* The dinar (from the Roman denarius) contained 65 grams of gold, or .135 of an ounce, and would be equal to $4.72 ½ in terms of the price of gold in the United States of America in 1947; we shall roughly reckon it at $4.75. The dirhem (from the Greek drachma) contained forty-three grams of silver, worth some eight cents. As the purity of the coinage varied, our equivalents will be only approximate.
* Mosque is from the Arabic masjid, from sajada, to bow down, adore. In the Near East masjid is pronounced musjid; in North Africa, musghid—whence the French and English forms of the word.
* The oldest known form of the horseshoe arch appears in a cave temple at Nasik, India, c. second century B.C.;86 it was used in a Christian church at Nisibis in Mesopotamia in A.D. 359.
† The Great Mosque of Damascus suffered by fire in 1069, was restored, was burnt almost to the ground by Timur in 1400, was rebuilt, and was severely injured by fire in 1894; since then plaster and whitewash have replaced the medieval decoration. On one wall of the mosque may still be seen the inscription that had overhung the lintel of the Christian church, and which the Moslems never erased: “Thy kingdom, O Christ, is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth forever.”88
* Every writer on Islamic science must record his debt to George Sarton for his Introduction to the History of Science. That monumental work is not only one of the noblest achievements in the history of scholarship; it also performs an inestimable service in revealing the wealth and scope of Moslem culture. Scholars everywhere must hope that every facility will be provided for the completion of this work.
* Alcohol is an Arabic word, but not an Arabian product. It is first mentioned in an Italian work of the ninth or tenth century.35 To the Moslems al-kohl was a powder for painting the eyebrows.
* It was restored to the Kaaba in 951 by order of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mansur.
* The above translations, worthy of Edward FitzGerald, are from three books by R. A. Nicholson, listed in the Bibliography. These volumes, each of them of fascinating interest, have done much to reveal to Western students the variety and beauty of Moslem poetry.
* This section is particularly indebted to the Survey of Persian Art edited by Arthur Upham Pope, and especially to the chapters written by himself. His devoted work in this field, like that of James H. Breasted on Egypt, is an enduring monument of meticulous scholarship and discriminating philanthropy.
* In 1925 Reza Khan, afterwards Shah of Persia, authorized Arthur Upham Pope to enter the mosques of Persia, which had been closed to non-Moslems, in order to photograph the interiors. The result was an epochal revelation of the technical and artistic excellence of Persian architecture.
* From Baldaq, the medieval Latin name for Baghdad.
* By this term we shall mean the Moslem population—partly Arab, mostly Berber—of western North Africa and Spain.
* A little jug of Saracen enameled glass was bought by the Rothschilds for $13,650.17
* Cf. the first lines of Descartes’ Discourse on Method: “Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everybody thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that even those most difficult to please in other matters do not commonly desire more of it than they already possess.”
* Santayana, in The Life of Reason, adopted the same principle.
* A minority of scholars holds that Jehuda did not commit his Mishna to writing, and that it was orally transmitted till the eighth century. For the majority opinion, cf. G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, Cambridge, Mass., 1932, Vol. I, p. 151; and W. O. Oesterley and G. H. Box, Short Survey of the Literature of Rabbinical and Medieval Judaism, London, 1920, p. 83.
* The Babylonian Talmud runs to 2947 folio leaves, or some 6000 pages of 400 words each. The Mishna is divided into six sedarim (orders), each of these into masechtoth (tractates) totaling sixty-three, each of these into perakim (chapters), each of these into mishnayoth (teachings). Modern editions of the Talmud usually include: (1) the commentary of Rashi (1040-1105), which appears on the interior margins of the text; and (2) tosaphoth (additions), discussions of the Talmud by French and German rabbis of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which appear on the exterior margins of the text. Many editions add the Tosefta or Supplement—remnants of the oral law omitted from the Mishna of Jehuda Hanasi.
This chapter will also quote from the Midrash (exposition), addresses allegedly given by tannaim or amoraim, but assembled and committed to writing between the fourth and the twelfth century, and expounding in popular style various books of the Hebrew Scriptures. Some of the major Midrashim: Genesis Rabbah, on Genesis; Wayyikrah Rabbah, on Leviticus; five Megilloth (scrolls)—on Esther, the Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, and Ecclesiasticus; the Mechilta, on Exodus; the Sifra, on Leviticus; the Sifre, on Numbers and Deuteronomy; the Pesikta, homilies on passages from the Bible.12
* Catholic theologians interpret it as symbolically describing the union of Christ with the Church as His chosen bride.
† Cf. the ancient Chinese belief that the operation and continuance of the universe depends upon the moral law; Heracleitus’ comparison of planetary deviations to sins; and Plato’s divine archetypal “ideas.” The theory goes back to Prov. viii, 22. Jesus accepted the eternity of the Law (Luke xvii, 7; Matt, v, 18). The Moslems, not to be outdone, taught the eternity of the Koran.
‡ No official Jewish council has ever accepted this Talmudic view of the Talmud. Modern Reformed Judaism rejects it.
* The valley of Hinnom was a rubbish heap outside of Jerusalem, where fires were kept constantly burning to prevent pestilence. Sheol was conceived as a subterranean region of darkness that received all the dead.
* From Qera, Aramaic for text; from qara, to read; cf. Quran.
* Sepharad is the name applied in the Book of Obadiah (i, 20) to a region, presumably Asia Minor, to which some Jews were deported by Nebuchadrezzar (597 B.C.); the word was later applied to Spain. The Jews of Germany were loosely called Ashkenazim through their supposed derivation from Ashkenaz, grandson of Japheth (Gen. x, 3).
* A mark was half a pound of silver, with a purchasing power probably fifty times as great as that amount today ($5.40).
* This ceremony of bar mizvah (“son of command”…i.e., heir to responsibilities) cannot be traced beyond the fourteenth century,102 but is probably older.
* The Cathedral of Lincoln still shows the relics of a shrine once raised therein to “Little Hugh,” and accompanies them with the following notice: “There are many incidents of the story which tend to throw doubt upon it; and the existence of similar stories in England and elsewhere points to their origin in the fanatical hatred of the Jews in the Middle Ages, and the common superstition, now wholly discredited, that ritual murder was a feature of Jewish Paschal rites. Attempts were made as early as the thirteenth century by the Church to protect the Jews against the hatred of the populace, and against these particular accusations.”
* These propositions, formulated by Avicenna, were adopted by St. Thomas Aquinas, and were adapted by Spinoza to the idea of a self-existing substance.