And It Is On That Place...

Here's a beautiful poem that I'd never seen before tonight, although apparently it has played a major role in the lives of many individuals, as is clear from the many comments here.

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Abou Ben Adhem
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Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An Angel writing in a book of gold:

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Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the Presence in the room he said,
"What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."

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"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so,"
Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
Write me as one who loves his fellow men."

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The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And showed the names whom love of God had blessed,
And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!

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- James Leigh Hunt

~

I asked my librarian about the story about the two brothers who shared a field. Is it a Jewish story? She emailed me that Eliezer Segal writes about the story here, and says something that I'd heard years ago, but never seen in (virtual) print, that this did not originate as a Jewish story. In fact, according to Prof. Alexander Scheiber of Budapest, who devoted a number of special studies to the history of the legend, it is Arabic in origin. Here it is mentioned as an Arab story in the book Visit to the Holy Land; Or, Recollections of the East By Alphonse de Lamartine. (I found and linked to a picture of the text from de Lamartine's book, but it seems to have disappeared).

Menachem Medel cites several scholars here who all agree that this story is not Jewish in origin. After his initial post M.M. (a very nice fellow, by the way) came across a theory (which I find hard to swallow) that the story is based on a medrash about Kayin and Hevel and posted about it once again.

The blog named On The Main Line writes about this story. It is the author of that blog, Mississippi Fred MacDowell, who alerted me to the poem that appears at the start of this post. He said that the story of the brothers reminded him of that poem. I can see that.

I wrote the story here, in one of my long and winding blog-posts from two years ago. and I also cited the modernized version of the story (which M.M. quotes and says may not be as modern as people think).