8. Chaplets Like to Gold

The use of this tormenting Saracen fire constituted the resemblance of the Arabs to scorpion-tailed locusts. Besides this, they had other re­markable “resemblances” in their equipment for war. They had, as it were, “chaplets like to gold” — hos stephanoi. This was only an homoioma — resemblance — not literal golden circlets. They would be yellow so as to bear a resemblance to gold. They had a yellow headgear. Ezekiel, in ch. 23:42, describes the head-dress of the Sabean and Ketur- ite Arabs by atereth, rendered in Greek by stephanon, as “Sabeans from the wilderness, who put beautiful Stephans or wreaths upon their heads” — that is, turbans. It was a usual saying among them that Allah had bes­towed four peculiar things upon the Arabs; and that one of them was, that their turbans should be to them instead of diadems. “Make a point,” said their prophet, “of wearing turbans, because it is the way of angels.”