THE SÚRA OF THE SEVERING (LXXXII). (1) When the Sky shall be severèd, (2) And when the Stars shall be shiverèd, (3) And when the Seas to mingle shall be sufferèd, (4) And when the Graves shall be uncoverèd— (5) A soul shall know that which it hath deferred or deliverèd.315 (6) O Man, what beguiled thee against thy gracious Master to rebel, (7) Who created thee and fashioned thee right and thy frame did fairly build? (8) He composed thee in whatever form He willed. (9) Nay, but ye disbelieve in the Ordeal!316 (10) Verily over you are Recorders honourable, (11) Your deeds inscribing without fail:317 (12) What ye do they know well. (13) Surely the pious in delight shall dwell, (14) And surely the wicked shall be in Hell, (15) Burning there on the Day of Ordeal; (16) And evermore Hell-fire they shall feel! (17) What shall make thee to understand what is the Day of Ordeal? (18) Again, what shall make thee to understand what is the Day of Ordeal?— (19) A Day when one soul shall not obtain anything for another soul, but the command on that Day shall be with God alone.
THE SÚRA OF THE SIGNS (LXXXV). (1) By the Heaven in which Signs are set, (2) By the Day that is promisèd, (3) By the Witness and the Witnessèd:— (4) Cursèd be the Fellows of the Pit, they that spread (5) The fire with fuel fed, (6) When they sate by its head (7) And saw how their contrivance against the Believers sped;318 (8) And they punished them not save that they believed on God, the Almighty, the Glorified, (9) To whom is the Kingdom of Heaven and Earth, and He seeth every thing beside. (10) Verily, for those who afflict believing men and women and repent not, the torment of Gehenna and the torment of burning is prepared. (11) Verily, for those who believe and work righteousness are Gardens beneath which rivers flow: this is the great Reward. (12) Stern is the vengeance of thy Lord. (13) He createth the living and reviveth the dead: (14) He doth pardon and kindly entreat: (15) The majestic Throne is His seat: (16) That he willeth He doeth indeed. (17) Hath not word come to thee of the multitude (18) Of Pharaoh, and of Thamúd?319 (19) Nay, the infidels cease not from falsehood, (20) But God encompasseth them about. (21) Surely, it is a Sublime Koran that ye read, (22) On a Table inviolate.320
THE SÚRA OF THE SMITING (CI). (1) The Smiting! What is the Smiting? (2) And how shalt thou be made to understand what is the Smiting? (3) The Day when Men shall be as flies scatterèd, (4) And the Mountains shall be as shreds of wool tatterèd. (5) One whose Scales are heavy, a pleasing life he shall spend, (6) But one whose Scales are light, to the Abyss he shall descend. (7) What that is, how shalt thou be made to comprehend? (8) Scorching Fire without end!
THE SÚRA OF THE UNBELIEVERS (CIX). (1) Say: 'O Unbelievers, (2) I worship not that which ye worship, (3) And ye worship not that which I worship. (4) Neither will I worship that which ye worship, (5) Nor will ye worship that which I worship. (6) Ye have your religion and I have my religion.'
To summarise the cardinal doctrines preached by Muḥammad The teaching of Muḥammad at Mecca. during the Meccan period:—
1. There is no god but God.
2. Muḥammad is the Apostle of God, and the Koran is the Word of God revealed to His Apostle.
3. The dead shall be raised to life at the Last Judgment, when every one shall be judged by his actions in the present life.
4. The pious shall enter Paradise and the wicked shall go down to Hell.
Taking these doctrines separately, let us consider a little more in detail how each of them is stated and by what arguments it is enforced. The time had not yet come for drawing the sword: Muḥammad repeats again and again that he is only a warner ( nadhír) invested with no authority to compel where he cannot persuade.
1. The Meccans acknowledged the supreme position of Allah, but in ordinary circumstances neglected him in favour The Unity of God. of their idols, so that, as Muḥammad complains, " When danger befalls you on the sea, the gods whom ye invoke are forgotten except Him alone; yet when He brought you safe to land, ye turned your backs on Him, for Man is ungrateful."321 They were strongly attached to the cult of the Ka‘ba, not only by self-interest, but also by the more respectable motives of piety towards their ancestors and pride in their traditions. Muḥammad himself regarded Allah as Lord of the Ka‘ba, and called upon the Quraysh to worship him as such (Kor. cvi, 3). When they refused to do so on the ground that they were afraid lest the Arabs should rise against them and drive them forth from the land, he assured them that Allah was the author of all their prosperity (Kor. xxviii, 57). His main argument, however, is drawn from the weakness of the idols, which cannot create even a fly, contrasted with the wondrous manifestations of Divine power and providence in the creation of the heavens and the earth and all living things.322
It was probably towards the close of the Meccan period that Muḥammad summarised his Unitarian ideas in the following emphatic formula:—
THE SÚRA OF PURIFICATION (CXII).323 (1) Say: 'God is One; (2) God who liveth on;(3) Without father and without son; (4) And like to Him there is none!'
