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


_______________________

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 God, the Compassionate, 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!


_______________________

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.


_______________________



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