330 THE DECLINE AND FALL the prince of the Saracens^ the ally and soldier of the emperor Justinian. ^^ 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 an hundred camels. In the time of ignorance, the Arabs, like the Jews and Egyptians, abstained from the taste of swine's flesh ; ^^ they circumcised ^^ 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 might become useless or inconvenient on the banks of the Danube or the Volga. Introduction Arabia was free ; the adjacent kingdoms were shaken bv the of the Sabians „ -•' f", t " n ^ storms oi conquest and tyranny, and the persecuted sects tied to the happy land where they might profess what they thought and practise what they professed. The religions of the Sa- bians and Magians, of the Jews and Christians, were disseminated from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. In a remote period of antiquity, Sabianism was diffused over Asia by the science of the Chaldeans ^^ and the arms of the Assyrians. From the finally abolished. Dumcetha, Daumat al Gendal, is noticed by Ptolemy (Tabul. p. 37, Arabia, p. 9-29), and Abulfeda (p. 57) ; and may be found in d'Anville's maps, in the mid-desert between Chaibar and Tadmor. ssprocopius (de Bell. Persico, 1. i. c. 28), Evagrius (1. vi. c. 21), and Pocock (Specimen, p. 72, 86) attest the human sacrifices of the Arabs in the vith century. The danger and escape of Abdallah is a tradition rather than a fact (Gagnier, Vie de Mahomet, tom. i. p. 82-84). ^^Suillis carnibus abstinent, says Solinus (Polyhistor. c. 33), who copies Pliny (1- viii. c. 68) in the strange supposition that hogs cannot live in Arabia. The Egyptians were actuated by a natural and superstitious horror for that unclean beast (Marsham, Canon, p. 205). The old Arabians likewise practised, post coilum, the right of ablution (Herodot. 1. i. c. 80 leg. 198]), which is sanctified by the Mahometan law (Reland, p. 75, &c. ; Chardin, or rather the Mollah of Shaw Abbas, tom. iv. p. 71, &c.). WThe Mahometan doctors are not fond of the subject ; yet they hold circumcision necessary to salvation, and even pretend that Mahomet was miraculously born vinthout a foreskin (Pocock, Specimen, p. 319, 320 ; Sale's Preliminary Discourse, p. 106, 107). 5*Diodorus Siculus (tom. i. 1. ii. p. 142-145 [c. 29 sqq."^ has cast on their religion the curious, but superficial, glance of a Greek. Their astronomy would be far more valuable: they had looked through the telescope of reason, since they could doubt whether the sun were in the number of the planets or of the fixed stars. [For the Sabians and their religion see Appendix 18. J
