Page:Muhammad Diyab al-Itlidi - Historical Tales and Anecdotes of the Time of the Early Khalîfahs - Alice Frere - 1873.djvu/283

254 "And the Holy House, is it ours or yours?"

"Yours," he replied.

"And the Khalîfah, is he of us or of you?"

"Of you," he answered.

"Then," said Khâlid, "to all excepting these four things thou art welcome."



¹ Nuʾamân, Mundhir, Koubais, and Tobbʾa. Four powerful kings amongst the ancient Arabian tribes who gave their names to their followers and descendants. Tobba was retained as a title by the princes of the Himyarite dynasty. See Note *, p. 178.

² The Psalms of David. I imagine this refers to "Og the king of Bashan."

³ Hánzhalah, one of the Associates, who was killed at the battle of Ohod, 3, where Muhammad and his followers were defeated by the Kuraish under Abu-Sufyân. According to Muslim faith, those who die fighting for el-Islám are martyrs, and when their bodies are buried their souls depart at once to Paradise, where they eat and drink and sleep in bliss. Their bodies are buried unwashed, martyrdom being held in lieu of ablution, unless they were known to have entered the fight in a state of ceremonial impurity,—i. e., in a state in which they could not have entered a mosque, nor performed their devotions. After the battle of Ohod, the Prophet beheld angels performing the last offices upon the body of Hánzhalah, showing thereby that he had entered the fight in a state of impurity, but raising him in the opinion of surviving Muslims to the rank of a saint. Occasionally a soul has been known to return in the form it wore while in the flesh, and wash its own lifeless corpse.

⁴ It is impossible to translate this word in the meaning here intended. This is—What is above the seventh heaven, where 