M. Hermann Zotenberg lately informed me that “Khudadad and his Brothers” is to be found in a Turkish MS., “Al-Faraj bȧ’d al-Shiddah”—Joy after Annoy—in the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris. But that work is a mere derivation from the Persian “Hazár o yek Roz,” for which see my vol. x. p. 499. The name Khudadad is common to most Eastern peoples, the Sansk. Devadatta, the Gr. Θεοδόσιος, Θεοδώρος, Θεοδώρητος and Dorotheus; the Lat. Deodatus, the Ital. Diodato, and Span. Diosdado, the French Dieu-donné, and the Arab.-Persic Alladád, Dívdád and Khudábaksh. Khudá is the mod. Pers. form of the old Khudáí = sovereign, king, as in Máh-i-Khudáí = the sovereign moon, Kám-Khudáí = master of his passions, etc.
Lit. Homes (or habitations) of Bakr (see vol. v. 66), by the Turks pronounced “Diyár-i-Bekír.” It is the most famous of the four provinces into which Mesopotamia (Heb. Naharaym, Arab. Al-Jàzírah) is divided by the Arabs; viz: Diyár Bakr (capital Amídah); Diyár Modhar (cap. Rakkah or Aracta); Diyár Rabí’ah (cap. Nisibis) and Diyár al-Jazírah or Al-Jazírah (cap. Mosul). As regards the “King of Harrán,” all these ancient cities were at some time the capitals of independent chiefs who styled themselves royalties.
The Heb. Charran, the Carrhæ of the classics where, according to the Moslems, Abraham was born, while the Jews and Christians make him emigrate thither from “Ur (hod. Mughayr) of the Chaldees.” Hence his Arab. title “Ibrahim al-Harráni.” My late friend Dr. Beke had a marvellous theory that this venerable historic Harrán was identical with a miserable village to the east of Damascus _because_ the Fellahs call it Harrán al-’Awámíd—of the Columns—from some Græco-Roman remnants of a paltry provincial temple. See “Jacob’s Flight,” etc., London, Longmans, 1865.
Pírozah = turquoise, is the Persian, Firúzah and Firuzakh (De Sacy Chrest. ii. 84) the Arab. forms. The stone is a favourite in the East where, as amongst the Russians (who affect to despise the Eastern origin of their blood to which they owe so much of its peculiar merit,) it is supposed to act talisman against wounds and death in battle; and the Persians, who hold it to be a guard against the Evil Eye, are fond of inscribing “turquoise of the old rock” with one or more of the “Holy Names.” Of these talismans a modern Spiritualist asks, “Are rings and charms and amulets _magnetic_, to use an analogue for what we cannot understand, and has the immemorial belief in the power of relics a natural not to say a scientific basis?”