Chapter IV: Part 4

‘There is no religion which has taken a higher view in its authoritative documents of animal life, and none wherein the precept has been so much honoured by its practical observance. ‘There is no beast on earth,’ says the Ḳur-án, ‘nor bird which flieth with its wings, but the same is a people like unto you—unto the Lord shall they return;’ and it is the current belief that animals will share with men the general resurrection, and be judged according to their works. At the slaughter of an animal, the Prophet ordered that the name of God should always be named; but the words, ‘the Compassionate, the Merciful,’ were to be omitted; for, on the one hand, such an expression seemed a mockery to the sufferer, and, on the other, he could not bring himself to believe that the destruction of any life, however necessary, could be altogether pleasing to the All-Merciful. ‘In the name of God,’ says a pious Musalman before he strikes the fatal blow; ‘God is most great; God give thee patience to endure the affliction which He hath allotted thee!’ In the East there has been no moralist like Bentham to insist in noble words on the extension of the sphere of morality to all sentient beings, and to be ridiculed for it by people who call themselves religious; there has been no naturalist like Darwin, to demonstrate by his marvellous powers of observation how large a part of the mental and moral faculties which we usually claim for ourselves alone we share with other beings; there has been no Oriental ‘Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.’ But one reason of this is not far to seek. What the legislation of the last few years has at length attempted to do, and, from the mere fact that it is legislation, must do ineffectually, has been long effected in the East by the moral and religious sentiment which, like almost everything that is good in that part of the world, can be traced back, in part at least, to the great Prophet of Arabia. In the East, so far as it has not been hardened by the West, there is a real sympathy between man and the domestic animals; they understand one another; and the cruelties which the most humane of our countrymen unconsciously effect in the habitual use, for instance, of the muzzle or the bearing-rein on the most docile, the most patient, the most faithful, and the most intelligent of their companions, are impossible in the East. An Arab _cannot_ ill-treat his horse; and Mr. Lane bears emphatic testimony to the fact that in his long residence in Egypt he never saw an ass or a dog (though the latter is there looked upon as an unclean animal) treated with cruelty, except in those cities which were overrun by Europeans.’[19]

There are some very beautiful traditions of the Prophet, showing the tenderness with which he always treated animals and which he ever enjoined on his people. A man once came to him with a carpet and said, ‘O Prophet, I passed through a wood and heard the voices of the young of birds, and I took and put them into my carpet, and their mother came fluttering round my head.’ And the Prophet said, ‘Put them down;’ and when he had put them down the mother joined the young. And the Prophet said, ‘Do you wonder at the affection of the mother towards her young? I swear by Him who has sent me, Verily God is more loving to his servants than the mother to these young birds. Return them to the place from which ye took them, and let their mother be with them.’ ‘Fear God with regard to animals,’ said Moḥammad; ‘ride them when they are fit to be ridden, and get off when they are tired. Verily there are rewards for our doing good to dumb animals, and giving them water to drink.’

Such, in brief outline, is the religion of Moḥammad. It is a form of pure theism, simpler and more austere than the theism of most forms of modern Christianity, lofty in its conception of the relation of man to God, and noble in its doctrine of the duty of man to man, and of man to the lower creation. There is little in it of superstition, less of complexity of dogmas; it is an exacting religion, without the repulsiveness of asceticism; severe, but not merciless. On the other hand, it is over-rigid and formal; it leaves too little to the believer and too much to his ritual; it places a prophet and a book between man and God, and practically discourages the desire for a direct relation between the Deity and his servant; it draws the picture of that God in too harsh outlines, and leaves out too much of the tenderness and loving-kindness of the God of Christ’s teaching, and hence it has been the source of more intolerance and fanatical hatred than most creeds.

This religion is Islám as understood and taught by its Prophet, so far as we can gather it from the Ḳur-án, aided by those traditions which seem to have the stamp of authenticity. It need hardly be said that it is not identical with the Islám with which the philosophers of Baghdád amused themselves, nor with the fantastic creed which the Fáṭimee Khalifs of Egypt represented, and brought in the person of El-Ḥákim to its limit of extravagance; nor is it the Islám with which as much as with their ferocity the Karmaṭees aroused the fear and abhorrence of all good Muslims. Neither the Soofism of Persia nor the dervish sensation-religion of Turkey conform to this ancient Islám, to which perhaps a modification of the Waḥḥábee puritanism would be the nearest approach. The original faith of Moḥammad has not gained by its development in foreign lands and alien minds, and perhaps the best we can hope for modern Islám is that it may try the experiment of retrogression, or rather seek to regain the simplicity of the old form without losing the advantages (if there be any) which it has acquired from contact with Western civilisation.

Islám is unfortunately a social system as well as a religion; and herein lies the great difficulty of fairly estimating its good and its bad influence on the world. It is but in the nature of things that the teacher who lays down the law of the relation of man to God should also endeavour to appoint the proper relation between man and his neighbour. Christianity was undoubtedly a social even more than a religious reform, but the social regulations were too indefinite, or at all events too impracticable, for any wide acceptance among the professors of the religion. Islám was less fortunate. Moḥammad not only promulgated a religion; he laid down a complete social system, containing minute regulations for a man’s conduct in all circumstances of life, with due rewards or penalties according to his fulfilment of these rules. As a religion Islám is great: it has taught men to worship one God with a pure worship who formerly worshipped many gods impurely. As a social system Islám is a complete failure: it has misunderstood the relations of the sexes, upon which the whole character of a nation’s life hangs, and, by degrading women, has degraded each successive generation of their children down an increasing scale of infamy and corruption, until it seems almost impossible to reach a lower level of vice.

