Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from Brigham Young University http://www.archive.org/details/lifeofmohammedfo1900bush MOHAMMED TH^ LIFE OF MOHAMMED FOUNDER OF THE RELIGION OF ISLAM, AND OF THE EMPIRE OF THE SA/^ACENS BY THE REV. GEORGE BUSH, A.M.. A. L. FOWLE NEW YORK 1900 THE IJCHARY BRIGHAM YOUNG U.../ERSITY PROVO, UTAH LIF£ OF MOHAMMAD. PREFACE. The present work lays claim to no higher cha- racter than that of a compilation. This indeea must necessarily be the character of any work at- tempted, at this day, upon the same subject. Ml the accessible facts in the life and fortunes of the Arabian prophet have long since been given to the world. New theories and speculations, moral and philosophical, founded upon these facts, and many of them richly deserving attention, are frequently pro- pounded to the reflecting, but they add little or no- thing to the amount of our positive information. A.il therefore that can now be expected is such a selection and arrangement and investment of the leading particulars of the Impostor's history, as shall convey to the English reader, in a correct and concentrated form, those details which a.re otherwise diflfiised through a great number of rare books, and couched in several different languages. Such a work, discreetly prepared* would supply, if we mistake not, a very considerable desideratum in our language — one which is beginning to be more sensibly felt than ever, and which the spirit of the age loudly requires to have supplied. How f} PREFACE. far the present sketch may go towards meeting th^ demcuni, it becomes others than the writer to judge. He has aimed to make the most judicious use of the materials before him, and from the whole mass to elicit a candid moral estimate of the character of the Founder of Islam. In one respect he may venture to assure the reader he will find the plan of the ensuing pages an improvement upon pre- ceding Memoirs ; and that is, in the careful colla- tion of the chapters of the Koran with the events of the narrative. He will probably find the history illustrated to an unexpected extent from this source — a circumstance, which, while it serves greatly to authenticate the facts related, imparts a zest also to the tenor of the narrative scarcely to he expected from the nature of the theme. In order to preserve the continuity of the story from being broken by incessant reference to au- thorities, the following catalogue is submitted, which will present at one view the principal works consulted and employed in preparing the present Life : — Sale's Koran, 2 vols. ; Universal History, Mod. Series, vol. i. ; Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. iii. ; Prideaux's Life of Mahomet ; Boulainvillier's do. ; do. in Library of Useful Knowledge, No. 45 ; Bayle's Historical Dictionary, Art. Mahomet ; Hottinger's Historia Orientalis : Abul-Faragii Historia Dynastarum, Pocock's Transl. ; Morgan's Mahometism Ex- plained, 2 vols. ; Forster's Mahometanism Un- veiled, 2 vols. ; D'Herbelot's Bibliotheque Orien- PREFACE. 7 tale ; Rycaut's Present State of the Ottoman Em- pire ; Ockley's History of the Saracens, 2 vols. ; White's Bampton Lectures ; Lee's Translation of the Rev. H. Martyn's Controversial Tracts ; Whitaker's Origin of Arianism; Faber's Sacred Calendar of Prophecy, 3 vols. ; Buckingham's, Keppel's, Burckhardt's, and Madden's Travels in the East. On the subject of the Arabic proper names so frequently occurring in this vrork, it may be uselul to the English reader to be informed, that Al is a particle equivalent to our definite article The. Thus, Alcoran is composed of two distinct words signifying The Koran^ of which the last only ought to be retained in English. Again, Ebn is the Arabic word for son^ as is Bint or Binta for daughter, and with the particle Al after it, accord- ing to the Arabic usage, EhnoH is, the son. So Abu, father, with the article after it, Abu'* I, the fa- ther. Thus, Said Ebn Obcidah Abu Omri, is. Said, the son of Obeidah father of Omri ; it be- mg usual with the Arabs to take their names of distinction from their sons as well as their fathers. In like manner, EbnoH Athir, is, the son of Athir ; Abu^l Abbas, the father of Abbas : and as Abd signifies servant, and Allah, God ; AbdoUah or Ab- dallah'is, servant of God; AbdoU Snems, servant of the sun, (Sfc The deciding between the different modes in ^ hieh the prophet's name is, or ought to be, writ- S PREFACE. ten, and the adoption of the most eligible, has been a matter of perplexing deliberation. Upon con- sulting the Greek Byzantine historians, it appears that the same diversity of appellation which now prevails, has obtained for seven centuries. In some of them we meet with Maometis^ from which comes our Mahomet^ the most popular and familial title to the English ear ; and in others, Machomed, Other varieties among ancient authors might doubt- less be specified. But it will be observed, for the most part, that writers acquainted with the Arabic tongue and who have drawn their materials directly from the original fountains, as well as the greai body of recent Oriental travellers, are very unani- mous in adopting the orthography of the name which appears in our title page. If the Arabic usage be in fact the proper standard, as will pro- bably be admitted, Mohammed^ instead of either Manomet, Mahomed, or Mahommed, is the genuine form of the name, and the mode in which it should be uniformly written and pronounced. The fact, that the example of most Oriental scholars of the present day has given currency to this form, and the probability that it will finally supplant all others, has induced us, on the whole, to adopt it though with considerable hesitation. The following list of names and titles frequently occurring in connexion with the affairs of the East, together with their etymological import, will not be deemed inappropriate to the object of the present work. PREFACE. \f Mohammed, ) From Hamad; praised, highly ce Ahmed. J lebrated, illustrious, glorious, Moslem, ^ All from the same root, Aslam : Mussulman, I signifying to yield up, dedicate, I^'LAM, [ consecrate entirely/ to the service IsLAMisM. J of religion, Koran. — From Kara, to read ; the reading, Icgendy or that which ought to be read. Caliph. — A successor; from the Hebrew Chalaph; to he changed, to succeed, to pass round in a revolution. Sultan. — Originally from the Chaldaic Soltan ; signifying authority, dominion, principality. Vizier. — An assistant, Hadj. — Pilgrimage; Hadji; one who makes the pilgrimage to Mecca, Saracen. — Etymology doubtful ; supposed to be from Sarak, to steal ; a plunderer, a robber* Hejira, ) The Flight ; applied emphatically to Mo- or > hammed's flight from Mecca to Me- Hejra. ) dina. See page 106. Mufti The principal head of the Mohammedan religion, and the resolver of all doubtful points of the law. — ^An office of great dig- nity in the Turkish empire. Imam. — A kind of priest attached to the mosques^ whose duty it is occasionally to expound 10 PREFACE. a passage of the Koran. They, at the same time, usually follow some Tnore lucra live employment, MooLLAH. — The Moollahs form what ^s called the Ulema, or body of doctors in 'heology and jurisprudence, who are entrusted with the guardianship of the laws of the em- pire, and from whose number the Mufti is chosen. Emir. — Lineal descendants of the Prophet him- self, distinguished by wearing turbans of deep sea-green, the colour peculiar to all the race of Mohammed. They have spe- cial immunities on the score of their de- scent, and one of them carries the green standard of the Prophet when the Grand Seignior appears in any public solemnity. Pasha. — The title given to the provincial governors. A Pasha is to a province or pashalic, what the Sultan is to the empire, except that the judicial power is in the hands of the cadis, the provincial magistrates. The tails of a Pasha are the standards which he is allowed to carry ; one of three tails is one of three standards, which number gives the power of life and death. Reis Effendi. — This officer may be termed the High Chancellor of the Ottoman empire. He is at the head of a class of attorneyt wtuch ai this time contains tlie best informed men of the nation. Seraglio. — This word is derived from Serai, a term of Persian origin, signifying a palace. It is therefore improperly used as synony mous with Harem, the apartments of the women. The Seraglio is, in strictness of speech, the place where the court of the Grand Seignior is held ; but it so happenj^ that at Constantinople this building includes the imperial Harem within its walls. Crescent. — The national ensign of the Turks, surmounting the domes and minarets at- tached to their mosques, as the Cross does the churches of the Roman Catholics in Christian countries. This peculiar and universal use of the Crescent is said to have owed its origin to the fact, that at the time of Mohammed's flight from Mecca to Medina the moon was new. Hence the half moon is commemorative of that event. Sublime Porte. — This title, which is frequently applied to the court, cabinet, or executive department of the Ottoman empire, is de- rived, as the words import, from a lofty arched gateway of splendid construction, forming the principal entrance to the Seraglio or palace. It is a phrase equivalent to " Court of St. James," " Court of St. Cloud.'^ 12 PREFACE. As one grand object continually aimed at by the compiler of the ensuing pages has been to exhibit the Arabian prophet as a signal instrument in the hands of Providence, and to put the whole system of his imposture, with its causes, accompaniments, and effects, where it properly belongs, into the great scheme of the Divine administration of the world, it is hoped that the prophetic investigations of this subject in the Appendix will not be over- looked. The writer is disposed to lay a peculiar, perhaps an unreasonable, stress of estimation upon this portion of the work. Not that he deems the interpretation proposed as infallible, but he is in hopes that this essay towards a right explication may contribute somewhat to inspire a more gene- ral interest in this province of scriptural elucida- tion, and thus to pave the way for the eventual correction of the errors of this and every preceding exposition. No one who admits the truth of reve- lation but will acknowledge that events, which are so overruled in the providence of God as to revo- lutionize a great portion of the civilized and Chris- tian world, are important enough to claim •^, place in the prophetic developements of futurity ; and if predicted, these predictions, when accomplished, are worthy of being explained. Otherwise, we willingly and culpably fcrego one of the main ar guments in favour of the truth and divinity of the inspired oracles. CONTENTS. Prkfacb • * Introduction 17 CHAPTER I. National Descent of the Arabs— Proved to be from Ishmael, Son of Abraham 24 CHAPTER II. Birth and Parentage of Mohammed— Loses his Parents in early Child- hood— Is placed under the Care of his Uncle Abu Taleb— Goes int« Syria on a trading Expedition with his Uncle at the Age of thirteen— Enters the Service of Cadijah, a Widow of Mecca, whom he afterward marries 3S CHAPTER III. Mohammed forms the Design of palming a new Religion upon the World — Difficult to account for this Determination — Considerations suggested— Retires to the Cave of Hera— Announces to Cadijah tha Visits of Gabriel with a Portion of the Koran— She becomes a Convert — His slow Progress in gaining Proselytes — Curious Coincidence 44 *- CHAPTER IV. Tht Prophet announces his Mission among his Kindred of the Koreisb —Meets with a harsh Repulse— Begins to declare it in Public— View •f his ftindamental Doctrines— His Pretensions respecting the Korao —The disdainOil Rejection of his Message by his fellow-citizens— Hia consequent Denunciations against them M 14 CONTEMS. CUAPTER V. Mohammed notdisca "^ged by Opposition— The Burden of his Preachinf —-Description of Pa» idise — Error to suppose Women excluded — Of HoII— Gains some Followers — Challenged to work a Miracle — Hi* Reply—The Koran the grand Miracle of his Religion— Judicial Ob- duracy charged unon the Unbelievers ^ CHAPTER VI. The Koreisb exasperated and alarmed by Mohammed's growing Success — Commence Persecution — Some of his Followers seek safety in Flight— New Converts— The Koreish form a League against him — ^Abu Taleb and Cadijah die — He makes a temporary Retreat from Mecca- Returns and preaches with increased Zeal — Some of the Pilgrims from Medina converted 63 CHAPTER Vn. The Prophet pretends to have had a Night-journey through the Bereft Heavens— Description of the memorable Night by an Arabic writer- Account of the Journey— His probable Motives in feigning such an •xtravagaat Fiction 8ft CHAPTER Vm In RmNi^Kjy sent to the Prophet from Medina — Enters into a League with them— Sends thither a Missionary — Another Deputation sent to pr^e'r lum an Asylum in that City— His Enemies renew their Perse- curions — Determines to fly to Medina— Incidents on the Way— Makes a solemn Entry into the City— Apostate Christians supposed to have loined Id tendering him the Invitation 101 CHAPTER IX. ^ ^ rho prophet now rai.sed to a high Pitch of Dignity— Builds a Mosque —A Change in the Tone of his Revelations— The Faithful now com- manded to fight for the true Religion— His first warlike Attempt nnsuccesstXil— The Failure compensated in the Second— Account of the Battle of Beder — This Victory much boasted of— DiflUculties In the Division of ;he Spoil— Caab, a Jew, assassinated at the Instanjo ef the Prophet lOf l/ CONTENTS. 1ft CHAPTER X. Mohammed alters the Kebia— Many of his Followers greatly ofTended thereby — ^Mohammedan Institution of Prayer — Appoints the Fast of Ramadan— Account of this Ordinance 119 CHAPTER XI. The Koreish undertake a new Expedation against fhe Prophet— The Battle of Ohod— Mohammed and his Army entireiy defeated— His Fol- lowers murmur— The Prophet's poor Devices to retrieve the Disgrace incurred in this Action — Resolves it mainly into the Doctrine of Pre- destination— Wine and Games of Chance forbidden— Sophyan, son of Caled, slain— War of the Ditch 126 CHAPTER Xn^ The Jews the special Objects of Mohammed's Enmity— Several Tribes of them reduced to Subjection — Undertakes a Pilgrimage to Mecca — The Meccans conclude a Truce ^vith him of ten Years— His Power and Authority greatly increased — Has a Pulpit constructed for his Mosque— Goes against Chaibar, a City of the Arab Jews— Besieges and takes the City, but is poisoned at an Entertainment by a young Woman — Is still able to prosecute his Victories 135 CHAPTER XIII. V- Mohammed alleges a Breach of Faith on the Part of the Meccans, and marches an Army against them — The City surrendered to the Con- queror—Abu Sophyan and Al Abbas, the Prophet's Uncle, declare themselves Converts — Mecca declared to be Holy Ground- Fhe neigh- bouring Tribes collect an Army of four thousand Men to arrest the growing Power of the Prophet — The Confederates entirely overthrown —A rival Prophet arises in the Person of Mosei^ama- la crushed by Caled 145 CHAPTER XIV. rht Religion of the Prophet firmly es«tablished— The pnncipal Countries subjected by him — The effects of me Poison make alarming Inroads upon his Constitution— Perceives his End approaching — Preaches fw the last Time in Public-Allis^last Illness and Death — The Moslems scarcely persuaded that their Prophet was dead — Tumult appeased l»y Abubeker— The Prqxhet buried at Medina— The_ Story of the luinging Coffin false .7. 15 putes of the Alians, Sabellians, Nestorians, Euty- jphiaus, and Collyridians, by whom the great doc- trines of Christianity were so confounded with metaphysical subtleties and the jargon of schools, that they ceased, in great measure, to be regarded as a rule of life, or as pointing out the only_way oL-^al^^tion. The religion of the Gospel, the blessed source of peace, love, and unity among men, became, by the perverseness of sectaries, a firebrand of burning contention. Council after council was called — canon after canon was en- acted— prelates were traversing the country in every direction in the prosecution of party pur- poses, resorting to every base art, to obtain the authoritative establishment of their own peculiar tenets, and the condemnation and suppression of those of their adversaries. The contests also for the episcopal office ran so high, particularly in the West, that the opposing parties repeatedly had re- course to violence, and, in one memorable mstance, the interior of a Christian church was stained by the blood of a number of the adherents of the rival bishops, who fell victims to their fierce contentions. Yet it is little to be wondered at that these places of preferment should have been so greedily sought after by men of corrupt minds, when we learn. INTRODUCTION. 23 that they opened the direct road to wealth, luxury, and priestly power. Ancient historians represent the bishops of that day, as enriched by the pre- sents of the opulent, as riding abroad in pompous state in chariots and sedans, and surpassing, in the extravagance of their feasts, the sumpluousness of princes ; while, at the same time, the most barba- rous ignorance was fast overspreading the nations of Christendom, the ecclesiastical orders them- selves not excepted. Among the bishops, the legi- timate instnicters and defenders of the church, num- bers were to be foimd incapable of composing the poor discourses which their office required them to deliver to the people, or of subscribing the decrees which they passed in their councils. The little learning in vogue was chiefly confined to the monks. But they, instead of cultivating science, or diffusing any kind of useful knowledge, squan- dered their time in the study of the fabulous le- gends of pretended saints and martyi's, or in com- posing histories equally fabulous. This woful corruption of doctrine and morals in the clergy was followed, as might be expected, by a very general depravity of the common people ; and though we. cannot suppose that God left hhn- self altogether without witnesses in this dark pe- riod, yet the number of the truly faithfiil had dwin- dled down to a mere remnant, and the wide-spread- ing defection seemed to call aloud for the judg- ments of heaven. In view of this deplorable state of Christianity, anterior to the appearance of Mo- hammed, we are prepared to admit at once the 24 INTRODUCTION. justness of the following remarks upon the moral ends designed to be accomplished by Providence in peiTnitting this desolating scourge to arise at this particular crisis of the world. " At length," says Prideaux, " having wearied the patience and long-suffering of God, he raised up the Saracens to be the instruments of his wrath to punish them for it ; who, taking advantage of the weakness of theii power, and the distraction of counsels w^hich their divisions had caused among them, overran, with a terrible devastation, all the eastern provinces of the Roman empire. And having fixed that tyranny over them which hath ever since afflicted those parts of the world, turned every where their churches into mosques, and theii worsiiip into a horrid superstition ; and instead of that holy religion which they had abused, forced on them the abominable imposture of Mahomet. — Thus those once glorious and most llourishing churches, for a punishment of their wickedness, being given up to the insult, ravage, and scorn of the worst of enemies, were on a sudden over- whelmed with so terrible a destruction as hath re- duced them to that low and miserable condition under which they have ever since groaned ; the all-wise providence of God seeming to continue ihem thus unto this day under the pride and perse- cution of Mahometan tyranny, for no other end but to be an example and warning unto others against the wickedness of separation and divi- sion." LIFE OF MOHAMMED. CHAPTER I. National Descent of the Arabs — Proved to be from Ishmaely son of Abraham In tracin)^ the genealogy of nations to their pri- mitive founders, the book of Genesis is a docu- ment of inestimable value. With those wno do not hesitate to receive this and the other inspired books of the Scriptures as authentic vouchers for historical facts, the national descent of the Arabs from Ishmael, the son of Abraham, is a point which will not admit of dispute. The fact of this derivation, however, has been seriously brought into question by several skeptical writers, par- ticularly by the celebrated historian of the De- cline and Fall of the Roman Empire. With his usual dexterity of insinuation, he assails the united authority of Scripture history and Arabian tradi- tion, respecting the pedigree of this remarkable people. Yet m no case does he undertake, in a formal manner, to disprove the fact to which he still labours to give the air of a fiction.* A suc- cinct view, therefore, of the testimonies which go to establish the Ishmaelitish origin of the AratMi * Decline and Fall, ch 1 c to LIFE OF MOHAMMED. may form no unsuitable introduction to the pre- sent work, detailing the life and character of the individual who has done so much towards render- ing the race illustrious. From the narrative of Moses we learn not onlv the parentage, birth, and settlement of Ishmael in Arabia, but the fact also of a covenant made with Abraham in his behalf, accompanied with a pro- phecy respecting his descendants, singularly ana- logous to the prophetic promise concerning the more favoured seed of Isaac. "And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee ! And God said, Sarah, thy wife, shall bear thee a son indeed ; and thou shalt call his name Isaac : and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard thee : Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply liim exceedingly ; twelve princes shall he beget, and I will make him a great nation."* In like manner, it will be recol- lected, the nation of Israel sprung from the twelve sons of Jacob, and was divided into twelve tribes. In a subsequent part of the Mosaic records we find the notice of the incipient fulfilment of this prediction concerning the posterity of Ishmael " And tliese are the names of the sons of Ishmael, by their names, according to their generations : The first-born of Ishmael, Nebajoth, and Kedar, and Adbeel, and Mibsam, and Mishma, and Dumah, and Massah, Hadar, and Tema, Jetur. • Genesis, xrii 18—20. LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 27 Naphish, and Kedemah. These are the sons of Is}ima#l, and these are their names, by their towns, and by their castles : twelve princes ac- cording to their nations."* Their geographical residence is clearly ascertained in a subsequent verse. " And they dwelt from Havilah unto Shur, ihat is before Egypt as thou goest towards Assy- ria."! Havilah and Shur, by the consent of the best sacred geographers, are allowed to have com- posed part of the region between the Euphrates and the Red Sea, denominated Arabia.J From causes now unknown, the tribes of Nebajoth and Kedar appear to have acquired an ascendency over the rest, so that the whole country is some- times designated from one, sometimes from the other of them, just as the entire nation of Israel is sometimes called Judah from the superior num- bers, power, or influence of that tribe. Among the ancient profane historians also we find the names ot Nahitheans and Kedarenes frequently employed as an appellation of the roving inhabit- ants of the Arabian deserts. This testimony is directly confirmed by that of Josephus. After reciting the names of the twelve sons of Ishmael, he adds : — " These inhabit all the country extend- ing from the Euphrates to the Red Sea, giving it the name of the Nahatenean region. These are they who have given names to the whole race of the Arabs with their tribes."^ In the fourth cen- tury, Jerome, in his commentary on Jeremiah, de« * Genesis, XXV. 13— 16. fVer. 18. : WeUs's Sac. Geogr. vol i. d. 341. $ Ant. Jud. b. i. ch 12, §4 2b LIFE OF MOHAMMED, scribes Kedar as a country of the Arabian desert, inhabited by the Ishmaeiites, who were then termed Saracens. The same father, in his commentary on Isaiah, again speaks of Kedai- as the country of the Saracens, who in Scripture are called Ish- maeiites ; and observes of Nebajoth, that he was one of the sons of Ishmael, after whose names the Arabian desert is called. Another source of evidence in relation to the na- tional descent of the Arabs, is their having prac- lised, from time immemorial, the rite of circum- cision.__Josephus has a very remarkable passage inching the origin of this rite among the Jews and Arabs, in which he first makes mention of the circumcision of Isaac ; then hitroduces that of Ishmael ; and states concerning each, as matter of universal and immemorial notoriety, that the Jews and the Arabians severally practised the rite, con- formably with the precedents given them, in the persons of their respective fathers. His words are these: — "Now when Sarah had completed her ninetieth, and Abraham his hundredth year, a son (Isaac) is born unto them : whom they forth- with circumcise on the eighth day ; and from him the Jews derive their custom of circumcising children after the same interval. But the Ara- bians administer circumcision at the close of the thirteenth year : for Ishmael, the founder of their nation, the son of Abraham by his concubine, was circumcised at that time of life."* Similar to this is the testimony of Origen, who wrote in the third * Ant. Jud b. i. ch. 10, $ 5. I. UK OF MOHAMMED. 29 i'entury of the Christian era. " The natives of Ju- dea," says he, "generally circumcise their children on the eighth day ; but the Ishmaelites who in- habit Arabia universally practise circumcision in the thirteenth year. For this history tells us con- cerning them."* This writer, like Josephus, lived near the spot, and had the best opportunities of ob- taining correct mformation respecting the Arabians. It is evident, therefore, beyond contradiction, from his words, that the fact of their derivation from Abraham through Ishmael was an established point of historical record, and not of mere tradi- tionary fame, at the period at which he wrote. The direct testimony to the Ishmaelitish ex- traction of the Arabs furnished by the earliest re- cords of the Bible, and confirmed as we see by foreign authorities, is strikingly corroborated by repeated references, bearing upon the same point, in later inspired writers, particularly the prophets. Through the long course of sacred history and prophecy, we meet with reiterated allusions to existing tribes of Arabia, descending from Ishmael, and bearing the names of his several sons, among which those of Nebajoth and Kedar usually predominate. Thus the Prophet Isaiah, in foretelling the future conversion of the Gentiles, makes mention of the " rams of Nebajoth,''^ the eldest, and " all the flocks of Kedar^*^ the second of the sons of Ishmael ; that is, of the Arab tribes descending from these brothers ; a passage which not only aflbrds strong * Orig. Op. torn. ii. p 16. «<1. Ben©^ 30 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. proofof our main position, but conveys also an in- timation of the future in-gathering of the Moham- medan nations into the Christian Church. The same Prophet, in another part of his predictions, notices " the cities of the wilderness^ the villages that Kedar doth inhabit." And again, when de- mouncing impending calamity upon the land of Ara- bia, he foretells how " all the glory of Kedar shall fail ;" he employs the name of this single tribe as synonymous with that of the entire peninsula. In this connexion the words of the Psalmist may be cited : — " Wo is me that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar,^^ These words arc supposed by some of the Jewish commentators to have been written by David, under the influence of inspiration, as the prophetic plaint of the Christian Church, labouring and groaning, as it has some- times done, under the yoke of Mohammedan op- pression. In Jeremiah, also, we find mention of Kedar. He speaks of it as " the wealthy nation that dwelleth without care, which have neither gates nor bars, which dwell alone." Ezekiel, moreover, prophesies conjointly of " Arabia and ail the princes of Kedar.^^ An allusion to Tema, the ninth son of Ishmael, as the name of a warlike people of Arabia, occurs as early as in the book os Job : " The troops of Tema looked, the compa- nies of Sheba waited for them." Lastly, the tiibes sprung from Jetur and Naphishy the tenth and ele- venth sons of Ishmael, are commemorated in the first book of Chronicles, who are there called Ha" qaritesy from Haj^ar, the mother of Ishmael, and LIFE OF MOHAMMEK 31 of whom a hundred thousand males were taken captives. When to this mass of Scripture evidence of the descent of the Arabs from Ishmael we add the ac knowledged coincidence between the national cha- racter of this people in every age, and the predicted personal character of their progenitor — " And he will be a wild man ; his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him" — and the fact, that the Ishmaelitish origin of the Arabs has ever been the constant and unvarying tradition of that people themselves, the subject scarcely admits of a more irrefragable proof. There are certainly few landmarks of history more universal or more permanent than the names of countries affixed by original settlers, or flowing from them, and we may as justly question the derivation of Hungary from the Huns, France from the Franks, Turkey from the Turks, or Judea from Judah and the Jews, as those of the several districts of Arabia from the respective sons of Ishmael.* * The argument in this chapter is condensed from a mora ample di»- onssion of the subject in the Appendix to '^ Forster's MaooioecaaieiiB Unyeiled." 32 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. CHAPTER II. Birth and Paientage of Mohammed — Loses his Parents in early Child' hood — /* placed under the care of his uncle Abu Taleb — Goes inta Syria on a trading expedition with his uncle at the age of thirteen — Enters the service of Cadijahy awidow of Mecca, whom he afterward Mohammed, the Legislator of Arabia, the Founder of the Moslem or Mohammedan religion, and thence dignified by himself and by his followers with the title of Prophet and Apostle of God, was horn at Mecca, a city of Arabia, A. D. 569.