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OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 379 their separate apartments round the house of the apostle, and en- joyed in their turns the favour of his conjugal society. What is singular enough, they were all widoMS, excepting only Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker. She was doubtless a virgin, since Maho- met consummated his nuptials (such is the premature ripeness of the climate) when she was only nine years of age. The youth, the beauty, the spirit of Ayesha gave her a superior ascendant ; she was beloved and trusted by the prophet ; and, after his death, the daughter of Abubeker was long revered as the mother of the faithful. Her behaviour had been ambiguous and indis- creet ; in a nocturnal march, she was accidentally left behind ; and in the morning Ayesha returned to the camp with a man. The temper of Mahomet was inclined to jealousy ; but a divine revelation assured him of her innocence : he chastised her ac- cusers, and published a law of domestic peace that no woman should be condemned unless four male witnesses had seen her in the act of adultery.^"^ In his adventures with Zeineb, the wife of Zeid, and with Maiy, an Egyptian captive,^"^ the amor- ous prophet forgot the interest of his reputation. At the house of Zeid, his freedman and adopted son, he beheld, in a loose un- dress, the beauty of Zeineb, and burst forth into an ejaculation of devotion and desire. The servile or grateful freedman under- stood the hint, and yielded, without hesitation, to the love of his benefactor. But, as the filial relation had excited some doubt and scandal, the angel Gabriel descended from heaven to ratify the deed, to annul the adoption, and gently to reprove the apostle for distrusting the indulgence of his God. One of his wives, Hafsa,^"^^ the daughter of Omar, surprised him on her own bed in the embraces of his Egyptian captive ; she promised secrecy and forgiveness ; he swore that he would renounce the possession of Mary. Both parties forgot their engagements ; and Gabriel again descended with a chapter of the Koran, to absolve him from his oath, and to exhort him freely to enjoy his captives and concubines Avithout listening to the clamours of his wives. In a solitary retreat of thirty days, he laboured, alone with Mary, to fulfil the commands of the angel. When his love and revenge were satiated, he summoned to his pres- ence his eleven wives, reproached their disobedience and indis- "■3 In a memorable case, the Caliph Omar decided that all presumptive evidence was of no avail ; and that all the four witnesses must have actually seen stylum in pyxide (Abulfedoe, Annales Moslemici, p. 71, vers. Reiske). '"■* [.^ &'f' of the Copt Mokaukas ; for whom see below, p. 448, and Appendix 20.] 174:1 j^'pjje editions give Hafna, which must have been originally a misprint.]