“Talapharum” is the well-known Tell-el-Faras at the termination of Jabal-el-Heis, a spur of Jabal-el-Sheykh or Hermon.—BRUUN.
(8.) “inhabited by seventy-two languages.”—This “great forest” is the Caucasus, the extent of the great mountain range in a direct line from sea to sea, agreeing exactly with the length given. The seventy-two languages are the seventy-two nationalities (Dorn, _Geog. Cauc._, 221), each of which spoke a different tongue; they were the seventy-two nations confined by Alexander beyond the Caspian Gates.
There exists a tradition, that when upon his death-bed Mahomet recommended to the faithful the conquest of the Caucasus, a country he had ever held in special veneration, so that several Shyite sects place it, in point of sanctity, above the cities of Arabia (D’Ohsson, _Des Peup. du Cauc._, ii, 182). It is therefore not at all strange that the sovereignty over a region so specially blessed and in which the sultan himself was born, should have been included amongst his dignities, since he was entitled, in a measure, to consider the power of the founder of Alexandria to be his heritage.
Claiming the monarchy, as he did, over the forests of the Caucasus, the sultan naturally added thereunto his possession of Cappadocia, a portion of which did indeed belong to him, and wherein he had every right to situate Paradise. Mahomedans believe, as do Christians and Jews, that the Garden was in a beautiful land called Adn, watered by a marvellous river which was the source of the Euphrates, of the Tigris, the Jihoun (Pyramus of the ancients) and the Syhoun (Sarus), all in Cappadocia or in its immediate neighbourhood. Really, Boursbaï was no farther out in his calculations, than were those learned men who recognised the two last-named rivers in the Oxus and Jaxartes (Hammer), in the Araxes and Phasis (Brugsch), and even in the Volga and Indus (Raumer).—BRUUN.
(9.) “the guardian of the caves.”—The disappearance, A.D. 873, at the age of twelve, of Mohammed the descendant of Ali and the twelfth and last Imam, in a cave near Sermen Rey, distant thirty-two miles from Baghdad, gave rise to numerous conjectures, all of equal absurdity. The Shyites believe that this Mehdy, or celestial judge, is still in the unknown cave, and they await his return as impatiently as do the Jews that of the Messiah. The Sunnites are satisfied that when the world comes to an end, he will make his appearance accompanied by three hundred and sixty celestial spirits, and prevail upon the people of the earth to embrace Islamism (D’Ohsson, _Tableau. général de l’E. O._, i, 152).