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The core of Mohammed's teaching was theism plus certain practices. A strict belief in the unity of God, an equally strict belief in the divine mission of Mohammed as set forth in the Koran, and certain clearly defined duties prayer, ablutions, fasting, almsgiving, and pilgrimage these, and these alone, constituted the Islam of the Arab conquerors of the Eastern world.
As to the popular doctrines of Mohammedanism, I shall here have nothing to say. The reader who is interested in that matter will find an account of them in a review of the Koran in the eleventh chapter of my "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe." It is enough now to remark that their heaven was arranged in seven stories, and was only a palace of Oriental carnal delight.
For the Turks, having no notion of letters and being, even by their religion, forbid the use of them, except for reading and transcribing the Koran, they have no historians of their own, nor any authentic records nor memorials for other historians to work upon; so that what histories we have of that country are written by foreigners; as Platina, Sir Paul Rycaut, Prince Cantimer, etc., or else snatches only of particular and short periods, by some who happened to reside there at those times; such as Busbequius, whom I have just finished.
The boys were diligent enough, and appeared to possess a considerable share of emulation; carrying their boards slung over their shoulders when about their common employments. When a boy has committed to memory a few of their prayers, and can read and write certain parts of the Koran, he is reckoned sufficiently instructed; and with this slender stock of learning, commences his career of life.
While I was at Djidda, a Yemen beggar mounted the minaret daily, after mid-day prayer, and exclaimed loud enough to be heard through the whole bazar, "I ask from God fifty dollars, a suit of clothes, and a copy of the Koran; O faithful, hear me, I ask of you fifty dollars," &c. &c.
Martyn read while on board the Old Testament in the original Hebrew and the New Testament in the original Greek, so that he might understand them better and make a more perfect translation into Persian. He read the Koran of Mohammed so that he could argue with the Persians about it. And he worked hard at Arabic grammar, and read books in Persian.
Let him fly where he will, from law to law; law, I thank God, meets him everywhere, and enforced, too, by the practice of the most impious tyrants, which he quotes as if it would justify his conduct. I would as willingly have him tried by the law of the Koran, or the Institutes of Tamerlane, as on the common law or statute law of this kingdom.
Do they not know that it is written in the Koran: 'Let a man hold his word sacred!
She craved for arms to guard her, to protect her from the terror of the heavens. Like a black silhouette against the lake of blood, a human figure rose up out of the desert, a John the Baptist, "a burning and shining light," a voice calling in the wilderness. As the sonorous words of the Koran were borne to them, Millicent said, "Oh, Mike, it's my holy man!
I could not believe that she could be wilfully disloyal to me still less that she could have suddenly broken through the fixed ideas of her whole life, the principles engraved on her mind by education more stringently than the maxims of the Koran or the Levitical Law on the children of Ishmael or of Israel; and this while the impressive rites of Initiation, the imprecation at which I myself had shuddered, were fresh in her memory their impression infinitely deepened, moreover, by the awful mystery of that Vision of which even yet we were half afraid to speak to one another.
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