The fatal spot in Islám is the degradation of women. The true test of a nation’s place in the ranks of civilisation is the position of its women. When they are held in reverence, when it is considered the most infamous of crimes to subject a woman to dishonour, and the highest distinction to protect her from wrong; when the family life is real and strong, of which the mother-wife is the heart; when each man’s pulse beats loyal to womanhood, then is a nation great. When women are treated as playthings, toys, drudges, worth anything only if they have beauty to be enjoyed or strength to labour; when sex is considered the chief thing in a woman, and heart and mind are forgotten; when a man buys women for his pleasure and dismisses them when his appetite is glutted, then is a nation despicable.

And so is it in the East. Yet it would be hard to lay the blame altogether on Moḥammad. The real roots of the degradation of women lie much deeper. When Islám was instituted, polygamy was almost necessitated by the number of women and their need of support; and the facility of divorce was quite necessitated by the separation of the sexes, and the consequence that a man could not know or even see the woman he was about to marry before the marriage ceremony was accomplished. It is not Moḥammad whom we must blame for these great evils, polygamy and divorce; it is the state of society which demanded the separation of the sexes, and in which it was not safe to allow men and women freely to associate; in other words, it was the sensual constitution of the Arab that lay at the root of the matter. Moḥammad might have done better. He might boldly have swept away the traditions of Arab society, unveiled the women, intermingled the sexes, and punished by the most severe measures any license which such association might at first encourage. With his boundless influence, it is possible that he might have done this, and, the new system once fairly settled, and the people accustomed to it, the good effects of the change would have begun to show themselves. But such an idea could never have occurred to him. We must always remember that we are dealing with a social system of the seventh century, not of the nineteenth. Moḥammad’s ideas about women were like those of the rest of his contemporaries. He looked upon them as charming snares to the believer, ornamental articles of furniture difficult to keep in order, pretty playthings; but that a woman should be the counsellor and companion of a man does not seem to have occurred to him. It is to be wondered that the feeling of respect he always entertained for his first wife, Khadeejeh, (which, however, is partly accounted for by the fact that she was old enough to have been his mother,) found no counterpart in his general opinion of womankind: ‘Woman was made from a crooked rib, and if you try to bend it straight, it will break; therefore treat your wives kindly.’ Moḥammad was not the man to make a social reform affecting women, nor was Arabia the country in which such a change should be made, nor Arab ladies perhaps the best subjects for the experiment. Still he did something towards bettering the condition of women: he limited the number of wives to four; laid his hand with the utmost severity on the incestuous marriages that were then rife in Arabia; compelled husbands to support their divorced wives during their four months of probation; made irrevocable divorce less common by adding the rough, but deterring, condition that a woman triply divorced could not return to her husband without first being married to some one else—a condition exceedingly disagreeable to the first husband; and required four witnesses to prove a charge of adultery against a wife—a merciful provision, difficult to be fulfilled. The evil permitted by Moḥammad in leaving the number of wives four instead of insisting on monogamy was not great. Without considering the sacrifice of family peace which the possession of a large harem entails, the expense of keeping several wives, each of whom must have a separate suite of apartments or a separate house, is so great that not more than one in twenty can afford it. It is not so much in the matter of wives as in that of concubines that Moḥammad made an irretrievable mistake. The condition of the female slave in the East is indeed deplorable. She is at the entire mercy of her master, who can do what he pleases with her and her companions; for the Muslim is not restricted in the number of his concubines, as he is in that of his wives. The female white slave is kept solely for the master’s sensual gratification, and is sold when he is tired of her, and so she passes from master to master, a very wreck of womanhood. Her condition is a little improved if she bear a son to her tyrant; but even then he is at liberty to refuse to acknowledge the child as his own, though it must be owned he seldom does this. Kind as the Prophet was himself towards bondswomen, one cannot forget the unutterable brutalities which he suffered his followers to inflict upon conquered nations in the taking of slaves. The Muslim soldier was allowed to do as he pleased with any ‘infidel’ woman he might meet with on his victorious march. When one thinks of the thousands of women, mothers and daughters, who must have suffered untold shame and dishonour by this license, he cannot find words to express his horror. And this cruel indulgence has left its mark on the Muslim character, nay, on the whole character of Eastern life. Now, as at the first, young Christian girls are dragged away from their homes and given over to the unhallowed lusts of a Turkish voluptuary; and not only to Turks, but to Englishmen; for the contagion has spread, and Englishmen, even those who by their sacred order should know better, instead of uttering their protest, as men of honour and Christians, against the degradation, have followed the example of the Turk, and helped in the ruin of women. Concubinage is the black stain in Islám. With Moḥammad’s views of women, we could hardly expect him to do better; but, on the other hand, he could scarcely have done worse. There are, however, one or two alleviating circumstances. One is the fact that the canker has not eaten into the whole of Eastern society; it is chiefly among the rich that the evil effects of the system are felt. And another fact which shows that the Mohammadan system, bad as it is, is free from a defect which social systems better in other respects than Moḥammad’s are subject to is the extreme rarity of prostitution in Muslim towns. The courtesan forms a very small item in the census of a Mohammadan city, and is retained more for strangers from Europe than for the Muslim inhabitants. Instances are frequently occurring in the Indian law courts which show the strong feeling that exists on the subject among the Mohammadans of India. They consider it quite inconceivable that a Muslim should have illicit intercourse with a free Muslimeh woman, and this inconceivableness of the action is urged as evidence in trials of the legitimacy of children. But whilst admitting the importance of this remarkable feature in Islám, it must not be forgotten that the liberty allowed by their law to Muslims in the matter of concubines does not very materially differ from prostitution, and whilst the latter is directly forbidden by the dominant religion of Europe, concubinage is as directly permitted by Islám.

