CONCERNING THE CHRISTIAN ADDITIONS

HAVE ALREADY SHOWN that Arabia was the common receptacle for the persecuted Jews and Christians of all sorts and sects to retire unto. I must add thereto this limitation: that persecution works this effect upon all religions that such as then do continue firm and constant are more pious and devout than at other times, the indifferent and the vicious usually adhering to that religion which prevails and prospers. And the martial spirit seldom persists in that profession which excludeth him from employment. Upon this account, the Nestorians, Jacobites, the Arians, Arabians, and Judaizing Christians were of more exemplary piety in those days than the Trinitarians, either out of policy to ingratiate their partisans by such speciousness, and to inodiate those who oppressed so innocent and religious persons, or out of a real conscientiousness. The Judaizing Christians had the fairest pretences and were most tenacious of their customs and traditions, and by a series of persecutions from their first conversion until the days of Mahomet, and by the principles of their Christianity which was conformable to the self-denying doctrine of Isa and the discipline of the Essenes, they were a harmless religion such as might win much up the melancholy temper and suspicious humor of the Arabians. They were diffused from Pella in Judea to Cochab in the confines of Arabia toward Syria and so on to Yemen or Arabia the Happy and Chaibar or Mesopotamia.¹

The kings of the Arabians and their tribes, several of them, had been Christians, as I related: first Trinitarians, then Jacobites, and amongst several of their tribes as that of Gassan in Syria and its confines and of Rabia and Codan, and many other tribes had their churches and converts as the Jews had also in others towards Arabia the Happy and elsewhere. As Mahomet seems himself to have been a Judaizing Christian and a great honorer of Isa, so he always expressed a great reverence for them. And it is concerning them that he says that Isa their prophet should save them in the last day. But as to the Trinitarians (that is those Christians who advanced Christ and the Holy Ghost or the Virgin Mary into the deity whom Mahomet calls Almushrikuna or Associators), these he universally judges to hellfire in his Alcoran as well for their tenets as wicked lives.2 That the Arabian Christians were men of just and strict deportment appears hence: that Mahomet <115> saith of them that one might safely entrust them with any sum of money and they would restore it again.³ But the Jews were such villains that no man could trust them with a penny.

It is known how severe enemies the Christians were against all images and pictures. The Mahometans were so likewise, insomuch that upon their coins they stamp some pious sentence and not any effigies. And so bigoted were⁴ they as to this point as that not only the former Saracens but the Turks, till of late, would not receive as current any Christian money with an effigy stamped thereon.⁵ And they universally demolish all pictures and images where they conquer. Mahomet, though he did not force the Christians to his religion, yet he told them that such as believed in Isa ought to live according to his precepts with great humility, piety, and unconcernedness for the pomp and vanities of this world, that they ought neither to seek nor retain honor nor riches or go to war, or intermeddle with state affairs—these things being inconsistent with the doctrine of Isa; such as pursued those courses not being really Christians, since Christianity lies not so much in open profession of reverence and worship as in the practice of a holy life.

I shall here insert the opinion of Grotius concerning the Eastern Christians when Mahomet arose that it may appear with how much justice Mahomet did exclude them from the number of Christians:

Grotius: De Veritate Religionis Christianæ, liber 6. The true and simple piety which flourished among the Christians during their oppressions and persecutions began to grow out of fashion and to be disused after that Constantine and his successors had not only indemnified but honored Christianity, the world being as it were crowded into the Church. The Christian emperors ceased not to multiply needless wars, the bishops raised great quarrels and tumults in order to their particular advancement, and as at first, it proved calamitous to mankind that the tree of knowledge was preferred before the tree of life, so then was it almost fatal that curiosity of speculations was more valued than true godliness and religion because modeled and methodized into an art. The consequence whereof was that as heretofore in the building of Babel, the erection of too high a structure gave an occasion to the confusion of <116> languages, so the elevated disquisitions of Christian doctors produced now a multitude of strange terms and unknown forms of speech, and afterwards discord. The commonalty, being amazed and perplexed with these inexplicable difficulties, and not knowing which to adhere unto or what to believe, and seeing each party establish its opinion upon scriptural interpretations and allegations, they began to complain of the obscurity and ambiguity, and at last turned their indignation into a perfect hatred of the Holy Writ.6

