[197] The occasion of their making this offering is thus related, according to the common tradition in the East. Each of them being born with a twin-sister, when they were grown up, Adam by God’s direction ordered Cain to marry Abel’s twin-sister, and Abel to marry Cain’s; (for it being the common opinion that marriages ought not to be had in the nearest degrees of consanguinity, since they must necessarily marry their sisters, it seemed reasonable to suppose they ought to take those of the remoter degree;) but this Cain refusing to agree to, because his own sister was the handsomest, Adam ordered them to make their offerings to God, thereby referring the dispute to His determination. The commentators say Cain’s offering was a sheaf of the very worst of his corn; but Abel’s a fat lamb of the best of his flock.—S. [198] Or, as the original literally signifies, boiled over [or boiled], which is consonant to what the Rabbins say, that the waters of the deluge were boiling hot.—This oven was, as some say, at El-Koofeh, in a spot whereon a mosque now stands; or, as others rather think, in a certain place in India, or else at ´Eyn-el-Wardeh in Mesopotamia. Some pretend that it was the same oven which Eve made use of to bake her bread in, being of a form different from those we use, having the mouth in the upper part, and that it descended from patriarch to patriarch till it came to Noah. It is remarkable that Moḥammad, in all probability, borrowed this circumstance from the Persian Magi, who also fancied that the first waters of the deluge gushed out of the oven of a certain old woman named Zala Cûfa.—But the word “tennoor,” which is here translated “oven,” also signifying “the superficies of the earth,” or “a place whence waters spring forth,” or “where they are collected,” some suppose it means no more in this passage than the spot or fissure whence the first eruption of waters broke forth.—S. [199] It is a custom of many Muslims to pronounce these words, ‘In the name of God be its course and its mooring,’ on embarking for any voyage.—L. The commentators tell us that Noah was two years in building the ark, which was framed of Indian plane-tree; that it was divided into three stories, of which the lower was designed for the beasts, the middle one for the men and women, and the upper for the birds; and the men were separated from the women by the body of Adam, which Noah had taken into the ark. This last is a tradition of the Eastern Christians.—S. [200] The original of this passage is considered the most sublime in the Ḳur-án. [201] The Moḥammadans say that Noah went into the ark on the tenth of Rejeb, and came out of it on the tenth of Moḥarram; which therefore became a fast: so that the whole time of Noah’s being in the ark according to them was six months.—S. (B.)