Part 17

HAST thou not seen1 how thy Lord dealt with the army of the ELEPHANT?

Did he not cause their stratagem to miscarry?

And he sent against them birds in flocks (ababils),

Claystones did they hurl down upon them,

And he made them like stubble eaten down!

_______________________

1 This Sura is probably Muhammad's appeal to the Meccans, intended at the same time for his own encouragement, on the ground of their deliverance from the army of Abraha, the Christian King of Abyssinia and Arabia Felix, said to have been lost in the year of Muhammad's birth in an expedition against Mecca for the purpose of destroying the Caaba. This army was cut off by small-pox (Wakidi; Hishami), and there is no doubt, as the Arabic word for small-pox also means "small stones," in reference to the hard gravelly feeling of the pustules, what is the true interpretation of the fourth line of this Sura, which, like many other poetical passages in the Koran, has formed the starting point for the most puerile and extravagant legends. Vide Gibbon's Decline and Fall, c. 1. The small-pox first shewed itself in Arabia at the time of the invasion by Abraha. M. de Hammer Gemaldesaal, i. 24. Reiske opusc. Med. Arabum. Hal‘, 1776, p. 8.

SURA CVI.-THE KOREISCH [XX.]

MECCA.-4 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

For the union of the KOREISCH:-

Their union in equipping caravans winter and summer.

And let them worship the Lord of this house, who hath provided them with food against hunger,

And secured them against alarm.1

_______________________

1 In allusion to the ancient inviolability of the Haram, or precinct round Mecca. See Sura, xcv. n. p. 41. This Sura, therefore, like the preceding, is a brief appeal to the Meccans on the ground of their peculiar privileges.

SURA XCVII.-POWER [XXI.]

MECCA.-5 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

VERILY, we have caused It1 to descend on the night of POWER.

And who shall teach thee what the night of power is?

The night of power excelleth a thousand months:

Therein descend the angels and the spirit by permission of their Lord for every matter;2

And all is peace till the breaking of the morn.

_______________________

1 The Koran, which is now pressed on the Meccans with increased prominence, as will be seen in many succeeding Suras of this period.

2 The night of Al Kadr is one of the last ten nights of Ramadhan, and as is commonly believed the seventh of those nights reckoning backward. See Sura xliv. 2. "Three books are opened on the New Year's Day, one of the perfectly righteous, one of the perfectly wicked, one of the intermediate. The perfectly righteous are inscribed and sealed for life," etc. Bab. Talm. Rosh. Hash., § I.

SURA LXXXVI. THE NIGHT-COMER [XXII.]