THE ENEMIES TO EACH OTHER 5 
with burning drops, and at issue with itself 
before there was (cause of) strife. 
This, then, lay out to dry for forty years 
between Tayif and Mecca and, through all that 
time, the Beneficence of the Almighty leavened 
it and rained upon it the Mercy and the Blessing, 
and the properties necessary to the adornment 
of the Successorship. In that period, too, it is 
narrated that the Angels passed to and fro above 
it, and among them Eblis the Accursed, who 
smote the predestined Creation while it was 
drying, and it rang hollow, Eblis then looked 
more closely and observing that of which it was 
composed to be diverse and ill-assorted and im- 
pregnated with bitter tears, he said: ‘ Doubt 
not I shall soon attain authority over this; and 
his ruin shall be easy.” (This, too, lay in the fore- 
knowledge of The Endless.) 
When time was that the chain of cause and 
effect should be surrendered to Man’s will, and 
the vessels of desire and intention entrusted to 
his intelligence, and the tent of his body illumin- 
ated by the lamp of vitality, the Soul was de- 
spatched, by Command of the Almighty, with the 
Archangel Jibrail, towards that body. But the 
Soul being thin and subtle refused, at first, to 
enter the thick and diverse clays, saying: “1 
have fear of that (which is) to be. This it 
cried twice, till it received the Word: ¢ Enter 
unwillingly, and unwillingly depart’ Then only 
it entered. And when that agony was accom- 
plished, the Word came: ‘My Compassion 
exceedeth My Wrath.) It is narrated that these