One would think that long intercourse with Europeans might have somewhat raised the estimation of women in the East; but either because travellers in the East are not always the best specimens of Western morality, or because the Eastern mind has an unequalled aptitude for assimilating the bad and rejecting the good in any system it meets, it is certain that women are no better off now than they were in the East. A well-known correspondent of a leading daily print writes thus of Turkish home life:—

‘It is obvious that the home life of any people will depend
almost entirely on the position which is assigned to women. It
is not necessary to inquire what this position is according to
the teaching of the sacred books of a race. Between
Christianity and Islám it is enough to notice that there is
apparently no country where the first is the prevailing
religion in which woman is hindered by religion from obtaining
a position almost, if not quite, on an equality with man, and
similarly, no country where the second prevails where woman is
not in a degraded position.... Under Christianity she is
everywhere free. Under Islám she is everywhere a slave. The
pious Mohammadan, like the pious Jew, thanks God that he has
not been made a woman. The pious Mohammadan woman, like the
pious Jewess, thanks God that she has been made according to
the Creator’s will. Man and woman alike recognise that to be a
woman is to be in an inferior condition. This feeling of the
degradation of woman so pervades Turkey that the poorer
classes of Christians have even become infected by it. When a
son is born there is nothing but congratulations. When a
daughter, nothing but condolences. A polite Turk, if he has
occasion to mention his wife, will do so with an apology....
He regards it as a piece of rudeness to mention the fact to
you, and it would be equally rude for him to inquire after
your wife, or to hint that he knew you were guilty of anything
so unmentionable as to have one. Charles the Twelfth told his
queen that she had been chosen to give children, and not
advice. The Turk regards woman as destined solely for the same
purpose and for his pleasure. Probably polygamy is of itself
sufficient to account for the way in which Mohammadans regard
woman. But whether this is so or not, there is one influence
which polygamy asserts which accounts for the low ideal of
woman prevalent in all Muslim countries. When a man has a
number of wives it is impossible that they can all become his
companions and his confidantes, or that one of them can become
his companion or confidante to the same extent as if the man
had only one wife. Hence a man who is limited to one will not
be contented with beauty alone. He must have a certain amount
of intelligence and education. The Turk, on the other hand,
has no reason whatever to think of anything except beauty. As
he never means to see much of his wife, intelligence or
education is a matter of small account. If he can afford it he
will have a Circassian wife, a woman who has been reared with
the intention of being sold, who has not an idea in her head,
who has seen nothing, and knows nothing. Such a woman would be
as objectionable as a wife to the great majority of Europeans
as a South Sea Island beauty. But she satisfies the ideal of
the Turk. She is beautiful, and beauty is all that he
requires.’

It is this sensual and degraded view of woman that destroys to so great an extent the good influence which the better part of the teaching of Islám might exert in the East. So long as women are held in so light an esteem, they will remain ignorant, and bigoted, and sensual; and so long as mothers are what most Muslim mothers are now, their children will be ignorant and fanatical and vicious. In Turkey there are other influences at work besides the Mohammadan social system; but Turkish women may serve as an instance of the state of things which that system encourages. ‘In those early years spent at home, when the child ought to have instilled into him some germ of those principles of conduct by which men must walk in the world if they are to hold up their heads among civilised nations, the Turkish child is only taught the first steps towards those vicious habits of mind and body which have made his race what it is. The root of the evil is partly found in the harem system. So long as that system keeps Turkish women in their present depressed state, so long will Turkish boys and girls be vicious and ignorant.’ As I have said elsewhere,[20] ‘It is quite certain that there is no hope for the Turks so long as Turkish women remain what they are, and home-training is the initiation of vice.’ If the mother is ignorant and vicious, the son cannot form a high ideal of womanhood, and thus is barred off from the chivalrous spirit wherewith alone a man may reach to the highest love:—that

‘Subtle master under heaven,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable words,
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man.’

The Muslin has no ideal of chivalry like this to make his life pure and honourable: his religion encourages an opposite view, and the women among whom he is brought up only confirm it.

If Islám is to be a power for good in the future, it is imperatively necessary to cut off the social system from the religion. At the beginning, among a people who had advanced but a little way on the road of civilisation, the defects of the social system were not so apparent; but now, when Easterns are endeavouring to mix on equal terms with Europeans, and are trying to adopt the manners and customs of the West, it is clear that the condition of their women must be radically changed if any good is to come of the Europeanising tendency. The difficulty lies in the close connection between the religious and social ordinances in the Ḳur-án: the two are so intermingled that it is hard to see how they can be disentangled without destroying both. The theory of revelation would have to be modified. Muslims would have to give up their doctrine of the syllabic inspiration of the Ḳur-án and exercise their moral sense in distinguishing between the particular and the general, the temporary and the permanent: they would have to recognise that there was much in Moḥammad’s teaching which, though useful at the time, is inapplicable to the present conditions of life; that his knowledge was often partial, and his judgment sometimes at fault; that the moral sense is capable of education as much as the intellect, and, therefore, that what was apparently moral and wise in the seventh century may quite possibly be immoral and suicidal in a society of the nineteenth century. Moḥammad himself said, according to tradition, ‘I am no more than a man: when I order you anything respecting religion, receive it; and when I order you about the affairs of the world, then I am nothing more than man.’ And he seemed to foresee that the time would come when his minor regulations would call for revision: ‘Ye are in an age,’ he said, ‘in which, if ye abandon one-tenth of what is ordered, ye will be ruined. After this, a time will come when he who shall observe one-tenth of what is now ordered will be redeemed.’[21]