* His lin^eage, notwithstanding that many of the earlier Christian writers, under the influence of mveterate prejudice against the prophet and his religion, have represented his origin as base and ignoble, is clearly shown to have been honourable and illustrious ; at least, when rated by the common standard ol dis- tinction among his countrymen. The ancient Ara- bians, deriving their pedigree from Ishmael, and inheriting the nomadic habits of their ancestor, had from time immemorial been divided into a number of separate independent tribes, roving at large over 4he immense sandy regions of which their country is composed, except where here and there a few thousands of them were gathered into cities, and engaged in merchandise. Some of these tribes. » Other authorities place his birth in A. D. 571. The precise year can Qot Z* determined with certainty. LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 33 from various causes, were more numerous, power- ful, and renowned than others. That of Koreish, from the founder of which Mohammed was m a di- rect line descended, had long been accounted the most noble of them all, and his ancestors, for se- veral generations, had ranked among the princes of Mecca, and the keepers of the keys of the Caaba,* its sacred temple. His father^s^ name was Abdallah, one of the thirteen sons of Abdol Motalleb, the chief personage in his day among the Koreish, and inheriting from his father Hashem the piincipal place in the government of Mecca, and succeeding him in the custody of the Caaba. This Hashem, the great-grandfather of Mohammed, was the most distinguished name in all the line of his predeces- sors, and from him not only is the appellation of Hashemites bestowed upon the kindred of the pro- phet, but even to this day, the chief magistrate, both at Mecca and Medina, who must always be of the race of Mohammed, is invariably styled •'The l^rnice of the Hashemites." The name of MohaaunecTs mother was Amina, whose parentage was traceable also to a distinguished family of the same tribe. Her lot was envied in gaining the hand of the son of Abdol Motalleb, as the surpassing beauty of his person is said to have ravished the hearts of a hundred maidens of Arabia, who were left, by his choice of Amina, to sigh over the wreck of their fondest hopes. Abdallah, though the son of a rich and princely * See Appendix B 4/*— o 34 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. father, was possessed of but little wealth, and as he died while his son was an infant, or, as some say, before he was born, it is probable that that little was seized with the characteristic rapacity of the A.rabs, and shared among his twelve surviving bro- thers, the powerful uncles of Mohammed. Al- though the laws of the Koran, in respect to inherit- ances, promulgated by the prophet himself, breathe more of the spirit of equity and kindness ; yet the pagan Arabs, previous to his time, as we learn from Eastern writers, were wont to treat widows and or phans with great injustice, frequently denying them any share in the inheritances of their fathers and husbands, under the pretence that it ought to be dis- tributed among those only who were able to bear arms, and disposing of widows, even against their own consent, as a part of their husband's posses- sions. The fatherless Mohammed, accordingly, faring like the rest of his countrymen, received, in the distribution of the patrimony, no more than five camels and an Ethiopian female slave. The Moslem writers, in order to represent the birth of their pretended prophet as equally marvel- lous with that of Moses or of Christ, the ancient messengers of God who preceded him, have re- ported a tissue of astonishing prodigies said to have occurred in connexion with that event. If tlie reader will receive their statements with the same implicit faith with which they seem to be delivered, he must acknowledge, that at the moment when the favoured infant was ushered into the world, a flood of light burst forth with him and illuminated every LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 35 pari of Syria ; that the waters of the Lake Sawa weie entirely dried up, so that a city was built upon its bottom: that an earthquake threw down four- teen towers of the king of Persia's palace ; that the sacred fire of the Persians was extinguished, and all the evil spirits which had inhabited the moon and stars were expelled together from their celes- tial abodes, nor could they ever after animate idols or deliver oracles on earth. The child also, if we may trust to the same authorities, discovered the most wonderful presages. He was no sooner born than he fell prostrate, in a posture of humble ado- ration, praying devoutly to his Creator, and saying, " God is great ! There is no God but God, ana I am his prophet !" By these and many other superna- tural signs, equally astounding, is the prophet's na- tivity said to have been marked. To some of them it would indeed appear that the earlier Christians gave an honest credence ; with this difference, how- ever, between their belief and that of his foJlowers, that while the latter ascribed them without hesita- tion to the hand of God, giving in this manner a gracious attestation to the prophetic character ol his servant, the former referred them directly to the agency of the devil, who might naturally be sup- posed, they thought, to v/ork some special won- ders on the present occasion. Upon the narrative of these miraculous phenomena the reader will form his own judgment. They are mentioned in the ab- sence of all authentic information touching the pe- riod and the event in question. Until the facts al- leged are proved, by competent historical testi- 8fi LIFE or MOrlAMMED. mony, to have taken place, it is scarcely necessary to call in the aid of divine or diabolical agency to account for them ; as it is much easier to imagine that an imposition or illusion may have been prac- tised upon the first, reporters, or that the whole ca- talogue of wonders is a mere fabrication of inte- rested partisans, than that the ordinary course of nature should have been disturbed at this crisis. The Arabic biographers of the prophet, more- over, inform us that Abdol Motalleb, his grandfa- ther, the seventh day after the birth of the child, gave a great entertainment, to which he invited the principal men of the Koreish, who, after the repast was over, desired him to give the infant a name. Abdol Motalleb immediately replied — " I name this child Mohammed." The Koreish grandees at once expressed their surprise that he did not call his grandson, according to custom, by a name which had belonged to some one of the family. But he persisted in the selection he had made, saying, ** May the Most High glorify in Heaven him whom he has created on earth !" alluding to the name Mohammed, which signifies praised or glo- rified. At the early age of two years Mohammed lost his father; and four years after, his mother. The helpless orphan, now cast upon the kindness of his relations, was taken into the house and family of his grandfather, under whose guardian care he re- mained but two years, when the venerable Motalleb hiiriself was also called to pay the debt of nature. \u a dying charge, he confided this tender plant* of LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 37 the ancient stock of the Koreish to the faithful handa of Abu Taleb, the eldest of his sons and the suc- cessor of his authority. " My dearest, best beloved son" — thus history or tradition reports the tenor of his instructions — " to thy charge I leave Moham- med, the son of thine own brother, strictly recom- mended, whose natural father the Lord hath been pleased to take to himself, with the intent that this dear child should become ours by adoption ; and much dearer ought he to be unto us than merely an adopted son. Receive him, therefore, at my dying hands, with the same sincere love and tender bow- els with which I deliver him to thy care. Honour, love, and cherish him as much, or even more than if he had sprung from thine own loins ; for all the honour thou showest unto him shall be trebled unto thee. Be more than ordinarily careful m thy treatment towards him, for it will be repaid thee with interest. Give him the preference before thine own children, for he exceedeth them and all man-, kind in excellency and perfection. Take notice, that whensoever he calleth upon thee, thou answer iiim not as an infant, as his tender age may re- quire, but as thou wouldst reply to the most aged and venerable person when he asketh thee any question. Sit not down to thy repasts of any sort soever, either alone or in company, till thy worthy nephew Mohammed is seated at the table before thee ; neither do thou ever ofter to taste of any kind of viands, or even to stretch forth thine hand towards the same, until he hath tasted thereof. If thou observest these my injunctions, thy goods 38 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. shall always increase, and in nowise be dimi- nished."* Whether Abu Taleb recognised in the deposite thus solemnly committed to his trust an object of such high destiny and such profound veneration as his father's language would imply, we are not in- fonned ; but there is good evidence that he acted towards his nephew the part of a kind friend and protector, giving him an education, scanty indeed, but equal to that usually received by his country men. His followers, it is true, in order to magnify their p^-ophet's supernatural gifts, and render the compositioa-of-4h«-KaraiL,a.§re.ater miracle, gene- rally affirm that he wa&, wholly illiterate, neither alJC^o X^ad or write. In this, indeed, they are au- thorized by the pretensions of Mohammed himself, who says,^^Thtis'Tf2nre--^we- seiii down the book of the Koran unto thee. — Thou couldst not read aiiy book before this ; J neither .couldst thou write it wdth thy right hand : then had the gainsayers justly doubted of the divine original thereof."! — *• Believe, therefore, in God and his apostle, the illitev-ii^ prophet." J But in the Koran, a complete hhur of imposture, the last thing we are to expect is an honest adherence to truth. There is abun- dant evidence, from the pages of this spurious re- velation itself, that writing was an art in common use among the Arabs at that time. The following precept concerning bonds puts it beyond question. ♦Morgan's Mahometanism Explained, vol. i. p 90 t Koran, ch. xxix. t Ch. vii. LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 39 *• O, true believers, when ye bind yourselves one to the other in a debt for a certain time, write it down ; and let a writer write between you according to justice, and let not the writer refuse writing ac- cording to what God hath taught him." We learn also that Ali Taleb, the son of Abu Taleb, and cousin of Mohammed, with whom the prophet passed his childhood, afterward became one of his scribes, of whom he had a number employed in making copies of the Koran as its successive portions were revealed to him. How did it happen that Abu Taleb should have had his son instructed in writing, and not his nephew ? The city of Mecca, moreover, being a place of traffic, the merchants must have hourly felt the want of some mode of recording their transactions ; and as we are in- formed that Mohammed himself was for several years engaged in mercantile pursuits before he commenced the propagation of a new religion, it is scarcely supposable that he was unacquainted with the use of letters. Of the infancy, childhood, and youth of the fu- ture prophet no authentic details have reached us. The blank has indeed been copiously supplied by the fabulous legends of his votaries, but as they are utterly void of authority, they will not repay the trouble of transcription. Being destined by his uncle to the profession of a merchant, he was taken, as some affirm, at the age of thirteen, into Syria with Abu Taleb's trading caravan, in order to his being perfected in the business of his intended vocation. Upon the simple circumstance of this journey, the 40 LIFE or MOHAMMED. superstition of his followers has grafted a series of miraculous omens all portending his future greatness. Among other things, it is said by his historians, thai upon his arriving at Bozrah, a certain man named Boheira, a Nestorian monk, who is thought by Pri- deaux to be otherwise called Sergius, advanced through the crowd collected in the market-place, and, seizing him by the hand, exclaimed, " There will be something wonderful in this boy ; for when he approached he appeared covered with a cloud." He is said to have affirmed also, that the dry trees ■nder which he sat were every where instantly covered with green leaves, which served him for a shade, and that the mystic seal of prophecy was impressed between his shoulders, in the form of a small lummous excrescence. According to others, instead of a bright cloud being the criterion by which his subsequent divine mission was indicated, the mark by which Boheira knew him was the prophetic light which shone upon his face. This miraculous light, according to the traditions of the Mohammedans, was first placed upon Adam, and from him transmitted to each individual in the line of his descendants, who sustained the character of a true prophet. The hallowed radiance at length rested upon the head of Abraham, from whom it was <1)vided into a twofold emanation, the greater Dr clearer descending upon Isaac and his seed, the ).css or obsc^urer to Ishmael and his posterity. The light hi the family of Isaac is represented as having been perpetuated in a constant glow through 5i long line of inspired messengers and prophets. LIFE or MOHAMMED. 4* among the children of Israel ; but that in the fa- mily of Ishmael is said to have been suppressed, and to have lain hidden through the whole tract of ages, from Ishmael down to the coming of Mo- hammed, in whom the sacred symbol was again re- vived, and now pointed out to Boheira the high des- tiny of him on whose person it appeared. How- ever intrinsically vain and visionary this legend may be deemed, it may, nevertheless, be worth advert- ing to, as affording perhaps, in its remoter sources, a hint of the origin of the halo^ which in most of the pauitings or engravings of the Saviour is made to encircle his sacred brows. When Abu Taleb was about to return with his caravan to Mecca, Boheira, it is said, again re- peated his solemn premonition, coupled with a charge, respecting the extraordinary youth. *' De- part with this child, and take great care that he does not fall into the hands of the Jews ; for your nephew will one day become a very wonderful person." The early Christian writers have laid hold of the narrative of this interview with the Syrian monk, as affording a clew to the true origin and authorship of the Koran. According to them, this Boheira, alias Sergius, who, th^y say, was an apos- tate Jew or Christian, instructed Mohammed in the histories and doctrines of the Bible, and that they in concert laid a plan for creating a new religion, a motley compound of Judaism and Christianity, to be carried into execution twenty years afterward ; and that accordingly the monk, rather than Mo- 12 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. hammed, is entitled to the credit of the most im- portant parts of the Koran. Others again, deem- mg it altogether incredible that a youth of thirteen should have conceived the vast idea of forming and propagating a new religion, place this corres- pondence with Sergius at a later period of his life ; that is to say, when he was not far from twenty years of age, at which time he is alleged to have taken a second journey into Syria. But, as we shall see hereafter, the question how far Moham- med was assisted by others in the composition of the Koran is not susceptible at the present day of a satisfactory solution. The next remarkable event in the life of Mo- hammed ls"Tiis appearance in the character of a soldier. At the age of fourteen, or, as others say, nearer the age of twenty, he served under his uncle, who commanded the troops of his tribe, the Koreish, in their wars against the rival tribes of the JSjenan and the Hawazan. They returned from the expedition victorious, and this circum- stance doubtless tended to render the people of the tribe still more devoted to the uncle and the ne- phew, and to acquire for Mohammed a notoriety which he was afterward enabled to turn essentially to his account. From this time to the age of twenty-five he ap- — -. pears to have continued in the employ of Abu { Taleb, engaged in mercantile pursuits. As he ' advanced in years there is reason to believe thai his personal endowments, which were doubtless of a superior order, together with strong native powers LIFE OF MOHAMM£D 43 of intellect, an acute observation, a ready wit, and pleasing address combined to render him both popular and prominent among his associates. Such, at least, is the concurrent testimony of all his biographers, and we have no means of invali- dating their statements. It is, however, natural to suppose, that a strong colouring would be put upon every superior quality of a pretended mes- senger of God, sent to restore the true religion to the world, and that he, who was by character a prophet, should be represented by his adherents as a paragon of all external perfections. About this period, by the assistance of his uncle, he was entered into the service of a rich trading widow of his native city, who had been twice married, and whose name was Cadijah. In the capacity of factor or agent to this his wealthy employer, he took a second journey of three years into Damascus and the neighbouring regions of Syria, in which he devoted himself so assiduously to the interests of Cadijah, and managed the trust committed to him so entirely to her satisfaction, that upon his return she rewarded his fidelity with the gift of her hand and her fortune. It may be imagined, that in entering into this alliance, she was probably in fluenced by the family connexions and the personal attractions of her suitor. But whatever were her motives, the union subsequently appears to have been one of genuine affection on both sides ; Mohammed never forgot the favours he had re- ceived from his benefactress, and never made her repent of having placed her person and her for- 44 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. tune at his absolute disposal. Although Cadijah, at the time of her marriage, was forty, and Mo- hammed not more than twenty-eight, yet till the age ol* sixty-four, when she died, she enjoyed the undivided affection of her husband ; and that too m a country where polygamy was allowed, and very frequently practised. By her he had eight children, of whom Fatima alone, his eldest daugh- ter, survived him. And such was the prophet's respect to the memory of his wife, that after her death he placed her in the rank of the four per- fect womea IVE OF MOHAMMED. 45 CHAPTER III. Itohammei forms the design of palming a new Religion upon tlu world— Difficult to account for this determination — Consideration* suggested — Retires to the Cave of Hera — Announces to Cadijah the Visits of Gabriel with a portion of the Koran — She becomes a Cotv- vert—His slow progress in gaining Proselytes — Curious Coin' cidence. Being now raised by his marriage to an equality with the first citizens of Mecca, Mohammed was enabled to pass the next twelve years of his life m comparative affluence and ease ; and, until the age of forty, nothing remarkable distinguished the histor} of the future prophet. It is probable that he still followed the occupation of a merchant, as the Arabian nation, like their ancestors the Ish-. maelites, have always been greatly addicted to commerce. It was during this interval, however, that he meditated and matured the bold design of palming a new religion upon the world. This there- fure becomes, in its results, the most important period in his whole life ; and it is greatly to be regretted, that the policty of the impostor, and the ravages of time, have deprived us of all sources of information, which might afford a satisfactory clew to the real origin of this design. The circum- stances which first suggested it, the peculiar train of reflection which went to cherish it, the ends which he proposed to accomplish by it, together with the real agencies employed in bringing it forward, are } 46 LIFE OF MOHAMMED, all matters wrapped in impenetrable mystery; yet these are the very points on which the inquiring mind, intent upon tracing great events to their pri- mary sources, is most eager for information. At the present day, it is impossible to determine whe- ther Mohammed commenced his career as a de- luded enthusiast or a designing impostor. Those who have most profoundly considered the whole subject of Mohammedanism in its rise, progress, genius, and effects, are, on this point, divided in ^ their opinion. On the one hand, it is supposed by some, that Mohammed was constitutionally addicted to reli- gious contemplation — that his native temperament was strongly tinged wTOTenthusiasm — and that he might originally have been free from any sinister motive in giving scope to the innate propensities of his character. As the result of his retired spe- t ulations he might, moreover, it is said, have been ) sincerely persuaded in his own mind of the grand article of his faith, the unity of God, which in his opinion was violated by all the rest of the world, and, therefore, might have deemed it a meritorious work to endeavour to liberate his countrymen and his race from the bondage of error. Impelled by this motive in the outset, and being aided by a warm imagination, he might at length have come, it is affirmed, as enthusiasts have often done, to the firm conviction, that he was destined by Pro- j vidence to be the mstrument of a great and glo- [ rious reformation ; and the circumstance of his being accustomed to solitary retirement would na- LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 47 turally cause this persuasion to take a deeper root in his mind. In this manner, it is supposed, his career might have commenced ; but finding himself to have succeeded beyond his expectations, and the force of temptation growing with the increase of his popularity and power, his self-love at last overpowered his honesty, ambition took the place of devotion, his designs expanded with his success, and he who had entered upon a pious enterprise as a well-meaning reformer degenerated in the end into a wilful impostor, a gross debauchee, and an unprincipled despot. On the other hand, it is maintained, and we think with more of an air of probability, that his conduct from the very first bears the marks of a deep-laid and systematic design ; that although he might not have anticipated all the results which crowned the undertaking, yet in every step of his progress he acted with a shrewdness and circum- spection very little savouring of the dreams of en- thusiasm ; that the pretended visits of an angel, and his publishing, from time to time, the chapters of the Koran, as a divine revelation, are wholly incon- sistent with the idea of his being merely a deluded fanatic ; and that, at any rate, the discovery of his inability to work a miracle, the grand voucher of a divine messenger, must have been sufficient to dispel the fond illusion from his mind. Many circumstances, moreover, it is said, may be adduced, which might have concurred to prompt and favour the design of this arch imposture ]. Mohammed's genius was bold and aspiring 48 LITE OF MOHAMMED. His family had formerly held the ascendency in rank and power in the city of Mecca, and it was merely his misfortune in having lost his father in infancy, and being left an orphan, that prevented him from succeeding to the same distinction. It was therefore the dictate of a very obvious prin- ciple of human nature, that he sltould contrive, if possible, to make the fortune and influence ac- quired by his marriage a step to still higher ho- nours, and to raise himself to the ancient dignity of his house. 2. He had travelled much in his own and foreign countries. His journeys would of course bring him acquainted with the tenets of the different sects of the religious world, particu- larly the Jewish and the Christian, which were then predominant, and the latter greatly corrupted and torn to pieces with internal dissensions. Be- ing a sagacious observer of men, he could not fail to perceive that the distracted state of the exist- ing religions had put the Eastern world into a posture extremely favourable to the propagation of a new system. His own countrymen, the people of Arabia, were, indeed, for the most part sunk in idolatry, but the vestiges of a purer faith, derived from patriarchal times, were still lingering among them, to a degree that afforded him the hope of recovering them to a sounder creed. 3. The political state of things at that time was such as signally to favour his project. The Roman empire, on the one hand, and the Persian monarchy on the other, had both become exceedingly en- feebled in the process of a long decline, towards? LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 49 the last stages of which they were now rapidly approaching. The Arabs, on the contrary, were a strong and flourishing people, abounding in num- bers, and inured to hardships. Their being divided into independent tribes presented also advantages for the spread of a new faith which would not have existed had they been consolidated into one government. As Mohammed had considerable op- portunities to acquaint himself with the peculiar situation of these empires ; as he had carefully noted the genius and disposition of the people which com- posed them; and as he possessed a capacity to render every circumstance subservient to his pur- pose, it is contended, that his scheme was much more legitimately the fruit of policy than of piety, and that the pseudo-prophet, instead of being pitied for his delusion, is rather to be reprobated for his base fabrication. After all, it is not improbable that Infinite Wis dom has so ordered it, that a veil of unpenetrated darkness should rest on the motives of the impos- tor, in order that a special providence may be re- cognised in the rise and establishment of this arch- delusion in the world. In the absence of sufficient human causes to account for the phenomena, we are more readily hiduced to acknowledge a divine interposition. In the production of events which are overruled in the government of God to operate as penal evils for the punishment of the guilty^ reason and revelation both teach us reverently to acknowledge the visitation of the Divine Hand, whoever or whatever may have been the subordi 47—4 E 60 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. iiate agents, or their motives. " Is there evil in the city, saith the Lord, and I have not done it?" 1. e. the evil of sufferings not of sin. It cannot be doubted that, as a matter of fact, the rise and reign of Mohammedanism has resulted in the infliction of a most terrible scourge upon the apostate churches in the East, and hi other portions of Christendom ; and, unless we exclude the Judge of the world from the exercise of his judicial prero- gatives in dealing with his creatures, we cannot err, provided we do not infringe upon man's moral agency, in referring the organ of chastisement to the will of the Most High. The life and actions of Mohammed himself, and his first broaching the religion of the Koran, are but the incipient links in a chain of political revolutions, equal in magnitude and importance to any which appear on the page of history — revolutions, from which it would be downright impiety to remove all idea of providential ordainment. If then we acknowledge a peculiar providence in the astonishing success of the Sara- cen arms subsequent to the death of Mohammed, we must acknowledge it also in the origination of that system of religion which brought them unde one head, and inspired them to the achievement o such a rapid and splendid series of conquests. The pretended prophet, having at length, after years of deliberation, ripenet: all his plans, pro- ceeded in the most gradual and cautious manner to put them in execution. He had been, it seems, for some time in the habit of retiring daily to a certain c^ve in the vicinity of Mecca, called the cave of LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 51 Hera, for the ostensible purpose of spending his time in fasting, prayer, and holy meditation. The important crisis having now arrived, lie began to break to his wife, on his return home in the eve- ning, the solemn intelhgence of supernatural visions and voices with which he was favoured in his re- tirement. Cadijah, as might be expected, was at first incredulous. She treated his visions as the dreams of a disturbed imagination, or as the delu- sions of the devil.* Mohammed, however, per- sisted in assuring her of the reality of these com- munications, and rising still higher in his demands upon her credulity, at length repeated a passage which he affirmed to be a part of a divine revela- tion>_X(ecently conveyed to him by the ministry of --^h§.^ angel . Gabriel. ITie^TuSaorable^ riigfit on -wbieh this visit was made by the heavenly mes- jengeris^ called th^^Jt, night of Al Kadr," or the night of the divine decree, and is greatly celebrated, "as it was the same night on which the entire Koran descended from the seventh to the lowest heaven, to be thence revealed by Gabriel in successive por- tions as^occtision might require. TKe Koran has a wtiole clfiapter devoted to the commemoration of this event, entitled Al Kadr, It is as follows : " In the name of the most merciful God. Verily, we sent down the Koran in the night of Al Kadr. And what shall make thee understand how excel- lent the night of Al Kadr is ? This night is better than a thousand months. Therein do the angels * This is the account given by Prideaux. Sale, however, says, " I do not remember to have read in any Fiastern author, that Cadijah sver rejected her husband's pretences as delusions, or suspected him of nny imposture." — Prelim. Disc, jo- 58. note. 52 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. descend, and the spirit Gabriel also, by the per* mission of tlieir Lord, with his decrees concerning every matter. It is peace until the rising of the morn."* On this favoured nicrht, between the 23d ^and 24th ot harmtttttft^ncx^ordrng to the j}roph^t^4he angel appeared to him, in glorious form, to commu- nicate the happy tidings of his mission. The light ^issuing from his body, if the apostle-elect may be -...believed^ was too (JazzKng for mortal eyes to be- hold ; he- fainted under the splendour ; nor was ii till Gabriel had assumed a human form, that he ^puld venture to approach or look upon him. The ^ig^i«jJ.l^!ipri^J *iloud, " O MoHAM ;ED, THOU ART 'liW:El.. AFQSTXE ox Goo, AND 1 AM THE ANGEL Gabriel !" " Read !" continued the angel ; the prophet declared that he was unable to read. " Read !" Gabriel again exclaimed, " read, in the name of thy Lord, who hath created all things ; who hath created man of congealed blood. Read, by thy most beneficent Lord, who hath taught the use of the pen ; who teacheth man that which he knoweth not."t The prophet, who professed hitherto to have been illiterate, then read the joy- ful tidings respecting his ministry on earth, when the angel, having accomplished his mission, majes- tically ascended to heaven, and disappeared from his view. When the story of this surprising inter- view with a celestial visitant was related to Cadijah in connexion with the passage repeated, her un- belief, as tradition avers, was wholly overcome, and not only so, but she was wrought by it into a kind of ecstasy, declaring, " By Him in whose * Koran, ch xcvii. ♦ Ch xcviii LIFE OF MOHAMM£D 53 hands her soul was, that she trusted her husband l«SuIdlndecd 6ne day[^^ of his nation." In the height of her joy she immediately imparted what she had heard to one Waraka, her cousin, who is supposed by some to have been in the secret, and who, being a Christian, had learned to write in the Hebrew character, and was tole- rably well versed m the Jewish and Christian Scriptures. He unhesitatingly assented to hei opinion respecting the divine designation of hei husband, and even affirmed, that Mohammed was no other than the great prophet foretold by Moses, the son of Amram. This belief that both the pro- phet and his spurious religion were subjects of in- spired prediction in the Old Testament Scriptures, is studiously inculcated in the Koran. " Thy Lord is the mighty, the merciful. This book is certainly a revelation from the Lord of all crea- tures, which the faithful spirit (Gabriel) hath caused to descend upon thy heart, that thou mightest be a preacher to thy people in the perspicuous Arabic tongue ; and it is borne witness to in the Scriptures of former ages. Was it not a sign unto them that the wise men among the children of Israel knew itr* Having succeeded in gaining over his wife, he persevered in that retired and austere kind of life which tends to beget the reputation of pre-eminent sanctity, and ere long had his servant, Zeid Ebn Hareth, added to the list of proselytes. He re- warded the faith of Zeid by manumitting him from * Koran, cb. xxiii 54 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. servitude, and it has hence become a standing rule among his followers always to grant their freedom to such of their slaves as embrace the religion of the prophet. Ali, the son of Abu Taleb, Moham- med's cousin, was his next convert, but the impe- tuous youth, disregarding the other two as persons of comparatively little note, used to style himself the first of believers. His fourth and most import- ant convert was Abubeker, a powerful citizen of Mecca, by whose influence a number of persons 'lossessed of rank and authority were induced to profess the religion of Islam. These were 0th- man, Zobair, Saad, Abdorrahman, and Abu Obei- dah, who afterward became the principal leaders in his armies, and his main instruments in the establishment both of his imposture and of his empire. Four years were spent in the arduous task of winning over these nine individuals to the faith, some of whom were the principal men of the city, and who composed the whole party of his proselytes previously to his beginning to pro- claim his mission in public. He was now forty- four years of age. It has been remarked, as somewhat of a striking coincidence, that the period of Moliammed's retiring to the cave of Hera for the purpose of fabricating his imposture corresponds very nearly with the time in which Boniface, bishop of Rome, by virtue of a grant from the tyrant Phocas, first assumed the title of Universal Pastor, and began fo lay claim to that spiritual supremacy over the cluirch of Chiist, which has ever since been arrogated to themselves by hi"=^ successors. " And from this LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 55 time," says Prideaux, " both he (the bishop of Rome) and Mohammed having conspired to found themselves an empire in imposture, their followers have been ever since endeavouring by the same methods, that is, those of fire and sword, to pro- pagate it among mankind ; so that Antichrist seems at this time to have set both his feet upon Christen- dom together ; the one in the East, the other in the West, and how much each hath trampled upon the church of Christ, all succeeding ages have abundantly experienced." The agreement of dates here adverted to may be vvorth noticing ; both events having occurred within the first six or eight years of the seventh century ; but we have as yet met with no evidence to convince us of the pro- priety of applying the epithet Antichrist to Mo- hammed. It is, however, the opinion of many Protestant expositors of prophecy, that this appel- lation is properly attributable to that system of ecclesiastical domination so long exercised by the Romish hierarchy, and the continuance of which, it is maintained, is limited by the prophetic term of 1260 years. If, therefore, this predicted period, assigned to the reign of the Roman Antichrist, be dated from near the commencement of the seventh century, we are not very far from the era of great moral changes in the state of the world; and there are reasons to be adduced in a subsequent part of this work, which lead us to believe, that the career of Mohammedanism runs parallel to that of Popery, and that, taking their rise from nearly a common era, they are destined also to ftj^nchn^nisc in their falL M LIFE OF MOHAMMKD. CHAPTER IV. The Prophet announces his Mission among his kindred qf the Kmeisk — Meets with a harsk repulse— Begins to declare it in public — View of kis fundament il Doctrines — His pretensions respecting the Ko- ran.— Tl/e disdainful Rejection of his Message by his fellow-citizens —His consequent Denunciations against them. The mission of Mohammed had hitherto been conducted in private. The proselytes he had thus far gained had been won over from among the circle of his immediate friends and connexions. The time had now come, he affirmed, when the Lord commanded him to make his message pub- licly known, beginning with his kindred of the tribe of Koreish. " O thou covered, arise and preach, and magnify thy liord."* " And admonish thy more near relations."