Beneficial ownership and legal responsibility; concealment, avoidance and impunity 1st edition paul
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Beneficial Ownership and Legal Responsibility; Concealment, Avoidance and Impunity 1st Edition Paul Beckett
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This book explores the connection between ownership, on one hand, and immunity from legal responsibility, on the other. It presents a definition of the concept of beneficial ownership, the reasons for its concealment, and the failures in international legal structures and arrangements.
Globally, states confront complex crimes, such as corruption, tax evasion, doctrinal fanaticism, slave trafcking, terrorism, and war. At the personal level, men and women may seek to escape their creditors, to disinherit unwanted heirs, to cheat divorced partners, and to appear straightforward when this is not the case. The response of politicians and regulators has been a global state initiative to identify beneficial owners via public registers to promote transparency and accountability. Yet, at the same time, there is an equally powerful global and personal counter-initiative to promote beneficial ownership avoidance. Where there is no owner, there is no accountability.
This book examines what “ownership” means in legal terms across multiple legal systems and explains why singling out ownership as being pivotal to state and personal accountability is a strategy both flawed and disingenuous. It is argued that an apparent lack of political will coupled with shape-shifting definitions of ownership have resulted in tokenism. Particular attention is paid to those “orphan” structures which have evolved from standard models or which have been designed for the purpose in each case of facilitating ownership concealment and avoidance. The author explains how the virtual world of the blockchain, crypto-assets and cryptocurrency, and virtual entities such as Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs), all of which elude legal classification, have opened a new world of possibilities.
Applicable across all jurisdictions and legal systems, the book will be a valuable resource for academics, researchers, and policy-makers working in the areas of financial crime, regulation, compliance, business, and accountancy.
Paul Beckett is an Isle of Man Advocate and Notary Public and an English Solicitor. He is Tynwald Commissioner for Administration (Tynwald Ombudsman) for the Manx parliament and a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Law and Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, UK.
The Law of Financial Crime
Series Editors:
Nicholas Ryder
Professor of Law, Cardiff University, School of Law and Politics, UK
Dr. Lachmi Singh
Associate Lecturer, Bristol Law School, University of the West of England, UK
Sam Bourton
Lecturer in Law, the University of the West of England, UK
While a growing number of high profile financial crime cases have hit the headlines recently the topic of financial crime is also generating much attention amongst academics and practitioners. This series will be the first to be dedicated to the law of financial, or economic, crime and offers a platform for important and original research in this area.
Books in the series will cover traditional subjects of financial crime including money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud, market abuse, insider dealing, market manipulation, tax evasion, briber y and corruption. But broader legal and regulator y issues will also be covered as well as emerging areas of concern such as the risks to stability of the financial system posed by financial crime. Emphasis will be placed on comparative approaches to the subject considering legislation across a number of jurisdictions as well as international regulations where appropriate, giving the series a truly global outlook.
The titles in the series are primarily aimed at an audience of researchers, scholars and practitioners in the area but should also be of interest to policy makers, law enforcement agencies, financial regulator y agencies, as well as people employed within the financial ser vices sector.
Available titles in this series include:
Organised Crime, Financial Crime, and Criminal Justice
Theoretical Concepts and Challenges
Edited by Dan Jasinski, Amber Phillips, and Ed Johnston
Counter-Terrorism Financing and Iran
Zeynab Malakouti Khah
Beneficial Ownership and Legal Responsibility
Concealment, Avoidance and Impunity
Paul Beckett
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/The-Law-of-FinancialCrime/book-series/FINCRIME
Beneficial Ownership and Legal Responsibility
Concealment, Avoidance and Impunity
Paul Beckett
First published 2024 by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge
The right of Paul Beckett to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Beckett, Paul, 1956– author.
Title: Beneficial ownership and legal responsibility : concealment, avoidance, and impunity / Paul Beckett.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon [UK] ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Series: The law of financial crime | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: — Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023047623 (print) | LCCN 2023047624 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032537603 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032544823 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003425120 (ebook)
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023047623
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023047624
ISBN: 978-1-032-53760-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-54482-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-42512-0 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003425120
Typeset in Galliard by Apex CoVantage, LLC
This book is dedicated to my wife, Dr Lesley M. Stone. “ I wonder, by my troth”
1 Introduction: the demand for concealment,
avoidance, and impunity 1
Introduction 1
What motivates the demand? 2
Criminality 2
Corruption and financial crime 2
Money laundering 3
The Russian Federation 6
Illicit funds flow 9
Luxembourg 10
The People’s Republic of China 11
Tax avoidance and tax evasion 12
Civil liability 14
Creditors 14
Families: dependants, heirs, pre-nups, and divorce 15
Kleptocracy 16
The United States of America 17
Reflections 18
2 What is meant by “ownership”? 19
Introduction 19
The philosophy: Kelsen and Wittgenstein 20
“Ownership” and “beneficial ownership” 21
The common law and equity: legal and equitable title 22
Ownership in civil law: usufruct, fiducie, and Treuhand 23
Usufruct 24
Fiducie and Treuhand 24
Ownership in Islam 24
3
Charity 28
The structures 30
Generic corporations 30
Piercing the corporate veil 32
Tax haven corporations 33
Nominee directors, nominee shareholders 33
De facto ownership 34
Generic trusts 35
The Hague Convention 35
The Hague Convention – ofshore counter-initiatives 36
Trustees 38
Beneficiaries 39
Ofshore trusts 39
The wakf 41
Foundations 42
Reflections 44
Appendix: foundation jurisdictions 45
Privacy, confidentiality, and corporate governance 46
Introduction 46
Privacy 47
The meaning of “privacy” 47
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 49
Privacy and human rights 52
The human rights of corporations 57
Piercing the corporate veil 59
Principles of commercial confidentiality 59
Common law approach: English and American 60
European Union: Directive (EU) 2016/943 – trade
secrets 63
Principles of corporate governance 64
The United Nations Global Compact (2000) and the United
Nations Convention Against Corruption (2004) 66
The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and
Human Rights 2011 70
G20/OECD Principles of Corporate Governance 2015 74
ICGN Global Governance Principles 2021 and ICGN
Global Stewardship Principles 2020 76
Guiding Principles issued by the Islamic Financial Services
Board: corporate governance 78
The UK Corporate Governance Code (July 2018) 82
An American perspective: Business Roundtable Principles of Corporate Governance 2016 83
Reflections 85
4 Disclosure and registration initiatives 87
Part 1: introduction 87
Part 2: fundamental transparency strategies 88
The World Bank’s StAR Initiative 88
G20 89
G20 Summits: Brisbane November 2014, Washington DC April 2016, Hangzhou September 2016, Hamburg July 2017, Buenos Aires 2018, Osaka 2019, Rome 2021, Bali 2022 89
The 2014 G20 High-Level Principles on Beneficial Ownership Transparency 95
Financial Action Task Force 100
FATF’s origin and mandate 100
FATF 40 Recommendations (2012, amended February 2023) 102
Beneficial ownership 105
The superseded Guidance on Transparency and Beneficial Ownership (October 2014) 105
Beneficial ownership concealed 106
Ownership vs control 108
FATF and the Egmont Group (July 2018): concealment of beneficial ownership 109
Best practices on beneficial ownership for legal persons (October 2019) 114
Guidance on beneficial ownership of legal persons (March 2023) 115
Part 3: the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 118
OECD’s origins and mission 118
OECD and multinational enterprises 122
OECD Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Business Conduct (2018) 123
OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Ofcials in International Business Transactions (“AntiBribery Convention”) 124
OECD and supply chains 127
OECD and tax evasion: information exchange 128
Exchange of information on request 128
A Beneficial Ownership Implementation Toolkit (2019) and Building Efective Beneficial Ownership Frameworks. A joint Global Forum and IDB Toolkit (2021) 132
Automatic information exchange: OECD Common Reporting Standard 2014 135
The CRS and trusts – a problematic area 137
OECD’s Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) and Amendments to the Common Reporting Standard 142
How efective is the CRS AEOI regime? 144
Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (2016) (BEPS) 147
BEPS Project Action 12 – the disclosure of CRS avoidance arrangements and ofshore structures 150
BEPS: tax challenges arising from digitalisation and the two-pillar solution 157
Part 4: United States of America 159
“A leading tax and secrecy haven for rich foreigners”? 159
Final Rule on Customer Due Diligence Requirements for Financial Institutions, under the Bank Secrecy Act (FinCEN, May 2016) 165
Financial Action Task Force Mutual Evaluation Report on the United States (December 2016) 166
OECD Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes Peer Review Report on the Exchange of Information on Request (Second Round) on the United States (July 2018) 167
Geographic Targeting Orders (GTOs) 2016 169
Corporate Transparency Act 2021 170
“Enablers” – a stalled initiative? 174
Part 5: European Union 176
Fifth Anti-Money-Laundering Directive (5AMLD) 176
Impact of 5AMLD on the Crown Dependencies and the
British Overseas Territories 183
November 2022 – an unexpected and seismic shift away from
disclosure 187
Reaction of the United Kingdom 190
Consequences for the United Kingdom’s Crown Dependencies
and British Overseas Territories 191
“Unshell” – rules to prevent the misuse of shell companies for
tax purposes: ATAD 3 193
Part 6: The Council of Europe MONEYVAL 196
