by holding them up to the sun. When thirsty, all he had to do was to put out his hands close together and catch the rain which was tumbling in bucketsful from the skies. He lived several centuries after the Flood till the time of Mûsa. One day, as he was standing on Jebel esh Sheykh,[1] he wanted to stride across El-Beka’a,[2] but, misjudging the distance, he stepped, not on to the Lebanon Range, as he had intended, but far beyond it, into the great sea. At another time when, suffering from fever, he lay down to rest, he stretched from Banias, where the Jordan gushes forth, as far as the Lake Merom. As he lay thus, some muleteers passed Banias on their way southward. When they approached his face, he said to them, “I am too ill to move. For the love of Allah, when you reach my feet, drive away the mosquitoes that are tickling them and cover them up with my “abâyeh.” The men promised to do as he said: but, when they reached his feet, they found no mosquitoes, but a crowd of jackals.
Og died at last by the hand of Mûsa, in the following manner. In order to destroy the Israelites on their way through the wilderness, the giant pulled up a great rock out of the earth. It was so large that it would have crushed the whole camp of Israel, which covered a square league of country. Og was carrying it upon his head, meaning to drop it on the camp, when Allah sent a bird that pecked through the stone a hole so large that the mass slipped down over Og’s head and on to his shoulders, in such a