Religion now was no longer terminated in the purity of the mind, but in the performance of certain outward ceremonies, as if the law, rites, and Judaism had been only varied not abolished, and men testified their Christianity not so much by amending their lives as by exterior and bodily gestures and humiliations and a zealous adherence to the party they owned insomuch that at last there were few real Christians, notwithstanding the multitude of professors. God did not connive at those sins and enormities but raised up the remote nations in Germany and Scythia to invade Christendom, which overran all like a torrent. And since the damages they did would not serve to instruct and reform the surviving Christians, Mahomet in Arabia began to preach a new doctrine which was directly opposite to the Christian religion, yet did, in words, contain a great part of the Christian practice. He was first credited by the Saracens, who revolted from the Emperor Heraclius, they having carried their conquests in a short time over Arabia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Persia, and afterwards into Africa and Spain. With their empire, they propagated their religion.

Nor is it a despicable plea of the Mahometans which is urged by Ismael ibn Ali, a Mahometan historian,7 that at the Nicene Council in the twentieth year of the reign of Constantine, there were assembled 2,048 bishops, out of which he chose 318 and adhered to their judgment in anathematizing Arius and so published a Christianity different from what had been taught before in the church.⁸ It is granted by the oriental historians of the church that such a number of bishops was summoned, as the Mahometans specify. So saith Eutychius and Josephus, an Egyptian presbyter, in his preface to the Arabic version of the councils.⁹ And it is confessed that all, excepting the <117> 318, did vary from the Nicene faith. Nor is it plain that these 318 were all bishops. Some accounts represent it as if there were but 232 bishops and the rest presbyters and monks. If that council were so managed as it is most likely, the pretences of Mahomet are not despicable. And that Mahomet might with better color deprive the Christians of their honor, powers, and riches, and reduce them to their primitive condition of piety and poverty, it is by these sayings that he and his followers describe Isa.¹⁰

Isa, the Son of Mary, peace be upon him, said thus: “He that greedily accumulates riches is like him that drinketh much salt water, the more he drinks the more his thirst increaseth and he desists not to drink until he bursts.” Isa the Son of Mary said to John the Son of Zachariah: “If any man say anything concerning thee that is true, praise God for it; if he say any untruth, give unto God a greater thanks for that, and He will reward that disposition of mind in thee and add it to the catalogue of thy virtues, and thus, without any trouble, shalt thou multiply thy good actions.” The world did once appear unto Isa in the shape of an old decrepit woman unto whom Isa said: “‘How many husbands hast thou had?’ And she replied, ‘The number of them hath been such that I cannot tell them to you.’ ‘And are they all dead,’ then added he, ‘and have left thee?’ The old woman said, ‘Nay they did not leave me. I destroyed them all.’ Isa rejoined: ‘It is a wonder therefore that any should be such fools as to dote upon thee and not consider how thou hast used all before them to be cautioned thereby against the love of thee.’”¹¹

In the time of Isa, three men traveled together who having found a great treasure said: “We want sustenance. Let one of us go and buy food.” So one of them went and upon the way reflected also to buy some poison and mix it with the meat and by the death of his companions to render himself sole possessor of the treasure. So he empoisoned the meat. In like manner, those two which stayed behind did purpose to kill him at his return and appropriate to themselves the benefit of their discovery; whereupon they slew him and also died themselves by the poison which he had mingled with the meat. At that <118> time Isa came by with his apostles and said: “This is the condition of the world. Behold how these three have suffered by it. These are deceased and left behind what they thought to be owners of. Woe unto him that seeks riches in this world.”

