ON METEORITES, OR CELESTIAL STONES 89
the weapon's
quality and as an assurance that it would not soon be duplicated. On
his death-bed the emir called to him his youngest son and said to him:
"My son, take the sword and hide it from your brother, and when you
shall see that he has seized my goods and is squandering them in
riotous living, and sends you away, without reverence for the Lord of
Heaven and Earth, take the sword away with you. If you bring it to the
court of the Persian King, Khusrau Nushirwan, he will heap gifts and
honors upon you, or if you elect to go instead to the court of the
Byzantine Caesar, monarch of the Servants of the Cross, he will give
you as much gold and silver as you may ask for." This was the tale told
by the younger knight, who added that when, after the father's death,
the brother had sought in vain for the famous sword, he had resorted to
torture to extract from the favored son the secret of its hiding place,
and had brought the latter to this spot commanding him to find it and
give it up, and when he refused so to do, had attacked him. The hero
Antar, like a veritable knight-errant, took up the quarrel of the
oppressed brother and slew his opponent, securing as a free-will
offering of gratitude the magic sword.34
The
forging of swords from meteoric iron was, in the opinion of the
Orientalist Hammer-Purgstall, the origin of the characteristic surface
given to the famous Damascus blades. A most interesting modern example
of a meteoric-iron weapon is a dagger made by Von Widmanstädt for
Emperor Francis I of Austria, out of the famous Bohemian siderite long
preserved in the Rathaus at Elbogen and known as the "Verwünschte
Burggraf." On the surface of this blade, however, the lines were
angular, while on the
·*
From Hammer-Purgetall's " Fundgrube des Oriente," vol. iv, Heft 3 ;
cited by E. F. F. Chladni, " Neues Verzeichniss der herabgefallenen
Stein- and Eiaenmaesen," p. 55; Gilbert*β Annalen der Physik, vol. 1.
