The Koran (Al-Qur'an)
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Title: The Koran (Al-Qur'an)
Translator: J. M. Rodwell
Release date: September 1, 2002 [eBook #3434]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3434
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KORAN (AL-QUR'AN) ***
The Koran
TRANSLATED FROM THE ARABIC BY THE REV. J.M. RODWELL, M.A. WITH AN
INTRODUCTION BY THE REV. G. MARGOLIOUTH, M.A.
Introduction Preface Index
Sura Number (this edition) Sura Number (Arabic text) Title
1 96 Thick Blood or Clots of Blood
2 74 The Enwrapped
3 73 The Enfolded
4 93 The Brightness
5 94 The Opening
6 113 The Daybreak
7 114 Men
8 1 Sura I.
9 109 Unbelievers
10 112 The Unity
11 111 Abu Lahab
12 108 The Abundance
13 104 The Backbiter
14 107 Religion
15 102 Desire
16 92 The Night
17 68 The Pen
18 90 The Soil
19 105 The Elephant
20 106 The Koreisch
21 97 Power
22 86 The Night-Comer
23 91 The Sun
24 80 He Frowned
25 87 The Most High
26 95 The Fig
27 103 The Afternoon
28 85 The Starry
29 101 The Blow
30 99 The Earthquake
31 82 The Cleaving
32 81 The Folded Up
33 84 The Splitting Asunder
34 100 The Chargers
35 79 Those Who Drag Forth
36 77 The Sent
37 78 The News
38 88 The Overshadowing
39 89 The Daybreak
40 75 The Resurrection
41 83 Those Who Stint
42 69 The Inevitable
43 51 The Scattering
44 52 The Mountain
45 56 The Inevitable
46 53 The Star
47 70 The Steps or Ascents
48 55 The Merciful
49 54 The Moon
50 37 The Ranks
51 71 Noah
52 76 Man
53 44 Smoke
54 50 Kaf
55 20 Ta. Ha.
56 26 The Poets
57 15 Hedjr
58 19 Mary
59 38 Sad
60 36 Ya. Sin
61 43 Ornaments of Gold
62 72 Djinn
63 67 The Kingdom
64 23 The Believers
65 21 The Prophets
66 25 Al Furkan
67 17 The Night Journey
68 27 The Ant
69 18 The Cave
70 32 Adoration
71 41 The Made Plain
72 45 The Kneeling
73 16 The Bee
74 30 The Greeks
75 11 Houd
76 14 Abraham, On Whom Be Peace
77 12 Joseph, Peace Be On Him
78 40 The Believer
79 28 The Story
80 39 The Troops
81 29 The Spider
82 31 Lokman
83 42 Counsel
84 10 Jonah, Peace Be On Him!
85 34 Saba
86 35 The Creator, or The Angels
87 7 Al Araf
88 46 Al Ahkaf
89 6 Cattle
90 13 Thunder
91 2 The Cow
92 98 Clear Evidence
93 64 Mutual Deceit
94 62 The Assembly
95 8 The Spoils
96 47 Muhammad
97 3 The Family of Imran
98 61 Battle Array
99 57 Iron
100 4 Women
101 65 Divorce
102 59 The Emigration
103 33 The Confederates
104 63 The Hypocrites
105 24 Light
106 58 She Who Pleaded
107 22 The Pilgrimage
108 48 The Victory
109 66 The Forbidding
110 60 She Who Is Tried
111 110 HELP
112 49 The Apartments
113 9 Immunity
114 5 The Table
MOHAMMED was born at Mecca in A.D. 567 or 569. His flight (hijra) to Medina,
which marks the beginning of the Mohammedan era, took place on 16th June 622.
He died on 7th June 632.
INTRODUCTION
THE Koran admittedly occupies an important position among the great religious
books of the world. Though the youngest of the epoch-making works belonging
to this class of literature, it yields to hardly any in the wonderful effect
which it has produced on large masses of men. It has created an all but new
phase of human thought and a fresh type of character. It first transformed a
number of heterogeneous desert tribes of the Arabian peninsula into a nation
of heroes, and then proceeded to create the vast politico-religious
organisations of the Muhammedan world which are one of the great forces with
which Europe and the East have to reckon to-day.
The secret of the power exercised by the book, of course, lay in the mind
which produced it. It was, in fact, at first not a book, but a strong living
voice, a kind of wild authoritative proclamation, a series of admonitions,
promises, threats, and instructions addressed to turbulent and largely
hostile assemblies of untutored Arabs. As a book it was published after the
prophet's death. In Muhammed's life-time there were only disjointed notes,
speeches, and the retentive memories of those who listened to them. To speak
of the Koran is, therefore, practically the same as speaking of Muhammed, and
in trying to appraise the religious value of the book one is at the same time
attempting to form an opinion of the prophet himself. It would indeed be
difficult to find another case in which there is such a complete identity
between the literary work and the mind of the man who produced it.
That widely different estimates have been formed of Muhammed is well-known.
To Moslems he is, of course, the prophet par excellence, and the Koran is
regarded by the orthodox as nothing less than the eternal utterance of Allah.
The eulogy pronounced by Carlyle on Muhammed in Heroes and Hero Worship will
probably be endorsed by not a few at the present day. The extreme contrary
opinion, which in a fresh form has recently been revived1 by an able writer,
is hardly likely to find much lasting support. The correct view very probably
lies between the two extremes. The relative value of any given system of
religious thought must depend on the amount of truth which it embodies as
well as on the ethical standard which its adherents are bidden to follow.
Another important test is the degree of originality that is to be assigned to
it, for it can manifestly only claim credit for that which is new in it, not
for that which it borrowed from other systems.
With regard to the first-named criterion, there is a growing opinion among
students of religious history that Muhammed may in a real sense be regarded
as a prophet of certain truths, though by no means of truth in the absolute
meaning of the term. The shortcomings of the moral teaching contained in the
Koran are striking enough if judged from the highest ethical standpoint with
which we are acquainted; but a much more favourable view is arrived at if a
comparison is made between the ethics of the Koran and the moral tenets of
Arabian and other forms of heathenism which it supplanted.
The method followed by Muhammed in the promulgation of the Koran also
requires to be treated with discrimination. From the first flash of prophetic
inspiration which is clearly discernible in the earlier portions of the book
he, later on, frequently descended to deliberate invention and artful
rhetoric. He, in fact, accommodated his moral sense to the circumstances in
which the r\oc\le he had to play involved him.
On the question of originality there can hardly be two opinions now that the
Koran has been thoroughly compared with the Christian and Jewish traditions
of the time; and it is, besides some original Arabian legends, to those only
that the book stands in any close relationship. The matter is for the most
part borrowed, but the manner is all the prophet's own. This is emphatically
a case in which originality consists not so much in the creation of new
materials of thought as in the manner in which existing traditions of various
kinds are utilised and freshly blended to suit the special exigencies of the
occasion. Biblical reminiscences, Rabbinic legends, Christian traditions
mostly drawn from distorted apocryphal sources, and native heathen stories,
all first pass through the prophet's fervid mind, and thence issue in strange
new forms, tinged with poetry and enthusiasm, and well adapted to enforce his
own view of life and duty, to serve as an encouragement to his faithful
adherents, and to strike terror into the hearts of his opponents.
There is, however, apart from its religious value, a more general view from
which the book should be considered. The Koran enjoys the distinction of
having been the starting-point of a new literary and philosophical movement
which has powerfully affected the finest and most cultivated minds among both
Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages. This general progress of the
Muhammedan world has somehow been arrested, but research has shown that what
European scholars knew of Greek philosophy, of mathematics, astronomy, and
like sciences, for several centuries before the Renaissance, was, roughly
speaking, all derived from Latin treatises ultimately based on Arabic
originals; and it was the Koran which, though indirectly, gave the first
impetus to these studies among the Arabs and their allies. Linguistic
investigations, poetry, and other branches of literature, also made their
appearance soon after or simultaneously with the publication of the Koran;
and the literary movement thus initiated has resulted in some of the finest
products of genius and learning.
The style in which the Koran is written requires some special attention in
this introduction. The literary form is for the most part different from
anything else we know. In its finest passages we indeed seem to hear a voice
akin to that of the ancient Hebrew prophets, but there is much in the book
which Europeans usually regard as faulty. The tendency to repetition which is
an inherent characteristic of the Semitic mind appears here in an exaggerated
form, and there is in addition much in the Koran which strikes us as wild and
fantastic. The most unfavourable criticism ever passed on Muhammed's style
has in fact been penned by the prophet's greatest British admirer, Carlyle
himself; and there are probably many now who find themselves in the same
dilemma with that great writer.
The fault appears, however, to lie partly in our difficulty to appreciate the
psychology of the Arab prophet. We must, in order to do him justice, give
full consideration to his temperament and to the condition of things around
him. We are here in touch with an untutored but fervent mind, trying to
realise itself and to assimilate certain great truths which have been
powerfully borne in upon him, in order to impart them in a convincing form to
his fellow-tribesmen. He is surrounded by obstacles of every kind, yet he
manfully struggles on with the message that is within him. Learning he has
none, or next to none. His chief objects of knowledge are floating stories
and traditions largely picked up from hearsay, and his over-wrought mind is
his only teacher. The literary compositions to which he had ever listened
were the half-cultured, yet often wildly powerful rhapsodies of early Arabian
minstrels, akin to Ossian rather than to anything else within our knowledge.
What wonder then that his Koran took a form which to our colder temperaments
sounds strange, unbalanced, and fantastic?
Yet the Moslems themselves consider the book the finest that ever appeared
among men. They find no incongruity in the style. To them the matter is all
true and the manner all perfect. Their eastern temperament responds readily
to the crude, strong, and wild appeal which its cadences make to them, and
the jingling rhyme in which the sentences of a discourse generally end adds
to the charm of the whole. The Koran, even if viewed from the point of view
of style alone, was to them from the first nothing less than a miracle, as
great a miracle as ever was wrought.
But to return to our own view of the case. Our difficulty in appreciating the
style of the Koran even moderately is, of course, increased if, instead of
the original, we have a translation before us. But one is happy to be able to
say that Rodwell's rendering is one of the best that have as yet been
produced. It seems to a great extent to carry with it the atmosphere in which
Muhammed lived, and its sentences are imbued with the flavour of the East.
The quasi-verse form, with its unfettered and irregular rhythmic flow of the
lines, which has in suitable cases been adopted, helps to bring out much of
the wild charm of the Arabic. Not the least among its recommendations is,
perhaps, that it is scholarly without being pedantic that is to say, that it
aims at correctness without sacrificing the right effect of the whole to
over-insistence on small details.
Another important merit of Rodwell's edition is its chronological arrangement
of the Suras or chapters. As he tells us himself in his preface, it is now in
a number of cases impossible to ascertain the exact occasion on which a
discourse, or part of a discourse, was delivered, so that the system could
not be carried through with entire consistency. But the sequence adopted is
in the main based on the best available historical and literary evidence; and
in following the order of the chapters as here printed, the reader will be
able to trace the development of the prophet's mind as he gradually advanced
from the early flush of inspiration to the less spiritual and more equivocal
r\oc\le of warrior, politician, and founder of an empire.
G. Margoliouth.
1 Mahommed and the Rise of Islam, in “Heroes of Nations” series.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS. From the original Arabic by G. Sale, 1734, 1764, 1795,
1801; many later editions, which include a memoir of the translator by R. A.
Davenport, and notes from Savary's version of the Koran; an edition issued by
E. M. Wherry, with additional notes and commentary (Tr\du\ubner's Oriental
Series), 1882, etc.; Sale's translation has also been edited in the Chandos
Classics, and among Lubbock's Hundred Books (No. 22). The Holy Qur\da\an,
translated by Dr. Mohammad Abdul Hakim Khan, with short notes, 1905;
Translation by J. M. Rodwell, with notes and index (the Suras arranged in
chronological order), 1861, 2nd ed., 1876; by E. H. Palmer (Sacred Books of
the East, vols. vi., ix.).
SELECTIONS: Chiefly from Sale's edition, by E. W. Lane, 1843; revised and
enlarged with introduction by S. Lane-Poole. (Tr\du\ubner's Oriental Series),
1879; The Speeches and Table-Talk of the Prophet Mohammad, etc., chosen and
translated, with introduction and notes by S. Lane-Poole, 1882 (Golden
Treasury Series); Selections with introduction and explanatory notes (from
Sale and other writers), by J. Murdock (Sacred Books of the East), 2nd ed.,
1902; The Religion of the Koran, selections with an introduction by A. N.
Wollaston (The Wisdom of the East), 1904.
See also: Sir W. Muir: The Koran, its Composition and Teaching, 1878;
H. Hirschfeld: New Researches into the Composition and Exegesis of the Qoran,
1902; W. St C. Tisdale: Sources of the Qur’ân, 1905; H. U. W. Stanton: The
Teaching of the Qur’án, 1919; A. Mingana: Syriac Influence on the Style of
the Kur’ân, 1927.
TO
SIR WILLIAM MARTIN, K.T., D.C.L.
LATE CHIEF JUSTICE OF NEW ZEALAND,
THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED,
WITH SINCERE FEELINGS OF ESTEEM FOR HIS PRIVATE WORTH,
PUBLIC SERVICES,
AND EMINENT LITERARY ATTAINMENTS,
BY
THE TRANSLATOR.
PREFACE
It is necessary that some brief explanation should be given with reference to
the arrangement of the Suras, or chapters, adopted in this translation of the
Koran. It should be premised that their order as it stands in all Arabic
manuscripts, and in all hitherto printed editions, whether Arabic or
European, is not chronological, neither is there any authentic tradition to
shew that it rests upon the authority of Muhammad himself. The scattered
fragments of the Koran were in the first instance collected by his immediate
successor Abu Bekr, about a year after the Prophet's death, at the suggestion
of Omar, who foresaw that, as the Muslim warriors, whose memories were the
sole depositaries of large portions of the revelations, died off or were
slain, as had been the case with many in the battle of Yemâma, A.H. 12, the
loss of the greater part, or even of the whole, was imminent. Zaid Ibn
Thâbit, a native of Medina, and one of the Ansars, or helpers, who had been
Muhammad's amanuensis, was the person fixed upon to carry out the task, and
we are told that he "gathered together" the fragments of the Koran from every
quarter, "from date leaves and tablets of white stone, and from the breasts
of men."1 The copy thus formed by Zaid probably remained in the possession of
Abu Bekr during the remainder of his brief caliphate, who committed it to the
custody of Haphsa, one of Muhammad's widows, and this text continued during
the ten years of Omar's caliphate to be the standard. In the copies made from
it, various readings naturally and necessarily sprung up; and these, under
the caliphate of Othman, led to such serious disputes between the faithful,
that it became necessary to interpose, and in accordance with the warning of
Hodzeifa, "to stop the people, before they should differ regarding their
scriptures, as did the Jews and Christians."2 In accordance with this advice,
Othman determined to establish a text which should be the sole standard, and
entrusted the redaction to the Zaid already mentioned, with whom he
associated as colleagues, three, according to others, twelve3 of the
Koreisch, in order to secure the purity of that Meccan idiom in which
Muhammad had spoken, should any occasions arise in which the collators might
have to decide upon various readings. Copies of the text formed were thus
forwarded to several of the chief military stations in the new empire, and
all previously existing copies were committed to the flames.
Zaid and his coadjutors, however, do not appear to have arranged the
materials which came into their hands upon any system more definite than that
of placing the longest and best known Suras first, immediately after the
Fatthah, or opening chapter (the eighth in this edition); although even this
rule, artless and unscientific as it is, has not been adhered to with
strictness. Anything approaching to a chronological arrangement was entirely
lost sight of. Late Medina Suras are often placed before early Meccan Suras;
the short Suras at the end of the Koran are its earliest portions; while, as
will be seen from the notes, verses of Meccan origin are to be found embedded
in Medina Suras, and verses promulged at Medina scattered up and down in the
Meccan Suras. It would seem as if Zaid had to a great extent put his
materials together just as they came to hand, and often with entire disregard
to continuity of subject and uniformity of style. The text, therefore, as
hitherto arranged, necessarily assumes the form of a most unreadable and
incongruous patchwork; "une assemblage," says M. Kasimirski in his Preface,
"informe et incohérent de préceptes moraux, religieux, civils et politiques,
mêlés d'exhortations, de promesses, et de menaces"–and conveys no idea
whatever of the development and growth of any plan in the mind of the founder
of Islam, or of the circumstances by which he was surrounded and influenced.
It is true that the manner in which Zaid contented himself with simply
bringing together his materials and transcribing them, without any attempt to
mould them into shape or sequence, and without any effort to supply
connecting links between adjacent verses, to fill up obvious chasms, or to
suppress details of a nature discreditable to the founder of Islam, proves
his scrupulous honesty as a compiler, as well as his reverence for the sacred
text, and to a certain extent guarantees the genuineness and authenticity of
the entire volume. But it is deeply to be regretted that he did not combine
some measure of historical criticism with that simplicity and honesty of
purpose which forbade him, as it certainly did, in any way to tamper with the
sacred text, to suppress contradictory, and exclude or soften down
inaccurate, statements.
The arrangement of the Suras in this translation is based partly upon the
traditions of the Muhammadans themselves, with reference especially to the
ancient chronological list printed by Weil in his Mohammed der Prophet, as
well as upon a careful consideration of the subject matter of each separate
Sura and its probable connection with the sequence of events in the life of
Muhammad. Great attention has been paid to this subject by Dr. Weil in the
work just mentioned; by Mr. Muir in his Life of Mahomet, who also publishes a
chronological list of Suras, 21 however of which he admits have "not yet been
carefully fixed;" and especially by Nöldeke, in his Geschichte des Qôrans, a
work to which public honours were awarded in 1859 by the Paris Academy of
Inscriptions. From the arrangement of this author I see no reason to depart
in regard to the later Suras. It is based upon a searching criticism and
minute analysis of the component verses of each, and may be safely taken as a
standard, which ought not to be departed from without weighty reasons. I
have, however, placed the earlier and more fragmentary Suras, after the two
first, in an order which has reference rather to their subject matter than to
points of historical allusion, which in these Suras are very few; whilst on
the other hand, they are mainly couched in the language of self-communion, of
aspirations after truth, and of mental struggle, are vivid pictures of Heaven
and Hell, or descriptions of natural objects, and refer also largely to the
opposition met with by Muhammad from his townsmen of Mecca at the outset of
his public career. This remark applies to what Nöldeke terms "the Suras of
the First Period."
The contrast between the earlier, middle, and later Suras is very striking
and interesting, and will be at once apparent from the arrangement here
adopted. In the Suras as far as the 54th, p. 76, we cannot but notice the
entire predominance of the poetical element, a deep appreciation (as in Sura
xci. p. 38) of the beauty of natural objects, brief fragmentary and
impassioned utterances, denunciations of woe and punishment, expressed for
the most part in lines of extreme brevity. With a change, however, in the
position of Muhammad when he openly assumes the office of "public warner,"
the Suras begin to assume a more prosaic and didactic tone, though the
poetical ornament of rhyme is preserved throughout. We gradually lose the
Poet in the missionary aiming to convert, the warm asserter of dogmatic
truths; the descriptions of natural objects, of the judgment, of Heaven and
Hell, make way for gradually increasing historical statements, first from
Jewish, and subsequently from Christian histories; while, in the 29 Suras
revealed at Medina, we no longer listen to vague words, often as it would
seem without positive aim, but to the earnest disputant with the enemies of
his faith, the Apostle pleading the cause of what he believes to be the Truth
of God. He who at Mecca is the admonisher and persuader, at Medina is the
legislator and the warrior, who dictates obedience, and uses other weapons
than the pen of the Poet and the Scribe. When business pressed, as at Medina,
Poetry makes way for Prose, and although touches of the Poetical element
occasionally break forth, and he has to defend himself up to a very late
period against the charge of being merely a Poet, yet this is rarely the case
in the Medina Suras; and we are startled by finding obedience to God and the
Apostle, God's gifts and the Apostle's, God's pleasure and the Apostle's,
spoken of in the same breath, and epithets and attributes elsewhere applied
to Allah openly applied to himself as in Sura ix., 118, 129.
The Suras, viewed as a whole, strike me as being the work of one who began
his career as a thoughtful enquirer after truth, and an earnest asserter of
it in such rhetorical and poetical forms as he deemed most likely to win and
attract his countrymen, and who gradually proceeded from the dogmatic teacher
to the politic founder of a system for which laws and regulations had to be
provided as occasions arose. And of all the Suras it must be remarked that
they were intended not for readers but for hearers–that they were all
promulgated by public recital–and that much was left, as the imperfect
sentences shew, to the manner and suggestive action of the reciter. It would
be impossible, and indeed it is unnecessary, to attempt a detailed life of
Muhammad within the narrow limits of a Preface. The main events thereof with
which the Suras of the Koran stand in connection, are–The visions of Gabriel,
seen, or said to have been seen, at the outset of his career in his 40th
year, during one of his seasons of annual monthly retirement, for devotion
and meditation to Mount Hirâ, near Mecca,–the period of mental depression and
re-assurance previous to the assumption of the office of public teacher–the
Fatrah or pause (see n. p. 20) during which he probably waited for a
repetition of the angelic vision–his labours in comparative privacy for three
years, issuing in about 40 converts, of whom his wife Chadijah was the first,
and Abu Bekr the most important: (for it is to him and to Abu Jahl the Sura
xcii. p. 32, refers)–struggles with Meccan unbelief and idolatry followed by
a period during which probably he had the second vision, Sura liii. p. 69,
and was listened to and respected as a person "possessed" (Sura lxix. 42, p.
