478 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Noah, also called Melek Salim, the blessing passed to his grand- 

 son Marge Meran, the father of the Yezidee race. The Mussul- 

 mans are descended from Ham, who, having detected his mother 

 in an intrigue, mocked her to his father. The children of Eve 

 and of Ham hate the children of Yezdani, because they are the 

 chosen people of Melek-Taus, who induced their father to eat the 

 forbidden fruit, thereby forfeiting paradise. 



The children of Eve laughed at Noah while he was building 

 the ark in anticipation of the flood. When the ark struck on 

 Mount Sindiar, it sprung a leak. The snake swelled itself up and 

 stopped the hole with its tail ; but after the flood, the snakes in- 

 creased so fast as to do much harm to men. Noah was so vexed 

 at this that he seized one of them and threw it into the fire. From 

 its ashes arose fleas. 



The history is continued, with a mixture of distorted incidents 

 from the Old and New Testament accounts, the life and sufferings 

 of Christ, stories of the Koran, and secular history. Christ, after 

 suffering, but not actually dying, upon the cross, was taken by 

 Melek-Taus into heaven, where, with him and God, he forms the 

 Trinity. 



Yezid, who made war upon his father, the Caliph Moanzeh, al- 

 though he lived in reality a Mussulman, but unorthodox, is fabled 

 in these books to have been a great champion of the religion of 

 Sheik Adi, and to have possessed miraculous powers. He is said 

 to have ordered all the books of Islam to be brought together and 

 cast into the sea, and to have pronounced a curse of body and soul 

 against every one, except those to whom special license might be 

 given, who should thereafter read or write a letter of the Arabic 

 language. Having overcome Hussim and Hassan, the sons of 

 Ali, Yezid lived three hundred years at Damascus and then as- 

 cended to heaven. The Mohammedans obtaining possession of 

 Damascus again, and beginning to oppress the faithful, Yezid 

 was sent down to earth to protect them. This time he took the 

 name of Sheik Adi. He again performed many wonderful works 

 and effected some marvelous conversions, receiving the adhesion, 

 among others, of the Caliph and of Hassan el Bassri, and drove the 

 Christian monks from Lalish, where he established the seat of his 

 religion. Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans, says the book of 

 Sheik Adi, " curse and blaspheme in the way that they are led by 

 their books. They are blind and hardened, and do not know that 

 God comes down from heaven every thousand years and punishes 

 blasphemers. They habitually speak of Satan, meaning thereby 

 our holy Melek-Taus, who is one with God. This wicked name 

 was invented by infamous and accursed people to shame our 

 august protector. It is no less sinful to let words of similar 

 meaning or like sound pass over the lips, such as kalian (a sting). 



