_Arab Tree Worship--Story of Kaimun, the Captive Slave--Miracle of the Date Tree--Persian Bushes--Plane Tree--The Great Cypress--The Old Man of Diarbekir--The Feroüers--Anecdote of Xerxes--Anecdote of a Merchant and his Wife--The Bush of the "Excellent Tree"--The Cypresses of Zoroaster--Motawakel--The Triple Tree of Abraham--Tree of the Club of Hercules--The Tree Menelais--The Tree of Passienus Crispus--The Virgin Mary's Fig Tree--Tree of Mohammed's Staff--The Neema Tree of the Gallas--Irish Superstitions--Saint Valeri--People of Livonia--Destruction of a Sacred Tree._ Among the Pagan Arabs of a very early date according to Ousley, was a tree worshipped by certain tribes as an idol, under the name of _Aluzza_ or _Alozza_, according to original authority, cited by the learned Pococke. This is said to have been the Egyptian Thorn or Acacia, a reference to which is found in the Preliminary Discourse to Sale's translation of the Koran. "_Al Uzza_, as some affirm, was the idol of the tribes of _Koreish_ and _Kenanah_, and part of the tribe of _Salim_; others tell us it was a tree called the Egyptian Thorn or Acacia, worshipped by the tribe of Ghatsan, first consecrated by one Dhalem, who built a chapel over it called Boss, so contrived as to give a sound when any person entered." The manuscript chronicle of Tabri, written in the ninth century, says that the people of Najrán (in Yemen or Arabia Felix) had been idolaters, like all the neighbouring tribes, until a remarkable event induced them to embrace Christianity. "And they had," says he, "outside the city, a date tree of considerable base; and every year on a certain day, they held a solemn festival; and on that day all the people assembled round the tree, and they covered it with garments of rich embroidery, and brought all their idols under it; and they went in ceremonious procession about that tree, and offered up prayers, and an evil spirit or devil spoke to them from the midst of it, and they having paid reverence to that tree, returned. It afterwards happened," continues the historian, "that a man of Syria, named Kaimun, a descendant from the Apostles of Jesus, came into Arabia, fell among thieves, was taken and sold as a slave in the land of Najrán. Here his master surprised him at midnight, reading the Gospel by a ray of celestial light, which illuminated the whole house, and Kaimun soon after, through divine assistance, caused the tree which had been worshipped as a divinity, to come forth, root and branch, from the earth; such a miracle effected an instantaneous conversion of the people, who destroyed all their idols and became zealous disciples of Jesus."