most part, merely expeditions undertaken for the purpose of reducing the petty tribes who still resisted his authority; and were all of them eventually successful. The influence and religion of Mahomet continued rapidly to extend: his difficulties were over; and the hour of his prosperity has nothing to instruct or to amuse the general reader. Between the taking of Mecca and the period of his death, not more than three years elapsed. In that short period he had destroyed the idols of Arabia; had extended his conquests to the borders of the Greek and Persian empires; had rendered his name formidable to those once mighty kingdoms; had tried his arms against the disciplined troops of the former, and defeated them in a desperate encounter at Muta. His throne was now firmly established, and an impetus given to the Arabian nations, that in a few years induced them to invade, and enabled them to subdue, a great portion of the globe. India, Persia, the Greek empire, the whole of Asia Minor, Egypt, Barbary, and Spain, were reduced by their victorious arms. And although Mahomet did not live to see such mighty conquests, he laid the first foundations of this wide-spreading dominion, and established over the whole of Arabia, and some parts of Syria, the religion he had founded.

One year before the taking of Mecca, Mahomet had been poisoned by a Jewish female at Chaibar. From the effects of this poison he is supposed never afterwards to have recovered. Day by day he visibly declined, and at the end of four years after that event, and in the sixty-third year* of his age, it was evident that his life was hastening to a close. Some time previous, he was conscious of the approach of death, and met it with firmness and composure. Till within three days of his end, he regularly performed the service of his church, and preached to his people. "If there be any man,' said the prophet from the pulpit, whom I have unjustly scourged, I submit my own back to the lash of retaliation. Have I aspersed the reputation of any Mussulman? let him proclaim my faults in the face of the congregation. Has any one been despoiled of his goods? the little which I possess shall compensate the interest and principal of the debt.' Yes,' replied a voice from the crowd, I am entitled

Abulpharagius, Pocock's trans., p. 13.

to three dramchs of silver. Mahomet heard the complaint, satisfied the demand, and thanked his creditor that he had accused him in this world rather than at the day of judgment." He enfranchised his slaves, and quietly awaited the approach of death. The violence of his fever, however, rendered him delirious, and during one of his paroxysms he demanded pen and ink, to compose or dictate a divine book. Omar, who was watching his dying moments, refused his request, lest the expiring prophet might dictate anything that should supersede the Koran. The traditions of his wives and companions relate that at the hour of his death he maintained the same character he had borne through life. He declared that Gabriel visited him, and respectfully asked permission to separate his soul from his body. The prophet granted his request, and the agonies of death came upon him. The blooming Ayesha, the best beloved of his wives, hung tenderly over her expiring husband; her knee sustained his drooping head as he lay stretched upon the floor; she watched with trembling anxiety his changing countenance, and heard the last broken sounds of his voice. Recovering from a swoon, into which the agony of his pains had thrown him, with a calm and steady gaze, he raised his eyes to heaven, but with faltering accents exclaimed,-" O! God, pardon my sins. Yes, I come among my fellow labourers on high." He then sprinkled his face with water, and quietly expired. At Medina, in the very chamber where he breathed his last, the piety of his votaries deposited his remains, and erected over them a simple and unadorned monument. Medina, on account of the precious relics of the prophet, has become sacred in the eyes of all Moslem nations, and holds the second place among the cities of the earth. And the pious pilgrim on his way to Mecca increases the worth of his pilgrimage if he turn aside to visit also the city which contains the ashes of Mahomet.

SECT. IV. With the succeeding revolutions of the Arabian empire our

present purpose has no connexion. Our task is finished at the death of Mahomet, and all that now remains for us to perform is to estimate his character. Mahomet found his countrymen living under certain institutions, following a certain code of morals and of law, and professing a certain rude religion. These institutions, through his instrumentality, all underwent a material alteration. Did he by this alteration improve the situation of his countrymen? and if so, to what extent did he improve it? These are the questions by which his worth must be judged; and they can be fully and fairly answered, only when we have carefully examined the institutions he framed as they severally regard the government, the laws, the religion, the morals and the manners of his countrymen. By summing up his excellencies and defects in each and all of these departments, we shall alone be able to estimate the public character of the man. His private character must be judged by his adherence to those rules of morality which his people adopted, and which his own judgment afterwards approved.

