The Koran Part 9

This soil on which thou dost dwell,

Or by sire and offspring!1

Surely in trouble have we created man.

What! thinketh he that no one hath power over him?

"I have wasted," saith he, "enormous riches!"

What! thinketh he that no one regardeth him?

What! have we not made him eyes,

And tongue, and lips,

And guided him to the two highways?2

Yet he attempted not the steep.

And who shall teach thee what the steep is?

It is to ransom the captive,3

Or to feed in the day of famine,

The orphan who is near of kin, or the poor that lieth in the dust;

Beside this, to be of those who believe, and enjoin stedfastness on each other, and enjoin compa.s.sion on each other.

These shall be the people of the right hand:

While they who disbelieve our signs,

Shall be the people of the left.

Around them the fire shall close.

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1 Lit. and begetter and what he hath begotten

2 Of good and evil.

3 Thus we read in Hilchoth Matt'noth Aniim, c. 8, "The ransoming of captives takes precedence of the feeding and clothing of the poor, and there is no commandment so great as this."

SURA CV.-THE ELEPHANT [XIX.]

MECCA.-5 Verses

In the Name of G.o.d, the Compa.s.sionate, the Merciful

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!

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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 pa.s.sages 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. Arab.u.m. Hal', 1776, p. 8.

SURA CVI.-THE KOREISCH [XX.]

MECCA.-4 Verses

In the Name of G.o.d, the Compa.s.sionate, 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

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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 G.o.d, the Compa.s.sionate, 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?