If Muslims would take these warnings of their prophet to heart, there would be some hope for Islám. Some few of the higher intellects among them have already admitted the principle of moral criticism applied to the Ḳur-án; but it is very doubtful whether ‘rational Islám’ will ever gain a wide following, any more than ‘rational Christianity.’ People in general do not care to think for themselves in matters religious. They like their creed served up to them as cooked meat, not raw flesh. They must have definite texts and hard-and-fast commandments to appeal to. They will not believe in the spirit, but prefer the letter. They will have nothing to say to tendencies, but must have facts. It is of no avail to speak to them of the spirit of a life or of a whole book; they must hang their doctrine on a solitary sentence. They will either believe every letter of their scripture, or they will believe nothing.

Such people make up the majority of the professors of Islám; and with them no reform, within Islám, seems possible. Among the upper (I will not call them the higher) classes, they are either fanatics or concealed infidels; and their lives are a proof of the incompatibility of ordinary Mohammadanism, real or nominal, with a high social and national life. Among the poorer classes, the social system has a more restricted field of operation, for the poor are naturally less able to avail themselves of the permissions of their Prophet. In a poor community Islám exerts an eminently salutary influence, as the condition of the Mohammadan converts in Western Africa conclusively proves. An able observer,[22] whose African birth and training qualify him in a high degree for properly understanding the true state of his countrymen, whilst his Christian profession serves as a guarantee against excessive prejudice in favour of Islám, has recorded his experience of the work of Mohammadan missionaries in Liberia and the neighbouring parts of Africa. ‘All careful and candid observers,’ he remarks, ‘agree that the influence of Islám in Central and West Africa has been, upon the whole, of a most salutary character.... As an eliminatory and subversive agency it has displaced or unsettled nothing as good as itself.’ It has inculcated habits of moderation and soberness over the whole of the vast region covered by its emissaries; and so great is the influence of its teaching, that where there are Muslim inhabitants, even in pagan towns, it is a very rare thing to see a person intoxicated. The Mohammadan converts drink nothing but water. ‘From Senegal to Lagos, over two thousand miles, there is scarcely an important town on the seaboard where there is not at least one mosque and active representatives of Islám, side by side with the Christian teacher. And as soon as a pagan, however obscure or degraded, embraces the Muslim faith, he is at once admitted as an equal to the society.... The pagan village possessing a Muslim teacher is always found to be in advance of its neighbours in all the elements of civilisation.... The introduction of Islám into Central and West Africa has been the most important, if not the sole, preservative against the desolations of the slave trade. Mohammadanism furnished a protection to the tribes who embraced it, by effectually binding them together in one strong religious fraternity, and enabling them by their united efforts to baffle the attempts of powerful slave-hunters. Enjoying this comparative immunity from sudden hostile incursion, industry was stimulated among them; industry diminished their poverty; and as they increased in worldly substance, they also increased in desire for knowledge. Receiving a desire of letters by a study of the Arabic language, they acquired loftier views, wider tastes, and those energetic habits which so pleasingly distinguish them from their pagan neighbours.’ Students often travel on foot from the west coast right across Africa to study at the great mosque of the Azhar in Cairo. It must be remembered that these results were observed in the very centre of African Christianity, in Sierra Leone and other coast settlements. It is said that in Sierra Leone three-fourths of the Muslim population were not born Muslims, but were converted from Christianity or paganism; and this, although ‘all liberated Africans are always handed over to Christian missionaries for instruction, and their children are baptized and brought up at the public expense in Christian schools, and are thus, in a sense, ready-made Christians.’

These facts show that, even in the present day, and with the competition of Christian missionary societies, Islám may be a power for good in poor communities—that it can not only give them a pure instead of a degraded faith, but can raise them socially and intellectually. The effects of a simple form of Islám on these African converts may give one some notion of its influence on its hearers in the early days, before the theologians had corrupted it.

But this good influence is very partial and limited, even among the poorer classes. In communities where all are poor, Islám is an excellent agent for improvement; but in countries where there are many grades of wealth and rank, the poor only ape in a humble manner the vices of those whom they are taught to regard as their ‘betters.’ In all civilised and wealthy countries the social system of Islám exerts a ruinous influence on all classes, and if there is to be any great future for the Mohammadan world, that system of society must be done away.

THE WOMAN’S CAUSE IS MAN’S; THEY RISE OR SINK
TOGETHER, DWARFED OR GODLIKE, BOND OR FREE.

