ept that it represents the
extent of scientific knowledge possessed by the authors at the time
the different books were written.

To return to the Koran, which may, then, be regarded as the Bible of
the Muslims. According to Mr. Badger: 'It embodies the utterances of
the Arabian Prophet on all subjects, religious and moral,
administrative and judicial, political and diplomatic, from the outset
to the close of his career, together with a complete code of laws for
regulating marriage, divorce, guardianship of orphans, bargains,
wills, evidence, usury, and the intercourse of private and domestic
life, as they were dictated by him to his secretaries, and by them
committed to writing on palm-leaves, the shoulder-blades of sheep, and
other tablets. These, it appears, were thrown pell-mell into chests,
where they remained till the reign of Abu Bakr, the immediate
successor of Muhammad, who, during the first year of his Khalifate,
entrusted Zaid-bin Harithah, an Ansar, or auxiliary, and one of the
amanuenses of the Prophet, with the task of collecting them together,
which he did, as well from "the breasts of men" as from the
afore-named materials, meaning thereby that he availed himself of the
memories of those who had committed parts of the Prophet's utterances
to memory. [Tradition states that one of the contemporary Muslims had
learnt as many as seventy chapters by heart.] Zaid's copy continued to
be the standard text during the Khalifate of Abu Bakr, who committed
it to the keeping of Hafsah, one of Muhammad's widows. Certain
disputes having arisen regarding this text, owing mainly to the
variations of dialect and punctuation occurring therein, Omar, the
successor of Abu Bakr, in the tenth year of his Khalifate, determined
to establish a text which should be the sole standard, and delegated
to Zaid, with whom he associated several eminent Arab scholars of the
Al-Koraish, the task of its reduction. On its completion copies were
forwarded to the principal stations of the empire, and all previously
existing copies were submitted to the flames. This is the text now in
general use among Muslims, and there is every reason to believe it to
be a faithful rescript of the original fragmentary collection, amended
only in its dialectical variations, and made conformable to the purer
Arabic of the Al-Koraish, in which the contents of the Koran were
announced by Muhammad.'

From a literary point of view the Koran is regarded as a speci