Part 7: United Kingdom 198
Registration shortcomings at the UK’s Companies
Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Act
House 199
2022 201
Unexplained Wealth Orders 205
Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 206
Part 8: Reflections 210
5 Chimeric structures: concealment, avoidance, and impunity 211
Introduction 211
Adaptation of principles and structures: tools of abuse 212
Chimeric structures 214
Trusts 214
United States Dynastic Trusts 214
BVI VISTA Trust 217
Cayman STAR Trust 220
Cook Islands International Relationship Property
Trust 222
Purpose and “relationship” 224
Who benefits? 225
Registration 226
Family businesses 226
Limitations on the powers of the trustees 226
Foreign courts 227
Capacity and “forced heirship” 228
Duration 228
Disclosure and publication 228
Governing law 229
Taxation 229
Isle of Man trusts 229
Trusts Act 1995 231
Recognition 231
Forced heirship 232
Non-charitable purpose trusts 233
How classic trusts and non-charitable purpose trusts
The practical efect of holding assets in a non-charitable
compare 234 purpose trust 235
Are they truly trusts? Uncertainty and the Hague
Convention 236
Transparency concerns – no-man’s land? 238
Technical analysis of the Isle of Man Purpose Trusts Act
1996 239
Foundations 241
Cayman Islands Foundation Companies 241
Liechtenstein private-benefit foundation 244
Nevis Multiform Foundation 246
New Hampshire Foundation 250
Panama Private Foundation 253
BVI business companies 255
Capacity, powers, and immunity 255
Types of company 257
Types of shares 257
Bearer shares 258
Registered agent 259
Charges and company accounts 259
Variable-Interest Entity (VIE) – the People’s Republic of
China and the Cayman Islands 259
Bahamas Executive Entities 265
Liechtenstein Anstalt 268
Isle of Man life assurance policies 269
Overview 269
Insurable interest 270
Isle of Man – 230 years later 271
Insurance and tax planning: overview 273
Insurance policies structured as trusts 274
Applications 275
Advantages for the client 275
“Janitors insurance” 276
Reflections 277
Appendix: correlation of chimeric structures and tools of abuse 278
Introduction 279
Terminology 281
Blockchain 281
Crypto-assets 282
Cryptocurrency 283
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) 285
Smart contracts 285
Virtual asset and virtual asset service providers (VASPs) 285
Cryptocurrency and crypto-assets 285
Cryptocurrency from an ownership perspective 285
Initial Coin Oferings 291
Cryptocurrency: due diligence and regulation 294 2023) 302
European Union: Fifth Anti-Money-Laundering Directive (Directive EU 2018/843 30 May 2018) 298
European Union – Markets in Crypto-assets Regulation (MiCA) (Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 31 May
Financial Action Task Force 307
Blockchain 314
The smart contracts fallacy 314
United States of America: Delaware – blockchain
maintenance of corporate records 317
United States of America: Wyoming – Decentralised
Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) 321
Non-fungible tokens 328
Terminology and tokenisation 329
NFTs as personal property 329
Provable ownership 332 consequences 335
Extinction/creation vs persistent thing – and unintended
Are NFTs subject to regulation? 337
Reflections 338
Preface
I am a lawyer and, for over 40 years, have practised in England, Switzerland, and the Isle of Man, where I now live and work. In the Isle of Man I interact professionally with both government and regulators, serving as Ombudsman to the Isle of Man’s more-than-a-thousand-year-old parliament, Tynwald, and sitting judicially as Chair of the Isle of Man Financial Services Tribunal. It is a privilege to be supported by inspirational friends and colleagues.
Beneficial Ownership and Legal Responsibility follows on from Ownership, Financial Accountability and the Law: Transparency Strategies and CounterInitiatives, which was published by Routledge in 2019. The few intervening years have seen the global industry in beneficial ownership avoidance grow beyond anything then foreseeable. Not least, the virtual world of the blockchain, crypto-assets and cryptocurrency, and virtual entities, such as Decentralised Autonomous Organisations (DAOs), all of which elude legal classification, have opened a new world of possibilities for what Gary Gensler, chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, described in June 2023 as “Hucksters. Fraudsters. Scam artists. Ponzi schemes”.
There has been a corresponding ballooning of regulation and guidance on a national, regional and global scale, attempting with only varying degrees of success to combat tax evasion, money laundering, organised crime, terrorism, bribery and corruption, illicit funds flows, and kleptocracy.
I am indebted to Peter Rutland, Professor of Government and the Colin and Nancy Campbell Chair for Global Issues and Democratic Thought at Wesleyan University (Middletown, Conn.) We met at school in 1968, were contemporaries at Oxford in the ’70s, and have never been out of contact. He has contributed in so many ways to the research for this book.
I express my thanks to the publishing team at Routledge, and in particular to Alison Kirk and Anna Gallagher, for sharing my vision of what this book could become and for providing me with the means to make it a reality.
This book is dedicated to my wife, Dr Lesley M. Stone, without whose support, encouragement, and patience, my fifth book, in as many years, would not have made it past the first draft.
The law is stated as at 1 August 2023.
Paul Beckett Ramsey, Isle of Man
1 Introduction: the demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity
Introduction
There are people who seek to conceal their activities, to avoid the consequences of their actions and to be welcomed into a place affording them complete impunity. Their desire goes far beyond merely maintaining their privacy and ensuring the confidentiality of their dealings. Impunity is the differentiator, the key to their motivation. The manipulation of ownership is their means.
There is something visceral about ownership. This is mine; you can’t have it. This is mine; you can share it. This is ours. Tr y to find it.1
Who are they? They feature in works of diligent investigative journalism like the Panama, Paradise and Pandora Papers;2 they glare back at us from early evening television documentaries, cornered, defiant, and in denial; they are the stuff of sensationalist but often ephemeral name-and-shame exposés of the darker side of business and underworld adventurers. Such “types” have always been around, skilfully navigating their course “in a world in which every gangster and trickster and stupid insensitive fool or rogue was let loose to do his damnedest”.3
This chapter identifies motivation from two perspectives: criminal and civil. Criminality is examined in the context of corruption and financial crime, money laundering, illicit funds flow, and tax avoidance and evasion; civil liability, in the context of creditors and families.
It also looks at the kleptocracies which turn a blind eye.
1 Paul Beckett, Ownership, Financial Accountability and the Law: Transparency Strategies and Counter-Initiatives (Routledge, London and New York, 2019) 1
2 ‘Offshore Leaks Database’ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists) <https:// offshoreleaks.icij.org/> (accessed 1 August 2023)
3 J.B. Priestley, Postscripts (William Heinemann Ltd, London and Toronto, 1940) 42.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003425120-1
The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity
What motivates the demand?
Criminality
Three countries at the epicentre of international funds flows, corruption, and financial crime, whether as perpetrator or as willing victim, are Luxembourg, a tax haven, and the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, each a patron of tax havens.
Corruption and financial crime
More than two decades ago, the OECD Council at a ministerial level meeting in Paris on 15–16 May 2002, with the 9/11 terror attack on the World Trade Center still fresh in everyone’s minds, affirmed:
The scope for financial crime has widened with the expansion and increased integration of financial markets. Money laundering, terrorism financing and tax crime have changed in both nature and dimension. Today the potential for financial abuse can threaten the strategic, political and economic interest of sovereign states. Widespread financial abuse undermines the integrity of the international financial system and raises new challenges for policymakers, financial super visors and enforcement agencies. In certain jurisdictions such abuse may go so far as to undermine the democratic basis of government itself. [. . .]
Poorly regulated financial markets not only open up new opportunities for financial crimes but also threaten the stability of the international financial system. As new technologies reduce the importance of physical proximity to major on-shore financial centres, so a new generation of Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs) has emerged. Remote jurisdictions bereft of natural resources and too isolated to benefit significantly from the global economy have established OFCs characterised by strict bank secrecy, criminal penalties for disclosure of client information and a policy or practice of noncooperation with regulator y, supervisory and law enforcement agencies of other countries. This new generation of OFCs has succeeded in attracting brass plate banks, anonymous financial companies and asset protection trusts.4
Sunlight may be the best disinfectant, but for some, darkness is the cure-all. Dominic Thomas-James writes:
It is axiomatic that no matter how well-regulated an environment is, criminal proceeds will find where it is darkest. While the temptations of
4 Quoted in Donato Masciandraro (ed.), Global Financial Crime: Terrorism, Money Laundering and Offshore Centres (First published 2004. Republished by Routledge, London and New York, 2017) 2–3. The full minutes are no longer available online but may be requested from OECD Archives <www.oecd.org/general/oecdarchives.htm> (accessed 1 August 2023)
Introduction: The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity 3
wealth exist, traditional methods of criminal justice and civil enforcement will be acting retrospectively, nor preventively. Crime is a profit-driven enterprise, and “getting ahead” remains a socially desirable construct. [. . .]
Economic misconduct has a dark side. It facilitates wars, fuels rebel groups, funds terrorist organisations, sustains human and narcotics trafficking and the dark economy.5
At the Summit for Democracy in December 2021, United States Secretary for the Treasury Janet Yellen described corruption as “a common adversar y”:
Corruption, after all, is just a form of financial alchemy. It’s the transformation of power into illicit money or illicit money into power, and in order to catalyze that transformation, bad actors usually need an intermediary, a place to store or launder their ill-gotten gains: a shell company, a real estate transaction, an art purchase.6
Money laundering
What is money laundering? It is concealing or disguising the origins of illegally obtained proceeds so that they appear to have originated from legitimate sources.