IV.—_THE ḲUR-ÁN._

The Muslim who reads the Ḳur-án is like the orange-fruit,
whose smell and taste are sweet; and the Muslim who reads not
the Ḳur-án is like the date, which hath no smell, but its
taste is sweet; and the Hypocrite who reads not the Ḳur-án is
like the colocynth, without a smell, and with a bitter taste;
and the Hypocrite who reads it is like the sweet bazil, whose
smell is sweet, but its taste bitter.—_Tradition._

It is an immense merit in the Ḳur-án that there is no doubt as to its genuineness. The ‘Word of the Lord’ came to Moḥammad, and he uttered it, and the people wrote it down or committed it to memory; and that very word we can now read with full confidence that it has remained unchanged through nearly thirteen hundred years.

The revelations came to Moḥammad in many ways and at all times, but never ‘in visions bright, transcendant, exalted. They came ghastly, weird, most horrible. After long solitary broodings, a something used to move Moḥammad, all of a sudden, with frightful vehemence. He “roared like a camel,” his eyes rolled and glowed like red coals, and on the coldest day terrible perspirations would break out all over his body. When the terror ceased, it seemed to him as if he had heard bells ringing, “the sound whereof seemed to rend him to pieces”—as if he had heard the voice of a man—as if he had seen Gabriel—or as if words _had been written in his heart_. Such was the agony he endured, that some of the verses revealed to him well-nigh made his hair turn white.’

No collection of these revelations was made during Moḥammad’s lifetime; at his death, the Ḳur-án existed only as scattered chaotically among the believers. But about a year later, the death in battle of some of the men who had specially committed passages of the Ḳur-án to memory, and the dread that the whole of Moḥammad’s teaching might vanish at the end of a generation or two, induced Aboo-Bekr to make the innovation from which every one shrank, and he gave orders to the Prophet’s secretary, Zeyd ibn Thábit, to collect the fragments of the Ḳur-án in one book. So Zeyd gathered the Ḳur-án from palm-leaves, skins, shoulder-blades, stones, and the hearts of men, arranged the chapters in a certain order, and presented Aboo-Bekr with a Ḳur-án which probably differed in no essential particular from the book we have now. All scholars are agreed that Zeyd did his work faithfully, and neither inserted nor omitted anything from party motives. But he seems to have occasionally mixed up fragments of very different date in one chapter—Moḥammad himself countenanced this—and may possibly have omitted some portions that were not found till afterwards.

Some twenty years later a second recension was ordered by the Khalif ´Othmán. Slight varieties of reading, mainly dialectal, had arisen; swords were near being drawn over them; and it was evident that a serious schism would come about if a uniform authorised text of the Ḳur-án were not provided. These slight dialectal differences were not sufficiently settled, it would seem, in Aboo-Bekr’s edition, so this new recension was made by Zeyd and three men of the Ḳureysh, for they would best know the original dialect of the Ḳur-án. The new edition followed the first one, apparently, both in order and in matter; definitely fixing, however, the true text in the dialect of the Ḳureysh, and possibly adding any verses that might have been discovered since Zeyd’s first edition. This second recension was conducted with the same careful fidelity and scrupulous impartiality as the first; and it was accepted by all the different parties that were then disputing the supremacy. Copies of this edition were then distributed to the principal cities of the empire, and the old copies and fragments were called-in and burned.

This edition of ´Othmán, made about A.D. 660, is the one that has ever since been the authorised and only version of the Ḳur-án throughout the Muslim world and in the studies of European linguists. The only differences that have since crept into the text are certain unimportant varieties in vocalisation and orthography and in the division of verses.

It was a singular system these early revisers went upon. They seem, indeed, to have established the authenticity of each saying satisfactorily; but in the arrangement of them they showed an extraordinary dulness. The tradition of the year when each revelation was spoken appears to have been lost even in the short time that had elapsed since it had been spoken. People remembered the words, but seldom the occasion of the words. Hence the revisers had to devise an artificial order; not according to subject, nor after the development of the style, but simply in order of length! They put the longest chapters first and the shortest last; that is to say, they inverted, roughly speaking, the true order, for the early soorahs were short and the later ones long.

Read in this order, the Ḳur-án is an unintelligible jumble. Carlyle may well say that ‘nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Ḳur-án.’ You can trace no development of mind or doctrine in the present arrangement; it is indeed a confused mass of ‘endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement, most crude, incondite.’ But scholars have long discovered certain signs of a true order—several kinds of evidence by which a chronological arrangement of the Ḳur-án may be attempted. These are—(1.) The _references to historical events_ in the Ḳur-án, as identified by tradition. These, however, are but few, and occur chiefly in quite the latest soorahs; and tradition is apt to identify any reference with any event it chooses. A much more important test is (2.) the _style_; for a distinct development can be traced in the rime, in the length of verses, and in the words employed. And then there is (3.) the _matter_ test, based on what we know of Moḥammad’s life, from which we can argue a certain change in his preaching at Mekka, and still more when, from addressing idolaters in his birthplace, he came to preach to Jews and Christians at Medina. The danger of this last test is that each man forms his own theory of Moḥammad’s mental and religious growth, and may arrange the soorahs in accordance with that theory. Even with these three tests, used by the most accomplished critics, it is impossible to arrive at an exact order, and to determine the precise chronological position of each soorah. But whilst it is admitted that an exact chronological arrangement of each individual chapter of the Ḳur-án is impossible, it is yet no less certain that the soorahs may be roughly grouped together, and that these groups can be definitely assigned to certain periods of Moḥammad’s career.