! To this end he directed A.li to prepare a generous entertainment, and in- vite to it the sons and descendants of Abdol Mo- talleb, where, when they were all convened, he would formally divulge to them the solemn fact of his apostolic commission. Some disturbance, oc- casioned by Abu Laheb, caused the company to break up before lie had an opportunity of effecting his purpose, which induced him to give them a se- cond invitation on the ensuing day. About forty of them accordingly assembled around his board, ^hen the prophet arose, and thus addressed his * Koran, eh. Ixx.y t Ch. zxtL LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 97 •Yondering guests : — " I know no man in the whole peninsula of the Arabs who can propose any thing more excellent to his relations than what I now do to you ; 1 offer you happiness both in this life and in that which is to come ; God Almighty hath com- manded me to call you unto him ; who therefore among you will be my vizier (assistant), and will become my brother and vicegerent?" General astonishment kept the assembly silent ; none of- fered to accept the proffered office till the fiery Ali burst forth and declared that he would be the brother and assistant of the prophet. " I," said he, " O prophet of God, will be thy vizier ; I my- self will beat out the teeth, pull out the eyes, rip open the bellies, and cut off the legs, of all those who shall dare to oppose thee." The prophet caught the young proselyte in his arms, exclaim- ing, *' This is my brother, my deputy, my succes- sor ; show yourselves obedient unto him." At this apparently extravagant command, the whole company burst into laughter, telling Abu Taleb that he must now pay obedience and submission to his own son ! ^A^wiJrds jwei^e jmilt^^^^^^^^ t).egan to give, way to indigjoiation^. the sarious^ pre- Jtensions of the prophet were seriously resented, arid in the issue the assembly broke up in confu- eion, affording the ardent apostle but slender pros- pects of. success among his kinsmen. Undeterred by tlie failure of his first public at- tempt, Mohammed began to preach still more openly before the people of Mecca. He an- nounced to them that he was commissioned bv the 58 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. Almighty to be his prophet on the earth ; to assen the unity of the Divino Being ; to denounce the worship of images ; to recall the people to the true and only religion ; to bear the tidings of para- dise to the believing ; and to threaten the deaf and unbelieving vrith the terrible vengeance of the Lord. His main doctrine, and that which consti- tutes the distinguishing character of the Koran is, jhat there is but one God; that he only is to be worshipped ; and that all idolatry is a foul abomi- nation, to be utterly abolished. The 112th ch. of the Koran, entitled " The Declaration of Grod's Unity," is held in the most profound veneration by the Mohammedans, and declared, by a tradition of the prophet, to be equal in value to a third part of the whole Koran. It is said to have been re- vealed in answer to the Koreish, who inquired of the apostle concerning the distinguishing attributes of the God whom he invited them to worship. It consists of a single sentence. " In the name of the most merciful God. Say, God is one God ; the eternal God ; he begetteth not, neither is he begotten : and there Is not any one like unto him.*^ In the incessant repetition of this doctrine in the pages of the Koran, the author is aiming not only at the grosser errors of polytheism and idolatry, then common among the Eastern nations, but is levelling a blow also at the fundamental tenet of Christianity, that Jesus Christ is the son of God, " the only begotten of the Father." Like otherg in other ages, Mohammed could conceive of no mode of understanding the doctrine of the filia- LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 99 tion of Christ, as held by Christians, which did not directly militate with the truth of the essential unify of the Most High ; and in his view the first- born of absurdities was, to affirm in the same breath that Christ was the son of God, and yet coequal and coeternal with the Father. The New Testament declarations, therefore, respecting the person and character of the Messiah find no mercy at the hands of the author of the Koran, who either had not the candour or the capacity to dis- criminate beween the doctrine of the Trinity and that of Tritheism. " O ye who have received the Scriptures, exceed not the just bounds in your re- ligion, neither say of God any other than the truth." — i. e. either by rejecting Jesus as the Jews do, or by raising him to an equality with God as do the Christians. " Verily, Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, is the apostle of God, and his word, which he conveyed into Mary, and a spirit pro- ceeding from him. Believe, therefore, in God and his apostles, and say not there are three Gods ; forbear this ; it will be better for you. God is but one God. Far be it from him that he should have a son ! Unto him belongeth whatsoever is in heaven and on earth ; and he is sufficient unto himself"* " They are certainly infidels who say, Verily, God is Christ the son of Mary. Whoever shall give a companion unto God, God shall ex- clude him from paradise, and his habitation shall be hell-fire. They are certainly infidels who say Ood is the third of three : foi there is no God be • Koran, ch. iv f?0 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. sides one God. Christ, the son of Mary, is ho more than an apostle ; and his mother was a woman of veracity : they both ate food."* " There is no God but. he : the curse be on those whom they associate with him in his worship."! With this fundamental article of the Moslem creed, Mohammed connected that of his being, since Moses and Jesus, the only true prophet of God. " We gave unto the children of Israel the book of the law, and wisdom, and prophecy ; and we fed them with good things, and preferred them above all nations : and we gave them plain ordinances concerning the business of religion. Afterward we appointed thee, O Mohammed, to promulgate a law concerning the business of religion : where- fore follow the same, and follow not the desires of those who are ignorant."^ JThe object of his mis^ sion, he affirmed., was not so much to deliver to the wx)rld ^n^jentirely new scheme of religion, as to restoje and replant the only true and ancient faith professed by the patriarchs and prophets, from Adam down to Christ. " Thus have we revealed unto thee an Arabic Koran, that thou mayest warn tiie metropolis of Mecca, and the Arabs who dwell 1 ound about it. He hath ordained you the religion which he commanded Noah, and which we have levealed unto thee, O Mohammed, and which we commanded Abraham, and Moses, and Jesus ; say- ing. Observe this religion, and be not divided there- m. Wherefore, invite them to receive the sure faith, and be urgent with them as thou hast been * Roran, ch v. t Ch. ix. t Ch. xIy. LIFS OF MOHAMMED. ftjf commanded." This revival and re-establishmem of the ancient faith, he taught, was to be effected by purging it of the idolatrous notions of the Arabs, and of the corruptions of the Jews and Christians. For while he admits the fact that the books of the Old and New Testaments were originally written by inspiration, he at the same time maintains, that they have been since so shamefully corrupted by their respective disciples, that the present copies of both are utterly unworthy of credit ; and therefore, he seldom quotes them in the Koran according to the received text. From the following extracts, the reader will perceive how unsparingly the restorer of the primitive faith deals forth his rebukes upon those who had wilfully adulterated and disfigured it. " O ye who have received the Scriptures, why do ye clothe truth with vanity, and knowingly hide the truth? And there are certainly some of them who read the Scriptures perversely, that ye may think what they read to be really in the Scrip tures, yet it is not in the Scriptures; and they say this is from God ; but it is not from God ; and they speak that which is false concerning God, against their own knowledge."* " Wherefore, because they have broken their covenant, wef have cursed them, and hardened their hearts ; they dislocate the words of the Pentateuch from their places, and have forgotten part of what they were admonished ; * Koran, ch. iii. t The reader will notice that notwithstanding Mohammed's strenuous assertion of God's absolute unity, and his execrations of those who as- cribe 10 him '' associates," yet when he introduces him speaking in the Koran it is usually in the plural number. 02 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. and wilt tliou not cease to discover the deceitftil practices among tliem, except a few of them?" " O ye Avho have received the Scriptures, now is our apostle come unto you, to make manifest unto you many things which ye have concealed in the Scriptures."* In the execution of his high behest, he declared himself appointed to promulge a new^ revelation in successive portions, tlie aggregate of which was to constitute the Bible of his followers. The ori- ginal or archetype of the Koran,! he taught, was laid up from everlasting in the archives of Heaven, being written on what he termed the preserved ta- ble^ near to the throne of God, from which the series of chapters communicated by Gabriel were a tran- script. This pretended gradual mode of revelation was certainly a master stroke of i)olicy in the im- postor. " The unbelievers say, unless the Koran be sent down to him entire at once, we will not be- lieve. But in this manner have we revealed it that we might confirm thy heait thereby, and we have dictated it gradually by distinct parcels. "J Had tlie whole volume been published at once, so that a rigid examination could have been instituted into its contents as a whole, and the different parts brought into comparison with each other, glaring inconsistencies would have been easily detected, and objections urged which he would probably have found it impossible to answer. But by pretending to receive his oracles in separate portions, at dif • Koran, cb. v, \ See Appendix C. X K^ran, ch xxr LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 63 Terent times, according as his own exigences or those of his followers required, he had a ready way of silencing all cavils, and extricating himself with credit from every difficulty, as nothing forbade the message or mandate of to-day being modified or abrogated by that of to-morrow. In this manner, twenty -three years elapsed before the whole chain of revelations was completed, though the prophet informed his disciples that he had the consolation of seeing the entire Koran, bound in silk^^d^orned with gold and gems^ PariiHise, once aj^r, till, in thela&t SarloJ^S Tife;He was favoured witlTthe vision, twice. A part of tne^^pxnriOus oracles were published at Mecca before his flight, the remainder at Medina after it. The particular mode of publica- tion is said to have been this : When a new chap- ter had been communicated to the prophet, and was about to be promulgated for the benefit of the world, he first dictated it to his secretary, and then delivered the written paper to his followers, to be read and repeated till it had become firmly im- printed upon their memories, when the paper was again returned to the prophet, who carefully depo- sited it in a chest, called by him " the chest of his apostleship." The hint of this sacred coffei was doubtless taken from the Ark of the Covenant, the holy chest of the Jewish tabernacle, in which the authentic copy of the law was laid up and pre- served. This chest Mohammed left at his death in the care of one of his wives ; and from its con- tents the volume of the Koran was afterward com- piled. The first collection and arrangement of fM LIFE OF MOHAMMED. these prophetic relics, more precious than the scat- tered leaves of all the Sybils, was made by Abu- beker, but the whole was afterward revised and new-modelled by Dtfinian, who left the entire vo- lume of tlie Koran in the order in which we now have it. Mohammed's first reception by the mass of his fellow-citizens of Mecca was scarcely more hope- ful than it had been amonjr his kindred. His al- leged divine messages, especially when they as- sumed a t(me of repreliension and reproach towards his countrymen, for their idolatry, obstinacy, and perverseness, were met with indignant scoffs and railings. Some called him a magician and a sor- cerer; otTiers, a "silly "retailer of old fables; and athers directly charged, hirnw^^^ being a liar afid~ -s^an impostor. The reader will be amused and in- terested by the insertion of a few out of the scores of allusions, with which the Koran abounds, to the profane and contemptuous treatment shown to- wards the prophet at this time. " The Meccans say, O thou, to^ whom the admonition (the Koran) hath been sent down, thou art certainly possessed with a devil : wouldst not thou have come unto us with an attendance of angels if thou hadst spoken the truth ? Answer, We send not down the angels but on a just occasion."* *' Verily I have permitted these Mecr'a;»>! and their fathers to live in prosperity, till the truth should come unto them, and a manife^^^t apostle : but now the truth is comf tiilldO. Ch. TL LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 65 unto them, they say, this is a piece of sorcery ; ^^■'We'^BeTieveToFtijo^^ tlua Korair ijcrgS^s^ut dpw unto some great man iiLxither pjf th^ two cities, we would have received ■AXJlt " The time of giving up their account draweth nigh unto the people of Mecca. No admonition Cometh unto them from their Lord, but when they hear it they turn it to sport. They say. The Ko- ran is a confused heap of dreams : nay, he hath fopge4-iCt " Andjhe unbeUevers sayj^^th^ Koran is no other tharTalbrgery which he hath contrived ; and other people have assisted him therein: but they utter an unjust thing and a falsehood. They also say. These are fables of the ancients, which he hath caused to be written down ; and they are dic- tated unto him morning and evening. Say, He hath revealed it who knoweth the secrets in hea- ven and earth. Aijd^ey^ay, What kind of apostle i§^ this ? He eateth food, anff walketh in the streets as we do. The ungodly also say. Ye follow no other than a man who is distracted.''^ " When our evident signs are rehearsed anto them, the unbe- hevers say of the truth. This is a manifest piece of sorcery. Will they say, Mohammed hath forged it? Answer, If I have forged it, verily, ye will not obtain for me any favour from God : he well knoweth the injurious language which ye utter concerning it. 1 follow no other than what is revealed unto me ; neither am I any more than ^ public Warner."^ * Koran, ch. xliii. t Ch. xxl t Ch. xxt. $ Ch. xlii 47-5 F 66 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. But these stiff-necked idolaters were plainly taught that they were not to promise themselves impunity in thus pouring contempt upon the testi- mony of an authorized legate of heaven. The Most High himself was brought in confirming by an oath the truth of his prophet's mission. " I swear by that which ye see and that which ye see not, that this is the discourse of an honourable apostle, and not the discourse of a poet: how little do ye believe ! Neither is it the discourse of a soothsayer : how little are ye admonished ! It is a revelation from the Lord of all creatures. If Mohammed had forged any part of these dis- courses concerning us, verily we had taken him by the right hand, and had cut in sunder the vein of his heart ; neither would we have withheld any of you from chastising him. And verily, this book is an admonition unto the pious ; and we well know there are some of you who charge the same with imposture : but it shall surely be an occa- sion of grievous sighing unto the infidels ; for it is the truth of a certainty."* " Because he is an adversary to our signs, I will afflict him with grievoMS calamities ; for he hath devised contume- lious expressions to ridicule the Koran. May he be cursed ! I will cast him to be burned in hell. And what shall make thee understand what hell is? It leaveth not any thing unconsumed, neither doth it suffer any thing to escape; it searcheth men's flesh ; over the same are nineteen * Koran ch. Ixxz LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 67 angels appointed. We have appointed none but angels to preside over hell-fire."* '* Verily we have prepared for the unbelievers chains, and col- lars, and burning fire."t " Verily those who dis- believe our signs we will surely cast out to be broiled in hell-fire : and when their skins shall be well burned, we will give them other skins in ex- change, that they may taste the sharper torment. "J * Koran, ch. Ixxiv. t Ch. xi. I Ch, tv. flfi LIFE OF MOHAMMKu. CHAPTER V. Mohammed not discouraged by Opposition — The burden of his ing — Description of Paradise — Error to suppose Women excluded — Of Hell—Gains some Followers — Challenged to work a Miracle — His Reply— The Koran the grand Miracle of his Religion— Judtcuu Obduracy charged upon the Unbelievers. But 440 -jrepulsesj JiowfiJ^er rude qr,.xfibfilUous, operated to detexihei)rophet from prosecuting his j.postolic ministry. No injuries or insults, how- ever gallmg; availed to quench that glow of phi- laafcopy, that earnest solicitude for the salvation of his countryHien, for whi<;h his divine revela- tions plainly give him, credit. " Peradventure, thou afflictest thyself unto death lest the Meccans be- come not true believers."* "Verily, God will cause to err whom he pleaseth, and will direct whom he pleaseth. Let not thy soul, therefore be spent in sighs for their sakes, on account of their obstinacy ; for God well knoweth that which they do."t A.nd it must be acknowledged, that his firm- ness at this stage of his career, in the midst of bitter opposition, opprobrious taunts, and relentless ^dicule, has very much the air of having been Prompted by a sincere though enthusiastic belief n the truth and rectitude of his cause. The scope of several chapters of the Koran promul- gated at this time leads to the same impression. • Koran ch. xxvl. t Ch. xxxt. LIFE OF MOILAMMED. 69 They are strikingly hortatory and impassioned in their character, inculcating the being and perfec- tions of the one only God, the vanity of idols, a future resurrection, a day of judgment, a state of rewards and punishments, and the necessity of works of righteousness. The marks of impos- ture are much more discernible upon the pages subsequently revealed, in which the prophet had private ends of a sinister nature to accomplish. But he contented not himself with merely preach- ing in public assemblies, and proclaiming in streets and market-places the solemn and awakening burden of his message. With a zeal worthy of a better cause, and with a perseverance and patience that might serve as a model to a Christian mis- sionary, he backed his public appeals by private addresses, and put in requisition all the arts of per- suasion and proselytism, in which he was so emi- nently skilled. He applied himself in the most insinuating manner to all classes of people ; he was complaisant and liberal to the poor, cultivating their acquaintance and relieving their wants ; the rich and noble he soothed by flattery ; and bore aflronts without seeking to avenge them. The efl^ect of this politic management was greatly en hanced by the peculiar character of those inspired promises and threatenings which he brought to enforce his message. His promises were chiefly of a blissful paradise in another life ; and these he studiously aimed to set forth in colours best calculiited to work upon the fancies of a sensitive and sensual race, whose 70 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. minds, in consequence of their national habits, were httle susceptible of the images of abstract enjoyment. The notions of a purely intellectual or spiritual happiness pertain to a more cultivated people. The scorching heat of those tropical re- gions, the aridness of the soil, and the consequent lack of a verdant vegetation, made it natural to the Arabs, and other oriental nations, to conceive of the most exquisite scenes of pleasure under the images of rivers of water, cooling drinks, flowery gardens, shaded bowers, and luscious fruits. The magnificence also of many of the Eastern build- ings, their temples and palaces, with the sumptu- ousness of their dresses, the pomp of processions, and the splendour of courts, would all tend to mingle in their ideas of the highest state of en- joyment an abundance of gold and silver and pre- cious stones — treasures for which the East has been famed from time immemorial. Mohammed was well aware that a plenitude of these visible and palpable attractions, to say nothing of grosser sources of pleasure, was an indispensable requi- site in a heaven suited to the temperament of his countrymen. Accordingly, he assures the faith- ful, that they shall enter into delectable gardens, where the rivers flow, some with water, some with wine, 6ome with milk, and some with clarified honey; that there will be fountains and purling streams whose pebbles are rubies and emeralds, their earth of camphire, their beds of musk, and their sides of saffron. In feasting upon the ban- quets of paradise, at one time the most delicious* LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 71 fruits shall hang dependent from the branches of the trees under which their couches are spread, so that they have only to reach forth their hands to pluck them ; again, they shall be served in dishes of gold filled with every variety of grateful food, and supplied with wine of ambrosial flavour. But the prophet's own glowing pictures of the joys of his promised paradise will do more justice to the subject. " They shall repose on couches, the lin- ings whereof shall be of thick silk interwoven with gold ; and the fruit of the two gardens shall be near at hand to gather. Therein shall receive them beauteous damsels, refraining their eyes from beholding any besides their spouses, having com- plexions hke rubies and pearls. Besides these there shall be two other gardens that shall be dressed in eternal verdure. In each of them shall be two fountains pouring forth plenty of water. In each of them shall be fruits, and palm- trees, and pomegranates. Therein shall be agree- able and beauteous damsels, having fine black eyes, and kept in pavilions from public view, whom no man shall have dishonoured before their predestined spouses, nor any genius." " They shall dwell in gardens of delight, reposing on couches adorned with gold and precious stones ; sitting opposite to one another thereon. Youths, which shall continue in their bloom for ever, shall go round about to attend them, with goblets and beakers, and a cup of flowing wine : their heads shall not ache by drinking the same, neither shall their reason be disturbed." " Upon them shall be 72 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. garments of fine green silk, and of brocades, and they shall be adorned with bracelets of silver, and their Lord shall give them to drink of a most pure liquor — a cup of wine mixed with the water of Zenjebil, a fountain in paradise named Salsabil." ** But those who believe and do that which is right, we will bring into gardens watered by rivers, therein shall they remain for ever, and therein shall they enjoy wives free from all infirmities ; and we will lead them into perpetual abodes.' *' For those who fear their Lord will be preparea high apartments in paradise, over which shall be other apartments built ; and rivers shall run be- neath them." " But for the pious is prepared a place of bliss : gardens planted with trees, and vineyards, and damsels of equal age with them- selves, and a full cup."* Such is the Mohammedan paradise, rendered alluring by its gross, carnal, and luxurious cha- racter. It cannot indeed be denied that there are occasional intimations, in the Koran, of some kind of spiritual happiness to be enjoyed by the pious in addition to their corporeal pleasures. " Their prayer therein shall be. Praise be unto thee, O God ! and their salutation therein shall be. Peace ! and the end of their prayer shall be, Praise be unto God, the Lord of all creatures."! But it is beyond question, that the main ingredients in the anticipated happiness of the Moslem saints are of a sensual kind, addressed to the inferior principles * Koran, ch. iii. iv. xxxvi. xxxvii. xliii. xlvii. Ixxviii. tC^ » LIFE OF MOHAMMED 711 of our nature, and making their paradise to dif- fer but little from the Elysium of the heathen poets. The reader of the Koran wiil meet with re- peated declarations subversive of the vulgar opi- nion, that the religion of Mohammed denies to women the possession of souls, and excludes them from all participation in the joys of paradise. Whatever may have been imagined or affirmed on this point by some of his more ignorant followers, v is certain that Mohammed himself thought toe highly of women to inculcate any such doctrine, as the following passages will evince : "Whoso doeth evil, shall be rewarded for it ; and shall not find pny patron or helper besides God ; but whoso doeth g^ood works, whether he be male or female, and is a true believer, they shall be admitted into para- dise, and shall not in the least be unjustly dealt with."* " The reward of these shall be paradise, gardens of eternal abode, which they shall enter, and whoever shall have acted uprightly, of their fathers, and their wives, and their posterity ; and the angels shall go in unto them by every gate, saying. Peace be upon you, because ye have en- dured with patience ; how excellent a reward is paradise !"t rf these vivid representations of the future bliss of the faithful were calculated to work strongly upon the passions of his hearers, his denunciations of the fearful torments reserved for unbelievers, * Koran, ch. iv. t Ch. xiii 74 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. were equally well fitted to produce the same ef- fect. The most revolting images of bodily suf- fering, himger, thirst, the torture of fire, and the anguish of piercing cold, were summoned up by the preacher to alarm the workers of evil, and to call off the worshippers of idols from their im- piety. " But for the transgressors is prepared an evil receptacle, namely hell : they shall be cast into the same to be burned, and a wretched couch shall it be." "And they who believe not shall have garments of fire fitted unto them : boiling water shall be poured on their heads; their bow- els shall be dissolved thereby, and also their skins ; and they shall be beaten with maces of iron. So often as they shall endeavour to get out of hell, because of the anguish of their torments, they shall be dragged back into the same ; and their tormentors shall say imto them. Taste ye the pain of burning."* " It shall be said unto them. Go ye into the punishment which ye denied as a false- hood : go ye into the shadow of the smoke of hell, which shall ascend in three columns, and shall not shade you from the heat, neither shall it be of service against the flame ; but it shall cast forth sparks as big as towers, resembling yellow camels in colour."! " Hath the news of the overwhelming day of judgment reached theel The countenances of some, on that day, shall be cast down ; labouring and toiling ; they shall be «ast into a scorching fire to be broiled : they shaD ♦ Koran, ch. xrii. t Ch. Ixiriil LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 75 6*5 giYen to drink of a boiling fountain : they shall hive no food but of diy thorns and thistles ; which shall not fatten neither shall they satisfy hunger." "Is this a better entertainment, or the tree of Al Zaccum ? How different is the tree Al Zaecum from the abode of Eden ! We have planted it for the torment of the wicked. It is a tree which issueth from the bottom of hell : the fruit thereof resembleth the heads of devils ; and the damned shall eat of the same, and shall fill their bellies therewith ; and there shall be given them thereon a mixture of filthy and boiling water to drink : afterward shall they return into hell."* Such was the burden of his exhortations, while he warned the people of the danger of unbelief, and urged them by his eloquence to avoid eter- nal damnation by putting faith in the apostle of God. In addition to these powerful motives, drawn from another world, he was lavish in the menaces of fearful punishments in this life also, if they hearkened not to his voice. For this pur- pose, he set before them the calamities which had overtaken those who, in former times, had refused to listen to the prophets sent among them. " Do they not consider how many generations we have destroyed before them? Other apostles have been laughed to scorn before thee, but the judg- ments which they made a jest of encompassed those who laughed them to scorn. Say, Go through the earth, and behold what has been the ♦Koran ch xxxrii. 76 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. end of those who accused our prophets ol' impos- ture."* "We have already sent messages unto sundry nations before thee, and we afflicted them with trouble and adversity, that they might humble themselves : yet when the affliction which we sent came upon them, they did not humble them- selves ; but their hearts became hardened, and Satan caused them to find charms in rebellion. And when they had forgotten that concerning which they had been admonished, we suddenly laid hold on them, and behold they were seized with despair ; and the utmost part of the people which had acted wickedly was cut off: praise be unto God, the Lord of all creatures !"t He cited the case of the inhabitants of the old world, who perished in the deluge for not giving heed to the preaching of Noah ; of Sodom, overwhelmed by fire for not receiving the admonition of Lot ; and of the Egyptians, who were buried in the Red Sea for despising Moses. To give still greater effect to his warnings, and ingratiate himself into the favour, as well as to awaken the fears, of his auditors, he took repeated occasions to allege his entire disinterestedness in the work in which he was engaged. He preached because he was com- manded to preach, and not because he intended covertly to make gain of his hearers. He there- fore boldly takes them to witness that he de- manded no compensation for his services. He looked to a higher sourer ior reward. " But we ♦Koran ch \i. tCh. ▼!. LIF*. Of M0HAMMlcr> 77 have brought them their admonition ; and they turn aside from their admonition. Dost thou ask of them any maintenance for thy preaching 1 since the maintenance of thy Lord is better ; for he U the most bounteous provider."* " We have sent thee to be no other than a bearer of good tidings, and a denouncer of threats. Say, I ask not of you any reward for this my preaching, besides the conversion of him who shall desire to take the way unto his Lord."t As the prophet therefore disclaimed all sinister views in the execution of his office, as he expressly renounced the expect- ancy of any earthly advantage whatever, so he was commanded to divest his mind of all undue anxiety as to the result of his labours of love. *' O apostle, let not them grieve thee who hasten to infidelity." " Whoso is wilfully blind, the con- sequence will be to himself. We have not ap- pointed thee a keeper over them : neither art thou a guardian over them." " And be not thou grieved on account of the unbelievers, neither be thou troubled for that which they subtly devise."J It is not therefore to be wondered at that the rousing appeals of the prophet should have taken effect ; that one after another should have listened — pondered — wavered — and yielded — especially as the gravity and sanctity of his deportment seem, Hi this time, to have corresponded with the solemn strain of his expostulations. Such accordingly vas the fact. The number of his followers gra- * Koran, ch xxiii / Ch. xlii. X Ch. xn. 78 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. dually increased, so that in five years from the commencement of his mission, his party, including himself, amounted to forty. That which operated more than any thing else to disconcert the impostor was the demand re- peatedly made upon him to prove the truth of his mission by w^orking a miracle. " Moses and Je- sus," said his hearers, " and the rest of the pro- phets, according to thine own doctrine, wrought miracles to prove themselves sent of God. Now if thou be a prophet, and greater than any that were before thee, as thou boastest, let us see a miracle from thee also. Do thou make the dead to rise, the dumb to speak, the deaf to hear ; or else cause fountains to spring out of the earth, and make this place a garden adorned with vines and palm trees, and watered with rivers running through it in divers channels ; or do thou make thee a house of gold beautified with jewels and costly furniture ; or let us see the book which thou allegest to have come down from heaven, or the angel which thou sayest brings it unto thee, and we will believe." This natural and not un- reasonable demand, he had, as we learn from the Koran, several ways of evading. At one time, he tells them he is only a man sent to preach to them the rewards of paradise and the punishments of hell. " The infidels say, unless a sign be sent unto him from his Lord, we will not believe. Thou art commissioned to be a preacher only, and not a worker of miracles."* "Answer, Signs are ♦Koran, ch.xlii LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 79 m the power of God alone ; and I am no more than a public preacher. Is it not sufficient for them that we have sent down unto thee the book of the Koran, to be read unto them ?"* " We sent not our messengers otherwise than bearing good tidings and denouncing threats. Say, I say not unto you, The treasures of God are in my power : neither do 1 say, I know the secrets of God : neither do I say unto you. Verily I am an angel : I follow only that which is revealed unto me."t At another, that their predecessors had despised the miracles of the former prophets, and for this reason God would work no more among them. Again, that those whom God had ordained to believe, should believe without miracles, while thehaplessnon-elect, towhom he had not decreed the gift of faith, would not believe though ever so many miracles were wrought before them. " And though we had sent down angels unto them, and the dead had spoken unto them, they w(mld not have believed, unless God had so pleased."| " If their aversion to thy admonitions be grievous unto thee, if thou canst seek a den whereby thou mayest penetrate into the inward parts of the earth, or a ladder by which thou mayest ascend into heaven, that thou mayest show them a sign, do so, but thy search will be fruitless ; for if God pleased he would bring them all to the true direction."^ At a later period, when he was at Medina at the Head of an army, he had a more summary way of * Koran. ch.xiU. tciLTi. t Ibid. ^Ibid. 80 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. solving all difficulties arising from this source, for his doctrine then was, that God had formerly sent Moses and Jesus with the power of working mira- cles, and yet men would not believe, and there- fore he had now sent him, a prophet of another order, commissioned to enforce belief by the power of the sword. The sword accordingly was to be the true seal of his apostleship, and the remark ^yi the historian is equally just and striking, that " Mohammed, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, erected his throne on the ruins of Christianity and of Rome."