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 onthe nextday. Butas 
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 
killing 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 Cf. 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 Jand 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 bon viveuy /—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). 
2 “© 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. 
3 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.” 