Money laundering is the process of making illegally-gained proceeds (i.e. “dirty money”) appear legal (i.e. “clean”). Typically, it involves three steps: placement, layering and integration. First, the illegitimate funds are furtively introduced into the legitimate financial system. Then, the money is moved around to create confusion, sometimes by wiring or transferring through numerous accounts. Finally, it is integrated into the financial system through additional transactions until the “dirty money” appears “clean”. Money laundering can facilitate crimes such as drug trafficking and terrorism, and can adversely impact the global economy.7
Money laundering is the preferred weapon of choice for criminals and terrorists. In the words of Interpol:
Money laundering is frequently a component of other serious crimes such as drug trafficking, robbery or extortion. Money laundering is omnipresent
5 Dominic Thomas-James, Offshore Financial Centres and the Law: Suspect Wealth in British Overseas Territories (Routledge, London and New York, 2021) 14–15
6 ‘Remarks by Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen at the Summit for Democracy’ (U.S. Department of the Treasury Press Release, 9 December 2021) <https://home.treasury.gov/ news/press-releases/jy0524> (accessed 1 August 2023)
7 As defined by the US Treasury Financial Crimes Enforcement Network <www.fincen.gov/ history-anti-money-laundering-laws> (accessed 1 August 2023). And see Financial Action Task Force Report Professional Money Laundering (July 2018) <www.fatf-gafi.org/en/publications/Methodsandtrends/Professional-money-laundering.html> (accessed 1 August 2023)
Introduction: The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity and found in areas where it might least be expected, such as environmental crimes. The advent of cryptocurrency, such as bitcoins, has exacerbated this phenomenon. Criminal gangs move illegally obtained funds around the globe using banks, shell companies, intermediaries and money transmitters, attempting to integrate the illegal funds in legal businesses and economies. Nowadays, money mules play a key role in this context.8
Peter Lilley put it more bluntly:
The perception that still endures of money laundering is that of a suspicious character turning up at the counter of a bank with a suitcase (probably helpfully labelled “Swag”) overflowing with used notes. [. . .] It is perhaps only now that it is becoming clear that money laundering is a robust, corrosive, all-consuming and dynamic activity that has far reaching consequences and effects.
[. . .] This subversion of the political processes combined with adept manipulation of financial and business systems means that in affected countries (with a ripple effect all across the world), democratic institutions are corrupted, confidence in the country is eroded, the integrity of financial systems is destroyed and honest enterprise is undermined and thwarted.
[. . .] For every terrorist outrage that kills and maims innocent victims, for each woman and child trafficked to be sexually exploited, for any victim of organized criminal activity, somewhere in the process that led to these outcomes, dirty money was washed clean.9
A broad definition of “money laundering” is now accepted worldwide (even if in many cases either not acted upon or actively subverted), encapsulated in 2018 by Joshua Kirschenbaum and Nicolas Véron:
With increased financial globalisation and unrestricted cross-border financial flows, AML [anti-money-laundering] regimes have shifted their focus from cash to electronic transactions. As the regimes themselves have become more sophisticated, criminals and their facilitators have responded, leading to an AML arms race between governments and criminals. The end of the Cold War and the lull in great-power conventional militar y conflicts led to an increased focus on unconventional security threats, including terrorist finance, tax evasion, weapons proliferation, human trafficking, sanctions circumvention and kleptocracy.
8 ‘Money Laundering’ (Interpol) <www.interpol.int/Crimes/Financial-crime/Money-laundering> (accessed 1 August 2023)
9 Peter Lilley, Dirty Dealing: The Untold Truth about Global Money Laundering, International Crime and Terrorism (3rd edn., Kogan Page, London and Philadelphia, 2006) 1, 7, 200
Introduction: The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity 5
Governments now expect their AML regimes to help address all of these issues in a manner that was not foreseen fifty years ago, such that their scope is best described as countering all forms of illicit finance.10
Money laundering has long since become endemic globally, with onshore states, tax havens, and legal, accounting and other professional enablers all complicit. Anton Moiseienko obser ves:
The role that certain states play in facilitating economic crime elsewhere is a fixture of international politics and economic affairs. Some do so by offering financial secrecy one has come to associate with “tax havens” –or, more politely, “financial centres”. Others act as hubs for cognate services that can be misused by criminals, such as company incorporation or legal advice. Yet other countries are known as appealing, and arguably all-too-welcoming, locations for investing the proceeds of crime, for instance in high-end real estate. All of these phenomena are instances of “money laundering”, or, simply put, the use of the proceeds of crime – a quintessential form of economic crime.11
The use of cryptocurrency and the blockchain has further expanded its scope. Chainalysis reported in Januar y 2022:
Cybercriminals dealing in cryptocurrency share one common goal: Move their ill-gotten funds to a service where they can be kept safe from the authorities and eventually converted to cash. That’s why money laundering underpins all other forms of cr yptocurrency-based crime. If there’s no way to access the funds, there’s no incentive to commit crimes involving cryptocurrency in the first place.
Money laundering activity in cryptocurrency is also heavily concentrated. While billions of dollars’ worth of cr yptocurrency moves from illicit addresses ever y year, most of it ends up at a surprisingly small group of ser vices, many of which appear purpose-built for money laundering based on their transaction histories. [. . .] Overall, going by the amount of cryptocurrency sent from illicit addresses to addresses hosted
10 Joshua Kirschenbaum and Nicolas Véron, ‘A Better European Union Architecture to Fight Money Laundering’ (Policy Contribution, Number 19, October 2018, 1 at 3) <www.bruegel. org/sites/default/files/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/PC-19_2018-241018_.pdf> (accessed 1 August 2023)
11 Anton Moiseienko, ‘Does International Law Prohibit the Facilitation of Money Laundering?’ (Leiden Journal of International Law, 2022, 1–24 at 1) <www.cambridge.org/core/journals/leiden-journal-of-international-law/article/abs/does-international-law-prohibit-thefacilitation-of-money-laundering/D1D8710EEFC8ECEB7A269A15D775509A> (accessed 1 August 2023)
Introduction: The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity by ser vices, cybercriminals laundered $8.6 billion worth of cryptocurrency in 2021.12
THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
At the time of writing of this book, the Russian Federation has invaded and occupied territor y in Ukraine and has been subjected internationally to a wide range of sanctions encompassing economic, financial, trade, and admission restrictions; asset freezes; and diplomatic and militar y initiatives –in addition to those imposed on it following its invasion of the Crimea in 2014. 13
Funds which flowed out of the Russian Federation before the doors swung shut, at least if not held in onshore bank accounts or conver ted to assets, such as real estate and luxur y items which can be frozen or sequestered by governments where they are located, are more than likely still held in tax havens. The amount of the flow of funds from the Russian Federation to tax havens cannot be accurately quantified, if for no other reason than once in a tax haven, the structures on offer make it all too easy for the connection between those funds, their owners, and the Russian Federation to be broken.
Before the Ukrainian War erupted, it was standard business practice for wealthy Russians to transfer their liquid assets abroad, to avoid domestic threats to their wealth in the form of arbitrar y taxation and equally arbitrary law enforcement. The Russian Federation is widely regarded as a kleptocracy, for the benefit of a small ruling elite.
Illicit funds flowed from the newly created Russian Federation from its inception. Catherine Belton comments that the flows at that time were orchestrated by the KGB to maintain its foreign-intelligence networks, in the tens of billions of dollars:
a vast web of black cash, far larger and more sophisticated than the networks it had utilised for black ops and influence-peddling in the battle for empire of Soviet days. [These networks] had become so complex that Western law enforcement, underfunded and understaffed, is still struggling to trace any of them.
12 ‘DeFi Takes on Bigger Role in Money Laundering But Small Group of Centralized Services Still Dominate’ (Chainalysis, 26 January 2022) <https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/2022crypto-crime-report-preview-cryptocurrency-money-laundering/> (accessed 1 August 2023) And see the in-depth report by Chainalysis, ‘The 2023 Crypto Crime Report: Everything You need to know about Cryptocurrency-based Crime’ (Chainalysis, February 2022) <https:// go.chainalysis.com/2023-crypto-crime-report.html> (accessed 1 August 2023)
13 For a comprehensive account of pre-war corruption in the Russian Federation, see Anders Aslund, Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2019) from which some of the material in this chapter is drawn. An extensive Russian archive has been compiled by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) <www.icij.org/investigations/pandora-papers/alpha-offshore-leaks-database-pandora-papers-russia/> (accessed 1 August 2023)
Introduction: The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity 7
She writes that in the first decades of this century, the City of London was, for the newly rich Russians, the destination of choice:
London real-estate brokers were well aware that their biggest clients, splashing millions on the capital’s finest property, were from the former Soviet Union, while the city’s lawyers and bankers queued to service the billions of dollars at the command of Russian tycoons. This money’s provenance, and who really controlled it, were of little concern.14
In 2018 Oliver Bullough had explained to a committee of UK Members of Parliament how Britain was allowing tainted Russian funds to access its investment markets:
Russian money that moves through another jurisdiction before arriving in Britain isn’t counted as Russian and, since the overwhelming majority of money that enters and leaves Russia does so via tax havens such as Cyprus and the Bahamas, this means the official figures reflect only a small portion of the money the MPs were interested in. Over the past decade, £68bn has flowed from Russia into Britain’s offshore satellites such as the British Virgin Islands, Cayman, Gibraltar, Jersey and Guernsey. That’s seven times more money than has flowed directly from Russia into the UK. (On top of that, some £94bn has poured out of Russia into Cyprus, £13bn into Switzerland, and £23bn into the Netherlands, which has its own network of tax havens.)
