—Muhammad ibn Jarir (1) al-Tabari—states in his Great History, citing Ibn ʿAbbas: “The first person ever to shoot a foot-drawn bow was Nimrod ibn Canaan. He fashioned it when he tried to pelt the sky; for once it became certain to him that Allah is above in heaven, he built a chest, reared two enormous vultures, and set the chest upon their backs. The chest (2) was made of three tiers. When the earth had disappeared from his sight, he ordered the bow to be brought—an immense weapon that had to be drawn by a screw-like (3) mechanism owing to its strength. He placed a shaft in it and loosed it toward the sky; the arrow vanished from sight for a while and then returned to him blood-stained. This was part of Allah’s will to abandon him, let him persist in disbelief, and punish him as had already been decreed. Nimrod exclaimed, ‘I have killed the God of heaven!’ He then turned the two vultures back and angled the chest toward the earth until he descended, whereupon his arrogance and tyranny only increased—until Allah destroyed him by means of one of His weakest creatures, a mosquito.”

If you possessed no disgrace but this, it would suffice; and what a gulf there is between a bow wielded by the prophets and a bow that was shot at the very heaven! (4) As for you, your owner cannot carry you together with a shield, a buckler, a quiver, or any other type of weapon, nor can you be paired with the dark, slender lances or the gleaming white swords. Moreover, the force that propels you comes from mechanical movement and artifice, whereas the force of propulsion (5) I grant my master—by which I assist him from