(2) Between his legs were hanging down his entrails; His heart was visible, and the dismal sack That maketh excrement of what is eaten. While I was all absorbed in seeing him, He looked at me, and opened with his hands His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me; How mutilated, see, is Mahomet; In front of me doth Ali weeping go, Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin; And all the others whom thou here beholdest, Disseminators of scandal and of schism While living were, and therefore are cleft thus. A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge Putting again each one of all this ream, When we have gone around the doleful road; By reason that our wounds are closed again Ere any one in front of him repass. But who art thou, that musest on the crag, Perchance to postpone going to the pain That is adjudged upon thine accusations?" "Nor death hath reached him yet, nor guilt doth bring him," My Master made reply, "to be tormented; But to procure him full experience,

(4) Ayaz was afflicted with the evil eye, and had to leave the court of the Sultan Mahmud. In despair he fell into a state of despondency and lay on his bed and wept. When Mahmud heard about it he said to one of his attendants: 'Go to Ayaz and say, "I know that you are sad, but I also am in the same state. Though my body is far from you my spirit is near. O you who love me, I am not absent from you for a moment. The evil eye has indeed done ill in afflicting one so charming.'' ' He added to his attendant: 'Go at once, go like fire, go as the rushing water, go as the lightning before the thunder!'

The attendant set off like the wind and in no time reached Ayaz. But he found the Sultan already there, sitting before his slave. And trembling, he said to himself: 'What a misfortune to have to serve a king; no doubt my blood will be shed today.' Then he said to the Sultan: 'I assure you that I haven't stopped for a moment, sitting or standing; how then has the King got here before me? Does the King believe me? If I have been negligent in any way I acknowledge my fault.'

'You are not Mahram,' said Mahmud, 'how then should you be able to travel as I have? I came by a secret way. When I asked for news of Ayaz my spirit was already with him.'

(21) In the seventh year after the Hegira (A.H. 7) an attempt was made at Kheibar to poison the Prophet. As Mohammed took the first mouthful of the poisoned food, the evil design was revealed to him either by the taste of the meat or, as the faithful believe, by divine intercession. He had already swallowed a small portion of the food, however, and for the remainder of his life he suffered almost constantly from the effects of the poison. In A.H. 11, when his final illness came upon him, Mohammed insisted that the subtle effects of the poison were the indirect cause of his approaching end. It is related that during his last sickness he rose one night and visited a burial ground on the outskirts of Medina, evidently believing that he, too, would soon be numbered with the dead. At this time he told an attendant that the choice had been offered him of continuing his physical life or going to his Lord, and that he had chosen to meet his Maker.

(31) And the spirit of prophecy came down into his mouth, and he took Levi by his right hand and Judah by his left.

(1) He saith : Let my mouth be opened by Ptah, and let the muzzles which are upon my mouth be loosed by the god of my domain

(4) And he slew him in the field : and his blood cried from^the ground to heaven, complaining because he had slain him.

(22) Mohammed suffered greatly with his head and side and also from fever, but on June 8th seemed convalescent. He joined his followers in prayer and, seating himself in the courtyard, delivered a lecture to the faithful in a clear and powerful voice. Apparently he overtaxed his strength, for it was necessary to assist him into the house of A’isha, which opened into the court of the mosque. Here upon a tough pallet laid on the bare floor the prophet of Islam spent his last two hours on earth. When she saw that her aged husband was suffering intense pain, A’isha--then but a girl of twenty--lifting the gray head of the man she had known from infancy and who must have seemed more like a father than a husband, supported him in her arms until the end. Feeling that death was upon him, Mohammed prayed: "O Lord, I beseech Thee, assist me in the agonies of death." Then almost in a whisper he repeated three times: "Gabriel, come close unto me." (For details consult The Life of Mohammad by Sir William Muir.) In The Hero as Prophet, Thomas Carlyle writes thus of the death of Mohammed: "His last words were a prayer, broken ejaculations of a heart struggling-up in trembling hope towards its Maker."

(16) He dipped the sop: he gave it to Judas Iscariot: then said unto him,

(3) As he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined about him a light from heaven: and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying,

(90) And thereafter those three who were clothed in white and had seized me by my hand [who had taken me up before], and the hand of that ram also seizing hold of me, they took me up and set me down in the midst of those sheep before the judgement took place†.

