Ass

Job xi. 12. xxxix. 5. Jer. xiv. 6. Ps. ciii. 12.ASS, wild, an Animal formerly very common in Palestine, and frequently spoken of in Scripture. It lives in the most remote deserts, and is very jealous of its liberty. It can hardly endure thirst; and draws a great number of females of its own species after it. Josephus relates¹, that Herod the Great sometimes killed at one hunting only forty wild Asses². Some of the Moderns have supposed the wild Ass to be a very beautiful Animal³, about the size of a midling Mule, pretty tall, fat, with fine smooth hair; and that it has nothing of the Ass but the ears; that the hair of it is variously coloured in a very singular manner, with grey, black, and reddish fillets, all of the same size and proportion, which turn in a circle towards the flanks, and in curls towards the other parts. One of them has been sold for fourteen or fifteen thousand gold crowns. Ludolfus has given us a print of one, in the Comment on his Ethiopic History, p. 150. He says the Africans call this Animal Zecora; and the inhabitants of Congo, Zebra; and that the name of the wild Ass is given it very improperly.

The Eastern people say that the wild Ass is one of the swiftest Animals that is. The flesh of it is good to eat. I have seen the skin of one of these Asses stuff’d at M. Paul Lucas’s, which shews that they are about the size of a midling Mule, with several lists of a brown colour, grey, black, and inclining to red. It is my conjecture that these are the Asses which the Scripture calls white Asses⁴, which the Princes of Israel rode upon. It is certain that this Ass is not wild but tame.

The name Zecora, by which the Africans call it, is much the same with that of Zechora, by which Deborah mentions the She-Asses made use of generally by the Great Men of Israel for riding, whereof we have been just now speaking. She seems to intimate that these Animals were of service in war; and there are some still to be seen in the East, which are employed in such uses.

The Beast upon which the Mahometans affirm their false Prophet Mahomet to have been mounted, in his supposed journey to Heaven, was, as they say, of a middle size between an Ass and a Mule; the name of it was Borak, which signifies bright, shining. I make no question but this was one of the Asses we are here speaking of, from whence Bourique in French is derived. The other Etymologies which are given of this word are all strained, and far-fetched. Boruk in Arabick, and Zecora in Hebrew, signify the same thing.

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