port is excessively loud. It has been said by the narrator that the person
who listens to the report at the distance of the flight of an arrow dies
would probably imply that the report must have been very loud and
deafening.
Coming now to the contention that the person coming into contact
with the person who has been bitten by a snake also dies, the following
incident has been offered in support of this belief:
Two persons saw a snake shrivelled up by cold between Ghaznah and
Falzakhd. One of them lifted it with his hand. The snake recoiled
and bit him in the wrist. He immediately died. The other person
who lifted his corpse died too, as did the person who bathed him and
the man who bathed the bather after a week.
Ibn Mandawayh narrates the story of a man who (inadvertently) placed a
pile of sticks upon the Queen of Serpents. He immediately forfeited his
life, as did the rider who aimed a lance at her. He and the horse died. She
once bit a mare who died together with the rider.
This story is somewhat like that which we hear about the raddah
fish. It is said that the power of this fish suffuses the net as well as the
log with which it is pressed. But this story holds that, while it can be
seen, the spectator does not die because he has seen it. Heraclitus says:
"It can be seen. Were it not to be seen, how could anyone describe its
characteristic?"
Similar to this farrago of nonsense about the fish we have the story
from the Mediterranean.
A headless body was seen in the sea. Everyone who saw it died instantly. The stratagem adopted for its capture was that a diver diving
underneath it turned his head the other way, caught it and presented
it to the king. The king used this body against the enemy forces who
died when they saw it. The enemy retaliated by keeping blind men
at the frontal phalanx. They did not die. The king, being afraid that
the body had lost its effect, turned his head and looked at it. He
died. His courtiers, in order to save people from its malevolent
effects, set fire to it and destroyed it.
A similar legend pertains to a stone which paralysed the gazer. Alexander
had a city built from these stones at night, so that the masons might not
succumb to their evil effects.
Even a stranger legend is that which is ascribed to the epistles of
Musa bin Nusayr contained in Kitab al-Muta'ddibin used for teaching
children:
It has been mentioned in one of these epistles that Musa bin Nusayr
reached a castle in the desert of Al-Maghrib. It had a large circumference but had no gate. When his soldiers having found no gate, he
commanded that the soldiers should heap their luggage one over the