This wealth is not actually in the offshore centres – it is just registered there, which helps to obscure its origins. If you’re a Russian official whose wealth is wildly disproportionate to your salary, this anonymity allows you to spend your money in London without anyone realising you’re a crook.15
In June 2022 the United Kingdom House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee conceded the point:
London’s role as a global financial centre is tarnished by its reputation as a hub for illicit finance. The consequences for our national security and the integrity of our institutions and services are laid bare by the current war in Ukraine; assets laundered through the UK are financing President Putin’s war in Ukraine.16
14 Catherine Belton, Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took on the West (William Collins, London, 2020) 75, 364, 417
15 Oliver Bullough, ‘How Britain let Russia hide its Dirty Money’ The Guardian (London, 25 May 2018) <www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/25/how-britain-let-russia-hide-its-dirtymoney> (accessed 1 August 2023)
16 United Kingdom House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, The Cost of Complacency: Illicit Finance and the War in Ukraine (Second Report of Session 2022–23 HC 168, 30 June 2022) 3 <https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmfaff/168/report.html> (accessed 1 August 2023). See Oliver Bullough, ‘How Putin’s Oligarchs Hide Their Billions’ (VICE News, YouTube, 13 April 2022) <www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySyx-7CZJfg> (accessed 1 August 2023)
Introduction: The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity
Anders Aslund explains that throughout the 1990s most of the funds flowing out of the Russian Federation were destined for Cyprus (because of a favourable double taxation treaty in place between the two countries); however,
[t]he Russian money has not stayed in Cyprus. Typically, it just passes through Cyprus to other offshore havens. These havens have varied over time, but the current dominant pattern is first to the British Virgin Islands and then to the Cayman Islands. The money usually passes through several offshore havens, because each haven adds several layers of shell companies. For seriously dirty money, a layer of twenty to thirty shell companies is common. [. . .] In the end, the money tends to flow to the United States, mainly Delaware, and the United Kingdom.17
The Atlantic Council in 2020 reported:
Yet, the laundered funds do not stop in offshore havens that lack financial depth and access to global financial markets. Few jurisdictions with strong rule of law accept large amounts of dirty money, but the United States offers a ripe environment for offshore funds and is a hub for global money laundering. In the end, the money often moves from the Cayman Islands to the United States – mainly through the state of Delaware – and the United Kingdom. These are the two countries that have the deepest financial markets in the world and accept anonymous companies. The Cayman Islands is a tiny British overseas territory with sixty thousand inhabitants but one hundred and fifty-eight banks. The US Treasury publishes annual reports of foreign investments in US securities. In its 2019 report, the Treasury stated that Cayman Islands was the second biggest investor in US securities, before the United Kingdom but after Japan, with $1.87 trillion of investment in US securities, of which $1.08 trillion was in equities on June 30, 2018. [. . .] Sophisticated Russian money laundering practices then exploit weaknesses in the US AML regime. [. . .] Anonymous Russian money in the United States is substantial, fast-moving, and, in several well annotated cases, directed toward political influence. [. . .] [The United States] system is not designed to presume that incoming Russian funds are illicit just because they are Russian.18
17 Anders Aslund, Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2019) 159
18 Anders Aslund and Julia Friedlander, ‘Defending the United States against Russian Dark Money’ (Atlantic Council, 17 November 2020) 6, 9, 16 <www.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/defending-the-united-states-against-russian-dark-money/> (accessed 1 August 2023)
Introduction: The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity 9
Between 2010 and 2014 the Russian Laundromat, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), is “the biggest money-laundering operation in Eastern Europe”.19 The complex scheme involved fake loans between two companies each incorporated in the UK, guaranteed by Russian companies, the fake loans being rubber-stamped by courts in Moldova. The borrower conveniently refused to pay, the guarantees were called upon, and funds flowed out of Russia to the lending company’s account set up for the purpose in Moldova – later to be moved into the European Union by being redeposited in Riga, Latvia. The transactions were repeated and repeated, with sums of between $100 million and $800 million each time. Luke Harding and Nick Hopkins looking back on this in 2017 wrote:
With these transfers, the money had undergone a miraculous transformation. From Russia, it was now inside the EU, properly and legally. From Riga, it could go anywhere. It did. Law enforcement officers in Latvia and Moldova subsequently discovered an omni-tentacled trail, involving 96 countries and about 70,000 banking transactions. The cash from Valemont [the UK loaning company] and dozens of companies like it went to major territories such as the US, China, Germany and France. And to smaller ones: Denmark, Slovenia, South Korea, Taiwan and Finland. Most of the billions vanished into a twilight world of offshore companies. The scheme cleverly mingled fake transactions with real ones. Some of it was spent on luxur y items: furs, diamonds, Swiss watches, German industrial equipment, fashionable children’s clothes, plus hotel suites in Alpine ski resorts used by Russian oligarchs. It also went to a pro-Kremlin thinktank in Poland. The Laundromat ran between 2010 and 2014. It was one of the most successful money-laundering frauds ever. Nobody in Britain noticed.20
The amounts leaving Russia are staggering, even though by their ver y nature, funds held offshore are ultimately unquantifiable. Anders Aslund quotes sources which estimate that between 1992 and 2017 the outflow was between US$780 billion and US$1,118 billion.21
Illicit funds flow
“Illicit” does not necessarily however have to be the same as “criminal”. Funds may flow, and cross-border investments may be made, which are not the proceeds
19 ‘The Russian Laundromat’ (OCCRP, 22 August 2014) <www.occrp.org/en/laundromat/ russian-laundromat/> (accessed 1 August 2023)
20 Luke Harding and Nick Hopkins, ‘How “Dirty Money” from Russia Flooded into the UK –and Where it Went’ The Guardian (London, 20 March 2017) <www.theguardian.com/ world/2017/mar/20/how-dirty-money-from-russia-flooded-into-the-uk-and-where-itwent> (accessed 1 August 2023)
21 Anders Aslund, Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2019) 165
Introduction: The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity
of crime but which are nevertheless phantom transactions. Raymond W. Baker dispels the myth that “illegal overseas deposits, however they are done, are merely rational reactions on the part of well-heeled citizens who fear that their hardearned savings will be taxed, blocked or confiscated”. In his opinion,
[t]he primary motivation for cross-border dirty-money flows is getting rich secretly. Another principal motivation is avoiding pressures for distribution locally. Both are much more important than concerns about taxes or loss of control or value.22
Frank Vogl observed in 2022:
Never before has so much illicit finance flowed between nations. [. . .]
Dirty money, like water running down a mountain, finds its way through the global financial systems; the bankers know it and their bank governmental regulators know it. Each new scandal yields public calls for more enforcement and tougher penalties, but the clamor is insufficient to unleash meaningful pressures on politicians and governments to act with force. Do the punishments for money-laundering violations equate with the true seriousness of the crimes? Of course not. And the beneficiaries include the kleptocrats.23
LUXEMBOURG
Luxembourg was a founding member of what is today the European Union. It is also one of the world’s leading tax havens. Pulitzer Prize winner Jake Bernstein describes Luxembourg at the time when its former long-time Prime Minister Jean-Claude Junker (in office 1995 to 2013) was ser ving as President of the Commission of the European Union in 2014:
Luxembourg was widely castigated as a tax parasite, prospering from the depletion of government coffers throughout the world. [. . .] [A] tax avoidance factor y masquerading as a country.24
In September 2019 Jannick Damgaard, Thomas Elkjaer, and Niels Johannesen produced for the International Monetar y Fund, Finance & Development their repor t Empty corporate shells in tax havens undermine tax collection in advanced, emerging market and developing economies and
22 Raymond W. Baker, Capitalism’s Achilles Heel: Dirty Money and How to Renew the FreeMarket System (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, 2005) 242–243
23 Frank Vogl, The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption – Endangering Our Democracy (Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Boulder, New York, London, 2022) 3, 48
24 Jake Bernstein, The Laundromat: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite (Penguin, London, 2019) 200
Introduction: The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity 11
highlighted Luxembourg’s activities in enabling questionable foreign direct investment:
According to official statistics, Luxembourg, a country of 600,000 people, hosts as much foreign direct investment (FDI) as the United States and much more than China. Luxembourg’s $4 trillion in FDI comes out to $6.6 million a person. FDI of this size hardly reflects brick-andmortar investments in the minuscule Luxembourg economy.
