a rare
creation, virgins, young and fascinating.... Modest damsels averting
their eyes, whom no man shall have known before, nor any Jinn," etc.

The reader will not fail to be struck by the materialistic character of
Mohammed's paradise.

[47] See Sura _Jehad_; also _Annals of the Early Caliphate_, p.
167, _et. seq._

[48] _Annals of the Early Caliphate_, p. 105, _et. seq._

[49] See _Annals_, etc., p. 253.

[50] Sura ix, v. 30.

[51] So Jews and Christians as possessing the Bible are named
in the Koran.

[52] See _Annals_, etc., p. 213.

[53] _The Apology of Al Kindy_, written at the court of Al
Mamun A.H. 215 (A.D. 830), with an essay on its age and authorship, p.
12. Smith & Elder, 1882.

[54] _Ibid._, p. 34.

[55] _Apology_, p. 47, _et. seq._

[56] Alluding to the "_Ansar_," or mortal "Helpers" of Mohammed
at Medina. Throughout, the apologist, it will be observed, is drawing a
contrast with the means used for the spread of Islam.

[57] _Apology_, p. 16.

[58] _Apology_, p. 57.

[59] I am not here comparing the value of these observances
with those of other religions. I am inquiring only how far the
obligations of Islam may be held to involve hardship or sacrifice such
as might have retarded the progress of Islam by rendering it on its
first introduction unpopular.

[60] See Sura ii, v. 88.

[61] Sura iv, 18. "Exchange" is the word used in the Koran.

[62] Each of his widows had 100,000 golden pieces left her.
_Life of Mohammed_, p. 171.

[63] "These divorced wives were irrespective of his concubines
or slave-girls, upon the number and variety of whom there was no limit
or check whatever."--_Annals_, p. 418.

[64] Lane adds: "There are many men in this country who, in the
course of ten years, have married as many as twenty, thirty, or more
wives; and women not far advanced in age have been wives to a dozen or
more husbands successively." Note that all this is entirely within the
religious sanction.

[65] _Pilgrimage to Mecca_, by her highness the reigning Begum
of Bhopal, translated by Mrs. W. Osborne (1870), pp. 82, 88. Slave-girls
cannot be _married_ until freed by their masters. What her highness
tells of women _divorcing_ their husbands is of course entirely _ultra
vires_, and shows how the laxity of conjugal relations allowed to the
male sex has extended itself to the female also, and that in a city
where, if anywhere, we should have expected to find the law observed.

[66] In Ind