These pretenses were first made use of by Julian the Apostate thereby to depress the Christians and, by this stratagem, did Mahomet gain to his party all the ambitious and military who could not satisfy their inclinations unless they embraced the Saracenical religion. And withal, by the same means, he rendered Christianity contemptible and weak and fit only for subjection or slavery. He did also hereby give a just color to the pretense of his followers that they were the Elmumenin or true believers, and that their enemies of the Christians were not indeed Christians so that they seem in their wars not to oppose but vindicate Isa.12

In reference to him, the Christians were not altogether so candid. You will find as little integrity in the Christian narratives of him as in any before, so that the most dissolute Christians published as great untruths in their times as they who passed for saints. It is acknowledged by all the learned, after a severe inquiry into the Arabian writers, as well Christians as Mahometans, that Mahomet was descended of the principal tribe of the Arabians both by his father’s side and mother’s side, as I have represented it. Notwithstanding this, “Mahometis Arabis vitam qui descripserunt, multi fuerent qui esse non uno modo illius res tradunt, in eo tamen convenient omnes, (sed male, ut habet Erpen. de Ling. Arab. p. 42.) quod eum à plebejo vilíque genere ortum, pauperibus parentibus, patre Ethnico, matre Judæa affirmant.”¹³

It is certain that the Christians which lived under the Mahometans as Elmacin and others do mention Mahomet with great respect as “Mahomet of glorious memory” and “Mahometes super quo pax et benedictio, et cetera.” Whereas others have proceeded so far as to say that he was even Antichrist and found out the number of the beast 666 in his name, writing it—than which nothing can be more ridiculous.¹⁴ Is it not mere folly to spell a man’s name wrong, and then to imagine mysteries in <119> it: some Greeks Μαχουμέθ others Μωαμμέθ, the Latins Machumet, Machomet, Magmed, Maomethes, in Arabic, if rightly pronounced, Muhammed or Mohammed, which signifies much desired.¹⁵

I find that his father’s name was Abdalla and that, he dying, he was educated by his grandfather Abdolmutleb and, upon his decease, by his uncle Abutaleb; and that he travelled twice to Jerusalem, besides his expeditions into Egypt, Africa, and Spain; that he conversed with the Christians of all sects. And it appears that he understood very well all their tenets and the most solid foundations which they went upon. Nor was he unacquainted with the Jewish principles and Talmudical learning, as is likewise manifest by his Alcoran, the state of Arabia being divided into Jews, Judaizing Arabians, Judaizing Christians (at Cochab there was one of the seats of the Nazarene Christians), Jacobites, Nestorians, Arians, Trinitarians, Manicheans, Montanists, Sabeans, and idolaters. This gave him occasion and opportunity to examine and try all sects and sorts of religions. But the Christians have given him two assistants, one Abdalla a Jew and Sergius a Nestorian monk, and represent Mahomet himself as an ignorant fellow who could not judge of what they instilled into him, which is the reason of such gross errors in his Alcoran.

But I cannot find any Abdalla besides his father who was a Coreischite, nor any tutor or companion of his called Sergius. And if Sergius were a Nestorian, why did not Mahomet adhere to Nestorianism and teach that Isa was true God and true man under a double personality? Why did he not mention Nestorius and Theodorus Mopsuestersis or Diodorus Tarsoris as holy men or saints and condemn Cyril of Alexandria?16 Neither he nor any of his followers have done this as I know of. Had any such thing been, this would have happened. Nor would he have declined to cajole so great an interest as the Nestorians then were, being so strengthened by the decree of Chosroes and so extended that even the Christians of Saint Thomas in the Indies are of that profession. No, he was undoubtedly a great admirer of Isa as a prophet or apostle of God,¹⁷ and of this he makes so great and <120> frequent declarations, and that Isa was his predecessor and taught the same doctrine that it is but justice to style him a Christian.

Nor do I believe that he did cajole or love the Jews at all and consequently would not form his Alcoran so as to please them. It is recorded that he did so detest them albeit out of compliance to the Coreischites he had retained the fast of Ashura on the tenth day of the month of Moharam. Out of hatred to the Jews he would have altered the observation thereof to the ninth day of the same month had he lived but one year longer. I believe that he was a convert to the religion of the Judaizing Christians and did form his religion as far as possible in resemblance of theirs. They and the Arians were his principal instructors, but not any of them had any hand in the penning of the Alcoran. For that was not made before he began his apostleship in any desert, but, published upon several emergencies, most at Medina where that he should have had any such assistance, it is unimaginable.18 For it would have been suspicious in that city and amongst his followers and so near confidants and secretaries as he there retained about him.