60, lii. 29, p. 64)–the first emigration to Abyssinia in A.D. 616, in
consequence of the Meccan persecutions brought on by his now open attacks
upon idolatry (Taghout)–increasing reference to Jewish and Christian
histories, shewing that much time had been devoted to their study the
conversion of Omar in 617–the journey to the Thaquifites at Taief in A.D.
620–the intercourse with pilgrims from Medina, who believed in Islam, and
spread the knowledge thereof in their native town, in the same year–the
vision of the midnight journey to Jerusalem and the Heavens–the meetings by
night at Acaba, a mountain near Mecca, in the 11th year of his mission, and
the pledges of fealty there given to him–the command given to the believers
to emigrate to Yathrib, henceforth Medinat-en-nabi (the city of the Prophet)
or El-Medina (the city), in April of A.D. 622–the escape of Muhammad and Abu
Bekr from Mecca to the cave of Thaur–the FLIGHT to Medina in June 20, A.D.
622–treaties made with Christian tribes–increasing, but still very imperfect
acquaintance with Christian doctrines–the Battle of Bedr in Hej. 2, and of
Ohod–the coalition formed against Muhammad by the Jews and idolatrous
Arabians, issuing in the siege of Medina, Hej. 5 (A.D. 627)–the convention,
with reference to the liberty of making the pilgrimage, of Hudaibiya, Hej. 6–
the embassy to Chosroes King of Persia in the same year, to the Governor of
Egypt and to the King of Abyssinia, desiring them to embrace Islam–the
conquest of several Jewish tribes, the most important of which was that of
Chaibar in Hej. 7, a year marked by the embassy sent to Heraclius, then in
Syria, on his return from the Persian campaign, and by a solemn and peaceful
pilgrimage to Mecca–the triumphant entry into Mecca in Hej. 8 (A.D. 630), and
the demolition of the idols of the Caaba–the submission of the Christians of
Nedjran, of Aila on the Red Sea, and of Taief, etc., in Hej. 9, called "the
year of embassies or deputations," from the numerous deputations which
flocked to Mecca proffering submission–and lastly in Hej. 10, the submission
of Hadramont, Yemen, the greater part of the southern and eastern provinces
of Arabia–and the final solemn pilgrimage to Mecca.
While, however, there is no great difficulty in ascertaining the Suras which
stand in connection with the more salient features of Muhammad's life, it is
a much more arduous, and often impracticable task, to point out the precise
events to which individual verses refer, and out of which they sprung. It is
quite possible that Muhammad himself, in a later period of his career,
designedly mixed up later with earlier revelations in the same Suras not for
the sake of producing that mysterious style which seems so pleasing to the
mind of those who value truth least when it is most clear and obvious but for
the purpose of softening down some of the earlier statements which represent
the last hour and awful judgment as imminent; and thus leading his followers
to continue still in the attitude of expectation, and to see in his later
successes the truth of his earlier predictions. If after-thoughts of this
kind are to be traced, and they will often strike the attentive reader, it
then follows that the perplexed state of the text in individual Suras is to
be considered as due to Muhammad himself, and we are furnished with a series
of constant hints for attaining to chronological accuracy. And it may be
remarked in passing, that a belief that the end of all things was at hand,
may have tended to promote the earlier successes of Islam at Mecca, as it
unquestionably was an argument with the Apostles, to flee from "the wrath to
come." It must be borne in mind that the allusions to contemporary minor
events, and to the local efforts made by the new religion to gain the
ascendant are very few, and often couched in terms so vague and general, that
we are forced to interpret the Koran solely by the Koran itself. And for
this, the frequent repetitions of the same histories and the same sentiments,
afford much facility: and the peculiar manner in which the details of each
history are increased by fresh traits at each recurrence, enables us to trace
their growth in the author's mind, and to ascertain the manner in which a
part of the Koran was composed. The absence of the historical element from
the Koran as regards the details of Muhammad's daily life, may be judged of
by the fact, that only two of his contemporaries are mentioned in the entire
volume, and that Muhammad's name occurs but five times, although he is all
the way through addressed by the Angel Gabriel as the recipient of the divine
revelations, with the word SAY. Perhaps such passages as Sura ii. 15, p. 339,
and v. 246, p. 365, and the constant mention of guidance, direction,
wandering, may have been suggested by reminiscences of his mercantile
journeys in his earlier years.
It may be considered quite certain that it was not customary to reduce to
writing any traditions concerning Muhammad himself for at least the greater
part of a century. They rested entirely on the memory of those who have
handed them down, and must necessarily have been coloured by their prejudices
and convictions, to say nothing of the tendency to the formation of myths and
to actual fabrication, which early shews itself, especially in
interpretations of the Koran, to subserve the purposes of the contending
factions of the Ommeyads and Abbâsides. It was under the 5th Caliph, Al-
Mâmûn, that three writers (mentioned below) on whom we mainly depend for all
really reliable information, flourished: and even their writings are
necessarily coloured by the theological tendencies of their master and
patron, who was a decided partizan of the divine right of Ali and of his
descendants. The incidents mentioned in the Koran itself, for the
interpretation of which early tradition is available, are comparatively few,
and there are many passages with which it is totally at variance; as, for
instance, that Muhammad worked miracles, which the Koran expressly disclaims.
Traditions can never be considered as at all reliable, unless they are
traceable to some common origin, have descended to us by independent
witnesses, and correspond with the statements of the Koran itself–always of
course deducting such texts as (which is not unfrequently the case) have
themselves given rise to the tradition. It soon becomes obvious to the reader
of Muslim traditions and commentators that both miracles and historical
events have been invented for the sake of expounding a dark and perplexing
text; and that even the earlier traditions are largely tinged with the
mythical element.
The first biographer of Muhammad of whom we have any information was Zohri,
who died A.H. 124, aged 72; but his works, though abundantly quoted by later
writers, are no longer extant. Much of his information was derived from Orwa,
who died A.H. 94, and was a near relative of Ayesha, the prophet's favourite
wife.
Ibn Ishaq, who died in A.H. 151, and who had been a hearer of Zohri, composed
a Biography of Muhammad for the use of the Caliph Al Mánsûr. On this work,
considerable remains of which have come down to us, Ibn Hisham, who died A.H.
213, based his Life of Muhammad.
Waquidi of Medina, who died A.H. 207, composed a biographical work, which has
reached us in an abbreviated form through his secretary (Katib). It is
composed entirely of traditions.
Tabari, "the Livy of the Arabians" (Gibbon, 51, n. 1), who died at Baghdad
A.H. 310, composed annals of Muhammad's life and of the progress of Islam.
These ancient writers are the principal sources whence anything like
authentic information as to the life of Muhammad has been derived. And it may
be safely concluded that after the diligent investigations carried on by the
professed collectors of traditions in the second century after the Hejira,
that little or nothing remains to be added to our stores of information
relative to the details of Muhammad's life, or to facts which may further
illustrate the text of the Koran. But however this may be, no records which
are posterior in date to these authorities can be considered as at all
deserving of dependance. "To consider," says Dr. Sprenger, "late historians
like Abulfeda as authorities, and to suppose that an account gains in
certainty because it is mentioned by several of them, is highly uncritical."
Life of Mohammad, p. 73.
The sources whence Muhammad derived the materials of his Koran are, over and
above the more poetical parts, which are his own creation, the legends of his
time and country, Jewish traditions based upon the Talmud, or perverted to
suit his own purposes, and the floating Christian traditions of Arabia and of
S. Syria. At a later period of his career no one would venture to doubt the
divine origin of the entire book. But at its commencement the case was
different. The people of Mecca spoke openly and tauntingly of it as the work
of a poet, as a collection of antiquated or fabulous legends, or as palpable
sorcery.4 They accused him of having confederates, and even specified
foreigners who had been his coadjutors. Such were Salman the Persian, to whom
he may have owed the descriptions of Heaven and Hell, which are analogous to
those of the Zendavesta; and the Christian monk Sergius, or as the
Muhammadans term him, Boheira. From the latter, and perhaps from other
Christians, especially slaves naturalised at Mecca, Muhammad obtained access
to the teaching of the Apocryphal Gospels, and to many popular traditions of
which those Gospels are the concrete expression. His wife Chadijah, as well
as her cousin Waraka, a reputed convert to Christianity, and Muhammad's
intimate friend, are said to have been well acquainted with the doctrines and
sacred books both of Jews and Christians. And not only were several Arab
tribes in the neighbourhood of Mecca converts to the Christian faith, but on
two occasions Muhammad had travelled with his uncle, Abu Talib, as far as
Bostra, where he must have had opportunities of learning the general outlines
of Oriental Christian doctrine, and perhaps of witnessing the ceremonial of
their worship. And it appears tolerably certain that previous to and at the
period of his entering into public life, there was a large number of
enquirers at Mecca, who like Zaid, Omayah of Taief, Waraka, etc., were
dissatisfied equally with the religion of their fathers, the Judaism and the
Christianity which they saw around them, and were anxiously enquiring for
some better way. The names and details of the lives of twelve of the
"companions" of Muhammad who lived in Mecca, Medina, and Taief, are recorded,
who previous to his assumption of the Prophetic office, called themselves
Hanyfs, i.e., converts, puritans, and were believers in one God, and regarded
Abraham as the founder of their religion. Muhammad publicly acknowledged that
he was a Hanyf–and this sect of the Hanyfites (who are in no way to be
confounded with the later sect of the same name) were among his Meccan
precursors. See n. pp. 209, 387. Their history is to be found in the Fihrist–
MS. Paris, anc. fonds, nr. 874 (and in other treatises)–which Dr. Sprenger
believes to have been in the library of the Caliph El-Mâmûn. In this
treatise, the Hanyfs are termed Sabeites, and said to have received the
Volumes (Sohof) or Books of Abraham, mentioned in Sura lxxxvii. 19, p. 40,
41, which most commentators affirm to have been borrowed from them, as is
also the case with the latter part of Sura liii. 37, ad f. p. 71; so that
from these "Books" Muhammad derived the legends of Ad and Themoud, whose
downfall, recent as it was (see note p. 300), he throws back to a period
previous to that of Moses, who is made to ask (Sura xiv. 9, p. 226) "whether
their history had reached his hearers." Muhammad is said to have discovered
these "Books" to be a recent forgery, and that this is the reason why no
mention of them occurs after the fourth year of his Prophetic function, A.D.
616. Hence too, possibly, the title Hanyf was so soon dropped and exchanged
for that of Muslim, one who surrenders or resigns himself to God. The Waraka
above mentioned, and cousin of Chadijah, is said to have believed on Muhammad
as long as he continued true to the principles of the Hanyfs, but to have
quitted him in disgust at his subsequent proceedings, and to have died an
orthodox Christian.
It has been supposed that Muhammad derived many of his notions concerning
Christianity from Gnosticism, and that it is to the numerous gnostic sects
the Koran alludes when it reproaches the Christians with having "split up
their religion into parties." But for Muhammad thus to have confounded
Gnosticism with Christianity itself, its prevalence in Arabia must have been
far more universal than we have any reason to believe it really was. In fact,
we have no historical authority for supposing that the doctrines of these
heretics were taught or professed in Arabia at all. It is certain, on the
other hand, that the Basilidans, Valentinians, and other gnostic sects had
either died out, or been reabsorbed into the orthodox Church, towards the
middle of the fifth century, and had disappeared from Egypt before the sixth.
It is nevertheless possible that the gnostic doctrine concerning the
Crucifixion was adopted by Muhammad as likely to reconcile the Jews to Islam,
as a religion embracing both Judaism and Christianity, if they might believe
that Jesus had not been put to death, and thus find the stumbling-block of
the atonement removed out of their path. The Jews would in this case have
simply been called upon to believe in Jesus as being what the Koran
represents him, a holy teacher, who, like the patriarch Enoch or the prophet
Elijah, had been miraculously taken from the earth. But, in all other
respects, the sober and matter-of-fact statements of the Koran relative to
the family and history of Jesus, are altogether opposed to the wild and
fantastic doctrines of Gnostic emanations, and especially to the manner in
which they supposed Jesus, at his Baptism, to have been brought into union
with a higher nature. It is quite clear that Muhammad borrowed in several
points from the doctrines of the Ebionites, Essenes, and Sabeites. Epiphanius
(H‘r. x.) describes the notions of the Ebionites of Nabath‘a, Moabitis, and
Basanitis with regard to Adam and Jesus, almost in the very words of Sura
iii. 52. He tells us that they observed circumcision, were opposed to
celibacy, forbad turning to the sunrise, but enjoined Jerusalem as their
Kebla (as did Muhammad during twelve years), that they prescribed (as did the
Sabeites), washings, very similar to those enjoined in the Koran, and allowed
oaths (by certain natural objects, as clouds, signs of the Zodiac, oil, the
winds, etc.), which we find adopted in the Koran. These points of contact
with Islam, knowing as we do Muhammad's eclecticism, can hardly be
accidental.
We have no evidence that Muhammad had access to the Christian Scriptures,
though it is just possible that fragments of the Old or New Testament may
have reached him through Chadijah or Waraka, or other Meccan Christians,
possessing MSS. of the sacred volume. There is but one direct quotation (Sura
xxi. 105) in the whole Koran from the Scriptures; and though there are a few
passages, as where alms are said to be given to be seen of men, and as, none
forgiveth sins but God only, which might seem to be identical with texts of
the New Testament, yet this similarity is probably merely accidental. It is,
however, curious to compare such passages as Deut. xxvi. 14, 17; 1 Peter v.
2, with Sura xxiv. 50, p. 448, and x. 73, p. 281 John vii. 15, with the
"illiterate" Prophet–Matt. xxiv. 36, and John xii. 27, with the use of the
word hour as meaning any judgment or crisis, and The last judgment–the voice
of the Son of God which the dead are to hear, with the exterminating or
awakening cry of Gabriel, etc. The passages of this kind, with which the
Koran abounds, result from Muhammad's general acquaintance with Scriptural
phraseology, partly through the popular legends, partly from personal
intercourse with Jews and Christians. And we may be quite certain that
whatever materials Muhammad may have derived from our Scriptures, directly or
indirectly, were carefully recast. He did not even use its words without due
consideration. For instance, except in the phrase "the Lord of the worlds,"
he seems carefully to have avoided the expression the Lord, probably because
it was applied by the Christians to Christ, or to God the Father.
It should also be borne in mind that we have no traces of the existence of
Arabic versions of the Old or New Testament previous to the time of Muhammad.
The passage of St. Jerome–"Hæc autem translatio nullum de veteribus sequitur
interpretem; sed ex ipso Hebraico, Arabicoque sermone, et interdum Syro, nunc
verba, nunc sensum, nunc simul utrumque resonabit," (Prol. Gal.) obviously
does not refer to versions, but to idiom. The earliest Ar. version of the Old
Testament, of which we have any knowledge, is that of R. Saadias Gaon, A.D.
900; and the oldest Ar. version of the New Testament, is that published by
Erpenius in 1616, and transcribed in the Thebais, in the year 1171, by a
Coptic Bishop, from a copy made by a person whose name is known, but whose
date is uncertain. Michaelis thinks that the Arabic versions of the New
Testament were made between the Saracen conquests in the seventh century, and
the Crusades in the eleventh century–an opinion in which he follows, or
coincides with, Walton (Prol. in Polygl. § xiv.) who remarks–"Plane constat
versionem Arabicam apud eas (ecclesias orientales) factam esse postquam
lingua Arabica per victorias et religionem Muhammedanicam per Orientem
propagata fuerat, et in multis locis facta esset vernacula." If, indeed, in
these comparatively late versions, the general phraseology, especially in the
histories common to the Scriptures and to the Koran, bore any similarity to
each other, and if the orthography of the proper names had been the same in
each, it might have been fair to suppose that such versions had been made,
more or less, upon the basis of others, which, though now lost, existed in
the ages prior to Muhammad, and influenced, if they did not directly form,
his sources of information. But5 this does not appear to be the case. The
phraseology of our existing versions is not that of the Koran–and these
versions appear to have been made from the Septuagint, the Vulgate, Syriac,
Coptic, and Greek; the four Gospels, says Tischendorf6 originem mixtam habere
videntur.
From the Arab Jews, Muhammad would be enabled to derive an abundant, though
most distorted, knowledge of the Scripture histories. The secrecy in which he
received his instructions from them, and from his Christian informants,
enabled him boldly to declare to the ignorant pagan Meccans that God had
revealed those Biblical histories to him. But there can be no doubt, from the
constant identity between the Talmudic perversions of Scripture histories and
Rabbinic moral precepts, that the Rabbins of the Hejaz communicated their
legends to Muhammad. And it should be remembered that the Talmud was
completed a century previous to the era of Muhammad,7 and cannot fail to have
extensively influenced the religious creed of all the Jews of the Arabian
peninsula. In one passage,8 Muhammad speaks of an individual Jew–perhaps some
one of note among his professed followers, as a witness to his mission; and
there can be no doubt that his relations with the Jews were, at one time,
those of friendship and intimacy, when we find him speak of their recognising
him as they do their own children, and hear him blaming their most colloquial
expressions.9 It is impossible, however, for us at this distance of time to
penetrate the mystery in which this subject is involved. Yet certain it is,
that, although their testimony against Muhammad was speedily silenced, the
Koreisch knew enough of his private history to disbelieve and to disprove his
pretensions of being the recipient of a divine revelation, and that they
accused him of writing from the dictation of teachers morning and evening.10
And it is equally certain, that all the information received by Muhammad was
embellished and recast in his own mind and with his own words. There is a
unity of thought, a directness and simplicity of purpose, a peculiar and
laboured style, a uniformity of diction, coupled with a certain deficiency of
imaginative power, which proves the ayats (signs or verses) of the Koran at
least to be the product of a single pen. The longer narratives were,
probably, elaborated in his leisure hours, while the shorter verses, each
claiming to be a sign or miracle, were promulgated as occasion required them.
And, whatever Muhammad may himself profess in the Koran11 as to his
ignorance, even of reading and writing, and however strongly modern
Muhammadans may insist upon the same point an assertion by the way
contradicted by many good authors12–there can be no doubt that to assimilate
and work up his materials, to fashion them into elaborate Suras, to fit them
for public recital, must have been a work requiring much time, study, and
meditation, and presumes a far greater degree of general culture than any
orthodox Muslim will be disposed to admit.
In close connection with the above remarks, stands the question of Muhammad's
sincerity and honesty of purpose in coming forward as a messenger from God.
For if he was indeed the illiterate person the Muslims represent him to have
been, then it will be hard to escape their inference that the Koran is, as
they assert it to be, a standing miracle. But if, on the other hand, it was a
Book carefully concocted from various sources, and with much extraneous aid,
and published as a divine oracle, then it would seem that the author is at
once open to the charge of the grossest imposture, and even of impious
blasphemy. The evidence rather shews, that in all he did and wrote, Muhammad
was actuated by a sincere desire to deliver his countrymen from the grossness
of its debasing idolatries–that he was urged on by an intense desire to
proclaim that great truth of the Unity of the Godhead which had taken full
possession of his own soul–that the end to be attained justified to his mind
the means he adopted in the production of his Suras–that he worked himself up
into a belief that he had received a divine call–and that he was carried on
by the force of circumstances, and by gradually increasing successes, to
believe himself the accredited messenger of Heaven. The earnestness of those
convictions which at Mecca sustained him under persecution, and which perhaps
led him, at any price as it were, and by any means, not even excluding deceit
and falsehood, to endeavour to rescue his countrymen from idolatry,–naturally
stiffened at Medina into tyranny and unscrupulous violence. At the same time,
he was probably, more or less, throughout his whole career, the victim of a
certain amount of self-deception. A cataleptic13 subject from his early
youth, born–according to the traditions–of a highly nervous and excitable
mother, he would be peculiarly liable to morbid and fantastic hallucinations,
and alternations of excitement and depression, which would win for him, in
the eyes of his ignorant countrymen, the credit of being inspired. It would
be easy for him to persuade himself that he was "the seal of the Prophets,"
the proclaimer of a doctrine of the Divine Unity, held and taught by the
Patriarchs, especially by Abraham–a doctrine that should present to mankind
Judaism divested of its Mosaic ceremonial, and Christianity divested of the
Atonement and the Trinity14–doctrine, as he might have believed, fitted and
destined to absorb Judaism, Christianity, and Idolatry; and this persuasion,
once admitted into his mind as a conviction, retained possession of it, and
carried him on, though often in the use of means, towards the end of his
career, far different from those with which he commenced it, to a victorious
consummation. It is true that the state of Arabia previous to the time of
Muhammad was one of preparedness for a new religion that the scattered
elements were there, and wanted only the mind of a master to harmonise and
enforce them and that Islam was, so to speak, a necessity of the time.15
Still Muhammad's career is a wonderful instance of the force and life that
resides in him who possesses an intense Faith in God and in the unseen world;
and whatever deductions may be made–and they are many and serious–from the
noble and truthful in his character, he will always be regarded as one of
those who have had that influence over the faith, morals, and whole earthly
life of their fellow-men, which none but a really great man ever did, or can,
exercise; and as one of those, whose efforts to propagate some great verity
will prosper, in spite of manifold personal errors and defects, both of
principle and character.
The more insight we obtain, from undoubted historical sources, into the
actual character of Muhammad, the less reason do we find to justify the
strong vituperative language poured out upon his head by Maracci, Prideaux,
and others, in recent days, one of whom has found, in the Byzantine
"Maometis," the number of the Beast (Rev. xii)! It is nearer to the truth to
say that he was a great though imperfect character, an earnest though
mistaken teacher, and that many of his mistakes and imperfections were the
result of circumstances, of temperament, and constitution; and that there
must be elements both of truth and goodness in the system of which he was the
main author, to account for the world-wide phenomenon, that whatever may be
the intellectual inferiority (if such is, indeed, the fact) of the Muslim
races, the influence of his teaching, aided, it is true, by the vast impulse
given to it by the victorious arms of his followers, has now lasted for
nearly thirteen centuries, and embraces more than one hundred millions of our
race–more than one-tenth part of the inhabitants of the globe.
