From 'History of the Intellectual Development of Europe.' Copyright
1876, by Harper & Brothers
Arabian influence, thus imposing itself on Africa and Asia by
military successes, and threatening even Constantinople, rested
essentially on an intellectual basis, the value of which it is needful
for us to consider. The Koran, which is that basis, has exercised a
great control over the destinies of mankind, and still serves as a
rule of life to a very large portion of our race. Considering the
asserted origin of this book,--indirectly from God himself,--we might
justly expect that it would bear to be tried by any standard that man
can apply, and vindicate its truth and excellence in the ordeal of
human criticism. In our estimate of it, we must constantly bear in
mind that it does not profess to be successive revelations made at
intervals of ages and on various occasions, but a complete production
delivered to one man. We ought therefore to look for universality,
completeness, perfection. We might expect that it would present us
with just views of the nature and position of this world in which we
live, and that whether dealing with the spiritual or the material, it
would put to shame the most celebrated productions of human genius, as
the magnificent mechanism of the heavens and the beautiful living
forms of the earth are superior to the vain contrivances of man. Far
in advance of all that has been written by the sages of India, or the
philosophers of Greece, on points connected with the origin, nature,
and destiny of the universe, its dignity of conception and excellence
of expression should be in harmony with the greatness of the subject
with which it is concerned.
[Illustration: _AFRICAN ARABIC MANUSCRIPT._
Thirteenth Century. National Library, Paris.
Reduced fac-simile of part of a page of an Arabic Koran, in
the African character, captured at Tunis by Charles V.
The scribes of the East are distinguished by their efforts to
acquire a perfect style of execution; and their success
merits the greater praise, since they generally stand while
writing, resting only on the left arm; and notwithstanding
the inferiority of the reed to the modern pen, the Arabs have
succeeded in producing the most excellent specimens of
calligraphy.]
We might expect that it should propound with authority, and
definitively settle, those all-important problems which have exercised
the mental powers of the ablest men of Asia and Europe for so many
centuries, and which are at the foundation of all faith and all
philosophy; that it should distinctly tell us in unmistakable language
what is God, what is the world, what is the soul, and whether man has
any criterion of truth; that it should explain to us how evil can
exist in a world the Maker of which is omnipotent and altogether good;
that it should reveal to us in what the affairs of men are fixed by
Destiny, in what by free-will; that it should teach us whence we came,
what is the object of our continuing here, what is to become of us
hereafter. And since a written work claiming a divine origin must
necessarily accredit itself even to those most reluctant to receive
it, its internal evidences becoming stronger and not weaker with the
strictness of the examination to which they are submitted, it ought to
deal with those things that may be demonstrated by the increasing
knowledge and genius of man; anticipating therein his conclusions.
Such a work, noble as may be its origin, must not refuse but court the
test of natural philosophy, regarding it not as an antagonist but as
its best support. As years pass on, and human science becomes more
exact and more comprehensive, its conclusions must be found in unison
therewith. When occasion arises, it should furnish us at least the
foreshadowings of the great truths discovered by astronomy and
geology, not offering for them the wild fictions of earlier ages,
inventions of the infancy of man. It should tell us how suns and
worlds are distributed in infinite space, and how in their successions
they come forth in limitless time. It should say how far the dominion
of God is carried out by law, and what is the point at which it is his
pleasure to resort to his own good providence or his arbitrary will.
How grand the description of this magnificent universe, written by the
Omnipotent hand! Of man it should set forth his relations to other
living beings, his place among them, his privileges and
responsibilities. It should not leave him to grope his way through the
vestiges of Greek philosophy, and to miss the truth at last; but it
should teach him wherein true knowledge consists, anticipating the
physical science, physical power, and physical well-being of our own
times, nay, even unfolding for our benefit things that we are still
ignorant of. The discussion of subjects so many and so high is not
outside the scope of a work of such pretensions. Its manner of dealing
with them is the only criterion it can offer of its authenticity to
succeeding times.