Professor Th. Nöldeke’s _Geschichte des Qorâns_ has established his right to the first place in this science of Ḳur-án arrangement, and his order of soorahs may fairly be accepted as authoritative. Of this order Mr. Rodwell’s English version of the Ḳur-án is an example, except that a few of the earliest soorahs are transposed. Nöldeke has two great divisions of the soorahs: those revealed at Mekka, and those revealed during the Medina period. Further, he divides the Mekkan division into three groups.[23]

{ I. A.D. 612-617 (Rodwell, pp. 1-64)—To the Abyssinian
{ exile (fifth year).
{
{ II. A.D. 617-619 (Rodwell, pp. 64-192)—Fifth and sixth
Mekka { years of Moḥammad’s mission.
{
{ III. A.D. 619-622 (Rodwell, pp. 193-366)—From the
{ seventh year to the Flight.

Medina A.D. 622-633 (Rodwell, pp. 366-555)—At Medina.

Read in this order the Ḳur-án becomes intelligible. It is still confused in its progression and strangely mixed in its contents; but the development of Moḥammad’s faith can be traced in it, and we can see dimly into the workings of his mind, as it struggles with the deep things of God, wrestles with the doubts which echoed the cavils of the unbelievers, soars upwards on the wings of ecstatic faith, till at last it gains the repose of fruition. Studied thus, the Ḳur-án is no longer dull reading to one who cares to look upon the working of a passionate troubled human soul, and who can enter into its trials and share in the joy of its triumphs.

In the soorahs revealed at Mekka, Moḥammad has but one theme—God; and one object—to draw his people away from their idols and bring them to the feet of that God. He tells them of Him in glowing language, that comes from the heart’s white heat. He points to the glories of nature, and tells them these are God’s works. With all the brilliant imagery of the Arab, he tries to show them what God is, to convince them of His power and His wisdom and His justice. The soorahs of this period are short, for they are pitched in too high a key to be long sustained. The language has the ring of poetry, though no part of the Ḳur-án complies with the demands of Arab metre. The sentences are short and full of half-restrained energy, yet with a musical cadence. The thought is often only half expressed; one feels the speaker has essayed a thing beyond words, and has suddenly discovered the impotence of language, and broken off with the sentence unfinished. There is the fascination of true poetry about these earliest soorahs; as we read them we understand the enthusiasm of the Prophet’s followers, though we cannot fully realise the beauty and the power, inasmuch as we cannot hear them hurled forth with Moḥammad’s fiery eloquence. From first to last the Ḳur-án is essentially a book to be heard, not read, but this is especially the case with the earliest chapters.

In the soorahs of the second period of Mekka we begin to trace the decline of the Prophet’s eloquence. There are still the same earnest appeals to the people, the same gorgeous pictures of the Last Day and the world to come; but the language begins to approach the quiet of prose, the sentences become longer, the same words and phrases are frequently repeated, and the wearisome stories of the Jewish prophets and patriarchs, which fill so large a place in the later portion of the Ḳur-án, now make their appearance. The fierce passion of the earliest soorahs, that could not out save in short burning verses, gives place to a calmer more argumentative style. Moḥammad appeals less to the works of God as proofs of his teaching, and more to the history of former teachers, and the punishments of the people who would not hear them. And the characteristic oaths of the first period, when Moḥammad swears by all the varied sights of nature as they mirrored themselves in his imagination, have gone, and in their place we find only the weaker oath ‘by the Ḳur-án.’ And this declension is carried still further in the last group of the soorahs revealed at Mekka. The style becomes more involved and the sentences longer, and though the old enthusiasm bursts forth ever and anon, it is rather an echo of former things than a new and present intoxication of faith. The fables and repetitions become more and more dreary, and but for the rich eloquence of the old Arabic tongue, which gives some charm even to inextricable sentences and dull stories, the Ḳur-án at this period would be unreadable. As it is, we feel we have fallen the whole depth from poetry to prose, and the matter of the prose is not so superlative as to give us amends for the loss of the poetic thought of the earlier time and the musical fall of the sentences.

In the soorahs of the Medina period these faults reach their climax. We read a singularly varied collection of criminal laws, social regulations, orders for battle, harangues to the Jews, first conciliatory, then denunciatory, and exhortations to spread the faith, and such-like heterogeneous matters. Happily the Jewish stories disappear in the latest soorahs, but their place is filled by scarcely more palatable materials. The chapters of this period are interesting chiefly as containing the laws which have guided every Muslim state, regulated every Muslim society, and directed in their smallest acts every Mohammadan man and woman in all parts of the world from the Prophet’s time till now. The Medina part of the Ḳur-án is the most important part for Islám, considered as a scheme of ritual and a system of manners; the earliest Mekka revelations are those which contain what is highest in a great religion and what was purest in a great man.

The word _Ḳur-án_ means the _crying_, _reciting_, _reading_, and is applied not only to the whole book, but to any chapter or section of it. The Ḳur-án is also called El-Furḳán, ‘the Distinguisher,’ and El-Muṣḥaf, ‘the Volume,’ and El-Kitáb, ‘the Book,’ and Edh-Dhikr, ‘the Admonition.’ The Ḳur-án contains, in its ordinary form, 114 chapters (_soorahs_), 6616 verses (_áyát_, literally ‘signs’ or ‘wonders’), 77,934 words, and 323,671 letters, according to the estimates of laborious Muslim divines, which differ, however, in a slight manner in consequence of the various divisions of verses. After the first chapter, which is a short prayer (the Fátiḥah), the soorahs gradually decrease in length from 289 verses in the second to from three to six in the ten concluding chapters. Each chapter is headed by a title, taken from same prominent word in it (as the ‘Chapter of the Striking,’ ‘of the Cow,’ &c.); beneath which is noted whether it was promulgated (according to tradition) at Mekka or Medina, and the number of its verses. Then follow the words:—‘In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful;’ after which the chapter begins. To twenty-nine chapters are prefixed certain letters (_e.g._, ch. ii. on p. 4), or a single letter, which have never been successfully interpreted. The Muslims believe them to conceal profound mysteries. In Soorah 55 a refrain is found, and traces of a like imitation in Soorahs 54 and 17. It is probable that the Ḳur-án was originally _chanted_ in somewhat the same manner as it is in the present day.

