mostly drawn from distorted apocryphal sources, and native heathen stories,
all first pass through the prophet's fervid mind, and thence issue in strange
new forms, tinged with poetry and enthusiasm, and well adapted to enforce his
own view of life and duty, to serve as an encouragement to his faithful
adherents, and to strike terror into the hearts of his opponents.

There is, however, apart from its religious value, a more general view from
which the book should be considered. The Koran enjoys the distinction of
having been the starting-point of a new literary and philosophical movement
which has powerfully affected the finest and most cultivated minds among both
Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages. This general progress of the
Muhammedan world has somehow been arrested, but research has shown that what
European scholars knew of Greek philosophy, of mathematics, astronomy, and
like sciences, for several centuries before the Renaissance, was, roughly
speaking, all derived from Latin treatises ultimately based on Arabic
originals; and it was the Koran which, though indirectly, gave the first
impetus to these studies among the Arabs and their allies. Linguistic
investigations, poetry, and other branches of literature, also made their
appearance soon after or simultaneously with the publication of the Koran;
and the literary movement thus initiated has resulted in some of the finest
products of genius and learning.

The style in which the Koran is written requires some special attention in
this introduction. The literary form is for the most part different from
anything else we know. In its finest passages we indeed seem to hear a voice
akin to that of the ancient Hebrew prophets, but there is much in the book
which Europeans usually regard as faulty. The tendency to repetition which is
an inherent characteristic of the Semitic mind appears here in an exaggerated
form, and there is in addition much in the Koran which strikes us as wild and
fantastic. The most unfavourable criticism ever passed on Muhammed's style
has in fact been penned by the prophet's greatest British admirer, Carlyle
himself; and there are probably many now who find themselves in the same
dilemma with that great writer.

The fault appears, however, to lie partly in our difficulty to appreciate the
psychology of the Arab prophet. We must, in order to do him justice, give
full consideration to his temperament and to the condition of things around
him. We are here in touch with an untutored but fervent mind, trying to
realise itself and to assimilate certain great truths which have been
powerfully borne in upon him, in order to impart them in a convincing form to
his fellow-tribesmen. He is surrounded by obstacles of every kind, yet he
manfully struggles on with the message that is within him. Learning he has
none, or next to none. His chief objects of knowledge are floating stories
and traditions largely picked up from hearsay, and his over-wrought mind is
his only teacher. The literary compositions to which he had ever listened
were the half-cultured, yet often wildly powerful rhapsodies of early Arabian
minstrels, akin to Ossian rather than to anything else within our knowledge.
What wonder then that his Koran took a form which to our colder temperaments
sounds strange, unbalanced, and fantastic?

Yet the Moslems themselves consider the book the finest that ever appeared
among men. They find no incongruity in the style. To them the matter is all
true and the manner all perfect. Their eastern temperament responds readily
to the crude, strong, and wild appeal which its cadences make to them, and
the jingling rhyme in which the sentences of a discourse generally end adds
to the charm of the whole. The Koran, even if viewed from the point of view
of style alone, was to them from the first nothing less than a miracle, as
great a miracle as ever was wrought.

But to return to our own view of the case. Our difficulty in appreciating the
style of the Koran even moderately is, of course, increased if, instead of
the original, we have a translation before us. But one is happy to be able to
say that Rodwell's rendering is one of the best that have as yet been
produced. It seems to a great extent to carry with it the atmosphere in which
Muhammed lived, and its sentences are imbued with the flavour of the East.
The quasi-verse form, with its unfettered and irregular rhythmic flow of the
lines, which has in suitable cases been adopted, helps to bring out much of
the wild charm of the Arabic. Not the least among its recommendations is,
perhaps, that it is scholarly without being pedantic that is to say, that it
aims at correctness without sacrificing the right effect of the whole to
over-insistence on small details.

Another important merit of Rodwell's edition is its chronological arrangement
of the Suras or chapters. As he tells us himself in his preface, it is now in
a number of cases impossible to ascertain the exact occasion on which a
discourse, or part of a discourse, was delivered, so that the system could
not be carried through with entire consistency. But the sequence adopted is
in the main based on the best available historical and literary evidence; and
in following the order of the chapters as here printed, the reader will be
able to trace the development of the prophet's mind as he gradually advanced
from the early flush of inspiration to the less spiritual and more equivocal
r\oc\le of warrior, politician, and founder of an empire.

G. Margoliouth.


1 Mahommed and the Rise of Islam, in “Heroes of Nations” series.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS. From the original Arabic by G. Sale, 1734, 1764, 1795,
1801; many later editions, which include a memoir of the translator by R. A.
Davenport, and notes from Savary's version of the Koran; an edition issued by
E. M. Wherry, with additional notes and commentary (Tr\du\ubner's Oriental
Series), 1882, etc.; Sale's translation has also been edited in the Chandos
Classics, and among Lubbock's Hundred Books (No. 22). The Holy Qur\da\an,
translated by Dr. Mohammad Abdul Hakim Khan, with short notes, 1905;
Translation by J. M. Rodwell, with notes and index (the Suras arranged in
chronological order), 1861, 2nd ed., 1876; by E. H. Palmer (Sacred Books of
the East, vols. vi., ix.).


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