A distinguished modern scholar (see the printed text, p. 80, lines 12-35) argues that Ṭâ´ûs is the god Tammuz. His argument is that the word Ṭâ´ûs must embody an ancient god, but owing to the obscurity in which the origin of Yezidism and the being of Melek Ṭâ´ûs are wrapped, it is very difficult to say which god is meant. And to determine this, he assumes that the term does not come from the Arabic word Ṭâ´ûs, but was occasioned by some “folk-etymology,” and that we must look, therefore, for some god-name which resembles the word Ṭâ´ûs. Taking this as a starting point, the critic calls attention to the fact that in Fihrist, p. 322, l. 27f, which treats of the feasts and gods of the Ḥarranians, we read that the god Tauz had a feast in middle of Tammuz. He infers from this that the god Tauz is identical with Melek Ṭâ´ûs. And to the question who this god Tauz is, he answers it is Tammuz. To justify his explanation, the writer contends that the Yezidis speak in Kurdish, and according to Justi’s _Kurdische Grammatik_, p. 82ff, the change of meem to waw in this language is frequent.[131] However plausible this process may seem to be, philologically it cannot here yield a satisfactory conclusion. For it is based on wrong premises. It is not true that the word Ṭâ´ûs signifies an ancient deity. It denotes the devil and nothing else. This is so clear to the Yezidis, or to anyone acquainted with their religion, as to leave no need for further discussion. And to question the religious consciousness of a sect is to engage in pure speculation. Likewise, the method of determining this supposed god by the name of some deity resembling it is objectionable. There are many such names. One might also infer that the sect worship Christ under the form of the devil. This theory has actually been advanced.—_Theatre de la Turquie_, 364. The statement that in Kurdish the letter meem is changed to waw frequently is untenable, if one would set it up as a grammatical rule to explain such phenomena. What is more, the Kurds pronounce the name tammuz, and nothing else, unless some one has a physiological difficulty which will not permit him to close his lips, so that instead of saying tammuz, he would mutter taouz. The following are a few of many instances to show that meem is not changed to waw in Kurdish, even in words of Arabic origin: ‘Amelie ṣaliḥ (good works), zamanie aḫerat (the last day), the well of Zamsam, Mohammed, and Mustafa (the chosen one), when applied to the prophet, Melek (king), when applied to Ṭâ´ûs. Further the assumption that Ṭâ´ûs does not come from the Arabic Ṭâ´ûs is unverifiable. Unquestionably the attempt to trace this term to tauz, then to Tammuz, was suggested to Professor Lidzbarski by the fact that ammuz was the name of an ancient Babylonian god, and that Abu Sayyid Wahb ibn Ibrahim, quoted by an-Nedim, an Arab author of the tenth century, states that the god Tauz has a feast in his honor on the fifteenth of Tammuz (_Fihrist_, p. 322).