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the emperor Justinian.' A parent who drags CHAP. his son to the altar, exhibits the most painful and sublime effort of fanaticism: the deed, or the intention, was sanctified by the example of saints and heroes: and the father of Mahomet himself was devoted by a rash vow, and hardly ransomed for the equivalent of an hundred camels. In the time of ignorance, the Arabs, like the Jews and Egyptians, abstained from the taste of swine's flesh; they circumcised* their children at the age of puberty: the same customs, without the censure or the precept of the Koran, have been silently transmitted to their posterity and proselytes. It has been sagaciously conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen. It is more simple to believe that he adhered to the habits and opinions of his youth, without foreseeing that a practice congenial to the climate of Mecca, might become useless or inconvenient on the banks of the Danube or the Volga.

Procopius (de Bell. Persico, 1. i, c. 28;) Evagrius (1. vi, c. 21) and Pocock (Specimen, p. 72, 86), attest the human sacrifices of the Arabs in the vith century. The danger and escape of Abdallah, is a tradition rather than a fact, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i, P. 82 84).

Suillis carnibus abstinent, says Solinus, (Polyhistor. c. 33), who copies Pliny, (1. viii, c. 68), in the strange supposition, that hogs cannot live in Arabia. The Egyptians were actuated by a natural superstitious horror for that unclean beast, (Marsham, Canon. p. 205). The old Arabians likewise practised, post coitum, the rite of ablution, (Herodot. 1. i, c. 80), which is sanctified by the Mahometan law, (Reland p. 75, &c. Chardin, or rather the Mollah of Shaw Abbas, tom. iv, p. 71, &c.)

The Mahometan doctors are not fond of the subject; yet they hold circumcision necessary to salvation, and even pretend that Mahomet was miraculously born without a foreskin, (Pocock Specimen, p. 319, 320 Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 106, 107).

CHAP.
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Introduc

Sabians.

Arabia was free: the adjacent kingdoms were shaken by the storms of conquest and tyranny, and the persecuted sects fled to the happy land tion of the where they might profess what they thought, and practise what they professed. The religions of the Sabians and Magians, of the Jews and Christians, were disseminated from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. In a remote period of antiquity, Sabianism was diffused over Asia by the science of the Chaldeans' and the arms of the Assyrians. From the observations of two thousand years, the priests and astronomers of Babylon' deduced the eternal laws of nature and providence. They adored the seven gods or angels who directed the course of the seven planets, and shed their irresistible influence on the earth. The attributes of the seven planets, with the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the twenty-four constellations of the northern and southern hemisphere, were represented by images and talismans; the seven days of the week were dedicated to their respective deities; the Sabians prayed thrice each day; and the temple of the moon at Haran was the term

i Diodorus Siculus (tom. i, 1. ii, p, 142, 145) has cast on their religion the curious but superficial glance of a Greek. Their astronomy would be far more valuable: they had looked through the telescope of reason, since they could doubt whether the sun were in the number of the planets or of the fixed stars.

k Simplicius (who quotes Porphory) de Cælo. 1. ii, com. xlvi, p. 123, lin. 19, apud Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 474, who doubts the fact, because it is adverse to his systems. The earliest date of the Chaldean observations is the year 2334 before Christ. After the conquest of Babylon by Alexander, they were communicated, at the request of Aristotle, to the astronomer Hipparchus. What a moment in the annals of science!

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of their pilgrimage. But the flexible genius of CHAP. their faith was always ready either to teach or to learn in the tradition of the creation, the deluge, and the patriarchs, they held a singular agreement with their Jewish captives; they appealed to the secret books of Adam, Seth, and Enoch; and a slight infusion of the gospel has transformed the last remnant of the Polytheists into the Christians of St. John, in the territory

m

of Bassora. The altars of Babylon were over- The Maturned by the Magians; but the injuries of the gians, Sabians were revenged by the sword of Alexander; Persia groaned above five hundred years under a foreign yoke; and the purest disciples of Zoroaster escaped from the contagion of idolatry, and breathed with their adversaries the freedom of the desert." Seven hundred years The Jews. before the death of Mahomet, the Jews were settled in Arabia: and a far greater multitude was expelled from the holy land in the wars of Titus and Hadrian. The industrious exiles aspired to liberty and power; they erected synagogues in the cities and castles in the wilderness, and their gentile converts were con

1 Pocock, (Specimen p. 138-146); Hottinger, (Hist. Oriental. p. 162203); Hyde, (de Religione Vet. Persarum, p. 124, 128, &c.) ; d'Herbelot, (Sabi, p. 725, 726), and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 14, 15), rather excite than gratify our curiosity; and the last of these writers confounds Sabianism with the primitive religion of the Arabs.

m D'Anville (l'Euphrates de le Tigre, p. 130-147) will fix the position of these ambiguous Christians; Assemannus (Bibliot. Oriental. tom. iv, p. 607-614) may explain their tenets. But it is a slippery task to ascertain the creed of an ignorant people, afraid and ashamed to disclose their secret traditions.

