of Saladin, October 2, 1187. In 1823, we are informed by a traveller of the period that the only bell in the city was a hand- bell in the Latin Convent. Since the close of the Crimean War, many large church-bells have been hung up and are in constant use in various Christian churches in Palestine, though the writer remembers the time when a great riot took place amongst the Moslems at Nablûs because a small bell had been put up in the Mission school in that place.
P. 14. The donkey and Iblis in the ark.—Presumably to pay the donkey out for this meanness, Iblis whispered in his ear that all the females of his kind had been destroyed ; whereupon the unfortunate beast made so terrible a noise of lamentation that the Evil One was scared and made haste to comfort him by adding, “ But there is one left for you.” At that the donkey’s noise subsided in one long “ Ah!”’ of relief. This is the origin of the donkey’s braying. (I have the story from a friend in Egypt.) —Ed.
P. 15. The ’abdyeh, or ’aba, is the wide, coarse, outer garment worn by all classes in Palestine, and on occasion adaptable to other uses. See Deut. xxiv. 13; Amos ii. 8; P.E.F. Quarterly Statement, 1881, p. 298. The fables concerning Og are doubt- less derived from Rabbinical sources; see article “Og” in Smith’s Bible Dictionary.
P. 17. “The ark informed Noah that here the Beyt el Makdas would be rebuilt.” Cf.“ Uns el Jelil.” Cairo edition, vol. i. pp. 19-22.
P. 17. Marriage of Noah's daughter—This story is a very common one. There is a version of it given by P. Baldensperger in one of the Quarterly Statements of the P.E.F. The tomb of one of Noah’s daughters is shown at ’Ellar in Southern Palestine, and another, it is said, at, or near, Baalbec.
IV
P. 18. Job.—In the fourth Christian century many pilgrims used to visit the district east of the Jordan in order to see and embrace the dunghill on which Job sat and scratched himself in his day, and even now there may be seen at the ancient sanctuary called “Esh Sheykh Sa’ad”’ in the Hauran, the famous “Rock of Job,” which modern research has shown to be a monument commemorating the victories of the Egyptian monarch Rameses II. Besides this, there are in Western Palestine at least two “Wells of Job”: one on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, the other, the well-known Bir Aydb, in the Kedron Valley just at the point where it is joined by the traditional Valley of Hinnom. This well is a hundred feet
