ARAB GEOGRAPHERS 



Afterwards the coasts extend farther still to the north and 

 west, and lose themselves in the climate of Darkness, and no 

 one knows what is there. 



Of the whales he says that in the Black Sea a kind of whale 

 is often seen which the ignorant assert to have been carried 

 by angels alive into Hell, to be used for various punishments, 

 while others think it keeps at the bottom of the sea and lives 

 on fish ; 



" then Allah sends to It a cloud and angels, who lift it up out of the sea and 

 cast it upon the shore for food for Yagug and Magug. The whales are very 

 large in the Mediterranean, in the Caspian Sea (!) and in the Varangians' Sea 

 (!), as also off the coasts of Spain in the Atlantic Ocean." 



There is preserved an " abstract of wonders " (oldest MS. 

 of 1484),^ by an unknown Arab author, which gives a picture 

 of the Arabs' mythical ideas in the tenth century. It also tells 

 of islands in the west, which are of interest to us on account of 

 their resemblance to many of the mediaeval mythical concep- 

 tions of Western Europe. 



"In the great ocean is an island which is visible at sea at some distance, 

 but if one tries to approach it, it withdraws and disappears. If one returns 

 to the place one started from, it is seen again as before. It is said that upon 

 this island is a tree that sprouts at sunrise, and grows as long as the sun is 

 ascending; after midday it decreases, and disappears at sunset. Sailors assert 

 that in this sea there is a little fish called ' shakil,' and that those who carry 

 it upon them can discover and reach the island without its concealing itself. 

 This is truly a strange and wonderful thing." 



This is evidently the same myth as that of the Lost Isle, already referred 

 to (Perdita, Vol. I, p. 376), and of the Norwegian huldrelands, etc. It also 

 bears resemblance to legends from China and Japan. The tree is the sun-tree 

 of the Indian legends, which was already introduced into the earliest versions 

 of the Alexander romance (Pseudo-Callisthenes, circa 200 A.D.), and which is 

 met with again in the fairy tales and mythical conceptions of many peoples.2 

 Possibly it is this same tree that grows on the mountain Fusan in the Japa- 

 nese happy-land Horaisan, and which is sometimes seen over the sea horizon 

 (see p. 56). 



" The island of ' as-Sayyara.' There are sailors who assert that they have 

 often seen it, but they have not stayed there. It is a mountainous and cul- 

 tivated island, which drifts towards the east when a west wind is blowing, and 



1 C. de Vaux, 1898, pp. 69 f. 



2 Cf. Moltke Moe, " Maal og Minne," Christiania, 1909, pp. 9 f. 



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