Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/315

Rh Islam bore its somewhat jejune creed and more complex legends, the new converts read into the foreign faith all their old beliefs. In Syria Khidr has been identified with St. George—a sort of Perseus who in rescuing Andromeda from the sea-dragon is badly repaid by being confused with the monster itself. The coast of Syria is studded with little shrines where sacrifices and the first-born are regularly offered. The Syrian Muslim have indeed a proverb (closely resembling an axiom of the Russian Slavs before the late changes): 'Khidr is near but God is far off.' Like the pirs in India he has really become a god, and Cumont suggests that he may have embodied much of ancient Semitic mythology or even the early Tammuz-cult of the Sumerians.

5. The more orthodox Muslim divines object to this hero-worship or spirit-cult, just as in their hearts they object to the dervishes and the religion of ecstasy and trance: surtout point de zêle, except in the innocent area of military propagandism. Many have tried in vain to prove that Khidr, a companion of the Prophet, died very soon after him, and is by no means either an immortal chef or a grotesque 'dragon of the slime.' But the Sufis, abhorring Arabs and Sunnites from the bottom of their heart, have supported the popular cultus with arguments and enthusiasm.

But even the orthodox and unemotional have helped towards a strange doctrine of the 'Recurrent Prophet,' which is at least as old as the pseudo-Clementine Writings and indeed as Elkesai (c. 100 ). It is a favourite theological pastime to identify or equate Khidr with some Old Testament worthy; he is Melchizedek, Seth, Enoch, Lot, Jonah, Jeremiah, the Messiah Himself. Cumont is inclined to call these conjectures the 'product of unfettered speculative fancy,' but there seems to be some