like Abulfeda as authorities, and to suppose that an account gains in
certainty because it is mentioned by several of them, is highly uncritical."
Life of Mohammad, p. 73.

The sources whence Muhammad derived the materials of his Koran are, over and
above the more poetical parts, which are his own creation, the legends of his
time and country, Jewish traditions based upon the Talmud, or perverted to
suit his own purposes, and the floating Christian traditions of Arabia and of
S. Syria. At a later period of his career no one would venture to doubt the
divine origin of the entire book. But at its commencement the case was
different. The people of Mecca spoke openly and tauntingly of it as the work
of a poet, as a collection of antiquated or fabulous legends, or as palpable
sorcery.4 They accused him of having confederates, and even specified
foreigners who had been his coadjutors. Such were Salman the Persian, to whom
he may have owed the descriptions of Heaven and Hell, which are analogous to
those of the Zendavesta; and the Christian monk Sergius, or as the
Muhammadans term him, Boheira. From the latter, and perhaps from other
Christians, especially slaves naturalised at Mecca, Muhammad obtained access
to the teaching of the Apocryphal Gospels, and to many popular traditions of
which those Gospels are the concrete expression. His wife Chadijah, as well
as her cousin Waraka, a reputed convert to Christianity, and Muhammad's
intimate friend, are said to have been well acquainted with the doctrines and
sacred books both of Jews and Christians. And not only were several Arab
tribes in the neighbourhood of Mecca converts to the Christian faith, but on
two occasions Muhammad had travelled with his uncle, Abu Talib, as far as
Bostra, where he must have had opportunities of learning the general outlines
of Oriental Christian doctrine, and perhaps of witnessing the ceremonial of
their worship. And it appears tolerably certain that previous to and at the
period of his entering into public life, there was a large number of
enquirers at Mecca, who like Zaid, Omayah of Taief, Waraka, etc., were
dissatisfied equally with the religion of their fathers, the Judaism and the
Christianity which they saw around them, and were anxiously enquiring for
some better way. The names and details of the lives of twelve of the
"companions" of Muhammad who lived in Mecca, Medina, and Taief, are recorded,
who previous to his assumption of the Prophetic office, called themselves
Hanyfs, i.e., converts, puritans, and were believers in one God, and regarded
Abraham as the founder of their religion. Muhammad publicly acknowledged that
he was a Hanyf-and this sect of the Hanyfites (who are in no way to be
confounded with the later sect of the same name) were among his Meccan
precursors. See n. pp. 209, 387. Their history is to be found in the Fihrist-
MS. Paris, anc. fonds, nr. 874 (and in other treatises)-which Dr. Sprenger
believes to have been in the library of the Caliph El-Mâmûn. In this
treatise, the Hanyfs are termed Sabeites, and said to have received the
Volumes (Sohof) or Books of Abraham, mentioned in Sura lxxxvii. 19, p. 40,
41, which most commentators affirm to have been borrowed from them, as is
also the case with the latter part of Sura liii. 37, ad f. p. 71; so that
from these "Books" Muhammad derived the legends of Ad and Themoud, whose
downfall, recent as it was (see note p. 300), he throws back to a period
previous to that of Moses, who is made to ask (Sura xiv. 9, p. 226) "whether
their history had reached his hearers." Muhammad is said to have discovered
these "Books" to be a recent forgery, and that this is the reason why no
mention of them occurs after the fourth year of his Prophetic function, A.D.
616. Hence too, possibly, the title Hanyf was so soon dropped and exchanged
for that of Muslim, one who surrenders or resigns himself to God. The Waraka
above mentioned, and cousin of Chadijah, is said to have believed on Muhammad
as long as he continued true to the principles of the Hanyfs, but to have
quitted him in disgust at his subsequent proceedings, and to have died an
orthodox Christian.

It has been supposed that Muhammad derived many of his notions concerning
Christianity from Gnosticism, and that it is to the numerous gnostic sects
the Koran alludes when it reproaches the Christians with having "split up
their religion into parties." But for Muhammad thus to have confounded
Gnosticism with Christianity itself, its prevalence in Arabia must have been
far more universal than we have any reason to believe it really was. In fact,
we have no historical authority for supposing that the doctrines of these
heretics were taught or professed in Arabia at all. It is certain, on the
other hand, that the Basilidans, Valentinians, and other gnostic sects had
either died out, or been reabsorbed into the orthodox Church, towards the
middle of the fifth century, and had disappeared from Egypt before the sixth.
It is nevertheless possible that the gnostic doctrine concerning the
Crucifixion was adopted by Muhammad as likely to reconcile the Jews to Islam,
as a religion embracing both Judaism and Christianity, if they might believe
that Jesus had not been put to death, and thus find the stumbling-block of
the atonement removed out of their path. The Jews would in this case have
simply been called upon to believe in Jesus as being what the Koran
represents him, a holy teacher, who, like the patriarch Enoch or the prophet
Elijah, had been miraculously taken from the earth. But, in all other
respects, the sober and matter-of-fact statements of the Koran relative to
the family and history of Jesus, are altogether opposed to the wild and
fantastic doctrines of Gnostic emanations, and especially to the manner in
which they supposed Jesus, at his Baptism, to have been brought into union
with a higher nature. It is quite clear that Muhammad borrowed in several
points from the doctrines of the Ebionites, Essenes, and Sabeites. Epiphanius
(H‘r. x.) describes the notions of the Ebionites of Nabath‘a, Moabitis, and
Basanitis with regard to Adam and Jesus, almost in the very words of Sura
iii. 52. He tells us that they observed circumcision, were opposed to
celibacy, forbad turning to the sunrise, but enjoined Jerusalem as their
Kebla (as did Muhammad during twelve years), that they prescribed (as did the
Sabeites), washings, very similar to those enjoined in the Koran, and allowed
oaths (by certain natural objects, as clouds, signs of the Zodiac, oil, the
winds, etc.), which we find adopted in the Koran. These points of contact
with Islam, knowing as we do Muhammad's eclecticism, can hardly be
accidental.

We have no evidence that Muhammad had access to the Christian Scriptures,
though it is just possible that fragments of the Old or New Testament may
have reached him through Chadijah or Waraka, or other Meccan Christians,
possessing MSS. of the sacred volume. There is but one direct quotation (Sura
xxi. 105) in the whole Koran from the Scriptures; and though there are a few


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