A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'/Appendix B/20
[Sidenote: The story a spurious one.]
20. These stories, and I believe a few more varied accounts of the same, like those of the story of Maria the Coptic, were originally mere conjectures of supposed events that might have given rise to an expression in the Koran (Sura XXXIII, verse 37)—if not wilful misrepresentations of story-tellers and enemies of Islam—which the European writers represent in the garb of facts. The words of the Koran which have been the father of the story are:—
- "And when thou saidst to him unto whom God had shewn favour, and unto whom thou also hadst shewn favour, 'keep thy wife to thyself, and fear God,' and thou didst hide in thy mind what God would bring to light, and thou didst fear men; but more right it had been to fear God."
This shows Mohammad dissuaded Zeid from divorcing his wife, notwithstanding the great facility of divorce common at that time in Arabia.
Sir W. Muir is not justified in copying these stories from Tabari. They are not related by earliest biographers from any authentic and reliable source. He ought to have rejected them as spurious fabrications under historical criticism, as he rejects other traditions which are on a better footing of truth than these false and maliciously forged stories.