Burckhardt Assigns, As
A Motive For It Being Planted In Graveyards, That Its Name Saber
Denotes The Patience With Which The Believer Awaits The Last Day.
And
Lane remarks, “The Aloe thus hung (over the door), without earth and
water, will live for several years, and even blossom:
Hence it is
called Saber, which signifies patience.” In India it is hung up to
prevent Mosquitoes entering a room. I believe the superstition to be a
fragment of African fetichism. The Gallas, to the present day, plant
Aloes on graves, and suppose that when the plant sprouts the deceased
has been admitted into the gardens of “Wak”—the Creator. Ideas breed
vocables; but seldom, except among rhymesters, does a vocable give
birth to a popular idea: and in Arabic “Sibr,” as well as “Sabr,” is the name
of the Aloe.
[FN#7] Burckhardt mentions the “Tomb of Umna, the mother of Mohammed,” in
the Ma’ala at Meccah; and all the ciceroni agree about the locality. Yet
historians place it at Abwa, where she gave up the ghost, after
visiting Al-Madinah to introduce her son to his relations. And the
learned believe that the Prophet refused to pray over or to intercede
for his mother, she having died before Al-Islam was revealed.
[FN#8] Burckhardt calls it “Maulid Sittna Fatimah”: but the name “Kubbat el
Wahy,” applied by my predecessor to this locality, is generally made
synonymous with Al-Mukhtaba, the “hiding-place” where the Prophet and his
followers used in dangerous times to meet for prayer.
[FN#9] So loose is local tradition, that some have confounded this
quern with the Natak al-Nabi, the stone which gave God-speed to the
Prophet.
[FN#10] He would of course pray the Farz, or obligatory devotions, at
the shrine.
[FN#11] About a year since writing the above a firman was issued by the
Porte suppressing the traffic from Central Africa.
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