Note 68 — HISTORY OF AL-HAJJAJ BIN YUSUF AND THE YOUNG SAYYID.[42]

Surah (Meccah) xcix. vv. 7 and 8: in text “Mithkála Zarratín,” which Mr. Rodwell (p. 28) englishes “an atom’s weight of good,” and adds in a foot-note, “Lit. a single ant.” Prof. Houdas would render it, Quiconque aura fait la valeur d’un mitskal de millet en fait de bien; but I hardly think that “Zarrah” can mean “Durrah” = millet. [“Mithkál” in this context is explained by the commentators by “Wazn”= weight, this being the original meaning of the word which is a nomen instrumenti of the form “Mif’ál,” denoting “that by which the gravity of bodies is ascertained.” Later on it became the well-known technical term for a particular weight. “Zarrah,” according to some glossarists, is the noun of unity of “Zarr,” the young ones of the ant, an antlet, which is said to weigh the twelfth part of a “Kitmír” = pedicle of the date-fruit, or the hundredth part of a grain of barley, or to have no weight at all. Hence “Mukhkh al-Zarr,” the brains of the antlet, means a thing that does not exist or is impossible to be found. According to others “Zarrah” is a particle of al-Habá, i.e. of the motes that are seen dancing in the sunlight, called “Sonnenstäubchen” in German, and “atomo solare” in Italian. Koran xxi. 48 and xxxi. 15 we find the expression “Mithkála Habbatin min Khardalin” = of the weight of a mustard-seed, used in a similar sense with the present quotation.—St.]