[P.343]CHAPTER XVII.

AN ESSAY TOWARDS THE HISTORY OF THE PROPHET'S MOSQUE.

IBN ABBAS has informed the world that when the eighty individuals composing Noah's family issued from the ark, they settled at a place distant ten marches and twelve parasangs[FN#1] (thirty-six to forty-eight miles) from Babel or Babylon. There they increased and multiplied, and spread into a mighty empire. At length under the rule of Namrud (Nimrod), son of Kanaan (Canaan), son of Ham, they lapsed from the worship of the true God: a miracle dispersed them into distant parts of the earth, and they were further broken up by the one primaeval language being divided into seventy-two dialects.

A tribe called Aulad Sam bin Nuh (the children of Shem), or Amalikah and Amalik,[FN#2] from their ancestor Amlak bin Arfakhshad bin Sam bin Nuh, was inspired

[p.344]with a knowledge of the Arabic tongue[FN#3]: it settled at Al-Madinah, and was the first to cultivate the ground and to plant palm-trees. In course of time these people extended over the whole tract between the seas of Al-Hijaz (the Red Sea) and Al-Oman, (north-western part of the Indian Ocean), and they became the progenitors of the Jababirah[FN#4] (tyrants or "giants") of Syria, as well as the Farainah (Pharaohs) of Egypt.[FN#5] Under these Amalik such

[p.345]was the age of man that during the space of four hundred years a bier would not be seen, nor "keening" be heard, in their cities.

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