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thy beloved again save on the bridge Al-Sirát;[1] for the people of the Christian's house, when they arose in the morning, found the window giving on the garden torn from its hinges and Zumurrud missing, and with her a pair of saddle-bags full of the Christian's money. And when
- ↑ Lit. = "pathway, road"; hence the bridge well known as "finer than a hair and sharper than a sword," over which all (except Khadijah and a chosen few) must pass on the Day of Doom; a Persian apparatus bodily annexed by Al-Islam. The old Guebres called it Puli Chinávar or Chinávad and the Jews borrowed it from them as they did all their fancies of a future life against which Moses had so gallantly fought. It is said that a bridge over the grisly "brook Kedron" was called Sirát (the road) and hence the idea, as that of hell-fire from Ge-Hinnom (Gehenna) where children were passed through the fire to Moloch. A doubtful Hadis says, "The Prophet declared Al-Sirát to be the name of a bridge over hell- fire, dividing Hell from Paradise" (pp. 17, 122, Reynold's trans. of Al-Siyuti's Traditions, etc.). In Koran i. 5, "Sirat" is simply a path, from sarata, he swallowed, even as the way devours (makes a lakam or mouthful of) those who travel it. The word was orig. written with Sín but changed for easier articulation to Sád, one of the four Hurúf al-Mutabbakát, "the flattened," formed by the broadened tongue in contact with the palate. This Sad also by the figure Ishmám (=conversion) turns slightly to a Zá, the intermediate between Sin and Sad.