As for the Arians, it is manifest that the Saracens have always retained a veneration for their Saint George, bishop of Alexandria, whom yet they do not allow for a prophet but one of their saints or fathers, and his life is written by Kessaeus a Mahometan as if he were such.¹⁹ And Ahmad Ben Edris, passing over the Nestorians as a foolish sort of Christian heretics, brings in a fable concerning Paul as if he had deluded the world into an opinion of the deity of Isa and given a beginning to the heresy of Eutychius and the Jacobites; and that an Arian, or else a Judaizing Christian, whom he calls an Elmunim, or true believer, did anathematize Paul thereupon saying: “We were the companions of Isa, we saw him, we are descended from him, he was the servant of God and his Apostle, he never told us otherwise.” Also that Mahomet did meet with thirty of the descendants of this Elmunim or orthodox person, they being retired into an hermitage, and that they owned his doctrine and professed Moslenisme.²⁰

Let us not then give credit to the aforesaid stories <121> but inscribe another original to the Mahometical doctrines. The same Christians say that he was troubled with the falling sickness, that he took advantage from thence to pretend to raptures, and that upon his recovery out of those paroxysms he would repeat the Bismillah, “In the name of God, merciful and gracious,” and published the surats of the Alcoran. I have refuted this story already of which there is no mention among the Arabians nor do they magnify their prophet for any such raptures. I add that the Alcoran was not given out in that manner that each surat was penned according to particular emergencies. And it would have been an important piece of intelligence for the Christians to have published the way of contriving epileptic fits according each emergency of his and deferring them at other times. No less vain is the story of Mahomet’s pigeon which used to eat peas out of his ear, and therefore, as a representation of the Holy Ghost, would resort to his shoulder and seem to inspire or commune with him. I will not ask whether it be possible to breed a pigeon to that work, so as that it should be kept or fed invisibly (for otherwise it would have bred suspicion in his followers and watchful enemies), or do the feat without prejudice to the drum of the ear, or without discovering what it swallowed or what it sought after.

Nor whether Mahomet did own the Holy Ghost any more than the Arians and Judaizing Christians did. But I would be informed what ground there is for this fable seeing neither Mahomet nor his followers do speak of any such apparition of any pigeon. Nor doth any Christian of the Arabians mention it.21 Grotius indeed speaks of it, and Doctor Pococke thereupon consulted him desiring to know what grounds he had for such a relation. The reply was that he did not therein follow the narration of the Mahometans or Arabic Christians, but of the European Christians, and particularly of Scaliger (in his notes upon Manilius where this is reported).²² And this is all that can be said for the relation. But it is to no purpose for any to say that the Mahometans have ever since preserved a veneration or extraordinary respect for <122> pigeons. They give another reason for this viz.: because that the prophet Noah did pronounce a blessing upon the pigeon and said she should be forever beloved and regarded by men for returning to the ark with an olive branch, whilst the raven stayed to prey upon the dead bodies, which appeared after the retiring of the waters. I am apt to believe this story concerning the pigeon was by some ignorant person transferred from Athanasius to Mahomet. For it is reported concerning that father how a pigeon in the street flew to him and settled on his shoulder by his ear. This the Trinitarians interpreted as a miracle but the Arians as magical. And indeed, in the legend of St. George, I find Athanasius reputed to be a magician.²³

I shall add another Christian fable concerning Mahomet: that he privately bred up a bull which was constantly fed out of his hand and thereby accustomed to run to him as soon as he came sight. And to the horns of this bull one day he fastened the Alcoran, and, as he was discoursing to the people concerning his new religion and laws, this bull was contrived into his sight, which immediately rushed through the crowd to the prophet and presented him with the Alcoran, which he received with much ostentation of piety as sent to him by God and read some of it to the Arabians there. And, at the same time, a pigeon came and brought a schedule in which was written: “He shall be king of the Arabians who yoketh this bull.” Whereupon Sergius the Nestorian monk brought him a yoke, which he easily put on the neck of the bull aforesaid, and thereupon was saluted as king and the Alcoran received as being of divine authority.²⁴

With such stories as these have the Christians represented him to be the vilest imposter in the world and transformed the wisest legislator that ever was into a simple cheat. But neither was the Alcoran written or published all at one time, nor ever reduced into one volume entirely by him, but by Abubacr and Othman as I have shewed.25 Nor is there any mention of this miracle of the bull in the Saracen records when they speak of the wonders of the prophet. Behold the simplicity of the Christians then who were deluded and thought to delude by such fopperies as these. As little credit is there to be given to that other fable that Mahomet should promise the people of <123> Mecca (they demanding a miracle) that he would cause a mountain to remove to him at his sermons. But it, not obeying his call, he briskly said if the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the mountain. Was there ever a greater foppery imagined yet in the legends of the Christian saints?

