the worlds.’ They said, ‘Thou meanest Nimrod.’ Then said he, ‘No! Him who has created me, and who therefore guideth me,’ &c. That matter accordingly was spread abroad until it reached the tyrant Nimrod. Then he called him and said to him, ‘O Abraham, hast thou seen thy God, who hath sent thee, and to whose worship thou dost invite men, and whose power thou recordest and on account thereof dost magnify Him above all other? What is He?’ Abraham said, ‘My Lord is He who preserveth alive and causeth to die.’ Nimrod said, ‘I preserve alive and cause to die.’ Abraham said, ‘How dost thou preserve alive and cause to die?’ He said, ‘I take two men to whom death is due in my jurisdiction, then I slay one of them, thus I have caused him to die; next I pardon the other and let him go, thus I have preserved him alive.’ Accordingly Abraham said unto him thereupon, ‘Verily God bringeth the sun from the East, do thou therefore bring it from the West ¹.’ Thereupon Nimrod was confounded and gave him no answer."

The story goes on to inform us that the custom of the tribe to which Abraham belonged was to hold a great festival once every year, during which everyone for a time went out of the city. (This may contain a confused reference to the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, for the forte of the Qur'an is undoubtedly the number of its anachronisms, and Muhammadan tales regarding the patriarchs

and prophets are in general distinguished by the same characteristic.) Before leaving the city, we are told, the citizens "had made some food ready. Accordingly they placed it before the gods, and said, ‘When it shall be time for us to return, we shall return, and the gods will have blessed our food and we shall eat.’ When therefore Abraham ¹ beheld the idols and the food which was before them, he said unto them in mockery, ‘Will ye not eat?’ And when they did not answer him, he said, ‘What is the matter with you? will ye not speak?’ Then he turned upon them, striking a blow with his right hand ², and he began to dash them in pieces with an axe which he held in his hand, until there remained none but the biggest idol, on the neck of which he hung the axe. Then he went out. Such then is the statement of the Honoured and Glorified One: ‘So he broke them into pieces, except the largest of them, that perchance they might come back to it’ (and find what it had done ³). When therefore the people came from their festival to the house of their gods, and saw them in that condition, they said, ‘Who hath done this to our gods? verily he is one of the unjust.’ They said, ‘We heard a youth who is called Abraham make mention of them. It is he, we think, that hath done this.’ Then that