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94' 't .FOURTH .DISCOURSE. (JN PHYSICIANS
green-gracer opposite him, " if at any time'chis butcher should die,
"
inforrrv me of it before they lay him in his grave." Willingly,"
,, replied the green-grocer. When five or six months had elapsdd,
ope morning it was rumoured abroad thai: such-and-such a butcher
had died suddenly without any premonitory illness. The green-
grocer also went to offer his condolences./ He found a number of ,
people tearing their garments, while others were consumed with
grief, for the dead man was young, and had little children. Then he
remembered the words of Khwaja Isma'il, and hastened to bear
the intelligence to him. Said the c
Khwaja, " He has been a long
time in dying." Then he took his staff, went to the dead man's
house, raised the sheet from the face of the corpse, [felt his
pulse, and ordered some one to strike {he soles of hisfeet with the
staff. After a while he said to him, "It is enough." Then he]
began to apply the remedies for apoplexy, and on the third day
the dead man a'rose. and, though he remained paralytic, 'he lived
for many years, and men were astonished, because that great
man had foreseen that the man would be stricken by apoplexy*
ANECDOTE XL.
The Shaykhu'l- Islam 'Abdu'llah Ansari 1
(may God sanctify
his spirit!) conceived a fanatical hatred of the above-mentioned
man of science, (A) and several times attempted to do him an
and burned his books. Now this fanatical dislike 'arose
injury,
from religious motives, for the people of Herat believed that he
could restore the dead to life, and this belief was injurious to the
2 common . people
Now the Shaykh fell ill,' and in the course of his illness
developed a hiccough for the cure of which all the methods of
treatment tried by the physicians availed nothing. They were
in despair, and finally sent a sample of his urine to the Khwaja
under the name of another, and requested him "to prescribe.
JVhen Khwaja Isma'il had inspected it, he )
said, "This is 'the
urine of so-and-so, who has developed a hiccough which they
are unable to cure. Bid him tell them to pound together an
istdr* of the skins of pistachio-kernels, and an istdr of the sugar
called 'askari, and administer '[the mixture] to him, so that
he may recover and ; give him also this message <
' You should
study science, and not burn books.'"
r
1
Concerning this celebrated mystic see pp. foo A of the Persian notes, a'nd Note
XXXI at the end. He was born in A.H. 396 (A.D. 1006) and died in A.H. ^I^'A.D.,
1089). He was the author of numerous works, somjs of which are extant, including the
well-known Persian quatrains in which he calls himself Pfr-i-Ansdr, fir-i-Hfri, and
At&dri. Though a mystic, he was a fanatical Hanbali.
2 Instead of \jj\^-, the reading adopted in the text, B. and L. have
"to [his own] pretensions."
3 A weight consisting of 4^ mithqdls.
c