The Scriptures, which contained everything necessary to salvation, were comprised in the Koran. This name, from the Arabic word Karaa, to read, has the full force of the Greek Biblia, the books, and of the Latin Scripturæ, the writings.

In presenting the earlier portions of the Koran, Mohammed conceded that God had revealed His will in writing to the earlier prophets-Adam, Seth, Enoch and Abraham-but that these Scriptures had been lost. Then, by Divine inspiration, Moses had written the Pentateuch, and David many of the Psalms. The record of Jesus was found in the Gospels; and now Mohammed had been commissioned as the last of the Apostles, and the seal of the prophets, and had presented God's latest revelation in the Koran. To satisfy the taste of a people remarkable for their keen enjoyment of sensual pleasures, he conceived a heaven which intensified and eternally prolonged these pleasures; and to deter them from sin he provided an analogous hell, at once horrible and eternal. On a white stone of immense size, hidden from all eyes, and placed near the throne of the Almighty, all events past and future were inscribed, and man's destiny was as inflexible and irremediable as that sung by the Parcæ of an olden mythology to their revolving spindles-stabili Fatorum numine-all that should. happen to the earth and its helpless inhabitants.

The Moslem prayed five times in every twenty-four hours, facing toward Mecca; the Kebla, or direction in which they turned, having been changed from Jerusalem to Mecca. The times of prayer were azohbi, before sunrise; adohar, afternoon; almagreb, before sunset; alaxá, just after sunset, and also before the first watch of the night. The purification just before prayer was made with water when it could be had, and when otherwise, as in the desert, with white sand. Fastings were frequent and systematic; there were two Lenten seasons in the year. Of these, the great fast, based upon religion and hygiene, was kept in the month Ramadan, with great rigor. The pilgrimage to Mecca was to be yearly, if possible in the month Dulhagia, the last in the Mohammedan year; but there were many 1 The months were computed from new moon to new moon, and were alternately of thirty and twenty-nine days. They are Maharrem, Safer, Rabié 1, Rabié 2, Jumada 1, Jumada 2, Regeb, Xaban, Ramadan, Xawal, Dylcada and Dulhagia.

exemptions for obvious reasons, such as age, childhood and woman's weakness. Circumcision, long practiced among Eastern nations, was adopted as a rite in the new religion. Polygamy was legalized and restrained; the number of wives which each believer might take was limited to four.

I have thought it necessary to enter into these few particulars because Islam was the great moral motor of Arabian power and civilization, and these commonly known facts must be kept in mind in the consideration of Arabian progress.

Such, in brief, was the creed presented by such a man, intellectually towering above his fellows, to a waiting and receptive people, a people worthy of it, or of a better one, grand as it was. It appealed to their lively intelligence; it modulated and established their ancient and beautiful language as only a great epic can do; it utilized their mobility, their endurance, their skill in arms, by banding them together for conquest; it subsidized the strong, fleet and beautiful breed of horses, making of horse and rider the finest light cavalry in the world.

Awakened from their quiet and ignorance by the new cry, "the voice of one crying in the wilderness," they sprang into marshaled ranks and were ready to do deeds of national daring.

They had needed a creed and a teacher to reclaim them from idolatry and give them religious coherence; a statesman who could unite them into a nation and show them that in union alone was national strength; a leader who could forecast those great plans of conquest, the only limit to which was the subjugation of the surrounding world. All these characters they found in their prophet.

At the age of twenty-five, Mohammed had married a widow named Kadijah, who was forty years old. His new creed, for a short time despised and resisted, from the first found favor in her eyes and in those of Ali, his nephew, who was also his son in-law, having married his daughter Fatima. The party aroused against the prophet on the first promulgation of his doctrine, compelled him to flee from Mecca to Medina, and gave his creed that incipient motion which, like that of a mighty pendulum, should increase in scope and power, until it should describe wide arcs of oscillation over the East and over the West.

On the death of Kadijah, the prophet, with the fond fancy of

an old man, had married Ayesha, a girl of nine or ten years, the daughter of a man named Abdallah Athic, who, according to a strange Arabian custom, has come down to us in history as Abu Becre, "the father of the girl." Thus were presented rival claims to the succession-those of Abu Becre, the father-in-law, and those of Ali, the son-in-law-claims which have affected the orthodoxy and influenced the politics of the Mohammedans from that day to this.

In the eleventh year of the hejira, June 6, A. D. 632, and in the sixty-third year of his age, the prophet commended his creed, his people and his soul to Allah, and expired in the arms of Ayesha; but his mission was fully accomplished, his religion was a success, and his people were marshaled for conquest. He had named no successor, and no mode of electing one; but his companions assembled at once to supply his place. There was an enthusiastic party in favor of Ali; but woman's influence, combined with a desire to avert a quarrel between the people of Medina and those of Mecca, was potent enough to cause the election of Abu Becre as the first khalif, or successor.

