[55] _The term of life._
[56] [‘Predominant,’ orig. ed.]
[57] _Angels who register your deeds._
[58] _The creatures._
[59] _That He may recompense them._
[60] _O Moḥammad, to the people of Mekkeh._
[61] _Namely, the Jews and the Christians, and those_ [Arabs] _who
assert that the angels are daughters of God_.
[62] [‘Demolished,’ orig. ed.]
[63] _On the day of resurrection._
[64] _Without wealth or helper._
[65] _Of the perfume and saffron with which they are overdaubed._
[66] _Idols._
[67] _This they would not worship them._
[68] [‘Similitudes,’ orig. ed. It is the plural of the same word as
that translated ‘parable’ at the beginning of the preceding extract,
and ‘likeness’ twice in this extract.]
[69] [It is said that Moḥammad, when a revelation came down to him,
used to say, ‘Cover ye me with something whereby I may become warm.’
Lane: Lexicon, voce _dathara_.]
[70] [Idolatry.]
[71] [This rendering is Mr. Rodwell’s. I do not think it can be
bettered.]
[72] [Lit. ‘And by the night when it becometh still;’ or (but this is
less strongly supported) ‘when it darkeneth.’]
[73] [‘In my possession,’ orig. ed.]
[74] [‘Apostle,’ in the orig. ed.; but Christian associations have
somewhat restricted the original meaning of the word, and I have
therefore in this and other instances substituted ‘Messenger,’ which
exactly represents the Arabic _rasool_.]
[75] _To unbelief._
[76] _He will only injure himself._
[77] _The Jews said unto the Muslims, We are the people of the first
book_ (the Pentateuch), _and our Ḳibleh_ (the point to which we turn
our faces in praying) _is the more ancient, and the prophets have not
been of the Arabs, and if Moḥammad were a prophet, he had been of us_.
_Therefore_ the following _was revealed_.
[78] _So that He may choose of His servants whom He pleaseth._
[79] _That is, God is; and He hath acquitted Abraham of belonging to
them by His saying_ [Ḳur. iii. 60], _Abraham was not a Jew nor a
Christian; and the other persons above-mentioned with him were
followers of him_.
[80] _They are the Jews, who have concealed the testimony of God, in
the Pentateuch, of Abraham’s orthodoxy._
[81] [Moḥammad and Aḥmad are from the same root, _ḥamd_, meaning
‘praise;’ and both names were borne by the Prophet. The supposed
prediction of Moḥammad’s coming arose, perhaps, from a confusion
between Parakletos and Perikleitos or possibly Periklytos in Evang. S.
Jo. xvi. 7, where the coming of ‘the Paraclete’ is promised; in some
Arabic version of which the word may have been ignorantly rendered by
‘Aḥmad,’ and thus reported to Moḥammad.]
[82] _By the description of him in their books._
[83] _The description of him._
[84] _In the Law._
[85] _Or miracles._
[86] _As Zechariah and John, and ye slew them._
[87] _Their belief, if the signs come._ The copies of the original
differ in this verse, but not in an important manner.
[88] _From the truth, so that they shall not believe._
[89] _The Ḳur-án._
[90] Or art mad.
[91] _That is, with punishment._
[92] [The original copy kept by God.]
[93] [This line is often inscribed on the covers of copies of the Ḳur-án.]
[94] _In eloquence._
[95] [In orig. edition, and literally, ‘Although some of them assisted
others.’]
[96] _That they may be admonished._
[97] _And not sent an angel?_
[98] _Instead of mankind._
[99] _For no apostle is sent unto a people but one of their own kind._
[100] Forgery.
[101] _Moḥammad._
[102] Chapter.
[103] _To assist you._
[104] _The result of the threat that it containeth._
[105] _As to its being from God._
[106] _In eloquence and beauty of composition and information
concerning what is unseen._
[107] _Your deities whom ye worship, that they may aid you._
[108] _When the unbelievers cavilled at abrogation, and said,
‘Moḥammad commandeth his companions to-day to do a thing and
forbiddeth it tomorrow,’_ the following _was revealed_.
