we shall applaud the
modesty of the Arabian, who espoused no more than seventeen or fifteen
wives; eleven are enumerated, who occupied at Medina their separate
apartments round the house of the apostle, and enjoyed in their turns
the favor of his conjugal society. What is singular enough, they were
all widows, excepting only Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker. _She_ was
doubtless a virgin, since Mahomet consummated his nuptials (such is the
premature ripeness of the climate) when she was only nine years of age.
The youth, the beauty, the spirit of Ayesha gave her a superior
ascendant; she was beloved and trusted by the prophet, and after his
death the daughter of Abubeker was long revered as the mother of the
faithful. Her behavior had been ambiguous and indiscreet; in a nocturnal
march she was accidentally left behind, and in the morning Ayesha
returned to the camp with a man. The temper of Mahomet was inclined to
jealousy; but a Divine revelation assured him of her innocence: he
chastised her accusers, and published a law of domestic peace, that no
woman should be condemned unless four male witnesses had seen her in the
act of adultery. In his adventures with Zeineb the wife of Zeid, and
with Mary, an Egyptian captive, the amorous prophet forgot the interest
of his reputation. At the house of Zeid, his freedman and adopted son,
he beheld in a loose undress the beauty of Zeineb, and burst forth into
an ejaculation of devotion and desire. The servile, or grateful,
freedman understood the hint, and yielded without hesitation to the love
of his benefactor. But as the filial relation had excited some doubt and
scandal, the angel Gabriel descended from heaven to ratify the deed, to
annul the adoption, and gently to reprove the apostle for distrusting
the indulgence of his God. One of his wives, Hafna the daughter of Omar,
surprised him on her own bed, in the embraces of his Egyptian captive:
she promised secrecy and forgiveness; he swore that he would renounce
the possession of Mary. Both parties forgot their engagements; and
Gabriel again descended with a chapter of the Koran, to absolve him from
his oath and to exhort him freely to enjoy his captives and concubines,
without listening to the clamors of his wives. In a solitary retreat of
thirty days, he labored, alone with Mary, to fulfill the commands of the
angel. When his love and revenge were satiated, he summoned to his
presence his eleven wives, reproached their disobed