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which is the preliminary of all others, is the testifying that there is no god but God and that Mohammed is His apostle; that, of which all others have need, is ablution; that, which compriseth all others, is that of [total] ablution from [ceremonial] defilement; the Traditional ordinance, that enters into the Koranic, is the separation of the fingers and the thick beard; and that, wherewith all Koranic ordinances are completed, is circumcision.’ Therewith was manifest the insufficiency of the doctor, who rose to his feet and said, ‘I call God to witness, O Commander of the Faithful, that this damsel is more learned than I in the Law and what pertains thereto.’ So saying, he put off his clothes and went away, defeated.
Then turned she to the rest of the learned men present and said, ‘O masters, which of you is the reader,[1] versed in the seven readings and in syntax and lexicography?’ Thereupon the professor arose and seating himself before her, said, ‘Hast thou read the Book of God the Most High and made thyself throughly acquainted with its verses and its various parts, abrogating and abrogated, equivocal and unequivocal, Meccan and Medinan? Dost thou understand its interpretation and hast thou studied it, according to the various versions and readings?’ ‘Yes,’ answered she; and he said, ‘What, then, is the number of its chapters, how many are Meccan and how many Medinan? How many verses and decades[2] does it contain, how many words and how many letters and how many acts of prostration and how many prophets and birds are mentioned in it?’ ‘It contains a hundred and fourteen chapters,’ replied she, ‘whereof threescore and ten were revealed at Mecca and forty and four at Medina, six thousand three hundred and thirty-six verses, six hundred and twenty-one decades, seventy-nine thousand four hundred and thirty-nine words and three hundred and twenty-
