MOHAXITEDANISM, the religion founded by Mohammed, or, according to him, the only orthodox creed existing from the beginning of the world, and preached by all the prophets ever since Adam. It is also called /skim, resignation, entire submission to the will -and precepts. of_God, InIts exclusively dogmatical or theoretiettIpart, it is bran. faith; in its religion (by eminence). The fundainental principles of the former are contained in the two articles of belief: "There is no God but God; and Mohammed is God's apostle." The Mohammedan docrine of God's nature and attributes coincides With the Christian, in so far as he is by both taught to be the Creator of all things in heaven and earth, who rules and preserves all things, without beginning, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and full of mercy. Yet, according to the Moham medan belief, he has no offspring: "He begetteth not, nor is he begotten." Nor is Jesus called anything but a prophet and apostle, although his birth is said to have been due to a miraculous divine operation; and as the Koran superseded the Gospel, so Mohammed, Christ. The crucifixion is said to have been executed upon another person, Christ having been taken up unto God before the decree was carried out. He will come again upon the earth, to establish everywhere the Moslem religion, and to be a sign of the coming of the day of judgment. Next to the belief in God, that in angels forms a prominent dogma. Created of fire, and endowed with a kind of uncorixtreal body, they stand between God and man, adoring or waiting upon the former, or interceding for and guarding the latter. The four chief angels are "The Holy Spirit," or "Angel of Revelation "—Gabriel; the special protector and guardian of the Jews—Michael; the "Angel of Denth"—Azrael (Raphael, in the apocryphal gospel of Barnabas); and Israfil —Uriel, whose office it will be to sound the trumpet at the resurrection. It will hardly Ire necessary, after what we said under MOHAMMED, to point out, in every individual instance, how most of his "religious" notions were taken almost bodily from the Jewish legends; his aneelology, however, the Jews had borrowed themselves from the Persians, only altering the names, and, in a few eases, the offices of the chief angelic dignitaries. Besides angels, there are good and evil genii, the chief of the latter being Iblis once called Azazil, who, refusing to pay homage to Adam, was rejected by God. Those Jill are of a grosser fabric than angels, and subject to death. They, too, have different names and offices (Peri, fairies; Div, giants; Takvins, fates, etc.), and are, in almost every respect, like the Shedim in the Talmud and Midrash. A further point of belief is that in certain God given scriptures, revealed successively to the different prophets. Four only of the original 101 sacred hooks: viz., the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospel, and the Koran, are said to have survived; the three former, however, in a mutilated awl falsified condition. Besides these. a certain apocryphal gospel, attributed to St. Barna bas, and the writings of Daniel, together with those of a few other prophets, are taken notice of by the Moslems, but not as canonical books. The number of prophets, sent at various times, is stated variously at between 200,000 and 300,000, among whom 313 were apostles, and six were specially commissioned to proclaim new laws and dispensations, which abrogated the preceding ones. These were Adam, Noah, Abraham. Moses, Jesus and Mohammed—the last the greatest of them all, and the propagator of the final dispen cation. The belief in the resurrection and the final judgment is the next article of faith, The dead are received in their graves by an angel annouucing the coining of' the two examiners, .honker and Nakir, who put questions to the corpse respecting his belief in God and Mohammed, and who, in accordance with the answers, either torture or com fort him. This again is the Jewish " Chibbut hakkeber," the beating of the grave, a hyperbolical description of the sufferings during the intermediate state after death (purgatory). The soul, awaiting the general resurrection, enters according to its rank, either immediately into paradise (prophets), or partakes, in the shape of a green bird, of the delights of the abode of bliss (martyrs), or—in the case of common believers—is supposed either to stay near the grave, Or to be with Adam in the lowest heaven, or to remain either in the well of Zem-Zem. or in the trumpet of the resurrection. According to others, it rests in the shape of a white bird under the throne of God. The souls of the infidels dwell in a certain well in the province of Hadramaut (Heb. Chambers of Death), or, being first offered to heaven, then offered to earth, and rejected by either, subject to unspeakable tortures until the day of resurrection. Concernino. the latter, great discrepancy reigns among the Moham medan theologians. Mohammed himself seems to have held that both soul and body will be raised, and the "Bone Luz" of the Jewish Haggadah was by him transformed into the bone Al Ajb, the rump-bone, which will remain uncorrupted till the last day, mid from which the whole body will spring anew, after a forty days' rain. Among the signs by which the approach of the last day may be known—nearly all taken from the legendary part of the Talmud and Midrash, where the signs of the coming of the Messiah are enumerated—are the decay of faith among men, the advancing of the meanest per sons to highest dignities, wars, seditions, and tumults, and consequent dire distress, so that a man, passing another's grave, shall say: " Would to God I were in his place !" Certain provinces shall revolt, and the buildings of Medina shall reach to Yahlib.
