Scriptures and the Talmud.  She gave instruction through a window, remaining in the house, whilst the disciples were below, unable to see her.]

     [Footnote 131:  The office of Exilarch had but recently been
     revived, and the Mohammed here referred to may have been
     Mohammed El Moktafi, the Caliph Mostanshed’s predecessor.]

[Footnote 132:  The Alans throughout the Middle Ages occupied Georgia and the regions of the Caucasus.  As to the Iron Gates which Alexander made, Yule in commenting on Marco Polo’s text (Travels of Ser Marco Polo: edited by Sir Henry Yule, 3rd edition, London, John Murray, chap, iii) says that Benjamin was the first European traveller to mention this pass.  Benjamin and Marco Polo both record the general belief currrent at the time that the Pass of Derbend was traversed by Alexander.  It is still called in Turkish “Demis-Kapi” or the Iron Gate, and the Persians designate it “Sadd-i-Iskandar”—­the Rampart of Alexander.  Lord Curzon, however, in his valuable work Persia and the Persians, vol. 1, p. 293, proves conclusively that the pass through which Alexander’s army marched when pursuing Darius after the battle of Arbela could not have been at Derbend.  Arrian, the historian of Alexander’s expeditions, writes that the pass was one day’s journey from Rages (the noted city mentioned in the Book of Tobit) for a man marching at the pace of Alexander’s army.  But Derbend is fully 500 miles from Rages.  In Lord Curzon’s opinion, confirmed by Spiegel, Droysen and Schindler, the Sirdara Pass, some forty miles from Teheran on the way to Meshed, must have been the defile which Alexander’s army forced.  I think it will be found that Marco Polo’s geography is less reliable than that of Benjamin.  In the third chapter referred to above, Marco Polo speaks of the Euphrates falling into the Caspian Sea.]

[Footnote 133:  Probably the Oxus, called by the Arabs “Gaihun.”  Rabad I, a contemporary of Benjamin, speaks of the land of Gurgan in his Sefer Hakabalah.  The Nestorian Christians are probably here referred to.]

     [Footnote 134:  It is interesting to compare this account
     with that of the Installation of the Egyptian Nagid
     (J.Q.R., IX, p. 717).]

     [Footnote 135:  This is a well-known sage, whose name often
     occurs in the Talmud.]

[Footnote 136:  The Babel of Bible times was captured by Sennacherib; after stopping up a dam of the Euphrates, the country was placed under water and the city destroyed.  Nebuchadnezzar restored the city; he also erected a magnificent palace for himself—­the Kasr—­also the Temple of Bel.  Herodotus, Book I, chaps. 178-89, fully describes these edifices, and dwells upon the huge extent of the metropolis, which was estimated to have a circuit of fifty miles.  Xerxes destroyed the city.  Alexander the Great contemplated the restoration of Bel’s