The Ḳur-án is also divided in thirty sections, and these are again subdivided; and from this division rather than from chapter and verse do the Muslims generally quote.

‘The Muslims absolutely deny that the Ḳur-án was composed by their Prophet himself, or by any other for him; it being their general and orthodox belief that it is of divine original; nay, that it is eternal and uncreated, remaining, as some express it, in the very essence of God; that the first transcript has been from everlasting by God’s throne, written on a tablet of vast size, called the Preserved Tablet, in which are also recorded the divine decrees, past and future; that a copy from this tablet, in one volume on paper, was, by the ministry of the angel Gabriel, sent down to the lowest heaven, in the month of Ramaḍán, on the Night of Power;[24] whence Gabriel revealed it to Moḥammad by parcels, some at Mekka, and some at Medina, at different times during the space of twenty-three years, as the exigency of affairs required; giving him, however, the consolation to show him the whole (which they tell us was bound in silk, and adorned with gold and precious stones of Paradise) once a year; but in the last year of his life he had the favour to see it twice. They say that few chapters were delivered entire, the most part being revealed piecemeal, and written down from time to time by the Prophet’s amanuensis, in such or such a part of such or such a chapter, till they were completed, according to the directions of the angel. The first parcel that was revealed is generally agreed to have been the first five verses of the ninety-sixth chapter. After the new revealed passages had been from the Prophet’s mouth taken down in writing by his scribe, they were published to his followers, several of whom took copies for their private use; but the far greater number got them by heart. The originals, when returned, were put promiscuously into a chest, without regard to any order of time, for which reason it is uncertain when many passages were revealed.

‘The Ḳur-án being the Muslims’ rule of faith and practice, it is no wonder its expositors and commentators are so very numerous; and it may not be amiss to take notice of the rules they observe in expounding it.

‘One of the most learned commentators distinguishes the contents of the Ḳur-án into allegorical and literal. The former comprehends the more obscure, parabolical, and enigmatical passages, and such as are repealed or abrogated; the latter, those which are plain, perspicuous, liable to no doubt, and in full force.

‘To explain these severally in a right manner, it is necessary, from tradition and study, to know the time when each passage was revealed, its circumstances, state, and history, and the reasons or particular emergencies for the sake of which it was revealed. Or, more explicitly, whether the passage was revealed at Mekka or at Medina; whether it be abrogated, or does itself abrogate any other passage; whether it be anticipated in order of time or postponed; whether it be distinct from the context or depend thereon; whether it be particular or general; and lastly, whether it be implicit by intention, or explicit in words.

‘By what has been said, the reader may easily believe that this book is held by the Muslims in the greatest reverence and esteem. The more strict among them dare not touch it without being first washed or legally purified; which lest they should do by inadvertence, they sometimes write these words of the book itself on the cover or label, “None shall touch it but they who are purified.” They read it with great care and respect, never holding it below their girdles. They swear by it, consult it in their weighty occasions, carry it with them to war, inscribe sentences from it on their banners, sometimes adorn it with gold and precious stones, and knowingly suffer it not to be in the possession of any person of a different persuasion. It is the foundation of their education; and the children in the schools are taught to chant it, and commit the whole of it to memory.’

BOOKS.

In reading a large number of works bearing upon the subjects of this Introduction, I have remarked a curious freedom of quotation in most of the writers. I find the same sentence, or at least the same thought, repeated in several books without any reference to the author who first put it forth. Each writer seems to have studied his predecessors with such minuteness that he can quote their very words, but he does not appear to remember whence the words came. When a thought has once been perfectly expressed, it were a ridiculous vanity to seek to frame it in different words, and so far it is undoubtedly wise to make use of the best of what has preceded us; nevertheless, it is well to acknowledge our debt. Yet thoughts, and even phrases, impress themselves on the memory till one unconsciously comes to appropriate them as his own; and this, I doubt not, is the cause of much of the plagiarism I have noticed. It is extremely probable that I have been guilty of the same sin. I have crowded my pages with marks of quotation, sometimes with foot references, sometimes without (for the student of the subject will know where to look for them), but it is quite likely that I have often unconsciously used another’s phrase or metaphor without rendering thanks. So I now append a list of the principal European books I have used, and beg once and for all to record my indebtedness to their writers. The original Arabic authorities will dispense with my acknowledgments, and the catalogue of them would not assist the English reader who wishes to proceed further in the study of the subject, for whom this list may prove useful.

BURCKHARDT, J. L. _Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys._ 2 vols.
1831.

DEUTSCH, EMANUEL. _Literary Remains._ 1874.

DOZY, R. _Essai sur l´Histoire de l´Islamisme_, trad. par V.
Chauvin. 1879.