It must be acknowledged, too, that the Koran deserves the highest praise for
its conceptions of the Divine nature, in reference to the attributes of
Power, Knowledge, and universal Providence and Unity–that its belief and
trust in the One God of Heaven and Earth is deep and fervent–and that, though
it contains fantastic visions and legends, teaches a childish ceremonial, and
justifies bloodshedding, persecution, slavery, and polygamy, yet that at the
same time it embodies much of a noble and deep moral earnestness, and
sententious oracular wisdom, and has proved that there are elements in it on
which mighty nations, and conquering though not, perhaps, durable–empires can
be built up. It is due to the Koran, that the occupants in the sixth century
of an arid peninsula, whose poverty was only equalled by their ignorance,
become not only the fervent and sincere votaries of a new creed, but, like
Amru and many more, its warlike propagators. Impelled possibly by drought and
famine, actuated partly by desire of conquest, partly by religious
convictions, they had conquered Persia in the seventh century, the northern
coasts of Africa, and a large portion of Spain in the eighth, the Punjaub and
nearly the whole of India in the ninth. The simple shepherds and wandering
Bedouins of Arabia, are transformed, as if by a magician's wand, into the
founders of empires, the builders of cities, the collectors of more libraries
than they at first destroyed, while cities like Fostât, Baghdad, Cordova, and
Delhi, attest the power at which Christian Europe trembled. And thus, while
the Koran, which underlays this vast energy and contains the principles which
are its springs of action, reflects to a great extent the mixed character of
its author, its merits as a code of laws, and as a system of religious
teaching, must always be estimated by the changes which it introduced into
the customs and beliefs of those who willingly or by compulsion embraced it.
In the suppression of their idolatries, in the substitution of the worship of
Allah for that of the powers of nature and genii with Him, in the abolition
of child murder, in the extinction of manifold superstitious usages, in the
reduction of the number of wives to a fixed standard, it was to the Arabians
an unquestionable blessing, and an accession, though not in the Christian
sense a Revelation, of Truth; and while every Christian must deplore the
overthrow of so many flourishing Eastern churches by the arms of the
victorious Muslims, it must not be forgotten that Europe, in the middle ages,
owed much of her knowledge of dialectic philosophy, of medicine, and
architecture, to Arabian writers, and that Muslims formed the connecting link
between the West and the East for the importation of numerous articles of
luxury and use. That an immense mass of fable and silly legend has been built
up upon the basis of the Koran is beyond a doubt, but for this Muhammad is
not answerable, any more than he is for the wild and bloodthirsty excesses of
his followers in after ages. I agree with Sale in thinking that, "how
criminal soever Muhammad may have been in imposing a false religion on
mankind, the praises due to his real virtues ought not to be denied him"
(Preface), and venture to think that no one can rise from the perusal of his
Koran without argeeing with that motto from St. Augustin, which Sale has
prefixed to his title page, "Nulla falsa doctrina est, quæ non aliquid veri
permisceat." Qu‘st. Evang. ii. 40.
The Arabic text from which this translation has been made is that of Fluegel.
Leips. 1841. The translations of Sale, Ullmann, Wahl, Hammer von Purgstall in
the Fundgruben des Orients, and M. Kasimirski, have been collated throughout;
and above all, the great work of Father Maracci, to whose accuracy and
research search Sale's work mainly owes its merits. Sale has, however,
followed Maracci too closely, especially by introducing his paraphrastic
comments into the body of the text, as well as by his constant use of
Latinised instead of Saxon words. But to Sale's "Preliminary Discourse" the
reader is referred, as to a storehouse of valuable information; as well as to
the works of Geiger, Gerock, and Freytag, and to the lives of Muhammad by Dr.
Weil, Mr. Muir, and that of Dr. Sprenger now issuing from the press, in
German. The more brief and poetical verses of the earlier Suras are
translated with a freedom from which I have altogether abstained in the
historical and prosaic portions; but I have endeavoured nowhere to use a
greater amount of paraphrase than is necessary to convey the sense of the
original. "Vel verbum e verbo," says S. Jerome (Præf. in Jobum) of versions,
"vel sensum e sensu, vel ex utroque commixtum, et medie temperatum genus
translationis." The proper names are usually given as in our Scriptures: the
English reader would not easily recognise Noah as Nûh, Lot as Lût, Moses as
Musa, Abraham as Ibrahym, Pharaoh as Firaun, Aaron as Harun, Jesus as Isa,
John as Yahia, etc.; and it has been thought best to give different
renderings of the same constantly recurring words and phrases, in order more
fully to convey their meaning. For instance, the Arabic words which mean
Companions of the fire, are also rendered inmates of, etc., given up to,
etc.; the People of the Book, i.e. Jews, Christians and Sabeites, is
sometimes retained, sometimes paraphrased. This remark applies to such words
as tanzyl, lit. downsending or Revelation; zikr, the remembrance or constant
repetition or mention of God's name as an act of devotion; saha, the Hour of
present or final judgment; and various epithets of Allah.
I have nowhere attempted to represent the rhymes of the original. The
"Proben" of H. v. Purgstall, in the Fundgruben des Orients, excellent as they
are in many respects, shew that this can only be done with a sacrifice of
literal translation. I subjoin as a specimen Lieut. Burton's version of the
Fatthah, or opening chapter of previous editions. See Sura [viii.] p. 28.
1 In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate!
2 Praise be to Allah, who the three worlds made.
3 The Merciful, the Compassionate,
4 The King of the day of Fate.
5 Thee alone do we worship, and of thee alone do we ask aid.
6 Guide us to the path that is straight–
7 The path of those to whom thy love is great,
Not those on whom is hate,
Nor they that deviate. Amen.
"I have endeavoured," he adds, "in this translation to imitate the imperfect
rhyme of the original Arabic. Such an attempt, however, is full of
difficulties. The Arabic is a language in which, like Italian, it is almost
impossible not to rhyme." Pilgr. ii. 78.
1 Mishcât, vol. i. p. 524. E. Trans. B. viii. 3, 3.
2 Mishcât, as above. Muir, i. p. xiii. Freyt. Einl., p. 384. Memoires de
l’Acad. T. 50, p. 426. Nöld. p. 205.
3 Kitâb al Waquidi, p. 278
4 See Suras xxxvi. xxv. xvii.
5 See Walton’s Prol. ad Polygl. Lond. § xiv. 2.
6 Prol. in N.T. p. lxxviii.
7 The date of the Bab. Gemara is A.D. 530; of the Jerusalem Gamara, A.D.
430; of the Mischina A.D. 220; See Gfrörer’s Jahrhundert des Heils, pp. 11-
44.
8 Sura xlvi. 10, p. 314.
9 Sura vi. 20, p. 318. Sura ii. 13 (p. 339), verse 98, etc.
10 Sura xxv. 5, 6, p. 159.
11 Sura. vii. 156, p. 307; xxix. 47, p. 265.
12 See Dr. Sprenger’s “Life,” p. 101.
13 Or, epileptic.
14 A line of argument to be adopted by a Christian missionary in dealing
with a Muhammadan should be, not to attack Islam as a mass of error, but to
shew that it contains fragments of disjointed truth–that it is based upon
Christianity and Judaism partially understood–especially upon the latter,
without any appreciation of its typical character pointing to Christianity as
a final dispensation.
15 Muhammad can scarcely have failed to observe the opportunity offered for
the growth of a new power, by the ruinous strifes of the Persians and Greeks.
Abulfeda (Life of Muhammad, p. 76) expressly says that he had promised his
followers the spoils o Chosroes and Cæsar.
SURA1 XCVI.–THICK BLOOD, OR CLOTS OF BLOOD [I.]
MECCA.–19 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful2
RECITE3 thou, in the name of thy Lord who created;–
Created man from CLOTS OF BLOOD:–
Recite thou! For thy Lord is the most Beneficent,
Who hath taught the use of the pen;–
Hath taught Man that which he knoweth not.
Nay, verily,4 Man is insolent,
Because he seeth himself possessed of riches.
Verily, to thy Lord is the return of all.
What thinkest thou of him that holdeth back
A servant5 of God when he prayeth?
What thinkest thou?6 Hath he followed the true Guidance, or enjoined Piety?
What thinkest thou? Hath he treated the truth as a lie and turned his back?
What! doth he not know how that God seeth?
Nay, verily, if he desist not, We shall seize him by the forelock,
The lying sinful forelock!
Then let him summon his associates;7
We too will summon the guards of Hell:
Nay! obey him not; but adore, and draw nigh to God.8
_______________________
1 The word Sura occurs nine times in the Koran, viz. Sur. ix. 65, 87, 125,
128; xxiv. 1; xlvii. 22 (twice); ii. 21; x. 39; but it is not easy to
determine whether it means a whole chapter, or part only of a chapter, or is
used in the sense of "revelation." See Weil's Mohammed der Prophet, pp. 361-
363. It is understood by the Muhammadan commentators to have a primary
reference to the succession of subjects or parts, like the rows of bricks in
a wall. The titles of the Suras are generally taken from some word occurring
in each, which is printed in large type throughout, where practicable.
2 This formula–Bismillahi 'rrahmani 'rrahim–is of Jewish origin. It was in
the first instance taught to the Koreisch by Omayah of Taief, the poet, who
was a contemporary with, but somewhat older than, Muhammad; and who, during
his mercantile journeys into Arabia Petr‘a and Syria, had made himself
acquainted with the sacred books and doctrines of Jews and Christians. (Kitab
al-Aghâni, 16. Delhi.) Muhammad adopted and constantly used it, and it is
prefixed to each Sura except the ninth. The former of the two epithets
implies that the mercy of God is exercised as occasions arise, towards all
his creatures; the latter that the quality of mercy is inherent in God and
permanent, so that there is only a shade of difference between the two words.
Maracci well renders, In Nomine Dei Miseratoris, Misericordis. The rendering
I have adopted is that of Mr. Lane in his extracts from the Koran. See also
Freytag's Lex. ii. p. 133. Perhaps, In the name of Allah, the God of Mercy,
the Merciful, would more fully express the original Arabic. The first five
verses of this Sura are, in the opinion of nearly all commentators, ancient
and modern, the earliest revelations made to Muhammad, in the 40th year of
his life, and the starting point of El-Islam. (See the authorities quoted in
detail in Nöldeke's Geschichte des Qorâns, p. 62, n.)
3 The usual rendering is read. But the word qaraa, which is the root of the
word Koran, analogous to the Rabbinic mikra, rather means to address, recite;
and with regard to its etymology and use in the kindred dialects to call, cry
aloud, proclaim. Compare Isai. lviii. 1; 1 Kings xviii. 37; and Gesen.
Thesaur. on the Hebrew root. I understand this passage to mean, "Preach to
thy fellow men what thou believest to be true of thy Lord who has created man
from the meanest materials, and can in like manner prosper the truth which
thou proclaimest. He has taught man the art of writing (recently introduced
at Mecca) and in this thou wilt find a powerful help for propagating the
knowledge of the divine Unity." The speaker in this, as in all the Suras, is
Gabriel, of whom Muhammad had, as he believed, a vision on the mountain Hirâ,
near Mecca. See note 1 on the next page. The details of the vision are quite
unhistorical.
4 This, and the following verses, may have been added at a later period,
though previous to the Flight, and with special reference, if we are to
believe the commentators Beidhawi, etc., to the opposition which Muhammad
experienced at the hands of his opponent, Abu Jahl, who had threatened to set
his foot on the Prophet's neck when prostrate in prayer. But the whole
passage admits of application to mankind in general.
5 That is Muhammad. Nöldeke, however, proposes to render "a slave." And it is
certain that the doctrines of Islam were in the first instance embraced by
slaves, many of whom had been carried away from Christian homes, or born of
Christian parents at Mecca. "Men of this description," says Dr. Sprenger
(Life of Mohammad. Allahabad. p. 159), "no doubt prepared the way for the
Islam by inculcating purer notions respecting God upon their masters and
their brethren. These men saw in Mohammad their liberator; and being
superstitious enough to consider his fits as the consequence of an
inspiration, they were among the first who acknowledged him as a prophet.
Many of them suffered torture for their faith in him, and two of them died as
martyrs. The excitement among the slaves when Mohammad first assumed his
office was so great, that Abd Allah bin Jod'an, who had one hundred of these
sufferers, found it necessary to remove them from Makkah, lest they should
all turn converts." See Sura xvi. 105, 111; ii. 220.
6 Lit. hast thou seen if he be upon the guidance.
7 The principal men of the Koreisch who adhered to Abu Jahl.
8 During a period variously estimated from six months to three years from the
revelation of this Sura, or of its earliest verses, the prophetic inspiration
and the revelation of fresh Suras is said to have been suspended. This
interval is called the Fatrah or intermission; and the Meccan Suras delivered
at its close show that at or during this period Muhammad had gained an
increasing and more intimate acquaintance with the Jewish and Christian
Scriptures. "The accounts, however," says Mr. Muir (vol. ii. 86) "are
throughout confused, if not contradictory; and we can only gather with
certainty that there was a time during which his mind hung in suspense, and
doubted the divine mission." The idea of any supernatural influence is of
course to be entirely excluded; although there is no doubt that Muhammad
himself had a full belief in the personality and influence of Satans and
Djinn. Profound meditation, the struggles of an earnest mind anxious to
attain to truth, the morbid excitability of an epileptic subject, visions
seen in epileptic swoons, disgust at Meccan idolatry, and a desire to teach
his countrymen the divine Unity will sufficiently account for the period of
indecision termed the Fatrah, and for the determination which led Muhammad,
in all sincerity, but still self-deceived, to take upon himself the office
and work of a Messenger from God. We may perhaps infer from such passages as
Sura ii. 123, what had ever been the leading idea in Muhammad's mind.
SURA LXXIV.–THE ENWRAPPED1 [II.]
MECCA.–55 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
O THOU, ENWRAPPED in thy mantle!
Arise and warn!
Thy Lord–magnify Him!
Thy raiment–purify it!
The abomination–flee it!
And bestow not favours that thou mayest receive again with increase;
And for thy Lord wait thou patiently.
For when there shall be a trump on the trumpet,2
That shall be a distressful day,
A day, to the Infidels, devoid of ease.
Leave me alone to deal with him3 whom I have created,
And on whom I have bestowed vast riches,
And sons dwelling before him,
And for whom I have smoothed all things smoothly down;–
Yet desireth he that I should add more!
But no! because to our signs he is a foe
I will lay grievous woes upon him.
For he plotted and he planned!
May he be cursed! How he planned!
Again, may he be cursed! How he planned!
Then looked he around him,
Then frowned and scowled,
Then turned his back and swelled with disdain,
And said, “This is merely magic that will be wrought;
It is merely the word of a mortal.”
We will surely cast him into Hell-fire.
And who shall teach thee what Hell-fire is?
It leaveth nought, it spareth nought,
Blackening the skin.
Over it are nineteen angels.
None but angels have we made guardians of the fire:4 nor have we made this to
be their number but to perplex the unbelievers, and that they who possess the
Scriptures may be certain of the truth of the Koran, and that they who
believe may increase their faith;
And that they to whom the Scriptures have been given, and the believers, may
not doubt;
And that the infirm of heart and the unbelievers may say, What meaneth God by
this parable?
Thus God misleadeth whom He will, and whom He will doth He guide aright: and
none knoweth the armies of thy Lord but Himself: and this is no other than a
warning to mankind.
Nay, by the Moon!
By the Night when it retreateth!
By the Morn when it brighteneth!
Hell is one of the most grievous woes,
Fraught with warning to man,
To him among you who desireth to press forward, or to remain behind.5
For its own works lieth every soul in pledge. But they of God’s right hand
In their gardens shall ask of the wicked;–
“What hath cast you into Hell-fire?”6
They will say, “We were not of those who prayed,
And we were not of those who fed the poor,
And we plunged into vain disputes with vain disputers,
And we rejected as a lie, the day of reckoning,
Till the certainty7 came upon us”–
And intercession of the interceders shall not avail them.
Then what hath come to them that they turn aside from the Warning
As if they were affrighted asses fleeing from a lion?
And every one of them would fain have open pages given to him out of Heaven.
It shall not be. They fear not the life to come.
It shall not be. For this Koran is warning enough. And whoso will, it
warneth him.
But not unless God please, shall they be warned. Meet is He to be feared.
Meet is forgiveness in Him.
_______________________
1 This Sura is placed by Muir in the “second stage” of Meccan Suras, and
twenty-first in chronological order, in the third or fourth year of the
Prophet’s career. According, however, to the chronological list of Suras
given by Weil (Leben M. p. 364) from ancient tradition, as well as from the
consentient voice of tradionists and commentaries (v. Nöld. Geschichte, p.
69; Sprenger’s Life of Mohammad, p. 111) it was the next revealed after the
Fatrah, and the designation to the prophetic office. The main features of
the tradition are, that Muhammad while wandering about in the hills near
Mecca, distracted by doubts and by anxiety after truth, had a vision of the
Angel Gabriel seated on a throne between heaven and earth, that he ran to his
wife, Chadijah, in the greatest alarm, and desired her, perhaps from
superstitious motives (and believing that if covered with clothes he should
be shielded from the glances of evil spirits–comp. Stanley on I Cor. xi. 10),
to envelope him in his mantle; that then Gabriel came down and addressed him
as in v. I. This vision, like that which preceded Sura xcvi., may actually
have occurred during the hallucinations of one of the epileptic fits from
which Muhammad from early youth appears to have suffered. Hence Muhammad in
Sura lxxxi. appeals to it as a matter of fact, and such he doubtless believe
it to be. It may here be observed, that however absurd the Muslim traditions
may be in many of their details, it will generally be found that where there
is an ancient and tolerably universal consent, there will be found at the
bottom a residuum of fact and historical truth. At the same time there can
be no doubt but that the details of the traditions are too commonly founded
upon the attempt to explain or to throw light upon a dark passage of the
Koran, and are pure inventions of a later age.
2 The Arabic words are not those used in later Suras to express the same
idea.
3 Said to be Walid b. Mogheira, a person of note among the unbelieving
Meccans. This portion of the Sura seems to be of a different date from the
first seven verses, though very ancient, and the change of subject is similar
to that at v. 9 of the previous Sura.
4 This and the three following verses wear the appearance of having been
inserted at a later period to meet objections respecting the number of the
angels who guard hell, raised by the Jews; perhaps at Medina, as the four
classes of persons specified are those whom Muhammad had to deal with in that
city, viz., the Jews, Believers, the Hypocrites, or undecided, and Idolaters.
These are constantly mentioned together in the Medina Suras.
5 That is, who believe, and do not believe.
6 As the word sakar disturbs the rhyme, it may have been inserted by a
mistake of the copyist for the usual word, which suits it.
7 That is, death. Beidh. Comp. Sura xv. 99.
SURA LXXIII. THE ENFOLDED1 [III.]
MECCA. 20 Verses.
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
O THOU ENFOLDED in thy mantle,
Stand up all night, except a small portion of it, for prayer:
Half; or curtail the half a little,–
Or add to it: And with measured tone intone the Koran,2
For we shall devolve on thee weighty words.
Verily, at the oncoming of night are devout impressions strongest, and words
are most collected;3
But in the day time thou hast continual employ–
And commemorate the name of thy Lord, and devote thyself to Him with entire
devotion.
Lord of the East and of the West! No God is there but He! Take Him for thy
protector,
And endure what they say with patience, and depart from them with a decorous
departure.
And let Me alone with the gainsayers, rich in the pleasures of this life; and
bear thou with them yet a little while:
For with Us are strong fetters, and a flaming fire,
And food that choketh, and a sore torment.
The day cometh when the earth and the mountains shall be shaken; and the
mountains shall become a loose sand heap.
Verily, we have sent you an Apostle to witness against you, even as we sent
an Apostle to Pharaoh:
But Pharaoh rebelled against the Apostle, and we therefore laid hold on him
with a severe chastisement.
And how, if ye believe not, will you screen yourselves from the day that
shall turn children greyheaded?
The very heaven shall be reft asunder by it: this threat shall be carried
into effect.
Lo! this is a warning. Let him then who will, take the way to his Lord.
Of a truth,4 thy Lord knoweth that thou prayest almost two-thirds, or half,
or a third of the night, as do a part of thy followers. But God measureth the
night and the day: He knoweth that ye cannot count its hours aright, and
therefore, turneth to you mercifully. Recite then so much of the Koran as may
be easy to you. He knoweth that there will be some among you sick, while
others travel through the earth in quest of the bounties of God; and others
do battle in his cause. Recite therefore so much of it as may be easy. And
observe the Prayers and pay the legal Alms,5 and lend God a liberal loan: for
whatever good works ye send on before for your own behoof, ye shall find with
God. This will be best and richest in the recompense. And seek the
forgiveness of God: verily, God is forgiving, Merciful.
_______________________
1 From the first line of this Sura, and its expressions concerning the Koran,
Prayer, and Future Punishment: from the similarity of the tradition with
regard to its having been preceded by a vision of Gabriel (Beidh., etc.), it
seems to belong to, or at least to describe, a period, perhaps immediately
succeeding the Fatrah, during which the hours of night were spent by Muhammad
in devotion and in the labour of working up his materials in rhythmical and
rhyming Suras, and in preparation for the public assumption of the prophetic
office. Comp. especially verses 11, 19, 20, at the end, with 11, 54, 55, of
the preceding Sura.