* By some of the more credulous of the prophet's followers, there are, it is true, several miracles at- tributed to him ; as that he clave the moon asun- der ; that trees went forth to meet him ; that water flowed from between his fingers ; that the stones saluted him ; that a beam groaned at him ; that a camel complained to him ; and that a shoul- der of mutton informed him of its being poisoned, together with several others. But these miracles were never alleged by Mohammed himself, nor are they maintained by any respectable Moslem wri- ters. The only miracle claimed either by him or his intelligent votaries is the Koran, the composi- tion of which is the grand miracle of their reli- gion. On this point the reader will perceive that the prophet's assumptions in the following pas- sages are high-toned indeed. " If ye be in doubt concerning that revelation which we have seni * Gibbon \ LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 81 dovn unto our servant, produce a chapter like untc it, and call upon your witnesses, besides God, if ye say the truth."* " Say, Verily, if men and genii were purposely assembled, that they might prodice a book like this Koran, they could not produce one like it, although the one of them as- sisted the other. "t " Will they say. He hath forge(! the Koran ? Bring therefore ten chapters like mto it, forged by yourselves; and call on whomsoever ye may to assist you."J The infatua- tion o^ the Meccans in rejecting this inestimable " admmition," stamped as it was with the evident unpress of the divinity, he hesitates not to ascribe to the effect of a fearful judicial obstinacy, such as the Jevish prophets frequently threaten against the pe^^erse nation of Israel. " If we had re- vealed he Koran in a foreign language, they had surely Stid, Unless the signs thereof be distinctly explaind, we will not receive the same : Answer, It is unt) those who believe a sure guide and a remedy ; but unto those who believe not, it is a thicknessof hearing in their ears, and it is a dark- ness whidi covereth them."§ " As for the unbe- lievers, it will be equal unto them whether thou admonish hem or do not admonish them ; they ivrill not beieve. God hath sealed up their hearts and their hiaring ; a dimness covereth their sight, and they shall suffer a grievous punishment."|| " There is of them who hearkeneth unto thee when thou riadest the Koran ; but we have cast * Koran, ch. \ t Ch. xvii. 4Cb.xli \ U Ch. ii. 47—6 G 82 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. veils over their hearts, that they should not und^r Btand it, and a deafness in their ears ; and though they should see all kinds of signs, they will not believe therein ; and their infidelity will arriie to that height, that they will even come unto thee to dispute with thee."* Still his preaching previiled. He became more and more popular ; prosdytes flocked around hini ; and, as Gibbon remarks " he had the satisfaction of beholding the incresse of his infant congregation of Unitarians, who revered him as a prophet, and to whom he seasonably dis- pensed tne spiritual nourishment of the Korin."t • Koran, ch. TL t Dec. and Fall, ch. I LIFE OF MOHAMMED 83 ' CHAPTER VI, T/-» Iff^tjrA Kjrcrperated and alarmed by Mohammed's growing sm^ c^ d ,*^»n<7to'» persecution — Some of his followers seek safety in Jlifht - NkM' 'c-^'-^erts —The Koreish form a League against him— Aim Tuleb end Cudijah die— He makes a temporary Retreat from Mefci, — R»!t-itnj rid preaches with increased zeal — Some (f ths Pilgrims Jrom Medina converted. ^^JiE zeaLQLdie^W~o£het m,4)xacl^ his doc- trines, together with the visible increase of his foUovers, at lehgth alarmed the fears of the head ^paeii of the tribe of Koreish; and had it not been for tliB powerful protectioa of his uncle, Moham- med vould doubtless at this time have fallen a victim to the malice of his opponents. The chief men of the tribe warmly solicited Abu Taleb to abandon his riepheWji; remonstrating against the {perilous innovations he was making in the religioo of their hthers, and threatening him with an open rupture h case he did not prevail upon him to 4^si.st. Their entreaties had so much weight with Ahu Talel, that he earnestly dissuaded his rela- tive from prosecuting his attempted reformation any farther representing to him in strong terms the danger lie would incur both for himself and his friends by persisting in his present course. But the ardent apostle, far from being intimidated by^ fXhe prospect (f opposition, frankly assured his 1 uncle, •' That f they should set the sun against V^him on his right hand, and the moon on his lefk \ 0:t l>'^ 84 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. vet he would noi relinquish his enterprise." Abu Taleb, seeing him thus determined, used no far- ther arguments to divert him, but promised to stand by him against all his enemies ; a promise which he faithfully kept till he died, though there s no clear evidence that he ever became a con- vert to the new religion. The Koreish, finding that they could prevail neither by fair words nor by menaces, had re- course to violence. They b_egan to persficiite his followers j^nd to suchj..iength did they proceed injliei^jnju^ it was no longer ,safc^rlthem to continue at Mecca. Mohammed therefore gave leave to such of them as liadnot frjjeiids to p^rotecflEem, to seek refuge elsewhere. /\rrrQnll^V Mlif^P ^ thenv among whom was J^Iohammed^s daughter and her husband, fled into Ethiopia. These "were afterward followed by 'severir others, who withdrew in successive com- panies, till their number amounted to eighty-three men, and eighteen women, with theii children. These refugees were kindly entertained by the king of Ethiopia, who peremptorily refused to deliver them to the emissaries of the Xoreish sent to demand them. To these voluntay exiles he prophet perhaps alludes in the folloving passage : " As for those who have fled frorr their country for the sake of God, after they hat been unjustly persecuted, we will surely provide them an excel- lent habitation in this world, but he reward of the next life shall be greater, if the^ knew it." * * Koran, ch. xvl. LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 85 In the sixth year of his mission, he had the pleasure of seeing his party strengthened by the conversion of his uncle Hamza, a man of distin- guished valour, and of Omar, a person of equal note in Mecca, who had formerly made himself conspicuous by his virulent opposition to the pro- phet and his claims. This new accession to the rising sect exasperated the Koreish afresh, and in- cited them to measures of still more active perse- cution against the proselytes. But as persecution usually advances the cause which it labours to destroy, so in the present case Islamism made more rapid progress than ever^ till the Koreish, ^.l^addened with ^ a solemn league or cp.yenant against the Hashemites, and especially ^e family of the Mbtalleb, many of whom upheld the, ijnpostor, engaging to contract no . marriages with them, jnpr to hold any farther connexion or ..commerce of any kind ; and, to give it the greater sanction, the compact was reduced to writing and (aid up in the Caaba. Upon this the tribe became divided into two factions ; the family of llashem, except one of Mohammed's uncles, putting them- selves under Abu Taleb as their head, and the other party rangmg themselves under the standard of A.bu Sophyan. This league, however, was of no avail during the lifetime of Abu Taleb. The power of the uncle, who presided in the govern- ment of Mecca, defended the nephew against the designs of his enemies. At length, about the close of the seventh year of the mission, Abu Taleb died ; and, a few days after his death, Mo- 86 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. hammed was left a widower, bv the decease of Cadijah, whose memory has been canonized by the snymg of the prophet ; " That among men there had been many perfect, but of women, four only had attained to perfection, viz. Cadijah, his wife ; Fatima, his daue:hter ; Asia, the wife of Pha- raoh ; and Mary (Minam), the daughter of Imran and sister of Moses " As to Abu Taleb, though the prophet ever cherished a most grateful sense of the kindness of his early benefiictor yet if the following passage from the Koran hat reference, as some of the commentators say, to his uncle, it shows that the dictates of nature in the nephew's breast were thoroughly brought into subjection to the stern precepts of his religion. " It is not allowed unto the prophet, nor those who are true believers, that taey pray for idolaters, although they be of kin, after it is become known unto them that they are inhabitants of hell." * This passage^ it is said by some, was revealed on account of Abu Taleb, who, upon his d^ath-bed, being pressed by his nephew to speak a word which might enable him to plead his cause before God, that is, to pro- fess Islam, absolutely refused. Mohammed, how- ever, told him that he would not cease to pray for 'lim till he should be forbidden by God ; such a prohibition, he affirmed, was given him in the words here cited. Others suppose the occasion to have been the prophet's visiting his mother Amina's sepulchre, who also ^^is an infidel, soon after the capture of Mecca. Mere, while standing at the K«ran, c**. It LIFE OF MOHAMMED. SI (oinb of his parent, he is reported to have burst into tears and said, " I asked leave of God to visit my mother's tomb, and he panted it tie ; but when I asked leave to pray for her, it wls denied me." This twofold affliction of the prophet, in the loss of his uncle ynd his wife on *ne same year, induced him ever after to call this " The Year of Mourning." The unprotected apostle was now left com- pletely exposed to the attacks of his enem'es, and they failed not to improve their advantage. ^Ujey redoubled their efforts to crush the pestilent heresy, Vith its author and abettors, and some of his fol- lowers and friends, seeing the symptoms of a fiercer storm of persecution gathering, forsook the standard of their leader. In this extremity Mo-/ hammed perceived, that his only chance of safet^ was in a temporary retreat from the scene of conv flict. ^He accordingly withdrew to Tayef, a village\ situated sixty miles to the East of Mecca, where he had an uncle named Abbas, whose hospitality afforded him a seasonable shelter. Here, how- ever, his stay wj^shortiaad.his prophetic labours ji^availing. He returned to_Mecca, and boldly taking his stanS^iTlHe^precm of the^ Caaba, among the crowds of pilgrims who resorted an- nually to this ancient shrine, he preached the gospel of Islam to the multitudinous assemblies. New proselytes again rewarded his labours ; and, among the accessions now made to his party from these pilgrim hordes, were six of the inhabitants of Medina, then called Yatreb, who, on their return 88 LIFE OF MOIfAMMED. home began at once to relate to their fellow-citizeni the story of their conversion, and to extol, in no measured terms, their new religion and its apostle. This circumstance gave eclat to Mohammed in the city of Medina, and paved the way to a train of events which tended more than any thing else to promote his final success in Arabia. In the mean time, in order to strengthen his interest in Mecca, he married Ayesha, the daughter of Abu- beker, and shortly after Sawda, the daughter of Zama. By thus becoming the son-in-law of two of the principal men of his party he secured their patronage to his person and his cause. LIFE OF MOIIAMMEP. 8f CHAPTER Vn. The Prophet pretends to have had a night-journey through the Set^fn Heavens — Description of the memorable Night by an Arabic writer—' Account of the Journey — His probable Motives in feigning such an extravagant Action. It was in the twelfth year of the pretended mis- sion that Mohammed was favoured, according to his own account, with his celebrated night-journey , / from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from thence to the \ seventh heaven, under the conduct of the angel Gabriel. In allusion to this the seventeenth chap- ter of the Koran commences thus : — " Praise be unto him who transported his servant by night from the sacred temple of Mecca to the farther temple of Jerusalem, the circuit of which we have blessed, that we might show some of our signs ; for God is he who heareth and seeth/* This idle and extravagant tale, which is not related in the Koran, but handed down by tradition, was probably devised by the impostor in order to raise his reputation as a saint, and to put himself more nearly upon a level with Moses, with whom God conversed, face to face, in the holy mount. The story, however, is devoutly believed by the Mussulmans, and one of their writers has given the following highly-w fought description of the memorable ni^ht in which it occurred. " In the H 00 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. darkest, most obscure, and most silent night that the sun ever caused by his absence, since that glorious planet of light was created or had its being; a night in which there was no crowing of cocks to be heard throughout the whole universe, no bark- ings of dogs, no bowlings, roarings, or yellings of wild beasts, nor watchings of nocturnal birds ; nay, and not only the feathered and four-footed creatures suspended their customary vociferations and motions, but likewise the waters ceased from their murmurings, the winds from their whistlings, the air from its breathings, the serpents from their hissings, the mountains, valleys, and caverns from their resounding echoes, the earth from its produc- tions, the tender plants from their sproutmgs, the grass of the field from its verdancy, the waves of the sea from their agitations, and their inhabitants, the fishes, from plying their fins. And indeed upon a night so wonderful it was very requisite, that all the creatures of the Lord's handy-work should cease from their usual movements, and be- come dumb and motionless, and lend an attentive ear, that they might conceive by means of their ears what their tongues were not capable of ex- pressing. Nor is any tongue able to express the wonders and mysteries of this night, and should any undertake so unequal a task, there could no- thing be represented but the bare shadow : since what happened in this miraculous night was infi- nitely the greatest and most stupendous event that ever befell any of the posterity of Adam, either expressed in any of the sacred writings whi<*h LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 9l came down ft-om above, or by signs and figures. From the sublime altitudes of heaven the most glorious seraph of all those which God ever created or produced, the incomparable Gabriel, upon the latter part of the evening of that sti pen- dous night, took a hasty and precipitate flight, and descended to this lower world with an unheard- of and wonderful message, the which caused an •miversal rejoicing on earth, and filled the seven heavens with a more than ordinary gladness ; and, as the nature of the message both required and inspired joy, he visited the world under the most glorious and beautiful appearance that even imagi- nation itself is capable of figuring. His whiteness obscured that of the driven snow, and his splen- dour darkened the rays of the noontide sun. His garments were all covered with the richest flowers in embroidery of celestial fabric, and his many wings were most beautifully expanded, and all in- terspersed with inestimable precious stones. His stature was exceeding tall, and his presence exquisitely awful. Upon his beauteous capa- cious forehead he bore two lines written in cha- racters of dazzling light ; the uppermost consisted of these words, La Utah iV allah — There is no God but Allah ; and in the lowermost line was contained, Mohammed Rasoul Allah — Mohammed IS God's Messenger."* In passing from this poetical prelude, conceived in the true gorgeous style of oriental description, lo the meagre and puerile story of the journey it- * Motrgan's Mahometanism Explained. 92 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. St If, we feel at on-r that the prophet's fancy suffers bv comparison with that of his disciple, who could certainly, from the above specimen, have given a vastly more interesting fiction of a celestial tour than the miserable tissue of absurdity which appears in the fabrication of tlie prophet. Without detail- ing all the particulars of this nocturnal expedition, in which the marvels thickened upon him till he had reached the utmost height of the empyrean, the following outline will afford the reader an idea of its general character. While the prophet was reposing in his bed, with his beloved Ayesha at his side, he was suddenly awakened by the angel Gabriel, who stood before him with seventy pair of expanded wings, whiter than snow and clearer than crystal. The angel informed him that he had come to conduct him to heaven, and directed him to mount an animal that stood ready at the door, and which was between the nature of an ass and a mule. The name of this beast was Alborak, signifying in the Arabic tongue, '* The Lightning," from his inconceivable swiftness. His colour was a milky white. As he had, however, remained inactive from the time of Christ to that of Mohammed — there having been no prophet in the interval to employ him — he now proved so restless and refractory, that Mohammed could not succeed in seating himself on his back till he had promised him a place in paradise. Pacified by this promise, he sufferp.d the prophet quietly to mount, and Gabriel, taking the bridle in his hand, conveyed him fiom Mecca LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 93 to Jerusalem in the twinkling of eye. When he arrived at the latter place, the departed prophets and saints came forth to meet and to salute him, and to request an interest in his prayers when he came near to the throne of glory. Going out of the temple he found a ladder of light ready fixed for them, and tying Alborak to a rock, he followed Gabriel on the ladder till they reached the first heaven, where admittance was readily granted by the porter, when told by Gabriel that his com- panion was no other than Mohammed, the pro- phet of God. This first heaven, he tells us, was all of pure silver, adorned with stars hanging from it by chains of gold, each of them of the size of a mountain. Here he was met by a de- crepid old man, whom the prophet learned to be our father Adam, and who greatly rejoiced at having so distinguished a son. He saw also in this heaven innumerable angels in the shape of birds, beasts, and men ; but its crowning wonder was a gigantic cock, whose head towered up to the sef*ond heaven, though at the distance of five hundred days journey from the first ! His wings were large in proportion, and were decked witli carbuncles and pearls ; and so loud did he crow, whenever the morning dawned, that all creatures on earth, except men and fairies, heard the tre- mendous din. The second heaven was of pure gold, and contained twice as many angels as the former. Among these was one of such vast di- mensions, that the distance between his eyes was equal to the length of seventy thousand days 94 LIFE OF MOHAMMifV journey. Here he met Noah, who begged thr favour of his prayers. Thence he proceeded to tlie third, where he was accosted by Abraham with the same request. Here he found the Angel of Death, with an immense table before him, on which he was writing the names of the human race as they were born, and blotting them out a© their allotted number of days was completed, when they immediately died. At his entrance into the fourth heaven, which was of emerald, he was met by Joseph, the son of Jacob. In the fifth he beheld his honoured predecessor, Moses. In the sixth, which was of carbuncle, he found John the Baptist. In the seventh, made of divine light in- stead of metals or gems, he saw Jesus Christ, whose superior dignity it would seem that he ac- knowledged by requesting an interest in his '^rayers, whereas in every preceding case the per- sonages mentioned solicited this favour of him. in this heaven the number of angels, which had been increasing through every step of his progress^ vastly exceeded that of all the other dc^par^ments, and among them was one who had seventy thou- sand heads, in every head seventy thousand mouths, in every mouth seventy thousand tongues, in every tongue seventy thousand voices, with which day and night he was incessantly employed praising God! The angel having conducted him thus far, in- formed him, that he was not permitted to attend him any farther in the capacity of guide, but that he must ascend the remainder of the distance to the LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 95 throne of God alone. This he accordingly under- took, and finally accomplished, though with gr^at difficulty, his way lying through waters and snows, and other formidable obstacles, sufficient to daunt the stoutest heart. At length he reached a point where he heard a voice addressing him, saying, " O Mohammed, salute thy Creator." Mounting still higher, he came to a place where he beheld a vast extension of light of such dazzling bright- ness, that the powers of mortal vision were unable to endure it. In the midst of the effulgence was the throne of the Eternal ; on the right side of which was written in luminous Arabic characters : ** There is no God but God, and Mohammed is his prophet." This inscription, he says, he found written on all the gates of the seven heavens through which he passed. Having approached to within two bow- shots of the Divine presence, he affirmed that he there behtld the Most High seated upon his throne, with a covering of seventy thousand veils before his face, from beneath which he stretched forth his hand and laid it upon the prophet, when a coldness of inconceivable intensity pierced, as he said, to " the very marrow of his back." No injury, however, ensued, and the Al- mighty then condescended to enter into the most familiar converse with his servant, unfolding to him a great many hidden mysteries, making him to understand the whole law, and instructing him fully in the nature of the institutions he was to deliver to mankind. In addition to thi« he honoured him with several distinctions above tht* rest of his §6 Life of mohammed. race ; us that he should be the most perfect of all creatures ; that at the day of judgment he should have the pre-eminence among the risen dead ; that he should be the redeemer of all that believe in him ; that he should have the knowledge of all languages ; and, lastly, that the spoils of all whom lie should conquer in war should belong to him alone. After receiving these gracious assurances, he retired from the presence of the Divine Majesty, and, returning, found the angel awaiting him at the place where they parted, who immediately re- conducted him back, in the same manner in which he came, to Jerusalem and Mecca. Such were the puerile conceptions of the pro- phet. Such the silly rhapsody which he palmed upon the credulity of his followers as the description of a most veritable occurrence. The story, however, carried on the face of it such glaring absurdity, that several of his party forsook him at once, and his whole cause came near to being utterly ruined by it. At length Abubeker, the man of greatest influence among the prophet's friends, by professing to give credence to the tale, at once put to shame the in- fidelity of the rest, and extricated his leader from his unhappy dilemma. He boldly vouched for the prophet's veracity. " If Mohammed affirms it, it is undeniably true, and I will stand by him. I believe every word of it. The Lord's elected cannot lie." This seasonable incident not only retrieved the prophet's credit, but increased it to »uch a degree, that it made him sure of being able vver after to impose any fiction he pleased upon the L1F15 OF MOHAMMED. 97 easy faith of his disciples. So that this senseless and paltry fable, which at first threatened to blast all the impostor's schemes in the bud, did in fact serve, by a peculiar combination of circumstances, materially to promote his success. Abubeker henceforth had the honorary title of " Faithful Witness" bestowed upon him. We learn from Sale, the English commentator upon the Koran, that it is still somewhat disputed among the Mohammedan doctors, whether their prophet's night-journey was really performed by him corporeally, or whether it was only a dream or a vision. Some think it was no more than a vision, and allege an express tradition of Moawiyah, one of Mohammed's successors, to that purpose. Others suppose, that he was carried bodily to Jerusalem, but no farther ; and that he thence as- cended to heaven in spirit only. But the received opinion is, that it was no vision, but that he was actually transported in the body to his journey's end; and, if any impossibility be objected, they deem it a sufficient answer to say, that it might easily have been effected by an omnipotent Being. It is by no means improbable that Mohammed had a farther design in forging this extravagant ale than merely to astonish his adherents by the relation of a miraculous adventure. The attentive observer of the distinguishing traits of Islamism will not fail to discover innumerable points of re- semblance between that system and the divinely- revealed religion of the Jews ; and it appears tc have been an object studiously aimed at by the 47—7 9S LIFE OF MOHAMMED. impostor to assimilate himself as much as possible to Moses, and to incorporate as many peculiarities ot the Jewish economy into his own fabrication as he could without destroying the simplicity of his creed. This fact is in keeping with what may be asserted in general terms, that the descendants of Ishmael, under a consciousness that the cove- nanted blessings of Jehovah have flow^ed down in the line of Isaac and Jacob, have ever shown a disposition to imitate what they could not attain. More stiking proofs of this will appear in the sequel. We adduce the observation here as affording a probable clew to the motives of the prophet in feigning this memorable night-journey. Hitherto he had only imparted to his followers the Koran, which, like the books of Moses, may be termed his written law. In making this revelation he had professed himself merely an organ through whom the divine counsels were to be uttered to the race of men. He simply gave forth what was communicated to him through the medium of tlie angelic messenger, and that without interposing any comments or expositions of his own. Ac- cordingly, when pressed by the cavils of his adver- saries, his usual refuge was to affirm that the Koran was not his book, but God's, and that he alone could give a just interpretation of its meaning which was in some places to be understood literally, in others allegorically. " There is no God but God, the living, the self-subsisting : he hath sent down unto thee the book of the Koran with truth, confirming that which was revealec/ before it. — — LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 99 It is he who hath sent down unto thee the book, wherein are some verses clear to be understood; thev are the foundation of the book ; and others are paraboUcal. But they whose hearts are per- veiae will follow that which is parabolical therein, out of lovo of schism, and a desire of the inter- pretation thereof; yet none knoweth the interpre- tation thereof except God."* But having by some means become acquainted with the fact, that the Jews, in addition to the written law dictated by God himself, were in possession of anotlier, called the oral law, said to have been given to Moses at the same time with the former on the holy mount ; and from him handed down by tradition from age to age; understanding, moreover, that this law was accounted cf equal authority with the written, while it had its origin solely from certain verbal declarations or dictates of Moses which were pre- served in the memories of those who conversed with him ; the prophet may from this have taken the hint of a similar mode of advancing his autho- rity, and of giving the weight and character of oracles to his private sayings. To this end it is not unlikely that he originated the fabulous legend of his nocturnal travel into the regions of the spheres. He was well aware, that could he once succeed in making it believed that he had been fa- voured to hold this high converse with God in the secret of his presence, and that he had been there fully instructed in the profound mysteries of hea- ven, he could upon this foundation erect just such * Koran, ch. iii. 100 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 8L fkbric of imposture as he pleased, and in^pose it upon his credulous followers. Such at any rate was the actual result. From this time forth a peculiar sacredness attached to the most trivial sayings and the most inconsiderable actions of the prophet in every thing that regarded his religion. They were reverently noted during his lifetime, and devoutly collected from traditional reports aftei his death, and at length brought together in those volumes of traditions, which compose the Sonnah^ answering precisely to the oral law of the Jews. And as the Jewish Rabbins employ themselves in collating, digesting, and explaining their ancient traditions, by many of which they make the law of God of none effect, so also among the Moham- medan divines, there are those who devote them- selves to the business of expounding the Sonnah, as containing the sum of their theology, both speculative and practical. It was not without rea- son, therefore, that the impostor was extremely anxious to have this marvellous recital cordially believed, or that he should have mlroduced the iVTost High in the Koran confirming the truth of his servant's asseverations. " By the star when ii setteth, your companion Mohammed erreth not, nor is he led astray : neither doth he speak of his own will. It is no other than a revelation which hath been revealed unto him. The heart of Moham- med did not falsely represent that which he saw. Will ye therefore dispute with nim concerning that which he saw ?"* * Koran. cU. *.iii. LIFE OF MOHAMMED. i(M CHAPTER VIII. An Embassy sent to the Prophet from Medina — Enters into a Leagtut untfi them — Sends thither a Missionary — Another Deputation sent to proffer him an Asylum in that City — His Enemies renew their Persecutions — Determines to fly to Medina — Incidents on the waff — Makes a Solemn Entry into the City — Apostate Christians nipposed to have joined in tendering him the Invitation. The fame of Mohammed had now extended be- yond the walls of his native town. While he was opposed, scorned, and derided at Mecca, his repu- tation was growing, and his doctrines secretly spreading at Medina. This city, anciently known by the name of Yatreb, and lying at the northern extremity of the province of Hejaz, about seventy miles from Mecca, had been distinguished by the early introduction of letters, arts, and science ; and its inhabitants, composed of pagan Arabs, here- tical Christians, and Jews, were frequently desig- nated as the people of the book. The two princi- pal tribes which now had possession of the city were the Karejites and the Awsites, between whom a hereditary feud had long subsisted, and the disturbances occasioned by the rivalry of these two tribes were enhanced by the disputes of the religious factions, Jewish and Christian, which dis- tracted all classes of citizens. It has been al- ready observed that several of the inhabitants, \n a pilgrimage to the Caaba, had been converted by the preaching of Mohammed, and that on their ce- 102 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. Vurn they had not been slothful in the propagation of their new sentiments. That they were both sincere and successful disciples of the prophet may oe inferred from the fact, that on this year, the twelfth of the mission, called the accepted ytar twelve men came to M(icca, and took an oath of fidelity to Mohammed at Al Akaba, a hill on the north of that city. The amount of this oath was : " That they should renounce all idolatry ; that they should not steal nor commit fornication, noi kill their children, as the pagan Arabs used to do when they apprehended they should not be able to maintain them ; nor forge calumnies ; and that they should obey the prophet in every thing that was reasonable." When they had solemnly bound themselves to the conditions of the oath, Moham- med sent one of his disciples, named Masab Ebn Omair, to instruct these men fully in the principles and practices of the new religion. Masab's mis- sion was eminently successful. Among the prose- lytes were Osaid Ebn Hodeira, a chief man of the city, and Saad Ebn Moadh, prince of the tribe of Aws ; and scarce a house in the city but numbered one or more converts. If the terms may be al' lowed, the excitement was little short of a Mo- hammedan revival. The next year, the thirteenth of the mission, Masab returned to Mecca accompanied by se- venty-three men and two women who had pro- fessed Islamism, besides several v^ho were as yet unbelievers. The object of this deputation was lo proffer to the apostle an asylum or any assist LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 103 ance in their power, as iliey had learned that, from the strength and malice of his adversaries, he stood in special need of auxiliaries. It was in fact a political association which was proposed to be entered into, " in which we may perceive," says Gibbon, " the first vital spark of the empire of the Saracens." In this ?rcret conference with the prophet, his kinsmen, and his disciples, vows ot fealty and of mutual fidelity were pledged by the parties. The deputies from Medina promised, in the name of the city, that if he should be banished, they would " receive him as a confederate, obey him as a leader, and defend him to the last extre- mity, like their wives and children." " But if you are recalled to your country." they asked, " will you not abandon your new allies ?" " All things," replied Mohammed, " are now common between us ; your blood is as my blood ; your ruin as my niin. We are bound to each other by the ties of honour and interest. I am your friend and the enemy of your foes." " But if we are killed in your service, what will be our reward ?" " Para- dise !" replied the confident apostle. This treaty was then ratified, and they separated, Mohammed having first chosen twelve out of their number, who were to have the same authority among them as the twelve apostles of Christ had among the disciples. Abu Sophyan succeeded Abu Taleb in the go- vernment of Mecca, in whom Mohammed found a mortal enemy to his family, his religion, and him- self. No sooner was he called to the head of the 104 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. state than he determined to exterminate the apostlo and his new-fangled heresy. A council of the Koreish and their allies was called, and the death of the impostor decided upon. It was agreed that a man should be chosen out of each of the con- federated tribes for the execution of the project, and that each man should have a blow at him with his Bword in order to divide the guilt of the deed, and to baffle the vengeance of the Hashemites ; as it was supposed that with their inferior strength they would not dare, in the face of this powerful union, to attempt to avenj^e their kinsman's blood. The prophet declared that the angel Gabriel had re- vealed to him the atrocious conspiracy, to which he thus alludes siome time afterwards : " And call to mind, when the unbelievers plotted against thee that they might either detain thee in bonds, or put thee to death, or expel thee the city ; and they plotted agamst thee ; but God laid a plot against them ; and God is the best layer of plots."