the witnesses, who decided that the size or number of pieces into which the furweh was to be cut had not been specified.
This made Habrûn so angry that he took the forty witnesses to the top of the hill south-west of the city, where the ruins of Deyr el Arba’in[1] now stand and there cut their heads off. But even that did not silence them, for each head, as it rolled down the hill, cried: “The agreement was that the jacket should be cut.” El-Khalil took their corpses and buried them, each in the place where the head had stopped rolling.
Next to his implicit faith in Allah’s Providence, Ibrahim was chiefly noted for his hospitality. He used often to say, “I was a poor penniless outcast and fugitive, but Allah cared for and enriched me. Why, therefore, should not I, in my turn, show kindness to my fellow-men?” He had a hall built in which there was a table set ready for the refreshment of any hungry wayfarer, as well as new garments for such as were in rags. Before taking his own meals he was wont to go forth out of his camp to the distance of one or two miles in hopes of meeting guests to keep him company. In spite of his liberality he was not impoverished, but actually grew richer, by Allah’s blessing. One year there was a sore famine in the land, and the Patriarch sent his servants to a friend he had in Egypt, asking the latter to send him a supply of corn. The false friend, thinking that he had now an opportunity for ruining the Friend of Allah, answered that, had
- ↑ i.e. Convent of the Forty.
