[212] Some tell us that Nimrod, on seeing this miraculous deliverance from his palace, cried out that he would make an offering to the God of Abraham; and that he accordingly sacrificed four thousand kine. [B.] But, if he ever relented, he soon relapsed into his former infidelity: for he built a tower that he might ascend to heaven to see Abraham’s God; which being overthrown [Ḳur. xvi. 28], still persisting in his design, he would be carried to heaven in a chest borne by four monstrous birds; but after wandering for some time through the air, he fell down on a mountain with such force that he made it shake, whereto (as some fancy) a passage in the Ḳur-án [xiv. 47] alludes, which may be translated, ‘although their contrivances be such as to make the mountains tremble.’—Nimrod, disappointed in his design of making war with God, turned his arms against Abraham, who, being a great prince, raised forces to defend himself; but God, dividing Nimrod’s subjects, and confounding their language, deprived him of the greater part of his people, and plagued those who adhered to him by swarms of gnats, which destroyed almost all of them; and one of those gnats having entered into the nostril, or ear, of Nimrod, penetrated to one of the membranes of his brain, where, growing bigger every day, it gave him such intolerable pain, that he was obliged to cause his head to be beaten with a mallet, in order to procure some ease, which torture he suffered four hundred years; God being willing to punish, by one of the smallest of His creatures, him who insolently boasted himself to be lord of all. A Syrian calendar places the death of Nimrod, as if the time were well known, on the eighth of Tamooz, or July.—S. [213] They tell us that Gabriel thrust his wing under them and lifted them up so high that the inhabitants of the lower heaven heard the barking of the dogs and the crowing of the cocks; and then, inverting them, threw them down to the earth.—S. (B.) [214] It is the most received opinion among the Moḥammadans that the son whom Abraham offered was Ishmael and not Isaac; Ishmael being his only son at that time: for the promise of Isaac’s birth is mentioned lower, as subsequent in time to this transaction. They also allege the testimony of their prophet, who is reported to have said, ‘I am the son of the two who were offered in sacrifice;’ meaning his great ancestor, Ishmael, and his own father ´Abd-Allah: for ´Abd-el-Muṭṭalib had made a vow that if God would permit him to find out and open the well Zemzem and should give him ten sons he would sacrifice one of them; accordingly, when he had obtained his desire in both respects, he cast lots on his sons, and the lot falling on ´Abd-Allah, he redeemed him by offering a hundred camels, which was therefore ordered to be the price of a man’s blood in the Sunneh.—S. (B., Z.)