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ewes, and ended with his own hands his shoes and his woollen garment. Disdaining the penance and merit of a hermit, he observed, without effort or vanity, the abstemious diet of an Arab and a soldier. On solemn occasions he feasted his companions with rustic and hospitable plenty; but in his domestic life, many weeks would elapse without a fire being kindled on the hearth of the prophet. The inter diction of wine was confirmed by his example; his hunger was appeased with a sparing allowance of barley-bread: he delighted in the taste of milk and honey; but his ordinary food consisted of dates and water. Perfumes and women were the two sensual enjoyments which his nature required, and his religion did not forbid; and Mahomet affirmed, that the fervor of his devotion was increased by these innocent pleasures. The heat of the climate inflames the blood of the Arabs; and their libidinous complexion has been noticed by the writers of antiquity.' Their incontinence was regulated by the civil and religious laws of the Koran: their incestuous alliances were blamed; the boundless license of polygamy was reduced to four legitimate wives or concubines; their rights both of bed and of dowry were equitably determined, the freedom of divorce was discouraged, adultery was condemned as a capital offence; and fornication, in either sex, was punished with a hundred stripes.160 Such were the calm and rational precepts of the legislator: but in his private conduct, Mahomet indulged the appetites of a man, and abused the claims of a prophet. A special revelation dispensed him. from the laws which he had imposed on his nation: the female sex, without reserve, was abandoned to his desires; and this singular prerogative excited the envy, rather than the scandal, the veneration, rather than the envy, of the devout Mussul mans If we remember the seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines of the wise Solomon, we shall applaud the modesty of the Arabian, who espoused no more than sev enteen or fifteen wives; eleven are enumerated who occupied at Medina their separate apartments round the house of the apostle, and enjoyed in their turns the favor of his conjugal

169 Incredibile est quo ardore apud eos in Venerem uterque solvitur sexus, (Ammian. Marcellin. 1. xiv. c. 4.)

160 Sale (Preliminary Discourse, p. 133-137) has recapitulated the laws of marriage, divorce, &c.; and the curious reader of Selden's User Hebraica will recognize many Jewish ordinances

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society. What is singular enough, they were all widows excepting only Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker. She was doubtless a virgin, since Mahomet 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 behavior had been ambiguous and indiscreet: in a nocturnal march she was accidentally left behind; and in the morning Ayesha returned to the camp with a man. temper of Mahomet was inclined to jealousy; but a divine revelation assured him of her innocence: he chastised her accusers, 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.11 In his adventures with Zeineb, the wife of Zeid, and with Mary, an Egyptian captive, the amorous prophet forgot the interest of his reputation. At the house of Zeid, his freedman and adopted son, he beheld, in a loose undress, the beauty of Zeineb, and burst forth into an ejaculation of devotion and desire. The servile, or grateful, freedman understood 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, Hafna, 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, without listening to the clamors of his wives. In a solitary retreat of thirty days, he labored, alone with Mary, to fulfil the commands of the angel. When his love and revenge were satiated, he summoned to his presence his eleven wives, reproached their disobedience and indiscretion,

161 In a memorable case, the Caliph Omar decided that all fresun p tive evidence was of no avail; and that all the four witnesses must have atually seen stylum in pyxide, (Abulfedæ Annales Moslemici p. 71, vers. Reiske.)

and threatened them with a sentence of divorce, both ir. this world and in the next; a dreadful sentence, since those who had ascended the bed of the prophet were forever excluded from the hope of a second marriage. Perhaps Perhaps the incontinence of Mahomet may be palliated by the traditica of his natural or preternatural gifts; 162 he united the manly virtue of thirty of the children of Adam: and the apostle might rival the thirteenth labor 169 of the Grecian Hercules.164 A more serious and decent excuse may be drawn from his fidelity to Cadijah. During the twenty-four years of their marriage, her youthful husband abstained from the right of polygamy, and the pride or tenderness of the venerable matron was never insulted by the society of a rival. After her death, he placed her in the rank of the four perfect women, with the sister of Moses, the mother of Jesus, and Fatima, the best beloved of his daughters. "Was she not old?" said Ayesha, with the insolence of a blooming beauty; "has not God given you a better in her place?" "No, by God," said Mahomet, with an effusion of honest gratitude, "there never can be a better! She believed in me when men despised me; she relieved my wants, when I was poor and persecuted by the world." 165

In the largest indulgence of polygamy, the founder of a religion and empire might aspire to multiply the chances of a numerous posterity and a lineal succession. The hopes of Mahomet were fatally disappointed. The virgin Ayesha, and his ten widows of mature age and approved fertility, were

162 Sibi robur ad generationem, quantum triginta viri habent, inesse Jactaret: ita ut unicâ horâ posset undecim foeminis satisfacere, ut ex Arabum libris refert Stus. Petrus Paschasius, c. 2., (Maracci, Prodromus Alcoran, p. iv. p. 55. See likewise Observations de Belon, 1. iii. c. 10, fol. 179, recto.) Al Jannabi (Gagnier, tom. iii. p. 287) records his own testimony, that he surpassed all men in conjugal vigor; and Abulfeda mentions the exclamation of Ali, who washed the body after his death, "O propheta, certe penis tuus cœlum versus erectus est," in Vit. Mohammed, p. 140.

163 I borrow the style of a father of the church, ἐναθλεύων Ηρακλῆς -piokaidékatov ã¤dov, (Greg. Nazianzen, Orat. iii. p. 108.)

