placed there in order to recall the incident that led to the great work.
The foregoing is not the only legend connected with Bab el Asbat. Just inside the city, a few yards from the gateway and between it and the historic Church and Abbey of St Anne, there stood, till the summer of 1906, an interesting old Saracenic bath-house, which has been pulled down in order to make room for a new building. The following legend used to be told concerning it:—
When Belkis, Queen of Sheba, visited Jerusalem, King Suleyman, enchanted by her loveliness, wished to marry her; but a mischief-maker told him that the queen was not human, but a jinniyeh, having legs and hoofs like a donkey. The king ordered his informant, a jealous woman,[1] to hold her tongue on pain of death. But the charge rankled in his mind, and he determined to see for himself that it was untrue. So he caused the Jân to build a spacious hall, whose floor was one huge pane of transparent crystal, through which could be seen a stream of running water with fish swimming about in it. At one end he placed his own throne, and beside it that of Belkis, which was made of the precious metals, encrusted with the costliest jewels. On leaving her own land the queen, who valued this throne as her greatest treasure, had it locked up inside the inner
- ↑ Some of the learned say it was a jinni who came to Suleyman with this tale about Belkis. The Jân feared lest the royal lady, whose mother had been a jinniyeh, should be converted from idolatry to El Islam and, on her marriage with the king, blab certain secrets of might to keep them (the Jân) for ever in the servitude to which El Hakim had reduced them.
