not doubt;

And that the infirm of heart and the unbelievers may say, What meaneth God by
this parable?

Thus God misleadeth whom He will, and whom He will doth He guide aright: and
none knoweth the armies of thy Lord but Himself: and this is no other than a
warning to mankind.

Nay, by the Moon!

By the Night when it retreateth!

By the Morn when it brighteneth!

Hell is one of the most grievous woes,

Fraught with warning to man,

To him among you who desireth to press forward, or to remain behind.5

For its own works lieth every soul in pledge. But they of God’s right hand

In their gardens shall ask of the wicked;-

“What hath cast you into Hell-fire?”6

They will say, “We were not of those who prayed,

And we were not of those who fed the poor,

And we plunged into vain disputes with vain disputers,

And we rejected as a lie, the day of reckoning,

Till the certainty7 came upon us”-

And intercession of the interceders shall not avail them.

Then what hath come to them that they turn aside from the Warning

As if they were affrighted asses fleeing from a lion?

And every one of them would fain have open pages given to him out of Heaven.

It shall not be. They fear not the life to come.

It shall not be. For this Koran is warning enough. And whoso will, it
warneth him.

But not unless God please, shall they be warned. Meet is He to be feared.
Meet is forgiveness in Him.


_______________________

1 This Sura is placed by Muir in the “second stage” of Meccan Suras, and
twenty-first in chronological order, in the third or fourth year of the
Prophet’s career. According, however, to the chronological list of Suras
given by Weil (Leben M. p. 364) from ancient tradition, as well as from the
consentient voice of tradionists and commentaries (v. Nöld. Geschichte, p.
69; Sprenger’s Life of Mohammad, p. 111) it was the next revealed after the
Fatrah, and the designation to the prophetic office. The main features of
the tradition are, that Muhammad while wandering about in the hills near
Mecca, distracted by doubts and by anxiety after truth, had a vision of the
Angel Gabriel seated on a throne between heaven and earth, that he ran to his
wife, Chadijah, in the greatest alarm, and desired her, perhaps from
superstitious motives (and believing that if covered with clothes he should
be shielded from the glances of evil spirits-comp. Stanley on I Cor. xi. 10),
to envelope him in his mantle; that then Gabriel came down and addressed him
as in v. I. This vision, like that which preceded Sura xcvi., may actually
have occurred during the hallucinations of one of the epileptic fits from
which Muhammad from early youth appears to have suffered. Hence Muhammad in
Sura lxxxi. appeals to it as a matter of fact, and such he doubtless believe
it to be. It may here be observed, that however absurd the Muslim traditions
may be in many of their details, it will generally be found that where there
is an ancient and tolerably universal consent, there will be found at the
bottom a residuum of fact and historical truth. At the same time there can
be no doubt but that the details of the traditions are too commonly founded
upon the attempt to explain or to throw light upon a dark passage of the
Koran, and are pure inventions of a later age.

2 The Arabic words are not those used in later Suras to express the same
idea.

3 Said to be Walid b. Mogheira, a person of note among the unbelieving
Meccans. This portion of the Sura seems to be of a different date from the
first seven verses, though very ancient, and the change of subject is similar
to that at v. 9 of the previous Sura.

4 This and the three following verses wear the appearance of having been
inserted at a later period to meet objections respecting the number of the
angels who guard hell, raised by the Jews; perhaps at Medina, as the four
classes of persons specified are those whom Muhammad had to deal with in that
city, viz., the Jews, Believers, the Hypocrites, or undecided, and Idolaters.
These are constantly mentioned together in the Medina Suras.

5 That is, who believe, and do not believe.

6 As the word sakar disturbs the rhyme, it may have been inserted by a


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