[208] _Mír Said Muhammed Nurbaksh_ was the assumed name of _Shams-eddin_, a descendant from a Guebre family of Irák. He fixed himself in Kachmir, where he became the founder of a sect which acknowledged him as a prophet and a _Mahdi_, and took from him the name of _Nur-bak-shian_.――(See _Journal des Savants, avril 1840; article de M. Mohl sur l’Histoire de Ferishta_.) [209] The word here used by the author is برزخ _barzakh_, “interval of time, according to the Koran (chap. XXIII) between the death of a man and the resurrection, before which the souls of the departed receive neither reward nor punishment.” [210] We have already mentioned (vol. I. p. 55. note 1) the _Enka_, or _Simurgh_, “thirty birds,” as an object of fabulous romance. At one time this mysterious bird was counsellor of the Jins (genii), and for the last time was visible at the court of Solomon, the son of David, after which he retired to the mount _Kaf_, which encircles the earth. According to a tradition of Muhammed, God created, in the time of Moses, a female bird, called _Enka_, having wings on each side and the face of a man. God gave it a portion of every thing, and then created a male of the same species. They propagated after the death of Moses, feeding on ferocious beasts and carrying away children, until the intervening time between Jesus and Muhammed, when, at the prayer of Khaled, this race was extinguished. Proverbially, the Enka is mentioned as a thing of which every body speaks without having ever seen it.