2 Singe den Koran laut. H.v.P. Psalle Alcoranum psallendo. Mar. Singe den
Koran mit singender und lauter Stimme ab. Ullm.
3 Lit. most firm, perhaps, distinct.
4 This verse, according to a tradition of Ayesha, was revealed one year later
than the previous part of the Sura. Nöldeke says it is "offenbar ein
Medinischer."
5 The reader will not be surprised to find in the very outset of Muhammad's
career a frequent mention of Alms, Prayer, Heaven, Hell, Judgment, Apostles,
etc., in their usual sense, when he remembers that Judaism was extensively
naturalised in Arabia, and Christianity, also, although to a smaller extent.
The words and phrases of these religions were doubtless familiar to the
Meccans, especially to that numerous body who were anxiously searching after
some better religion than the idolatries of their fathers (v. on Sura iii.
19, 60), and provided Muhammad with a copious fund from which to draw.
SURA XCIII.1–THE BRIGHTNESS [IV.]
MECCA.–11 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
BY the noon-day BRIGHTNESS,
And by the night when it darkeneth!
Thy Lord hath not forsaken thee, neither hath he been displeased.
And surely the Future shall be better for thee than the Past,
And in the end shall thy Lord be bounteous to thee and thou be satisfied.
Did he not find thee an orphan2 and gave thee a home?
And found thee erring and guided thee,3
And found thee needy and enriched thee.
As to the orphan therefore wrong him not;
And as to him that asketh of thee, chide him not away;
And as for the favours of thy Lord tell them abroad.
_______________________
1 This and the six following Suras are expressions of a state of deep mental
anxiety and depression, in which Muhammad seeks to reassure himself by
calling to mind the past favours of God, and by fixing his mind steadfastly
on the Divine Unity. They belong to a period either before the public
commencement of his ministry or when his success was very dubious, and his
future career by no means clearly marked out.
2 The charge of the orphaned Muhammad was undertaken by Abd-al-Mutalib, his
grandfather, A.D. 576. Hishami, p. 35; Kitab al Wakidi, p. 22, have preserved
traditions of the fondness with which the old man of fourscore years treated
the child, spreading a rug for him under the shadow of the Kaaba, protecting
him from the rudeness of his own sons, etc.
3 Up to his 40th year Muhammad followed the religion of his countrymen. Waq.
Tabari says that when he first entered on his office of Prophet, even his
wife Chadijah had read the Scriptures, and was acquainted with the History of
the Prophets. Spreng. p. 100. But his conformity can only have been partial.
SURA XCIV.–THE OPENING [V.]
MECCA.–8 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
HAVE we not OPENED thine heart for thee?
And taken off from thee thy burden,
Which galled thy back?
And have we not raised thy name for thee?
Then verily along with trouble cometh ease.
Verily along with trouble cometh ease.
But when thou art set at liberty, then prosecute thy toil.
And seek thy Lord with fervour.
SURA CXIII.–THE DAYBREAK [VI.]
MECCA OR MEDINA.–5 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
SAY: I betake me for refuge to the Lord of the DAY BREAK
Against the mischiefs of his creation;
And against the mischief of the night when it overtaketh me;
And against the mischief of weird women;1
And against the mischief of the envier when he envieth.
_______________________
1 Lit. who blow on knots. According to some commentators an allusion to a
species of charm. Comp. Virg.Ec. vi. But the reference more probably is to
women in general, who disconcert schemes as thread is disentangled by blowing
upon it. Suras cxiii. are called the el mouwwidhetani, or preservative
chapters, are engraved on amulets,etc.
SURA CXIV.–MEN [VII.]
MECCA OR MEDINA.–6 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
SAY: I betake me for refuge to the Lord of MEN,
The King of men,
The God of men,
Against the mischief of the stealthily withdrawing whisperer,1
Who whispereth in man's breast–
Against djinn and men.
_______________________
1 Satan.
SURA I.1 [VIII.]
MECCA.–7 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
PRAISE be to God, Lord of the worlds!
The compassionate, the merciful!
King on the day of reckoning!
Thee only do we worship, and to Thee do we cry for help.
Guide Thou us on the straight path,2
The path of those to whom Thou hast been gracious;–with whom thou art not
angry, and who go not astray.3
_______________________
1 This Sura, which Nöldeke places last, and Muir sixth, in the earliest class
of Meccan Suras, must at least have been composed prior to Sura xxxvii.
182,where it is quoted, and to Sura xv. 87, which refers to it. And it can
scarcely be an accidental circumstance that the words of the first, second,
and fifth verses do not occur in any other Suras of the first Meccan period
as given by N”ldeke, but frequently in those of the second, which it
therefore, in N”ldeke, opinion, immediately precedes. But this may be
accounted for by its having been recast for the purposes of private and
public devotion by Muhammad himself, which is the meaning probably of the
Muhammadan tradition that it was revealed twice. It should also be observed
that, including the auspicatory formula, there are the same number of
petitions in this Sura as in the Lord's Prayer. It is recited several times
in each of the five daily prayers, and on many other occassions, as in
concluding a bargain, etc. It is termed "the Opening of the Book," "the
Completion," "the Sufficing Sura," the Sura of Praise, Thanks, and Prayer,"
"the Healer," "the Remedy," "the Basis," "the Treasure," "the Mother of the
Book," "the Seven Verses of Repetition." The Muhammadans always say "Amen"
after this prayer, Muhammad having been instructed, says the Sonna, to do so
by the Angel Gabriel.
2 Islam
3 The following transfer of this Sura from the Arabic into the corresponding
English characters may give some idea of the rhyming prose in which the Koran
is written:
Bismillahi 'rahhmani 'rrahheem.
El-hamdoo lillahi rabi 'lalameen.
Arrahhmani raheem.
Maliki yowmi-d-deen.
Eyaka naboodoo, wa‚yaka nest aeen.
Ihdina 'ssirat almostakeem.
Sirat alezeena anhamta aleihim, gheiri-'l mughdoobi aleihim, wala dsaleen.
Ameen.
SURA CIX.–UNBELIEVERS [IX.]
MECCA.–6 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
SAY: O ye UNBELIEVERS!
I worship not that which ye worship,
And ye do not worship that which I worship;
I shall never worship that which ye worship,
Neither will ye worship that which I worship.
To you be your religion; to me my religion.1
_______________________
1 This Sura is said to have been revealed when Walîd urged Muhammad to
consent that his God should be worshipped at the same time with the old
Meccan deities, or alternately every year. Hishâmi, p. 79; Tabari, p. 139. It
is a distinct renunciation of Meccan idolatry, as the following Sura is a
distinct recognition of the Divine Unity.
SURA CXII.–THE UNITY [X.]
MECCA.–4 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
SAY: He is God alone:
God the eternal!
He begetteth not, and He is not begotten;
And there is none like unto Him.
SURA CXI. ABU LAHAB [XI.]
MECCA. 5 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
LET the hands of ABU LAHAB1 perish,and let himself perish!
His wealth and his gains shall avail him not.
Burned shall he be at the fiery flame,2
And his wife laden with fire wood,–
On her neck a rope of palm fibre.
_______________________
1 Undoubtedly one of the earliest Suras, and refers to the rejection of
Muhammad's claim to the prophetic office by his uncle, Abu Lahab, at the
instigation of his wife, Omm Djemil, who is said to have strewn the path of
Muhammad on one occasion with thorns. The following six Suras, like the two
first, have special reference to the difficulties which the Prophet met with
the outset of his career, especially from the rich.
2 In allusion to the meaning of Abu Lahab, father of flame.
SURA CVIII.–THE ABUNDANCE [XII.]
MECCA.–3 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
TRULY we have given thee an ABUNDANCE;
Pray therefore to the Lord, and slay the victims.
Verily whoso hateth thee shall be childless.1
_______________________
1 A reply to those who had taunted Muhammad with the death of his sons, as a
mark of the divine displeasure.
SURA CIV.–THE BACKBITER [XII.]
MECCA.–9 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Woe to every BACKBITER, Defamer!
Who amasseth wealth and storeth it against the future!
He thinketh surely that his wealth shall be with him for ever.
Nay! for verily he shall be flung into the Crushing Fire;
And who shall teach thee what the Crushing Fire is?
It is God's kindled fire,
Which shall mount above the hearts of the damned;
It shall verily rise over them like a vault,
On outstretched columns.
SURA CVII.–RELIGION [XIV.]
MECCA.–7 Verses
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
WHAT thinkest thou of him who treateth our RELIGION as a lie?
He it is who trusteth away the orphan,
And stirreth not others up to feed the poor.
Woe to those who pray,
But in their prayer are careless;
Who make a shew of devotion,
But refuse help to the needy.
SURA CII.–DESIRE [XV.]
MECCA.–8 Verses
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
THE DESIRE of increasing riches occupieth you,
Till ye come to the grave.
Nay! but in the end ye shall know
Nay! once more,in the end ye shall know your folly.
Nay! would that ye knew it with knowledge of certainty!
Surely ye shall see hell-fire.
Then shall ye surely see it with the eye of certainty;
Then shall ye on that day be taken to task concerning pleasures.
SURA XCII.–THE NIGHT [XVI.]
MECCA.–21 Verses
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
BY the NIGHT when she spreads her veil;
By the Day when it brightly shineth;
By Him who made male and female;
At different ends truly do ye aim!1
But as to him who giveth alms and feareth God,
And yieldeth assent to the Good;
To him will we make easy the path to happiness.
But as to him who is covetous and bent on riches,
And calleth the Good a lie,
To him will we make easy the path to misery:
And what shall his wealth avail him when he goeth down?
Truly man’s guidance is with Us
And Our’s, the Future and the Past.
I warn you therefore of the flaming fire;
None shall be cast to it but the most wretched,–
Who hath called the truth a lie and turned his back.
But the God-fearing shall escape it,–
Who giveth away his substance that he may become pure;2
And who offereth not favours to any one for the sake of recompense,
But only as seeking the face of his Lord the Most High.
And surely in the end he shall be well content.
_______________________
1 See Pref., p. 5, line I.
2 Comp. Luke xi. 41. Muhammad perhaps derived this view of the meritorious
anture of almsgiving from the Jewish oral law.
SURA LXVIII.–THE PEN [XVII.]
Mecca.–52 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Nun.1 By the PEN2 and by what they write,
Thou, O Prophet; by the grace of thy Lord art not possessed!3
And truly a boundless recompense doth await thee,
For thou art of a noble nature.4
But thou shalt see and they shall see Which of you is the demented.
Now thy Lord! well knoweth He the man who erreth from his path, and well doth
he know those who have yielded to Guidance;
Give not place, therefore, to those who treat thee as a liar:
They desire thee to deal smoothly with them: then would they be smooth as oil
with thee:
But yield not to the man of oaths, a despicable person,
Defamer, going about with slander,
Hinderer of the good, transgressor, criminal,
Harsh–beside this, impure by birth,
Though a man of riches and blessed with sons.
Who when our wondrous verses are recited to him saith–"Fables of the
ancients."
We will brand him on the nostrils.
Verily, we have proved them (the Meccans) as we proved the owners of the
garden, when they swore that at morn they would cut its fruits;
But added no reserve.5
Wherefore an encircling desolation from thy Lord swept round it while they
slumbered,
And in the morning it was like a garden whose fruits had all been cut.
Then at dawn they called to each other,
"Go out early to your field, if ye would cut your dates."
So on they went whispering to each other,
"No poor man shall set foot this day within your garden;"
And they went out at daybreak with this settled purpose.
But when they beheld it, they said, "Truly we have been in fault:
Yes! we are forbidden our fruits."
The most rightminded of them said, "Did I not say to you, Will ye not give
praise to God?"
They said, "Glory to our Lord! Truly we have done amiss."
And they fell to blaming one another:
They said, "Oh woe to us! we have indeed transgressed!
Haply our Lord will give us in exchange a better garden than this: verily we
crave it of our Lord."
Such hath been our chastisement–but heavier shall be the chastisement of the
next world. Ah! did they but know it.
Verily, for the God-fearing are gardens of delight in the presence of their
Lord.
Shall we then deal with those who have surrendered themselves to God, as with
those who offend him?
What hath befallen you that ye thus judge?
Have ye a Scripture wherein ye can search out
That ye shall have the things ye choose?
Or have ye received oaths which shall bind Us even until the day of the
resurrection, that ye shall have what yourselves judge right?
Ask them which of them will guarantee this?
Or is it that they have joined gods with God? let them produce those
associate-gods of theirs, if they speak truth.
On the day when men's legs shall be bared,6 and they shall be called upon to
bow in adoration, they shall not be able:
Their looks shall be downcast: shame shall cover them: because, while yet in
safety, they were invited to bow in worship, but would not obey.
Leave me alone therefore with him who chargeth this revelation with
imposture. We will lead them by degrees to their ruin; by ways which they
know not;
Yet will I bear long with them; for my plan is sure.
Askest thou any recompense from them? But they are burdened with debt.
Are the secret things within their ken? Do they copy them from the Book of
God?
Patiently then await the judgment of thy Lord, and be not like him who was in
the fish,7 when in deep distress he cried to God.
Had not favour from his Lord reached him, cast forth would he have been on
the naked shore, overwhelmed with shame:
But his Lord chose him and made him of the just.
Almost would the infidels strike thee down with their very looks when they
hear the warning of the Koran. And they say, "He is certainly possessed."
Yet is it nothing less than a warning for all creatures.
_______________________
1 It has been conjectured that as the word Nun means fish, there may be a
reference to the fish which swallowed Jonas (v. 48). The fact, however, is
that the meaning of this and of the similar symbols, throughout the Koran,
was unknown to the Muhammadans themselves even in the first century. Possibly
the letters Ha, Mim, which are prefixed to numerous successive Suras were
private marks, or initial letters, attached by their proprietor to the copies
furnished to Said when effecting his recension of the text under Othman. In
the same way, the letters prefixed to other Suras may be monograms, or
abbreviations, or initial letters of the names of the persons to whom the
copies of the respective Suras belonged.
addenda: The symbol nun may possibly refer to this letter as forming the
Rhyme in most of the verses of this Sura.
2 This Sura has been supposed by ancient Muslim authorities to be, if not the
oldest, the second revelation, and to have followed Sura xcvi. But this
opinion probably originated from the expression in v. 1 compared with Sura
xcvi. 4. Verses 17-33 read like a later addition, and this passage, as well
as verse 48-50, has been classed with the Medina revelations. In the absence
of any reliable criterion for fixing the date, I have placed this Sura with
those which detail the opposition encountered by the Prophet at Mecca.
3 By djinn. Comp. Sur. xxxiv. 45.
4 In bearing the taunts of the unbelievers with patience.
5 They did not add the restriction, if God will.
6 An expression implying a grievous calamity; borrowed probably from the
action of stripping previous to wrestling, swimming, etc.
7 Lit. the companion of the fish. Comp. on Jonah Sura xxxvii. 139-148, and
Sura xxi. 87.
SURA XC.–THE SOIL [XVIII.]
MECCA.–20 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
I NEED not to swear by this SOIL,
This soil on which thou dost dwell,
Or by sire and offspring!1
Surely in trouble have we created man.
What! thinketh he that no one hath power over him?
"I have wasted," saith he, "enormous riches!"
What! thinketh he that no one regardeth him?
What! have we not made him eyes,
And tongue, and lips,
And guided him to the two highways?2
Yet he attempted not the steep.
And who shall teach thee what the steep is?
It is to ransom the captive,3
Or to feed in the day of famine,
The orphan who is near of kin, or the poor that lieth in the dust;
Beside this, to be of those who believe, and enjoin stedfastness on each
other, and enjoin compassion on each other.
These shall be the people of the right hand:
While they who disbelieve our signs,
Shall be the people of the left.
Around them the fire shall close.
_______________________
1 Lit. and begetter and what he hath begotten
2 Of good and evil.
3 Thus we read in Hilchoth Matt'noth Aniim, c. 8, "The ransoming of captives
takes precedence of the feeding and clothing of the poor, and there is no
commandment so great as this."
SURA CV.–THE ELEPHANT [XIX.]
MECCA.–5 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
HAST thou not seen1 how thy Lord dealt with the army of the ELEPHANT?
Did he not cause their stratagem to miscarry?
And he sent against them birds in flocks (ababils),
Claystones did they hurl down upon them,
And he made them like stubble eaten down!
_______________________
1 This Sura is probably Muhammad's appeal to the Meccans, intended at the
same time for his own encouragement, on the ground of their deliverance from
the army of Abraha, the Christian King of Abyssinia and Arabia Felix, said to
have been lost in the year of Muhammad's birth in an expedition against Mecca
for the purpose of destroying the Caaba. This army was cut off by small-pox
(Wakidi; Hishami), and there is no doubt, as the Arabic word for small-pox
also means "small stones," in reference to the hard gravelly feeling of the
pustules, what is the true interpretation of the fourth line of this Sura,
which, like many other poetical passages in the Koran, has formed the
starting point for the most puerile and extravagant legends. Vide Gibbon's
Decline and Fall, c. 1. The small-pox first shewed itself in Arabia at the
time of the invasion by Abraha. M. de Hammer Gemaldesaal, i. 24. Reiske
opusc. Med. Arabum. Hal‘, 1776, p. 8.
SURA CVI.–THE KOREISCH [XX.]
MECCA.–4 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
For the union of the KOREISCH:–
Their union in equipping caravans winter and summer.
And let them worship the Lord of this house, who hath provided them with food
against hunger,
And secured them against alarm.1
_______________________
1 In allusion to the ancient inviolability of the Haram, or precinct round
Mecca. See Sura, xcv. n. p. 41. This Sura, therefore, like the preceding, is
a brief appeal to the Meccans on the ground of their peculiar privileges.
SURA XCVII.–POWER [XXI.]
MECCA.–5 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
VERILY, we have caused It1 to descend on the night of POWER.
And who shall teach thee what the night of power is?
The night of power excelleth a thousand months:
Therein descend the angels and the spirit by permission of their Lord for
every matter;2
And all is peace till the breaking of the morn.
_______________________
1 The Koran, which is now pressed on the Meccans with increased prominence,
as will be seen in many succeeding Suras of this period.
2 The night of Al Kadr is one of the last ten nights of Ramadhan, and as is
commonly believed the seventh of those nights reckoning backward. See Sura
xliv. 2. "Three books are opened on the New Year's Day, one of the perfectly
righteous, one of the perfectly wicked, one of the intermediate. The
perfectly righteous are inscribed and sealed for life," etc. Bab. Talm. Rosh.
Hash., § I.
SURA LXXXVI. THE NIGHT-COMER [XXII.]
MECCA. 17 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
BY the heaven, and by the NIGHT-COMER!
But who shall teach thee what the night-comer is?
'Tis the star of piercing radiance.
Over every soul is set a guardian.
Let man then reflect out of what he was created.
He was created of the poured-forth germs,
Which issue from the loins and breastbones:
Well able then is God to restore him to life,–
On the day when all secrets shall be searched out,
And he shall have no other might or helper.
I swear by the heaven which accomplisheth its cycle,
And by the earth which openeth her bosom,
That this Koran is a discriminating discourse,
And that it is not frivolous.
They plot a plot against thee,
And I will plot a plot against them.
Deal calmly therefore with the infidels; leave them awhile alone.
SURA XCI.–THE SUN [XXIII.]
MECCA.–15 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
BY the SUN and his noonday brightness!
By the Moon when she followeth him!
By the Day when it revealeth his glory!
By the Night when it enshroudeth him!
By the Heaven and Him who built it!
By the Earth and Him who spread it forth!
By a Soul and Him who balanced it,
And breathed into it its wickedness and its piety,
Blessed now is he who hath kept it pure,
And undone is he who hath corrupted it!
Themoud1 in his impiety rejected the message of the Lord,
When the greatest wretch among them rushed up:–
Said the Apostle of God to them,–"The Camel of God! let her drink."
But they treated him as an impostor and hamstrung her.
So their Lord destroyed them for their crime, and visited all alike:
Nor feared he the issue.
_______________________
1 See Sura vii. 33, for the story of Themoud.
SURA LXXX.–HE FROWNED [XXIV.]
MECCA.–42 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
HE FROWNED, and he turned his back,1
Because the blind man came to him!
But what assured thee that he would not be cleansed by the Faith,
Or be warned, and the warning profit him?
As to him who is wealthy–
To him thou wast all attention:
Yet is it not thy concern if he be not cleansed:2
But as to him who cometh to thee in earnest,
And full of fears–
Him dost thou neglect.
Nay! but it (the Koran) is a warning;
(And whoso is willing beareth it in mind)
Written on honoured pages,
Exalted, purified,
By the hands of Scribes, honoured, righteous.
Cursed be man! What hath made him unbelieving?
Of what thing did God create him?
Out of moist germs.3
He created him and fashioned him,
Then made him an easy passage from the womb,
Then causeth him to die and burieth him;
Then, when he pleaseth, will raise him again to life.
Aye! but man hath not yet fulfilled the bidding of his Lord.
Let man look at his food:
It was We who rained down the copious rains,
Then cleft the earth with clefts,
And caused the upgrowth of the grain,
And grapes and healing herbs,
And the olive and the palm,
And enclosed gardens thick with trees,
And fruits and herbage,
For the service of yourselves and of your cattle.
But when the stunning trumpet-blast shall arrive,4
On that day shall a man fly from his brother,
And his mother and his father,
And his wife and his children;
For every man of them on that day his own concerns shall be enough.
There shall be faces on that day radiant,
Laughing and joyous:
And faces on that day with dust upon them:
Blackness shall cover them!
These are the Infidels, the Impure.
