440 FISH OF MOSES— JONAH— SOLOMON'S RING 



them illustrates Koranic invention. Thinking to avoid the 

 sin and yet secure their seducers, the sojourners went out. 

 dammed the channels, and ate the fish on the next day. But as 

 there was, and in some parts of Scotland still is, little difference 

 as regards working on the Sabbath between fishing and damming, 

 the violation of the day — the punishment scarcely fits the 

 crime — involved their metamorphosis into apes ! ^ 



The Koran denies to the faithful on pilgrimage any hunting 

 of game en route, but allows fishing and eating of fish from the 

 sea. 2 At first, eating of fish was apparently unlawful, because 

 the name of Allah could not always be pronounced over them 

 before they died. 



To remedy this enforced abstinence from such a wealth of 

 healthy food Mahomet blessed a knife and cast it into the 

 sea, thus all fish were blessed and had their throats cut before 

 they were brought to shore. " The large openings behind the 

 gills are of course the wounds thus miraculously made without 

 kilHng the fish ! " 3 



We discover in another legend that an accidental act on the 

 part of Abraham — not a designed ceremony on the part of 

 Mahomet — gave Mussulmans their liberty of ichthyophagy. 

 The patriarch, after sacrificing the ram instead of Isaac, threw 

 the knife into a stream and incidentally struck a fish, whence 

 fishes are the only animals eaten by Mahometans without their 

 throats being previously cut. 



1 Ci. with these inciters to Sabbath-breaking, (A) The fish, " called the 

 Jewish Sheikh, which with a long white beard and a body as large as a calf, 

 but in shape like a frog and hairy as a cow, comes out of the sea every Satur- 

 day and remains on land until sundown on Sunday " (Robinson, op. cit., 

 p. 35), and (B) the story of how on a Friday during St. Corbinian's pilgrimage 

 to Rome, when although meat and all else abounded — the Saint had always 

 been a bit of a bo7i viveur ! — 'there was an absolute dearth of fish, an eagle 

 suddenly dropped from the clouds and let fall at the feet of the chef a fine 

 fish. Baring-Gould, Lives of the Saints, vol. X. 123 (London, 1897). 



- " O True Believers, kill no game while ye are on pilgrimage. It is 

 lawful for you to fish in the sea and eat what ye shall catch as a provision for 

 you and for those that travel." The Koran (Sale, chap. V. or " on Contracts "). 

 " This passage," says Jallaleddin, " is to be understood only of fish which live 

 altogether in the sea, and not of those which live partly in the sea and partly 

 on land, such as crabs." The Turks, who are Hanifites, never eat of the latter 

 class ; but some sects have no scruples. 



^ Robinson, op. cit., p. 41. See the Koran (Sale, vol. II. 89), " God hath 

 only forbidden you that which dieth of itself, and blood, and swine's flesh, 

 and that which has been slain in the name of any besides God." 