Again: the sun will rise in the west, the Beast will appear, Constantinople wilt be taken by the descendants of Isaac, the Antichrist will come and be killed by Jesus at Luc]. There will further take place, a war with the Jews, Gog and Magog's (Jajug and Majuj's) eruption, a great smoke, an eclipse, the Mohammedans will return to idolatry, a great treasure will be found in the Euphrates, the Kaaba will he destroyed by the Ethi opians, beasts and inanimate things will speak, and finally, a wind will sweep away the souls of those who have faith, even if equal only to a grain of mustard seed, so that the world shall be left in ignorance. The time of the resurrection even Mohammed could not learn from Gabriel it is a mystery. Three blasts will announce it: that of conster nation, of such terrible powers that mothers shall neglect the babes on their breasts, and that heaven and earth will melt; that of examination, which will annihilate all things and beings, even the angel of death, save paradise and hell, and their inhabitants; and forty years later, that of resurrection. when all men, Mohammed first, shall have their souls breathed into their restored bodies, and will sleep in their sepulchers until the final doom has been passed upon them. The day of judgment, lasting from one to fifty thousand years, will call up angels, genii, men, and animals. The trial over, the righteous will enter paradise, to the right hand, and the wicked will pass to the left, into hell; both, however, have first to go over the bridge Al Sirat, laid over the midst of hell, and tiuer than a hair, and sharper than the edge of a sword, and beset with thorns on either side. Time righteous will proceed on their path with ease and swiftness, but the wicked will fall down headlong to hell below—a place divided into seven stories or apart ments, respectively assigned to Mohammedans, Jews, Christians, Sabians, Magians, idolaters, and—the lowest of all—to the hypocrites, who, outwardly professing a religion, in reality had none. The degrees of pain—chiefly consisting in intense heat andcold vary: but the Mohammedans, and all those who professed the unity of God, will finally be released, while unbelievers and idolaters will he condemned to eternal punishment. Paradise is divided from hell by a partition (Orf), in which a certain number of half saints will find place. The blessed, destined for the abodes of eternal delight (Jannat Aden. Heb. Gan Eden)—of which it is, however, not quite certain whether it is created already—will first drink of the pond of time prophet, which is supplied from the rivers of paradise, whiter than milk, and more odoriferous than musk. Arrived at one of the eight gates, they will he met by beautiful youths and angels; and their degree of right eousness (prophets, religious teachers, martyrs, believers) will procure for them the cor responding degree of happiness. It may, however, not be superfluous to add that, aecording to the Mohammedan doctrine, it is not a person's good works or merits which pin his admittance, but solely God's mercy; also, that the poor will enter paradise five nindred years before the rich; and that the majority of the inhabitants of hell are somen. As to the variods felicities which await the pious (and of which there are about a hundred degrees), they are a wild conglomeration of Jewish, Christian, Magian, and other fancies on the subject, to which the prophet's own exceedingly sensual imagination has added very considerably. Feasting in the most gorgeous and delicious variety, the most costly and brilliant garments, odors, and music of the most ravishing nature, and above all, the enjoyment of the Aar Al Cyan, the black-eyed daughters of para dise, created of pure musk, and free from all the bodily weaknesses of time female sex, are held out as a reward to the commonest inhabitants of paradise, who will always remain in the full vigor of their youth and manhood.* For those deserving a higher dezrec of recompense, rewards will be prepared, of a purely spiritual kind—i.e., the beholding of God's face" (Shechinah) by night and by day. A separate abode of hap piness will also be reserved for women, but there is considerable doubt as to the manner of their enjoyment. That they are not of a prominently spiritual nature is clear from the story of the prophet and the old woman. The latter solicited Mohammed to inter with God that she might be admitted into paradise, whereupon he replied that old women were not allowed in paradise, which dictum—causing her to weep—he further explained by saying that they would first be made young again. The last of the precepts of pure faith taught by Mohammedanism, is the full and unconditional submission to God's decree [Ist..a.m], and the predestination of good and evil, which is found, from the beginning, inscribed on a " preserved table." Not only a man's fortunes, but his deeds, and, consequently, his future reward or punishment, are irrevocably, and thus unavoid ably, pre-ordained (fate): a doctrine which is not, however, taken literally by all Mos lems, but which has no doubt contributed largely to the success of Islam, by inspiring its champions with the greatest indifference and contempt for the dangers of warfare; their destiny being immutably fixed, under any circumstances.