(2) The shaikh went out one day from his monastery in the company of his disciples, riding on his donkey while his companions followed walking. All at once the donkey broke wind with a loud noise, whereupon the shaikh gave a cry and tore his khirka. His disciples looked at him in surprise, and one of them asked him why he acted like this. He said: ' When I looked round and saw the number of my followers I thought to myself, ''Now am I really equal to Bayazid. Today, I am accompanied by many earnest disciples; so, tomorrow, I shall without doubt ride with glor)" and honour over the plain of the resurrection."' He added, Ht was then, when I presumed this to be my destiny, that my donkey made that seemingly incongruous noise you heard. By this he wished to say, "Here is the reply that an ass makes to him who has such pretensions, and thoughts so vain! " That is why the fire of repentance fell so suddenly on my soul.

and why my attitude has changed, and my imaginary position has fallen to pieces.'

O you who change with every moment, you are as Pharaoh to the roots of your hair. But if you destroy in yourself the ego for a single day, your darkness will be lighted up. Never say the word 'I'. You, because of your 'I's', are fallen into a hundred evils, and you will always be tempted of the devil.

(7) When they had blindfolded Jesus, they struck him on the face, and say unto him, Prophesy, who is it that smote thee?

(13) assured him that his own virtuous life would be his protection and that he need fear no evil. Thus reassured, the Prophet awaited further visitations from Gabriel. When these did not come, however, such a despair filled his soul that he attempted self-destruction, only to be stopped in the very act of casting himself over a cliff by the sudden reappearance of Gabriel, who again assured the Prophet that the revelations needed by his people would be given to him as necessity arose.

(7) While the Prophet was still but a toddling babe, the Angel Gabriel with seventy wings came to him, and cutting open the child, withdrew the heart. This Gabriel cleansed of the black drop of original sin which is in every human heart because of the perfidy of Adam and then returned the organ to its proper place in the Prophet's body. (See footnote in E. H. Palmer's translation of the Qur'an.)

(4) But Jesus stooped, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them,

(14) Possibly as a result of his lonely periods of meditation, Mohammed seemingly was subject to ecstatic swoons. On the occasions when the various suras of the Koran were dictated he is said to have fallen unconscious, and, regardless of the chill of the surrounding air, to have been covered with beads of perspiration. Often these attacks came without warning; at other times he would sit wrapped in a blanket to prevent a chill from the copious perspiration, and while apparently unconscious would dictate the various passages which a small circle of trusted friends would either commit to memory or reduce to writing. On one occasion in later life when Abu Bekr referred to the gray hairs in his beard, Mohammed, lifting the end of his beard and looking at it, declared its whiteness to be due to the physical agony attendant upon his periods of inspiration.

(6) Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

(12) In the seventeenth sura of the Koran it is written that upon a certain night Mohammed was transported from the temple at Mecca to that of Jerusalem, but no details are given of the strange journey. In the Mishkāteu ’l-Masabih, Mohammed is made to describe his ascent through the seven heavens into the icy presence of the may-veiled God and his subsequent return to his own bed, all in a single night. Mohammed was awakened in the night by the Angel Gabriel, who, after removing the Prophet's heart, washed the cavity with Zamzam water, and filled the heart itself with faith and science. A strange creature, called Alborak, or the lightning bolt, was brought for the conveyance of the Prophet. Alborak is described as white animal of the shape and size of a mule, with the head of a woman and the tail of a peacock. According to some versions, Mohammed merely rode Alborak to Jerusalem, where, dismounting upon Mount Moriah, he caught hold of the lower rung of a golden ladder lowered from heaven and, accompanied by Gabriel, ascended through the seven spheres separating he earth from the inner surface of the empyrean. At the gate of each sphere stood me of the Patriarchs, whom Mohammed saluted as he entered the various planes. At the gate of the first heaven stood Adam; at the gate of the second, John and Jesus (sisters' sons); at the third, Joseph; at the fourth, Enoch; at the fifth, Aaron; at the sixth, Moses; and at the seventh, Abraham. Another order of the Patriarchs and prophets is given which places Jesus at the gate of the seventh heaven, and upon reaching this Point Mohammed is said to have requested Jesus to intercede for him before the throne of God.

(3) After they had mocked him, they took off the purple from him, put his own raiment on him, smote him with their hands, and led him away to crucify him.

(2) He who is in heaven it was who made firm the fastening for him who was fainting upon his two haunches on that day when the fleece was shorn