purpose which forbade him, as it certainly did, in any way to tamper with the
sacred text, to suppress contradictory, and exclude or soften down
inaccurate, statements.

The arrangement of the Suras in this translation is based partly upon the
traditions of the Muhammadans themselves, with reference especially to the
ancient chronological list printed by Weil in his Mohammed der Prophet, as
well as upon a careful consideration of the subject matter of each separate
Sura and its probable connection with the sequence of events in the life of
Muhammad. Great attention has been paid to this subject by Dr. Weil in the
work just mentioned; by Mr. Muir in his Life of Mahomet, who also publishes a
chronological list of Suras, 21 however of which he admits have "not yet been
carefully fixed;" and especially by Nöldeke, in his Geschichte des Qôrans, a
work to which public honours were awarded in 1859 by the Paris Academy of
Inscriptions. From the arrangement of this author I see no reason to depart
in regard to the later Suras. It is based upon a searching criticism and
minute analysis of the component verses of each, and may be safely taken as a
standard, which ought not to be departed from without weighty reasons. I
have, however, placed the earlier and more fragmentary Suras, after the two
first, in an order which has reference rather to their subject matter than to
points of historical allusion, which in these Suras are very few; whilst on
the other hand, they are mainly couched in the language of self-communion, of
aspirations after truth, and of mental struggle, are vivid pictures of Heaven
and Hell, or descriptions of natural objects, and refer also largely to the
opposition met with by Muhammad from his townsmen of Mecca at the outset of
his public career. This remark applies to what Nöldeke terms "the Suras of
the First Period."

The contrast between the earlier, middle, and later Suras is very striking
and interesting, and will be at once apparent from the arrangement here
adopted. In the Suras as far as the 54th, p. 76, we cannot but notice the
entire predominance of the poetical element, a deep appreciation (as in Sura
xci. p. 38) of the beauty of natural objects, brief fragmentary and
impassioned utterances, denunciations of woe and punishment, expressed for
the most part in lines of extreme brevity. With a change, however, in the
position of Muhammad when he openly assumes the office of "public warner,"
the Suras begin to assume a more prosaic and didactic tone, though the
poetical ornament of rhyme is preserved throughout. We gradually lose the
Poet in the missionary aiming to convert, the warm asserter of dogmatic
truths; the descriptions of natural objects, of the judgment, of Heaven and
Hell, make way for gradually increasing historical statements, first from
Jewish, and subsequently from Christian histories; while, in the 29 Suras
revealed at Medina, we no longer listen to vague words, often as it would
seem without positive aim, but to the earnest disputant with the enemies of
his faith, the Apostle pleading the cause of what he believes to be the Truth
of God. He who at Mecca is the admonisher and persuader, at Medina is the
legislator and the warrior, who dictates obedience, and uses other weapons
than the pen of the Poet and the Scribe. When business pressed, as at Medina,
Poetry makes way for Prose, and although touches of the Poetical element
occasionally break forth, and he has to defend himself up to a very late
period against the charge of being merely a Poet, yet this is rarely the case
in the Medina Suras; and we are startled by finding obedience to God and the
Apostle, God's gifts and the Apostle's, God's pleasure and the Apostle's,
spoken of in the same breath, and epithets and attributes elsewhere applied
to Allah openly applied to himself as in Sura ix., 118, 129.

The Suras, viewed as a whole, strike me as being the work of one who began
his career as a thoughtful enquirer after truth, and an earnest asserter of
it in such rhetorical and poetical forms as he deemed most likely to win and
attract his countrymen, and who gradually proceeded from the dogmatic teacher
to the politic founder of a system for which laws and regulations had to be
provided as occasions arose. And of all the Suras it must be remarked that
they were intended not for readers but for hearers-that they were all
promulgated by public recital-and that much was left, as the imperfect
sentences shew, to the manner and suggestive action of the reciter. It would
be impossible, and indeed it is unnecessary, to attempt a detailed life of
Muhammad within the narrow limits of a Preface. The main events thereof with
which the Suras of the Koran stand in connection, are-The visions of Gabriel,
seen, or said to have been seen, at the outset of his career in his 40th
year, during one of his seasons of annual monthly retirement, for devotion
and meditation to Mount Hirâ, near Mecca,-the period of mental depression and
re-assurance previous to the assumption of the office of public teacher-the
Fatrah or pause (see n. p. 20) during which he probably waited for a
repetition of the angelic vision-his labours in comparative privacy for three
years, issuing in about 40 converts, of whom his wife Chadijah was the first,
and Abu Bekr the most important: (for it is to him and to Abu Jahl the Sura
xcii. p. 32, refers)-struggles with Meccan unbelief and idolatry followed by
a period during which probably he had the second vision, Sura liii. p. 69,
and was listened to and respected as a person "possessed" (Sura lxix. 42, p.
60, lii. 29, p. 64)-the first emigration to Abyssinia in A.D. 616, in
consequence of the Meccan persecutions brought on by his now open attacks
upon idolatry (Taghout)-increasing reference to Jewish and Christian
histories, shewing that much time had been devoted to their study the
conversion of Omar in 617-the journey to the Thaquifites at Taief in A.D.
620-the intercourse with pilgrims from Medina, who believed in Islam, and
spread the knowledge thereof in their native town, in the same year-the
vision of the midnight journey to Jerusalem and the Heavens-the meetings by
night at Acaba, a mountain near Mecca, in the 11th year of his mission, and
the pledges of fealty there given to him-the command given to the believers
to emigrate to Yathrib, henceforth Medinat-en-nabi (the city of the Prophet)
or El-Medina (the city), in April of A.D. 622-the escape of Muhammad and Abu
Bekr from Mecca to the cave of Thaur-the FLIGHT to Medina in June 20, A.D.
622-treaties made with Christian tribes-increasing, but still very imperfect
acquaintance with Christian doctrines-the Battle of Bedr in Hej. 2, and of
Ohod-the coalition formed against Muhammad by the Jews and idolatrous
Arabians, issuing in the siege of Medina, Hej. 5 (A.D. 627)-the convention,
with reference to the liberty of making the pilgrimage, of Hudaibiya, Hej. 6-
the embassy to Chosroes King of Persia in the same year, to the Governor of
Egypt and to the King of Abyssinia, desiring them to embrace Islam-the
conquest of several Jewish tribes, the most important of which was that of


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