tabari, i. c. xcviii.; Weil, pp. 237-9.
Footnote 668:
The Jews also believed in a purgatory; see Bartolocci, i. 342.
Footnote 669:
Targum Scheni Esther, fol. 401, tells the same of the moorcock.
Footnote 670:
This is the letter according to Rabbinic authors: “Greeting to thee
and to thine; from me, King Solomon. It is known to thee that the
holy, ever-blessed God has made me lord and king over the wild beasts
and birds of heaven, and over the devils, and spirits, and ghosts of
the night, and that all kings, from the rising to the down-setting of
the sun, come and greet me. If thou also wilt come and salute me, then
will I show thee great honour above all the kings that lie prostrate
before me. But if thou wilt not come, and wilt not salute me, then
will I send kings, and soldiers, and horsemen against thee. And if
thou sayest in thine heart, ‘Hath King Solomon kings, and soldiers,
and horsemen?’ then know that the wild beasts are his kings, and
soldiers, and horsemen. And if thou sayest, ‘What, then, are his
horsemen?’ know that the birds of heaven are his horsemen. His army
are ghosts, and devils, and spectres of the night; and they shall
torment and slay you at night in your beds, and the wild beasts will
rend you in the fields, and the birds will tear the flesh off you.”
This letter, the Jews say, was sent to the Queen of Sheba by a
moorcock. (Targum Scheni Esther, fol. 401, 440.)
Footnote 671:
According to another account, “that she had ass’s legs” (Weil, p.
267). Tabari says, “hairy legs” (i. p. 441).
Footnote 672:
Weil, pp. 246-267; Tabari, i. cc. 94, 95.
Footnote 673:
Weil, pp. 267-9.
Footnote 674:
Tabari, i. c. xcvi. p. 448.
Footnote 675:
Weil, pp. 269-271; Tabari, pp. 450, 451.
Footnote 676:
Koran, Sura xxxviii.
Footnote 677:
Tabari, pp. 460, 461.
Footnote 678:
In the Jewish legend, Asmodeus. In “Curiosities of Olden Times” I have
pointed out the connection between the story of the disgrace of
Solomon and that of Nebuchadnezzar, Jovinian, Robert of Sicily, &c.
Footnote 679:
Deut. xvii. 16, 17.
Footnote 680:
Emek Nammelek, fol. 14; Gittin, fol. 68, col. 2; Eisenmenger, i. pp.
358-60. The Anglo-Saxon story of Havelock the Dane bears a strong
resemblance to this part of the story of Solomon.
Footnote 681:
Eisenmenger, i. pp. 358-60; Weil, pp. 271-4; Tabari, c. 96.
Footnote 682:
Weil, p. 274.
Footnote 683:
Eisenmenger, i. 361.
Footnote 684:
Tabari, p. 454.
Footnote 685:
Koran, Sura xxxiv.; Tabari, c. 97; Weil, p. 279.
XXXIX.
ELIJAH.
When the prophet Elijah appeared, idolatry was general. God sent him to
Balbek (Heliopolis), to persuade the inhabitants to renounce the worship
of Baal, from whom the city took its name. Some say that Baal was the
name of a woman, beautiful of countenance. The Israelites also adored
Baal; Elijah preached against idolatry; and Ahab at first believed in
him, and rejected Baal, but after a while relapsed. Then Elijah prayed,
and God sent a famine on the land for three years, and many men died.
None had bread save Elijah, and when any smelt the odour of bread, they
said, “Elijah hath passed this way!”
One day Elijah came to the house of an old woman who had a son named
Elisha. Both complained of hunger. Elijah gave them bread. It is said,
likewise, that Elisha was paralytic, and that at the prayer of Elijah he
was healed.
When the famine had lasted three years, Elijah went, accompanied by
Elisha, before King Ahab, and he said:—“For three years you have been
without bread; let your god Baal, if he can, satisfy your hunger. If he
cannot, I will pray to Jehovah, and He will deliver you out of your
distress, if you will consent to worship Him.”
Ahab consented. Then Elijah ordered the idol of Baal to be taken out of
the city, and the worshippers of Baal invoked the god, but their prayers
remained unanswered. Then Elijah prayed, and immediately rain fell, and
the earth brought forth green herb and corn.
Nevertheless, shortly after, the people returned to idolatry, and Elijah
was weary of his life; he consecrated Elisha to succeed him, and he
prayed to God, “O Lord! save me from this untoward generation.” And God
heard his cry, and He carried him away and gave him life till the day
when Israfiel shall sound the trump of judgment.[686]
Both Jews and Mussulmans believe that Elijah is not dead, but that he
lives, and appears at intervals. The Mussulmans have confused him with
El Khoudr, and relate many wonderful stories of him. He is
unquestionably the origin of the Wandering Jew. His reappearances are
mentioned in the Talmud, and in later Jewish legends, as, for instance,
in a story told by Abraham Tendlau.[687] A poor Jew and his wife were
reduced to great necessity; the man had not clothes in which to go forth
and ask for work. Then his wife borrowed for him clothes, and he entered
the street seeking work. He met a venerable man, who bade him use him as
a slave. The Jew engaged to build a palace for a prince with the
assistance of his slave, for ten thousand thalers. The mysterious
stranger laboured hard, and angels assisted him, so that the mansion was
completed with astonishing rapidity. When the Jew had received the
money, the old man announced that he was Elijah, who had come to assist
him, and vanished.