There are such tales that one will not admire if they made no better romances of their enemies. A greater objection is raised against him for his ignorance: this they say is acknowledged by himself in his Alcoran, where he brings in God saying that he had sent to the ignorant a prophet amongst them,²⁶ that is to illiterate persons an illiterate prophet. Moreover that the inhabitants of Mecca were so illiterate at that time that they could neither write nor read, so that it seems enough to prove him illiterate that it is confessed he was born there. In fine he is generally acknowledged by the Arabians to be Nabian Ommian, that is the illiterate prophet.

But none of those arguments are of any validity. Not the first: for though God should say that He had sent to the ignorant a prophet from amongst them, doth it therefore follow that he must be as ignorant as they? Is not the saying verified if it appear that he was of their lineage and country? Not the second: for what necessity is there that every one that was born and lived in Mecca should be illiterate? May there not be an Anacharsis in Scythia?27 Must the seven sages be as ignorant as the residue of Greece?²⁸ Must not Ezra be able to read because the people could not (Nehemiah 8:8)? As to his being styled Nabian Ommian, though that title be given him by the Arabians generally, yet they do not agree upon the meaning thereof, some of them saying that it was not by reason of his ignorance, but of his being born at Mecca which is termed Ommal koras, or the mother city. And how can they call him truly the ignorant prophet since they believe he knew all things, which is acknowledged by Doctor Pococke? The same doctor doth acknowledge that one Warakah, a kinsman (or rather uncle according to Abunazarus), taught him to write Hebrew and the Arabic speech, may be as well penned in that character which was newly propagated at Mecca by one that had married the sister of Abusofian some years before Mahomet pretended to an apostleship.²⁹ And who will imagine that so subtle <124> a man as he and who had framed to himself so vast a design would omit the learning of a thing so important to his ends and so subservient to the promulgation of his doctrine as the writing of Arabic was? I add that since Othman and Ali could write and were his scribes, and so were several of his other followers, why should we think it impossible for Mahomet to write?³⁰

It is further considerable that in all this controversy as it is managed the question is only whether Mahomet could write and read the Arabic characters newly introduced there and not whether he were so learned as to understand the religion and rites, customs and histories of his country, the religion and learning of the Jews, and of the several sects of Christians. Concerning this, there can be no question amongst any that know the Alcoran and his constitutions which are such as demonstrate a profound insight into these matters and a knowledge of many minute particularities extending even to legendary stories and fables. And if this be notorious, I should not see any just grounds to conclude him illiterate though it were more demonstrable than it is that he could not write or read the Arabic characters.

Another fable of the Christians against Mahomet is that he should promise his followers to revive again in three days, or some such time, and that they expected his return there so long till his carcass grew noisome, and that they still expect his return, that his body is enclosed in an iron tomb and hangs in the air suspended by the force of two opposite loadstones. But these are such figments as there the Mahometans laugh at and deride the Christians for relating them. Doctor Pococke refutes them more than once.³¹ And I will here repeat his words as he delivered them in his speech at Oxford where he excites his scholars to study Arabic:

Historia quibus curae est ut Arabum eorum monumenta diligentiis evolverent, quam persuasum cuperem; ut ita tollerentur tot ineptæ, quas ignorantia istius linguæ nobis obtrusit, fabulæ. Ita fieret, ut non ultra Mahometis tumulum in aere pendulum somniaremus: nec falsum illius de reditu suo promissum urgentes, Assedis ipsius, quos absurdè haec credere dicimus … impingendo veris refutandis ineptos nosmet redderemus, nec amplius illos Saracenorum appellatione à Sara se oriundos jactare nugaremur. Hujusmodi sexcenta sunt, quibus occurri sine linguarum studio non potest.32