The government of his country Mahomet left as faulty as he found it. Previous to his mission the people had been subject to the sway of powerful nobles, whose dominion was uncontrolled either by established forms of government, or by established laws. The petty despotisms of the nobles were by Mahomet united under one head; but the rude mind of the barbarian was unable to conceive any other means of governing his distant provinces than to delegate his own despotic power to the governors he appointed to rule over them. The separate provinces, therefore, though they now owed obedience to one and the same distant monarch, were, nevertheless, ruled as before, each by its own petty despot. Supported by the authority of a mighty empire, and influenced in his private manners, in his expenditure and in his public conduct, by the example of his sublime original, the petty tyrant lost no particle of his mischievousness; oppression, as before, was the lot of the unfortunate multitude*.

That Mahomet established no other

A more abominable race of governors never existed than the lieutenants of the Caliphs, who suc

ceeded Mahomet. A history of their cruelties may be found in Ockley's Hist. of the Saracens, vol. ii. reign of Moawiyah 1.

form of administration than the usual despotism of oriental nations, even for the central government, need not excite our astonishment. For although superior to his countrymen in the qualifications requisite to lead and impose upon a barbarous people, he was possessed of little really useful knowledge. He had just arrived at that degree of knowledge which renders a man sensible of the necessity of some government; of some person to lead the armies of his nation in war, and to adjudge their differences in peace; beyond this he had made no advance. He knew not that the same circumstances which render a governor necessary, create also a necessity that some securities should exist against the abuse of power by the governor himself. If he was thus ignorant, his merits as a legislator were of the lowest description; if he were not, he was culpably indifferent.

The glare and pomp of constant victory, and wide-spreading conquests, are too often able to attract the admiration, and to disturb the judgment of the historian. Whenever a nation has been induced to unite its energies, and to direct them to the annoyance and destruction of its neighbours, it is usually thought that its government has of necessity been improved, and its people rendered happy and prosperous. To him, however, who will coolly investi gate the causes of a nation's prosperity, war, in every shape, must appear the most tremendous of human miseries. The happiness of a people depends upon means of enjoyment, which, in by far the greater number of cases, are the produce of industry: industry employed in deriving from the soil the productions of nature, and fashioning them for use according to our several wants and desires. But the devastations of war disturb the peaceful vocations of the industrious artisan and agriculturist; its expenses swallow up the produce of their labour; that which ought to be employed in reproduction is thrown away in the maintenance of armies; and while the glory of the nation is increased, while the wreath of victory is, by vulgar admiration, placed upon the brows of its warriors, the people are reduced to starving and the triumphs of the successful general are purchased by the admired the mighty conquests of the misery of millions. Those who have Arab prophet have seldom been at the

pains to learn whether the people of Arabia were made happy by those conquests, or whether the nations subdued by his victorious arms had their welfare increased by having their fields overrun, and their towns destroyed by his ferocious followers. What is usually termed the increased national greatness of Arabia, that is, its increased power of subduing and destroying its neighbours, entitles Mahomet to no respect.

KORAN.

The Koran must be considered as the code of laws, religion, and morality, which Mahomet, in his character of legislator, promulgated to the people of Arabia. It contains almost every thing he left behind him in the shape of precept and instruction; and such as it is, was supposed by him, and is still thought by his followers, to comprise all the information that is requisite for the happiness of mankind. "It must be remarked, that, as the Alcoran is among the Mussulmans the only book of law, it consequently comprehends all their civil, and, to speak according to our own phraseology, all their canon law. And as it comprehends also the truths which they ought to believe, it follows that a doctor in the law is, according to them, a doctor in theology, and that the two professions of law and theology are amongst them inseparable.

"This law, upon which is founded all the theology and all the jurisprudence of the Mussulmans, is then comprised in the Koran, in the same manner that the law of the Jews is comprised in the Five Books of Moses "."

When Mahomet first laid claim to divine inspiration, he cunningly contrived to obtain in reality the power of making laws. In name, indeed, he was but the instrument by which the divine decrees were made known to the world. He informed his followers, and they believed him, that in the seventh heaven there had been from everlasting a large table, called the preserved table, on which were recorded the commands of the Almighty. From this table a copy had been taken, and conveyed by the angel Gabriel to the lowest heaven, on the night of the divine decree. From this copy, as Mahomet's necessities required, fragments were conveyed by inspiration to the prophet, and by him were announced to his followers. As

• D'Herbelot, Bib. Orient. mot FEK.

might have been expected, they were connected intimately with Mahomet's immediate interests; were composed for the momentary service; they assumed no regular form; and possessed few of the requisites to a complete and accurate body of laws. These fragments, as we have before stated, were, by the succeeding caliphs, collected into one volume, in the form of the present Koran.

