Page 61 - Demo

57means 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 towardsthe 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 dangercould 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 oflearning and confraternities. They seem to be like the Islamic Mevlevi, Bektashi, Neqshbendi, and other religious confraternities, each one of them being under its own