Bahamut is a vast fish that supports the earth in Arabian mythology

Arabian mythology

Arabian mythology comprises the ancient, pre-Islamic beliefs of the Arabs. Prior to Islam the Kaaba of Mecca was covered in symbols representing the myriad demons, djinn, demigods, or simply tribal gods and other assorted deities which represented the polytheistic culture of pre-Islamic Arabia...

. In some sources, Bahamut is described as having a head resembling a hippopotamus or elephant.

Overview

In Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

' Book of Imaginary Beings

Book of Imaginary Beings

Jorge Luis Borges wrote and edited the Book of Imaginary Beings in 1957 as the original Spanish Manual de zoología fantástica, or Handbook of Fantastic Zoology, expanding it in 1967 and 1969 to the final El libro de los seres imaginarios...

, Bahamut is a beast of Arabic mythology "altered and magnified" from Behemoth

Behemoth

Behemoth is a mythological beast mentioned in the Book of Job, 40:15-24. Metaphorically, the name has come to be used for any extremely large or powerful entity.-Plural as singular:...

. In Arabic myth, Bahamut is a giant fish, described as so immense that a human cannot bear its sight; "[a]ll the seas of the world, placed in one of the fish's nostrils, would be like a mustard seed laid in the desert."

One tradition describes Bahamut as a fish floating in a fathomless sea. On the fish is a bull called Kujata, on the bull, a ruby mountain; on the mountain, an angel; over the angel, six hells; over the hells, earth; and over the earth, seven heavens. Another tradition places the Earth's foundation on water, the water on a crag, the crag on a bull's forehead, the bull on a bed of sand, the sand on Bahamut, Bahamut on a stifling wind, and the wind on a mist; what is beneath the mist is unknown. In a similar telling of the hierarchy, Bahamut supports a layer of sand, on which stands a giant bull, on whose forehead rests a mountain of rock which holds the waters in which the earth is located.

According to Borges, Bahamut is the giant fish that Isa (Jesus

Jesus

Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...

) beholds in the 496th night of the One Thousand and One Nights. Bahamut in this telling is a giant fish swimming in a vast ocean. It carries a bull on its head; the bull bears a rock, and above the rock is an angel who carries the seven stages of the earths. Beneath Bahamut is an abyss of air, then fire, and beneath that a giant serpent called Falak

Falak

Falak in the legend of Bahamut is the powerful serpent that lives under the Realm of Fire. This serpent is said to be so great that only its fear of the greater power of Allah prevents it from swallowing all creation....

.

Upon seeing Bahamut, Isa passes into unconsciousness:

At this sight Isa fell down aswoon, and when he came to himself, Allah

Allah

Allah is a word for God used in the context of Islam. In Arabic, the word means simply "God". It is used primarily by Muslims and Bahá'ís, and often, albeit not exclusively, used by Arabic-speaking Eastern Catholic Christians, Maltese Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Mizrahi Jews and...

 spake to him by inspiration, saying, 'O Isa, hast thou seen the fish and comprehended its length and its breadth?' He replied, 'By Thy honour and glory, O Lord, I saw no fish; but there passed me by a great bull, whose length was three days' journey, and I know not what manner of thing this bull is.' Quoth Allah, 'O Isa, this that thou sawest and which was three days in passing by thee, was but the head of the fish; and know that every day I create forty fishes like unto this.'

Borges cites the idea of Bahamut as part of a layered cosmology

Cosmology

Cosmology is the discipline that deals with the nature of the Universe as a whole. Cosmologists seek to understand the origin, evolution, structure, and ultimate fate of the Universe at large, as well as the natural laws that keep it in order...

 as an illustration of the cosmological proof of the existence of God, which infers a first cause from the impossibility of infinite prior causes

Infinite regress

An infinite regress in a series of propositions arises if the truth of proposition P1 requires the support of proposition P2, the truth of proposition P2 requires the support of proposition P3, .....

. He also draws parallels between Bahamut and the mythical Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese fish Jinshin-Uwo.

The 2007 album Bahamut by blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

/indie folk

Indie folk

Indie folk is a music genre that arose in the 1990s from singer/songwriters in the indie rock community showing heavy influences from folk music scenes of the 50s, 60s and early 70s, country music, and indie rock. A few early artists included Lou Barlow, Beck, Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith...

/world fusion musical group Hazmat Modine

Hazmat Modine

Hazmat Modine is a blues/folk/world fusion/jazz musical group from New York. "Hazmat" is a portmanteau of "hazardous material" and "Modine" is the name of a company that manufactures commercial heaters but may be used to refer to the heater itself...

features a song of the same name about Bahamut and Behemoth.