The whole is divided into one hundred and fourteen portions, which may properly be termed chapters; and these again into smaller divisions, which may with equal propriety be called verses.

There is not the slightest approximation to any thing like design or method in either the larger or the smaller divisions. Neither the time at which they were revealed, nor the matter they contain, was the rule by which they were arranged; they were, in fact, thrown together without order or meaning. The divisions of the chapters also are equally faulty. One verse has seldom any connexion with the preceding; and the same subject is in no case continued for a dozen verses in succession: each one appears an isolated precept or exclamation; the tendency of which it is difficult, the pertinence impossible, to discover.

The first nine titles will convey to the reader a fair conception of the skill in arrangement and nomenclature manifested by the prophet's followers.

1. The Preface. 2. The Cow. 3. The Family of Iram. 4. Women. 5. Table. 6. Cattle. 7. Al Araf. 8. The Spoils. 9. The Declaration of Immunity.

No

The language of the book, if we may judge by the translations we possess, is by no means superior to its arrangement. The Arabians themselves declare it to be beyond competition. thing inferior to the divinity, say they, could have composed such magnificent sentences. Mahomet himself was so convinced of the beauty of his style, that he boldly advanced its perfection as the most striking proof of the authenticity of his mission. "The Koranists, or persons attached to the Koran, find nothing eloquent or excellent out of the Book. They assert that Lebid, one of the most famous poets of the Arabs, became a convert upon the reading of three or four verses of the second chapter, which he believed inimitable in their style. These Koranists are great enemies to the philosophers, par

ticularly to metaphysicians and schoolmen. They condemn both Averroes and Avicenna, the two greatest ornaments of Moslemism; and also Plato and Aristotle." We suspect, however, that the Arabians are as ignorant of style as of method. Rhapsody is in no place less desirable than in a body of laws. The expression of a law should be precise, clear, complete, and brief. It would be difficult to discover any of these qualities in any portion of the Koran. To an Arabian ear the language may probably possess beauties that none but an Arabian can feel. But these delicate graces of style, though, in poetry, of infinite importance, are of secondary, perhaps, no importance whatever in a book of laws. It is more than probable, also, that even these graces are exaggerated, and that fashion makes an Arabian pretend to feel beauties which in reality he never discovered.

RELIGION.

One thing it will be necessary to premise respecting the standard to which we intend to refer the religion of the impostor. The religion of Mahomet, unfortunately for the largest portion of the human race, was not the TRUE RELIGION. As a means of salvation, therefore, it is worse than useless: we know too well that it cannot save men hereafter, we need only inquire if it can possibly make them happier in this life. On examining the precepts of the Koran, we are astonished how little was either added to or altered by Mahomet in the ancient belief and institutions of the Arabs; and, moreover, we cannot but feel sensible that these alterations and additions were scarcely, if at all, for the better. The religion of Mahomet, as contra-distinguished from that of his countrymen, was marked by three peculiarities the first was, that he established the worship of a single God; the next, that he set himself up for his inspired minister; the third, that he commanded his followers to propagate their belief by the sword. The first of these, viewed in conjunction with his other doctrines, was little more than a nominal improvement, the two last evidently mischievous.

The wild Indian, who, in the sun, fancies he beholds the sole governor of the universe, and to him alone pays his

D'Herbelot, mot ALCORAN, p. 81.

adoration, believes evidently in a single god; but no one can say that he believes in the only true God. His god is a phantasy, and may be a terrible phantasy. The ignorant savage may fancy him a being endowed, not with mild and merciful, but malignant and revengeful qualities. If to this savage there should come some eloquent but half-instructed philanthropist, who should teach him that, instead of one such terrible Divi, nity, there were two, whose pleasure was creating happiness not misery; who, in their beneficent solicitude, fashioned this wonderful universe, in order to enjoy the spectacle of a world of happy creatures; can we believe that the religion of the savage would not be improved, though now he should offer up his orisons to two divinities instead of one? Mahomet, in circumscribing the number of the Arabian gods, altered not their character. He left them as he found them -easily irritated, with difficulty appeased; revengeful and capricious; to be propitiated rather by ceremonies than by virtuous actions; more interested in the proper cut of a votary's nails, or in the regular prostrations of his body, than in the happiness he enjoyed himself, or in the conduct he pursued towards others. There were seven things in which the faithful Mussulman was to believe; four things which he was to perform, only one of which was connected with the temporal welfare of himself or his fellows.

