home began at once to relate to their fellow-citizens the story of their conversion, and to extol, in no measured terms, their new religion and its apostle. This circumstance gave eclat to Mohammed in the city of Medina, and paved the way to a train of events which tended more than any thing else to promote his final success in Arabia. In the mean time, in order to strengthen his interest in Mecca, he married Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker, and shortly after Sawda, the daughter of Zama. By thus becoming the son-in-law of two of the principal men of his party he secured their patronage to his person and his cause,

CHAPTER VII.

The Prophet pretends to have had a night-journey through the Seven Heavens Description of the memorable Night by an Arabic writerAccount of the Journey-His probable Motives in feigning such an extravagant fiction.

Ir was in the twelfth year of the pretended mission that Mohammed was favoured, according to his own account, with his celebrated night-journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from thence to the seventh heaven, under the conduct of the angel Gabriel. In allusion to this the seventeenth chapter of the Koran commences thus:"Praise be unto him who transported his servant by night from the sacred temple of Mecca to the farther temple of Jerusalem, the circuit of which we have blessed, that we might show some of our signs; for God is he who heareth and seeth." This idle and extravagant tale, which is not related in the Koran, but handed down by tradition, was probably devised by the impostor in order to raise his reputation as a saint, and to put himself more nearly upon a level with Moses, with whom God conversed, face to face, in the holy mount. The story, however, is devoutly believed by the Mussulmans, and one of their writers has given the following highly-wrought description of the memorable night in which it occurred. "In the

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darkest, most obscure, and most silent night that the sun ever caused by his absence, since that glorious planet of light was created or had its being; a night in which there was no crowing of cocks to be heard throughout the whole universe, no barkings of dogs, no howlings, roarings, or yellings of wild beasts, nor watchings of nocturnal birds; nay, and not only the feathered and four-footed creatures suspended their customary vociferations and motions, but likewise the waters ceased from their murmurings, the winds from their whistlings, the air from its breathings, the serpents from their hissings, the mountains, valleys, and caverns from their resounding echoes, the earth from its produc tions, the tender plants from their sproutings, the grass of the field from its verdancy, the waves of the sea from their agitations, and their inhabitants, the fishes, from plying their fins. And indeed upon a night so wonderful it was very requisite, that all the creatures of the Lord's handy-work should cease from their usual movements, and become dumb and motionless, and lend an attentive ear, that they might conceive by means of their ears what their tongues were not capable of expressing. Nor is any tongue able to express the wonders and mysteries of this night, and should any undertake so unequal a task, there could no, thing be represented but the bare shadow; since what happened in this miraculous night was infinitely the greatest and most stupendous event that ever befell any of the posterity of Adam, either expressed in any of the sacred writings which

came down from above, or by signs and figures. From the sublime altitudes of heaven the most glorious seraph of all those which God ever created or produced, the incomparable Gabriel, upon the latter part of the evening of that stupendous night, took a hasty and precipitate flight, and descended to this lower world with an unheardof and wonderful message, the which caused an universal rejoicing on earth, and filled the seven heavens with a more than ordinary gladness; and, as the nature of the message both required and inspired joy, he visited the world under the most glorious and beautiful appearance that even imagination itself is capable of figuring. His whiteness obscured that of the driven snow, and his splendour darkened the rays of the noontide sun. garments were all covered with the richest flowers in embroidery of celestial fabric, and his many wings were most beautifully expanded, and all interspersed with inestimable precious stones. His stature was exceeding tall, and his presence exquisitely awful. Upon his beauteous capa cious forehead he bore two lines written in characters of dazzling light; the uppermost consisted of these words, La illah il`allah—THERE IS NO GOD BUT ALLAH; and in the lowermost line was contained, Mohammed Rasoul Allah-MOHAMMED IS GOD'S MESSENGER."*

His

In passing from this poetical prelude, conceived in the true gorgeous style of oriental description, to the meagre and puerile story of the journey it* Morgan's Mahometanism Explained.

self, we feel at once that the prophet's fancy suffers by comparison with that of his disciple, who could certainly, from the above specimen, have given a vastly more interesting fiction of a celestial tour than the miserable tissue of absurdity which appears in the fabrication of the prophet. Without detailing all the particulars of this nocturnal expedition, in which the marvels thickened upon him till he had reached the utmost height of the empyrean, the following outline will afford the reader an idea of its general character.

While the prophet was reposing in his bed, with his beloved Ayesha at his side, he was suddenly awakened by the angel Gabriel, who stood before him with seventy pair of expanded wings, whiter than snow and clearer than crystal. The angel · informed him that he had come to conduct him to heaven, and directed him to mount an animal that stood ready at the door, and which was between the nature of an ass and a mule. The name of this beast was Alborak, signifying in the Arabic tongue," The Lightning," from his inconceivable swiftness. His colour was a milky white. As he had, however, remained inactive from the time of Christ to that of Mohammed—there having been no prophet in the interval to employ himhe now proved so restless and refractory, that Mohammed could not succeed in seating himself on his back till he had promised him a placé in paradise. Pacified by this promise, he suffered the prophet quietly to mount, and Gabriel, taking the bridle in his hand, conveyed him from Mecca