Saleh

“ When Saleh agreed to this also, the king added, "And let it bring with it a foal like to its mother, just born, and running by her side; then will I believe in Allah, and in thee as His prophet."
"And wilt thou believe too?" asked Saleh of the high priest.
"Yes," answered Davud, "if she give milk without being milked, cold in summer and warm in winter."
"And one thing more," threw in the king's brother, Schihab; "the milk must heal the sick, enrich the poor, and the camel must of its own accord go into every house, and fill the pails with milk." ”

“ Then cried the raven, “Kanuch, open to thy wife!” and so vanished.
Nine months after that Raghwah had rejoined her husband, she bore him a son, who was the image of Seth, and had on his brow the prophetic light; and Kanuch, in the hope of drawing him to the knowledge of the true God and to a pious life, gave him the name of Saleh (The Blessed) .
Not long after Saleh’s birth, Kanuch died; and the raven of Paradise returned to the grotto to lead back Saleh to his own people.
Saleh grew in beauty and strength, to the admiration of his mother and all who saw him. ”

“ As soon as the smoke began to arise, the palace shook, and immediately the king of Samandal, with King Saleh's officers, appeared. The king of Persia cast himself at the king of Samandal's feet, and, kneeling, said, "It is no longer King Saleh that demands of your majesty the honour of your alliance for the king of Persia; it is the king of Persia himself that humbly begs that boon; and I persuade myself your majesty will not persist in being the cause of the death of a king, who can no longer live if he does not share life with the amiable Princess Jehaun-ara." ”

“ But Saleh was moved with compassion when he saw the anguish of those who had been bitten by the scorpions and vipers, and he prayed to God, and the noxious reptiles were transformed back again into date-leaves, and those who had been stung were made whole. Nevertheless the king hardened his heart, and continued to worship false gods.
When Saleh saw the impenitence of the Thamudites, he besought God to destroy them; but an angel appeared to him in a cave, and sent him to sleep for twenty years. ”

“ Waking up Saleh Mohammed without much ceremony, the young Toorkoman chief proceeded to business at once, but in a very cunning way, commencing with another subject, like a wily lawyer seeking to lure and throw a witness off his guard.
"After a nine days' journey, Khan, you must be short of provisions?" said he.
"Oh, fear not for our presence here in Bameean," replied Saleh Mohammed, leisurely sucking at his hubble-bubble, the light of which had gone out; "every tobrah full of oats, every maund of ottah and rice, we require shall be duly paid for." ”

“ The camel of the prophet Saleh was placed by Mohammed in the heavens, together with the ass of Balaam, and other favoured animals.
Now wonderful as is this story, it is surpassed by that related by certain Arabic historians of the mission of Saleh. This we proceed to give.
Djundu Ibn Omar was king of the Thamudites, a people numbering seventy thousand fighting men. He had a palace cut out of the face of a rock, and his high priest, Kanuch Ibn Abid, had one likewise. The most magnificent building in the city was a temple which contained the idol worshipped by the people. ”

“ I thought him lost from that very moment, and you now restore life to me by bringing him again.'
'I thought as much,' replied King Saleh, 'though you had not the least reason to apprehend any danger; for, before I plunged into the sea with him I pronounced over him certain mysterious words, which were engraven on the seal of the great Solomon, the son of David. We do the same to all those children that are born in the regions at the bottom of the sea, by virtue of which
KING SALEH AND PRINCE BEDER
they receive the same privileges that we have over those people who inhabit the earth. ”

“ And when the young camel heard the shouting of the inhabitants of the city, and saw the multitude in pursuit, it stood before the rock, turned round, uttered three piercing cries, and vanished.
The Thamudites arrived and beat the rock, but they could not open it. Then said Saleh, "The judgment of God will fall; prepare to receive it. The first day your faces will become livid, the second day they will become black, and the third day red." ”

