Note 20 — Chapter VIII

This was the manner of death chosen by Mokanna, in the year of the Hejira 563 (A. D. 776). This upstart prophet (see note 1, p. 3), being pent up in a mountain-castle by the forces of the khalif Mohadi, without hope of escape, poisoned the garrison and his family, and then plunged into a vessel full of aqua fortis, which consumed every part of his body except his hair; he hoped that, from his disappearance, he should be supposed to have been taken up to heaven. One of his concubines, who by concealment had escaped destruction, and had seen every thing, revealed what had taken place; but many of his followers continued to believe in his divinity and future reappearance.

I shall here remark, that destroying human bodies by means of aqua fortis is an ancient practice, mentioned in the Desátir (Engl. transl., p. 29), and accounts for the fact of so many funeral urns being found in Asia without ashes in them.