Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night - Volume 5.djvu/236

 verses, and its abrogating parts and abrogated portions, its unequivocal commands and its ambiguous; and the difference of its revelations, Meccan and Medinan? Dost thou understand its interpretation and hast thou studied it, according to the various traditions and origins?" "Yes," answered she; and he said, "What then is the number of its chapters, how many are the decades and versets, how many words and how many letters and how many acts of prostration and how many prophets and how many chapters are Medinan and how many are Meccan and how many birds are mentioned in it?" Replied she, "O my lord, its chapters are an hundred and fourteen, whereof seventy were revealed at Meccah and forty-four at Al-Medinah; and it containeth six hundred and twenty-one decades; six thousand three hundred and thirty-six versets; [FN#345] seventy-nine thousand four hundred and thirty-nine words and three hundred and twenty-three thousand and six hundred and seventy letters; and to the reader thereof, for every letter, are given ten benefits. The acts of prostration it compriseth are fourteen."--And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her permitted say.

When it was the Four Hundred and Forty-sixth Night,

She said, It hath reached me, O auspicious King, that when the professor of Koranic exegesis questioned the damsel, she continued, "As regards the Prophets named in the Book there be five-and-twenty, to wit, Adam, Noah, [FN#346] Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Lot, Elisha, Jonah, Salih, [FN#347] or Heber, Húd, [FN#348] Shua'yb or Jethro, [FN#349] David, Solomon, Zú'l-kafl or Joshua, Idrís, Elias, Yahyá or John the Baptist, Zacharias, Job, Moses, Aaron, Jesus and Mohammed, [FN#350] the peace of Allah and His blessing be on them all! Moreover, nine flying things are mentioned in the Koran, namely, the gnat, the bee, the fly, the ant, the hoopoe, the crow,