[109] _Namely, a Christian slave whom the Prophet used to visit._ [The
Mekkans accounted for the production of the Ḳur-án by an unlearned man
like Moḥammad by ascribing it to the teaching of some Christian, whom
is doubtful. Moḥammad’s reply is that the Christian’s was a foreign
tongue, whilst the Ḳur-án was in Arabic.]
[110] [‘As a further supply,’ orig. ed.]
[111] [Lit. ‘Burdens:’ explained by El-Beyḍáwee and others _as buried
treasures_ and as _dead_.]
[112] _The most highly esteemed of property._
[113] [‘Be set on fire,’ orig. ed. Both these renderings, and also ‘be
dried up,’ are supported by various authorities. See Lane: Lex. voce
_sejera_.]
[114] Woman-child.
[115] _Of men’s actions._
[116] _As the skin is plucked off a_ slaughtered _sheep_.
[117] _A kind of thorn which no beast eateth, by reason of its
impurity._
[118] _Or eight ranks of them._
[119] _Unto a company, by reason of his joy thereat._
[120] _And it shall be said unto such._
[121] _And it shall be said unto the keepers of hell._
[122] _As it hath denied it in the present world._
[123] _Those who shall receive their books in their right hands._
[124] _How honourable shall they be!_
[125] _How contemptible shall they be!_
[126] _In the way to good fortune (namely, the Prophets), how
honourable shall be!_
[127] [‘Destined to continue for ever _in boyhood_,’ orig. ed.]
[128] [Ḥooreeyehs.]
[129] Intensely black and white, large-eyed.
[130] From bottom to top.
[131] [The Ḥooreeyehs.]
[132] _Polytheism._
[133] Beneath the tents thereof.
[134] _The believers and the unbelievers._
[135] _One after another, barefooted, naked, unarmed._
[136] _Of the resurrection._
[137] _Written in their books._
[138] _I will surely fill Hell_, &c. [Ḳur. vii. 17, given below, p.
51].
[139] Of righteousness.
[140] _Between all creatures._
[141] [Or ‘marked’ or ‘goodly.’]
[142] [Fighting for the faith.]
[143] [Or ‘end,’ ‘result.’]
[144] “Arms on armour clashing bray’d Horrible discord.”—_Par. Lost_,
vi. 209.
[145] _O Moḥammad._ The copies of the original differ here, but the
differences are unimportant.
[146] _By taking to themselves idols._
[147] _Thou wouldst see a great thing!_
[148] _Denying their having led them into error._
[149] _Iblees._
[150] _And the people of paradise are introduced into paradise, and
the people of the fire into the fire, and when the latter have
assembled around him._
[151] _Respecting the resurrection and retribution._
[152] _The contrary._
[153] _The people of Mekkeh._
[154] _Of the resurrection._
[155] _If the choice had been given us we had not gone forth and had
not been slain._
[156] _Namely, the Jews._
[157] [See _Modern Egyptians_, 5th ed., p 284.]
[158] [On the various orders of the Jinn, see Lane’s _Thousand and One
Nights_, Introduction, note 21. And see above, pp. 7, 9.]
[159] _Consisting of the angels._
[160] _They speak not until after He hath spoken._
[161] _Iblees_ [the devil].
[162] [In the Arabic, ‘Ḳur-án.’]
[163] _This is said to be the most comprehensive verse in the Ḳur-án
with respect to good and evil._ [The commentators say it contains the
whole duty of man, both in respect of doing and of shunning. It is
needless to enumerate the various virtues and sins which they consider
are implied in each of the simple words of the text.]
[164] [Mr. Rodwell’s rendering.]
[165] The traveller.
