Note 198 — PART THE SECOND.

Or, as the original literally signifies, boiled over [or boiled], which is consonant to what the Rabbins say, that the waters of the deluge were boiling hot.—This oven was, as some say, at El-Koofeh, in a spot whereon a mosque now stands; or, as others rather think, in a certain place in India, or else at ´Eyn-el-Wardeh in Mesopotamia. Some pretend that it was the same oven which Eve made use of to bake her bread in, being of a form different from those we use, having the mouth in the upper part, and that it descended from patriarch to patriarch till it came to Noah. It is remarkable that Moḥammad, in all probability, borrowed this circumstance from the Persian Magi, who also fancied that the first waters of the deluge gushed out of the oven of a certain old woman named Zala Cûfa.—But the word “tennoor,” which is here translated “oven,” also signifying “the superficies of the earth,” or “a place whence waters spring forth,” or “where they are collected,” some suppose it means no more in this passage than the spot or fissure whence the first eruption of waters broke forth.—S.