Without an investigation of the rival claims, we may say that the choice was by no means, injudicious; the venerable chief vindicated his fitness by issuing a manifesto, summoning the nation to arms, and inciting them to conquer Syria from the Infidel. The new war was to propagate the faith, and to place all nations under the control of believers. Dusky swarms in white turbans flocked to the standard. Inadequate arms and scanty clothing were more than counterbalanced by zeal and hope. The first victories would equip them. The camp grew in dimensions around Medina, and Kaled was appointed to lead the eager body at once to Damascus.

The instructions of the khalif were at once prudent and philanthropic. The generals were to be considerate of their troops, for they were all, the meanest of them, Moslemah, children of the true faith. The commander was to take counsel of his officers; it was victory, and not individual fame for which they should fight. To the troops he enjoined absolute obedience. To fight was honorable, to conquer was the reward direct from the hand of Allah, to die for the faith was the greatest glory, and after death came the eternal joys of Paradise.

The khalif directed moderation and even friendship to the vanquished, and protection to the conquered territory. No trees should be cut down-they were of inestimable value in those warm lands; no fields should be ravaged; no dwellings burned; no supplies, except what were needed as stores, should be taken. Quarter should be given to those who asked it. In no case should the old, women, children, monks and hermits be molested. Such were the first instructions of the first khalif to his armies; such the spirit with which Islam began its march. It cannot be doubted that they frequently in after times deviated from these benevolent rules; but in so doing they imitated their fierce enemies, or occasionally acted under the wild influence of the certaminis gaudia, that Berserker fury, which transforms men into lions and tigers.

Mohammedanism, like Christianity, was soon to be divided. into numerous sects. Chief among these was that of the Sonnites, or orthodox; so named for their adherence to the Sonna, or collection of the traditional sayings and doings of the prophet. It may be compared to the Mishnu and Gemara of the Jewish Talmud, and was regarded by those who accepted it as a supplement to the Koran. The Sonnites considered all other sects as heretical, or schismatic. The dissidents were very numerous; the largest and most respectable body being that of the Shiites, whose views were based upon historical polity. They rejected the claims and the khalifates of Abu Becre, Oman and Othman, the first three khalifs, and upheld Ali as the rightful claimant, from the day of Mohammed's death. They were ever afterward the supporters of the Fatimite khalifs, so called from Fatima, the daughter of Mohammed and wife of Ali.

Out of the Koran the Mohamme dan publicists drew the great body of their civil law, which is to be principally found in four great digests, each tinctured by the religious or sectarian views of its compiler. The four doctors, or Imáins, who produced them were Abu Hanifa, Malik Ibn Ans, Al Shafei and Ibn Hanat, all of whom were Sonnites. The principal authority, received in Spain soon after the accession of the Ommyades to the throne of Cordova, was that of Malik Ibn Ans.

The remaining history must be brief: Under Waled, the general of Abu Becre, the faithful made themselves masters of

Damascus, easily wresting it from the Eastern Roman Empire of Heraclius on the 23d of August, 634. Persia, long cursed by intestine wars, was the next field of victory. From Persia they turned their arms eastward and westward. Near the pyramids of Egypt they laid the foundations of a city, which they called El Kahira, or victory, a name which has been corrupted into Cairo. They seized Alexandria, a capital of ancient fame and existing splendor. They found there, it is said, forty thousand palaces, four hundred theaters, and a cluster of forty thousand tributary Jews. Six millions of Copts bowed beneath their yoke, and the conquest of Egypt was complete. Yet in ignorance of the value of books, these men of the sword and of faith gave over the magnificent library of Alexandria to the flames. The story has been doubted, but there is strong evidence of its truth. When John the Grammarian begged for its preservation, Amru, the Arabian general in Egypt, wrote to the khalif for orders: "Either its books agree with the Koran or they do not; if they do, they are not needed; if they do not, they should be destroyed;" and they went to feed the ovens and heat the baths of the city. Thus the grandest, manifold annals of the ancient world were lost-an irreparable loss-to history.

Omar had succeeded Abu Becre. The heated factions intrigued, and he was assassinated in 643. Again the expectant Ali was defeated, and Othman became khalif.

For ten years the westward movement was slow into Africa proper. This was in part due to the strength and system of the factions-the adherents of Ali and the party in power. The immediate issue was the assassination of Othman as he sat with the open Koran in his lap. And now the party of Ali had become so strong that, by something like a popular election at Medina, he was placed upon the throne of Mohammed. But this success

of Ali was by no means the end of trouble. By it the Fatimite party was temporarily successful, but their success virtually declared the former khalifs usurpers, and threatened that schism of the faith which was afterward represented by the conflicting doctrines of the Sonnites and Shiites, the former called by D'Herbelot "the Catholics of Moslemism," and the latter "a Protestant sect, whose green slippers were an abomination to their enemies." The suspicion and contention around the khalif's throne obliged