_______________________
1 We are told in the traditions, etc., that when engaged in converse with
Walid, a chief man among the Koreisch, Muhammad was interrupted by the blind
Abdallah Ibn Omm Maktûm, who asked to hear the Koran. The Prophet spoke very
roughly to him at the time, but afterwards repented, and treated him ever
after with the greatest respect. So much so, that he twice made him Governor
of Medina.
2 That is, if he does not embrace Islam, and so become pure from sin, thou
wilt not be to blame; thou art simply charged with the delivery of a message
of warning.
3 Ex spermate.
4 Descriptions of the Day of Judgment now become very frequent. See Sura
lxxxv. p. 42, and almost every Sura to the lv., after which they become
gradually more historical.
SURA LXXXVII.–THE MOST HIGH [XXV.]
MECCA.–19 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
PRAISE the name of thy Lord THE MOST HIGH,
Who hath created and balanced all things,
Who hath fixed their destinies and guideth them,
Who bringeth forth the pasture,
And reduceth it to dusky stubble.
We will teach thee to recite the Koran, nor aught shalt thou forget,
Save what God pleaseth; for he knoweth alike things manifest and hidden;
And we will make easy to thee our easy ways.
Warn, therefore, for the warning is profitable:
He that feareth God will receive the warning,–
And the most reprobate only will turn aside from it,
Who shall be exposed to the terrible fire,
In which he shall not die, and shall not live.
Happy he who is purified by Islam,
And who remembereth the name of his Lord and prayeth.
But ye prefer this present life,
Though the life to come is better and more enduring.
This truly is in the Books of old,
The Books of Abraham1 and Moses.
_______________________
1 Thus the Rabbins attribute the Book Jezirah to Abraham. See Fabr. Cod.
Apoc. V. T. p. 349.
SURA XCV.–THE FIG [XXVI.]
MECCA.–8 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
I SWEAR by the FIG and by the olive,
By Mount Sinai,
And by this inviolate soil!1
That of goodliest fabric we created man,
Then brought him down to be the lowest of the low;–
Save who believe and do the things that are right, for theirs shall be a
reward that faileth not.
Then, who after this shall make thee treat the Judgment as a lie?
What! is not God the most just of judges?
_______________________
1 In allusion to the sacredness of the territory of Mecca. This valley in
about the fourth century of our ‘ra was a kind of sacred forest of 37 miles
in circumference, and called Haram a name applied to it as early as the time
of Pliny (vi. 32). It had the privilege of asylum, but it was not lawful to
inhabit it, or to carry on commerce within its limits, and its religious
ceremonies were a bond of union to several of the Bedouin tribes of the
Hejaz. The Koreisch had monopolised most of the offices and advantages of the
Haram in the time of Muhammad. See Sprenger's Life of Mohammad, pp. 7 20.
SURA CIII.–THE AFTERNOON [XXVII.]
MECCA.–3 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
I SWEAR by the declining day!
Verily, man's lot is cast amid destruction,1
Save those who believe and do the things which be right, and enjoin truth and
enjoin stedfastness on each other.
_______________________
1 Said to have been recited in the Mosque shortly before his death by
Muhammad. See Weil, p. 328.
SURA LXXXV.–THE STARRY [XXVIII.]
MECCA.–22 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
BY the star-bespangled Heaven!1
By the promised Day!
By the witness and the witnessed!2
Cursed the masters of the trench3
Of the fuel-fed fire,
When they sat around it
Witnesses of what they inflicted on the believers!
Nor did they torment them but for their faith in God, the Mighty, the
Praiseworthy:4
His the kingdom of the Heavens and of the Earth; and God is the witness of
everything.
Verily, those who vexed the believers, men and women, and repented not, doth
the torment of Hell, and the torment of the burning, await.
But for those who shall have believed and done the things that be right, are
the Gardens beneath whose shades the rivers flow. This the immense bliss!
Verily, right terrible will be thy Lord's vengeance!
He it is who produceth all things, and causeth them to return;
And is He the Indulgent, the Loving;
Possessor of the Glorious throne;
Worker of that he willeth.
Hath not the story reached thee of the hosts
Of Pharaoh and Themoud?
Nay! the infields are all for denial:
But God surroundeth them from behind.
Yet it is a glorious Koran,
Written on the preserved Table.
_______________________
1 Lit. By the Heaven furnished with towers, where the angels keep watch;
also, the signs of the Zodiac: this is the usual interpretation. See Sura xv.
15.
2 That is, by Muhammad and by Islam; or, angels and men. See, however, v. 7.
3 Prepared by Dhu Nowas, King of Yemen, A.D. 523, for the Christians. See
Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. xii. towards the end. Pocock Sp. Hist. Ar.
p. 62. And thus the comm. generally. But Geiger (p. 192) and Nöldeke (p. 77
n.) understand the passage of Dan. iii. But it should be borne in mind that
the Suras of this early period contain very little allusion to Jewish or
Christian legends.
4 Verses 8-11 wear the appearance of a late insertion, on account of their
length, which is a characteristic of the more advanced period. Observe also
the change in the rhymes.
SURA CI.–THE BLOW [XXIX.]
MECCA.–8 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
THE BLOW! what is the Blow?
Who shall teach thee what the Blow is?
The Day when men shall be like scattered moths,
And the mountains shall be like flocks of carded wool,
Then as to him whose balances are heavy–his shall be a life that shall please
him well:
And as to him whose balances are light–his dwelling-place1 shall be the pit.
And who shall teach thee what the pit (El-Hawiya) is?
A raging fire!
_______________________
1 Lit. Mother.
SURA XCIX.–THE EARTHQUAKE [XXX.]
MECCA.–8 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
WHEN the Earth with her quaking shall quake
And the Earth shall cast forth her burdens,
And man shall say, What aileth her?
On that day shall she tell out her tidings,
Because thy Lord shall have inspired her.
On that day shall men come forward in throngs to behold their works,
And whosoever shall have wrought an atom's weight of good shall behold it,
And whosoever shall have wrought an atom's weight of evil shall behold it.
SURA LXXXII.–THE CLEAVING [XXXI.]
MECCA.–19 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
WHEN the Heaven shall CLEAVE asunder,
And when the stars shall disperse,
And when the seas1 shall be commingled,
And when the graves shall be turned upside down,
Each soul shall recognise its earliest and its latest actions.
O man! what hath misled thee against thy generous Lord,
Who hath created thee and moulded thee and shaped thee aright?
In the form which pleased Him hath He fashioned thee.
Even so; but ye treat the Judgment as a lie.
Yet truly there are guardians over you–
Illustrious recorders–
Cognisant of your actions.
Surely amid delights shall the righteous dwell,
But verily the impure in Hell-fire:
They shall be burned at it on the day of doom,
And they shall not be able to hide themselves from it.
Who shall teach thee what the day of doom is?
Once more. Who shall teach thee what the day of doom is?
It is a day when one soul shall be powerless for another soul: all
sovereignty on that day shall be with God.
_______________________
1 Salt water and fresh water.
SURA LXXXI.–THE FOLDED UP [XXXII.]
MECCA.–29 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
WHEN the sun shall be FOLDED UP,1
And when the stars shall fall,
And when the mountains shall be set in motion,
And when the she-camels shall be abandoned,
And when the wild beasts shall be gathered together,2
And when the seas shall boil,
And when souls shall be paired with their bodies,
And when the female child that had been buried alive shall be asked
For what crime she was put to death,3
And when the leaves of the Book shall be unrolled,
And when the Heaven shall be stripped away,4
And when Hell shall be made to blaze,
And when Paradise shall be brought near,
Every soul shall know what it hath produced.
It needs not that I swear by the stars5 of retrograde motions
Which move swiftly and hide themselves away,
And by the night when it cometh darkening on,
And by the dawn when it brighteneth,
That this is the word of an illustrious Messenger,6
Endued with power, having influence with the Lord of the Throne,
Obeyed there by Angels, faithful to his trust,
And your compatriot is not one possessed by djinn;
For he saw him in the clear horizon:7
Nor doth he grapple with heaven's secrets,8
Nor doth he teach the doctrine of a cursed9 Satan.
Whither then are ye going?
Verily, this is no other than a warning to all creatures;
To him among you who willeth to walk in a straight path:
But will it ye shall not, unless as God willeth it,10 the Lord of the worlds.
_______________________
1 Involutus fuerit tenebris. Mar. Or, thrown down.
2 Thus Bab. Talm. Erchin, 3. "In the day to come (i.e., of judgment) all the
beasts will assemble and come, etc."
3 See Sura xvi. 61; xvii. 33.
4 Like a skin from an animal when flayed. The idea is perhaps borrowed from
the Sept. V. of Psalm civ. 2. Vulg. sicut pellem.
5 Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn.
6 Gabriel; of the meaning of whose name the next verse is probably a
paraphrase.
7 Sura 1iii. 7.
8 Like a mere Kahin, or soothsayer.
9 Lit. stoned. Sura iii. 31. This vision or hallucination is one of the few
clearly stated miracles, to which Muhammad appeals in the Koran. According to
the tradition of Ibn-Abbas in Waquidi he was preserved by it from committing
suicide by throwing himself down from Mount Hira, and that after it, God
cheered him and strengthened his heart, and one revelation speedily followed
another.
10 Comp. the doctrine of predestination in Sura 1xxvi. v. 25 to end.
SURA LXXXIV.–THE SPLITTING ASUNDER [XXXIII.]
MECCA.–25 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
WHEN the Heaven shall have SPLIT ASUNDER
And duteously obeyed its Lord;1
And when Earth shall have been stretched out as a plain,
And shall have cast forth what was in her and become empty,
And duteously obeyed its Lord;
Then verily, O man, who desirest to reach thy Lord, shalt thou meet him.
And he into whose right hand his Book shall be given,
Shall be reckoned with in an easy reckoning,
And shall turn, rejoicing, to his kindred.
But he whose Book shall be given him behind his back2
Shall invoke destruction:
But in the fire shall he burn,
For that he lived joyously among his kindred,
Without a thought that he should return to God.
Yea, but his Lord beheld him.
It needs not therefore that I swear by the sunset redness,
And by the night and its gatherings,
And by the moon when at her full,
That from state to state shall ye be surely carried onward.3
What then hath come to them that they believe not?
And that when the Koran is recited to them they adore not?
Yea, the unbelievers treat it as a lie.
But God knoweth their secret hatreds:
Let their only tidings4 be those of painful punishment;
Save to those who believe and do the things that be right.
An unfailing recompense shall be theirs.
_______________________
1 Lit. and obeyed its Lord, and shall be worthy, or capable, i.e., of
obedience.
2 That is, into his left hand. The Muhammadans believe that the right hand of
the damned will be chained to the neck; the left chained behind the back.
3 From Life to Death, from the Grave to Resurrection, thence to Paradise.
4 The expression is ironical. See Freyt. on the word. Lit. tell them glad
tidings.
SURA C.–THE CHARGERS [XXXIV.]
Mecca.–11 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
By the snorting CHARGERS!
And those that dash off sparks of fire!
And those that scour to the attack at morn!
And stir therein the dust aloft;
And cleave therein their midway through a host!
Truly, Man is to his Lord ungrateful.
And of this he is himself a witness;
And truly, he is vehement in the love of this world's good.
Ah! knoweth he not, that when that which is in the graves shall be laid bare,
And that which is in men's breasts shall be brought forth,
Verily their Lord shall on that day be informed concerning them?
SURA LXXIX.1–THOSE WHO DRAG FORTH [XXXV.]
MECCA.–46 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
By those angels who DRAG FORTH souls with violence,
And by those who with joyous release release them;
By those who swim swimmingly along;
By those who are foremost with foremost speed;2
By those who conduct the affairs of the universe!
One day, the disturbing trumpet-blast shall disturb it,
Which the second blast shall follow:
Men's hearts on that day shall quake:–
Their looks be downcast.
The infidels will say, "Shall we indeed be restored as at first?
What! when we have become rotten bones?"
"This then," say they, "will be a return to loss."
Verily, it will be but a single blast,
And lo! they are on the surface of the earth.
Hath the story of Moses reached thee?
When his Lord called to him in Towa's holy vale:
Go to Pharaoh, for he hath burst all bounds:
And say, "Wouldest thou become just?
Then I will guide thee to thy Lord that thou mayest fear him."
And he showed him a great miracle,–
But he treated him as an impostor, and rebelled;
Then turned he his back all hastily,
And gathered an assembly and proclaimed,
And said, "I am your Lord supreme."
So God visited on him the punishment of this life and of the other.
Verily, herein is a lesson for him who hath the fear of God.
Are ye the harder to create, or the heaven which he hath built?
He reared its height and fashioned it,
And gave darkness to its night, and brought out its light,
And afterwards stretched forth the earth,–
He brought forth from it its waters and its pastures;
And set the mountains firm
For you and your cattle to enjoy.
But when the grand overthrow shall come,
The day when a man shall reflect on the pains that he hath taken,
And Hell shall be in full view of all who are looking on;
Then, as for him who hath transgressed
And hath chosen this present life,
Verily, Hell–that shall be his dwelling-place:
But as to him who shall have feared the majesty of his Lord, and shall have
refrained his soul from lust,
Verily, Paradise–that shall be his dwelling-place.
They will ask thee of "the Hour," when will be its fixed time?
But what knowledge hast thou of it?
Its period is known only to thy Lord;
And thou art only charged with the warning of those who fear it.
On the day when they shall see it, it shall seem to them as though they had
not tarried in the tomb, longer than its evening or its morn.
_______________________
1 This Sura obviously consists of three portions, verses 1-14, 15-26, 27-46,
of which the third is the latest in point of style, and the second, more
detailed than is usual in the Suras of the early period, which allude to
Jewish and other legend only in brief and vague terms. It may therefore be
considered as one of the short and early Suras.
2 Or, By those angels which precede, i.e., the souls of the pious into
Paradise. Or, are beforehand with the Satans and djinn in learning the
decrees of God.
SURA LXXVII.–THE SENT [XXXVI.]
MECCA.–50 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
By the train of THE SENT ones,1
And the swift in their swiftness;
By the scatterers who scatter,
And the distinguishers who distinguish;
And by those that give forth the word
To excuse or warn;
Verily that which ye are promised is imminent.
When the stars, therefore, shall be blotted out,
And when the heaven shall be cleft,
And when the mountains shall be scattered in dust,
And when the Apostles shall have a time assigned them;
Until what day shall that time be deferred?
To the day of severing!
And who shall teach thee what the day of severing is?
Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!
Have we not destroyed them of old?
We will next cause those of later times to follow them.2
Thus deal we with the evil doers.
Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!
Have we not created you of a sorry germ,
Which we laid up in a secure place,
Till the term decreed for birth?
Such is our power! and, how powerful are We!
Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!
Have we not made the earth to hold
The living and the dead?
And placed on it the tall firm mountains, and given you to drink of sweet
water.
Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!
Begone to that Hell which ye called a lie:–
Begone to the shadows that lie in triple masses;
"But not against the flame shall they shade or help you:"–
The sparks which it casteth out are like towers–
Like tawny camels.
Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!
On that day they shall not speak,
Nor shall it be permitted them to allege excuses.
Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!
This is the day of severing, when we will assemble you and your ancestors.
If now ye have any craft try your craft on me.
Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!
But the god-fearing shall be placed amid shades and fountains,
And fruits, whatsoever they shall desire:
"Eat and drink, with health,3 as the meed of your toils."
Thus recompense we the good.
Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!
"Eat ye and enjoy yourselves a little while. Verily, ye are doers of evil."
Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!
For when it is said to them, bend the knee, they bend it not.
Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture
In what other revelation after this will they believe?
_______________________
1 Lit. by the sent (fem.) one after another. Per missas. Mar. Either angels
following in a continued series; or, winds, which disperse rain over the
earth; or the successive verses of the Koran which disperse truth and
distinguish truth from error.
2 Sura xliv. 40.
3 Maimonides says that the majority of the Jews hope that Messiah shall come
and "raise the dead, and they shall be gathered into Paradise, and there
shall eat and drink and be in good health to all eternity."–Sanhedrin, fol.
119, col. I.
SURA LXXVIII.–THE NEWS [XXXVII.]
MECCA.–41 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Of what ask they of one another?
Of the great NEWS.1
The theme of their disputes.
Nay! they shall certainly knows its truth!
Again. Nay! they shall certainly know it.
Have we not made the Earth a couch?
And the mountains its tent-stakes?
We have created you of two sexes,
And ordained your sleep for rest,
And ordained the night as a mantle,
And ordained the day for gaining livelihood,
And built above you seven solid2 heavens,
And placed therein a burning lamp;
And we send down water in abundance from the rain-clouds,
That we may bring forth by it corn and herbs,
And gardens thick with trees.
Lo! the day of Severance is fixed;
The day when there shall be a blast on the trumpet, and ye shall come in
crowds,
And the heaven shall be opened and be full of portals,
And the mountains shall be set in motion, and melt into thin vapour.
Hell truly shall be a place of snares,
The home of transgressors,
To abide therein ages;
No coolness shall they taste therein nor any drink,
Save boiling water and running sores;
Meet recompense!
For they looked not forward to their account;
And they gave the lie to our signs, charging them with falsehood;
But we noted and wrote down all:
"Taste this then: and we will give you increase of nought but torment."
But, for the God-fearing is a blissful abode,
Enclosed gardens and vineyards;
And damsels with swelling breasts, their peers in age,
And a full cup:
There shall they hear no vain discourse nor any falsehood:
A recompense from thy Lord–sufficing gift!–
Lord of the heavens and of the earth, and of all that between3 them lieth–the
God of Mercy! But not a word shall they obtain from Him.
On the day whereon the Spirit4 and the Angels shall be ranged in order, they
shall not speak: save he whom the God of Mercy shall permit, and who shall
say that which is right.
This is the sure day. Whoso then will, let him take the path of return to his
Lord.
Verily, we warn you of a chastisement close at hand:
The day on which a man shall see the deeds which his hands have sent before
him; and when the unbeliever shall say, "Oh! would I were dust!"
_______________________
1 Of the Resurrection. With regard to the date of this Sura, we can only be
guided (I) by the general style of the earlier portion (to verse 37, which is
analogous to that of the early Meccan Suras; (2) by verse 17, which pre-
supposes lxxvii. 12; (3) by the obviously later style of verse 37 to the end.
2 See Sura ii. 27. This is the title given by the Talmudists to the fifth of
the seven heavens.
3 This phrase is of constant recurrence in the Talmud. Maimonides, Yad Hach.
i. 3, makes it one of the positive commands of the Rabbins to believe "that
there exists a first Being . . . and that all things existing, Heaven and
Earth, and whatever is between them, exist only through the truth of his
existence."
4 Gabriel.
SURA LXXXVIII.–THE OVERSHADOWING [XXXVIII.]
MECCA.–26 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Hath the tidings of the day that shall OVERSHADOW, reached thee?
Downcast on that day shall be the countenances of some,
Travailing and worn,
Burnt at the scorching fire,
Made to drink from a fountain fiercely boiling.
No food shall they have but the fruit of Darih,1
Which shall not fatten, nor appease their hunger.
Joyous too, on that day, the countenances of others,
Well pleased with their labours past,
In a lofty garden:
No vain discourse shalt thou hear therein:
Therein shall be a gushing fountain,
Therein shall be raised couches,
And goblets ready placed,
And cushions laid in order,
And carpets spread forth.
Can they not look up to the clouds, how they are created;
And to the heaven how it is upraised;
And to the mountains how they are rooted;
And to the earth how it is outspread?
Warn thou then; for thou art a warner only:
Thou hast no authority over them:
But whoever shall turn back and disbelieve,
God shall punish him with the greater punishment.
Verily to Us shall they return;
Then shall it be Our's to reckon with them.
_______________________
1 The name of a bitter, thorny shrub.
SURA LXXXIX.–THE DAYBREAK [XXXIX.]
MECCA.–30 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
By the DAYBREAK and ten nights.1
By that which is double and that which is single,
By the night when it pursues its course!
Is there not in this an oath becoming a man of sense?
Hast thou not seen how thy Lord dealt with Ad,
At Irem adorned with pillars,
Whose like have not been reared in these lands!
And with Themoud who hewed out the rocks in the valley;
And with Pharaoh the impaler;
Who all committed excesses in the lands,
And multiplied wickedness therein.
Wherefore thy Lord let loose on them the scourge of chastisement,2
For thy Lord standeth on a watch tower.
As to man, when his Lord trieth him and honoureth him and is bounteous to
him,
Then saith he, "My Lord honoureth me:"
But when he proveth him and limiteth his gifts to him,
He saith, "My Lord despiseth me."
Aye. But ye honour not the orphan,
Nor urge ye one another to feed the poor,
And ye devour heritages, devouring greedily,
And ye love riches with exceeding love.
Aye. But when the earth shall be crushed with crushing, crushing,
And thy Lord shall come and the angels rank on rank,
And Hell on that day shall be moved up,3–Man shall on that day remember
himself. But how shall remembrance help him?
He shall say, Oh! would that I had prepared for this my life! On that day
none shall punish as God punisheth,
And none shall bind with such bonds as He.
Oh, thou soul which art at rest,
Return to thy Lord, pleased, and pleasing him:
Enter thou among my servants,
And enter thou my Paradise.
_______________________
1 Of the sacred month Dhu'lhajja.
2 Or, poured on them the mixed cup of chastisement.
3 The orthodox Muhammadans take this passage literally. Djelal says that hell
will "be dragged up by 70,000 chains, each pulled by 70,000 angels," as if it
were an enormous animal or locomotive engine.
SURA LXXV.–THE RESURRECTION [XL.]
MECCA.–40 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
It needeth not that I swear by the day of the RESURRECTION,
Or that I swear by the self-accusing soul.
Thinketh man that we shall not re-unite his bones?
Aye! his very finger tips are we able evenly to replace.
