of Hagar. In order to save the life of the latter, and yet to enable his wife to keep her solemn though savage oath, Hagar, at Abraham’s suggestion, allowed Sarah to perform upon her the rite of circumcision, to submit to which has, since then, become a “sunnah,” or traditional and religious custom amongst Mohammedan women. (See Mejr-ed-din, vol. i. p. 46.)
P. 35. The patriarchs said to be not dead but living. —The tomb of the patriarchs at Hebron is very jealousy guarded against intruders who are not Moslems. Very few Christians have ever been admitted even into the courts of the Haram; the first in modern times who was allowed to enter being the Prince of » Wales (now King Edward VII.), who visited the Holy Land in 1862.
Even Mohammedans are forbidden to descend into the cave below, which is generally supposed to be that of Machpelah, lest they should disturb the patriarchs and their “ harìm,” are conceived of as living in a state of sacred “keyf,” or “dolce far niente.” A couple of hundred years ago a Mohammedan had the temerity to enter the cavern. He suddenly came upon a lady who was combing her hair. It is supposed to have been Sarah herself. She threw her comb at the audacious intruder and hit him in the eyes. He was, in consequence, blind to his dying day.
It is also related that when Ibrahim Pasha took Hebron about seventy years ago, he likewise attempted to penetrate into the mausoleum of the patriarchs, and had an opening made through the masonry enclosing it, but that, just as he was going to enter, he was taken seriously ill, and had to be carried away unconscious.
VI
An old tradition, which has been traced back to the time of Origen, in the second century, says that the cross on which Christ suffered was, at the Crucifixion, planted at the head of Adam’s tomb, and that some drops of the Saviour’s blood, percolating through the soil and the fissure made in the rock by the earthquake that then occurred, touched Adam’s skull and revived the progenitor of mankind to life.[1] He led the band of
- ↑ A Maronite Christian once told me a story, beginning with the burial of Adam and ending with the Crucifixion, which lasted a whole summer afternoon. It included the subject of this note and also that of the foregoing chapter, yet seemed homogeneous. Melchizedek was, I remember, a leading character. He buried Adam, carrying his body an unheard-of distance to Jerusalem, and kept appearing and disappearing mysteriously throughout the narrative. The narrator assured me he had found it all in a great book in the library of a