“ And now in front of the column of advancing horse, two cavaliers came galloping on at headlong speed, far before all their comrades, whose ranks were loose and confused, and all unlike Europeans; so Saleh Mohammed, his face darkened by a scowl, his eyes glistening like those of a rattlesnake, and his white beard floating on the wind, crouched behind the old and mouldering wall, adjusting with his own hands a clumsy jingall, or swivel wall-piece, with the iron one-pound shot of which he was prepared to empty the saddle of one of those two adventurous riders—he cared not a jot which. ”

“ Next day, as the king Djundu with his brother Schihab, and the priests and the princes of the people formed a procession to an idol temple near the town, Saleh ran before the procession entered the temple, and stood in the door.
“Who art thou?” asked the king in astonishment: for he did not recognize Saleh, so greatly had God changed him in his sleep of twenty years. ”

“ So the king said to him: "What dost thou desire, O Saleh?" And he answered: "O King of the age, we desire of thy goodness that thou wouldst give us permission to depart; for we have become desirous of seeing again our family and our country and our relations and our homes. We will not, however, relinquish the service of thee, nor that of my sister nor the son of my sister; and by Allah, O King of the age, to quit you is not pleasant to my heart; but how can we act, when we have been reared in the sea, and the land is not agreeable to us?" ”

“ Let her go and eat on the earth, and do her no injury, that a terrible retribution fall not upon you." [2]
Now Saleh had asked them what miracle they desired, and they had answered, "Bring out of the rock a camel with red hair, and a colt of a camel also with red hair; let them eat grass, and we will believe."
Saleh said to them, "What you ask is easy," and he prayed.
Then the rock groaned and clave asunder, and there came out a she-camel with her foal, and their hair was red, and they began to eat grass.
Then the Thamudites exclaimed, "He is a magician!" and they would not believe in him. ”

“ King Saleh began: 'Sir,' said he to the King of Persia, 'we are at a loss for words to express our joy to think that the queen my sister should have the happiness of falling under the protection of so powerful a monarch. We can assure you she is not unworthy of the high rank you have been pleased to raise her to; and we have always had so much love and tenderness for her, that we could never think of parting with her to any of the puissant princes of the sea, who often demanded her in marriage before she came of age. Heaven has reserved her for you. ”

“ Saleh, at the head of fifty or sixty horsemen, [Pg 144] met us beyond the village, and conducted us to the encampment of his brother.
The tents were pitched in long, parallel lines. That of the chief held the foremost place, and was distinguished by its size, the upright spears tufted with ostrich feathers at its entrance, and the many high-bred mares tethered before it. As we approached, a tall, commanding figure, of erect and noble carriage, issued from beneath the black canvass, and advanced to receive me. I had never seen amongst the Arabs a man of such lofty stature. ”

“ For, after the king's speech of the 9th of June, in which he upbraided them with breach of their oath, and that they were slow in avenging the blood of their brethren and priests wantonly slain by the Moors, every man in the army measured the exactness with which he acquitted himself of the sacrament at the Hawash, only by the quantity of blood that he could shed. Weary at last with butchery, a few were taken prisoners, and among these was Saleh king of Mara. ”

“ Where are we going? I also am an Arab and a Moslem, and I swear by my Koran and my religion, that we will give you forty dollars, and spend two days in Ghail Babwazir, during which you will have your eleven dollars a day; and we will engage you on to Sheher, and give you good bakshish, and a good character to the sultan and two nice turbans.'
We gasped in amazement at this.
'Oh!' said Saleh, 'I only read them something from the preface of the Koran! We are not bound at all. If I had to swear falsely on the Koran, I should have to be given a great many guineas! ”

“ King Saleh began with the praises of the king his nephew, and expressed to the queen his sister how glad he was to see him govern so prudently, all of which had acquired him great reputation, not among his neighbours only, but more remote princes. King Beder, who could not bear to hear himself so well spoken of, and not being willing, through good manners, to interrupt the king his uncle, turned on one side to sleep, leaning his head against a cushion that was behind him. ”