But man chooseth to deny what is before him:
He asketh, "When this day of Resurrection?"
But when the eye shall be dazzled,
And when the moon shall be darkened,
And the sun and the moon shall be together,1
On that day man shall cry, "Where is there a place to flee to?"
But in vain–there is no refuge–
With thy Lord on that day shall be the sole asylum.
On that day shall man be told of all that he hath done first and last;
Yea, a man shall be the eye witness against himself:
And even if he put forth his plea. . . .2
(Move not thy tongue in haste to follow and master this revelation:3
For we will see to the collecting and the recital of it;
But when we have recited it, then follow thou the recital,
And, verily, afterwards it shall be ours to make it clear to thee.)
Aye, but ye love the transitory,
And ye neglect the life to come.
On that day shall faces beam with light,
Outlooking towards their Lord;
And faces on that day shall be dismal,
As if they thought that some great calamity would befal them.
Aye, when the soul shall come up into the throat,
And there shall be a cry, "Who hath a charm that can restore him?"
And the man feeleth that the time of his departure is come,
And when one leg shall be laid over the other,4
To thy Lord on that day shall he be driven on;
For he believed not, and he did not pray,
But he called the truth a lie and turned his back,
Then, walking with haughty men, rejoined his people.
That Hour is nearer to thee and nearer,5
It is ever nearer to thee and nearer still.
Thinketh man that he shall be left supreme?
Was he not a mere embryo?6
Then he became thick blood of which God formed him and fashioned him;
And made him twain, male and female.
Is not He powerful enough to quicken the dead?
_______________________
1 Lit. shall be united. In the loss of light, or in the rising in the west.–
Beidh.
2 Supply, it shall not be accepted.
3 Verses 16-19 are parenthetic, and either an address to Muhammad by Gabriel
desiring him (I) not to be overcome by any fear of being unable to follow and
retain the revelation of this particular Sura; (2) or, not to interrupt him,
but to await the completion of the entire revelation before he should proceed
to its public recital. In either case we are led to the conclusion that, from
the first, Muhammad had formed the plan of promulging a written book. Comp.
Sura xx. 112.
4 In the death-struggle.
5 Or, Therefore woe to thee, woe! And, again, woe to thee, woe. Thus Sale,
Ullm. Beidhawi; who also gives the rendering in the text, which is that of
Maracci.
6 Nonne fuit humor ex spermate quod spermatizatur.
SURA LXXXIII.–THOSE WHO STINT [XLI.]
MECCA.–36 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Woe to those who STINT the measure:
Who when they take by measure from others, exact the full;
But when they mete to them or weigh to them, minish–
What! have they no thought that they shall be raised again
For the great day?
The day when mankind shall stand before the Lord of the worlds.
Yes! the register of the wicked is in Sidjin.1
And who shall make thee understand what Sidjin is?
It is a book distinctly written.
Woe, on that day, to those who treated our signs as lies,
Who treated the day of judgment as a lie!
None treat it as a lie, save the transgressor, the criminal,
Who, when our signs are rehearsed to him, saith, "Tales of the Ancients!"
Yes; but their own works have got the mastery over their hearts.
Yes; they shall be shut out as by a veil from their Lord on that day;
Then shall they be burned in Hell-fire:
Then shall it be said to them, "This is what ye deemed a lie."
Even so. But the register of the righteous is in Illiyoun.
And who shall make thee understand what Illiyoun is?
A book distinctly written;
The angels who draw nigh unto God attest it.
Surely, among delights shall the righteous dwell!
Seated on bridal couches they will gaze around;
Thou shalt mark in their faces the brightness of delight;
Choice sealed wine shall be given them to quaff,
The seal of musk. For this let those pant who pant for bliss–
Mingled therewith shall be the waters of Tasnim–2
Fount whereof they who draw nigh to God shall drink.
The sinners indeed laugh the faithful to scorn:
And when they pass by them they wink at one another,–
And when they return to their own people, they return jesting,
And when they see them they say, "These are the erring ones."
And yet they have no mission to be their guardians.
Therefore, on that day the faithful shall laugh the infidels to scorn,
As reclining on bridal couches they behold them.
Shall not the infidels be recompensed according to their works?
_______________________
1 Sidjin is a prison in Hell which gives its name to the register of actions
there kept, as Illiyoun, a name of the lofty apartments of Paradise, is
transferred to the register of the righteous.
2 Derived from the root sanima, to be high: this water being conveyed to the
highest apartments in the Pavilions of Paradise.
SURA LXIX.–THE INEVITABLE [XLII.]
MECCA.–52 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
The INEVITABLE!
And who shall make thee comprehend what the Inevitable is?
Themoud and Ad treated the day of Terrors1 as a lie.
So as to Themoud,2 they were destroyed by crashing thunder bolts;
And as to Ad, they were destroyed by a roaring and furious blast.
It did the bidding of God3 against them seven nights and eight days together,
during which thou mightest have seen the people laid low, as though they had
been the trunks of hollow palms;
And couldst thou have seen one of them surviving?
Pharaoh also, and those who flourished before him, and the overthrown cities,
committed sin,–
And disobeyed the Sent one of their Lord; therefore did he chastise them with
an accumulated chastisement.
When the Flood rose high, we bare you in the Ark,
That we might make that event a warning to you, and that the retaining ear
might retain it.
But when one blast shall be blown on the trumpet,
And the earth and the mountains shall be upheaved, and shall both be crushed
into dust at a single crushing,
On that day the woe that must come suddenly shall suddenly come,4
And the heaven shall cleave asunder, for on that day it shall be fragile;
And the angels shall be on its sides, and over them on that day eight shall
bear up the throne of thy Lord.
On that day ye shall be brought before Him: none of your hidden deeds shall
remain hidden:
And he who shall have his book given to him in his right hand, will say to
his friends, "Take ye it; read ye my book;
I ever thought that to this my reckoning I should come."
And his shall be a life that shall please him well,
In a lofty garden,
Whose clusters shall be near at hand:
"Eat ye and drink with healthy relish, as the meed of what ye sent on
beforehand in the days which are past."
But he who shall have his book given into his left hand, will say, "O that my
book had never been given me!
And that I had never known my reckoning!
O that death had made an end of me!
My wealth hath not profited me!
My power hath perished from me!"
"Lay ye hold on him and chain him,
Then at the Hell-fire burn him,
Then into a chain whose length is seventy cubits thrust him;
For he believed not in God, the Great,
And was not careful to feed the poor;
No friend therefore shall he have here this day,
Nor food, but corrupt sores,
Which none shall eat but the sinners."
It needs not that I swear by what ye see,
And by that which ye see not,
That this verily is the word of an apostle worthy of all honour!
And that it is not the word of a poet–how little do ye believe!
Neither is it the word of a soothsayer (Kahin)–how little do ye receive
warning!
It is a missive from the Lord of the worlds.
But if Muhammad had fabricated concerning us any sayings,
We had surely seized him by the right hand,
And had cut through the vein of his neck.5
Nor would We have withheld any one of you from him.
But, verily, It (the Koran) is a warning for the God-fearing;
And we well know that there are of you who treat it as a falsehood.
But it shall be the despair of infidels,
For it is the very truth of sure knowledge.
Praise, then, the name of thy Lord, the Great.
_______________________
1 Thus Beidh., Sale, etc. But with reference to another sense of the root
karaa, it may be rendered the day of decision, the day on which man's lot
shall be decided.
2 On Ad and Themoud. See Sura vii. 63-77.
3 Lit. God subjected it to himself, availed himself of it against them.
4 El-wakia, the sudden event, the calamity; the woe that must break in upon
Heaven and Earth. The same word is used, Sura lvi. 1, and ci. 1, for the
Resurrection and Day of Judgment.
5 In allusion to the mode of executing criminals in many eastern countries.
SURA LI.–THE SCATTERING [XLIII.]
MECCA.–60 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
By the clouds1 which scatter with SCATTERING,
And those which bear their load,
And by those which speed lightly along,
And those which apportion by command!
True, indeed, is that with which ye are threatened,
And lo! the judgment will surely come.2
By the star-tracked heaven!
Ye are discordant in what ye say;
But whose turneth him from the truth, is turned from it by a divine decree.
Perish the liars,
Who are bewildered in the depths of ignorance!
They ask, "When this day of judgment?"
On that day they shall be tormented at the fire.
"Taste ye of this your torment, whose speedy coming ye challenged."
But the God-fearing shall dwell amid gardens and fountains,
Enjoying what their Lord hath given them, because, aforetime they were well-
doers:
But little of the night was it that they slept,
And at dawn they prayed for pardon,
And gave due share of their wealth to the suppliant and the outcast.
On Earth are signs for men of firm belief,
And also in your own selves: Will ye not then behold them?
The Heaven hath sustenance for you, and it containeth that which you are
promised.
By the Lord then of the heaven and of the earth, I swear that this is the
truth, even as ye speak yourselves.3
Hath the story reached thee of Abraham's honoured guests?4
When they went in unto him and said, "Peace!" he replied, "Peace:–they are
strangers."
And he went apart to his family, and brought a fatted calf,
And set it before them. He said, "Eat ye not?"
And he conceived a fear of them. They said to him, "Fear not;" and announced
to him a wise son.
His wife came up with outcry: she smote her face and said, "What I, old and
barren!"
They said, "Thus saith thy Lord. He truly is the Wise, the Knowing."
Said he, "And what, O messengers, is your errand?"
They said, "To a wicked people are we sent,
To hurl upon them stones of clay,
Destined5 by thy Lord for men guilty of excesses."
And we brought forth the believers who were in the city:
But we found not in it but one family of Muslims.
And signs we left in it for those who dread the afflictive chastisement,–
And in Moses: when we sent him to Pharaoh with manifest power:
But relying on his forces6 he turned his back and said, "Sorcerer, or
Possessed."
So we seized him and his hosts and cast them into the sea; for of all blame
was he worthy.
And in Ad: when we sent against them the desolating blast:
It touched not aught over which it came, but it turned it to dust.
And in Themoud:7 when it was said to them, "Enjoy yourselves for yet a
while."
But they rebelled against their Lord's command: so the tempest took them as
they watched its coming.8
They were not able to stand upright, and could not help themselves.
And we destroyed the people of Noah, before them; for an impious people were
they.
And the Heaven–with our hands have we built it up, and given it its expanse;
And the Earth–we have stretched it out like a carpet; and how
smoothly have we spread it forth!
And of everything have we created pairs: that haply ye may reflect.
Fly then to God: I come to you from him a plain warner.
And set not up another god with God: I come to you from him a plain warner.
Even thus came there no apostle to those who flourished before them, but they
exclaimed, "Sorcerer, or Possessed."
Have they made a legacy to one another of this scoff? Yes, they are a rebel
people.
Turn away, then, from them, and thou shalt not incur reproach:
Yet warn them, for, in truth, warning will profit the believers.
I have not created Djinn and men, but that they should worship me:
I require not sustenance from them, neither require I that they feed me:
Verily, God is the sole sustainer: possessed of might: the unshaken!
Therefore to those who injure thee shall be a fate like the fate of
their fellows of old. Let them not challenge me to hasten it.
Woe then to the infidels, because of their threatened day.
_______________________
1 Lit. (I swear) by those which scatter (i.e., the rain) with a scattering,
(2) and by those which carry a burden, (3) and by those which run lightly,
(4) and by those which divide a matter, or by command. The participles are
all in the feminine: hence some interpret verse 1 of winds; verse 2 of
clouds; verse 3 of ships; verse 4 of angels.
2 Comp. note at Sura lvi. 1, p. 65.
3 That is, this oath is for the confirmation of the truth, as ye are wont to
confirm things one among another by an oath.
4 Comp. Sura xi. 72, and xv. 51. From the want of connection with what
precedes, it is highly probable that the whole passage from verse 24 60 did
not originally form a part of this Sura, but was added at a later period,
perhaps in the recension of the text under Othman.
5 Lit. marked, with the names of the individuals to be slain, say the
commentators.
6 Or, with his nobles.
7 For Ad and Themoud, see Sura xi.
8 That is, in broad daylight. Thus Beidh. Comp. Sura xlvi. 22.
SURA LII.–THE MOUNTAIN [XLIV.]
MECCA.–49 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
BY the MOUNTAIN,
And by the Book written
On an outspread roll,
And by the frequented fane,1
And by the lofty vault,
And by the swollen sea,
Verily, a chastisement from thy Lord is imminent,
And none shall put it back.
Reeling on that day the Heaven shall reel,
And stirring shall the mountains stir.2
And woe, on that day, to those who called the apostles liars,
Who plunged for pastime into vain disputes–
On that day shall they be thrust with thrusting to the fire of Hell:–
"This is the fire which ye treated as a lie.
What! is this magic, then? or, do ye not see it?
Burn ye therein: bear it patiently or impatiently 'twill be the same to you:
for ye shall assuredly receive the reward of your doings."
But mid gardens and delights shall they dwell who have feared God,
Rejoicing in what their Lord hath given them; and that from the pain of hell-
fire hath their Lord preserved them.
"Eat and drink with healthy enjoyment, in recompense for your deeds."
On couches ranged in rows shall they recline; and to the damsels with large
dark eyes will we wed them.
And to those who have believed, whose offspring have followed them in the
faith, will we again unite their offspring; nor of the meed of their works
will we in the least defraud them. Pledged to God is every man for his
actions and their desert.3
And fruits in abundance will we give them, and flesh as they shall desire:
Therein shall they pass to one another the cup which shall engender no light
discourse, no motive to sin:
And youths shall go round among them beautiful as imbedded pearls:
And shall accost one another and ask mutual questions.
"A time indeed there was," will they say, "when we were full of care as to
the future lot of our families;
But kind hath God been to us, and from the pestilential torment hath he
preserved us;
For, heretofore we called upon Him–and He is the Beneficent, the Merciful."
Warn thou, then. For thou by the favour of thy Lord art neither soothsayer
nor possessed.
Will they say, "A poet! let us await some adverse turn of his fortune?"
SAY, wait ye, and in sooth I too will wait with you.
Is it their dreams which inspire them with this? or is it that they are a
perverse people?
Will they say, "He hath forged it (the Koran) himself?" Nay, rather it is
that they believed not.
Let them then produce a discourse like it, if they speak the Truth.
Were they created by nothing? or were they the creators of themselves?
Created they the Heavens and Earth? Nay, rather, they have no faith.
Hold they thy Lord's treasures? Bear they the rule supreme?
Have they a ladder for hearing the angels? Let any one who hath heard them
bring a clear proof of it.
Hath God daughters and ye sons?
Asketh thou pay of them? they are themselves weighed down with debts.
Have they such a knowledge of the secret things that they can write them
down?
Desire they to lay snares for thee? But the snared ones shall be they who do
not believe.
Have they any God beside God? Glory be to God above what they join with Him.
And should they see a fragment of the heaven falling down, they would say,
"It is only a dense cloud."
Leave them then until they come face to face with the day when they shall
swoon away:
A day in which their snares shall not at all avail them, neither shall they
be helped.
And verily, beside this is there a punishment for the evildoers: but most of
them know it not.
Wait thou patiently the judgment of thy Lord, for thou art in our eye; and
celebrate the praise of thy Lord when thou risest up,
And in the night-season: Praise him when the stars are setting.
_______________________
1 Of the Caaba.
2 Comp. Psalm lxviii. 9.
3 The more prosaic style of this verse indicates a later origin than the
context. Muir places the whole Sura in what he terms the fourth stage of
Meccan Suras.
SURA LVI.–THE INEVITABLE [XLV.]
MECCA.–96 Verses
In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
WHEN the day that must come shall have come suddenly,1
None shall treat that sudden coming as a lie:
Day that shall abase! Day that shall exalt!
When the earth shall be shaken with a shock,
And the mountains shall be crumbled with a crumbling,
And shall become scattered dust,
And into three bands shall ye be divided:2
Then the people of the right hand3–Oh! how happy shall be the people of the
right hand!
And the people of the left hand–Oh! how wretched shall be the people of the
left hand!
And they who were foremost on earth–the foremost still.4
These are they who shall be brought nigh to God,
In gardens of delight;
A crowd of the former
And few of the latter generations;
On inwrought couches
Reclining on them face to face:
Aye-blooming youths go round about to them
With goblets and ewers and a cup of flowing wine;
Their brows ache not from it, nor fails the sense:
And with such fruits as shall please them best,
And with flesh of such birds, as they shall long for:
And theirs shall be the Houris, with large dark eyes, like pearls hidden in
their shells,
In recompense of their labours past.
No vain discourse shall they hear therein, nor charge of sin,
But only the cry, "Peace! Peace!"
And the people of the right hand–oh! how happy shall be the people of the
right hand!
Amid thornless sidrahs5
And talh6 trees clad with fruit,
And in extended shade,
And by flowing waters,
And with abundant fruits,7
Unfailing, unforbidden,
And on lofty couches.
Of a rare creation have we created the Houris,
And we have made them ever virgins,
Dear to their spouses, of equal age with them,8
For the people of the right hand,
A crowd of the former,
And a crowd of the latter generations.9
But the people of the left hand–oh! how wretched shall be the people of the
left hand!
Amid pestilential10 winds and in scalding water,
And in the shadow of a black smoke,
Not cool, and horrid to behold.11
For they truly, ere this, were blessed with worldly goods,
But persisted in heinous sin,
And were wont to say,
"What! after we have died, and become dust and bones, shall we be raised?
And our fathers, the men of yore?"
SAY: Aye, the former and the latter:
Gathered shall they all be for the time of a known day.
Then ye, O ye the erring, the gainsaying,
Shall surely eat of the tree Ez-zakkoum,
And fill your bellies with it,
And thereupon shall ye drink boiling water,
And ye shall drink as the thirsty camel drinketh.
This shall be their repast in the day of reckoning!
We created you, will ye not credit us?12
What think ye? The germs of life13–
Is it ye who create them? or are we their creator?
It is we who have decreed that death should be among you;
Yet are we not thereby hindered14 from replacing you with others, your likes,
or from producing you again in a form which ye know not!
Ye have known the first creation: will ye not then reflect?
What think ye? That which ye sow–
Is it ye who cause its upgrowth, or do we cause it to spring forth?
If we pleased we could so make your harvest dry and brittle that ye would
ever marvel and say,
"Truly we have been at cost,15 yet are we forbidden harvest."
What think ye of the water ye drink?
Is it ye who send it down from the clouds, or send we it down?
Brackish could we make it, if we pleased: will ye not then be thankful?
What think ye? The fire which ye obtain by friction–
Is it ye who rear its tree, or do we rear it?
It is we who have made it for a memorial and a benefit to the wayfarers of
the desert,
Praise therefore the name of thy Lord, the Great.
It needs not that I swear by the setting of the stars,
And it is a great oath, if ye knew it,
That this is the honourable Koran,
Written in the preserved Book:16
Let none touch it but the purified,17
It is a revelation from the Lord of the worlds.
Such tidings as these will ye disdain?
Will ye make it your daily bread to gainsay them?
Why, at the moment when the soul of a dying man shall come up into his
throat,
And when ye are gazing at him,
Though we are nearer to him than ye, although ye see us not:–
Why do ye not, if ye are to escape the judgment,
Cause that soul to return? Tell me, if ye speak the truth.
But as to him who shall enjoy near access to God,
His shall be repose, and pleasure, and a garden of delights.
Yea, for him who shall be of the people of the right hand,
Shall be the greeting from the people of the right hand–"Peace be to thee."
But for him who shall be of those who treat the prophets as deceivers,
And of the erring,
His entertainment shall be of scalding water,
And the broiling of hell-fire.
Verily this is a certain truth:
Praise therefore the name of thy Lord, the Great.
_______________________
1 The renderings of Mar. cum inciderit casura, or as in Sur. lxix, 15,
ingruerit ingruens nearly express the peculiar force of the Arabic verb and
of the noun formed from it; i.e. a calamity that falls suddenly and surely.
Weil renders, ween der Auferstehung's Tag eintritt (p. 389). Lane, when the
calamity shall have happened.
2 Comp. Tr. Rosch Haschanah, fol. 16, 6.
3 Lit., the companions of the right hand, what shall be the companions of the
right hand! and thus in verses 9, 37, 40.
4 Lit., the preceders, the preceders.
5 See Sura liii. 14, p. 69.
6 Probably the banana according to others, the acacia gummifera.
7 "A Muslim of some learning professed to me that he considered the
descriptions of Paradise in the Koran to be, in a great measure, figurative;
'like those,' said he, 'in the book of the Revelation of St. John;' and he
assured me that many learned Muslims were of the same opinion." Lane's Modern
Egyptians, i. p. 75, note.
8 Like them, grow not old.
9 This seems a direct contradiction to verse 14, unless we suppose with
Beidhawi that an inferior and more numerous class of believers are here
spoken of.
10 Or, scorching.
11 Lit., not noble, agreeable in appearance.
12 As to the resurrection.
13 Lit., semen quod emittitis.
14 Lit., forestalled, anticipated.
15 Lit, have incurred debt.
16 That is, The Prototype of the Koran written down in the Book kept by God
himself.
17 This passage implies the existence of copies of portions at least of the
Koran in common use. It was quoted by the sister of Omar when at his
conversion be desired to take her copy of Sura xx. into his hands.
SURA1–LIII. THE STAR [XLVI.]
MECCA.–62 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
By the STAR when it setteth,
Your compatriot erreth not, nor is he led astray,
Neither speaketh he from mere impulse.
The Koran is no other than a revelation revealed to him:
One terrible in power2 taught it him,
Endued with wisdom. With even balance stood he
In the highest part of the horizon:
Then came he nearer and approached,
And was at the distance of two bows, or even closer,–
And he revealed to his servant what he revealed.