"The magi were fixed in the province of Bahrein, (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. iii, p. 114), and mingled with the old Arabians, (Pocock, Specimen, p. 146-150).

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The Christians.

CHAP. founded with the children of Israel, whom they resembled in the outward mark of circumci sion. The Christian missionaries were still more active and successful: the catholics asserted their universal reign; the sects whom they oppressed successively retired beyond the limits of the Roman empire; the Marcionites and the Manichæ ans dispersed their phantastic opinions and apocryphal gospels; the churches of Yemen, and the princes of Hira and Gassan, were instructed in a purer creed by the Jacobite and Nestorian bishops. The liberty of choice was presented to the tribes: each Arab was free to elect or to compose his private religion: and the rude superstition of his house was mingled with the sublime theology of saints and philosophers. A fundamental article of faith was inculcated by the consent of the learned strangers; the existence of one supreme God, who is exalted above the powers of heaven and earth, but who has often revealed himself to mankind by the ministry of his angels and prophets, and whose grace or justice has interrupted, by seasonable miracles, the order of nature. The most rational of the Arabs acknowledged his power, though they neglected his worship; and it was habit rather than conviction that still at

The state of the Jews and Christians in Arabia is described by Pocock from Sharestani, &c. (Specimen, p. 60, 134, &c.); Hottinger, (Hist. Orient. p. 212-238); d'Herbelot, (Bibliot. Orient. p. 474-476); Basnange, (Hist. des Juifs, tom. vii, p. 185; tom. viii, p. 280), and Sale, (Preliminary Discourse, p. 22, &c. 33, &c.).

In their offerings, it was a maxim to defraud God for the profit of the idol, not a more potent, but a more irritable, patron, (Pocock, Specimeu, p. 108, 109).,

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tached them to the relics of idolatry. The CHAP. Jews and Christians were the people of the book; the bible was already translated into the Arabic language; and the volume of the old testament was accepted by the concord of these implacable enemies. In the story of the Hebrew patriarchs, the Arabs were pleased to discover the fathers of their nation. They applauded the birth and promises of Ismael; revered the faith and virtue of Abraham; traced his pedigree and their own to the creation of the first man, and imbibed, with equal credulity, the prodigies of the holy text, and the dreams and traditions of the Jewish rabbis.

education

569-609.

The base and plebeian origin of Mahomet is Birth and an unskilful calumny of the Christians," who ex- of Mahoalt instead of degrading the merit of their ad- met, A. D. versary. His descent from Ismael was a na tional privilege or fable; but if the first steps of the pedigree are dark and doubtful, he could

Our versions now extant, whether Jewish or Christian, appear more recent than the Koran; but the existence of a prior translation may be fairly inferred,-1. From the perpetual practice of the synagogue, of expounding the Hebrew lesson by a paraphrase in the vulgar tongue of the country. 2. From the analogy of the Armenian, Persian, Ethiopic versions, expressly quoted by the fathers of the fifth century, who assert that the Scriptures were translated into all the barbaric languages, (Walton, Prolegomena ad Biblia Polygot. p. 34, 93-97. Simon, Hist. Critique du V. et du N. Testament, tom. i, p. 180, 181, 282-286, 293, 305, 306; tom. iv, p. 206).

In eo conveniunt omnes ut plebeio vilique genere ortum, &c. (Hottinger, Hist. Orient, p. 136). Yet Theophanes, the most ancient of the Greeks, and the father of many a lie, confesses that Mahomet was of the race of Ismael, ex μaç YeVIXWTATNG QUANG (Chronograph. p. 277). * Abulfeda (m Vit. Mohammed. c. i, 2) and Gagnier (Vie de Mahomet, p. 25-97) describe the popular and approved genealogy of the prophet. At Mecca, I would not dispute its authenticity: at Lausanne, I will venture to observe, 1. That from Ismael to Mabomet, a period