ven 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; and the rocks of the desert were hewn into gods or altars, in
imitation of the black stone [49] 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 honor of the gods,
the dearest and most precious of their gifts. The life of a man [50] 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; [51] and a royal captive was piously slaughtered by the
prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the emperor Justinian.
[52] A parent who 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 a hundred camels. In the time of ignorance, the Arabs,
like the Jews and Egyptians, abstained from the taste of swine's flesh;
[53] they circumcised [54] 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 mi