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means the “seer” (I Sam. ix. 9). The Hebrew scholars
are, of course, familiar with the word Msaphpi, or rather
Msappi, which is equivalent in orthography to the Arabic
musaphphi, which signifies “one who endeavours to
elect that which is pure, sound, firm,” and so forth. The
watchman on the Tower of Yizrael, as quoted above, was
gazing and watching sharply from a great distance to
distinguish a company of persons coming on towards the
town. He saw the first messenger of the King who arrived
and joined the group but did not return. The same was
the case with the second and the third envoy. It was later
on that the Sophi could distinguish the chief of the group
as Jehu. Now, what then was the business and the office
of that watchman? It was to look out sharply from some
distance to distinguish one among the others with a view
to understanding his identity and his movements, if at all
possible, and then to inform his king. If you ask: What
was the business and the office of the solitary Sophi of
the Mispa? The answer -which would merely be that he
used to watch from the minaret of the Misppha (Mispa)
in order to distinguish the identity of the pilgrims in the
desert, or that he used to keep watch against some danger-
could not satisfy an eager inquirer. If so, the Mispha
would lose its religious and sacred character, and would
rather seem to assume that of a military watchtower. But
the case with the Sophi of the Mispha was quite different.
Originally the Mispha was only a simple shrine on a
solitary high place in Gal’ead where the Sophi with his
family or attendants used to live. After the conquest and
occupation of the land of Canaan by Israel, the number
of the Misphas increases, and they soon become great
religious centres and develop into institutions of learning
and confraternities. They seem to be like the Islamic
Mevlevi, Bektashi, Neqshbendi, and other religious
confraternities, each one of them being under its own