[166] _Of being rewarded for so doing._
[167] _Or reproach._
[168] _Their idols._
[169] _Disposition._
[170] [Lit., and in orig. ed., ‘hath great good fortune.’]
[171] [_Mod. Egypt._, 104.]
[172] [The Christians and Jews.]
[173] [Or ‘best:’ so in _Mod. Egypt._, 280.]
[174] [This is Mr. Rodwell’s word, and is, I think, more expressive of
the original (_muslimoona_) than ‘resigned.’]
[175] _In the prophets._
[176] [Some suppose this verse to be abrogated by the next extract:
others try to explain it away.]
[177] _And of him who inviteth them to the true religion._
[178] Mirage (_saráb_).
[179] _In like manner the unbeliever reckoneth that his works will
profit him, until, when he dieth and is brought before his Lord, he
findeth not his works._
[180] _The unbeliever._
[181] _By his unbelief._
[182] _In the tradition it is said, ‘Whosoever hath any good thing
given unto him, whether of family or wealth, and saith on the occasion
thereof, ‘What God willeth (`má-sháä-lláh)! There is no power but in
God!’ he will not see in it aught displeasing.’_
[183] _On the day of resurrection._
[184] _O Moḥammad._
[185] _Of the people of Mekkeh._
[186] _So as to disdain receiving the truth._ (_This was revealed as
respecting the envoys who came from the King of Abyssinia: the Prophet
recited the Soorat Yá-Seen_ [xxxvi.], _whereupon they wept and became
Muslims, and said, ‘How like is this to that which was revealed to
Jesus.’_)
[187] _Not believing in Moḥammad._
[188] _With respect to the hypocrites_ the following _was revealed_.
[189] _Their chiefs._
[190] The number of the prophets which have been from time to time
sent by God into the world amounts to no less than 224,000, according
to one Moḥammadan tradition, or to 124,000 according to another; among
whom 313 were apostles, sent with special commissions to reclaim
mankind from infidelity and superstition; and six of them brought new
laws or dispensations, which successively abrogated the preceding:
these were Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Moḥammad. All the
prophets in general the Moḥammadans believe to have been free from
great sins and errors of consequence, and professors of one and the
same religion, that is, El-Islám, notwithstanding the different laws
and institutions which they observed. In this great number of
prophets, they not only reckon divers patriarchs and persons named in
Scripture but not recorded to have been prophets (wherein the Jewish
and Christian writers have sometimes led the way), as Adam, Seth, Lot,
Ishmael, Nun, Joshua, &c., and introduce some of them under different
names, as Enoch, Heber, and Jethro, who are called in the Ḳur-án,
Idrees, Hood, and Sho´eyb; but several others whose very names do not
appear in Scripture (though they endeavour to find some persons there
to fix them on), as Ṣáliḥ, El-Khiḍr, Dhu-l-Kifl.
As to the Scriptures, the Moḥammadans are taught by the Ḳur-án that
God, in divers ages of the world, gave revelations of His will in
writing to several prophets, the whole and every word of which it is
absolutely necessary for a good Muslim to believe. The number of these
sacred books was, according to them, 104; of which ten were given to
Adam, fifty to Seth, thirty to Idrees or Enoch, ten to Abraham; and
the other four, being the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospel, and the
Ḳur-án, were successively delivered to Moses, David, Jesus, and
Moḥammad; which last being the _seal_ of the prophets, those
revelations are now closed and no more are to be expected. All these
divine books, except the four last, they agree to be now entirely lost
and their contents unknown; though the Sabians have several books
which they attribute to some of the antediluvian prophets. And of
those four, the Pentateuch, Psalms, and Gospel, they say, have
undergone so many alterations and corruptions, that though there may
possibly be some part of the true word of God therein, yet no credit
is to be given to the present copies in the hands of the Jews and
Christians.—S.
[191] ‘El-Jánn’ is here used as a name of Iblees, the father of the
jinn. It also signifies the jinn themselves.
