Edris

(the student), one of the appellations of the prophet Enoch among the Mohammedans. He was the third of the prophets, and, according to the Arabians, the greatest that flourished in the antediluvian world. They represent him as having been commissioned to preach to the Cainites, but they rejected his teaching; and in consequence he waged war upon them and made them slaves to the true believers. He is also said to have ordered the faithful to treat all future infidels in the same way, being thus the originator of religious wars and of the persecution of infidels. To Edris the Arabians attribute the invention of the pen, the needle, the sciences of astronomy and arithmetic, and the arts of magic and divination. He is alleged to have written thirty treatises, only one of which survives to the present time — The Book of Enoch, an apocryphal work, held in great esteem by the Arabians. See Gardner, Faiths of the World, s.v.