Mythology among the Hebrews and Its Historical Development

The Mohammedan legends and popular traditions present instances of borrowing stories which in some foreign cycle of legends are connected with favourite heroes of that cycle, by substituting for the foreign heroes those who are well known in Mohammedan tradition. In this manner many Iranian local traditions and stories were changed and interpreted in a Mohammedan sense after the subjection of the mind of Îrân to the dominion of Islâm. This phenomenon meets us at every step in the history of the religions and stories of the East and West. I will here limit myself to the quotation of a single instance. The mountain Demâwend in the region of Reyy plays an important part in the old Iranian story of the war of the great king Ferîdûn with Zohak Buyurasp; to this mountain the conqueror of the demons chained the inhuman monster and made it powerless for evil. Now the Mohammedan cycle of legends borrowed Suleymân (Solomon) from the Jews, and invested him with the characteristics which the Agâdâ narrates of the great king of the Hebrews; which characteristics, by the way, themselves point strongly to the influence of the Iranian story of Ferîdûn. Among these is especially to be reckoned the subjection of the demons by the mysterious ring, which passed from the Agâdâ into the Ḳorân (Sûr. XXI. v. 82) and into Islamite tradition.

When Demâwend had become Mohammedan ground, it had to divest itself of memories of the old fabled Iranian king. ‘The common people believe,’ it is said in Yâḳût, II. 607, ‘that Suleymân son of Dâʾûd chained to this mountain one of the rebellious Satans named Ṣachr, the Traitor; others believe that Ferîdûn chained Buyurasp to it, and that the smoke which is seen to issue from a cavern in it is his breath.’ We learn, moreover, from this note that the original story still possessed vitality alongside of the transformation. The preservation of old national memories was promoted partly by the intellectual movement excited in Îrân by the ‘King’s Book’ (Shâh-nâmeh), partly by national historians of a remarkable type, who were at the same time proficient in Arabic philology and interested in the preservation of old memories of their own nation.[773] Appropriation and transformation of Greek myths are probably rarer. The case quoted in the text is an instance of such appropriation, in which the place of the less-known personages of the Greek myth is occupied by the more familiar ones of Nimrod and his family. There are, however, also cases in which the name is changed, although the abandoned one is quite as familiar as that newly imported into the legend. An instance of this, from Yâḳût’s Geographical Dictionary, IV. 351. 16 sq., is as follows. The writer is speaking of a place called al-Lajûn west of the Jordan, and says: ‘In the middle of the village of al-Lajûn is a round rock with a dome (ḳubbâ) over it, which is believed to have been a place of prayer of Abraham.

Beneath the rock is a well with abundant water. It is narrated that on his journey to Egypt Abraham came with his flocks to this place, where there was insufficient water, and the villagers begged him to go on farther, as there was too little water even for themselves; but Abraham struck his staff against the rock, and water flowed copiously from it. The rock exists to this day.’ No further examination is needed to show that this Mohammedan legend is only a transformation of the Biblical one of Moses striking the rock and providing water for his thirsty people. Yet Ibrâhim has been substituted for Mûsa, a name equally familiar to Mohammedan legends.

This miracle of making water gush out by striking a hard substance with a staff is, moreover, a very favourite one in legends, and is repeated on other occasions, notably in the legend of King Solomon. It is said that the well at Lînâ, a watering station in the land of Negd in Arabia, was dug by demons in the service of Suleymân. For he once, having left Jerusalem on a journey to Yemen, passed by Lînâ, when his company were seized with terrible thirst, and could find no water. Then one of the demons laughed. ‘What makes you laugh so?’ asked Suleymân. The demon replied, ‘I am laughing at your people being so thirsty, when they are standing over a whole sea of water.’ So Suleymân ordered them to strike with their sticks, and water immediately gushed out. (Yâḳût, ibid. p. 375. 22 sq.)