Also When A Moslem Blesses Mohammed At Al-Madinah, His Sins Are Not Written Down For Three Days,-Thus Allowing Ample Margin For Repentance,-By The Recording Angel.

Al-Malakayn (the two Angels), or Kiram al-Katibin (the Generous Writers), are mere personifications of the good principle and the evil principle of man's nature; they are fabled to occupy each a shoulder, and to keep a list of words and deeds.

This is certainly borrowed from a more ancient faith. In Hermas II. (command. 6), we are told that "every man has two angels, one of godliness, the other of iniquity," who endeavour to secure his allegiance,-a superstition seemingly founded upon the dualism of the old Persians. Mediaeval Europe, which borrowed so much from the East at the time of the Crusades, degraded these angels into good and bad fairies for children's stories. [FN#29] Burckhardt writes this word Hedjra (which means "flight"). Nor is M. Caussin de Perceval's "El Hadjarat" less erroneous. At Madinah it is invariably called Al-Hujrah-the chamber. The chief difficulty in distinguishing the two words, meaning "chamber" and "flight," arises from our only having one h to represent the hard and soft h of Arabic, ???? [Arabic text] and ???? [Arabic text]. In the case of common saints, the screen or railing round the cenotaph is called a "Maksurah." [FN#30] Yet Mohammed enjoined his followers to frequent graveyards. "Visit graves; of a verity they shall make you think of futurity!" And again, "Whoso visiteth his two parents' grave, or one of the two, every Friday, he shall be written a pious child, even though he might have been in the world, before that, a disobedient." [FN#31] The truth is no one knows what is there.

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