Note 742 — Chapter VII · THE BABYLONIAN “EVIL DAYS” AND THE SHABATTUM

D. Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier und der Ssabismus, St. Petersburg, 1856, ii, 8, 94 sqq., translating the Fihrist (ix, i, 5) of Ibn al-Nadīm. On the Harranians see in general D. S. Margoliouth, in Hastings’s Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics, vi, 519 sq. It is curious to find a Moslem tradition, current about 830 A.D., that “Abraham lived with his people four-score years and ten in the land of Harran, worshipping none other than Al Ozza, an idol famous in that land and adored by the men of Harran, under the name of the Moon, which same custom prevails among them to the present day” (Sir William Muir, The Apology of Al Kindy,² London, 1887, p. 17).