CHAPTER II.
THE KORAN, THE SACRED BOOK OF ISLAM.
1. The Asserted Supremacy of the Koran. Mohammetans confess four sacred books, Law of Moses, Psalms of David, Gospel of Jesus and Koran of Mohamet, with these two distinctions, that the Koran, being the last and the best of the revelations, is supreme and authoritative over the others, and that the present books, which Jews and Christians have in their hands, are not the genuine revelations given to Moses, David and Jesus; that the Jewish and Christian scribes intentionally corrupted them in order to conceal all indications about the Latter Day Prophet and his true religion. Hence they have no value as authoritative texts and no Mohametan need be led astray by them, as the substance of the original revelations is given in the book of Koran.
The original text of the Koran, they assert, exists upon a tablet co-existent with the throne of God and adored by the celestial hosts as "the Eternal Word." A copy of it, written with silver and golden letters, descended into the first heaven in the sacred month of Ramazan, and piece by piece communicated to Mohamet by the archangel Gabriel. Each letter of this holy book is said to contain ten thousand mysteries and unmeasurable virtues. Simply the heading of each chapter, "Bismilláh er rahmán errahim" (in the name of the most merciful Allah), being composed of 19 Arabic letters, is be-
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