FRESNEL, F. _Lettres sur l´Histoire des Arabes avant
l´Islamisme._ 1836-38.

HUGHES, REV. T. P. _Notes on Muhammadanism._ 2d ed. 1877.

KREMER, A. VON. _Geschichte der herrschenden Ideen des
Isláms._ 1868.

—— _Culturgeschichte des Orients unter den Chalifen._ 2 vols.
1876, 1877.

LANE, E. W. _The Modern Egyptians._ 5th ed. 1 vol. 1860.

—— _The Thousand and One Nights_ (notes). 2d ed. 3 vols.
1859, 1860.

—— _Selections from the Kur-án._ 1st ed. 1843.

—— _Arabic-English Lexicon_, Preface, &c. 1863.

LYALL, C. J. _Translations from the Hamâseh and the Aghânî; The
Mo´allaqah of Zuheyr._ (Journal As. Soc. of Bengal, 1878.)

MUIR, SIR W. _The Life of Mahomet._ 4 vols. New edition.[25]
1867.

NÖLDEKE, TH. _Geschichte des Qorâns._ 1860.

—— _Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Poesie der alten Araber._
1864.

PALGRAVE, W. GIFFORD. _Central and Eastern Arabia._ 6th ed.
1871.

PERCEVAL, A.-P. CAUSSIN DE. _Essai sur l´Histoire des Arabes
avant l´Islamisme._ 3 vols. 1847, 1848.

POOLE, R. STUART. _Pagan and Muslim Arabs._ (Fortnightly
Review, October 15, 1865.)

RODWELL, J. M. _El-Korân._ 2d ed. 1876.

SALE, G. _The Koran._ 1836.

SÉDILLOT, L.-A. _Histoire Générale des Arabes._ 2d ed. 2 vols.
1877.

SMITH, R. BOSWORTH. _Mohammed and Mohammedanism._ 2d ed. 1876.

SPRENGER, A. _Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammad._ 2d ed. 3
vols. 1869.

ST. HILAIRE, T.-BARTHÉLEMY. _Mahomet et le Coran._ 2d ed.
1865.

TIELE, C. P. _Outlines of the History of Religion_, translated
by J. E. Carpenter. (Trübner’s Philosophical Library. Vol.
vii. 1877.)

WEIL, G. _Das Leben Mohammed’s nach Ibn Ishak_ bearbeitet von
Ibn Hischam. 2 vols. 1864.

SELECTIONS FROM THE ḲUR-ÁN.

_PART THE FIRST._

NOTE.

The following extracts were all translated by Mr. Lane, with the exception of those to which an obelus (†) is prefixed, for which I alone am responsible. In the text, the words in italics are inserted from the commentary of the Jeláleyn; words in square brackets [] are Mr. Lane’s additions, inserted where the difference between the Arabic and English idioms required them.

In the foot-notes, words in italics are from the commentary of the Jeláleyn; notes followed by the initial S., from Sale’s _Koran_; the letters B., Z., and A. F., following S. in parenthesis, point to the authorities from which Sale’s note was derived, the great commentaries of El-Beydáwee and Ez-Zamakhsharee, and Abu-l-Fidá’s Life of Moḥammad, respectively. The other notes are Mr. Lane’s, either from the original edition or extracted from his _Modern Egyptians_ (5th 1 vol. ed. 1860), or his notes to the _Thousand and One Nights_ (2d ed. 1859); except those enclosed in square brackets, which are due to myself.

The numbers at the end of each extract refer to the chapter (soorah) and verse in Flügel’s text of the Ḳur-án (Lipsiæ, 1869).

S. L. P.

_PART THE FIRST._

_THE OPENING PRAYER._[26]

_EL-FÁTIḤAH._

I.

In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Praise be to God, the Lord of the Worlds,[27]
The Compassionate, the Merciful,
The King of the day of judgment.
Thee do we worship, and of Thee seek we help.[28]
Guide us in the right way,
The way of those to whom Thou hast been gracious,
Not of those with whom Thou art wroth, nor of the erring.

(i.)

_PREMONITION._

II.

A.L.M.[29] Respecting this Book there is no doubt;[30] _it is_ a guidance for them that fear Him,

Who believe in the unseen,[31] and perform the prayer, and of what We have bestowed on them expend,

And who believe in that which hath been sent down to thee,[32] and what hath been sent down before thee,[33] and have firm assurance of the life to come.

Those follow a right direction from their Lord, and those are they who shall prosper.

As for those who have disbelieved, it will be equal to them whether thou admonish them or admonish them not: they will not believe.

God hath sealed their hearts and their ears, and over their eyes is a covering, and for them is [ordained] a great punishment.

(ii. 1-6.)

_GOD._

III.

SAY, He is God, One [God];
God, the Eternal.
He begetteth not nor is begotten,
And there is none equal unto Him.

(cxii.)[34]

IV.

_The Throne-Verse._[35]

God! There is no God but He, the _Ever_-Living, the Ever-Subsisting. Slumber seizeth Him not, nor sleep. To Him belongeth whatsoever is in the Heavens and whatsoever is in the Earth. Who is he that shall intercede with Him, unless by His permission? He knoweth what [hath been] before them and what [shall be] after them, and they shall not compass aught of His knowledge save what He willeth. His Throne comprehendeth the Heavens and the Earth,[36] and the care of them burdeneth Him not. And He is the High, the Great.

(ii. 256.)

V.