His heart falsified not what he saw.
What! will ye then dispute with him as to what he saw?
He had seen him also another time,
Near the Sidrah-tree, which marks the boundary.3
Near which is the garden of repose.
When the Sidrah-tree4 was covered with what covered it,5
His eye turned not aside, nor did it wander:
For he saw the greatest of the signs of his Lord.
Do you see Al-Lat and Al-Ozza,6
And Manat the third idol besides?7
What? shall ye have male progeny and God female?
This were indeed an unfair partition!
These are mere names: ye and your fathers named them thus: God hath not sent
down any warranty in their regard. A mere conceit and their own impulses do
they follow. Yet hath "the guidance" from their Lord come to them.
Shall man have whatever he wisheth?
The future and the present are in the hand of God:
And many as are the Angels in the Heavens, their intercession shall be of no
avail8
Until God hath permitted it to whom he shall please and will accept.
Verily, it is they who believe not in the life to come, who name the angels
with names of females:
But herein they have no knowledge: they follow a mere conceit; and mere
conceit can never take the place of truth.
Withdraw then from him who turneth his back on our warning and desireth only
this present life.
This is the sum of their knowledge. Truly thy Lord best knoweth him who
erreth from his way, and He best knoweth him who hath received guidance.
And whatever is in the Heavens and in the Earth is God's that he may reward
those who do evil according to their deeds: and those who do good will He
reward with good things.
To those who avoid great crimes and scandals but commit only lighter faults,
verily, thy Lord will be diffuse of mercy. He well knew you when he produced
you out of the earth, and when ye were embryos in your mother's womb. Assert
not then your own purity. He best knoweth who feareth him.
Hast thou considered him who turned his back?
Who giveth little and is covetous?
Is it that he hath the knowledge and vision of the secret things?
Hath he not been told of what is in the pages of Moses?
And of Abraham faithful to his pledge?
That no burdened soul shall bear the burdens of another,
And that nothing shall be reckoned to a man but that for which he hath made
efforts:
And that his efforts shall at last be seen in their true light:
That then he shall be recompensed with a most exact recompense,
And that unto thy Lord is the term of all things,
And that it is He who causeth to laugh and to weep,
And that He causeth to die and maketh alive,
And that He hath created the sexes, male and female,
From the diffused germs of life,9
And that with Him is the second creation,
And that He enricheth and causeth to possess,
And that He is the Lord of Sirius,10
And that it was He who destroyed the ancient Adites,
And the people of Themoud and left not one survivor,
And before them the people of Noah who were most wicked and most perverse.
And it was He who destroyed the cities that were overthrown.
So that that which covered them covered them.
Which then of thy Lord's benefits wilt thou make a matter of doubt?11
He who warneth you is one of the warners of old.
The day that must draw nigh, draweth nigh already: and yet none but God can
reveal its time.
Is it at these sayings that ye marvel?
And that ye laugh and weep not?
And that ye are triflers?
Prostrate yourselves then to God and worship.
_______________________
1 This Sura was revealed at about the time of the first emigration of
Muhammad's followers to Abyssinia, A. 5. The manner in which the Prophet
cancelled the objectionable verses 19, 20, is the strongest proof of his
sincerity (as also is the opening of Sura 1xxx.) at this period. Had he not
done so, nothing would have been easier for him than to have effected a
reconciliation with the powerful party in Mecca, who had recently compelled
his followers to emigrate.
2 The Angel Gabriel, to the meaning of whose name, as the strong one of God,
these words probably allude.
3 That is, Beyond which neither men nor angels can pass (Djelal). The
original word is also rendered, the Lote-Tree of the extremity, or of the
loftiest spot in Paradise, in the seventh Heaven, on the right hand of the
throne of God. Its leaves are fabled to be as numerous as the members of the
whole human family, and each leaf to bear the name of an individual. This
tree is shaken on the night of the 15th of Ramadan every year a little after
sunset, when the leaves on which are inscribed the names of those who are to
die in the ensuing year fall, either wholly withered, or with more or less
green remaining, according to the months or weeks the person has yet to live.
4 The Sidrah is a prickly plum, which is called Ber in India, the zizyphus
Jujuba of Linnæus. A decoction of the leaves is used in India to wash the
dead, on account of the sacredness of the tree.
5 Hosts of adoring angels, by which the tree was masked.
6 Al-Lat or El-Lat, probably the Alilat of Herodotus (iii. 8) was an idol at
Nakhlah, a place east of the present site of Mecca. Al-Ozza was an idol of
the Kinanah tribe; but its hereditary priests were the Banu Solaym, who were
stationed along the mercantile road to Syria in the neighbourhood of Chaibar.
7 When at the first recital of this Sura, the prophet had reached this verse,
he continued,
These are the exalted females, [or, sublime swans, i.e., mounting nearer and
nearer to God]
And truly their intercession may be expected.
These words, however, which were received by the idolaters with great
exultation, were disowned by Muhammad in the course of a few days as a
Satanic suggestion, and replaced by the text as it now stands. The
probability is that the difficulties of his position led him to attempt a
compromise of which he speedily repented. In the Suras subsequent to this
period the denunciations of idolatry become much sterner and clearer. The
authorities are given by Weil, Sprenger and Muir. See Sura [lxvii.] xvii. 74-
76.
8 Verses 26-33 are probably later than the previous part of the Sura, but
inserted with reference to it. Some (as Omar b. Muhammad and 1tq.) consider
verse 33, or (as Itq.36) verses 34-42, or (as Omar b. Muhammad) the whole
Sura, to have originated at Medina.
9 Ex spermate cum seminatum fuerit.
10 The Dog-star, worshipped by the Arabians.
11 Compare the refrain in Sura lv. p. 74.
SURA LXX.–THE STEPS OR ASCENTS [XLVII.]
MECCA.–44 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
A SUITOR sued1 for punishment to light suddenly
On the infidels: none can hinder
God from inflicting it, the master of those ASCENTS,
By which the angels and the spirit ascend to him in a day, whose length is
fifty thousand years.2
Be thou patient therefore with becoming patience;
They forsooth regard that day as distant,
But we see it nigh:
The day when the heavens shall become as molten brass,
And the mountains shall become like flocks of wool:
And friend shall not question of friend,
Though they look at one another. Fain would the wicked redeem himself from
punishment on that day at the price of his children,
Of his spouse and his brother,
And of his kindred who shewed affection for him,
And of all who are on the earth that then it might deliver him.
But no. For the fire,
Dragging by the scalp,
Shall claim him who turned his back and went away,
And amassed and hoarded.
Man truly is by creation hasty;
When evil befalleth him, impatient;
But when good falleth to his lot, tenacious.
Not so the prayerful,
Who are ever constant at their prayers;
And of whose substance there is a due and stated portion
For him who asketh, and for him who is ashamed3 to beg;
And who own the judgment-day a truth,
And who thrill with dread at the chastisement of their Lord–
For there is none safe from the chastisement of their Lord–
And who control their desires,
(Save with their wives or the slaves whom their right hands have won, for
there they shall be blameless;
But whoever indulge their desires beyond this are transgressors);
And who are true to their trusts and their engagements,
And who witness uprightly,
And who keep strictly the hours of prayer:
These shall dwell, laden with honours, amid gardens.
But what hath come to the unbelievers that they run at full stretch around
thee,
On the right hand and on the left, in bands?
Is it that every man of them would fain enter that garden of delights?
Not at all. We have created them, they know of what.
It needs not that I swear by the Lord of the East and of the West4 that we
have power.
To replace them with better than themselves: neither are we to be hindered.
Wherefore let them flounder on and disport them, till they come face to face
with their threatened day,
The day on which they shall flock up out of their graves in haste like men
who rally to a standard:–
Their eyes downcast; disgrace shall cover them. Such their threatened day.
_______________________
1 Lit. asking one asked; probably some unbeliever, with reference to the
opening of Sura lvi., p. 60, or like statements in some previous Sura.
2 The expression is hyperbolical, and, as such, identical with Sura [lxx.]
xxxii. 4. Compare also Sura xcvii., p. 37. where the descent is said to take
place in a single night.
3 Lit. forbidden or prevented by shame.
4 See next Sura. v. 16.
SURA LV.–THE MERCIFUL [XLVIII.]
MECCA.–78 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
The God of MERCY hath taught the Koran,
Hath created man,
Hath taught him articulate speech,
The Sun and the Moon have each their times,
And the plants and the trees bend in adoration.
And the Heaven, He hath reared it on high, and hath appointed the balance;
That in the balance ye should not transgress.
Weigh therefore with fairness, and scant not the balance.
And the Earth, He hath prepared it for the living tribes:
Therein are fruits, and the palms with sheathed clusters,
And the grain with its husk, and the fragrant plants.
Which then of the bounties of your Lord will ye twain1 deny?
He created man of clay like that of the potter.
And He created the djinn of pure fire:
Which then of the bounties, etc.
He is the Lord of the East,2
He is the Lord of the West:
Which, etc.
He hath let loose the two seas3 which meet each other:
Yet between them is a barrier which they overpass not:
Which, etc.
From each he bringeth up pearls both great and small:
Which, etc.
And His are the ships towering up at sea like mountains:
Which, etc.
All on the earth shall pass away,
But the face of thy Lord shall abide resplendent with majesty and glory:
Which, etc.
To Him maketh suit all that is in the Heaven and the Earth. Every day doth
some new work employ Him:
Which, etc.
We will find leisure to judge you, O ye men and djinn:4
Which, etc.
O company of djinn and men, if ye can overpass the bounds of the Heavens and
the Earth, then overpass them. But by our leave only shall ye overpass them:
Which, etc.
A bright flash of fire shall be hurled at you both, and molten brass, and ye
shall not defend yourselves from it:
Which, etc.
When the Heaven shall be cleft asunder, and become rose red, like stained
leather:
Which, etc.
On that day shall neither man nor djinn be asked of his sin:
Which, etc.
By their tokens shall the sinners be known, and they shall be seized by their
forelocks and their feet:
Which, etc.
"This is Hell which sinners treated as a lie."
To and fro shall they pass between it and the boiling water:
Which, etc.
But for those who dread the majesty of their Lord shall be two gardens:
Which, etc.
With o'erbranching trees in each:
Which, etc.
In each two kinds of every fruit:
Which, etc.
On couches with linings of brocade shall they recline, and the fruit of the
two gardens shall be within easy reach:
Which, etc.
Therein shall be the damsels with retiring glances, whom nor man nor djinn
hath touched before them:
Which, etc.
Like jacynths and pearls:
Which, etc.
Shall the reward of good be aught but good?
Which, etc.
And beside these shall be two other gardens:5
Which, etc.
Of a dark green:
Which, etc.
With gushing fountains in each:
Which, etc.
In each, fruits and the palm and the pomegranate:
Which, etc.
In each, the fair, the beauteous ones:
Which, etc.
With large dark eyeballs, kept close in their pavilions:
Which, etc.
Whom man hath never touched, nor any djinn:6
Which, etc.
Their spouses on soft green cushions and on beautiful carpets shall recline:
Which, etc.
Blessed be the name of thy Lord, full of majesty and glory.
_______________________
1 Men and djinn. The verb is in the dual.
2 Lit. of the two easts, of the two wests, i.e., of all that lies between the
extreme points at which the sun rises and sets at the winter and summer
solstices.
3 Lit. he hath set at large, poured forth over the earth the masses of fresh
and salt water which are in contact at the mouths of rivers, etc. See Sura
[lxviii.] xxvii. 62; [lxxxvi.] xxxv. 13.
4 Lit. O ye two weights; hence, treasures; and, generally, any collective
body of men or things.
5 One for men, the other for the Genii; or, two for each man and Genius; or,
both are for the inferior classes of Muslims. Beidh.
6 It should be remarked that these promises of the Houris of Paradise are
almost exclusively to be found in Suras written at a time when Muhammad had
only a single wife of 60 years of age, and that in all the ten years
subsequent to the Hejira, women are only twice mentioned as part of the
reward of the faithful. Suras ii. 23 and iv. 60. While in Suras xxxvi. 56;
xliii. 70; xiii. 23; xl. 8 the proper wives of the faithful are spoken of as
accompanying their husbands into the gardens of bliss.
SURA LIV.–THE MOON [XLIX.]
MECCA.–55 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
The hour hath approached and the MOON hath been cleft:
But whenever they see a miracle they turn aside and say, This is well-devised
magic.
And they have treated the prophets as impostors, and follow their own lusts;
but everything is unalterably fixed.
A message of prohibition had come to them–
Consummate wisdom–but warners profit them not.
Quit them then. On the day when the summoner shall summon to a stern
business,
With downcast eyes shall they come forth from their graves, as if they were
scattered locusts,
Hastening to the summoner. "This," shall the infidels say, "is the
distressful day."
Before them the people of Noah treated the truth as a lie. Our servant did
they charge with falsehood, and said, "Demoniac!" and he was rejected.
Then cried he to his Lord, "Verily, they prevail against me; come thou
therefore to my succour."
So we opened the gates of Heaven with water which fell in torrents,
And we caused the earth to break forth with springs, and their waters met by
settled decree.
And we bare him on a vessel made with planks and nails.
Under our eyes it floated on: a recompence to him who had been rejected with
unbelief.
And we left it a sign: but, is there any one who receives the warning?
And how great was my vengeance and my menace!
Easy for warning have we made the Koran–but, is there any one who receives
the warning?
The Adites called the truth a lie: but how great was my vengeance and my
menace;
For we sent against them a roaring wind in a day of continued distress:
It tore men away as though they were uprooted palm stumps.
And how great was my vengeance and my menace!
Easy for warning have we made the Koran–but, is there any one who receives
the warning?
The tribe of Themoud treated the threatenings as lies:
And they said, "Shall we follow a single man from among ourselves? Then
verily should we be in error and in folly.
To him alone among us is the office of warning entrusted? No! he is an
impostor, an insolent person."
To-morrow shall they learn who is the impostor, the insolent.
"For we will send the she-camel to prove them: do thou mark them well, O
Saleh, and be patient:
And foretell them that their waters shall1 be divided between themselves and
her, and that every draught shall come by turns to them."
But they called to their comrade, and he took a knife and ham-strung her.
And how great was my vengeance and my menance!
We sent against them a single shout; and they became like the dry sticks of
the fold-builders.
Easy have we made the Koran for warning–but, is there any one who receives
the warning?
The people of Lot treated his warning as a lie;
But we sent a stone-charged wind against them all, except the family of Lot,
whom at daybreak we delivered,
By our special grace–for thus we reward the thankful.
He, indeed, had warned them of our severity, but of that warning they
doubted.
Even this guess did they demand: therefore we deprived them of sight,
And said, "Taste ye my vengeance and my menace;"
And in the morning a relentless punishment overtook them.
Easy have we made the Koran for warning but, is there any one who receives
the warning?
To the people of Pharaoh also came the threatenings:
All our miracles did they treat as impostures. Therefore seized we them as he
only can seize, who is the Mighty, the Strong.
Are your infidels, O Meccans, better men than these? Is there an exemption
for you in the sacred Books?
Will they say, "We are a host that lend one another aid?"
The host shall be routed, and they shall turn them back.
But, that Hour is their threatened time, and that Hour shall be most severe
and bitter.
Verily, the wicked are sunk in bewilderment and folly.
On that day they shall be dragged into the fire on their faces. "Taste ye the
touch of Hell."
All things have we created after a fixed decree:
Our command was but one word, swift as the twinkling of an eye.
Of old, too, have we destroyed the like of you–yet is any one warned?
And everything that they do is in the Books;2
Each action, both small and great, is written down.
Verily, amid gardens3 and rivers shall the pious dwell.
In the seat of truth, in the presence of the potent King.
_______________________
1 See Sura [lvi.] xxvi. 155; also Sura [lxxxvii.] vii. 71.
2 Kept by the Guardian Angels.
3 The Talmudic descriptions of the Gardens–for the later Jews believed in
more than one Paradise–and of the rivers and trees therein, will be found in
Schr der Talm. Rabb. Judenthum, pp. 418-432.
SURA XXXVII.–THE RANKS [L.]
MECCA.–182 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
By the angels ranged in order for Songs of Praise,
And by those who repel demons,1
And by those who recite the Koran for warning,
Truly your God is but one,
Lord of the Heavens and of the Earth, and of all that is between them, and
Lord of the East.2
We have adorned the lower heaven with the adornment of the stars.
They serve also as a guard against every rebellious Satan,
That they overhear not what passeth in the assembly on high, for they are
darted at from every side,3
Driven off and consigned to a lasting torment;
While, if one steal a word by stealth, a glistening flame pursueth him.
Ask the Meccans then, Are they, or the angels whom we have made, the stronger
creation? Aye, of coarse clay have we created them.
But while thou marvellest they mock;
When they are warned, no warning do they take;
And when they see a sign, they fall to mocking,
And say, "This is no other than clear sorcery:
What! when dead, and turned to dust and bones, shall we indeed be raised?
Our sires also of olden times?"
Say, Yes; and ye shall be covered with disgrace.
For, one blast only, and lo! they shall gaze around them, And shall say, "Oh!
woe to us! this is the day of reckoning; This is the day of decision which ye
gainsaid as an untruth."
Gather together those who have acted unjustly, and their consorts,4 and the
gods whom they adored
Beside God; and guide them to the road for Hell.
Set them forth: they shall be questioned.
"How now, that ye help not one another?"
But on this day they shall submit themselves to God,
And shall address one another with mutual reproaches.
They shall say, "In sooth, ye came to us in well-omened sort:"5
But they will answer, "Nay, it was ye who would not believe; and we had no
power whatever over you. Nay, ye were people given to transgress;
Just, therefore, is the doom which our Lord hath passed upon us.6 We shall
surely taste it:
We made you err, for we had erred ourselves."
Partners therefore shall they be in punishment on that day.
Truly, thus will we deal with the wicked,
Because when it was said to them, There is no God but God, they swelled with
pride,
And said, "Shall we then abandon our gods for a crazed poet?"
Nay, he cometh with truth and confirmeth the Sent Ones of old.
Ye shall surely taste the painful punishment,
And ye shall not be rewarded but as ye have wrought,
Save the sincere servants of God!
A stated banquet shall they have
Of fruits; and honoured shall they be
In the gardens of delight,
Upon couches face to face.
A cup shall be borne round among them from a fountain,
Limpid, delicious to those who drink;
It shall not oppress the sense, nor shall they therewith be drunken.
And with them are the large-eyed ones with modest refraining glances, fair
like the sheltered egg.7
And they shall address one another with mutual questions.
Saith one of them, "I truly had a bosom friend,
Who said, 'Art thou of those who credit it?
What! when we shall have died, and become dust and bones, shall we indeed be
judged?"'
He shall say to those around him, "Will ye look?"
And he shall look and see him in the midst of Hell.
And he shall say to him, "By God, thou hadst almost caused me to perish;
And, but for the favour of my Lord, I had surely been of those who have been
brought with thee into torment."
"But do we not die," say the blessed,
"Any other than our first death? and have we escaped the torment?"8
This truly is the great felicity!
For the like of this should the travailers travail!
Is this the better repast or the tree Ez-zakkoum?
Verily, we have made it for a subject of discord to the wicked.
It is a tree which cometh up from the bottom of hell;
Its fruits is as it were the heads of Satans;
And, lo! the damned shall surely eat of it and fill their bellies with it:
Then shall they have, thereon, a mixture of boiling water:
Then shall they return to hell.
They found their fathers erring,
And they hastened on in their footsteps.
Also before them the greater number of the ancients had erred.
Though we had sent warners among them.
But see what was the end of these warned ones,
Except of God's true servants.
Noah called on us of old, and right prompt were we to hear him,9
And we saved him and his family out of the great distress,
And we made his offspring the survivors;
And we left for him with posterity,
"Peace be on Noah throughout the worlds!"
Thus do we reward the well-doers,
For he was one of our believing servants;–
And the rest we drowned.
And truly, of his faith was Abraham,
When he brought to his Lord a perfect heart,
When he said to his father and to his people, "What is this ye worship?
Prefer ye with falsehood gods to God?
And what deem ye of the Lord of the worlds?"
So gazing he gazed towards the stars,
And said, "In sooth I am ill:10
And they turned their back on him and departed.
He went aside to their gods and said, "Do ye not eat?
What aileth you that ye do not speak?"
He broke out upon them, with the right hand striking:
When his tribesmen came back to him with hasty steps
He said, "Worship ye what ye carve,
When God hath created you, and that ye make?"
They said, "Build up a pyre for him and cast him into the glowing flame."
Fain would they plot against him, but we brought them low.
And he said, "Verily, I repair to my Lord who will guide me:
O Lord give me a son, of the righteous."
We announced to him a youth of meekness.
And when he became a full-grown youth,11
His father said to him, "My son, I have seen in a dream that I should
sacrifice thee; therefore, consider what thou seest right."
He said, "My father, do what thou art bidden; of the patient, if
God please, shalt thou find me."
And when they had surrendered them to the will of God, he laid him down upon
his forehead:
We cried unto him, "O Abraham!
Now hast thou satisfied the vision." See how we recompense the righteous.
This was indeed a decisive test.
And we ransomed his son with a costly12 victim,
And we left this13 for him among posterity,
"PEACE BE ON ABRAHAM!"
Thus do we reward the well-doers,
For he was of our believing servants.
And we announced Isaac to him–a righteous Prophet–
And on him and on Isaac we bestowed our blessing. And among their offspring
were well-doers, and others, to their own hurt undoubted sinners.
And of old,14 to Moses and to Aaron shewed we favours:
And both of them, and their people, we rescued from the great distress:
And we succoured them, and they became the conquerors:
And we gave them (Moses and Aaron) each the lucid book:
And we guided them each into the right way:
And we left this for each among posterity,
"PEACE BE ON MOSES AND AARON."
