Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/365

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 343 Mahomet, the sacred volume was collected and published by his friend and successor Abubeker ; ^"^ the work was revised by the [Second caliph Othman, in the thirtieth year of the Hegira ; and the various editions of the Koran assert the same miraculous privilege of an uniform and incorruptible text. In the spirit of enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet rests the truth of his mission on the merit of his book, audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate the beauties of a single page, and presumes to assert that God alone could dictate this incomparable performance.^^ This argument is most powerfully addressed to a devout Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith and rapture, whose ear is delighted by the music of sounds, and whose ignorance is incapable of comparing the productions of human genius. ^'■' The harmony and copious- ness of style will not reach, in a version, the European infidel ; he will peruse, with impatience, the endless incoherent rhr.psody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust and is sometimes lost in the clouds. The divine attributes exalt the fancy of the Arabian missionary ; but his loftiest strains must yield to the sublime simplicity of the book of Job, composed in a remote age, in the same country, and in the same language. ^'^'^ If the composition of the Koran exceed the faculties of a man, to what superior intelligence should we ascribe the Iliad of Homer or the Philippics of Demosthenes ? In all religions, the life of the founder supplies the silence of his wi'itten revela- tion : the sayings of Mahomet were so many lessons of truth ; his actions so many examples of virtue ; and the public and private memorials were preserved by his wives and companions. At the end of two hundred years, tlie Sonna, or oral law, was [sunna = custom] " [Abu-Bekr's edition was made by Zaid, who had acted as secretary of the prophet. It was known as " the Leaves " (al-suhuf). Zaid also took part in the preparation of Othman's edition, of which four official copies were made, for Medina, Kufa, Basra and Damascus.] '^^ Koran, c. 17, v. 89. In Sale, p. 235, 236. In Maracci, p. 410. 99 Yet a sect of .Arabians was persuaded that it might be equalled or surpassed by an human pen (Pocock, Specimen, p. 221, &c.) ; and Maracci (the polemic is too hard for the translator) derides the rhyming affectation of the most applauded passage (toni. i. part ii. p. 69-75). 100 Colloquia (whether real or fabulous) in media Arabia atque ab Arabibus habita (Lowth, de Poesi Hebraeorum Prrelect. x.xxii. xxxiii. xxxiv. with his German editor Michaelis, Epimetron iv. ). Yet Michaelis(p. 671-673) has detected many Egyptian images, the elephantiasis, papyrus, Nile, crocodile, .tc. The language is ambiguously styled AraHco-Hebraea. The resemblance of the sister dialects was much more visible in their childhood than in their mature age (Mi- chaelis, p. 682. Schultens, in Prasfat. Job).