When we contemplate with impartiality the character of Muhammed, we must be convinced that he was a man of superior natural abilities to most of his contemporary countrymen. The influence, however, which he obtained over his disciples, was in most cases the effect of the lowest species of cunning, working on an ignorant class of people. His enterprise was begun and carried through under the pompous title of a divine mission, and its authority was supported by documents which he asserted to have been an immediate communication of the Deity, and which his own affected ignorance of writing and reading satisfied them were not his own. These documents collected together formed the Koran, that mass of wild and unmeaning matter, which has been received so devoutly by his followers.[1]
- ↑ Vix dici potest, quid determinate contineat Alcoranus: est enim miscella et farrago innumerarum rerum. Maracci, p. 34. The German translator of Mosheim, J. A. Christoph von Einem, imagined that the work which now bears this name is not the real Koran of Mohammed. Das Buch, welches von den Mahumedaner der Koran genennt wird, bestehet aus verschiedenen Papieren und Reden, die Man nach seinem Tode gefunden und gesammlet hat, und ist nicht das achte Gesetz, dessen Vortreflichkeit Muhammed selbst so sehr erhebt. Veilleicht lieset Man einige Stükke des wahren Korans in dem heutigen Koran: dass aber der eigentliche Koran, oder das von Muhammed den Arabern vorgeschriebene Gesetz, von Muhammed selbst in unserm Koran aufseinen wahren Koran sich beruft, und ihn lobt. Ein Buch, welches in einem andern Buche empfohlen und gelobt wird, das muss von dem Buche, in welchem es gelobt wird, unterschieden sein. (not. in Mosheim, band iii. pp. 221, 292.)
