Legends
In an Afghan legend, one of the highest peaks of the Takht-i Sulaiman ("Throne of Solomon"), 3,382 metres (11,096 ft) high, is associated with Prophet Solomon. Ibn Battuta names it Koh-i Sulaiman. It is related that Prophet Solomon climbed this mountain and looked out over the land of South Asia, which was then covered with darkness, but he turned back without descending into this new frontier, and left only the mountain which is named after him (from Ibn Battuta). According to the local folklore, Prophet Solomon, by exercising his miraculous power, had confined the mischievous Jinns inside it who had refused to obey his command. The evil-spirited Jinns are supposed to remain imprisoned almost all the year, but in Safar, the second month of the Lunar Islamic calendar, they are allowed to go free for a while. During this month, after darkness falls over the region, mothers restrict their children within their homes as a precaution against the evil effects of these Jinns. According to another legend, Noah's Ark alighted in the Takht-i Sulaiman after the Deluge.
Legend says that Qais Abdur Rashid, said to be the ancestor of the Pashtun nation, is buried on top of the Kesai Ghar ("Mount of Qais"), located in Zhob District, Balochistan. Some people visit the place and make animal sacrifices, usually a sheep or a goat, at the tomb of Qais as to help feed the poor. A trip to the mountain is undertaken mostly in summer, since from late November until March the snowfall makes it difficult to climb. Nearly all major Pashtun tribes are said to be the progeny of his sons and daughters.
Al-Biruni, who himself lived a large part of his life in Ghazni located just northwest of the Sulaiman mountain range, writes of the mountain range in his memoirs as being the western frontier mountains of South Asia and the homeland of the people known as the Afghans or Pashtuns.
Read more about this topic: Sulaiman Mountains
Famous quotes containing the word legends:
“a child’s
Forgotten mornings when he walked with his mother
Through the parables
Of sunlight
And the legends of the green chapels
And the twice-told fields of infancy”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“Therefore our legends always come around to seeming legendary,
A path decorated with our comings and goings. Or so I’ve been told.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1947)