[192] According to a tradition of the Prophet, the height of Adam was
equal to that of a tall palm-tree.
[193] The Moḥammadans say, that when they were cast down from Paradise
[which is in the seventh heaven], Adam fell on the isle of Ceylon, or
Sarandeeb, and Eve near Juddah (the port of Mekkeh) in Arabia; and
that, after a separation of two hundred years, Adam was, on his
repentance, conducted by the angel Gabriel to a mountain near Mekkeh,
where he found and knew his wife, the mountain being thence named
´Arafát; and that he afterwards retired with her to Ceylon.—S.
[194] The prayer is inserted by the commentary from Ḳur. vii. 22.
[195] This word has various significations in the Ḳur-án; sometimes,
as in this passage, it signifies _divine revelation_, or _scripture_
in general; sometimes the _verses_ of the _Ḳur-án_ in particular; and
at other times, _visible miracles_. But the sense is easily
distinguished by the context.—S.
[196] Called in Arabic Hábeel and Ḳábeel.
[197] The occasion of their making this offering is thus related,
according to the common tradition in the East. Each of them being born
with a twin-sister, when they were grown up, Adam by God’s direction
ordered Cain to marry Abel’s twin-sister, and Abel to marry Cain’s;
(for it being the common opinion that marriages ought not to be had in
the nearest degrees of consanguinity, since they must necessarily
marry their sisters, it seemed reasonable to suppose they ought to
take those of the remoter degree;) but this Cain refusing to agree to,
because his own sister was the handsomest, Adam ordered them to make
their offerings to God, thereby referring the dispute to His
determination. The commentators say Cain’s offering was a sheaf of the
very worst of his corn; but Abel’s a fat lamb of the best of his
flock.—S.
[198] Or, as the original literally signifies, boiled over [or
boiled], which is consonant to what the Rabbins say, that the waters
of the deluge were boiling hot.—This oven was, as some say, at
El-Koofeh, in a spot whereon a mosque now stands; or, as others rather
think, in a certain place in India, or else at ´Eyn-el-Wardeh in
Mesopotamia. Some pretend that it was the same oven which Eve made use
of to bake her bread in, being of a form different from those we use,
having the mouth in the upper part, and that it descended from
patriarch to patriarch till it came to Noah. It is remarkable that
Moḥammad, in all probability, borrowed this circumstance from the
Persian Magi, who also fancied that the first waters of the deluge
gushed out of the oven of a certain old woman named Zala Cûfa.—But the
word “tennoor,” which is here translated “oven,” also signifying “the
superficies of the earth,” or “a place whence waters spring forth,” or
“where they are collected,” some suppose it means no more in this
passage than the spot or fissure whence the first eruption of waters
broke forth.—S.
[199] It is a custom of many Muslims to pronounce these words, ‘In the
name of God be its course and its mooring,’ on embarking for any
voyage.—L. The commentators tell us that Noah was two years in
building the ark, which was framed of Indian plane-tree; that it was
divided into three stories, of which the lower was designed for the
beasts, the middle one for the men and women, and the upper for the
birds; and the men were separated from the women by the body of Adam,
which Noah had taken into the ark. This last is a tradition of the
Eastern Christians.—S.
[200] The original of this passage is considered the most sublime in
the Ḳur-án.
[201] The Moḥammadans say that Noah went into the ark on the tenth of
Rejeb, and came out of it on the tenth of Moḥarram; which therefore
became a fast: so that the whole time of Noah’s being in the ark
according to them was six months.—S. (B.)
[202] ´Ád was an ancient and potent tribe of Arabs, and zealous
idolaters. They chiefly worshipped four deities, Sákiyeh, Ḥáfiḍhah,
Ráziḳah, and Sálimeh; the first, as they imagined, supplying them with
rain, the second preserving them from all dangers abroad, the third
providing food for their sustenance, and the fourth restoring them to
health when afflicted with sickness; according to the signification of
the several names.—S.