After the Arabs had captured the city of Elvan, Fadhilah, at the head of
three hundred horsemen, pitched his tents, late in the evening, between
two mountains. Fadhilah having begun his evening prayer with a loud
voice, heard the words “Allah akbar!” (God is great!) repeated
distinctly, and each word of his prayer was followed in a similar
manner. Fadhilah, not believing this to be an echo, was much astonished,
and cried out, “O thou! whether thou art of the angel ranks, or whether
thou art of some other order of spirits, it is well, the power of God be
with thee; but if thou art a man, then let mine eyes light upon thee,
that I may rejoice in thy presence and society.”
Scarcely had he spoken these words, before an aged man with bald head
stood before him, holding a staff in his hand, and much resembling a
dervish in appearance. After having courteously saluted him, Fadhilah
asked the old man who he was. Thereupon the stranger answered, “Bassi
Hadut Issa, I am here by command of the Lord Jesus, who has left me in
this world, that I may live therein until He comes a second time to
earth. I wait for the Lord, who is the Fountain of Happiness, and in
obedience to his command I dwell beyond the mountain.”
When Fadhilah heard these words, he asked when the Lord Jesus would
appear; and the old man replied that his appearing would be at the end
of the world.
But this only increased Fadhilah’s curiosity, so that he inquired the
signs of the approach of the end of all things; whereupon Zerib bar Elia
gave him an account of the general social and moral dissolution which
would be the climax of this world’s history.[688]
“In the second year of Hezekiah,” says the Rabbinic Sether Olam Rabba
(c. 17), “Elijah disappeared, and he will not appear again till the
Messiah come; then he will show himself once more; and he will again
disappear till Gog and Magog show themselves. And all this time he
writes the events and transactions that happen in each century....
Letters from Elijah were brought to King Joram seven years after Elijah
had disappeared.”
A prophecy ascribed to Elijah is preserved in the Gemara:[689] “The
world will last six thousand years; it will lie desert for two thousand
years; the Messiah will reign two thousand years; but, because of our
iniquities which have super-abounded, the years of the Messiah have
passed away.”
Footnote 686:
Tabari, i. c. 84.
Footnote 687:
Das Buch der Sagen und Legenden jüdischer Vorzeit, p. 45; Stuttgart,
1845.
Footnote 688:
Herbelot, Bibl. Orient., s. v. Zerib, iii. p. 607.
Footnote 689:
Gemara, Avoda Sara, c. i. fol. 65.
XL.
ISAIAH.
The Book of the Ascension of Isaiah has reached us only in an Ethiopic
version, which was published along with a translation by Archbishop
Laurence, Oxford, 1819. Gieseler translated the book, and gave learned
prolegomena and notes, Göttingen, 1837; and Gfrörer has included it in
his “Prophetæ Pseudepigraphi,” Stuttgardt, 1840, pp. 1-55, with the
Latin translation. It must have existed in Greek and Latin, for
fragments of the Latin apocryphal book remain, and have been published
by Cardinal Mai, in “Scriptorum Veterum Nova Collectio;” Romæ, 1824, t.
III. ii. 238 et seq.: and it is very evident from these that they are
versions of a Greek original, and not of the Ethiopic.
Whilst Isaiah was speaking to the king Hezekiah, he suddenly stopped,
and his soul was borne away by an angel. He traversed the firmament,
where he saw the strife of the angels and demons, waged between the
earth and the moon. He entered the six heavens and admired their glory;
then he penetrated into the seventh heaven, where he saw the Holy
Trinity, and there the events of futurity were revealed to him. When he
returned to himself, Isaiah related to Hezekiah all that he had seen and
heard, except what concerned his son Manasseh.
This is the prophecy of Isaiah concerning Antichrist: “And when that
time is passed, Berial, the great angel, the prince of this world,
Berial will descend from his place in the form of a man; an impious
king, the murderer of his mother, a king of this world.
“And he will pluck up from amongst the twelve apostles the plant that
they had planted, and it will fall into his hands.
“And all the powers of the world will do the will of the angel Berial,
the impious king.
“At his word, the sun will shine in the darkness of the night, and the
moon will appear at the eleventh hour.
“He will do all his pleasures; he will illtreat the Well-Beloved, and
will say to him, Lo! I am God, and before me there is none other.
“And all the world will believe in him.
“And sacrifice will be offered to him, and a worship of adoration,
saying, He alone is God, and there is none other.
“Then the greater number of those gathered together to receive the
Well-Beloved will turn aside to Berial;
“Who by his power will work miracles in the cities and in the country;
“And everywhere shall a table be spread for him.
“His domination shall be for three years seven months and twenty-seven
days.”[690]
Only when Hezekiah was at the point of death, did Isaiah reveal to him
what and how great would be the iniquities of his son. Then the king
would have slain Manasseh: “I had rather,” said he, “die without
posterity, than leave behind me a son who should persecute the saints.”