He is not a poet, but when he deals with the unity of God, with
the beneficence of the Divine Being, with the wonders of Nature, with
the beauty of resignation, he exhibits a glowing rhetoric, a power of
gorgeous imagery, of pathos, and religious devotion, that make the
"Koran" the first written work in the Arabian tongue.
If we take Mohammed's own account of the composition of the volume, we
must believe that the completed "Koran" existed from all eternity, on a
tablet preserved in the upper heavens. Once a year, during the period of
the prophet's active work, fragments of this tablet were brought down by
the angel Gabriel to the lower heavens of the moon, and imparted to the
prophet, who was periodically transported to that celestial sphere. The
words were recited by the angel, and dictated by the prophet to his
scribe. These detached scraps were written on the ribs of palm leaves,
or the shoulder-blades of sheep, or parchment, and were stored in a
chest, in which they were kept until the caliphat of Abu Bekr, in the
seventh century, when they were collected in one volume. Such marvels of
revelation were made at different periods to the prophet, and were
called Surahs, and formed separate chapters in the Koran as we have it
to-day. Some of these Surahs contradict what had previously been uttered
by the prophet, but this discrepancy is obviated by the expedient of
what is called "abrogation," and the more recent utterances were held to
supersede and rescind those which were contradictory to it in the
earlier revelation.
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