master in another life; and the invocation of departed spirits implies that they were still endowed with consciousness and power. I am ignorant, and I am careless, of the blind mythology of the barbarians; of the local deities, of the stars, the air, and the earth, of their sex or titles, their attributes or subordination. Each tribe, each family, each independent warrior, created and changed the rites and the object of his fantastic worship; but the nation, in every age, has bowed to the religion, as well as to the language, of Mecca. The genuine antiquity of the CAABA ascends beyond the Christian æra: in describing the coast of the Red Sea, the Greek historian Diodorus 36 has remarked, between the Thamudites and the Sabæans, a famous temple, whose superior sanctity was revered by all the Arabians; the linen or silken veil, which is annually renewed by the Turkish emperor, was first offered by a pious king of the Homerites, who reigned seven hundred years before the time of Mahomet. 37 A tent or a cavern might suffice for the worship of the savages, but an edifice of stone and clay has been erected in its place; and the art and power of the monarchs of the East have been confined to the simplicity of the original model. 38 A spacious portico 36 Ιερὸν ἁγιώτατον ἵδρυται τιμώμενον ὑπὸ πάντων ̓Αράβων TEρITTÓTEрOV (Diodor. Sicul. tom. i. 1. iii. p. 211). The character and position are so correctly apposite, that I am surprised how this curious passage should have been read without notice or application. Yet this famous temple had been overlooked by Agatharchides (de Mari Rubro, p. 58, in Hudson, tom. i.), whom Diodorus copies in the rest of the description. Was the Sicilian more knowing than the Egyptian? Or was the Caaba built between the years of Rome 650? 37 Pocock, Specimen, pp. 60, 61. From the death of Mahomet we ascend to 68, from his birth to 129, years before the Christian æra. The veil or curtain, which is now of silk and gold, was no more than a piece of Egyptian linen (Abulfeda, in Vit. Mohammed. c. 6, p. 14). 38 The original plan of the Caaba (which is servilely copied in Sale, the Universal History, &c.) was a Turkish draught, which Reland (de Religione Mohammedicâ, pp. 113-123) has corrected and explained from the best authorities. VOL. V. N encloses the quadrangle of the Caaba, a square chapel, twenty-four cubits long, twenty-three broad, and twenty-seven high; a door and a window admit the light; the double roof is supported by three pillars of wood; a spout (now of gold) discharges the rainwater, and the well Zemzem is protected by a dome from accidental pollution. The tribe of Koreish, by fraud or force, had acquired the custody of the Caaba the sacerdotal office devolved through four lineal descents to the grandfather of Mahomet; and the family of the Hashemites, from whence he sprung, was the most respectable and sacred in the eyes of their country.39 The precincts of Mecca enjoyed the rights of sanctuary; and, in the last month of each year, the city and the temple were crowded with a long train of pilgrims, who presented their vows and offerings in the house of God. The same rites, which are now accomplished by the faithful Musulman, were invented and practised by the superstition of the idolaters. At an awful distance they cast away their garments; seven times, with hasty steps, they encircled the Caaba, and kissed the black stone; seven times they visited and adored the adjacent mountains; seven times they threw stones into the valley of Mina; and the pilgrimage was achieved, as at the present hour, by a sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their hair and nails in the consecrated ground. Each tribe either found or introduced in the Caaba their domestic worship; the temple was adorned, or defiled, with three hundred and sixty idols of men, eagles, lions, and antelopes; and most conspicuous was the statue of Hebal, of red agate, holding in his hand seven arrows, without heads or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane divination. But this statue was a monument of Syrian arts; the devotion of the ruder ages was content with a pillar or a tablet; 29 Cosa, the fifth ancestor of Mahomet, must have usurped the Caaba, A.D. 440; but the story is differently told by Jannabi (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. pp. 65-69) and by Abulfeda (in Vit. Moham. c. 6, p. 13). and the rocks of the desert were hewn into gods or altars, in imitation of the black stone of Mecca, which is deeply tainted with the reproach of an idolatrous origin. From Japan to Peru, the use of sacrifice has universally prevailed; and the votary has expressed his gratitude, or fear, by destroying or consuming, in honour of the gods, the dearest and most precious of their gifts. The life of a man is the most precious oblation to deprecate a public calamity: the altars of Phoenicia and Egypt, of Rome and Carthage, have been polluted with human gore; the cruel practice was long preserved among the Arabs; in the third century, a boy was annually sacrificed by the tribe of the Dumatians; and a royal captive was piously slaughtered by the prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the 43 Justinian.* emperor A parent who 42 40 In the second century, Maximus of Tyre attributes to the Arabs the worship of a stone'Αράβιοι σέβουσι μὲν, ὅντινα δὲ οὐκ οἶδα, τὸ δὲ ἄγαλμα εἶδον λίθος ἦν τετράγωνος (dissert. viii. tom. i. p. 142, edit. Reiske); and the reproach is furiously reechoed by the Christians (Clemens Alex. in Protreptico, p. 40; Arnobius contra Gentes, 1. vi. p. 246). Yet these stones were no other than the ẞairuλa of Syria and Greece, so renowned in sacred and profane antiquity (Euseb. Præp. Evangel. l. i. p. 37, Marsham, Canon. Chron. pp. 54-56). 