[. . .] Interestingly, a few well-known tax havens host the vast majority of the world’s phantom FDI. Luxembourg and the Netherlands host nearly half. And when you add Hong Kong SAR, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, Singapore, the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, Ireland, and Mauritius to the list, these 10 economies host more than 85 percent of all phantom investments.25
THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
The Ministr y of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China actively encourages investment in China:
In November 2021, Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, highlighted in his keynote speech delivered at the Opening Ceremony of the Fourth China International Import Expo, “As for China, we will not change our resolve to open wider at a high standard; we will not change our determination to share development opportunities with the rest of the world; and we will not change our commitment to an economic globalization that is more open, inclusive, balanced and beneficial for all”. In March 2022, Li Keqiang, Premier of the State Council, said in the 2022 Report on the Work of the Government, “China will pursue higher-standard opening-up and promote stable growth of foreign trade and investment. We will make full use of international and domestic markets and resources, continue to expand international economic cooperation and trade, and push for in-depth reform and high-quality development by promoting high-standard opening-up”.26
Not all Chinese citizens have shown themselves to be fully on board with that plan. The reorganisation of China’s economy in the 1990s focussed on
25 Jannick Damgaard, Thomas Elkjaer and Niels Johannesen, ‘The Rise of Phantom Investments: Empty Corporate Shells in Tax Havens Undermine Tax Collection in Advanced, Emerging Market and Developing Economies’ (International Monetar y Fund, Finance & Development, September 2019) <www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2019/09/ the-rise-of-phantom-FDI-in-tax-havens-damgaard> (accessed 1 August 2023)
26 ‘Foreign Investment Guide of the People’s Republic of China 2022 Edition’ (Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, Beijing, 2022) Forward <https://fdi.mofcom. gov.cn/resource/pdf/wx/2022_EN.pdf> (accessed 1 August 2023)
Introduction: The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity
state-owned enterprises, rather than fledgling entrepreneurial initiatives. The would-be entrepreneurs looked to the offshore world.
Chinese entrepreneurs engaged in “round-tripping” – setting up companies offshore, selling their products to those subsidiaries (and paying sales tax in China), allowing the subsidiaries to onward sell them at a substantial markup with the onward sales profit parked safely offshore. “Trillions of dollars left China, a fact easily ignored since an exponentially larger amount of foreign direct investment was flowing into the country”.27
In the 2020s, China-related demand is recognised as a key driver in the growth of offshore business.28 The British Virgin Islands in particular have benefitted:
[T]he British Virgin islands became so popular, it entered the lexicon. To have a “BVI” became shorthand in China for any offshore company, regardless of where in the world it was located.29
The British Virgin Islands’ relationship with the PRC is by no means exclusive, and the role played by Variable Interest Entities (VIEs) based in the Cayman Islands is of global trade significance.
Tax avoidance and tax evasion
Tax avoidance is the legitimate (albeit amoral) arrangement of tax affairs, applying the law creatively and usually not in ways which the legislators foresaw (the rules of statutor y interpretation being almost infinitely malleable) in order to minimise a future and as yet uncr ystallised liability to taxation. Tax evasion involves the use of illegal means to escape a liability to tax which had already been incurred.
The Tax Justice Network in November 2020 published its report “Tax avoidance and tax evasion”, contrasting legal theory with the realities of international tax planning:
In the real world, however, this legal/illegal distinction often falls apart.
A lot of what gets called “avoidance” cannot be called “legal” because it is in a grey area: one only finds out definitely which side of the law the
27 Jake Bernstein, The Laundromat: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite (Penguin, London, 2019) 163
28 Sasha Chavkin (Center for Public Integrity), Offshore 2020: Perception and Reality: Forces Driving the Offshore Industry (OIL Offshore Incorporations) 16 <www.documentcloud.org/documents/841880offshore2020-oil-report.html#document/p21/a135331> and <https://s3.documentcloud.org/ documents/841880/offshore2020-oil-report.pdf> (accessed 1 August 2023)
29 Jake Bernstein, The Laundromat: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite (Penguin, London, 2019) 169
Introduction: The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity 13
activity falls on until it has been challenged in court. Many tax structures, whether set up by wealthy individuals or multinational corporations, are highly complex cross-border arrangements that hinge on interpretations that are open to question.
In fact, much of what gets called “avoidance” turns out to be rather more like evasion: it involves pocketing tax money that legally should be paid. It’s just that they don’t get noticed or challenged, or successfully prosecuted. It has been described as “risk mining” – where individuals or companies deliberately push the boundaries of the law, and hope to get away with it.30
The Tax Justice Network launched its Financial Secrecy Index (FSI) on 2 November 2015. That year, according to the FSI, an estimated US$21–32 trillion of private wealth was located in secrecy jurisdictions (the FSI’s preferred term for tax havens). On 20 November 2020 the Tax Justice Network published its report “The State of Tax Justice 2020”, in which it claimed that “countries are losing over $427 billion in tax each year to corporate tax abuse and private tax evasion”.31 By 2022,
[c]ountries are losing a total of $483 billion in tax a year to global tax abuse committed by multinational corporations and wealthy individuals. That’s enough to fully vaccinate the global population against Covid-19 more than three times over.
These tax losses are particularly damaging to lower income countries, which lose the equivalent of nearly half of their combined public health budgets ever y year to global tax abuse. Of the $483 billion in tax lost a year, over a third, $171 billion, is lost to offshore tax evasion by wealthy individuals.32
Yet by their very nature, illicit corporate tax evasion schemes are largely unquantifiable, even in the most advanced taxation systems. Writing in the Financial Times on 29 May 2022 Emma Agyemang quoted the United Kingdom’s HM Revenue & Customs as admitting that the tax authority “has no idea how much tax is being evaded by UK residents holding money offshore. [. . .] UK residents had £850bn in financial accounts overseas – of which
30 ‘Tax Avoidance and Tax Evasion’ (Tax Justice Network, 14 November 2020) <www.taxjustice. net/topics/tax-avoidance-and-tax-evasion/> (accessed 1 August 2023)
31 Alex Cobham, Javier Garcia-Bernardo, Miroslav Palansky and Mark Bou Mansour, ‘The State of Tax Justice 2020’ (Tax Justice Network, 20 November 2020) <https://taxjustice.net/reports/the-state-of-tax-justice-2020> (accessed 1 August 2023)
Introduction: The demand for concealment, avoidance, and impunity
£570bn was based in tax havens – in 2019, the latest year HMRC has released statistics for”.33
Civil liability
Creditors
Two principal means of redress for creditors are reciprocity in judgments between different jurisdictions and a prohibition on fraudulent transfers. Assisting debtors to avoid their creditors by neutralising reciprocity in certain cases and, more specifically, by refusing to recognise fraudulent transfer provisions, thereby assuring debtors of impunity, is a strategy which a number of the chimeric structures have been designed to achieve.
In the case of reciprocity in judgments, a jurisdiction binds itself to recognise a final judgment of a foreign court which is not capable of further appeal in that foreign jurisdiction (and may limit the types of judgment to, for example, decisions requiring a defendant to make a money payment rather than decisions compelling specific performance of contractual or other liabilities). As what is at stake is reciprocity, parallel recognition and enforcement legislation will be in place in the foreign jurisdiction. The length of such a list per jurisdiction is determined by the number of parallel arrangements it chooses to make.34
A significant exception to this general principle of international law is the stance taken by the United States of America:
There is no bilateral treaty or multilateral convention in force between the United States and any other country on reciprocal recognition and enforcement of judgments. Although there are many reasons for the absence of such agreements, a principal stumbling block appears to be the perception of many foreign states that U.S. money judgments are excessive according to their notions of liability. Moreover, foreign countries have objected to the extraterritorial jurisdiction asserted by courts in the United States. In consequence, absent a treaty, whether the courts of a foreign country would enforce a judgment issued by a
33 Emma Agyemang, ‘UK Admits it Has No Idea How Much Tax is being Evaded Through Offshore Assets’ Financial Times (London, 29 May 2022) <www.ft.com/content/a14162d00f65-4c63-842e-e0778516d03a> (accessed 1 August 2023). The figures derive from exchanges of information under the OECD Common Reporting Standard (see ch 4, part 3).
34 Examples of enabling legislation are the Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Act 1933 (United Kingdom) <www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/23-24/13> (accessed 1 August 2023) and the Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) (Isle of Man) Act 1968 (Isle of Man) <https://legislation.gov.im/cms/images/LEGISLATION/PRINCIPAL/1968/1968-0006/ JudgmentsReciprocalEnforcementIsleofManAct1968_1.pdf> (accessed 1 August 2023)
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XVIII.
RELICS OF THE ARK.
We have already seen that Berosus relates how in his time portions of the ark were removed, and used as amulets. Josephus says that remains of the ark were to be seen at his day upon Ararat; and Nicolas of Damascus reports the same. S. Epiphanius writes: “The wood of the ark of Noah is shown to this day in the Kardæan (Koord) country.”[261] And he is followed by a host of fathers. El Macin, in his History of the Saracens, relates that the Emperor Heraclius visited the relics after he had conquered the Persians, in the city of Thenia, at the roots of Ararat. Haithon, the Armenian, declares that upon the snows of Ararat a black speck is visible at all times: this is Noah’s ark.[262] Benjamin of Tudela, in his Itinerary, says that all the wood was carried away by the Caliph Omar, in A.D. 640, and was placed by him in a temple or mosque he erected in an island formed by the Tigris. One of the beams is shown in the Lateran at Rome. In 1670, Johann Jansenius Strauss ascended to a hermit’s cell on the side of Ararat, to bind up the cœnobite’s leg which was broken. The hermit’s cell, said Strauss, was five days’ journey up the mountain, athwart three clouds, and above a region of intolerable cold, in a calm warm atmosphere. From the account of the hermit, Herr Strauss learnt that the old man had dwelt there twenty-five years, and that he had felt there neither rain nor winds. On the top of the mountain, fifteen Italian miles from the cell, through the clear air, was distinguishable the great vessel grounded in the snow. The hermit had reached it, and of one of its planks had cut a cross, which he exhibited to the German traveller.