1. He was to believe in Mahomet's God; 2. in Mahomet as his prophet; 3. in his angels; 4. in his scriptures; 5. in his prophets; 6. in the resurrection and day of judgment; 7. in God's absolute decree and predetermination of good and evil.

His imposed performances were— 1. Prayer, under which were compre hended the washings and purifications; 2. Alms; 3. Fastings; and, 4. Pilgrimages to Mecca*.

"There is no circumstance connected with a religious system more worthy of attention than its morality

than the ideas which it inculcates respecting merit and demerit; purity and impurity, innocence and guilt. If those qualities which render a man amiable, respectable, and useful as a human being; if wisdom, beneficence, self-command, are celebrated as the

Sale, Pre. Disc. sec. 4. p. 93.

chief recommendations to the favour of the Almighty; if the production of happiness is steadily and consistently represented as the most acceptable worship of the Creator, no other proof is requisite, that they who framed, and they who understand this religion, have arrived at high and refined notions of an all-perfect Being*." Taking this observation for our standard, it requires little penetration to discover that the conceptions of Mahomet respecting the requisites for a perfect religion, were those of an ignorant barbarian. Throughout the Koran, the greatest possible stress is laid upon the necessity of a belief in Mahomet's pretended mission; all other virtues are useless if this single point of the prophet's divine appointment be not steadily fixed in the mind, and constantly present to the imagination of the aspirant to everlasting life. But while belief in the pretended prophet is thus exalted to the highest point the imagination can conceive, the really useful qualities are placed low down in the scale of importance. The consequence is, that the votary is careless of his conduct so long as he is fortunate enough to preserve a belief of the proper description. The faithful, that is the believing, Mussulman is in no doubt concerning his reception into the heavenly regions, if, while in the minor consideration of virtuous conduct, he might be wanting, he should have strictly followed the ceremonious observances of his religion, and firmly believed in the impostures of his prophet. This assertion is amply borne out by experience. A Mussulman proverb condemns every man as untrustworthy who has performed the pilgrimage to Mecca. That general precepts may be found in the Koran, which, in emphatic language, command, men to be virtuous, cannot be denied; but it must be remembered that no legislator ever deliberately, in words, recommended vice. A general command to be virtuous is of little service, and should by no means receive our approbation till we have learned what, in the legislator's opinion, is deemed to be virtuous. The great object of every legislator is to enforce the observance of what he commands; that observance he would consider virtue, though he should command his subjects to slay all who wore clothes or

• Mill's Hist. of British India, b. 2. c. 6. p. 263.

professed opinions differing from their own. These vague and general precepts, then, may be considered as neither beneficial nor otherwise: no matter how emphatic, how beautiful may be the language in which they are conveyed. The circumstance really important is the conduct which the legislator has enjoined, and to which he has attached the character of virtue. We must learn what acts the legislator con. siders most acceptable to the Divinity; what acts he recommends to the approbation of mankind. We again quote Mr. Mill.

"If we search a little further, we shall discover, that nations do not differ so much from one another in regard to a knowledge of morality and its obligations (the rules of morality having been taught among nations in a manner remarkably similar), as in the various degrees of steadiness, or the contrary, with which they assign the preference to moral above other acts. Among rude nations it has almost always been found that religion has served to degrade morality by advancing to the place of greatest honour those external performances, or those mental exercises, which more immediately regard the Deity; and with which, of course, he was supposed to be more peculiarly delighted. On no occasion, indeed, has religion obliterated thei impressions of morality, of which the rules are the fundamental laws of human society. It has everywhere met with the highest applause, and no where has it been celebrated in more pompous strains than in places where the most contemptible, or the most abominable rites have most effectually been allowed to usurp its honours. It is not so much, therefore, by the mere words in which morality is mentioned, that we are to judge of the mental perfection of different nations, as by the place which it clearly holds in the established scale of meritorious acts."

From the list of actions we have given, as necessary to a perfect Mussulman, it is obvious that Mahomet established a scale of meritorious acts, in which idle, ridiculous, useless, and sometimes mischievous observances occupy the chief place, while all really useful actions are passed over as unimportant. We need no further proof of the low character both of his religion and his morality.

• Hist, of Brit. India, b. ii., c. 6, pp. 278, 279.