“ Saleh and King Djundu fled to Sinai where they became hermits, and Saleh died and was buried in El Ramlah. The tomb of Nebi Saleh is located in the present Wadi Sheykh near the Gebel Musa, and is the site of the great annual encampment of the Arabs of southern Sinai.
In the newly discovered annals of King Sargon of Assyria (b.c. 722-705) , the people of Tamud are named among “the Arabians living at a distance in the desert of whom the Wise Men and the Magi knew nothing, who never brought tribute to (my father) the king, whom I overthrew, and the remainder [51] I carried off into Palestine.” ”

“ Three hours later Abdullah, which was the name of the second man, mounted, and assisted me to lift Saleh in front of him, and we set out for El Obeid. We got into the town at daybreak. There were few people about, and these paid no attention to us. Wounded men had been coming in, in hundreds. Turning into the street where both the men lived, we went first to the house of Saleh, which was at the farther end, and was, indeed, quite in the outskirts of the place. It stood in a walled enclosure, and was of better appearance than I had expected. ”

“ He immediately mounted a horse belonging to one of the Arabs and galloped away. He actually found his mare standing quietly in the court of the house in which she had been born, surrounded by her former owners, who were marveling greatly. Saleh rejoined us, and we soon entered the hill-country which encircles Nazareth. Our volunteer attendants rode now before and now behind, singing and shouting. Higher and higher we rose, meeting the fresh mountain air. ”

“ For it is to be observed, that, though religion was very powerful in uniting these Moors against the Christians, yet the love of gain, and jealousies of commerce, perpetually kept a party alive that favoured the king for their own interest, in the very heart of the Moorish confederacies and councils. To overcome this was the object of Saleh, and he succeeded beyond expectation, as sixteen kings brought 40,000 men into the field under their several leaders; but the chief command was given to the king of Adel. ”

“ Saleh, the brother of Gulnare, and her mother, and the daughters of her uncle, also came, and consoled them for the loss of the king; and they said: "O Gulnare, if the king hath died, he hath left this ingenuous youth, and he who hath left such as he is hath not died. This is he who hath not an equal, the crushing lion, and the splendid moon." Then the lords of the empire, and the grandees, went in to the King Bedr Basim, and said to him: "O King, there is no harm in mourning for the king; but mourning becometh not any save women ”

“ The Rabbi and chief members of the Jewish community of Shefa 'Amer were also present, with a few Moslems and Druzes, and a number of Christian Arabs. Arrack was handed round from time to time in the lower part of the room, and songs of praise were sung in honor of the chief guests. Saleh, who is no singer, but a very fluent speaker, said, "Ibrahim left his kindred, his home, and his country, he dwelt in a strange land among strangers, but he became mighty in the land, his family increased, his name became great. ”

“ It lies in a straight line about eighteen miles northwest of Saul's home at Gibeah. Saul's quest for his father's asses took him over the high ridges and through the deep, picturesque valleys of western Benjamin and Ephraim. A few trees still grow on the hills, suggesting they were once densely wooded, and rushing, perennial streams dash along the valleys toward the Plain of Sharon. Ramah itself is situated where the hills of Samaria descend to the western plain. Near by the natives still worship a Mohammedan prophet, Neby Saleh, whose tomb is the goal of many pilgrimages. ”

“ In the evening the sultan came back, telling us that the Tamimi wished to bring 400 soldiers unpaid (?) and to take us through their country, but the Kattiri were too strong for them. They said, 'One man came disguised to see us (Herr von Wrede) , one man came undisguised (Herr Hirsch) , and now a party has come. Next time it will be a larger one still, and then it will be all over with the sacred valley of the Hadhramout.' Saleh, meanwhile, was doing all he could to annoy us. When we were talking over our difficulties with Imam Sharif, he strutted in with a bill for the camels. ”

“ They are all nervous and excitable to a high degree, and one of them is slightly deranged in intellect. [2]
Till a late hour visitors flocked in to see us, for our arrival was soon known throughout the Christian quarter. First came Jirius el Yakûb, with his fat, burly figure, his crisp gray beard and twinkling eyes shining from under a large shawl turban. He is Mr. Finn's agent for Nazareth, and is very proud of his office, and of the few words of English which he can speak.
Saleh 's pretty little sister, "Jalîly "—that is, "the Glorious"—led me to the room prepared for me. ”