Tried by such a standard, the Koran altogether fails. In its
philosophy it is incomparably inferior to the writings of Chakia
Mouni, the founder of Buddhism; in its science it is absolutely
worthless. On speculative or doubtful things it is copious enough; but
in the exact, where a test can be applied to it, it totally fails. Its
astronomy, cosmogony, physiology, are so puerile as to invite our
mirth, if the occasion did not forbid. They belong to the old times of
the world, the morning of human knowledge. The earth is firmly
balanced in its seat by the weight of the mountains; the sky is
supported over it like a dome, and we are instructed in the wisdom and
power of God by being told to find a crack in it if we can. Ranged in
stories, seven in number, are the heavens, the highest being the
habitation of God, whose throne--for the Koran does not reject
Assyrian ideas--is sustained by winged animal forms. The shooting
stars are pieces of red-hot stone, thrown by angels at impure spirits
when they approach too closely. Of God the Koran is full of praise,
setting forth, often in not unworthy imagery, his majesty. Though it
bitterly denounces those who give him any equals, and assures them
that their sin will never be forgiven; that in the Judgment Day they
must answer the fearful question, "Where are my companions about whom
ye disputed?"--though it inculcates an absolute dependence on the
mercy of God, and denounces as criminals all those who make a
merchandise of religion,--its ideas of the Deity are altogether
anthropomorphic. He is only a gigantic man, living in a paradise. In
this respect, though exceptional passages might be cited, the reader
rises from a perusal of the one hundred and fourteen chapters of the
Koran with a final impression that they have given him low and
unworthy thoughts; nor is it surprising that one of the Mohammedan
sects reads it in such a way as to find no difficulty in asserting
that "from the crown of the head to the breast God is hollow, and
from the breast downward he is solid;" that he "has curled black hair,
and roars like a lion at every watch of the night." The unity asserted
by Mohammed is a unity in special contradistinction to the Trinity of
the Christians, and the doctrine of a Divine generation. Our Savior is
never called the Son of God, but always the Son of Mary. Throughout
there is a perpetual acceptance of the delusion of the human destiny
of the universe. As to man, Mohammed is diffuse enough respecting a
future state, speaking with clearness of a resurrection, the Judgment
Day, Paradise, the torment of hell, the worm that never dies, the
pains that never end; but with all this precise description of the
future, there are many errors as to the past. If modesty did not
render it unsuitable to speak of such topics here, it might be shown
how feeble is his physiology when he has occasion to allude to the
origin or generation of man. He is hardly advanced beyond the ideas of
Thales. One who is so untrustworthy a guide as to things that are past
cannot be very trustworthy as to events that are to come.
Of the literary execution of his work, it is perhaps scarcely possible
to judge fairly from a translation. It is said to be the oldest prose
composition among the Arabs, by whom Mohammed's boast of the
unapproachable excellence of his work is almost universally sustained;
but it must not be concealed that there have been among them very
learned men who have held it in light esteem. Its most celebrated
passages, as those on the nature of God, in Chapters ii., xxiv., will
bear no comparison with parallel ones in the Psalms and Book of Job.
In the narrative style, the story of Joseph in Chapter xii., compared
with the same incidents related in Genesis, shows a like inferiority.
Mohammed also adulterates his work with many Christian legends,
derived probably from the apocryphal gospel of St. Barnabas; he mixes
with many of his own inventions the Scripture account of the
temptation of Adam, the Deluge, Jonah and the whale, enriching the
whole with stories like the later Night Entertainments of his country,
the seven sleepers, Gog and Magog, and all the wonders of genii,
sorcery, and charms.
An impartial reader of the Koran may doubtless be surprised that so
feeble a production should serve its purpose so well. But the theory
of religion is one thing, the practice another. The Koran abounds in
excellent moral suggestions and precepts; its composition is so
fragmentary that we cannot turn to a single page without finding
maxims of which all men must approve. This fragmentary construction
yields texts and mottoes and rules complete in themselves, suitable
for common men in any of the incidents of life. There is a perpetual
insisting on the necessity of prayer, an inculcation of mercy,
almsgiving, justice, fasting, pilgrimage, and other good works;
institutions respecting conduct, both social and domestic, debts,
witnesses, marriage, children, wine, and the like; above all, a
constant stimulation to do battle with the infidel and blasphemer. For
life as it passes in Asia, there is hardly a condition in which
passages from the Koran cannot be recalled suitable for instruction,
admonition, consolation, encouragement. To the Asiatic and to the
African, such devotional fragments are of far more use than any
sustained theological doctrine. The mental constitution of Mohammed
did not enable him to handle important philosophical questions with
the well-balanced ability of the great Greek and Indian writers; but
he has never been surpassed in adaptation to the spiritual wants of
humble life, making even his fearful fatalism administer thereto. A
pitiless destiny is awaiting us; yet the prophet is uncertain what it
may be. "Unto every nation a fixed time is decreed. Death will
overtake us even in lofty towers, but God only knoweth the place in
which a man shall die." After many an admonition of the resurrection
and the Judgment Day, many a promise of Paradise and threat of hell,
he plaintively confesses, "I do not know what will be done with you or
me hereafter."
The Koran thus betrays a human and not a very noble intellectual
origin. It does not however follow that its author was, as is so often
asserted, a mere impostor. He reiterates again and again, "I am
nothing more than a public preacher." He defends, not always without
acerbity, his work from those who even in his own life stigmatized it
as a confused heap of dreams, or what is worse, a forgery. He is not
the only man who has supposed himself to be the subject of
supernatural and divine communications, for this is a condition of
disease to which any one, by fasting and mental anxiety, may be
reduced.