1 The common and most glorious legend includes, in a single night the fifty victories of Hercules over the virgin daughters of Thestius, (Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. 1. iv. p. 274. Pausanias, 1. ix. p. 763. Statius Sylv. 1. i. eleg. iii. v. 42.). But Athenæus allows seven nights, (Deip nosophist, I. xiii. p. 556.) and Apollodorus fifty, for this arduous achieve ment of Hercules, who was then no more than eighteen years of age, Bibliot. 1. 11. c. 4, p. 111, cum notis Heyne, part i. p. 332.)

les Abulfeda in Vit. Moham. p. 12, 13, 16, 17, cum Notis Gagnies

barren in his potent embraces. The four sons of Cadijah died in their infancy. Mary, his Egyptian concubine, was endeared to him by the birth of Ibrahim. At the end of fifteen montn the prophet wept over his grave; but he sustained with firm ness the raillery of his enemies, and checked the adulation of credulity of the Moslems, by the assurance that an eclipse of the sun was not occasioned by the death of the infant. Cadi Jah had likewise given him four daughters, who were married to the most faithful of his disciples: the three eldest died before their father; but Fatima, who possessed his confidence and love, became the wife of her cousin Ali, and the mother of an illustrious progeny. The merit and misfortunes of Ali and his descendants will lead me to anticipate, in this place, the series of the Saracen caliphs, a title which describes the commanders of the faithful as the vicars and successors of the apostle of God.166

The birth, the alliance, the character of Ali, which exalted him above the rest of his countrymen, might justify his clain. to the vacant throne of Arabia. The son of Abu Taleb was in his own right, the chief of the family of Hashem, and the hereditary prince or guardian of the city and temple of Mecca. The light of prophecy was extinct; but the husband of Fatima might expect the inheritance and blessing of her father: the Arabs had sometimes been patient of a female reign; and the two grandsons of the prophet had often been fondled in his lap, and shown in his pulpit as the hope of his age, and the chief of the youth of paradise. The first of the true believers might aspire to march before them in this world and in the next; and if some were of a graver and more rigid cast, the zeal and virtue of Ali were never outstripped by any recent proselyte. He united the qualifications of a poet, a soldier, and a saint: his wisdom still breathes in a collection of moral and religious sayings; 187 and every antagonist, in

166 This outline of the Arabian history is drawn from the Biblio thèque Orientale of D'Herbelot, (under the names of Aboubecre, Omar Othman, Ali, &c.;) from the Annals of Abulfeda, Abulpharagius, and Elmacin, (under the proper years of the Hegira,) and especially from Ockley's History of the Saracens, (vol. i. p. 1-10, 115-122, 229, 249, 868-372, 378-391, and almost the whole of the second volume.) Yet we should weigh with caution the traditions of the hostile sects; a stream which becomes still more muddy as it flows farther from the Bource. Sir Johr. Chardir has too faithfully copied the fables and errors of the modern Persians, (Voyages, tom. i. p. 235-250, &c)

107 Cckley (at the end of his second volume) has given an English

the combats of the tongue or of the sword, wa subdued by his eloquence and valor. From the first hour on his mission to the last rites of his funeral, the apostle was never forsaken by a generous friend, whom he delighted to name his brother, his vicegerent, and the faithful Aaron of a second Moses. The son of Abu Taleb was afterwards reproached for neglect ing to secure his interest by a solemn declaration of his right, which would have silenced all competition, and sealed his succession by the decrees of Heaven. But the unsuspecting hero confided in himself: the jealousy of empire, and perhaps the fear of opposition, might suspend the resolutions of Mahomet; and the bed of sickness was besieged by the artful Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker, and the enemy of Ali.*

The silence and death of the prophet restored the liberty of the people; and his companions convened an assembly to deliberate on the choice of his successor. The hereditary claim and lofty spirit of Ali were offensive to an aristocracy of elders, desirous of bestowing and resuming the sceptre by a free and frequent election: the Koreish could never be reconciled to the proud preeminence of the line of Hashem; the ancient discord of the tribes was rekindled, the fugitives of Mecca and the auxiliaries of Medina asserted their respective merits; and the rash proposal of choosing two independ

version of 169 sentences, which he ascribes, with some hesitation, to Ali, the son of Abu Taleb. His preface is colored by the enthusiasm of a translator; yet these sentences delineate a characteristic, though dark, picture of human life.

* Gibbon wrote chiefly from the Arabic or Sunnite account of these transactions, the only sources accessible at the time when he composed his History. Major Price, writing from Persian authorities, affords us the advantage of comparing throughout what may be fairly considered the Shiite Version. The glory of Ali is the constant burden of their strain. He was destined, and, according to some accounts, designated, for the caliphate by the prophet; but while the others were fiercely pushing their own interests, Ali was watching the remains of Mahomet with pious fidelity. His disinterested magnanimity, on each separate occasion, declined the sceptre, and gave the noble example of obedience to the ap pointed caliph. He is described, in retirement, on the throne, and in the field of battle, as transcendently pious, magnanimous, valiant, and humane He lost his empire through his excess of virtue and love for the faithful his life through his confidence in God, and submission to the decrees of fate.

Compare the curious account of this apathy in Price, chapter it. It is to be regretted, I must add, that Major Price has contented himself with quoting the names of the Persian works which he follows, without any account d their character, age, and authority.-M.

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