This last passage of Doctor Pococke puts me in mind of some other <125> forgeries with which the Christians did formerly asperse the Mahometans and proceeded so far therein that they obliged the Saracenical converts in their catechisms to pronounce anathemas against such practices as were never used by the Musulmen viz.: that they worshipped the Morning Star and Venus, by the name of Chabar or Chubar, and that they cried in honor thereto, Cabar or Cubar, signifying in Arabic the great goddess. Which assertion how great authors so ever it hath as Euthymius Zegabenus,³³ the Saracen catechism, Constantius, Porphyrogenitus, Cedrenus, et cetera, is most false and is rejected by Selden, Pococke, Hottinger, et cetera:³⁴ this exclamation among the Mahometans, being no other than their usual doxology of Allah Ekbar Allah or Allah Allah Howa Cobar Allah. God, God the great God. No less false is that report that they worship Venus under the stone called Brachtan, in which stone, if you look exactly, you may see lineaments of that goddess portrayed, though Euthymius Zegabenus relates this: that the Saracens in their catechism are taught to anathematize the worship of it.³⁵

Yet it is a great untruth. This stone is no other than the Black Stone I have given an account of, which they do not worship at all, but kiss devoutly as a relic of paradise (or for other reasons alleged by them) which may have been adored perhaps by the old Arabians but not by Mahomet or his sect, nor was it called Brachtan. Our linguists are in as great a perplexity to divine whence the Christians received this appellation (except it be because they kiss it, “tabarracan behi, boni ominis seu benedictionis captandi gratia”) as they are to find them place the stone Brachtan on the ground in the middle of the Caaba, which is really raised above two cubits from the ground and fixed in the wall and is a plain stone, having no effigies in it.³⁶ That which carries the show of any sculpture in it is the other stone (not in the middle of the Caaba but in the midst of the Court or Almesjad Alharan) and retaineth the impressions of Abraham’s feet, not the face of Venus:

Quod autem à Damasceno, & Euthymio asseritur, si quis accuratiùs inspectet videri in eo figuram capitis scalpro expressam, quod Veneris esse volunt, ex Arabum scriptis puto probari non posse. Alius illis lapis est sacer, cui insculptam, vel potius impressam, tradunt figuram, sed tantum à figura capitis quantum caput à pedibus distantem, nisi <126> oculi superstitione lippi caput à pedibus distinguere nesciant. Lapis scil quo vestigia pedum Abrahami impressa, cùm vel illis inter aedificandum Caabam insisteret, ut innuit Abulfeda, vel dum ipse caput Ismaelis, quem visum venerat, uxor (ut Ahmed Ebn Yusef, & Safioddinus) laveret. Unde & illi nomen Makam Abrahim Locus (scilicet) Abrahami, vel, quo stetit Abrahamus.37

As for the Τζίτζαφα Μαρουά Τζάφα mentioned also as idols of the Mahometans by the said Euthymius Zegabenus, these are nothing else but the Safa and Marwa of the Mahometans between which they run in their pilgrimages at Mecca and are said to be two stones into which a man and a woman were metamorphosed for committing adultery together in the Caaba³⁸ Nor are they the objects of any Mahometan devotion as I have showed. But it is most pleasant to read how Euthymius doth further aggravate the idolatry of the Saracens. “Ibidem esse illis ait - - - - - - Simulacrum Baccha Ismaketh dictum, quod ipse Mohammedes sc. - - - - - - Adoramen observationis appellat, & ut miseri barbari adorarent praecepit.”³⁹ The original of this barbarous idol or rather mistake was that in the Alcoran there is once found the word Bebecca, which Beidani, the Arabian commentator, expounds in Mecca, there being a metathesis of B for M.⁴⁰ And this Baccha Ismaketh, if it be pronounced according to the Arabian manner, signifies now more than Bacca or Becca, and is the name of Macca or Mecca, and this Mecca called by the said Euthymius - - - - - - is to be explained adoramen observationis, or the place towards which the Mahometans pray (or their Keblah).⁴¹

