either clawed or that of a rooster. He walks aided by two walking sticks in Lesage's work, and this gave rise to the English title The Devil on Two Sticks (also later translated The Limping Devil and The Lame Devil). Lesage attributes his lameness to falling from the sky after fighting with another devil. On 18 February 1865, author Evert A. Duyckinck sent President Abraham Lincoln a letter, apparently mailed from Quincy. Duyckinck signed the letter "Asmodeus", with his initials below his pseudonym. His letter enclosed a newspaper clipping about an inappropriate joke allegedly told by Lincoln at the Hampton Roads Peace Conference. The purpose of Duyckinck's letter was to advise Lincoln of "an important omission" about the history of the conference. He advised that the newspaper clipping be added to the "Archives of the Nation". In the Kabbalah According to the Kabbalah and the school of Shlomo ibn Aderet, Asmodeus is born as the result of a union between Agrat bat Mahlat and King David. In Islam In Islamic culture, Asmodeus is known as Sakhr (rock), probably a reference to his fate being imprisoned inside a box of rock, chained with iron and thrown into the sea. Asmodeus become a central figure in exegesis of the Quranic verse Surah 38:34: "We allowed Solomon to be seduced by temptation, and we cast a body upon his seat. Then he repented." According Quranic exegesis tafsir, the "body" is Asmodeus; either a jinni or demon (div) impersonating the king. Ibn al-Faqih and Aja'ib al-Makhluqat in his Aja'ib al-Makhluqat refer to Sakhr as a jinni, while the Persian Quran exegete (224–310 AH; 839–923 AD) Tabari (224–310 AH; 839–923 AD) refers to him as a shaitan in his work Annals of al-Tabari. Others also identify him as a demon (div), which might have been the Persian term for shaitan as both refer to innovocally evil spirits. After forty days, Solomon defeats Sakhr and gets his throne back, whereupon he imprisons Sakhr in a rock sealed in iron chains and throws him into the sea. This tale became key to medieval Sufism regarding spiritual development. Attar of Nishapur elucidates the allegory: one must behave like a triumphant 'Solomon' and chain the demons of the nafs or lower self, locking the demon-prince into a 'rock', before the rūḥ or soul can make the first steps to the Divine. The idea of a spirit in a bottle,