* The heavenly minister, however, who disclosed the plot, pointed out no way of defeating it but by a speedy flight. Even this chance of safety had like to have been cut off through the vigilance of nis enemies. He was indebted for his escape to the devoted zeal of Ali, who wrapped himself in the green mantle of the prophet, and lying down upon his bed deceived the assassins who had be- sieged the house of his friend. Moliammed, in the mean time, in company with his faithful friend * Koran. cH. Till. LIFE OF MOHAMMED. lOt A-bubeker, succeeded in getting safely out of the city, and in reaching a cave tliree miles distant, called the cave of Thor, where the two fugitives concealed themselves three days from their pur- suers. A tradition of his followc s states that the assassins, having arrived at the uouth of the cave, were deceived by the nest of a pigeon made at its entiance, and by a web which a spider had fortunately woven across it. Believing this to be sufficient evidence that no human being was within, they desisted from all farther examination. The manifest tokens of divine protection vouchsafed to the prophet on this occasion, afforded him signal encouragement ever after, even in the entire des- titution of human resources. " If ye assist not the prophet, verily God will assist him, as he as- sisted him formerly, when the unbelievers drove him out of Mecca, the second of two (i. e. havhig only Abubeker with him) ; when they were both in the cave ; when he said unto his companion. Be not grieved, for God is with us. And God sent down his security upon him, and strengthened hira with armies which ye saw not."* Leaving the cave after the departure of their enemies, they made their way as rapidly as the perils of their flight would permit towards the city of refuge, where they arrived sixteen days after leaving Mecca. Having halted at Koba, two miles from Medina, he was there met by five hundred of the citizens who had gone forth for the purpose, ind * Koran, ch. ix» I lOfJ LIFE OF MOHAMMED. by whom his arrival was greeted with a cordii welcome. The prophet, having mounted a camd with an umbrella spread over his head, and a tur- ban unfurled instead of a banner, made his publi-: and solemn entry into the city, which was hereafi ter to be sanctified as the place of his throne This flight of the apostle of Islamism, called in the Arabic toiigue the Hkjira, or more properly the Hejra, has beconiejhe -grand era of all the Mo- hammedan nations, being employed _by_them for the" same purposes as the year of our Saviour's birth is throughout the nations of Christendom. It ^tqok^place A. D. 622, in the fifty-third year of the prophet's age. The waiting adherents of the messenger of truth, composed of those of his friends who had by his orders fled from Mecca a short time before him, and the proselytes of Medina whom he had never seen, now flocked obsequiously about his person, and the distinction henceforth became es- rablished among his followers, of the Mohajerins\ or the companions of his flight, and the Ansars^ or helpers; familiar appellations for the fugitives of Mecca, and the auxiliaries of Medina. "As for the leaders and the first of the Mohajerin and the Ansars, and those who have followed them in well doing ; God is well pleased with them, and they are well pleased in him ; and he hath prepared them gardens watered by rivers ; they shall re- main therein for ever ; this shall be great felicity * Koran, ch ix. ♦»• LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 107 At this distance of time it is not possible to de- rMED. CHAPTER XI. The Koreiah undntake a new Expedition against the Prophet— Thi Battle of Ohod — Mohammed and his Army entirely defected— His fol lowers wurrnur — The PropheVs poor devices to retrieve the disgrace mcurred ia this action— Resolves it mainly into the doctrine of Pre- destination— Wine and Games of chance forbiddev.—iSophyanj son of Caledf slain — War of the Ditch. The resentment of Abu Sophyan and the citi- zouji of Mecca, for the loss and the disgrace sus- tained the preceding year, stimulated them to un- dertake a new expedition against the warlike apos- tle. The Koreish accordingly assembled an army of three thousand men imder the command of Abu Sophyan, and proceeded to besiege their enemy in the city of Medina. Mohammed, being much in- ferior in numbers to the invading army, determined at first to await and receive their attack within the walls of the city. But the ardour of his men, en- kindled by the recollection of their former success, could not brook restraint ; tiiey clamorously de- manded to be led out to battle ; and he unwisely yielded to their request. Impelled, also, himself, by the same spirit of rash confidence, he unwarily promised them certain victory. The prophetic powers of the apostle were to be estimated by the event. Mohammed, in every encounter, seems to have manifested, in a high degree, the talents of a 'general. In the present instanc his army, con- LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 127 sisting of about one thousand men, was advantage- ously posted on the declivity of the mountain Ohod, four miles to the north of Medina. Three standards were confided each one to a separate tribe, while the great standard was carried before the prophet, and a chosen band of fifty archers were stationed in the rear, with peremptory orders to remain there till commanded to the attack bv Mohammed himself. The Koreish advanced m the form of a crescent ; Caled, the fiercest of the Arabian warriors, led the right wing of the ca- valry ; while Hinda, the wife of Abu Sophy an, ac- companied by fifteen matrons of Mecca, inces- santly sounded timbrels to animate the troops to the approaching conflict. The action commenced by the Moslems charging down the hill, and break- ing through the enemy's ranks. Victory or para- dise was the reward promised by Mohammed to his soldiers, and they strove with frantic enthusi- asm to gain the expected recompense. The line of the enemy was quickly disordered, and an easy victory seemed about to crown the spirit and valour of the Moslem troops. At this moment, the arch- ers in the rear, impelled by the hope of plunder, deserted their station and scattered themselves over the field. The intrepid Caled, seizing the favour- able opportunity, wheeled his cavalry on their flank and rear, and exclaiming aloud, " Mohammed is slain!" charged with such fury upon the disordered ranks of the Moslems, as speedily to turn the fate of the day. The flying report of the death of their leader so dispirited the faithful, that they gave way 128 LIFE OF MOHAMMED, in every direction, and the rout soon became gene- ral. Mohammed endeavoured in vain to rally his broken troops ; he fought with desperate valour ; exposed his person where the danger appeared greatest; was wounded in the face by a javelin; had two of his teeth shattered by a stone ; was thrown from his horse ; and would in all probabi lity have been slain, but for the determined bra- very of a few chosen adherents, who rescued their leader from the throng, and bore him away to a place of safety. The day was utterly lost ; se- venty of his soldiers were slain, among whom was his uncle Hamza ; and his reputation as a prophet and apostle was in imminent peril. His followers murmured at the disastrous issue of the conflict, and had the hardihood to affirm that the prophet had deceived them ; that the will of the Lord had not been revealed to him, since his confident pre- diction of success had been followed by a signal defeat. The prophet, on the other hand, threw the blame on the sins of the people ; the anger of the Lord had fallen upon them in consequence of an overweening conceit of their security, and because he had determined to make tr'al of their sincerity. "After a misfortune hath befallen you at Ohod, do ye say. Whence cometh this? Answer, This is from yourselves : for God is almighty, and what happened unto you was certainly by the permis sion of God, that he might know the faithful and that he might know the ungodly. And we cause these days of different success interchange- ably to succeed each other among men, that God l^IFii. OF MOHAMMED. 129 might prove those who believe, and might destroy the infidels. — Did ye imagine that ye should entei paradise, when as yet God knew not those among you who fought strenuously hi his cause ; nor knew those who persevered with patience ? — Verily, they among you who turned their backs on the day whereon the two armies met each other ^* Ohod, Satan caused them to slip for some criine which they had committed."* In order to stifle the mur- murs of those who were overwhelmed with grief at the loss of their friends and relatives, he repre- sented to them, that the time of every man's death is distinctly fixed by the divine decree, and that those who fell in battle could not have avoided their predetermined fate even if they had staid at home ; whereas now they had obtained the glo- rious privilege of dying martyrs for the faith, and were consequently translated to the bliss of para- dise. " 0 true believers, be not as they who be- lieve not, and said of their brethren when they had journeyed in the land, or had been at war, If they had been with us, those had not died, nor had these been slain : whereas, what befell them was so ordained. — No soul can die unless by the permission of God, according to what is written in the book containing the determination of things. — Thou shalt in no wise reckon those who have been slain at Ohod, in the cause of God, dead : nay, they are sustained alive with their Lord, rejoicing for what God of his favour hath granted them."t With these miserable evasions did he excuse the • Koran, ch. iii. _ tibid 47—9 L 130 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. falsehood of his prediction, and salve over the ignominy of his defeat. This doctrine of fatalism however, took a deep root among his followers, and to this day the Mohammedans are the most stre- nuous sticklers of any people on earth for the doe trine of absolute unconditional predestination. " No accident," saith the Koran, " happeneth in the earth, nor in your persons, but the same was en- tered in the book of our decrees, before we cre- ated it."* Abu Sophy an, for reasons now inexplicable, did not pursue the advantages he had gained on this occasion. He merely gave the prophet a chal- lenge to meet him again in the field on the ensu- ing year, which was readily accepted, although somewhat more than a year elapsed before the actual renewal of hostilities. * " We had at the same time the following striking instance of the frivolous appeals to the Deity among the Mohammedans. A man went round Vm caravan, crying with a loud voice, 'In the name of God, the just, the merciful. My cup is gone from me: it disappeared while I prayed at sunset (and may God grant my evening prayer). To whoever may find the same, may God lengthen out his life, may God augment his pleasures, and may God bring down affairs of business on his head I' This pompous appeal to Heaven, and prayers for good fortune to the finder of the missing utensil, were all powerless, however, in their effect. The lost cup was not found; and the consolation then assumed was, ' God knows where it is gone ; but it was written in heaven from of old." " — Bnckingham's Travrlsin Mesopotamia, vol. i. p. 281, Lond. 1827. " While this was going on, the author of our calamity [a vessel' had been run aground] was pacing the deck, the picture of terror and inde- cision, calling aloud on Mohammed to assist us out of the danger. His fears were not much lessened by the threats thrown out by each passing tar. M say, Jack,' said one of them, " we'll string you up for this ;' making his observation intelligible, by pointing with one hand to the yard-arm, and with the other to the neck of his auditor, at the same linre imitating the convulsive guggle of strangulation. When called to account for his obstmacy, the pilot gave us an answer in the true spirit of (Mohammedan) predestination ;—^T/it is Go^s 'pleasure that the ship should go ashore, what business is it ofmine?^^^ — KeppeVs Jour- ney from India to England* in 1824. v- 33. LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 131 About this time, or in the fourth year of the Hej.ira (A. D. 626), Mohammed prohibited the use of wine and of games of chance to his followers. " They will ask thee of wine and lots. Answer, In both these there is great sin, and also some things of use unto men ; but their sinfulness is greater than their use."* The occasion of this prohibition seems to have been the prophet's wit- nessing their bad effects in producing discord and broils among his disciples. " O true believers, wine and games of chance are an abomination, of the work of Satan ; therefore avoid them, that ye may prosper. Satan seeketh to sow dissension and hatred among you by means of wine and lots, and to divert you from remembering God, and from prayer ; will ye not, therefore, abstain from them ?" The sins of the past, arising from this source, are graciously remitted on condition of future amend- ment. " In those who believe and do good works, it is no sin that they have tasted wine or gaming before they were forbidden ; if they fear God and believe, and do good works, and shall for the future fear God and believe, and shall persevere to fear him and to do good. Obey God, and obey the apostle, and take heed to yourselves : but if ye turn back, know that the duty of our apostle is only to preach publicly."! Under wine are com- prehended also all kinds of strong and hiebriating liquors ; and though Mussulmans of lax and liber- line principles, and many such there are, will indulge themselves with the forbidden beverage, yet the * Koran, ob. ii. t Clh. ▼. J 32 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. more conscientious scrupulously avoid it, and na only hold it criminal to taste of wine, but also tt press grapes for the making of it, to buy or to sel' it, or even to maintain themselves with the mone\ arising from the sale of it. Another act of blood stains the fame of M<^ hammed in this part of his history. Being in formed that Sophy an, the son of Caled, was col lecting men for the purpose of attacking him, h* ordered Abdallah, the son of Onais, surname t Dhul-Malldhrat, that is, a man ready to undertake any thing, to assassinate his designing foe. Ah dallah obeyed the prophet's command, and mui dered Sophyan in the valley of Orsa. He imme- diately returned to Mohammed, who, upon heai ing the success of the enterprise, gave him as i token of his friendship the cane with which he usv- ally walked. In the fifth year of the Hejira occurred the wa* of the ditch, or, as it is otherwise termed, the wa' of the nations ; which, but for peculiar circum stances, would probably have resulted in the entir^f overthrow of the impostor. The Koreish, in coii junction with a number of the neighbouring tribes or nations, many of whom were Jews, assemblec^ an army of ten thousand men, and making commoi cause against the grand adversary of their ancien religion, advanced to the siege of Medina. Oi their approach, Mohammed, by the advice of So liman, or Salman, the Persian,* ordered a deej * This Soliman, otherwiac called Suleiman Pauk (i.e. the Pure), bat celebrated tomb erected to his memory near the ruins of the ancien: LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 133 iitch, or intrenchmeiil, to be dug around the city for its security, behind which he remained fortiiie(>' for near a month. During this period, no othe/ acts of hostility occurred than a few inefTectua] attempts to annoy each otlier by shooting arrows and slinging stones. In the mean time, tradition says, the prophet was busily employed by his arts and emissaries, in corrupting and bringing over to his interest the leading men among the enemy. Having succeeded with several, he employed them in sowing dissensions among the rest; so that at length the camp of the confederates was torn to pieces with divisions, and one party breaking off after another, nearly the whole army was finally dissipated, and the little remnant that remained thrown into confusion and made powerless by the direct visitation of an angry God. For while they Ctesiphon, on the Tigris. It is amon^ the prominent objects of curi- osity to modern travellers to the East. " From the ruins we went to the tomb of Suleiman Pauk, whose name has superseded that of the builder of this magnificent pile, in giving a name to the district. The tomb is a small building with a dome ; the interior, to which they allowed us access, on our pulling off our shoes, was ornamented with arabesque arches, and the suTounding enclosure was used as a cara- vanserai."— KeppeVs Journey, p. 82. " After traversing a space within the walls strewed with fragments of burnt brick and pottery, we came in about half an hour to the tomb of Selman Pauk, which is within a short distance of the ruined palace ofChosroes. We found here a very comfortable and secure retreat, within a high-walled enclosure of about a hundred paces square, in the centre of which rose the tomb of the celebrated favourite of Mohammed. This Selman Pauk, or Selman the Pure, was a Persian barber, who, from the fire-worship of his ancestors, became a convert to leilam, under the persuasive eloquence of the great prophet of Medina himself, and after a life of fidelity to the cause he had embraced, was buried here in his native city of Modain (Ctesiphon). The memory of this beloved companion of the great head of their faith is held in great respect by all the Mohammedans of the country ; for, besides the annual feast of the barbers of Bagdad, who, in the month of April visit his tomb as that of a patron saint, there are others who come to it on pilgrimage at all sea- •ons of the year." — Buckingham's Travels in Mesopotamia, vol. % 450. 134 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. iay encamped about the city, a remarkable tem- pest, supernaturally excited, bemimbed the limbs of the besiegers, blew dust in their faces, extin- fished their fires, overturned their tents, and put their horses in disorder. The angels, moreover, co-operated with the elements in discomfiting the enemy, and by crying "Allah Acbar!" (God is :^reat /) as their invisible legions surrounded the camp, struck them with such a panic, that they were glad to escape with their lives. The prophet was not insensible to the marks of die divine favour vouchsafed him in these illus- trious prodigies, nor did he fail to hold them up to the consolation of his followers on subsequent occasions. " O true believers, remember the fa- vour of God towards you, when armies of infidels came against you, and we sent against them a wind, and hosts of angels which ye saw not."* But, to whatever it were owing, whether to human or hea- venly agency, it is certain that from this time the Koreish gave up all hopes of putting an end to the growing power and spreading conquests of Mo- hammed. They henceforth undertook no more expeditions against him. * Konn, ch. xxxlii UFE OK MOHAMMED 135 CHAPTER XII. The Jews the special objects of MohammeiPs Enmity — beveral Tnbes of them reduced to Subjection — Undertakes a Pilgrimage to Mecca— - The Meccans conclude a Truce with him of ten years — His Power and Authority greatly increased — Has a Pulpit constructed for his Mosque — Goes against Chaibar, a City of the Arab Jews — Besieges and takes the City, but is poisoned at an Entertainment by a young Woman — Is still able to prosecute his Victories. Whatever might have been the prophet's early reverence for the city of Jerusalem, and his friend- ship towards the Jews, who, together with the sons of Ishmael, claimed in Abraham a common father, their obstinacy converted his favour into impla- cable hatred ; and to the last moment of his life he pursued that unfortunate people with a rigour of persecution unparalleled in his treatment oi other nations. The Jewish tribes of Kainoka, Ko- raidha, and the Nadhirites, lying in the vicinity of Medina, were singled out as the next objects of his warlike attempts ; and as they fell an easy prey to the power of his arms, spoliation, banishment, and death were the several punishments to which he adjudged them, according to the grade of their crime in rejecting a prophet or opposing a con- queror. Our intended limits will not permit us to enu- merate the various battles fought by Mohammed during the five succeeding 3^ears. Suffice it to 136 LITE OF MOHAMMED. say, that, according to the computation of some of his biographers, no less than twenty-seven expedi- tions were undertaken, in which he commanded personally, and in which nine pitched battles were fought. The heart sickens in following a pro- fessed messenger and apostle of God from one scene of blood and carnage to another, making th*^ pretences of religion a cloak to cover the most un bounded ambition and the vilest sensuality. A mind untrained to a deep sense of the purity and peaceableness of the religion of Jesus may be daz- zled by the glare of a tide of victories, and lose its detestation of the impostor in admiring the success of the conqueror. But to one who feels the force of Christian principles, no relief is afforded by the view of arduous battles won, of sieges undertaken, or of cities sacked or subjected, by the prowess of a leader whose career is stained like that of the founder of Islam. One or two subsequent expeditions, however, are too important in the prophet's history to be passed over without notice. In the sixth year of the Hejira, with fourteen hundred men, he undertook what he declared to be a peaceful pilgrimage to the holy temple of Mecca. The inhabitants were jealous of his intentions ; and while he halted several days at Hodeibiya, from whence he des- patched an emissary to announce his intention, they came to a determination to refuse him admit- tance, and sent him word, that if he entered the city, it must be by forcing his way at the point of the sword. Upon this intelligence, the warlike LIFE or MOHAMMED. 137 pilgrim called his men together, and it was resolved to attack the city. The Meccans, in the mean time, having more accurately measured their strength, or estimated their policy, and having been, besides, somewhat wrought upon by an unex pected act of clemency on the part of Mohammed, in pardoning and dismissing eighty prisoners of their fellow-citizens, who had fallen into his hands, altered their purpose of resistance, and sent an ambassador to his camp to confer upon terms of peace. Some umbrage was given to the Moslems by the facility with which their leader waived the title of Apostle of God,* but the result was the concluding of a truce of ten years, in which it was stipulated, that the prophet and his followers should have free access to the city and temple whenever they pleased, during the period of the truce, pro- vided they came unarmed as befitted pilgrims, and remained not above three days at a time. In the 48th chapter of the Koran, entitled " The Victory," the prophet thus alludes to the events of this ex pedition ; " If the unbelieving Meccans had fought against you, verily they had turned their backs ; and they would not have found a patron or pro- tector; according to the ordinance of Gcd, which hath been put in execution heretofore agamst the * "In wording the treaty, when the prophet ordered Ali to begin with the form, In the name of the moH merciful God, they (the Meccans) objected to it, and insisted that he should begin with this, In thy name^ O God ; which Mohammed submitted to, and proceeded to dictate : These are the conditions on which Mohammed, the apostle of God, has made peace with those of Mecca. To this Sohail again objected, saying, If we had acknowledged thee to be the apostle of God , we had not given, thee any opposition. Whereupon Mohammed ordered Ali to write as Sohail desired, These are the conditions which Mohammed, the son ofAbdal lah^^ S>'C. — SaWs Koran, vol. 2 p. 3S4. note. 138 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. opposers of the prophets. It was he who re- strained their hands from you, and your handa from them, in the valley of Mecca." The entrance into Mecca on this occasion is vaunted of by the apostle as the fulfilment of a prophetic dream. " Now hath God in truth verified unto his apostle the vision, wherein he said, Ye shall surely enter the holy temple of Mecca, if God please, in full secvirity." This event tended greatly to confirm the powei of Mohammed ; and not long after, he was solemnly inaugurated and invested with the authority of a king by his principal men. With the royal dignity he associated that of supreme pontiff of his reli- gion, and thus became at once the king and priest of his Moslem followers, whose numbers had by this time swelled to a large amount. So intense bad their devotion to their leader now become, that even a hair that had dropped from his head, and •he water in which he washed himself, were care- fully collected and preserved, as partaking of superhuman virtue. A deputy, sent from another ^ity of Arabia to Medina to treat with the prophet, ")eheld with astonishment the blind and unbomided v^eneration of his votaries. " I have seen," said le, " the Chosroes of Persia, and the Caesar of Rome, but never did I behold a king among his subjects like Mohammed among his companions." With this new addition to his nominal authority, he began to assume more of the pomp and parade due to his rank. After the erection of the mosque at Medina, in which the prophet himself officiated LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 139 as leader of worship, he had for a long time no other convenience in the way of stand, desk, or pulpit, than the trunk of a palm-tree fixed perpendicularly in the ground, on the top of which he was accus tomed to lean while preaching. This was now become too mean an accommodation, and by the advice of one of his wives he caused a pulpit to be constructed, with a seat and two steps attached to it, which he henceforth made use of instead of the " beam." The beam, however, was loath to be deprived of its honour, and the dealers in the marvellous among his followers say, that it gave an audible groan of regret when the prophet left it. Othman Ebn AfFan, when he became Caliph, hung this pulpit with tapestry, and Moawiyah, an- other Caliph, raised it to a greater height by add- ing six steps more, in imitation, doubtless, of the ivory throne of Solomon, and in this form it is said to be preserved and shown at the present day, as a holy relic, in the mosque of Medina. /This year he led his army against Chaibar, a city inhabited by Arab Jews, who offering him a manly resistance, he laid siege to the place and carried it by storm. A great miracle is here saiil to have been performed by Ali, surnamed "The Lion of God." A ponderous gate, which eight men after- ward tried in vain to lift from the ground, was lorn by him from its hinges, and used as a buck- ler during the assault !* Mohammed, on entering * " Abu Rafe, the servant of Mohammed, is said to have affirmed that he was an eve- witness of the fact ; but who will be witness for Ab» - - r—Gibh' LIFE OP WOHAiMMED. 147 acknowledgment of their homage and fealty. The numerous deputations which for this and other purposes, waited upon Mohammed this year, in- duced him to call it " The Year of Embassies." The close of this year was distinguished by the prophet's last pilgrimage to Mecca, called, from its being the last, " The Pilgrimage of Valedic- tion." An idea of the amazing increase of his fol- lowers since he last visited Mecca may be formed from the fact, that on this occasion he is said to have been accompanied by one hundred and four- teen thousand Moslems! Signal success in any enterprise seldom fails to call forth imitators and rivals. Mohammed had now become too powerful to be resisted by force, but not too exalted to be troubled by corrt- petition. His own example in assuming the sa- cred character of an apostle and prophet, and the brilliant success which had attended him, gave a hint to others of the probable means of advancing themselves to a similar pitch of dignity and do- minion. The spirit of emulation, therefore, raised up a formidable fellow-prophet in the person of Moseilama, called to this day by the followers oi Islam, " the lying Moseilama," a descendant of the tribe of Hoi.eifa, and a principal personage in the province of Yemen. This man headed an em- bassy sent by his tribe to Mohammed, in the ninth year of the Hejira, and then professed himself a Moslem ; but on his return home, pondermg on the nature of the new religion and the character and fortunes of its founder the saeiilegious suggestion 148 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. occurred to him, that by skilful management he might share with his countryman in the glory of a divine mission ; and accordingly, in the ensuing year, began to put his project in execution. He gave out that he also was a prophet sent of God, having a joint commission with Mohammed to re- call mankind from idolatry to the worship of the true God. He moreover aped his model so closely as to publish written revelations like the Koran, pretended to have been derived from the same source. Having succeeded in gaining a consider- able party from the tribe of Honeifa, he at length began to put himself still more nearly upon a level with the prophet of Medina, and even went so fai as to propose to Mohammed a partnership in his spiritual supremacy. His letter commenced thus : " From Moseilama, the apostle of God, to Mo- hammed, the apostle of God. Now let the earth be half mine and half thme." But the latter, feeling himself too firmly established to stand in need of an associate, deigned to return him only the following reply : " From Mohammed, the apostle of God, to Moseilama, the liar. The earth is God's : he giveth the same for inheritance unto such of his servants as he pleaseth ; and the happy issue shall attend those who fear him." During the few months that Mohammed lived after this revolt, Moseilama continued, on the whole, to gain ground, and became, at length, so formidable as to occasion extreme anxiety to the prophet now rapidly sinking under the effects of his dis case. An expedition under the command of LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 149 Galecl, " the Sword of God," was ordered out to suppress the rival sect, headed by the spurious apostle, and the bewildered imagination of Mo- hammed, in his moments of delirium, was fre- quently picturing to itself the results of the engage- ment between his faithful Moslems and these da- ring apostates. The army of Caled returned victorious. Mo- seilama himself and ten thousand of his followers were left dead on the field ; while the rest, con- vinced by the shining evidence of truth that gleamed from the swords of the conquerors, renounced their 3rrors, and fell quietly back into the bosom of the Mohammedan church. Several other insurgents of similar pretences, but of minor consequence, were crushed in like manner in tlie early stages ol their defection. i>0 LIFE OF M(>HAMMED. CHAPTER XIV. The Religion of the Prophetjirmly established — Tlie principal Countnet subjected by him — The effects of the Poison make mlarmins: fnroads upon his Constitution — Perceives his End approaching — Prearh.es for the lastTime in Public — His last Illness and Death — The Moslerrvt scarcely persuaded that their Prophet was dead — Tumult appeased by Abubeker — The Prophet buried at Medina — The Story of the hang- ing Coffin false. We have now reached the period at which the rehgion of Mohammed may be considered to have become permanently established. The conquest of Mecca and of the Koreish had been, in fact, the signal for the submission of the rest of Arabia ; and though several of the petty tribes offered, for a time, the show of resistance to the prophet's arms, they were all eventually subdued. Between the taking ^f Mecca and the period of his death, somewhat more than three years elapsed. In that short period he had destroyed the idols of Arabia ; had extended his conquests to the borders of the Greek and Persian empires ; had rendered his name formidable to those once mighty kingdoms ; had tried his arms against the disciplined troops of the former, and defeated them in a desperate en- counter at Muta. His throne was now firmly es- tablished ; and an impulse given to the Arabian na- tions, which induced them to invade, and enabled them to conquer, a large portion of the globe. In- dia, Persia, the Greek empire, the whole of Asf»» LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 151 Minor, Egypt, Barbary, and Spain, were eventually- reduced by their victorious arms. Mohammed tiimself did not indeed live to see such mighty conquests achieved, but he commenced the train which resuhed in this wide-spread dominion, and before his death had estabhshed over the whole of Arabia, and some parts of Asia, the religion which he had devised. And now, having arrived at the sixty-third yeai of his age, and the tenth of the Hejira, A. D. 632, the fatal effects of the poison, which had been so long rankling in his veins, began to discover them- selves more and more sensibly, and to operate with alarming virulence. Day by day he visibly de- clined, and it was evident that his life was hasten- ing to a close. For some time previous to the event, he was conscious of its approach, and is said to have viewed and awaited it with charac- teristic firmness. The third day before his disso- lution, he ordered himself to be carried to the mosque, that he might, for the last time, address his followers, and bestow upon them his parting prayers and benedictions. Being assisted to mount the pulpit, he edified his brethren by the pious tenor of his dying counsels, and in his own ex- ample taught a lesson of humility and penitence, such as we shall scarcely find inculcated in the precepts of the Koran. " If there be any man," said the apostle, " whom I have unjustly scourged, I submit my own back to the lash of retaliation. Have I aspersed the reputation of any Mussulman I let him proclaim my faults in the face of the con- 152 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. gregation. Has any one been de?