Thus do we reward the well-doers,
For they were two of our believing servants.
And Elias truly was of our Sent Ones,
When he said to his people, "Fear ye not God?
Invoke ye Baal and forsake ye the most skilful Creator?
God is your Lord, and the Lord of your sires of old?"
But they treated him as a liar, and shall therefore be consigned to
punishment,
Except God's faithful servants.
And we left this for him among posterity,
"PEACE BE ON ELIASIN!"15
Thus do we reward the well-doers,
For he was one of our believing servants.
And Lot truly was of our Sent Ones,
When we rescued him and all his family,
Save an aged woman among those who tarried.
Afterward we destroyed the others.
And ye indeed pass by their ruined dwellings at morn
And night: will ye not then reflect?
Jonas, too, was one of the Apostles,
When he fled unto the laden ship,
And lots were cast,16 and he was doomed,
And the fish swallowed him, for he was blameworthy.
But had he not been of those who praise Us,
In its belly had he surely remained, till the day of resurrection.
And we cast him on the bare shore–and he was sick;–
And we caused a gourd-plant to grow up over him,
And we sent him to a hundred thousand persons, or even more,
And because they believed, we continued their enjoyments for a season.
Inquire then of the Meccans whether thy Lord hath daughters, and they, sons?
Have we created the angels females? and did they witness it?
Is it not a falsehood of their own devising, when they say,
"God hath begotten"? They are indeed liars.
Would he have preferred daughters to sons?
What reason have ye for thus judging?
Will ye not then receive this warning?
Have ye a clear proof for them?
Produce your Book if ye speak truth.
And they make him to be of kin with the Djinn: but the Djinn have long known
that these idolaters shall be brought up before God.
Far be the glory of God from what they impute to him.
"His faithful servants do not thus.
Moreover, ye and what ye worship
Shall not stir up any against God,17
Save him who shall burn in Hell.
And verily each one of us hath his appointed place,
And we range ourselves in order,
And we celebrate His praises."18
And if those infidels say,
"Had we a revelation transmitted to us from those of old,19
We had surely been God's faithful servants."
Yet they believe not the Koran. But they shall know its truth at last.
Our word came of old to our servants the apostles,
That they should surely be the succoured,
And that our armies should procure the victory for them.
Turn aside therefore from them for a time,
And behold them, for they too shall in the end behold their doom.
Would they then hasten our vengeance?
But when it shall come down into their courts, an evil morning shall it be to
those who have had their warning.
Turn aside from them therefore for a time.
And behold; for they too shall in the end behold their doom.
Far be the glory of thy Lord, the Lord of all greatness, from what they
impute to him,
And peace be on his Apostles!
And praise be to God the Lord of the worlds.
_______________________
1 I have given in the text the sense of these first two verses according to
the Muhammadan commentators. The original, literally translated, viz. By the
ranks which rank themselves, and by the repellers who repel, would not convey
an intelligible idea to the English reader. Mar. renders, Per ordinantes
ordinando et agitantes agitando.
2 Ar. Easts. Errat in pluralitate mundorum. Mar. But the allusion probably is
to the different points of the horizon at which the sun rises and sets in the
course of the year.
3 See Sura [lvii.] xv. 18.
4 Or, comrades, i.e. the demons.
5 Lit. on the right hand, the side of good omen i.e. with semblance of truth.
6 See Sura [lx.] xxxvi. 6.
7 The ostrich egg carefully protected from dust.
8 Lit. and are we not among the punished?
9 Lit. et sane euge auditores. Mar.
10 And therefore unable to assist at your sacrifices.
11 Lit. cum igitur pervenisset cum eo ad ‘tatem cui competit operandi
studium. Mar. Beidh. When he had attained to the age when he could work with
him. Lane.
12 Brought, says Rabbi Jehoshua, from Paradise by an angel. Midr. fol.
13 This salutation.
14 The Arabic particle which is here and elsewhere rendered of old (also,
already, certainly) serves to mark the position of a past act or event as
prior to the time present, and in all such passages merely gives a fulness
and intensity to our perfect, or pluperfect tense.
15 The form of this word is altered in the original for the sake of the
rhyme.
16 Lit. he cast lots (with the sailors).
17 Nequequam vos ad illud colendum estis Seducturi. Mar.
18 This verse and the six preceding are the words of the Angel.
19 Compare verse 69.
SURA LXXI.–NOAH [LI.]
MECCA.–29 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
We sent NOAH to his people, and said to him, "Warn thou thy people ere there
come on them an afflictive punishment."
He said, "O my people! I come to you a plain-spoken warner:
Serve God and fear Him, and obey me:
Your sins will He forgive you, and respite you till the fixed Time; for when
God's fixed Time hath come, it shall not be put back. Would that ye knew
this!"
He said, "Lord I have cried to my people night and day; and my cry doth but
make them flee from me the more.
So oft as I cry to them, that thou mayest forgive them, they thrust their
fingers into their ears, and wrap themselves in their garments, and persist
in their error, and are disdainfully disdainful.
Then I cried aloud to them:
Then again spake I with plainness, and in private did I secretly address
them:
And I said, Beg forgiveness of your Lord, for He is ready to forgive.
He will send down the very Heaven upon you in plenteous rains;
And will increase you in wealth and children; and will give you gardens, and
will give you watercourses:–
What hath come to you that ye hope not for goodness from the hand of God?
For He it is who hath formed you by successive steps.1
See ye not how God hath created the seven heavens one over the other?
And He hath placed therein the moon as a light, and hath placed there the sun
as a torch;
And God hath caused you to spring forth from the earth like a plant;
Hereafter will He turn you back into it again, and will bring you forth anew–
And God hath spread the earth for you like a carpet,
That ye may walk therein along spacious paths."'
Said Noah, "O my Lord! they rebel against me, and they follow those whose
riches and children do but aggravate their ruin."
And they plotted a great plot;
And they said, "Forsake not your Gods; forsake not Wadd nor Sowah,
Nor Yaghuth and Yahuk and Nesr;"
And they caused many to err;2–and thou, too, O Muhammad! shalt be the means
of increasing only error in the wicked–
Because of their sins they were drowned, and made to go into the Fire;
And they found that they had no helper save God.
And Noah said, "Lord, leave not one single family of Infidels on the Earth:
For if thou leave them they will beguile thy servants and will beget only
sinners, infidels.
O my Lord, forgive me, and my parents, and every one who, being a believer,
shall enter my house, and believers men and women: and add to the wicked
nought but perdition."
_______________________
1 See Sura xxii. 5.
2 Or, the idols had seduced many. Thus Kas. Beidh. gives both interpp.–See
on these idols Freytag's Einleitung, p. 349.
SURA LXXVI.–MAN [LII.]
MECCA.–31 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Doth not a long time pass over MAN, during which he is a thing unremembered?1
We have created man from the union of the sexes that we might prove him; and
hearing, seeing, have we made him:
In a right way have we guided him, be he thankful or ungrateful.
For the Infidels we have got ready chains and collars and flaming fire.
But a wine cup tempered at the camphor fountain2 the just shall quaff:
Fount whence the servants of God shall drink, and guide by channels from
place to place;
They who fulfilled their vows, and feared the day whose woes will spread far
and wide;
Who though longing for it themselves, bestowed their food on the poor and the
orphan and the captive:
"We feed you for the sake of God: we seek from you neither recompense nor
thanks:3
A stern and calamitous day dread we from our Lord."
From the evil therefore of that day hath God delivered them and cast on them
brightness of face and joy:
And hath rewarded their constancy, with Paradise and silken robes:
Reclining therein on bridal couches, nought shall they know of sun or
piercing cold:
Its shades shall be close over them, and low shall its fruits hang down:
And vessels of silver and goblets like flagons shall be borne round among
them:
Flagons of silver whose measure themselves shall mete.
And there shall they be given to drink of the cup tempered with zendjebil
(ginger)
From the fount therein whose name is Selsebil (the softly flowing).
Aye-blooming youths go round among them. When thou lookest at them thou
wouldest deem them scattered pearls;
And when thou seest this, thou wilt see delights and a vast kingdom:
Their clothing green silk robes and rich brocade: with silver bracelets shall
they be adorned; and drink of a pure beverage shall their Lord give them.
This shall be your recompense. Your efforts shall meet with thanks.
We ourselves have sent down to thee the Koran as a missive from on high.
Await then with patience the judgments of thy Lord, and obey not the wicked
among them and the unbelieving:
And make mention of the name of thy Lord at morn, at even,
And at night. Adore him, and praise him the livelong night.
But these men love the fleeting present, and leave behind them the heavy day
of doom.
Ourselves have we created them, and strengthened their joints; and when we
please, with others like unto themselves will we replace them.
This truly is a warning: And whoso willeth, taketh the way to his Lord;
But will it ye shall not, unless God will it, for God is Knowing, Wise.
He causeth whom He will to enter into his mercy. But for the evil doers, He
hath made ready an afflictive chastisement.
_______________________
1 When in the womb.
2 With (the water of) Kafoor. Lane.
3 Desire no recompense from you.
SURA XLIV.–SMOKE [LIII.]
MECCA.–59 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
Ha. Mim.1 By this clear Book!
See! on a blessed night2 have we sent it down, for we would warn mankind:
On the night wherein all things are disposed in wisdom,3
By virtue of our behest. Lo! we have ever sent forth Apostles,
A mercy from thy Lord: he truly heareth and knoweth all things–
Lord of the Heavens and of the Earth and of all that is between them,–if ye
be firm in faith–
There is no God but He!–He maketh alive and killeth!–Your Lord and the Lord
of your sires of old!
Yet with doubts do they disport them.
But mark them on the day when the Heaven shall give out a palpable SMOKE,
Which shall enshroud mankind: this will be an afflictive torment.
They will cry, "Our Lord! relieve us from this torment: see! we are
believers."
But how did warning avail them, when an undoubted apostle had come to them;
And they turned their backs on him, and said, "Taught by others, possessed?"
Were we to relieve you from the plague even a little, ye would certainly
relapse.4
On the day when we shall fiercely put forth our great fierceness, we will
surely take vengeance on them!
Of old, before their time, had we proved the people of Pharaoh, when a noble
apostle presented himself to them.
"Send away with me," cried he, "the servants of God; for I am an apostle
worthy of all credit:
And exalt not yourselves against God, for I come to you with undoubted power;
And I take refuge with Him who is my Lord and your Lord, that ye stone me
not:
And if ye believe me not, at least separate yourselves from me."
And he cried to his Lord, "That these are a wicked people."
"March forth then, said God, with my servants by night, for ye will be
pursued.
And leave behind you the cleft sea: they are a drowned host."
How many a garden and fountain did they quit!
And corn fields and noble dwellings!
And pleasures in which they rejoiced them!
So was it: and we gave them as a heritage to another people.
Nor Heaven nor Earth wept for them, nor was their sentence respited;
And we rescued the children of Israel from a degrading affliction–
From Pharaoh, for he was haughty, given to excess.
And we chose them, in our prescience, above all peoples,5
And we shewed them miracles wherein was their clear trial.
Yet these infidels say,
"There is but our first death, neither shall we be raised again:
Bring back our sires, if ye be men of truth."
Are they better than the people of Tobba,6
And those who flourished before them whom we destroyed for their evil deeds?
We have not created the Heavens and the Earth and whatever is between them in
sport:
We have not created them but for a serious end:7 but the greater part of them
understand it not.
Verily the day of severing8 shall be the appointed time of all:
A day when the master shall not at all be aided by the servant, neither shall
they be helped;
Save those on whom God shall have mercy: for He is the mighty, the merciful.
Verily the tree of Ez-Zakkoum9
Shall be the sinner's10 food:
Like dregs of oil shall it boil up in their bellies,
Like the boiling of scalding water.
"–Seize ye him, and drag him into the mid-fire;
Then pour on his head of the tormenting boiling water.
–'Taste this:' for thou forsooth art the mighty, the honourable!
Lo! this is that of which ye doubted."
But the pious shall be in a secure place,
Amid gardens and fountains,
Clothed in silk and richest robes, facing one another:
Thus shall it be: and we will wed them to the virgins with large dark eyes:
Therein shall they call, secure, for every kind of fruit;
Therein, their first death passed, shall they taste death no more; and He
shall keep them from the pains of Hell:–
'Tis the gracious bounty of thy Lord! This is the great felicity.
We have made this Koran easy for thee in thine own tongue, that they may take
the warning.
Therefore wait thou, for they are waiting.11
_______________________
1 See Sura lxviii. I, p. 32.
2 Of the 23rd and 24th of Ramadhan, in which, according to the Muslim creed,
all the events of the year subsequent are arranged. See Sura xcvii. n. 2, p.
27.
3 Lit. We settle each wise affair–called wise, because proceeding direct from
the will of Him who is absolute wisdom.
4 Beidh, and others suppose this verse to have been revealed at Medina. This
opinion, however, is based upon the supposition that it refers to the famine
with which Mecca was visited after the Hejira.
5 Comp. Ex. xx. 20; Deut. viii. 16.
6 Tobba, i.e. Chalif or successor, is the title of the Kings of Yemen; or of
Hadramont, Saba, and Hamyar.–See Pocock, Spec. Hist. Ar. p. 60.
7 Lit. in truth.
8 That is, Of the good from the bad.
9 See Sura xxxvii. 60, p. 81.
10 The commentators suppose this sinner to be Abu Jahl, one of the chief of
the Koreisch, and the bitter enemy of Muhammad.
11 To see the turn which events may take.
SURA L.–KAF [LIV.]
MECCA.–45 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.
Kaf1. By the glorious Koran:
They marvel forsooth that one of themselves hath come to them charged with
warnings. "This," say the infidels, "is a marvellous thing:
What! when dead and turned to dust shall we. . . .? Far off is such a return
as this?"
Now know we what the earth consumeth of them, and with us is a Book in which
account is kept.
But they have treated the truth which hath come to them as falsehood;
perplexed therefore is their state.
Will they not look up to the heaven above them, and consider how we have
reared it and decked it forth, and that there are no flaws therein?
And as to the earth, we have spread it out, and have thrown the mountains
upon it, and have caused an upgrowth in it of all beauteous kinds of plants,
For insight and admonition to every servant who loveth to turn to God:
And we send down the rain from Heaven with its blessings, by which we cause
gardens to spring forth and the grain of harvest,
And the tall palm trees with date-bearing branches one above the other
For man's nourishment: And life give we thereby to a dead country. So also
shall be the resurrection.
Ere the days of these (Meccans) the people of Noah, and the men of Rass2 and
Themoud, treated their prophets as impostors:
And Ad and Pharaoh, and the brethren of Lot and the dwellers in the forest,
and the people of Tobba,3 all gave the lie to their prophets: justly,
therefore, were the menaces inflicted.
Are we wearied out with the first creation? Yet are they in doubt with regard
to a new creation!4
We created man: and we know what his soul whispereth to him, and we are
closer to him than his neck-vein.
When the two angels charged with taking account shall take it, one sitting on
the right hand, the other on the left:
Not a word doth he utter, but there is a watcher with him ready to note it
down:
And the stupor of certain death cometh upon him: "This is what thou wouldst
have shunned"–
And there shall be a blast on the trumpet,–it is the threatened day!
And every soul shall come,–an angel with it urging it along, and an angel to
witness against it5–
Saith he, "Of this day didst thou live in heedlessness: but we have taken off
thy veil from thee, and thy sight is becoming sharp this day."
And he who is at this side6 shall say, "This is what I am prepared with
against thee."
And God will say, "Cast into Hell, ye twain, every infidel, every hardened
one,
The hinderer of the good, the transgressor, the doubter,
Who set up other gods with God. Cast ye him into the fierce torment."
He who is at his side shall say, "O our Lord! I led him not astray, yet was
he in an error wide of truth."
He shall say, "Wrangle not in my presence. I had plied you beforehand with
menaces:
My doom changeth not, and I am not unjust to man."
On that day will we cry to Hell, "Art thou full?" And it shall say, "Are
there more?"7
And not far from thence shall Paradise be brought near unto the Pious:
– "This is what ye have been promised: to every one who hath turned in
penitence to God and kept his laws;
Who hath feared the God of Mercy in secret, and come to him with a contrite
heart:
Enter it in peace: this is the day of Eternity."
There shall they have all that they can desire: and our's will it be to
augment their bliss:
And how many generations have we destroyed ere the days of these (Meccans),
mightier than they in strength! Search ye then the land. Is there any escape?
Lo! herein is warning for him who hath a heart, or giveth ear, and is himself
an eye-witness.8
We created the heavens and the earth and all that is between them in six
days, and no weariness touched us.9
Wherefore put up with what they say, and celebrate the praise of thy Lord
before sunrise and before sunset:
And praise Him in the night: and perform the two final prostrations.
And list for the day whereon the crier shall cry from a place near to every
one alike:
The day on which men shall in truth hear that shout will be the day of their
coming forth from the grave.
Verily, we cause to live, and we cause to die. To us shall all return.
On the day when the earth shall swiftly cleave asunder over the dead, will
this gathering be easy to Us.
We know best what the infidels say: and thou art not to compel them.
Warn then by the Koran those who fear my menace.
_______________________
1 See Sura lxviii. I, p. 32.
2 See [lxvi.] xxv. 40.
3 See xliv. 36, p. 90.
4 The Resurrection.
5 Lit. a driver and a witness.
6 The Satan who is chained to him. Sura [lxxi.] xli. 24.
7 Lit. is there any addition? which some explain as if Hell enquired whether,
being already full, any addition could be made to its size. Comp. Prov. xxx.
15, and Othioth Derabbi Akiba, 8, 1: "That the Prince of Hell saith daily,
Give me food enough, is clear from what is said (Is. v. 14). Therefore Shaol
hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure, etc."
8 That is, of the ruins of the destroyed cities, etc.
9 This verse is said (by Omar b. Muhammad, Itq. 36, Djelal Eddin, ap. Maracc.
and Beidh.) to have been revealed in answer to the Jews who told the Prophet
that if God rested on the Sabbath, it was because he was weary. But a
connection with verse 14 seems more natural.
SURA XX.1–TA. HA. [LV.]
MECCA.–135 Verses
In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
TA. HA.2 Not to sadden thee have we sent down this Koran to thee,
But as a warning for him who feareth;
It is a missive from Him who hath made the earth and the lofty heavens!
The God of Mercy sitteth on his throne:
His, whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth, and
whatsoever is between them both, and whatsoever is beneath the humid soil!
Thou needest not raise thy voice:3 for He knoweth the secret whisper, and the
yet more hidden.
God! There is no God but He! Most excellent His titles!
Hath the history of Moses reached thee?
When he saw a fire, and said to his family, "Tarry ye here, for I perceive a
fire:
Haply I may bring you a brand from it, or find at the fire a guide."4
And when he came to it, he was called to, "O Moses!
Verily, I am thy Lord:. therefore pull off thy shoes: for thou art in the
holy valley of Towa.
And I have chosen thee: hearken then to what shall be revealed.
Verily, I am God: there is no God but me: therefore worship me, and observe
prayer for a remembrance of me.
Verily the hour is coming:–I all but manifest it–
That every soul may be recompensed for its labours.
Nor let him who believeth not therein and followeth his lust, turn thee aside
from this truth, and thou perish.
Now, what is that in thy right hand, O Moses?"
Said he, "It is my staff on which I lean, and with which I beast down leaves
for my sheep, and I have other uses for it."
He said, "Cast it down, O Moses!"
So he cast it down, and lo! it became a serpent that ran along.
He said, "Lay hold on it, and fear not: to its former state will we restore
it."
"Now place thy right hand to thy arm-pit: it shall come forth white, but
unhurt:–another sign!–
That We may shew thee the greatest of our signs.
Go to Pharaoh, for he hath burst all bounds."
He said, "O my Lord! enlarge my breast for me,
And make my work easy for me,
And loose the knot of my tongue,5
That they may understand my speech.
And give me a counsellor6 from among my family,
Aaron my brother;
By him gird up my loins,7
And make him a colleague in my work,
That we may praise thee oft and oft remember thee,
For thou regardest us."
He said, "O Moses, thou hast obtained thy suit:
Already, at another time, have we showed thee favour,
When we spake unto thy mother what was spoken:
'Cast him into the ark:8 then cast him on the sea [the river], and the sea
shall throw him on the shore: and an enemy to me and an enemy to him shall
take him up.' And I myself have made thee an object of love,
That thou mightest be reared in mine eye.
When thy sister went and said, 'Shall I shew you one who will nurse him?'9
Then We returned thee to thy mother that her eye might be cheered, and that
she might not grieve. And when thou slewest a person, We delivered thee from
trouble, and We tried thee with other trial.
For years didst thou stay among the people of Midian; then camest thou hither
by my decree, O Moses:
And I have chosen thee for Myself.
Go thou and thy brother with my signs and be not slack to remember me.
Go ye to Pharaoh, for he hath burst all bounds:
But speak ye to him with gentle speech; haply he will reflect or fear."
They said, "O our Lord! truly we fear lest he break forth against us, or act
with exceeding injustice."
He said, "Fear ye not, for I am with you both. I will hearken and I will
behold.
Go ye then to him and say, 'Verily we are Sent ones of thy Lord; send
therefore the children of Israel with us and vex them not: now are we come to
thee with signs from thy Lord, and, Peace shall be on him who followeth the
right guidance.
For now hath it been revealed to us, that chastisement shall be on him who
chargeth with falsehood, and turneth him away."'
And he said, "Who is your Lord, O Moses?"
He said, "Our Lord is He who hath given to everything its form and then
guideth it aright."
"But what," said he, "was the state of
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