[56] An opinion as ancient as Homer.--_Iliad_, vi. 487.

[57] Several stories have been told as the occasion of Mahomet's
prohibiting the drinking of wine. Busbequius says: "Mahomet, making a
journey to a friend at noon, entered into his house, where there was a
marriage feast; and sitting down with the guests, he observed them to be
very merry and jovial, kissing and embracing one another, which was
attributed to the cheerfulness of their spirits raised by the wine; so
that he blessed it as a sacred thing in being thus an instrument of much
love among men. But returning to the same house the next day, he beheld
another face of things, as gore-blood on the ground, a hand cut off, an
arm, foot, and other limbs dismembered, which he was told was the effect
of the brawls and fightings occasioned by the wine, which made them mad,
and inflamed them into a fury, thus to destroy one another. Whereon he
changed his mind, and turned his former blessing into a curse, and
forbade wine ever after to all his disciples." (Epist. 3.) "This
prohibition of wine hindered many of the prophet's contemporaries from
embracing his religion. Yet several of the most respectable of the pagan
Arabs, like certain of the Jews and early Christians, abstained totally
from wine, from a feeling of its injurious effects upon morals, and, in
their climate, upon health; or, more especially, from the fear of being
led by it into the commission of foolish and degrading actions. Thus
Keys, the son of Asim, being one night overcome with wine, attempted to
grasp the moon, and swore that he would not quit the spot where he stood
until he had laid hold of it. After leaping several times with the view
of doing so, he fell flat upon his face; and when he recovered his
senses, and was acquainted with the cause of his face being bruised, he
made a solemn vow to abstain from wine ever after."--_Lane's Arab.
Nights_, vol. i. pp. 217, 218.

[58] The following elucidation of the above circumstance is given by
Sale: "Mahomet having undertaken an expedition against the tribe of
Mostalek, in the sixth year of the Hegira, took his wife Ayesha with
him. On their return, when they were not far from Medina, the army
removing by night, Ayesha, on the road, alighted from her camel, and
stepped aside on a private occasion; but on her return, perceiving she
had dropped her necklace, which was of onyxes of Dhafar, she went back
to look for it; and in the mean time her attendant