*^oiled of his goods ? the little that I possess sb/ill compensate the principal and the interest of the debt." — " Yes," replied a voice from the crowd, " thou owest me three drachms of silver." Mohammed heard the complaint, satisfied the demand, and thanked his creditor, that he had accused him in this world rather than at the day of judgment. He then set his slaves at liberty, seventeen men and eleven women ; directed the order of his funeral ; strove to allay the lamentations of his weeping friends, and waited the approach of death. He did not expressly nominate a successor, a step which would have prevented the altercations that afterward came so near to crushing in its infancy the religion and the empire of the Saracens ; but his appointment of Abubeker to supply his place in the function of public prayer and the other ser- vices of the mosque, seemed to intimate indirectly the choice of the prophet. This ancient and faith- ful friend, accordingly, after much contention, be- came the first Caliph of the Saracens,* though his reign was closed by his death at the end of two years. The death of Mohammed was hastened by the force of a burning fever, which deprived him at times of the use of reason. In one of these pa- roxysms of delirium, he demanded pen and paper, that he might compose or dictate a divine book. Omar, w^ho was watching at his side, refused his ♦ Saracen is the name bestowed by the tmciem foreign writeirs upon tbe Arabs. They may have tolerated the title, but it is not one of their order to pave the way for a divorce. Mohammed, aware of the scandal that would ensue among his people, from his taking to his bed one who stood to him in the relation of a daughter, made a feint of dissuading him from his purpose, and endea- voured to suppress the violence of his passion. But finding the flame which consumed him uncon- querable, a chapter of the Koran came seasonably to his relief, which at once removed all impedi- ments in the way of a union. " And remember, when thou saidst to him unto whom God had been gracious "/.eid), and on whom thou also hadst conferrea lavours, keep thy wife to thyself and fear God ; and thou didst conceal that in thy mind (i. e. thine affection to Zeinab) which God had deter- tnined to discover, and didst fear men ; whereas it LIFlfi OF MOHAMM£D« 171 was more just that thou shoulJst fear God. But when Zeid had determined the matter concerning her, and had resolved to divorce her, we joined her in marriage unto thee, lest a crime should be charged on the true believers in marrying the wives of their adopted sons : and the command of God is to be performed. No crime is to be charged on the prophet as to what God hath allowed him."* Here the Most High is represented not only as sanctioning the marriage, but as conveying a gen- tle rebuke to the prophet, that he should so long have abstained from the enjoyment of this favour out of reg^ard to public sentiment, as though he feared men rather than God! Zeinab hereupon became the wife of this most favoured of mortals, and lived with him in great affection to the time of his death ; always glorying over her associates, that whereas they had been married to Mohammed by their parents and kindred, she had been united to hun by God himself, who dwells above the seven heavens ! Another of his wives, Safya, was a Jewess. Of ner nothing remarkable is related, except that she once complained to her husband of being thus re- proached by her companions : " O thou Jewess, the daughtei of a Jew and of a Jewess." To which the prophet answered, " Canst thou not say, Aaron is my father, Moses is my rnicle, and Mo- hammed is my husband?" But in reference to Jiese insulting taunts, an admonition was conveyed *■ Koran, ch. xxxiii 172 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. to the offenders from a higher source than the pro- phet himself. " O true believers, let not men laugh other men to scorn, who peradventure may be better than themselves ; neither let women laugh other women to scorn, who may possibly be bet- ter than themselves. Neither defame one another, nor call one another by opprobious appellations."* In addition to his wives, the harem of the pro- phet contained a number of concubines, among whom Mary, the Egyptian, was his favourite. By her he had a son, Ibrahim (Abraham), who died in infancy, to the unspeakable grief of the prophet and his disciples. He had no children by any of the rest of his wives except Cadijah, who was the mother of eight — four sons and four daughters ; but most of these died in early life, none of them sur- viving their father except Fatima, the wife of Ali, and she only sixty days. The following passages from the Koran evince that not the prophet only was an object of the di- vine care, beneficence, and guidance, but that his wives also shared in the same kind providence, and that whatever instructions or admonitions their frailties might require were graciously bestowed upon them. From an infirmity not uncommon to the sex, they had become, it appears, more devoted to the decoration of their persons than was credit- able for the wives of a holy prophet, and had de- manded of him a larger allowance on the score of dress than he deemed it prudent to grant. 1 hef • Koran, ch xlix LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 173 are thus rebuked : " O prophet, say unto thy wives, If ye seek this present life and the pomp thereof, come, I will make a handsome provision for you, and I will dismiss you with an honourable dismission : but if ye seek God and his apostle, and the life to come, verily God hath prepared for such of you as work righteousness a great re- ward."* " O wives of the prophet, ye are not as other women : if ye fear God, be not too com- plaisant in speech, lest he should covet in whose heart is a disease of incontinence ; but speak the speech which is convenient. And sit still in your houses ; and set not out yourselves with the osten- tation of the former time of ignorance, and observe the appointed times of prayer, and give alms ; and obey God and his apostle ; for God desireth only to remove from you the abomination of vanity, since ye are the household of the prophet, and to purify you by a perfect purification."t The prophet interdicted to all his wives the pri- vilege of marrying again after his death, and though some of them were then young, they scru- pulously obeyed his command, delivered to them, like every thing else in the Koran, in the form of a mandate of heaven, and lived and died in widow- hood. The passage in which this severe edict is found is a curiosity, and will doubtless lead the reader to suspect that it was prompted by a spirit of mean jealousy, the effects of which he aimed to perpetuate when he was no more. It is pre * Koran, ch. xxxiii. t Ibid 174 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. faced by some wholesome cautions to his fbllowert respecting the etiquette to be observed in their in- tercourse with the prophet and his household. " O true believers, enter not into the houses ot the prophet, unless it be permitted you to eat meat with him, without waiting his convenient lime ; but when ye are invited, then enter. And when ye shall have eaten, disperse yourselves ; and stay not to enter into familiar discourse ; for this incommodeth the prophet. He is ashamed to bid you depart, but God is not ashamed of the truth. And when ye ask of the prophet's wives what ye may have occasion for, ask it of them behind a curtain. This will be more pure for your hearts and their hearts. Neither is it fit for you to give any uneasiness to the apostle of God, or to marry his wives after him for ever ; for this would be a grievous thing in the sight of God."* In the outset of his career, Mohammed appears to have been more favourably disposed towards the Jews than the Christians. This is inferred fiom his enjoying with them a common descent from the patriarch Abraham ; from his agreement with them in the fundamental doctrine of the divine unity ; and from his proffering to make Jerusalem the point of pilgrimage and of the Kebla to his fol- lowers. But conceiving a pique against them about the time of his entrance into Medina, he thenceforward became their inveterate enemy, and 'n «iil his wars pursued them with a more relentles* * Koran, cb. xxxiii LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 170 severity than he showed towards any other people. Thus this descendant of Ishmael, without intend- ing it, made good the declaration of holy writ re- specting the antagonist seeds of Hagar and of Sa- rah. " For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond-maid the other by a free woman. But he who was of the bond-woman was born after the flesh ; but he of the free woman was by promise. But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit, even so it is now."* Their opposition to him can easily be accounted for on the score of national and religious prejudice. And the oppro- bnous name which they gave to the corrupt system of the heresiarch, tended still more to provoke his indignation. For while he professed to be a re storer of the true primitive religion which God com- municated to Abraham, and Abiaham to his sor Ishmael, and which the prophet denominated Islam, or Islamism, from a word signifying to devote or dedicate to religion, the Jews, by a transposition of letters, called the new creed Ismaelism, from the prophet's progenitor, and thus cast the greatest possible reproach on the bastard faith of their enemy. Their effrontery Mohammed neither for- got nor forgave. Still, both Jews and Christians were admitted to protection in ordinary cases on the payment of a specified tribute. Towards the Christians, though the Koran, and all who embrace it, breathe the most inveterate ma lice and the most sovereign contempt against the * Gal. ch. iv. 176 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. ** dogs" and " infidels" who profess the Gospel faith, yet rather more forbearance is exercised than to- wards the Jews ; and some of the Moslems will grant, that Christianity, next to their own, is the best religion in the world, particularly as held by Unitarians. Yet Mohammed, in the Koran, loses no opportunity to pour his revilings indiscriminately upon both. "The Jews and the Christians say, We are the children of God and his beloved. An- swer, Why, therefore, doth he punish you for your sins ?"* " They say. Verily, none shall enter pa radise, except they who are Jews or Christians : this is their wish. Say, Produce your proof of this, if ye speak truth. The Jews say, The Christians are grounded on nothing ; and the Chris- tians say, The Jews are grounded on nothing : yet they both read the Scriptures."! " O ye, to whom the Scriptures have been given, why do ye dispute concerning Abraham? Abraham was neither a Jew nor a Christian ; but he was of the true reli- gion, one resigned unto God, and was not of the number of idolaters."^ The religion of the Koran tolerates Christian churches in places where they have been anciently founded, but permits them not to be reared on new foundations. Christians may repair the walls and roofs of their places of worship, but are not allowed to lay a stone in a new place consecrated to the site of a holy building ; nor, if fire or any other accident should destroy the superstructure, are they suffered to renew the foundations, so as * Koran, ch. ▼. t Ch. ii % Oh. iii LIFE OF MOHAMMED. ITT to erect another building. The consequence isj that Christian churches, in the Mohammedan do* minions, must necessarily at lengtli sink to ruin, and vast numbers of them have already gone en- tirely to decay. In the great fires which happened in Galata and Constantinople in 1660, numerous Christian churches and chapels were reduced to ashes, and when the piety and zeal of their vota- ries had re-edified and almost completed the great- est number of them, a public order was issued that they should all be again demolished, it being judged contrary to Turkish law to permit the restoration of churches where nothing but the mere foundation remained. The fact may be here adverted to, in drawing our sketch to a close, that Mohammed not only admitted the Old and New Testaments as divinely inspired books, though corrupted by their disciples, but afiirmed that they bore unequivocal prophetic testimony to his future mission as prophet and apostle : " And when Jesus, the son of Mary, said, O children of Israel, Verily I am the apostle of God sent unto you confirming the law which was delivered before me, and bringing good tidings of an apostle who shall come after me, and whose name shall be Ahmed (Mohammed)."* In support of what is here alleged, the Persian paraphrast quotes the words of Christ in his last address to his disciples : " If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I go away, I will •end him unto you." This passage the Moham- ^' ^^ * Koran, ch. Ixi. 178 LIFE OF MOHAMMED. medan doctors unanimously teach has a direct iiv ference to their prophet, and is fulfilled in hii» only. But then, in order to make good their in- terpretation, they are obliged to hold that the Christians in their copies have corrupted the true reading, which, instead of Paraclete ( Comforter)^ is Periclyte (illustrious^ renowned)^ a word per- fectly synonymous with Ahmed. The following passage (Deut. xxxiii. 2) is also suborned to the support of the same bad cause : *' The Lord came from Sinai, and rose up from Mount Seir unto them; he shined forth from Mount Paran, and he came with ten thousand of his saints ; from his right hand went a fiery law for them." By these words, say the Moslem exposi- tors, is set forth the delivery of the law to Moses, on Mount Sinai ; of the Gospel to Jesus at Jeru- salem ; and of the Koran to Mohammed at Mecca. By Seir, they maintain that the mountains of Je- rusalem are meant, and by Paran, those in the neighbourhood of Mecca. But their geography will appear as lame as their divinity, when it is stated, that Seir was a hundred miles distant from Jerusalem, and Paran ^we hundred from Mecca. Their other glosses of this nature need no con- futation. In another sense, however, wholly different from that intended by Mohammed or his followers, we doubt not that this grand impostor and his re- ligion are distinctly foretold in the sacred volume The religion promulgated, and the empire esta- 61ished, by the author of Islam, has been too LIFE OF MOHAMMED. ITV signal a scourge to the Church and the civilized world not to be entitletl to a place in the prophetic annunciations of the Bible. A^s the subject of the rise, progress, and permanence of Mohammedan- ism cannot be duly appreciated apart from the pre- dictions concerning it, we have determined to de- vote a portion of the Appendix to the consideration of the most prominent and striking of these pro- phecies, to which the reader will permit us to bespeak his attention. (181) APPENDIX, [A.] # Prophecy. — Dan. vii. 8 — 26. (the vision.) i The he-goat waxed very great : and when he was strong, the gre« horn was broken ; and for it came up four notable ones toward the 9. four winds of heaven. And out of one of them came fbrth a little horn, which waxed exceeding great toward the south and toward iO. the east, and toward the pleasant land. And it waxed great even to the host of heaven ; and it cast down someof the host and of the stars 11. to the ground, and stamped upon them. Yea, he magnified himself even to the Prince of the host, and by him was the daily sacrifice 13. taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. And a host was given him against the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression ; and it cast down the truth to the ground ; and it 13. practised and prospered. Then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said unto that certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the !4. host to be trodden under foot? And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days ; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed. (the interpretation.) 31. And the rough goat is the king (kingdom) of Grecia: and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king (kingdom). 22. Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four king- 23. doms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power. And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding (Heb. making to understand, teaching) dark sentences, shall stand 34. up. And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power : and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, 35. and shall destrov the mighty and the holy people. And through his policy also he shall cause crafl to prosper in his hand ; and ho * For the materials of this chapter, and occasionally for some por- tion of the language, the compiler acknowledges himself indebted prin- cipally to Faber's Sacred Calendar of Prophecy, Foster's Mahometanism Unveiled, and Fry's Second Advent of Christ. He has moreover given a minute vnd critical atibAtion to these prophecies in the original la» fuagee. k82 APPENDIX. ■hall magniff himself in his heart, and by peace shall deatit^ many : he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes ; but S6. he shall be broken without hand. And the rision of the evening and the morning which was to'd is true^ wherefore shut thou up the Tision ; for it shall be for many days. Dan. vii. 8 — 26. The prophecy of Daniel contains a prospective view of the providential history of the world, in- cluding the four great empires of antiquity, together with the powers which should succeed them to the end of time, and consummation of all things. It is reasonable therefore to expect, that a system of pre- dictions thus large upon the history of the world, would not omit a revolution of such magnitude and prominence as that occasioned by Mohammed and Mohammedanism. No event, moreover, has had a more direct and powerful bearing: upon the state of the Church than the establishment of this vast im- posture ; and as the preceding chapter contains a full and exact portraiture of the Papal tyranny which was to arise and prevail in the western portion of Christendom, so the present is very generally ad- mitted to contain a prediction of that great aposiacy which was destined to grow up and overwhelm the Church in the East. The reasons of this opinion we now proceed to state. The theatre of this prophecy is the Macedonian empire, founded by Alexander; from one of the four dismembered kingdoms of which the little horn of the vision was to spring up. In the vision, the prophet saw the first great horn of the he-goat, or the kingdom of Alexander, " broken ;" indicating that that kingdom was no longer to have a place as a kingdom in the eye of pro])hecy. The dominions of Alexander at his death were divided between four of his generals: Macedon and Greece in the isrest were assigned to Cassander; Thrace and Bi- thynia in the north to Lysimachus ; Egypt in the south to Ptolemy ; and Syria with the eastern pro- vinces to Seleucus. yer. 9. And out of one of them camejorth a htth APPENDIX. 183 4om.— A " horn," in the symbol 4 al lang^uage of pro- phecy, represents a civil or ecclesiastical kingdom. The little horn here mentioneill was to come forth out of one of the four notable horns or members of the subdivided kingdom of Alexander. The ques- tion has been much agitated whether Alexander seized and retained any portion of the Arabian penin- sula : the fact of his having done so may be seen in any map of the Macedonian empire. " The empire of Alexander," observes M. RoUin, " was distributed into four kingdoms ; of which Ptolemy had Egypt, Libya, Arabia, CoBlosyria, and Palestine." The dis- trict occupied was indeed no more than an outskirt, but that outskirt comprised part of the province of Hejaz ; that is to say, part of that very district which gave birth to Mohammed and his religion. — As the horn in the vision was a little one, so Mohammedan- ism in its first rise perfectly corresponded with the symbol. It originated with an obscure inhabitant of a desert corner of Asia, whose earliest converts were his wife, his servant, his pupil, and his friend ; and whose party at the end of three years scarcely numbered a dozen persons. Which waxed exceeding great toward the south, and toward the east, and toward the pleasant land, — Mohammedanism accordingly, in its primitive course of conquest, did presently wax exceedingly great ; and that in the very line marked out by the prophecy. Its conquests extended southward over the large peninsula of Arabia, over Egypt, and over a considerable portion of central Africa ; eastward, over Persia, Bokhara, and Hindostan ; and north- ward, over Palestine, Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Tartary, the countries now forming the Turkish empire. " The pleasant land," or, literally, "the beauty," "the ornament," is an appellation bestowed upon the land of Judah, from its being in a peculiar manner the residence of the divine glory, the seat of worshiD. containing the city of Jerusalem 184 APPENDIX. and the temple, which were " a crown of beauty and .1 diadem of glory" to the nation of Israel, The ori i^inal word here employed is found in a parallel sense m Ezek. xx. 6. 15 ; "a land flowing with milk and ioney, which is the glory of all lands." Jerusalem was captured by the Saracens A. D. 637, after a i^iege of four months. Fer. 10. And it waxed great even to the host of r^iuven. — The " host of heaven" is but another name lur the multitude of stars in the firmament. But . >ars, in the idiom of prophecy, are a standing em- i.lem of ecclesiastical officers. The word " host" accordingly is not only applied to the priests and uevites performing the service of the sanctuary fNum. iv. 3), but to the nation of Israel as a great organized ecclesiastical body, or kingdom of priests. Ex, xii. 41. And when Christ says (Rev. i. 20), " the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches," his meaning undoubtedly is, that these stars are symbols of the spiritual rulers of the churches. The grand scope, therefore, of the pre- sent prophecy is, to point out a spiritual desolation, achieved by a hostile power suddenly attaining great strength, and forcibly thrusting itself into the body of true worshippers, with a view to their dis- comfiture and dispersion. And it cast down some of the host, and (i. e. even) of the stars to the ground, and stamped upon them, — As in the figurative language of prophecy the stars denote the spiritual pastors of God's church, so the violent dejection of such stars from heaven to earth signifies a compulsory apostatizing from their religion. Mo- hammedanism strikingly fulfilled this prophecy from the date of its first promulgation, when it stood up against the allegorical host, or the degenerate pas- tors of the Christian Church. Such of them as lay within the territories of the Greek empire were espe- cially given into the hand of this persecutmg super- stition ; but by its inroads into Africa, and Spain, APPENDIX. 185 and France, and Italy, it waxed great against the whole host. Of the eastern clergy, it cast some to the ground, or compelled them altogether to renounce the Christian faith. And as for those who still ad- hered to the form of their religion, it stamped them, as it were, under its feet with all the tyranny of brutal fanaticism. Ver. 11. Yea, he magnified himself even to the Prince of the host. — If the starry host be the pastors of the Church, the prince of that host must obviously be the Messiah. Mohammedanism has most clearly verified this prediction by magnifying its founder to a pitch of dignity and honour equal to that of Christ. In fact, it has set up Mohammed above Christ. The Arabian impostor allowed Jesus to be a prophet ; but he maintained that he himself was a greater pro- phet, and that the Koran was destined to supersede the Gospel. Thus did Mohammedanism magnify itself " even to" the Prince of the host. And by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down, — The term rendered " daily sacrifice," or, literally, " the daily,^' " the continual," is a term frequently used respect- ing the daily repeated sacrifices of the Jewish tem- ple, t)q)ifying the death of Christ till he should come. Now, what this continual burnt-offering was with respect to Christ's first coming, are the daily offer- ings of prayer and praise, and all the solemnities of the Christian Church, as administered by a divinely appointed order of men. When, therefore, the Saracens and Turks by their victories and oppres- sions broke up and dispersed the churches of the East, and abolished the daily spiritual worship of God, then did the " little horn" take away the " con- tinual offering" established by the Prince of the host. But the predicted desolation was to extend yet farther. The place of God's sanctuary was to be razed to its foundation, and both the sanctuary ind the host for a loner course of ages to be trodden P 186 APPENDIX. under foot. Accordingly, Mohammedanism began this appointed work by the subversion of tlie Chris- tian churches and altars in every stage of its pro- gress against the Greek empire ; and has continued the desolation during nearly twelve hundred years, until it has all but completed the extinction of Eastern Christianity. Gibbon observes, tliat upon the taking of Jerusalem, " by the command of Omar, the ground of the temple of Solomon was prepared for the foundation of a mosque."* And it is worthy of notice, that whereas the original word used by Daniel for ** sanctuary" is Kodsh, the same historian remarks, that the epithet Al Kods is used now, and was then among the Arabs as the proper appellation of the Holy City, of which the sanctuary or temple was the distinguishing ornament and glory. Ver. 12. And an host was given htm against the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression : and it cast down the truth to the ground : and it practised and prospered. — From this it would appear, that power was to be given to the little horn, not merely for the subversion of the true religion, but also for the per- manent substitution of another faith. " Host," we may naturally suppose, means in this place the same as when it was used in a former verse, — " a host of stars," symbolical of the several orders of Christian pastors and ministers. " An host," then, to be given to the liltle horn, implies that he too should have his orders of teachers^ and a regular system of reli- gious worship, and that by means of this new and spurious ecclesiastical polity, the Christian ministry should be opposed and superseded, and " the truth cast to the ground." The prediction, thus inter- preted, according to the natural force of the lan- guage and construction, is applicable to no other known power ; but as applied to the heresy of Mo- hammed, its fulfilment appears perfect. For tht^ * D«jc. and Fall, ch. li. da7 APPENDIX. 187 religion of Islam pennanently overthrew the Chris- tian priesthood and altars, by the permanent erection of other altars and of another priesthood in their room. Every where throughout its vast domains the mosques replaced the Christian temples; and the Imams and the Muezzin were substituted for the appointed ministry of Christ. In a more enlarged view, the Saracens and Turks themselves com- posed the antagonist host or priesthood. For in Mohammedanism, the sword being the grand engine of conversion, the whole Mussulman people became virtually a priesthood; and each individual Saracen and Turkish soldier a missionary and maker of proselytes. Ver, ':oix. 221 fonii on tine top of the mountain, and began his sermon, to which the multitude appeared to listen in solemn and respectful silence. At every pause, however, the assembled multitudes waved the skirts of their ihrams over their heads and rent the air with shouts of *Lebeyk, allahuma lebeyk!' — 'Here we are, at thy commands, O God !' ' During the wavings of the ihrams^'' says Burckhardt, ' the side of the mountain, thickly crowded as it was by the people in their white garments, had the appearance of a cataract of water ; wnne the green umbrellas, with which several thousand hadjis, sitting on their camels below, were provided, bore some resemblance to a verdant plain.' The assemblage of such a multitude, — to every outward appearance humbling themselves in prayer and adoration before God, — must be an imposing and impressive spectacle to him who first observes it, whether Mahommedan, Chris- tian, Jew, or Pagan. 'It was a sight, indeed,' says Pitts, * able to pierce one's heart, to behold so many in their garments of humility and mortifica- tion, with their naked heads and cheeks watered with tears, and to hear their grievous sighs and sobs, beg- ging earnestly for the remission of their sins.' Burckhardt mentions the first arrival of a black Darfoor pilgrim at the temple, at the time when it was illuminated; and from eight to ten thousand persons in the act of adoration, who was so over- awed, that, after remaining prostrate for some time, * he burst into a flood of tears ; and in the height of Ills emotion, instead of reciting the usual prayers of the visiter, only exclaimed—" 0 God ! now take my soul, for this is paradise !" ' "As the sun descended behind the western moun- tains, the Cadi shut his book : instantly the crowds rushed down the mountains : the tents were struck, and the whole mass of pilgrims moved forward across the plain on their return. Thousands ot torches were now lighted; volkjs of artillery aii(i .822 APPENDIX. of musketry were fired: sky-rockets innumerable were let off ; the Pasha's band of music were played till they arrived at a place called Mezdelle, when every one lay down on the bare ground where he could find a spot. Here another sermon was preached, commencing" with the first dawn, and con- tinuing till the first rays of the sun appear, when the multitude again move forw^ard, with a slow pace, to Wady Muna, about three miles off. This is the scene for the ceremony of ' throwing stones at the Devil ;' every pilgrim must throw seven little stones at three several spots in the valley of Muna, or twenty-one in the whole; and at each throw repeat the words, ' In the name of God ; God is great ; we do this to secure ourselves from the Devil and his troops.' Joseph Pitts says, ' as I was going to throw the stones, a facetious hadji met me ; saith he, " You may save your labour at present, if you please, for 1 have hit out the Devil's eyes already." ' The pilgrims are here shown a rock with a deep split in the middle, which was made by the angel turning aside the knife of Abraham, when he svas about to sacrifice his son Isaac. Pitts, on being told this, observes, ' it must have been a good stroke indeed.' The pilgrims are taught also to believe, that the cus- tom of * stoning the Devil' is to commemorate the endeavour of his satanic majesty to dissuade Isaac from following his father, and whispering in his ear that he was going to slay him. " This ' stoning' in the valley of Muna occupies a day or two, after which comes the grand sacrifice of animals, some brought b}^ the several hadjis, others purchased from, the Bedoums for the occasion; the throats of which must always be cut with their faces towards the Kaaba. At the pilgrim agu in question, the number of sheep thus slaughtered *in the name of the most merciful God,' is represented IS small, amounting only to between six and eight fiousand. The historian Kotobeddyn, quoted by APPENDIX. 