Likewise are the Prophet’s words—peace and blessings be upon him:

“Fever is from the blazing heat of Hell, so cool it with water,”

and his words:

“When the heat becomes intense, postpone the prayer until it cools, for the severity of the heat comes from the blazing heat of Hell.”

In this same way, the points where these earthly rivers spring forth are plainly visible on the face of the earth.

As for the Nile, no other river in the world rivals it in lightness, sweetness, and the vast distance it traverses from its source to its mouth. Its origin is in the Qumr Mountains—that is, the White Mountains; some say they are the “Mountains of the Moon,” so called after the heavenly body. These mountains lie in the far west, south of and beyond the equator.

It is said that the mountains are reddish in hue, that springs gush forth from among them, and that the waters first gather into ten separate courses. Every five of these unite in a little lake, from which six rivers emerge; these in turn join in another lake, out of which a single river issues—the Nile. It flows through the land of the Blacks in Abyssinia, then through Nubia and its great city Dunqula, then through Aswān, until at last it reaches the domains of Egypt.

From Abyssinia it brings to Egypt both the excess of its rains and the soil it has swept along—things Egypt desperately needs, for its own rainfall is scant and cannot suffice for its crops and trees, and its soil is sandy, yielding nothing until the Nile arrives with its rising waters and rich silt, whereupon it produces whatever its people require. Egypt is therefore among the lands most clearly included in the Almighty’s words:

“Do they not see that We drive the water to parched land, and thereby bring forth crops of which their cattle and they themselves eat? Will they not, then, perceive?” (Q 32:27).

A short distance beyond Egypt the Nile divides in two at a village on its bank called Shatnūf. The western branch passes by Rashīd (Rosetta) and empties into the salt sea. The eastern branch splits again near Gawjra into two channels: the western of the two flows past Dumyāt (Damietta) on its western side and pours into the sea, while the eastern channel runs past Ashmūn Ṭannāḥ and empties into a lake east of Dumyāt known as Lake Tinnīs, also called Lake Dumyāt. The distance from the river’s source to its mouth is therefore immense, and for this reason its water is the most delicate of all.

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) observed that the Nile has properties found in no other water on earth; one of them is that it travels farther from its source than any other river.