41 The two horrid subjects of 'Ανδροθυσία and Παιδοθυσία are accurately discussed by the learned Sir John Marsham (Canon. Chron. pp. 76-78, 301-304). Sanchoniatho derives the Phoenician sacrifices from the example of Chronus; but we are ignorant whether Chronus lived before or after Abraham, or indeed whether he lived at all. 42 Κατ ̓ ἔτος ἕκαστον παῖδα ἔθυον, is the reproach of Por phyry; but he likewise imputes to the Romans the same barbarous custom, which, A.U.C. 657, had been finally abolished. Dumætha, Daumat al Gendal, is noticed by Ptolemy (Tabul. p. 37, Arabia, pp. 9-29), and Abulfeda (p. 57); and may be jound in d'Anville's maps, in the mid-desert between Chaibar and Tadmor. 43 Procopius (de Bell. Persico, 1. i. c. 28), Evagrius (1. vi. c. 21), and Pocock (Specimen, pp. 72, 86) attest the human sacrifices of the Arabs in the vith century. The danger and escape of Abdallah is a tradition rather than a fact (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. pp. 82-84). drags his son to the altar exhibits the most painful and sublime effort of fanaticism; the deed, or the intention, was sanctified by the example of saints and heroes; and the father of Mahomet himself was devoted by a rash vow, and hardly ransomed for the equivalent of an hundred camels. In the time of ignorance, the Arabs, like the Jews and Egyptians, abstained from the taste of swine's flesh; they circumcised 45 their children at the age of puberty; the same customs, without the censure or the precept of the Koran, have been silently transmitted to their posterity and proselytes. It has been sagaciously conjectured that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices of his countrymen. It is more simple to believe that he adhered to the habits and opinions of his youth, without foreseeing that a practice congenial to the climate of Mecca might become useless or inconvenient on the banks of the Danube or the Volga. Arabia was free; the adjacent kingdoms were shaken by the storms of conquest and tyranny, and the persecuted sects fled to the happy land where they might profess what they thought and practise what they professed. The religions of the Sabians and Magians, of the Jews and Christians, were disseminated from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. In a remote period of antiquity, Sabianism was diffused over Asia by the 44 Suillis carnibus abstinent, says Solinus (Polyhistor. c. 33), who copies Pliny (1. viii. c. 68) in the strange supposition that hogs cannot live in Arabia. The Egyptians were actuated by a natural and superstitious horror for that unclean beast (Marsham, Canon. p. 205). The old Arabians likewise practised, post coitum, the rite of ablution (Herodot. 1. i. c. 80), which is sanctified by the Mahometan law (Reland, p. 75, &c. ; Chardin, or rather the Mollah of Shaw Abbas, tom. iv. P. 71, &c.). 45 The Mahometan doctors are not fond of the subject; yet they hold circumcision necessary to salvation, and even pretend that Mahomet was miraculously born without a foreskin (Pocock Specimen, pp. 319, 320; Sale's Preliminary Discourse, pp. 106, 107). science of the Chaldeans 46 and the arms of the Assyrians. From the observations of two thousand years the priests and astronomers of Babylon 47 deduced the eternal laws of nature and providence. They adored the seven gods or angels who directed the course of the seven planets and shed their irresistible influence on the earth. The attributes of the seven planets, with the twelve signs of the zodiac and the twenty-four constellations of the northern and southern hemisphere, were represented by images and talismans; the seven days of the week were dedicated to their respective deities; the Sabians prayed thrice each day; and the temple of the moon at Haran was the term of their pilgrimage.48 But the flexible genius of their faith was always ready either to teach or to learn; in the tradition of the creation, the deluge, and the patriarchs, they held a singular agreement with their Jewish captives; they appealed to the secret books of Adam, Seth, and Enoch; and a slight infusion of the gospel has transformed the last remnant of the Polytheists into the Christians of St. John, in the territory of Bassora.49 The altars of Babylon were 46 Diodorus Siculus (tom. i. 1. ii. pp. 142-145) has cast on their religion the curious, but superficial, glance of a Greek. Their astronomy would be far more valuable: they had looked through the telescope of reason, since they could doubt whether the sun were in the number of the planets or of the fixed stars. 47 Simplicius (who quotes Porphyry) de Cælo, 1. ii. com. xlvi. p. 123, lin. 18, apud Marsham, Canon. Chron. p. 474, who doubts the fact, because it is adverse to his systems. The earliest date of the Chaldean observations is the year 2234 before Christ. After the conquest of Babylon by Alexander, they were communicated, at the request of Aristotle, to the astronomer Hipparchus. What a moment in the annals of science! 48 Pocock (Specimen, pp. 138-146), Hottinger (Hist. Oriental. pp. 162-203), Hyde (de Religione Vet. Persarum, pp. 124, 128, &c.), d'Herbelot (Sabi, pp. 725, 726), and Sale (Preliminary Discourse, pp. 14, 15), rather excite than gratify our curiosity; and the last of these writers confounds Sabianism with the primitive religion of the Arabs. 49 D'Anville (l'Euphrates et le Tigre, pp. 130-147) will fix the position of these ambiguous Christians; Assemannus (Bibliot. |