warfare whatsoever, and after that you set up a boastful contest between the two kinds of bows, employing turns of phrase that an accomplished rhetorician would have done well to leave unsaid. They rest on no pillar of proof, and, what is more, they are bereft of any transmitted authority that could inform the speaker of a matter knowable only through revelation from one who is infallible. What, then, impelled you to cite as evidence something which—even by your own standard—carries no evidentiary weight without that proof (1)? This concerns a point that lies squarely within your own religious law; how, then, can it be adduced for an affair that dates back thousands of years, when you refuse to accept a comparable claim for events so much nearer in time?

Moreover, a hand-held bow, wielded by someone borne aloft on the backs of two soaring eagles, will shoot farther than a foot bow; for a rider perched upon a chest on those eagles must necessarily extend his leg to brace the arrow in its place before letting it fly. To Allah belong the ultimate issues of all matters.

You have further claimed that the praiseworthy bow was sent down by Allah to Adam together with its string, and that two arrows were sent down with it, while you contend that the foot bow is the invention of Nimrod. You go on to say that knowledge of that praiseworthy bow passed to Abraham and then to Ishmael. Do you imagine that the science of the hand bow was kept in reserve with Abraham alone, unavailable to anyone else, because he received it by revelation akin to divine revelation—although, by your own account, that very bow belonged to Adam? Or was such knowledge already widespread? If you choose exclusivity you will be asked for textual proof—how scarce that will be for you!—and if you concede that knowledge of the bow was common, what could have driven Nimrod to the trouble of lugging it about, transporting it—so you say—like half a millstone through the sky, and to abandon the lighter bow that was already well known among the people of his age? How flimsy the