223 Burckhardt, relates, that when the Caliph Mokteda performed the pilgrimage, in the year of the Hejira 360, he sacrificed on this occasion forty thousand camels and cows, and fifty thousand sheep. Bar- thema talks of thirty thousand oxen being slain, and their carcasses given to the poor, who appeared to him * more anxious to have their bellies filled than their sins remitted.' One is at a loss to imagine where, in such a miserable country, all these thou- sands and tens of thousands of camels, cows, and sheep can possibly be subsisted ; the numbers may be exaggerated, but there is no question of their being very great. The feast being ended, all the pilgrims had their heads shaved, threw off the ihram, and resumed their ordinary clothing ; a larger fair was now held, the valley blazed all night with illu- minations, bonfires, the discharge of artillery, and fireworks; and the hadjis then returned to Mekka. Many of tlie poorer pilgrims, however, remained to feast on the offals of the slaughtered sheep. At Mecca the ceremonies of the Kaaba and the Dnira were again to be repeated, and then the hadj was truly perfumed. Burckhardt makes no mention of any females becoming hadjis by a visit to Arafat, though Ali Bey talks of two thousand. There is no absolute prohibition; but from what follows, no great encouragement for the fair sex to go through the ceremonies. " ' The Mohammedan law prescribes, that no un- married woman shall perform the pilgrimage ; and that even every married woman must be accompa- nied by her husband, or at least by a very near re- lation (the Shaffay sect does not even allow the latter). Female hadjis sometimes arrive from Turkey for the hadj ; rich old widows who wish to «ee Mekka before they die ; or women who set ou* with their husbands, and lose them on the road by disease. In such cases the female finds at Djidda delyls (or, as this class is called, Muhallil) ready to 2'Z4 APPENDIX. facilitate their progress through the sacred territory in the character of husbands. The marriage con- tract is written out before the Kadhy ; and the lady, accompanied by her delyl, performs the pilgrimage to Mekka, Arafat, and all the sacred places. This, however, is understood to be merely a nominal mar- riage ; and the delyl must divorce the woman on his return to Djidda: if he were to refuse a divorce, the law cannot compel him to it, and the marriage would be considered binding: but he could no longer ex- ercise the lucrative profession of delyl; and my in- formant could only recollect two examples of the delyl continuing to be the woman's husband. I be- lieve there is not any exaggeration of the numlier, in stating that there are eight hundred full-grown delyls, besides boys who are learning the profession. Whenever a shop-keeper loses his customers, or a poor man of letters wishes to procure as much money as will purchase an Abyssinian slave, he turns delyl. The profession is one of little repute ; but many a prosperous Mekkawy has, at some period of his life, been a member of it.' " Burckhardt remained at Mekka a whole month after the conclusion of the hadj, at which time it appeared like a deserted town. " * Of its brilliant shops one-fourth only remained ; and in the streets, where a few weeks before it was necessary to force one's way through the crowd, not a single hadji was seen, except solitary beggars who raised their plaintive voices towards the windows of the houses which they supposed to be still inhabited. Rubbish and filth covered all the streets, and no- body appeared disposed to remove it. The skirts of the town were crowded with the dead carcasses of camels, the smell from which rendered the air, even in the midst of the town, offensive, and cer- tainly contributed to the many diseases now preva- »ent.' '* Di&ease and moriality, which succeed to the APPENDIX. 225 fatigues endured on the journey, or are caused by the light covering of the ihram, the unhealthy lodgings at Mekka, the bad fare, and sometimes absolute want, fill the mosque with dead bodies carried thither to receive the Imam's prayer, or with sick persons, many of whom when their dissolution approaches, are brought to the colonnades, that they may either be cured by the sight of the Kaaba, or at least to have the satisfaction of expiring within the sacred enclosure. Poor hadjis, worn out with disease and hunger, are seen dragging their emaciated bodies along the columns ; and when no longer able to stretch forth their hand to ask the passenger for charity, they place a bowl to receive alms near the mat on which they lay themselves. When they feel their last moments approaching, they cover them- selves with their tattered garments ; and often a whole day passes before it is discovered that they are dead. For a month subsequent to the conclusion of the hadj, I found, almost every morning, corpses of pil- grims lying in the mosque ; myself and a Greek hadji, whom accident had brought to the spot, once closed the eyes of a poor Moggrebyn pilgrim, who had crawled into the neighbourhood of the Kaaba to breathe his last, as the Moslems say, ' in the arms of the prophet and of the guardian angels.' He inti- mated by signs his wish that we should sprinkle Zemzem water over him; and while we were doing so he expired : half an hour afterward he was buried. "The situation of Mekka is singularly unhappy, and ill adapted for the accommodation of the numerous votaries of Islam that flock thither to perform the rites of the pilgrimage. The town is built in a nar- row valley, hemmed in by barren mountains ; the water of the wells is bitter or brackish ; no pastures for cattle are near it ; no land fit for agriculture ; and the only resource from which its inhabitants de- rive their subsistence is a little traffic, and the visits of the hadjis. Mr. Burckhardt estimates 47—15 S 226 APPENDIX. the population of the town and suburbs at twenty- five to thirty tlioiisand stationary inhabitants, to which he adds three or four thousand Abyssinian and black slaves. " On the whole, notwithstanding- all that Burckhardt records as to certain symptoms of enthusiasm in the course of his hadj, it is sufficiently plain, that even in the original seat of Mahommedanism, the reli- gious feeling-s of the people have cooled down con- siderably. The educated Moslems every where are mostly of the sect of Mahomet Ali of Egypt, nor can we have any doubt that all things are thus working together for the re-establishment of the true religion in the regions where man was first civilized, and where the oracles of God were uttered. In the mean time, the decline of the arch-heresy of the East will be regretted by no one who judges of the tree by the fruit. 'A long residence,' says Burck- hardt, ' among Turks, Syrians, and Egyptians' (and no man knew them better'i 'justifies me in declar- ing that they are wholly deficient in virtue, honour, and justice ; that they have little true piety, and still less charity or forbearance ; an 1 that honesty is only to be found in their paupers or idiots.'" APPENDIX. 227 [C] THE KORAN. The word Koran, derived from the verb Kara, to read, properly signifies the reading, legend, or that 'which ought to he read; by which name the Moham- medans denote not only the entire book or volume of the Koran, but also any particular chapter or sec- tion of it, just as the Jews, in their language, call the whole Scripture, or any part of it, by the name of Karah, or Mikra, words of precisely the same origin and import as Koran. This book must be re- garded as the code of laws, religion, and morality, which Mohammed, in his character of legislator and prophet, promulgated to the people of Arabia. As it is therefore the only book of law among the Mus- sulmans, and comprehends also the religious doc- trines which they are taught to believe, it follows, that with them a doctor in the law is also a doctor in theology, which two professions are wholly inse- parable. This law, upon which is founded all their theology and jurisprudence, is comprised in the Koran, in the same manner as the civil code of the Jews is comprised in the five books of Moses. The collection of moral traditions, composed of the sayings and actions of the prophet, and forming a kind of supplement to the Koran, the Moslems call the Sonnah; just as the Jews have denominated the book containing their oral traditions, the Mishna. The entire Koran is divided into one hundred and fourteen portions, which are denominated Suras, or chapters; and these again into smaller divisions, called Ayat, answering nearly, though not exactly, to our verses. There appears lO be an entire absence of any thing like design or method in either the larger or the 228 APPBNDIX. smaller divisions. Neither the time at which they were delivered, nor the matter they contain, was the rule by which they were arranged. They were, in t'a^t, apparently thrown together without order or meaning. One verse has seldom any connexion with the preceding; and the same subject, unless it be some narrative, such as that of Abraham, Joseph, or Pharaoh, distorted from the Sacred Scriptures, is in no case continued for a dozen verses in succes- sion ; each one appears an isolated precept or ex- clamation, the tendency and pertinence of which it IS often difficult and frequently impossible to dis- cover. The first nine titles will convey to the reader a fair conception of the arrangement, and something of the nature, of the subjects enbraced in the whole. 1. The Preface. 2. The Cow. 3. The Family of Iram. 4. Women. 5. Table. 6. Cattle. 7. Al ^raf. 8. The Spoils. 9. The Declaration of Im nunity. As to the plan or structure of this pseudo-revela- don, it is remarkable that Mohammed makes God Ihe speaker throughout. This should be borne in mind by the reader in perusing the extracts given in the preceding work. The addresses are for the most part made directly to the prophet, informing fiim what he is to communicate to his countrymen and the world; in other cases, the precepts, pro- mises, or threatenings are addressed immediately to the unbelievers, or the faithful, according as the burden of them applies to the one or the other. The following citations may serve as a specimen of the whole book. " Now we know that what they speak grieveth thee : yet, they do not accuse thee of false- hood ; but the ungodly contradict the signs of God. And apostles before thee have been accounted liars : but they patiently bore their being accounted liars, and th:ir being vexed, until our help came unto them." " Say, Verily I am forbidden to worship the false deities which ye invoke besides God. Say, I APPENDIX. 229 will not follow your desires; lor ihen should I err, neither should I be one of those who are rightly di- rected. Say, I believe according to the plain decla- ration which I have received from my Lord ; but ye have forged lies concerning him." The word ** Say," which is almost of perpetual occurrence in the Koran, is generally prefixed to the sentences or paragraphs containing a message to the people ; and the word " Answer" is employed where vei any hypothetical or foreseen objections are to be ob- viated, or any doubtful questions to be resolved. " They will ask thee also what they shall bestow in alms : answer. What ye have to spare. They will also ask thee concerning orphans : answer. To deal righteously with them is best ; and if ye intermeddle with the management of what belongs to them, do them no wrong; they are your brethen: God knoweth the corrupt dealer from the righteous ; and if God please he will surely distress you, for God is mighty and wise." To others the Divine mandates are usually couched in the following style : " O men, now is the apostle come unto you with truth from the Lord ; believe, therefore ; it will be better for you." "We have formerly destroyed the genera- tions who were before you, O men of Mecca, when they had acted unjustly, and our apostles had come unto them with evident miracles, and they would not believe. Thus do we reward the wicked people." " O true believers, wage war against such of the infidels as are near you ; and let them find severity in you : and know that God is with those that fear him." " O true believers, raise not your voices above the voice of the prophet ; neither speak loud unto him in discourse, as ye speak loud unto one another, lest your works become vain, and ye perceive it not." Immediately after the title, at the head of every chapter, with the single exception of the ninth, is prefixed the solemn fomu **In the name or the 230 API j^NDIX. MOST MERCIFUL GoD." This fomi is called by the Mohammedans, Bismillah, and is invariably ^.aced by them at the beginning of all their books and writings in general, as a peculiar mark or distin- guishing characteristic of their religion: it being deemed a species of impiety to omit it. The Jews, for the same purpose, make use of the form, " In the name of the Lord," or, " In the name of the great God :" and the Eastern Christians that of, " In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." In its general outline of facts, the Koran corres ponds with the Old Testament in the following his torical details : the accounts of the creation of the world ; of the fall of Adam ; of the general deluge ; of the deliverance of Noah and his family in the ark ; the call of Abraham ; the stories of Isaac and Ishmael ; of Jacob and the patriarchs ; the selec tion of the Jews as God's chosen people ; the pro- phetic office, miracles, and administration of Moses ; the inspiration and authority of the Hebrew hi-sto- rians, prophets, and psalmists, especially of David and Solomon ; and, lastly, of the promise of the ad- vent of the Messiah, with many of the accompany- ing predictions respecting it. Again, with the New Testament the Koran con- curs in the recognition of Jesus Christ as the pro- mised Messiah of the Jews ; in his miraculous con- ception by the breath or Spirit of God ; his imma culate nativity of the Virgin Mary; his title of Logos, or Word of God ; in the miraculous birth of Tohn the Baptist, son of !2echarias, as his forerunner ; in his performance of many mighty signs and mira- cles, such as healing the sick, raising the dead, and controlling and casting out devils ; in his rejection and persecution by his own countrymen ; his con- demnation to the death of the cross ; his bodily as- cension into heaven ; his officiating there as a Me- diator and Intercessor between God and man, and APPENDIX. 231 as Judge of all men at the last day. After the ex- ample, however, of some of the ancient heretics, Mohammed, as appears from the following passages^ denied the reality of the Saviour's crucifixion: — " And for that they have not believed in Jesus, and have spoken against Mary a grievous calumny; and have said, Verily we have slain Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, the apostle of God ; yet they slew him not, neither crucified him, but he was represented by one in his likeness. They did not really kill him; but God took him up to himself: and God is mighty and wise." " And the Jews devised a stra- tagem against him ; but God devised a stratagem against them ; and God is the best deviser of stra- tagems." This stratagem, according to the Mos- lems, was God's taking Jesus up into heaven, and stamping his likeness on another person, who was apprehended and crucified in his stead. Their con- stant tradition is, that it was not Jesus himself who underwent that ignominious death, but somebody else in his shape and resemblance. These numerous coincidences of the Koran with the facts and doctrines of the Bible are strangely interspersed with matter the most incongruous; with extravagant fables, monstrous perversions of the truth, and ridiculous and endless puerilities. This is accounted for on the supposition, that while the authentic facts were derived immediately from the canonical Scriptures, the fictions and absurdities were deduced in part from the traditions of the Tal- mudic and Rabbinical writers ; and in part from the apocryphal Gospels, or from the books of Adam, of Seth, of Enoch, of Noah, and other similar fabrica- tions, well known in church history as having been extensively in use among the heretics of the first centuries. A specimen or two of the manner in which some of the best-known narratives of the Old Testament ap- pear in the Koran, may not be unsuitably adduced here 232 APPENDIX. "Our messengers also came formerly unto Abra- ham with fi^ood tidings. They said, Peace be upon thee. And he answered, And on you be peace ! and he tarried not, but brought a roasted calf. And his wife Sarah was standing by; and she laughed: and we promised her Isaac, and after Isaac, Jacob. She said, Alas ! shall I bear a son, who am old : this my husband also being advanced in years 1 Verily, this would be a wonderful thing. The angels answered, Dost thou wonder at the effect of the command of God ? The mercy of God and his blessings be upon you. And when his apprehension had departed from Abraham, and the good tidings of Isaac's birth had come unto him, he disputed with us concerning the people of Lot ; for Abraham was a pitiful, compas- sionate, and devout person. The angels said unto him, O Abraham, abstain from this ; for now is the command of thy Lord come, to put their sentence in execution, and an inevitable punishment is ready to fall upon them. And when our messengers came unto Lot, he was troubled for them; and his arm was straitened concerning them ; and he said. This is a grievous day. And his people came unto him, rushing upon him : and they had formerly been guilty of wickedness. Lot said unto them, O my people, these my daughters are more lawful for you : there- fore fear God, and put me not to shame by wronging my guests. Is there not a man of prudence among you? They answered. Thou knowest that we have no need of thy daughters ; and thou well knowest what we would have. He said. If I had strength sufficient to oppose thee, or I could have recourse unto a powerful support, I would certainly do it. I'he angels said, 0 Lot, verily we are the messen gers of thy Lord ; they shall by no means come in unto thee. Go forth, therefore, with thy family, in some part of the night, and let not any of you turn back : but as for thy wife, that shall happen unto hei which shall happen unto them. Verily, the predic- APPENDIX. 233 tion of their punishment shall be fulfilled in the morning. " And Abraham said, Verily, I am going unto my Lord who will direct me. O Lord, grant me a righteous issue ! Wherefore we acquainted him that he should have a son, who should be a meek youth. And when he had attained to years of dis- cretion, and could join in acts of religion with him, Abraham said unto him, O my son, verily I saw in a dream that I should offer thee in sacrifice : consider therefore what thou art of opinion I should do. He answered, O my father, do what thou art commanded: thou shalt find me, if God please, a patient person. And when they had submitted themselves to the divine will, and Abraham had laid his son prostrate on his face, we cried unto him, 0 Abraham, now hast thou verified the vision. Thus do we reward the righteous. Verily, this was a manifest trial. And we ransomed him with a noble victim." The following passage may serve to illustrate the correspondence of the Koran with the historical re- lations of the New Testament : — " Zacharias called on his Lord, and said. Lord, give me from thee a good offspring, for thou art the hearer of prayer. And the angels called to him, while he stood praying in the chamber, saying. Verily, God promiseth thee a son, named John, who shall bear witness to the word which cometh from God ; an honourable person, chaste, and one of the righteous prophets. He answered. Lord, how shaiJ I have a son, when old age hath overtaken me, and my wife is barren 1 The angel said. So God dotli that which he pleaseth. Zacharias answered. Lord, give me a sign. The angel said. Thy sign shall be, that thou shalt speak unto no man for three days^ otherwise than by gesture. And when the angels said, O Mary, verily, God hath chosen thee, and hath purified thee, and hath chosen thee above all the women of the world : when the angels said, 0 Mary, 234 APPENDIX. verily, God sendetli thee good tidings, that thou shalt bear the word, proceeding from himself; his name shall be Christ Jesus, the son of Mary ; honour- able in this world and in the world to come, and one of those who approach near to the presence of God : She answered. Lord, how shall I have a son, since a man hath not touched me ? The angel said, So God createth that which he pleaseth : when he de- creeth a thing, he only saith unto it. Be, and it is : God shall teach him the Scripture, and wisdom, and the law, and the Gospel ; and he shall appoint him his apostle to the children of Israel." But besides agreements with the Old and New Testaments of this palpable kind, the Koran betrays its obligations to the sacred volume by numerous coincidences, more or less direct, with the senti- ments, the imagery, and the phraseology of Scrip- ture. Indeed, the most interesting light in which the Koran is to be viewed is as a spurious resem- blance of the inspired oracles of Jews and Christians. The extent to which the Bible of Mohammedans is made up of plagiarisms from the true revelation can scarcely be conceived by one who has not insti- tuted a special inquiry into the contents of each, with the express design of tracing the analogy be- tween them. Of the fact, however, of the Koran being constructed, in great measure, from the mate- rials furnished by the Old and New Testaments, no one can doubt, who is assured that the following is but a specimen of hundreds of similar correspon- dencies which might easily be made out between the two. BIBLE. KORAN. Take heed that ye do not your Make not your alms of none alms before men to be seen of them ; effect, by reproaching or mischief; otherwise ye iiave no reward of as he that layeth out what he hath, your Father which is in heaven. to appear unto men to give alms. Jesus of Nazareth, a man ap- We gave unto Jesus, the son of proved of God among you by mira- Mary, manifest signs, and strengtk^ eles and wonders, and signs woich ened him with the Holy Spirit. God did by him. APPENDIX. 235 BIBLE. KORAN. Thou Shalt give life for life, tooth for tooth, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe. But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the read- ing of the Old Testament-. But even unto this day when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. They said therefore unto him, What sign shewest thou then, that we may see and believe thee / In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And when he (Moses) was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren, the chil- ren of Israel. And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the ftill, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up. I will open my mouth in para- bles; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world. And the seventh angel sounded ; and there were great voices in heaven, saying. The kingdoms of this world are become the king- doms of our Lord and of his Christ. For behold, I created new heavens and a new earth. We look for new heavens and a new earth. I will cause you to come up out of your graves. And every man shall re- ceive his own reward according to his own labour. I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the vvricked. Ttms my heart was grieved. If thou. Lord, ehouldst mark ini- quities, O Lord who shall stand ? We have therein commanded them that they should give life for life, and eye for eye, and no«e for nose, and ear for ear, and tooth for tooth, and that wounds should be punished by retaliation. There is of them who hearkeneth unto thee when thou readest the Koran ; but we have cast veils over their hearts, that they should not understand it, and deaftiess in their ears. The infidels say. Unless some sign be sent down unto him from his Lord, we will not believe. It is he who hath created the heavens and the earth : And when- ever he sayeth unto a thing, Be, it is. I have already dwelt among vou to the age of forty years bef'^re I received it (the Koran), bo ye therefore not understand ? According to thy dream s'nall thy Lo^'*^ ^hoose thee and teach thee trie interpretation of dark sa}1ngs. We taughi him the interpreta- tion of dark sayings, bu« the greater part of men do not understand. O Lord, thou hast given me a part of the kingdom, and hast taught me the interpretation of dark sayings. And his will be the kingdom on the day whereon the trumpet shall be sounded. The day will come when the earth shall be changed into another earth, and the heavens into other heavens ; and men shall come forth from their graves to appear before the only, the mighty God. That God may reward every soul accord ing to what it shall have deserved. Cast not thine eyes on the good things which we have bestowed on several of the unbelievers, so as to covet the same ; neither be thoi grieved on their account. If God should punish men (br their iniquity, he would not lear* on the earth uny moving thing S36 APPENDIX. BIBLE. Dial thou art, and unto dust ■halt thou return. The merciftil doeth good to his own soul ; but he that is cruel troubleth his own flesh. Not rendering evil for evil, but contrariwise, blessing. Call ye on the name of your gods, and I will call on the name of the Lord. And they cried aloud. And it came to pass that there was neither voice nor any to answer. All that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth. All nations shall be gathered be- fore him. But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Go to, now, ye that say, To-day or to-morrow we will go into such 4 city, and contmue there a year ; and buy and sell and get gain : Whereas ye know not what shall toe on the morrow. For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we Mhall live and do this or ^hat. But of that day and that hour knoweth no man ; no, not the an- gels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father KORAN. Out of the ground have w created you, and to the same wiU we cause you to return. If ye do well, ye will do well l« your own souls ; and if ye do evil, ye will do it unto the same. Turn aside evil with that which is better. And it shall be said unto the idolaters, call now upon those whom ye have associated with God: and they shall call upon them but they shall not answer. And the trumpet shall be sounded again, and behold they shall come forth from their graves, and shall hasten unto the Lord. But God will not fail to perform what he hath threatened : ann ve- rily one day with the Lord is a« a thousand years of those which ye compute. Say not of any matter, I will surely do this ro-morrow ; unless thou add. If God please. They will ask thee concerning the last hour ; at what time its coming is fixed? Answer, Verily, the knowledge thereof is with my Lord ; none shall declare the fixed time thereof except he. From the foregoing examples it will appear mani- fest, that the plagiarisms of the Koran are not limited to the leading facts and narratives of the Bible, but extend to many of its minuter peculiarities ; to its modes of thought, its figures of speech, and even to its very forms of expression. Yet, in several in- stances, we meet with such egregious blunders, as to plain matters of fact, stated in the sacred volume, as must convict the copyist of the most arrant igno- rance, or of downright falsification. Thus he makes the prophet Elijah (Al Kedr) contemporary with APPENDIX. 237 Moses, Tshmael to have been offered in sacrifice in- stead ol Isaac, Saul to have led the ten thousand down to the river's brink instead of Gideon, and, by the most monstrous anachronism represents Mary, the mother of Jesus, to have been the same person with Miriam, the sister of Moses ! The palpable obligations of this spurious revela- tion to Holy Writ, and the real or supposed incom- petence of its nominal fabricator, have very natu- rally given birth to inquiries into the history of its composition. The great mass of writers on Mo- hammedanism, following the opinion of the Eastern Christians, have generally agreed in supposing that in the construction of the Koran, the Prophet was in- debted to the assistance of one or more accomplices. It is certain, from the pages of the work itself, that this was objected to him at the outset of his career. " We also know that they say. Verily a certain man teacheth him to compose the Koran." " And the unbelievers say. This Koran is no other than a forgery, which he hath contrived : and other people have assisted him therein: but they utter an unjust thing and a falsehood." But this emphatic disclaimer of the Apostle has failed to produce conviction. The un- believers of Christendom have continued to side with those of Mecca, and as many as eight or ten different persons have been designated as having been, some one or more of them, associated with the impostor in the promulgation of his counterfeit oracles. The more general belief has been, that Mo- hammed received his principal aid from a Nestorian monk, named Sergius, supposed to be the same per- son as the Boheira, with whom he became ac- quainted at an early period of his life, at Bosra, in Syria. On this, the learned Sale remarks : " If Bo- heira and Sergius were the same men, I find not the least intimation in the Mohammedan writers, that he ever quitted his monastery to go into Arabia, and his acquaintance with Mohammed at Bosra was 238 ArPENDIX. too early to favour the surmise of his assisting him in the Koran, though Mohammed might, from his dis- course, gain some knowledge of Christianity and the Scriptures, which might be of some use to him therein." The same writer, however, admits with Prideaux and others, thai while Mohammed is to be considered as the original projector and the real author of the Koran, he may have been assisted, in some measure, by others, though his successful pre- cautions of secrecy make it impossible to determine, at this day, by what agents, or to what extent, this was done. After all, the assertions advanced in respect to the part borne by others in the conipo- fsition of the Koran have never been authenticated by proofs, and the w^hole story has the air of an hypothesis framed to meet the difficulties of the case. And even were the popular belief on this question to be admitted, it would not do away all the difficulties which embarrass the subject. For who was capable, in that dark period, of producing such a work 1 This pretended revelation, independently of its plagiarisjns from our Scriptures, contains pas- sages as much superior to any remains, w^hether Jewish or Christian, of ttie literature of the seventh century, as they are utterly inferior to the contents of that sacred volume which the Koran blasphe- mously assumes to resemble and supplant. The whole subject, therefore, of the origin of this re- markable book, with the history of its composition, as well as the question how far Mohammed was ac- quainted with the Christian Scriptures, must doubt- less remain an unsolved problem to the end of time. Of the literary merits of the Koran, a fair esti- mate is not easily to be formed from a translation. By those who are acquainted with the original, it is universally acknowledged to possess distinguished excellences, which cannot be transfused into any other language. It is confessedly the standard of ihe Arabic tongue ; is written, for the most part, in APPENDIX. 239 a pure and eleg^ant style, abounding: with bold figures after the oriental manner ; and aiming at a concise- ness which often renders it obscure. Though writ- ten in prose, the sentences usually conclude in a long continued rhjnue, for the sake of which, the sense is often interrupted, and unnecessary repeti- tions introduced. This feature of the composition, though a disadvantage and a deformity to a transla- tion, is one of its superlative charms in the estimate of the native Arabs, whose ear is singularly sus- ceptible to the harmony of the rhythmical cadences with which the periods conclude. When we pass from the mere sound and diction which mark " the perspicuous book," it is indubitable that its finest passages are devoid of the merit of originality. Sir William Jones remarks ; " Tbe Koran indeed shines with a borrowed light, since most of its beauties are taken from our Scriptures ; but it has great beauties, and the Mussulmans will not be convinced that they are borrowed." In de- scribing the majesty and the attributes of God, and the variety and grandeur of the creation, it often rises to an impressive elevation ; but in almost every instance of this kin ^ it is evident that some pas- sage of inspiration of corresponding import was in the eye of the writer, and the copy is invariably in- ferior to the original. Yet the result of a candid examination of this pseudo-bible of Mohammedans, even in our English version, would probably be a more favourable impression of the book on the score of its composition, and a conviction that amid the mul- titude and heinousness of its defects, scarcely com- mon justice had been done by Chri3tian writers either to the character of its beauties, or the extent in which they obtain. Taken however as a whole, so far from supporting its arrogant claims to a super- human origin and eloquence, it sinks below the level of many confessedly human productions, to be found in different languages and regions of the earth? 240 APPENDIX. "With occasional passages of real beauty an6 power, it is, on the whole, a strange medley, in which the sublime is so nearly allied to the bom- bastic, the pathetic to the ludicrous, the terrible to the absurd, that each chapter, each page, almost each paragraph, is sure to give rise to the most opposite emotions. Respect, contempt, admiration, abhor- rence, so rapidly succeed each other, in the perusal, as to leave no fixed or uniform impression on the mind."* APPKNDIX. 241 MOHAMMEDAN CONFESSION OF FAITH ; TRANSLATED FROll THE ARABIC. (From Morgan's Mahometism Explained.) The articles of our faith which every good Mus- sulman is bound to believe and to receive with an entire assurance are thirteen in number, whereof the first and principal is, I. — Of God's Existence, To believe from the heart, to confess with the tongue, and with a voluntary and steadfast mind to affirm, that there is but one only God, Lord and Go- vernor of the universe, who produced all things from nothing, in whom there is neither image nor re- semblance, who never begot any person whatsoever, as he himself was begotton by none ; who, as he never was a son, so he never hath been a father. It is this Lord and Sovereign Arbiter of ail things whom we Mussulmans are bound to serve and adore • so that none among us may deviate from this arti- cle, but every one must imprint it deeply in hi> heart ; for it is unquestionable. IL — Of the Prophet Mahomet ayid the Koran, ( We must believe from our hearts and confess witli \our mouths that the Most High God, after having Jrevealed himself to mankind by his ancient pro* . phets, sent us at length his Elected, the blessed ^ Mahomet, with the sacred and divine law% which through his grace he had created, the which is con- tained in the venerable Koran, that hjith been from him remitted unto us. By this holy law it is that God hath abolished all the preceding ones, and hatb 47^16 T 24? AFPKNDIX. withdrawn from their doubts and errors all nationi and people in order to guide them to a firm and last- ing state of happiness. Wherefore we are obliged exactly to follow the precepts, rites, and ceremo- nies thereof, and to abandon every other sect or reli- gion whatsoever, whether instituted before or since this final revelation. By this article we are distin- guished and separated from all sorts of idolatry, lying rhapsodies, and false prophecies, and from all those sects, societies, and religions different from ours, which are either erroneous, abrogated, or exagger- ated, void of faith, and without truth. III. — Of Providence and Predestination. We must firmly believe and hold as a certainty that, except God himself who always was and always shall be, every thing shall one day be annihilated, and that the Angel of death shall take to himself the souls of mortals destined to a total and uni- versal extinction,* by the command of God, our powerful Lord and Master, who was able and hath vouchsafed to produce out of nothing, and in fine to set in form this universal world, with all things therein contained, both good and evil, sweet and bitter ; and hath been pleased to appoint two angels, the one on the right, and the other on the left, to register the actions of every one of us, as well the good as the bad, to the end that judicial cognizance may be taken thereof, and sentence pronounced thereupon, at the great day of judgment. It is there- fore necessary to believe predestination: but it is not permitted to discourse thereof to any whom- soever, till after being perfectly well versed in the study of our written law, viz. the Koran, and of our Sonnah, which is our oral law. Seeing then all things are to have an end, let us do good works, and deport ourselves so that we may live for ever. * Notwithstanding this annihilation, it is taught in the Koran that aU Intelligont creatures will be reproduced ngain at the resurrection. APPENDIX. 