Towards the eve of the first Friday after the funeral, and often early in the morning of the Thursday, the women of the family of the deceased repeat their wailing in the house accompanied by some of their female friends: male friends of the deceased also visit the house shortly before or after sunset; and three or four persons are hired to perform a recitation of the whole of the Ḳur-án. On the following morning, some or all of the members of the deceased's family, but chiefly the women, visit the tomb; they or their servants carrying palm-branches, and sometimes sweet basil, to lay upon it, and often the visitors take with them some kind of food, as bread, pancakes, sweet cakes of different kinds, or dates, to distribute to the poor on this occasion. They recite portions of the Ḳur-án or employ people to recite it, as has been already mentioned.[294] These ceremonies are repeated on the same days of the next two weeks; and again on the eve and morning of the Friday which completes, or next follows, the first period of forty days after the funeral; whence this Friday is called El-Arba´een, or Jum´at el-Arba´een. It is believed that the soul remains with the body until the expiration of the first night after the burial, when it departs to the place appointed for the abode of good souls until the last day, or to the appointed prisons in which wicked souls await their final doom; but with respect to the state of souls in the interval between death and judgment, there are various opinions which Sale thus states.[295] As to the souls of the good, he says, "1. Some say they stay near the sepulchres; with liberty, however, of going wherever they please; which they confirm from Moḥammad's manner of saluting them at their graves, and his affirming that the dead heard those salutations as well as the living, though they could not answer. Whence perhaps proceeded the custom of visiting the tombs of relations, so common among the Mohammadans. 2. Others imagine they are with Adam, in the lowest heaven; and also support their opinion by the authority of their prophet, who gave out that in his return from the upper heavens in his pretended night-journey, he saw there the souls of those who were destined to paradise on the right hand of Adam, and those who were condemned to hell on his left. 3. Others fancy the souls of believers remain in the well Zemzem, and those of infidels in a certain well in the province of Haḍramót, called Barahoot:[296] but this opinion is branded as heretical [?]. 4. Others say they stay near the graves for seven days; but that whither they go afterwards is uncertain. 5. Others that they are all in the trumpet, whose sound is to raise the dead. And 6. Others that the souls of the good dwell in the forms of white birds, under the throne of God. As to the condition of the souls of the wicked, the more orthodox held that they are offered by the angels to heaven, from whence