In the town of Chenna, in Arabia Felix, says the traveller Prévoux, is a large building, said to have been erected by Noah; and a large
piece of wood is exhibited through an iron grating, which is said to have formed a portion of his ark. There is also to be seen at Chenna a well, said to have been dug by the patriarch Jacob, of which the water is icy cold.
The Armenians say that a certain monk, Jacob, once ascended Ararat, and carried off a fragment of the ark, which he made afterwards into a cross, and this is preserved amongst the sacred relics of Etchmiadzin. When the Persian king, Abassus the Great, sent to inquire about the ark, the monks replied that it was in vain for him to attempt to reach it, on account of the precipices and glaciers, and innumerable difficulties of the way.[263]
XIX.
CERTAIN DESCENDANTS OF HAM.
We shall follow certain Mussulman traditions for what follows. Ad, son of Amalek, therefore grandson of Ham, established himself in Arabia, where he became chief of the tribe of the Adites. He fell into idolatry. He had two sons named Schedad and Schedéd, who reigned over numerous subjects—one for two hundred and fifty, the other for three hundred years. They built a superb city, where houses were of sumptuous magnificence; the like of this city was never seen before, nor will be seen again. This city vanished when the tribe of the Adites was exterminated; as we shall relate when we give the legends attaching to Heber. The commentators of the Koran tell marvels of this wondrous city.
Under the Khalifate of Moawiyah, first of the Ommiades, an Arab of the desert, named Kolabah, going in quest of his camel in the plain of Aden, lighted on the gate of a beautiful city. He went in, but, being filled with fear, he did not remain there more time than sufficed for him to collect some of the stones of the street, and then he returned.
His neighbours, to whom he relates his adventure, repeated it to the Khalif, who ordered Kolabah to be brought before him. The Arab related frankly what he had seen, but Moawiyah would not give credence to the marvellous tale, till he had consulted his learned men, and especially the illustrious Al-Akhbar, who assured him that the story of the poor Arab was worthy of all trust, for the city he had seen was none other than that built by Schedad, son of Ad, in the land of the Adites in which Aden is situated; and that, as the pride of this prince knew no bounds, God had sent His angel to destroy all the inhabitants, and conceal their splendid city from the eyes of men,
to be revealed only at intervals, that the memory of God’s judgment might not fade out of men’s minds.
Schedad had a son named Dhohak, of whom strange tales are told. He knew magic, and gained the sovereignty over the entire universe; and he kept his subjects in terror by excessive cruelty. In the Caherman-Nâmeh it is related that the Devil, satisfied with his proceedings, offered him his services gratuitously, and they were cheerfully accepted. The ferocity of the tyrant increased, he skinned men alive, impaled and crucified them on the slightest charges.
After having served him five years, the Evil One thus addressed him: “Sire! for many years I have been thy faithful attendant, neither have I received of thee any recompense. Now I beseech of thee one favour—that I may kiss thy shoulders.”
This favour was readily granted. Dhohak himself plucked off his mantle to facilitate the kiss.
But no sooner had the Devil applied his lips to the two shoulders of the tyrant, than two serpents, which could not be plucked off, fastened there and began to gnaw his flesh.
Tabari says that the king bore on his shoulders two frightful ulcers or cancers, resembling serpents’ heads, sent him by God as a punishment for his crimes. These cancers caused him such acute agony, that he shrieked night and day. No one was able to provide a remedy or to abate the torment.
One night when he was asleep, some one appeared to him in a dream, and said, “If you desire your ulcers to give less pain, apply to them human brains.”
Next day, Dhohak awoke and ordered two men to be brought before him; he slew them, cut open their skulls, extracted the brains and applied them to his cancers. The relief was instantaneous, and Dhohak felt, for the first time for many days, some hours of repose.
After this, every day two men were killed to form poultices for his ulcers. During the two hundred latter years of the life of Dhohak, the prisons were emptied to satisfy his requirement for fresh brains; and when no more criminals could be procured, it was made a tribute for
his kingdom to render to him two men, each day, to be immolated to soothe his pain.
Now there was at Ispahan a blacksmith, named Kaveh, who had two beautiful sons, whom he loved more dearly than his own life. One day they were seized, carried before the king, and his shoulders were poulticed with their brains.
Kaveh was at work at his anvil when the news of the slaying of his sons reached him. He deserted his anvil; and uttering a piercing cry, he rushed into the streets, with his leathern apron before him, bitterly lamenting his loss, and calling for vengeance on the monarch. The people crowded about him, they plucked off his leather apron, and converted it into a standard.
The crowd gathered as it advanced. From every street men flowed to join the army, and shortly the blacksmith found himself at the head of a hundred thousand men.
They marched to Demavend, where was the palace of the tyrant. And Kaveh, before attacking it, thus addressed his soldiers, “I am not one to lead you against a king; you need a king to make war against a king.”
“Well,” said his followers, “we elect you to be our king.”
“I am but a simple blacksmith, and am not fit to rule,” answered Kaveh, “but there is a royal prince named Afridoun, the son of Djemschid, who has fled from the cruelty of Dhohak: choose him.”
They agreed. The prince was found and invested with the sovereignty; then a battle was fought, and Dhohak’s army was routed, and the tyrant was slain.
When Afridoun mounted the throne, he named Kaveh governor of Ispahan. And when Kaveh was dead, the king asked his children to give him their father’s leathern apron. Then, having obtained it, he placed it among his treasures, and whenever he went to battle he attached the smith’s apron to a tall staff, and marched under that banner against his enemies.
In after years, this leathern apron was studded with precious stones, till Omar, despising it, ordered the old piece of leather to be burnt; but Yezdeguerd had already robbed it of its gems.[264]
Afridoun exercised the sovereignty during two hundred years. He was the first to study astronomy, and he founded the science of medicine. He was the first king to ride on an elephant. He had three sons, Tur, Salm, and Irad. He loved the third son, Irad, more than the two elder, and he gave him the sovereignty over Irad, Mosul, Koufa, and Bagdad.
After the death of Afridoun, Tur and Salm marched against Irad, defeated him and killed him, saying: “Our father has divided his inheritance unjustly. He has given to Irad the best portion, the centre of the world; as for us, we are cast out to its extremities.”
On the death of Tur and Salm, the crown left this family, and passed to a king named Cush, who was of the sons of Ham, the son of Noah. Cush reigned forty years. After him Canaan ascended the throne. Cush and Canaan worshipped idols. It is said that Nimrod was the son of Canaan. When Canaan died, Nimrod succeeded him. Nimrod had a vizir named Azar (Terah), son of Nahor, son of Sarough (Serug), who was sixth in generation from Noah. This Azar was the father of Abraham, the friend of God.
From the time of the Deluge to the time of Abraham was three thousand years. During that period, there was no prophet save Hud (Eber), who was sent to the Adites, and Saleh, who was sent to the Thamudites.
We shall relate the history of Hud and of Saleh, and then return to that of Nimrod.[265]
XX. SERUG.
“And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg.
“And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu. And Reu lived two and thirty years, and begat Serug. And Serug lived thirty years, and begat Nahor.”[266]
Serug is said to have discovered the art of coining gold and silver money. In his days men erected many idols, into which demons entered and wrought great signs by them. Samiri was king of the Chaldees, and he discovered weights and measures and how to weave silk, and also how to dye fabrics. He is related to have had three eyes and two horns.
At the same time Apiphanus was king of Egypt. He built a ship, and in it made piratical descents upon the neighbouring people living on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. He was succeeded by Pharaoh, son of Saner, and the kings after him assumed his name as their title.[267]
Nahor was the son of Serug. In the twenty-fifth year of his life, Job the Just underwent his trial, according to the opinion of Arudha the Canaanite. At that time Armun, king of Canaan, built the two cities Sodom and Gomorrah, and called them after the names of his two sons; but Zoar he named after his mother. At the same time, Murk or Murph, king of Palestine, built Damascus.[268]
XXI.
THE PROPHET EBER.
“Unto Shem, the father of all the children of Eber, the brother of Japheth the elder, even to him were children born.
“The children of Shem;—Elam, and Asshur, and Arphaxad, and Lud, and Aram.
“And the children of Aram;—Uz, and Hul, and Gether, and Mash.
“And Arphaxad begat Salah; and Salah begat Eber.”[269]
According to some Mussulman writers, Oudh (Lud), the son of Shem, had a son named Ad; but, according to others, Ad was the son of Aram, son of Shem.
The tribes of Ad and Thamud lived near one another in the desert of Hedjaz, in the south of Arabia. The land of the people of Ad was nearer Mecca than the valley of Hidjr, and the valley of Hidjr is situated at the extremity of the desert on the road to Syria.
Never in all the world were there such great and mighty men as the Adites. Each of them was twelve cubits high, and they were so strong that if any of them stamped on the ground he sank up to his knees.