243 IV. — Of the Interrogation in the Grave, We must truly and firmly believe and hold as cei- tain and assured, the Interrogation of the sepulchre, which will after death be administered to every one of us by two angels upon these four important ques- tions:— 1. Who was our Lord and our God? 2. Who was our Prophet ? 3. Which was our reli- gion ? 4. On what side was our Keblah ] He who shall be in a condition to make answer, that God was his only Lord, and Mahomet his Prophet, shall find a great illumination in his tomb, and shall him- self rest in glory. But he who shall not make a pro- per answer to these questions shall be involved in darkness until the day of judgment. V. — Of the Future Dissolution. We must heartily believe and hold as certain, that not only shall all things one day perish and be anni- hilated, viz. angels, men, and devils, but likewise this shall come to pass at the end of the world, when the angel Israfil shall blow the trumpet in such sort that except the Sovereign God none of the universal creation shall remain alive immediately after the dreadful noise, which shall cause the moun- tains to tremble, the earth to sink, and the sea to be changed to the colour of blood. In this total extinc- tion, the last who shall die will be Azarael, the Angel of death ; and the power of the Most High God wilJ be evidently manifested. VI. — Of the Future Resurrection. We are obliged cordially to believe and to hold for certain, that the first before all others whom God ehall revive in heaven shall be the Angel of death ; and that he will at that time recall all the souls in general, and reunite them to the respective bodies to 244 APPENDIX. which each belonged ; some of which shall be des- tined to glory, and others to torment. But upon earth, the first whom God will raise shall be our blessed prophet Mahomet. As for the earth itself, it shall open on all sides, and shall be changed in a moment ; and by God's command fire shall be kindled in every part thereof, which shall be ex- tended to its utmost extremities. God will then prepare a vast plain, perfectly level, and of sufficient extent to contain all creatures summoned to give an account of their past conduct. May this solemn, definite, and irrevocable judgment awaken us from our security ; for to nothing that hath been created shall favour be showed. Every soul shall be judged there by the same rule, and without exception of persons. VII. — Of the Day of Judgment We must believe from our hearts and hold for certain, that there shall be a day of judgment, whereon God shall ordain all nations to appear in a place appointed for this great trial, of sufficient vast- ness that His Majesty may there be evident in splen- dour. It is in this magnificent and spacious station that the universal assembly of all creatures shall be made, about the middle of the day, and in the bright- ness of noon : and then it is, that accompanied by his prophet (Mohammed), and in the presence of all mankind, God shall with justice and equity judge all the nations of the earth in general, and every person in particular. To this eflbct, every one of us shall have a book or catalogue of our actions de- livered to us ; that of the good in such wise that it shall be re( eived and held in the right hand ; that of the wicked^ so that it shall be received and held in the left hand. As to the duration of that day, it shall be as long as the continuance of the present age. This shall be a day of sighs aHd griefs, a day of tribulation and anguish, when the cup of sorrovf APPENDIX. 249 and misery must be drunk up, even the very dregs thereof. But this is what shall be particularly ex- perienced by the ungodly and the perverse ; every thing shall present to them ideas of sorrow and affliction. To them every thing shall become aloes and bitterness. They shall not obtain one moment of repose. They shall behold nothing that is agree- able, nor hear one voice that shall delight them : their eyes shall see nothing but the torments of hell; their ears shall hear nothing but the cries and bowl- ings of devils ; and their terrified imaginations shall represent unto them nothing but spectres and tortures. VIII. — OfMahomefs Intercession. We are bound to believe, and hold as certain, that our venerable prophet Mahomet shall with success intercede for his people at the great day of examina- tion. This will be the first intercession ; but at the second, God will be entirely relented, and all the faithful Mussulmans shall be transported into a state of glory, while not one excuse or supplication in behalf of other nations shall be accepted. As to the greatness of pain which those among us are to un- dergo, who have been offenders by transgressing the precepts of the Koran, it is known to God alone, as there is none but Him who exactly knoweth how long the same is to continue, whether its duration shall be more or less than that of the examination or judg- ment. But to us it belongeth to shorten its con- tinuance by good works, by our charity, and by all the endeavours we are capable of. IX. — Of the future Compensation at the last Judgment. We must sincerely believe, and hold as a certainty, that we must every one of us give up our accounts before God, concerning the good and evil we have transacted in this world. All who have been 246 APPENDIX. followers of Mahomet shall be before all others summoned to this examination, because they it will be who shall bear witness against all other strange nations. It shall come to pass on that day, that God will take away out of the balance of him who has slandered his brother some of the good works, and put them unto that of him who hath been slan- dered ; and if the slanderer is found to have no good works, he will then deduct from the punishment of the slandered, to include them in the list of those of the slanderer, insomuch that his great justice will be fully manifest. At least, then, that we not run the hazard of this terrible compensation, let us not think of wronging others, or of diminishing thejr substance, their honour, or their good name. X. — Of the Balance, and of Purgatory, We must believe from the heart, and confess with the mouth, that all our actions, good and bad, shall one day be weighed in the balance, the one against the other, insomuch that those whose good works outweigh their bad shall enter into Paradise ; and that, on the contrary, they whose bad works shall outweigh their good shall be condemned to the flames of hell. And for those whose scales shall be equally poised, because the good they have done is equivalent to the evil, they shall be detained in a station situate in the middle, between Paradise and hell, where consideration will be ^made both of their merits and of their demerits, since besides their being confined in that place, they shall have no punishment inflicted on them, nor shall they enjoy any part of the glory ordained for the beatified righteous. It is true that all those among that num- ber who are Mussulmans shall be at length released from their captivity, and shall be introduced into Paradise at the second intercession of our blessed prophet Mahomet, whose great compassion will AppEiifDix. 247 be signalized by his engaging, in ordet to our rc- demi)iion, to supplicate the power and the mercy of the Most High, as well as his justice, already satis- fied by the long captivity of the criminals. Where- fore let us from henceforward weigh our good works, to the end that we may assiduously strive to increase their weight, and that they may have the advantage over the bad. XI. — Of the Sharp-edged Bridge, and the unavoidable passage thereof. We are obliged to believe from our hearts and to hold as assured, that all mankind in tjie world must pass one day over the Sharp-edged Bridge, whose length shall be equal to that of this world, whose breadth shall not exceed that of one single thread of a spider's web, and whose height shall be propor- tionable to its extent. The righteous shall pass over it swifter than a flash of lightning ; but the impious and the ungodly, shall not, in as much time as the present age shall endure, be able to surmount the diflUculties thereof, and that through the want of good works. For which reason, they shall fall and precipitate themselves into hell-fire, in company with the infidels and blasphemers, with those of little faith and bad conscience, who have done few deeds of charity, because they were void of virtue. There shall be some among the good, notwithstand- ing, whose passage shall be lighter and swifter than that of many others, who shall therein meet with temptations and obstructions from every precept which they shall have ill-observed in this life. Good God ! how dreadful to our sight will this formidable bndge appear! What virtue, what secret grace from the Most High shall we not need to be enabled to pass over it ? 248 APPENDIX. XII. — Of Paradise. We are to believe and to hold for a certainty, that God did create a Paradise which he prepared for the blessed, from among- the number of the faithful, by which are meant the followers of the true religion, and of our holy prophet, Mahomet ; where with him they shall be placed in perpetual light, and in the enjoyment of heavenly delights ; for ever beautiful in the vigour of their age, and brighter than the sun ; and where tliey shall be found worthy to contem- plate and adore the face of the Most High God. As for those who shall be detained in the tortures of hell, to wit, the sinners and transgressors, who have nevertheless believed in one only God, they shall be released at the second intercession of the prophet, by whom they shall immediately be washed in the sacred laver, from whence being come forth whiter than snow and more refulgent than the sun, they shall, with the rest of the blessed, behold them- selves seated in paradise, there to enjoy all the glory they can desire. This is what shall befall the body composed of clay ; and what then shall be the state of our souls ] To the which it shall be granted eternally to behold the light and brightness of the divine majesty. Let us then endeavour to do works of such a character, that we may have no cause to fear hell-fire. Let us, I say, chiefly apply ourselves to good works, let us not refuse to exert our utmost strength in the exact observation thereof, and of the fast of our venerable month of Ramadan, and of the prayers and ceremonies which are ordained ; and let us not defraud the poor of a tenth of all our goods. Xllh-^Of Hell. We must sincerely believe and hold for certam, that there is a hell prepared for the unrighteous, the refractory transgressors of the divine law, accursed APPENDIX. 249 of God for their evil works, and for whom it would have been better had they never have been born, and to have never seen the light of day. It is for such as those that a place of torment is appointed, or rather a fire which burneth without touching them, a fire of ice and north winds, where there shall be nothing but snakes and serpents, with other venom- ous and ravenous creatures, which shall bite them without destroying them, and shall cause them to feel grievous pains. That place shall be the abode of the impious and of the devils, where these shall, with all sorts of cruelty and rage, incessantly tor ture those ; and lest the sense of their pain should cause them to relent, a new skin shall continually succeed in the stead of that which has been burned or mortified. It is for us Mussulmans to conceive and entertain a just horror of this detestable place, such reflections are the duty of all God's servants. As for those others who have declared war against our religion, they shall one day feel the torments ot hell. Let us all dread this punishment and these frightful terrors. Let us confirm our faith by the sentiments of our hearts, and by the confession of our tongues, and let us engrave it in the bottom of our souls. U 950 4PPENDir. [E] AN ACCOUNT OP THE PRINCIPAL ARABIC, GREEK, AND LATiB AUTHORS, WHO HAVE TREATED THE SUBJECT OF MO> HAMMEDANISM AND ITS FOUNDER. (Collected chiefly from Prideaox.) Abul Faragius ; a physician of Malatia, in Lesser Armenia, of the Christian religion, and of the sect of the Jacobites. He is a writer of distinguislied note in the East, both among Mohammedans and Chris- tians. His Historia Dynastarum embraces the pe- riod from the creation of the world to the year of our Lord 1284. He flourished near the close of the 13lh century, about the time when his History ends. His work was published in 4to at Oxford, A. D. 1663, with a Latin Version by Dr. Pocock. His entire name is Gregorius Ebn Hakim Abul Faragii. He is thus spoken of by Gibbon. " Yet in that long period some strangers of merit have been con- verted to the Monophysite faith, and a Jew was the father of Abul Pharagius, primate of the East, so truly eminent in his life and death. In his life, he was an elegant writer of the Syriac and Arabic tongues, a poet, a physician, and historian, a subtle philosopher, and a moderate divine. In his death, his funeral was attended by his rival, the Nestorian patriarch, with a train of Greeks and Armenians who forgot their disputes, and mingled their tears over the grave of an enemy.'"* Abul Feda; an author eminently distinguished among the oriental writers for two works well known among the learned ; the one, a General Geography of the world, after the method of Ptolemy ; the other ♦ Decline and Fall, vol.v. p. 508, DubU" edition, 1788 APPENDIX. 251 a General History, which he calls the Epitome of the History of Nations. He was born A. D. 1273, and finished his Geography A. D. 1321. Twenty years afterward he was advanced to the principality of Hamah, in Syria, from whence he is commonly called Shahah Hamah, i. e. prince of Hamah, when after a reign of three years and two months, he died A. D. 1345, aged seventy-two. He was by nation a Turk, of the noble family of the Jolidae, from which also Saladin, the famous Sultan of Egypt was de- scended. Ecchelensis quotes him by the name of Ishmael Shiahinshiah* Abunazar ; a legendary writer among the Mohanji- medans, often quoted by Hottinger. Agar; the name of a book of great authority among the Mussulmans, containing an account of the life and death of Mohammed. Johannes An- dreas makes great use of it under the name of Azaer as does Bellonius in the third book of his Observa- tions, under the name of Asaer. Guadagnl, who had a copy of the work, draws from it the most of the particulars which he objects against the life and actions of Mohammed. Ahmed Ebn Edris ; an author who wrote in the defence of the Mohammedan religion against the Christians and the Jews. Ahmed Ebn Yuseph ; a historian who flourished A. D. 1599, when he completed his history. Ahmed Ebn Zin Alabedin ; a nobleman of Ispa- han, in Persia, of the sixteenth century, who wrote one of the acutest works against the Christian reli- gion and in defence of the Mohammedan, ever pub- lished. Jernimo Xavier, a Jesuit Missionary to the court of Ecbar, Great Mogul, had written in the Persian language, two works in favour of Chistian- ity, one entitled, the History of Jesus Christ, collected for the most part out of the legends of the church of Rome : the other called A Looking-Glass of the Truths intended as a defence of the Gospel again»» 252 APPENDIX. the Mohammedans. This latter work, unluckily foi the author, soon after its publication, fell into the hands of the learned Persian Ahmed Ebn Zin, who immediately wrote an answer to it which he entitled, Tlie Brasher of the Looking-Glass. The college of the Propaganda at Rome were so exceedingly nettled by the masterly manner in which their missionary's work had been answered, that two Franciscan Friars were ordered each of them to prepare a reply to the rude Brusher of the Jesuit's Mirror. But as their arguments in defence of Christianity were mostly draw^n from the authorities of Popes and Councils, the palm of victory was fairly left in the hands of their Moslem opponent. Al Bochari ; an eminent Arabic writer, who has given the fullest account of the Traditionary Doc- trines of the Mohammedan religion. He is enume- rated, by Johannes Andreas and Bellonius, among the six Mohammedan Doctors who met by the ap- pointment of one of the Caliphs at Damascus in order to make an authentic collection of all the traditions which compose their Sonnah. His work contains the Pandects of all that relates either to their Law or their Religion, digested under their several titles through twenty books, and from its antiquity and authenticity ranks among their sacred writings next to the Koran. He was born at Bochara, A. D. 809, and died, A. D. 869. Al Fragani ; an astronomer of Fragana in Persia, whence his name ; which is at length Mohammed Ebn Katir Al Fragani. He wrote a book called The Elements of Astronomy, which has been several times republished in Europe, as at Nuremburgh, A. D. 1537; at Paris, 1546; at Frankfort, cum notis Christmanni, A. D. 1590, in Latin; and afterward by Golius in Arabic and Latin at Ley den, A. D. 1669, with copious notes extremely useful to a knowledge of the Geography of the East. He flou- fished under the Caliph Al Mamon, who died A. D. 833. APPENDIX. 253 Al Gazal ; a famous philosopher of Tusa in Persia. He wrote many works not only in the de- partment of philosophy, but also in defence of the Mohammedan religion against Christians, Jews, Pagans, and every class of unbelievers. The most noted of his works is that entitled Tlie Destruction of Philosophers, written against Avicenna and other philosophers, who, in order to solve the absurdities of Islamism, were for turning into figure and alle- gory numerous points of that religion which had all along been understood literally. These writers he violently opposes, accusing them, on account of these mystical interpretations, of heresy and infi- delity, as corrupters of the faith and subverters of religion, for which reason he had the honorary appel- lation bestowed upon him of Hoghatol Islam Zainod- din, i. e. The Demonstration of Mohammedanism^ and the Honour of Religion. He was born A. D. 1 058, and died A. D. 11 12. His name at length is Abu Hamed Ebn Mohammed Al Gazali Al Tusi. Al Jannabi ; a historian born at Jannaba, a city of Persia, near Shiraz. His History extends down to the year of our Lord, 1588, and in the course of it he informs his reader that he took a pilgrimage to Mecca, and went from thence to Medina, to pay his devotions at the tomb of the Prophet, in that year of the Hejira which answers to A. D. 1556. Al Kamus ; i. e. The Ocean ; a noted Arabic Dic- tionary, so called from the ocean of words con- tained in it. It was written by Mohammed Al Shi- razi Al Firauzabadi. He was a person of great esteem among the princes of his time, for his emi- nent learning and worth, particularly with Ismael Ebn Abbas, king of Yemen, Bajazet, king of the Turks, and Tamerlane the Tartar, the last of whom made him a present of five thousand pieces of gold at one time. He was by birth a Persian, bom A. D. 1338, but lived mostly at Sanau in Yemen of Arabia. He finished his Dictionary at Mecca, and dedicate' f54 APPENDIX. it to Ismael Ebn Abbas, whose patronage he had long enjoyed, and died at Zibit, m Arabia, A. D. 1414, having attained nearly to the age of ninety years. Al Kodai; an Arabic historian. He wrote his history about A. D. 1045, and died A. D. 1062. Al Masudi ; an historian. He is the author of a riistory called the Golden Meadows, but his era it is not possible now to discover. His name at length is Ali Ebn Housain Al Masudi. He wrote another work also, with the professed design of exposing the base fraud practised by the Roman Christians in Jerusalem, in lighting the candles at the Holy Sepul- chre on Easter Eve. A full account of this vile im- po.sition may be seen in Thevenot's Travels, Book li., chap. 43. Al Motarezzi ; the author of a book called Mo- grel; he was born A. D. 1143, and died A. D. 1213. Tie was of the sect of* the Motazali, and seems by his name, Al Motarezzi, to have been by occupation a tailor, as that is the signification of the word in Arabic. Bedawi; one of the most distinguished of the eomrnentatOTs on the Koran. He died A. D. 1293. DiALOGUs Mahometis Cum Abdollah Ebn Salem ; a book written in Arabic, containing a great many of the absurdities of the Mohammedan religion, in tiio form of a dialogue between the Impostor him- self, and the Jew who was supposed to have beep his assistant in forging the Koran. It was trans- lated into Latin by Hermannus Dalmata, whose version will be found at the end of Bibliander's fiat in translation of the Koran. Disputatio Christiani contra Saracenwi de lege Mahometis. This work was written in Arabic by a Christian, who was an officer in the court of a king of the Saracens, to a Mohammedan friend of his, a fellow-officer with him in the same court ; and con- tains a confutation of Islamism. Peter, the fanvous Xhboi of Cluny, in Burgundy who flourished A. D. APPENDIX. 255 1130, caused it to be translated into Latin, by Peter of Toledo. An epitome of the work occurs in Bi- bliander's Koran. Elmacinus, usually written Elmacin ; an Arabic author, who has written a histoiy of the Christian religion, which extends from the creation of the world to A. D. 1118. The latter part of it, com- mencing from the rise of Mohammedanism, was published by Erpenius, under the title of Historia Saracenica, A. D. 1625. He was son to Yaser AI Amid, secretary of the council of war mider the Sultans of Egypt, of the family of Jobidae, and in the year 1238, Elmacin succeeded his father to the same office, by whom it had been occupied for forty- five years together. His whole name is Georgius Ebn Amid ; but for his eminent learning, was styled Al Shaich Al Rais Al Macin, i. e. The prime Doctor, solidly learned. By the last of these titles, or Elma- cin, he is generally called by Erpenius; but by others he is frequently cited by the name of Ebn Amid. Ebnol Athir ; a Mohammedan author, born A. D. 1149, and died A. D. 1209. ALi Ebnol AxmR; an historian, brother to the former, who died A. D. 1232. His history, which he calls Camel, extends from the beginning of the world to the year of our Lord 1230. Ebnol Kassai ; author of the book called TaarifaU or an explication of the various Arabic terms used by philosophers, lawyers, divines, and other classes of the learned professions among them. EuTYCHius ; a Christian author, of the sect of the Melchites, whose name in Arabic is Said Ebn Ba- trik. He was bom at Cairo in Egypt, A. D. 876, where he became eminently distinguished in the medical profession. But towards the latter part of his life, addicting himself more to the study of di- vinity, he was A. D. 9^3, chosen patriarch of Alex- andria, when he first v-ok the name of Eutychius* 256 APPENDIX. He died seven years after, A. D. 940. His A.nnala of the Church of Alexandria, were published in Arabic and Latin at Oxford, by Dr. Pocock, A. D. 1656, at the charge of the learned Selden. Liber de Generatione et Nutritura Mahometis ; a most silly and frivolous Tract, written originally in Arabic, from which it was translated into Latin by Hermannus Dalmata, and published with the Latin Koran of Bibliander. Geographia. NuBiENsis; one of the most noted Oriental works on the subject of geography. This title was given it by Sionita and Hesronita, Maron- ite Christians, who published it in Latin with a geo- graphical appendix, A . D. 1 6 19. But the Geographia Kuhitnsis is in fact only an abridgment of a much larger and much better work, written by Sherif El Ednsi, at the command of Roger, king of Sicily, for the purpose of explaining a large terrestrial globe which that prince had constructed entirely of silver. He completed his work A. D. 1153, and entitled it Ketab Roger, i. e. The Book of Roger, from the name of his patron. The author was by extraction of the race of Mahomet, and therefore called Sherif, the title appropriated to all the descendants of the pro- phet. There was a beautiful copy of this work among the Arabic MSS. of Pocock. Georgius Monachus ; Abbot of the monastery of St. Simeon. He wrote a tract in defence of the Christian religion against the Mohammedans, in the form of a disputation held by himself with several Mussulmans, of whom the principal speaker was Abu Salama Ebn Saar, of Mosul. Jauhari ; the author of a noted Arabic Dictionary called Al Sahah. He was of Turkish origin, and died A. D. 1007. This dictionary is considered in- ferior only to the Ramus. Golius, in his Arabic Lexi- con, haa drawn largely from its resources. Jalalani; i.e. The two Jalals, They were .two individuals of the same name, who wrote a slior* APPENDIX. 257 -ommentary on the Koran, which was beg-an by the Arst, and finished by the second. The latter com- pleted the work A. D. 1466, and was author also of a history called Mezhar. Sharestani. — A scholastic writer of considerable repute among the Mohammedans. He was born at Sharestan, A.D. 1074, and died A. D. 1154. Zamach-shari. — The author of a work called Al Keshaf ; which is an exteuvsive commentary on the Koran, the most highly esteemed among the Mo- hammedans of any work of this kind. He died A.D. 1143. GREEK AUTHORS. Bartholomei Edessini Confutatio Hagarem. — A treatise in the Greek language written against the Mohammedan religion, published by Le Moyne among his Varia Sacra, The author was a monk of Edessa in Mesopotamia, but in what age he lived is unknown. CONTACUZENUS CoNTRA SeCTAM MaHOMETICAM. This work contains four apologies for the Christian Religion, and four orations against the Mohamme- dan. The author had been emperor of Constanti- nople, but having resigned his empire to John Pale- ologus, his son-in-law, A.D. 1355, he retired into a monastery, accompanied by one Meletius, whom he nad converted from the Mohammedan to the Chris- tian faith. The work now mentioned was written for Meletius in answer to a letter addressed to him by Sampsates, a Persian of Ispahan, with a view to reclaim him, if possible, again to the religion of Islam. Cedreni Compendium Historiarum. — A work em- bracing a concise history of all ages from the cre- ation of the world to the year of our Lord lOd*^ 47—17 258 APPENDIX. CoNFUTATio Mahometis. — A Greek tract published by Le Moyne in his Varia Sacra ; author unknown. Theophanis Chronographia. — The work of one of the Byzanthie historians, containing a chronolo- gical history of the Roman Empire, from the year of our Lord 285 to A.D. 813. The author was a nobleman of Constantinople, where he held an of- fice of distinction in tlie imperial court, but after- ward retiring from public life and secluding himself in a monastery, he wrote this history. He died A.D. 815 in prison, in the island of Samothrace, a martyr to his zeal for image- worship, for which he was a most strenuous advocate in the second coun- cil of Nice. ZoNAR^ Compendium Historiarum. — ^.Ainother of the series of the Byzantine historians. It contains a history reaching from the creation to the death of Alexius Comnenus, emperor of Constantinople, which happened A.D. 1118, when the author flou- rished. He was at first a person of distinguished rank in the court of Constantinople, but afterwaro becoming an ecclesiastic, he wrote the history no^ mentioned, and was author also of a celebrated Comment on the Greek Canons. LATIN AUTHORS. Clenardi EpisTOLiE. — The author of these epi ties was the famous grammarian of his age. Urged by his high opinion of the literary treasures locked up in the Arabic language, he went to Fez, A. D. 1540, on purpose to make himself master of this in valuable tongue, and that at an advanced period of life. From this place he wrote the epistles above- mentioned, containing a minute account of the man- ners and religion of the Mohammedans. He died at Granada in Spain, immediatelv after his return. APPENDIX. 25fi CusANi Cribatio Alcorani. — The author of this book was the celebrated Nicolas de Cusa, the most eminent scholar of the age in which he lived. He was made Cardinal of Rome, A. D. 1448, with the title of St, Peter'' s ad vincnla, and died A. D. 1464, about ten years after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks. This event gave occasion to the work, in which he aimed to provide an antidote to that baneful religion which he saw was now likely to overspread a great part of Christendom. Abrahami Ecchelensis Historia Arabum. — This work is subjoined by the author to his Chronicon Orientale, collected out of the Arabic writers. Ec- chelensis was a Maronite of Mount Libanus in Syria, and was employed as Professor of the Oriental Languages in the College De Propaganda Fide, at Rome, from whence, about the year 1640, he was called to Paris, to assist in the publication of the great Polyglot Bible, and was there made the king's Professor of Oriental Languages in the college of that city. His part, however, in the execution of that great work was said by some of the doctors of the Sorbonne to have done him little credit. His inaccuracies were almost infinite, and such as to evince that his judgment came far short of his eru- dition. J. H. HoTTiNGERi Historia Orientalis. — Of this valuable work there are two editions ; the first of A. D. 1651 ; the second, much enlarged, of A. I) 1660. The author was Professor of Oriental Lan- guages, first at Zurich in Switzerland, and afterward at Heidelburgh in Holland. From this place he was called to a similar Professorship at Leyden, but was unfortunately drowned in the Rhine during his re- moval thither. Hottinger was a man of amazing mdustry and of vast learning; but from having written so much in so short a compass of time, for he died young, his works want that accuracy which iGO APPENDIX. the maturity of a few more years in the author would have given them. As it is, they are all useful. Johannes Andreas de Confusione Sect^e Maho- metana:. — The author of this work was formerly an Alfaki^ or doctor of the Mohammedan Law ; but in the year 1487, being at Valencia in Spain, he was converted to Christianity, and soon after received into ?ioly orders ; whereupon he wrote this treatise in Spanish against the religion which he had aban- doned. From the Spanish, it was translated into Italian A. D. 1540; and again into Latin in 1595, and reprinted by Voetius at Utrecht in 1656. His tliorough knowledge of the subject enables him to manage the controversy with a force and pertinency which has since been rarely equalled. PococK. — The celebrated Professor of the Hebrew and Arabic tongues at Oxford ; for piety and learn- ing one of the brightest ornaments of his age. He was born A.D. 1604, and died A. D. 1691. For up- wards of sixty years he was a constant editor of useful and learned works, connected for the most part with the history or literature of the East. His most valuable, though by no means his most exten- sive, work is the Specimen Historian Jlrabicce, pub- lished A.D. 1650, which Mr. Gibbon thus signifi- cantly characterizes in one of his notes : — " Consult; peruse, and study the Specimen Historiae Arabica3 Tiie three hundred and nhy-eight notes form a classic and original work on the Arabian antiqui- ties."* Again, " the English scholar (Pocock) un- derstood more Arabic than the Mufti of Aleppo."! RiCHARDI CoNFUTATIO LeGIS SARACENICiE. — Tlic author of this very valuable tract was a Dominican friar, who in the year 1210 went to Bagdad with the sole purpose of studying the Mohammedan reli- gion out of their own writings, in order the more successfully to confute it. This learned and judi* * Decline and Fall. vol. v. p. 1S5 t lb vol. v. p. 226. APPENDIX. 261 .Mous treatise was the fruit of his foreign residence, which he published upon his return. It was trans- lated from the Latin into Greek by Demetrius Cydo- iiius for the ex-emperor Cantacuzene, who makes ^eat use of it, deriving from it whatever is of most real value in his four Orations against the Moham- medan rehgion. From this Greek version of Cydo- nius it was re-translated into Latin by Picenus, and published in the Latin Koran of Bibliander. This is all we now have of it, the original being lost. This tract of Richard, and that of Johannes Andreas be- fore mentioned, were the ablest which had been written by Europeans in the Mohammedan con- troversy previous to those of the Rev. Henry Martyn, which were originally published in Persian, and have since been translated into English by Prof. Lee of Cambridge. RoDERici ToLETANi HiSTORiA Arabum. — Containing a history of the Saracens from the birth of Moham- med to the year of our Lord 1150. The author was Roderic, Archbishop of Toledo, in Spain, who was present at the Lateran Council in 1215. His his- ory, from the tenth chapter, is mostly confined to \he Saracens of Spain, where his accounts may be generally relied on ; but little credit, it is said, is due o him wherever he follows them out of the bounds 5f the Peninsula. The work was published with Erpenius' Historta Saracenica at Leyden,A.D. 1625. THE END. BUSH la. DATE DUE ^aft ^ M)V09 1288 SEP 2 5 1999 'A MVl2«g' WOV IK 8 1996 C mv. 3 H NOV 15 1996 NOV jui 1 1 i9ffy ^WV?1oi wci ^i93r NOV 2 B vnno DEC 1 3 FL6 i .1 ms FEB 2 5 ifWfi NOV 1 ? ?noi OV MAR 1 1 1998 OCT 2 ^2001 WM^t^flgO OEC 1 ? 7001 ^1^ JUM W b 'Z002 ^ ^ — .DEC i 0 1931, JMT ^nn 7 7 7'»"7 OCT 0 7 2011 w DECO '•^fi 0.- DEMCO, INC. 38-2971 DEMCO 38-297 3 1197 00473 3041