[203] Generally supposed to be the same person as Heber.—S.
[204] Thamood was another tribe of the ancient Arabs who fell into
idolatry. They dwelt first in the country of the ´Ádites, but their
numbers increasing, they removed to the territory of Ḥejr.—S.
[205] This extraordinary camel frighting the other cattle from their
pasture, a certain rich woman, named ´Oneyzeh Umm-Ghánim, having four
daughters, dressed them out, and offered one Ḳudár his choice of them,
if he would kill the camel. Whereupon he chose one, and with the
assistance of eight other men hamstrung and killed the dam, and
pursuing the young one which fled to the mountain, killed that also,
and divided his flesh among them. Others tell the story somewhat
differently, adding Ṣadaḳah Bint-El-Mukhtár as a
joint-conspiratress with ´Oneyzeh, and pretending that the young one
was not killed.’—S. (A.F., B.)
[206] Defying the vengeance with which they were threatened; because
they trusted in their strong dwellings hewn in the rocks, saying that
the tribe of ´Ád perished only because their houses were not built
with sufficient strength.—S.
[207] Like violent and repeated claps of thunder; which some say was
no other than the voice of the angel Gabriel, which rent their hearts.
It is said that after they had killed the camel, Ṣáliḥ told them
that on the morrow their faces should become yellow, the next day red,
and the third day black; and that on the fourth God’s vengeance should
light on them: and that, the first three signs happening accordingly,
they sought to put him to death; but God delivered him by sending him
into Palestine.—S. (A.F., B.)
[208] In the Mir-át-ez-Zemán it is stated that there are various
opinions respecting the age in which this person lived: 1. That he
lived in the first century after the Deluge, and was of the sons of
Japheth, and was born in the land of the Greeks: so said ´Alee; 2.
That he was after Thamood: so said El-Ḥasan; 3. That he was of the
lineage of Esau, the son of Isaac: so said Muḳátil; 4. That he lived
between the times of Moses and Jesus; 5. That he lived between Jesus
and Moḥammad; and 6. That he was of the lineage of Yoonán, son [as
some say] of Noah, in the days of Abraham; and this, adds the author,
is the most correct.—But some suppose him to be the same with
Alexander the Great.—Respecting his surname of ‘Dhu-l-Ḳarneyn,’ the
most obvious signification of which is ‘the two-horned,’ the more
judicious in general are of opinion that he received it because he
made expeditions to the extreme parts of the east and west, and
therefore that it signifies ‘Lord of the two extreme parts of the
earth.’
[209] Who were clothed in the skins of wild beasts, and lived upon
what the sea cast on shore.—S. (B.)
[210] The Arabs call them Yájooj and Májooj, and say they are two
nations or tribes descended from Japheth the son of Noah; or, as
others write, Gog are a tribe of the Turks, and Magog of those of
Geelán, the Geli and Gelæ of Ptolemy and Strabo.—It is said these
barbarous people made their irruptions into the neighbouring countries
in the spring, and destroyed and carried off all the fruits of the
earth; and some pretend they were man-eaters.—S. (B.)
[211] The Eastern authors unanimously agree that he (Ázar) was a
statuary, or carver of idols; and he is represented as the first who
made images of clay, pictures only having been in use before, and
taught that they were to be adored as gods. However, we are told his
employment was a very honourable one, and that he was a great lord and
in high favour with Nimrod, whose son-in-law he was, because he made
his idols for him and was excellent in his art. Some of the Rabbins
say Terah was a priest and chief of the order.—S.
[212] Some tell us that Nimrod, on seeing this miraculous deliverance
from his palace, cried out that he would make an offering to the God
of Abraham; and that he accordingly sacrificed four thousand kine.
[B.] But, if he ever relented, he soon relapsed into his former
infidelity: for he built a tower that he might ascend to heaven to see
Abraham’s God; which being overthrown [Ḳur. xvi. 28], still
persisting in his design, he would be carried to heaven in a chest
borne by four monstrous birds; but after wandering for some time
through the air, he fell down on a mountain with such force that he
made it shake, whereto (as some fancy) a passage in the Ḳur-án [xiv.
