Note 359 — Chapter XXIII · FAMINE AND PLAGUE. A.H. XVIII. A.D. 639.

Here again the Kâtib Wâckidy gives a great array of traditions regarding Omar’s prayers and the service for rain. Some of these which notice the part taken by Abbâs (but they are comparatively few in number) have been eagerly seized by the Abbasside annalists to glorify the patriarch, and through him the dynasty descended from him. The tale is cast in the supernatural type of the Prophet’s life. A man finding a sheep which he had slaughtered to be nothing but mere skin and bone without a drop of blood, in his distress invokes Mahomet, who thereupon appears to him in a vision, assures him that he shares the distress of his people, and bids him tell Omar ‘to call to mind that which he had forgotten.’ A general assembly is summoned in the Great Mosque, and after much heart-searching as to what the Prophet meant by these words, they betake themselves to prayer. Omar seizes the hand of Abbâs, and for the sake of the Prophet’s aged kinsman, beseeches the mercy of Heaven. Then Abbâs himself prays, and the people weep floods of tears. The heavens are suddenly overcast, and the rain descends. Thereupon Abbâs is saluted as ‘the Waterer of the two Holy Places,’ i.e. of Mecca and Medîna.