Do not such writers as these, and such were all the Christians that writ of Mahomet (as well the Greeks as Latins), deserve much credit? And can we blame those Mahometans who despise the foolish relations our authors give of their prophet and religion? Certainly no people are more remote from idolatry than the Saracens, and, whatever name you give to their errors and follies, Maimonides (who was scholar to Averroes and traveled through Arabia and Egypt), and Doctor Pococke, will tell you they ought not to be thus stigmatized. That they were once idolaters and until the days of Heraclius did worship the star Venus by the name of Cabar or the great goddess is yielded: but Mahomet put an end to all such idolatrous worship and the rites <127> which he retained are continued to a different intention than they were first practiced upon. It must be avowed that they adore no other than the true God and err rather in the manner than in the object of their devotion, so that the Emperor Manuel Comnenus seems (in the judgment of Doctor Pococke) to have had good reason to have altered the form of abjuration which was imposed on the converted Saracens viz.: “I do anathematize the God of Mahomet” into another kind of renunciation.42

But that we may the better understand the Mahometan religion,⁴³ I shall give a brief account of the articles of their faith, not of the Alcoran, nor its formal words, but the formal words in which the Mahometans express themselves, as the Christians recite their creed and not the whole scripture, nor a verbal deduction thence. The Mahometans divide their religion into fundamentals and super structures, and though they have a great diversity of opinions in the explication of their law, yet they esteem him orthodox who observes these five articles where to every Musulman is obliged. So Algazali: and Mahomet himself is said to have determined the case.⁴⁴

These are:

First: The confession, there is no god beside God, and Mahomet is the apostle of God; In a constant saying of the prayers according to appointment; In giving alms; In performing a religious pilgrimage to Mecca; And in observing the fast of the month of Ramadan.

Of these five, two may seem to be established upon prudential reasons: the pilgrimage and the fast of Ramadan. For though Mahomet retained many Arabian usages (pretending only to reform the old and not introduce a new religion), and such I have showed this pilgrimage and fast to have been; yet I believe he wisely discerned that the retaining these two points would be of great use, since he designed a military empire to the support whereof valiant and hardy soldiers were necessary. And nothing could more conduce to the successive generation and education of such than these two institutions. For how active, laborious, and abstinent must the women as well as the men render themselves to be able to endure the pilgrimage and the fast aforesaid. The pilgrimage I have described largely. The fast is moveable, and every year happens <128> a month later than before, so that it falls sometimes in summer, other times in winter, in the hottest and coldest seasons, the longest as well as shortest days. The fast is observed so strictly that from daybreak till starlight, not one (except travelers or sick persons) doth eat or drink anything or so much as wash his mouth with a little water.45 And the most dissolute persons who adventure at other times to drink wine will not then so much as smell to it. It is true that at night, when the Emaum or priest declares it to be time to eat, they feed plentifully even to excess. And even this has its reason upon account of health. For this fasting and feasting in such extremes contributes to their health during the whole year. It is recommended by Celsus to the healthy not to live by rule but pursue a variety in diet lest they contract a custom the change whereof would be as dangerous as the continuance inconsistent with daily action and business.⁴⁶

I believe also the third precept concerning alms was political in its original. For having persuaded his followers into such a parsimony as was requisite to the making of them hardy, and to the making of them welcome in their quarters, that they might not lapse from his institutions and be debauched by riches. It was a sort of a Grecian law or leveling to oblige them to so extraordinary alms as he did. Mahomet calls it Zacot which signifies as much as increase as if the giving alms to the needy were the principal means to augment their revenue.⁴⁷ And this he inculcated to them that they might not grow effeminate through luxury or mutinous by means of their riches. Neither was there less prudence in the precept concerning prayers, for the injunction of the salah five times in twenty-four hours obliged them to a diligence and sobriety, which perhaps no other contrivance could have engaged them to, and doth also imprint in them a sense of their religion which, without apostasy, nothing could obliterate. Besides, it is a part of that precept never to mention any prophet or person reverenced by the Mahometans but with this eulogy: “God’s peace be with him of glorious memory, et cetera”; or any enemy thereto but thus: “God’s curse be upon him, God keep him from hurting us, et cetera”—which sayings did fix them more and more in their religion and estranged them more and more from their adversaries.