The Adites raised great monuments in the land which they inhabited. Wherever these Cyclopean edifices exist, they are called by the Arabs the constructions of the Adites.
God ordered the prophet Hud (Eber) to go to the Adites and preach to them the One true God, and turn them from idolatry. But the Adites would not hearken to his words, and when he offered them the promises of God, they said, “What better dwellings can He give
us than those which we have made?” And when he spoke to them of God’s threatenings, they mocked and said, “Who can resist us who are so strong?”
For fifty years did the prophet Hud speak to the Adites, and their reply to his exhortations is preserved in the Koran, “O Hud, you produce no evidence of what you advance; we will not abandon our gods because of your preaching. We mistrust your mission. We believe that one of our gods bears a hatred against you.”
Hud replied, “I take God to witness, and you also be witnesses, that I am innocent of your polytheism.”[270]
The words of the Adites, “We believe that one of our gods bears a hatred against thee,” signified that they believed one of their gods had driven him mad.
During the fifty years that Hud’s mission lasted, the Adites believed neither in God nor in the prophet, with the exception of a very few, who believed in secret.
At the end of that time God withheld the rain from heaven, and afflicted the Adites with drought. All the cattle of Ad died, and the Adites fainted for lack of water. For three years no rain fell.
Hud said to the Adites, “Believe in God, and He will give you rain.”
They replied, “Thou art mad.” But they chose three men to send to Mecca with victims; for the infidels believe in the sanctity of Mecca, though they believe not in the One true God.
But Eber said, “Your sacrifices will be unavailing, unless you first believe.”
The three deputies started for Mecca with many camels, oxen, and sheep, as sacrifices. And when they reached Mecca they made friends with the inhabitants of that city, and were received with hospitality. They passed their days and nights in eating and drinking wine, and in their drunkenness they forgot their people, and the mission on which they had been sent. The inhabitants of Mecca ordered musicians to sing the afflictions of the Adites, to recall to the envoys the purpose of their visit. Then Lokman and Morthed, two of
the deputies, declared to Qaïl, the third, that they believed in Allah; and they added, “If our people had believed the words of the prophet Hud, they would not have suffered from drought,” and Lokman and Morthed were not drunk when they said these words.
Qaïl replied, “You do not partake in the affliction of our nation. I will go myself and will offer the victims.”
He went and led the beasts to the top of a mountain to sacrifice them, and turning his face to heaven, he said, “O God of heaven, hearken unto my prayer, and send rain on my poor afflicted people.”
Instantly there appeared three clouds in the blue sky: one was red, one was black, the third was white; and a voice issued from the clouds, saying, “Choose which shall descend upon thy people.”
Then Qaïl said within himself, “The white cloud, if it hung all day over my nation, would not burst in rain; the red cloud, if it hung over them night and day, would not drop a shower; but the black cloud is heavy with water.” So he chose the black cloud.
And a voice cried, “It is gone to fall upon thy people.”
Qaïl returned full of joy, thinking he had obtained rain; but that cloud was big with the judgments of God. Qaïl told what he had done to his companions, Lokman and Morthed, but they laughed at him.
Now the cloud, when it arrived over the land of Ad, was accompanied by a wind. And the Adites looked up rejoicing, and cried, “The rain, the rain is coming!”
Then the cloud gaped, and a dry whirlwind rolled out from it, and swept up all the cattle that were in the land, and raised them in the air, spun them about, and dashed them lifeless on the ground.
But the Adites said, “Fear not; first comes wind, then comes rain.” And they rushed out of their houses into the fields. Hud thought they were coming forth to ask his assistance; but they sought him not. Then the whirlwind caught them up and cast them down again. Now each of these men was like a palm-tree in stature, and they lay shattered and lifeless on the sand.
Hud was saved, along with those who had believed his word.
Now when the envoys at Mecca heard what had befallen their people, they went all three to the summit of the mountain, and Lokman and Morthed said to Qaïl, “Believe.” But he answered, raising his face and hands to heaven: “O God of heaven, if thou hast destroyed my people, slay me also.”
Then the whirlwind came, and rushed on him, and caught him up and cast him down, and he was dead.
But Lokman and Morthed offered their sacrifice, and a voice from heaven said, “What is your petition?”
Lokman answered: “O Lord, grant me a long life, that I may outlive seven vultures.” Now a vulture is the longest-lived of all birds; it lives five hundred years.
And the voice replied, “However long thy life may be, death will close it.”
Lokman said, “I know; that is true.”
Then his prayer was granted. And Lokman took a young vulture and fed it for five hundred years, and it died; then he took a second, and at the expiration of five hundred years it died also; and so on till he had reached the age of three thousand five hundred years, and then he died also.
Morthed made his request, and it was, “O Lord, give me wheat bread,” for hitherto in Ad he had eaten only barley bread. So Allah gave Morthed so much wheat, that he was able to make bread thereof all the rest of his life.
Hud lived fifty years with the faithful who had received his doctrine, and his life in all was one hundred and fifty years. The prophet Saleh appeared five hundred years after Hud; he was sent to the Thamudites.[271]
But there is another version of the story given by Weil.
Hud promised Schaddad, king of the Adites, a glorious city in the heavens, if he would turn to the true God. But the king said, “I need no other city than that I have built. My palace rests on a thousand pillars of rubies and emeralds; the streets and walls are of gold, and
pearl, and carbuncle, and topaz; and each pillar in my house is a hundred ells long.”
Then, at Hud’s word, God let the city and palace of Schaddad fade away like a dream of the night, and storm and rain descended, and night fell, and the king was without home in the desert.[272]
Of Lokman we must relate something more. He was a great prophet; some say he was nephew of Job, whose sister was his mother; others relate that he was the son of Beor, the son of Nahor, the son of Terah.
One day, whilst he was reposing in the heat of the day, the angels entered his room and saluted him, but did not show themselves. Lokman heard their voices, but saw not their persons. Then the angels said to him,—
“We are messengers of God, thy Creator and ours; He has sent us unto thee to announce to thee that thou shalt be a great monarch.”
Lokman replied, “If God desires what you say, His will can accomplish all things, and doubtless He will give me what is necessary for executing my duty in that position in which He will place me. But if He would suffer me to choose a state of life, I should prefer that in which I now am,”—now Lokman was a slave,—“and above all would I ask Him to enable me never to offend Him; without which all earthly grandeur would be to me a burden.”
This reply of Lokman was so pleasing to Allah, that He gave him the gift of wisdom to such a degree of excellence, that he became capable of instructing all men; and this he did by means of a great multitude of maxims, sentences, and parables to the number of ten thousand, each of which is more valuable than the whole world.[273]
When Lokman did not know anything with which others were acquainted, he held his tongue, and did not ask questions and thus divulge his ignorance.
As he lived to a great age, he was alive in the days of King David. Now David made a coat of mail, and showed it to Lokman. The sage had seen nothing like it before, and did not know what purpose it was to serve, but he looked knowing and nodded his head. Presently
David put the armour upon him, and marched, and said, “It is serviceable in war.” Then Lokman understood its object; so his mouth became unsealed and he talked about it.
Lokman used to say, “Silence is wisdom, but few practise it.”[274]
Thalebi relates, in his Commentary on the Koran, that Lokman was a slave, and that having been sent along with other slaves into the country to gather fruit, his fellow-slaves ate them, and charged Lokman with having done so. Lokman, to justify himself, said to his master, “Let every one of us slaves be given warm water to drink, and you will soon see who has been the thief.”
The expedient succeeded; the slaves who had eaten the fruit vomited it, and Lokman threw up only warm water
The same story precisely is told of Æsop.
Lokman is always spoken of as black, with thick lips. He is regarded by the Arabs much as is Bidpay by the Indians, and Æsop by the Europeans, as the Father of Fable.
XXII.
THE PROPHET SALEH.
The prophet Saleh was the son of Ad, son of Aram, son of Shem, and is not to be confused with Saleh, son of Arphaxad.
The Mussulmans say that he was sent to convert the Thamudites.
The Thamudites were in size and strength like their brethren the Adites, but they inhabited the rocks, which they dug out into spacious mansions. They had in the midst of their land an unfailing supply of sweet and limpid water. They were idolaters. Saleh came armed with the command of Allah to these men, and he preached to them that they should turn from the worship of stocks and stones to that of the living God who made them.
Now Saleh had been born among the Thamudites, but he had never been an idolater. When he was young, the natives of the land had laughed at him, and said, “He is young and inexperienced; when he is old, and has grown wiser, he will adore our gods.”
When Saleh grew old, he forbade the Thamudites to worship idols, and he spoke to them of the true and only God.
But they said, “What miracle can you work, to prove that your mission is from God?”[275]
Then he said, “Oh, my people, a she-camel that shall come from God shall be to you for a sign. Let her go and eat on the earth, and do her no injury, that a terrible retribution fall not upon you.”[276]
Now Saleh had asked them what miracle they desired, and they had answered, “Bring out of the rock a camel with red hair, and a colt of a camel also with red hair; let them eat grass, and we will believe.”
Saleh said to them, “What you ask is easy,” and he prayed.
Then the rock groaned and clave asunder, and there came out a she-camel with her foal, and their hair was red, and they began to eat grass.
Then the Thamudites exclaimed, “He is a magician!” and they would not believe in him.
