INTERCHAPTER IX.

AN ILLUSTRATION FOR THE ASSISTANCE OF THE COM

MENTATORS DRAWN FROM THE HISTORY OF THE KORAN. REMARKS WHICH ARE NOT INTENDED FOR

MUSSELMEN, AND WHICH THE MISSIONARIES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN ARE ADVISED NOT TO TRANS

LATE.

You will excuse me if I do not strictly confine myself to narration, but now and then intersperse such reflections as may offer while I am writing. JOHN NEWTON.

BUT the most illustrious exemplification of the difficulty with the Doctorean or Dovean commentators will experience in settling the chronology of these chapters, is to be found in the history of the Koran.

Mahommedan Doctors are agreed that the first part or parcel of their sacred book which was revealed to the Prophet, consisted of what now stands as the first five verses of the ninetysixth chapter; and that the chapter which ought

to be the last of the whole hundred and fourteen, because it was the last which Mahommed delivered, is placed as the ninth in order.

The manner in which the book was originally produced and afterwards put together explains how this happened.

Whenever the Impostor found it convenient to issue a portion, one of his disciples wrote it, from his dictation, either upon palm-leaves or parchment, and these were put promiscuously into a chest. After his death Abubeker collected them into a volume, but with so little regard to any principle of order or connection, that the only rule which he is supposed to have followed was that of placing the longest chapters first.

Upon this M. Savary remarks, ce bouleversement dans un ouvrage qui est un recueil de préceptes donnés dans différens temps et dont les premiers sont souvent abrogés par les suivans, y a jetté la plus grand confusion. On ne doit donc y chercher ni ordre ni suite. And yet one of the chapters opens with the assertion that "a judicious order reigns in this book,"—according to Savary's version, which here follows those com

mentators who prefer this among the five interpretations which the words may bear.

Abubeker no doubt was of opinion that it was impossible to put the book together in any way that could detract from its value and its use. If he were, as there is every reason to think, a true believer, he would infer that the same divine power which revealed it piece-meal would preside over the arrangement, and that the earthly copy would thus miraculously be made a faithful transcript of the eternal and uncreated original.

If, on the other hand, he had been as audacious a knave as his son-in-law, the false prophet himself, he would have come with equal certainty to the same conclusion by a different process: for he would have known that if the separate portions, when they were taken out of the chest, had been shuffled and dealt like a pack of cards, they would have been just as well assorted as it was possible to assort them.

A north-country dame in days of old economy, when the tailor worked for women as well as men, delivered one of her nether garments to a

professor of the sartorial art with these directions:

"Here Talleor, tak this petcut; thoo mun bin' me't, and thoo mun tap-bin' me't; thoo mun turn it rangsid afoor, tapsid bottom, insid oot: thoo can do't, thoo mun do't, and thoo mun do't speedly."-Neither Bonaparte nor Wellington ever gave their orders on the field of battle with more precision, or more emphatic and authoritative conciseness.

Less contrivance was required for editing the Koran, than for renovating this petticoat: The Commander of the Faithful had only to stitch it together and bin' me't.

The fable is no doubt later than Abubeker's time that the first transcript of this book from its eternal and uncreated original in the very essence of the Deity, is on the Preserved Table, fast by the throne of God; on which Table all the divine decrees of things past, passing and to come are recorded. The size of the Table may be estimated by that of the Pen wherewith these things were written on it. The Great Pen was one of the first three created things; it is in length, five hun

dred years' journey, and in breadth, eighty; and I suppose the rate of an Angel's travelling is intended, which considerably exceeds that of a rail-road, a race-horse, or a carrier-pigeon. A copy of the Koran, transcribed upon some celestial material from this original on the Preserved Table, bound in silk, and ornamented with gold and set with precious stones from Paradise, was shown to the Prophet by the Angel Gabriel, once a year, for his consolation, and twice during the last year of his life.

Far later is the legend transmitted by the Spanish Moor, Mahomet Rabadan, that Othman arranged the fragments and copied them in the Prophet's life-time; and that when this transcript was compleated Gabriel presented the Prophet with another copy of the whole, written by his own arch-angelic hand in heaven, whereby the greatest honour and most perfect satisfaction that could be given to man were imparted, and the most conclusive proof afforded of the fidelity with which Othman had executed his holy task. For when his copy was collated with the Angel's it was found to be so exact," that not the least

VOL. III.