47] alludes, which may be translated, ‘although their contrivances be
such as to make the mountains tremble.’—Nimrod, disappointed in his
design of making war with God, turned his arms against Abraham, who,
being a great prince, raised forces to defend himself; but God,
dividing Nimrod’s subjects, and confounding their language, deprived
him of the greater part of his people, and plagued those who adhered
to him by swarms of gnats, which destroyed almost all of them; and one
of those gnats having entered into the nostril, or ear, of Nimrod,
penetrated to one of the membranes of his brain, where, growing bigger
every day, it gave him such intolerable pain, that he was obliged to
cause his head to be beaten with a mallet, in order to procure some
ease, which torture he suffered four hundred years; God being willing
to punish, by one of the smallest of His creatures, him who insolently
boasted himself to be lord of all. A Syrian calendar places the death
of Nimrod, as if the time were well known, on the eighth of Tamooz, or
July.—S.
[213] They tell us that Gabriel thrust his wing under them and lifted
them up so high that the inhabitants of the lower heaven heard the
barking of the dogs and the crowing of the cocks; and then, inverting
them, threw them down to the earth.—S. (B.)
[214] It is the most received opinion among the Moḥammadans that the
son whom Abraham offered was Ishmael and not Isaac; Ishmael being his
only son at that time: for the promise of Isaac’s birth is mentioned
lower, as subsequent in time to this transaction. They also allege the
testimony of their prophet, who is reported to have said, ‘I am the
son of the two who were offered in sacrifice;’ meaning his great
ancestor, Ishmael, and his own father ´Abd-Allah: for
´Abd-el-Muṭṭalib had made a vow that if God would permit him to
find out and open the well Zemzem and should give him ten sons he
would sacrifice one of them; accordingly, when he had obtained his
desire in both respects, he cast lots on his sons, and the lot falling
on ´Abd-Allah, he redeemed him by offering a hundred camels, which was
therefore ordered to be the price of a man’s blood in the Sunneh.—S.
(B., Z.)
[215] The occasion of this request of Abraham is said to have been a
doubt proposed to him by the devil in human form, how it was possible
for the several parts of a corpse of a man which lay on the sea-shore
and had been partly devoured by the wild beasts, the birds, and the
fish, to be brought together at the resurrection.—S.
[216] In the original, ‘Imám,’ which answers to the Latin _Antistes_.
This title the Moḥammadans give to their priests [if such a title may
be used, for want of one more correct] who begin the prayers in their
mosques, and whom all the congregation follow.—S.
[217] The term ‘rek´ah’ signifies the repetition of a set form of
words, chiefly from the Ḳur-án, and ejaculations of ‘God is most
Great!’ etc., accompanied by particular postures; part of the words
being repeated in an erect posture, part sitting, and part in other
postures: an inclination of the head and body, followed by two
prostrations, distinguishing each rek´ah. Each of the five daily
prayers of the Muslims consist of a certain number of rek´ahs.
[218] The city of Eṭ-Ṭáïf was so called, according to Abu-l-Fida and
several other Arab authors, because it, with the adjacent fields,
was separated from Syria during the Deluge, and after floating round
about upon the water at length rested in its present situation, where
its soil has continued to produce the fruits of Syria.
[219] Namely, the Kaạbeh.
[220] In the original, ‘Muslims,’ which is the peculiar and very
appropriate title of the believers in the religion taught by Moḥammad;
and as he professed not to teach a religion essentially _new_, this
title is given to all true believers before him.
[221] ‘El-Islam’ signifies the _resigning_ oneself to God and to His
service, and is the name given by Moḥammad to that religion which, he
asserted, all the prophets before him had taught, and he restored; the
foundation of which was the unity of God.