In what I have thus said respecting a work held by so many millions of
men as a revelation from God, I have endeavored to speak with respect
and yet with freedom, constantly bearing in mind how deeply to this
book Asia and Africa are indebted for daily guidance, how deeply
Europe and America for the light of science.
As might be expected, the doctrines of the Koran have received many
fictitious additions and sectarian interpretations in the course of
ages. In the popular superstition angels and genii largely figure. The
latter, being of a grosser fabric, eat, drink, propagate their kind,
are of two sorts, good and bad, and existed long before men, having
occupied the earth before Adam. Immediately after death, two greenish
livid angels, Monkir and Nekkar, examine every corpse as to its faith
in God and Mohammed; but the soul, having been separated from the body
by the angel of death, enters upon an intermediate state, awaiting the
resurrection. There is however much diversity of opinion as to its
precise disposal before the Judgment Day: some think that it hovers
near the grave; some, that it sinks into the well Zemzem; some, that
it retires into the trumpet of the angel of the resurrection; the
difficulty apparently being that any final disposal before the Day of
Judgment would be anticipatory of that great event, if indeed it would
not render it needless. As to the resurrection, some believe it to be
merely spiritual, others corporeal; the latter asserting that the _os
coccygis_, or last bone of the spinal column, will serve as it were as
a germ; and that, vivified by a rain of forty days, the body will
sprout from it. Among the signs of the approaching resurrection will
be the rising of the sun in the west. It will be ushered in by three
blasts of a trumpet: the first, known as the blast of consternation,
will shake the earth to its centre, and extinguish the sun and stars;
the second, the blast of extermination, will annihilate all material
things except Paradise, hell, and the throne of God. Forty years
subsequently, the angel Israfil will sound the blast of resurrection.
From his trumpet there will be blown forth the countless myriads of
souls who have taken refuge therein, or lain concealed. The Day of
Judgment has now come. The Koran contradicts itself as to the length
of this day; in one place making it a thousand, in another fifty
thousand years. Most Mohammedans incline to adopt the longer period,
since angels, genii, men, and animals have to be tried.
As to men, they will rise in their natural state, but naked;
white-winged camels, with saddles of gold, awaiting the saved. When
the partition is made, the wicked will be oppressed with an
intolerable heat, caused by the sun, which, having been called into
existence again, will approach within a mile, provoking a sweat to
issue from them; and this, according to their demerits, will immerse
them from the ankles to the mouth; but the righteous will be screened
by the shadow of the throne of God. The Judge will be seated in the
clouds, the books open before him, and everything in its turn called
on to account for its deeds. For greater dispatch, the angel Gabriel
will hold forth his balance, one scale of which hangs over Paradise
and one over hell. In these all works are weighed. As soon as the
sentence is delivered, the assembly, in a long file, will pass over
the bridge Al-Sirat. It is as sharp as the edge of a sword, and laid
over the mouth of hell. Mohammed and his followers will successfully
pass the perilous ordeal; but the sinners, giddy with terror, will
drop into the place of torment. The blessed will receive their first
taste of happiness at a pond which is supplied by silver pipes from
the river Al-Cawthor. The soil of Paradise is of musk. Its rivers
tranquilly flow over pebbles of rubies and emeralds. From tents of
hollow pearls the Houris, or girls of Paradise, will come forth,
attended by troops of beautiful boys. Each saint will have eighty
thousand servants and seventy-two girls. To these, some of the more
merciful Mussulmans add the wives they have had upon earth; but the
grimly orthodox assert that hell is already nearly filled with women.
How can it be otherwise, since they are not permitted to pray in a
mosque upon earth?
I have not space to describe the silk brocades, the green clothing,
the soft carpets, the banquets, the perpetual music and songs. From
the glorified body all impurities will escape, not as they did during
life, but in a fragrant perspiration of camphor and musk. No one will
complain, "I am weary;" no one will say, "I am sick.".
From the contradictions, puerilities, and impossibilities indicated in
the preceding paragraphs, it may be anticipated that the faith of
Mohammed has been broken into many sects. Of such it is said that not
less than seventy-three may be numbered. Some, as the Sonnites, are
guided by traditions; some occupy themselves with philosophical
difficulties,--the existence of evil in the world, the attributes of
God, absolute predestination and eternal damnation, the invisibility
and non-corporeality of God, his capability of local motion.... But
the great Mohammedan philosophers, simply accepting the doctrine of
the oneness of God as the only thing of which man can be certain, look
upon all the rest as idle fables--having however this political use:
that they furnish contention and therefore occupation to disputatious
sectarians, and consolation to illiterate minds.