The First Hermes (2)

Text
Ibn Abī Uṣaibiˁa, ˁUyūn al-anbāˀ, 16-17:
Abū Maˁshar says: He was the first to speak of upper things, such as the motions of the stars, and his grandfather, Adam, taught him the hours of night and day. He was the first to build sanctuaries and to praise God therein, the first to think and speak of medicine. He wrote for him contemporaries many books of rhythmic poems, with rhymes known in the language of his contemporaries, about the knowledge of terrestrial and celestial subjects. He was the first to prophesy the coming of the Flood and saw that heavenly plague by water and fire threatened the Earth. His domicile was the Ṣaˁīd of Egypt, which he selected for himself, and he built there the sanctuaries of the Pyramids and the temple towns. It was because of his fear that wisdom might be lost that he built the temples, namely, the mountain known as al-Barbā, the temple of Akhmīm (Panopolis), engraved on their walls drawings of all techniques and their technicians, made pictures of all the working-tools of craftsmen, and by inscriptions indicated the essence of the sciences for the benefit of those who were to come after him. In doing so, he was guided by the desire of preserving science for later generations and by fear that its trace might disappear from the world. In the tradition handed down from the ancestors it is stated that Idris was the first to study books and to think about sciences, and that Allah revealed to him thirty pages (of the Heavenly Book). He was the first to sew clothes and to wear them. Allah exalted him to a high place (Surah 19:57).

Sources (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Ibn Abī Uṣaibiˁa, ˁUyūn al-anbāˀ, 16-17
Qur’ān, Surah 19:57

Bibliography

Amar Annus

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