2. We have seen that when Muḥammad first appeared as a prophet he was thought by all except a very few to Muḥammad, the Apostle of God. be majnún, i.e., possessed by a jinní, or genie, if I may use a word which will send the reader back to his Arabian Nights. The heathen Arabs regarded such persons—soothsayers, diviners, and poets—with a certain respect; and if Muḥammad's 'madness' had taken a normal course, his claim to inspiration would have passed unchallenged. What moved the Quraysh to oppose him was not disbelief in his inspiration—it mattered little to them whether he was under the spell of Allah or one of the Jinn—but the fact that he preached doctrines which wounded their sentiments, threatened their institutions, and subverted the most cherished traditions of old Arabian life. But in order successfully to resist the propaganda for which he alleged a Divine warrant, they were obliged to meet him on his own ground and to maintain that he was no prophet at all, no Apostle of Allah, as he asserted, but "an insolent liar," "a schooled madman," "an infatuated poet," and so forth; and that his Koran, which he gave out to be the Word of Allah, was merely "old folks' tales" ( asáṭíru ’l-awwalín), or the invention of a poet or a sorcerer. "Is not he," they cried, "a man like ourselves, who wishes to domineer over us? Let him show us a miracle, that we may believe." Muḥammad could only reiterate his former assertions and warn the infidels that a terrible punishment was in store for them either in this world or the next. Time after time he compares himself to the ancient prophets—Noah, Abraham, Moses, and their successors—who are represented as employing exactly the same arguments and receiving the same answers as Muḥammad; and bids his people hearken to him lest they utterly perish like the ungodly before them. The truth of the Koran is proved, he says, by the Pentateuch and the Gospel, all being Revelations of the One God, and therefore identical in substance. He is no mercenary soothsayer, he seeks no personal advantage: his mission is solely to preach. The demand for a miracle he could not satisfy except by pointing to his visions of the Angel and especially to the Koran itself, every verse of which was a distinct sign or miracle ( áyat).324 If he has forged it, why are his adversaries unable to produce anything similar? " Say: 'If men and genies united to bring the like of this Koran, they could not bring the like although they should back each other up'" (Kor. xvii, 90).
3. Such notions of a future life as were current in Pre-islamic Arabia never rose beyond vague and barbarous superstition, Resurrection and Retribution. e.g., the fancy that the dead man's tomb was haunted by his spirit in the shape of a screeching owl.325 No wonder, then, that the ideas of Resurrection and Retribution, which are enforced by threats and arguments on almost every page of the Koran, appeared to the Meccan idolaters absurdly ridiculous and incredible. " Does Ibn Kabsha promise us that we shall live?" said one of their poets. " How can there be life for the ṣadá and the háma? Dost thou omit to ward me from death, and wilt thou revive me when my bones are rotten?"326 God provided His Apostle with a ready answer to these gibes: " Say: 'He shall revive them who produced them at first, for He knoweth every creation" (Kor. xxxvi, 79). This topic is eloquently illustrated, but Muḥammad's hearers were probably less impressed by the creative power of God as exhibited in Nature and in Man than by the awful examples, to which reference has been made, of His destructive power as manifested in History. To Muḥammad himself, at the outset of his mission, it seemed an appalling certainty that he must one day stand before God and render an account; the overmastering sense of his own responsibility goaded him to preach in the hope of saving his countrymen, and supplied him, weak and timorous as he was, with strength to endure calumny and persecution. As Nöldeke has remarked, the grandest Súras of the whole Koran are those in which Muḥammad describes how all Nature trembles and quakes at the approach of the Last Judgment. "It is as though one actually saw the earth heaving, the mountains crumbling to dust, and the stars hurled hither and thither in wild confusion."327 Súras lxxxii and ci, which have been translated above, are specimens of the true prophetic style.328