The camel went to the perpetual fountain, and she drank it up, so that from that day forward from their spring they could get no water, and they suffered from thirst.
The Thamudites went to Saleh and said, “We need water!”
Saleh replied, “The fountain shall flow one day for you, and one day for the camel.”
So it was agreed that the camel should drink alternate days with the people of the land, and that alternate days each should be without water whilst the other was drinking.
Then Saleh said, for he saw that the people hated the camel and her foal, “Beware that you slay not these animals, for the day that they perish, great shall be your punishment.”
The she-camel lived thirty years among the Thamudites, but God revealed to Saleh that they were bent on slaying the camel, and he said, “The slayer will be a child with red hair and blue eyes.”
Now the Thamudites ordered ten midwives to attend on the women in their confinement, and if a child were born with the signs indicated by the prophet, it was to be destroyed instantly.
Nine children had thus been killed, and the parents conceived a deadly animosity against Saleh the prophet, and formed a design to slay him.
One of the chiefs among the Thamudites had a son born to him with red hair and blue eyes, and the nurses would have destroyed it, but the nine men spake to the father of the child, and they banded together, and saved the infant.
Now when this child had attained the age of eleven, he became great and handsome; and each of the parents whose children had been put to death, when he saw him, said, “Such an one would have been my son, had not he been slain at the instigation of Saleh.” And they combined to put the prophet to death. They said among themselves, “We will kill him outside the city, and returning, say we were elsewhere when he was murdered.”
Having formed this project, they left the city and placed themselves under a rock, awaiting his exit from the gates. But God commanded the rock, and it fell and crushed them all.
Next day their corpses were recovered, but the Thamudites were very wroth, and said, “Saleh has slain our children, and now he slays our men;” and they added, “We will be revenged on his camel.”
But no one could be found to undertake the execution of this deed, save the red-haired child. He went to the fountain where the camel was drinking, and with one kick he knocked her over, and with another kick he despatched her.
But the foal, seeing the fate of her mother, ran away, and the boy with the red hair and blue eyes ran after her.
Saleh, seeing what had taken place, cried, “The judgment of God is about to fall.”
The people were frightened, and asked, “What shall we do?”
“The judgment of God will not fall as long as the colt remains among you.”
Hearing this, the whole population went in pursuit of the young camel. Now it had fled to the mountain whence it had sprung, and the red-haired boy was close on its heels. And when the young camel heard the shouting of the inhabitants of the city, and saw the multitude in pursuit, it stood before the rock, turned round, uttered three piercing cries, and vanished.
The Thamudites arrived and beat the rock, but they could not open it. Then said Saleh, “The judgment of God will fall; prepare to receive
it. The first day your faces will become livid, the second day they will become black, and the third day red.”
Things happened as Saleh had predicted. And when the signs befel them which Saleh had foretold, they knew that their end was near. The first day they became ash pale, the second day coal black, and the third day red as fire, and then there came a sound from heaven, and all fell dead on the earth, save Saleh and those who believed in him; these heard the sound, but did not perish.
By the will of God, when the people were destroyed, one man was absent at Mecca; the name of this man was Abou-Ghalib. When he knew what had befallen his nation, he took up his residence in Mecca; but all the rest perished, as it is written in the Koran, “In the morning they were found dead in their houses, stretched upon the ground, as though they had never dwelt there.”
From Saleh to Abraham there was no prophet. At the time of that patriarch there was no king over all the earth. The sovereignty had passed to Canaan, the son of Cush, the son of Ham, who was the son of Noah.[277]
The camel of the prophet Saleh was placed by Mohammed in the heavens, together with the ass of Balaam, and other favoured animals.
Now wonderful as is this story, it is surpassed by that related by certain Arabic historians of the mission of Saleh. This we proceed to give.
Djundu Ibn Omar was king of the Thamudites, a people numbering seventy thousand fighting men. He had a palace cut out of the face of a rock, and his high priest, Kanuch Ibn Abid, had one likewise. The most magnificent building in the city was a temple which contained the idol worshipped by the people. This idol had the head of a man, the neck of a bull, the body of a lion, and the feet of a horse. It was fashioned out of pure gold, and was studded with jewels.
One day, as Kanuch, the high priest, was worshipping in the temple, he fell asleep, and heard a voice cry, “The truth will appear, and the
madness will pass away.” He started to his feet in alarm, and saw the idol prostrate on the floor, and its crown had fallen from its head.
Kanuch cried out for assistance, and fled to the king, who sent men to set up the image, and replace on its head the crown that had fallen from it.
But doubt took possession of the heart of Kanuch; he no longer addressed the image in prayer, and his enthusiasm was at an end. The king observed this, and sent two vizirs with orders to imprison and execute him. But Allah struck the vizirs with blindness, and he sent two angels to transport Kanuch to a well-shaded grotto, well supplied with all that could content the heart of man.
As Kanuch was nowhere to be found, the king appointed his kinsman Davud to be high priest. But on the third day he came to the king to announce to him that the idol was again prostrate.
The monarch set it up once more, and Eblis, entering the image, spoke through its mouth, exhorting all men to beware of novel doctrines which were about to be introduced.
Next feast-day Davud was about to sacrifice two oxen to the idol, when one of them opened its mouth, and thus addressed him:—
“Will you sacrifice creatures endued with life by the living God to a mass of lifeless metal? O God, do Thou destroy this sinful nation!” And the oxen broke their halters, and ran away.
Horsemen were deputed to pursue and capture them, but they escaped, for Allah screened them.
But God in His mercy resolved to give the Thamudites another chance of repenting of their idolatry.
Raghwah, Kanuch’s wife, had shed incessant tears since the disappearance of her husband. Allah dispatched a bird out of Paradise to guide her to the grotto of Kanuch.
This bird was a raven; its head was white as snow, its back was green as emerald. Its feet were purple; its beak of heaven’s blue. Its eyes were gems; only its body was black, for this bird did not fall under the curse of Noah, as it was in Paradise.
It was midnight when the raven entered Raghwah’s dark chamber, where she lay weeping on a carpet; but the glory of its eyes illumined the whole room, as though the sun had suddenly flashed into it. Raghwah rose from her place, and gazed in wonder on the lovely bird, which opened its beak and said, “Arise and follow me! God has seen thy tears, and will reunite thee to thy husband.”
Raghwah followed the raven, which flew before her, and with the light of its eyes turned the night into day. The morning star had not risen, when they stood before Kanuch’s grot. Then cried the raven, “Kanuch, open to thy wife!” and so vanished.
Nine months after that Raghwah had rejoined her husband, she bore him a son, who was the image of Seth, and had on his brow the prophetic light; and Kanuch, in the hope of drawing him to the knowledge of the true God and to a pious life, gave him the name of Saleh (The Blessed).
Not long after Saleh’s birth, Kanuch died; and the raven of Paradise returned to the grotto to lead back Saleh to his own people.
Saleh grew in beauty and strength, to the admiration of his mother and all who saw him.
A war was being waged between the descendants of Ham and the Thamudites, and the latter had lost many battles and a large portion of their army, when Saleh suddenly appeared in the battle-field at the head of a few friends, and, by his personal heroism, turned the tide of victory, and routed the enemy.
This success drew upon him the gratitude and love of the people, but the envy of the king was kindled, and he sought the life of the young prophet. But as often as assassins were sent by the king to take his life, their arms shrivelled up, and were only restored at the intercession of Saleh. These circumstances tended to increase and confirm the number of his adherents, so that he was able to build a mosque, and occupy with worshippers of the true God one whole quarter of the city
But one day the king surrounded the mosque with his troops, and threatened Saleh and his followers with death if they would not work
a miracle to prove their worship to be the true one.
Saleh prayed, and instantly the leaves of the date-tree that stood before the mosque were transformed into serpents and scorpions, which fell over the king and his soldiers; whilst two doves, which dwelt on the terrace of the mosque, sang aloud, “Believe in Saleh, he is a prophet and messenger of God!”
But Saleh was moved with compassion when he saw the anguish of those who had been bitten by the scorpions and vipers, and he prayed to God, and the noxious reptiles were transformed back again into date-leaves, and those who had been stung were made whole. Nevertheless the king hardened his heart, and continued to worship false gods.
When Saleh saw the impenitence of the Thamudites, he besought God to destroy them; but an angel appeared to him in a cave, and sent him to sleep for twenty years.
When he woke he betook himself towards the mosque he had built, never doubting that he had slept but a single night. The mosque was gone, his friends and adherents were dead or dispersed, a few remained, but they were old, and he hardly recognized them. Falling into despair, the angel Gabriel came to him and said,—
“Thou wert hasty in desiring the destruction of this people, therefore God hath withdrawn from thy life twenty years, which He has taken from thee in sleep. Now He sends thee precious relics wherewith to establish thy mission, to wit, Adam’s shirt, Abel’s sandals, Seth’s overcoat, Enoch’s seal ring, Noah’s sword, and Hud’s staff.”
Next day, as the king Djundu with his brother Schihab, and the priests and the princes of the people, formed a procession to an idol temple near the town, Saleh ran before the procession, entered the temple, and stood in the door.
“Who art thou?” asked the king in astonishment: for he did not recognize Saleh, so greatly had God changed him in his sleep of twenty years.
He answered: “I am Saleh, the messenger of the only God, who preached to you twenty years ago, and showed to you many signs
