is called al Hâwiyat, to the hypocrites, or those who outwardly professed some religion, but in their hearts were of none. Over each of these apartments they believe there will be set a guard of angels,3 nineteen in number,1 to whom the damned will confess the just judgment of God, and beg them to intercede with him for some alleviation of their pain, or that they may be delivered by being annihilated.5

Mohammed has, in his Korân and traditions, been very exact in describing the various torments of hell, which, according to him, the wicked will suffer both from intense heat and excessive cold. We shall however enter into no detail of them here, but only observe that the degrees of these pains will also vary, in proportion to the crimes of the sufferer, and the apartment he is condemned to; and that he who is punished most lightly of all will be shod with shoes of fire, the fervour of which will cause his scull to boil like a cauldron. The condition of these unhappy wretches, as the same prophet teaches, cannot be properly called either life or death; and their misery will be greatly increased by their despair of being delivered from that place, since according to that frequent expression in the Korân, "they must remain therein for ever." It must be remarked, however, that the infidels alone will be liable to eternity of damnation, for the Moslems, or those who have embraced the true religion, and have been guilty of heinous sins, will be delivered thence after they shall have expiated their crimes by their sufferings. The contrary of either of these opinions is reckoned heretical; for it is the constant orthodox doctrine of the Mohammedans that no unbeliever or idolater will ever be released, nor any person who in his lifetime professed and believed the unity of God be condemned to eternal punishment. As to the time and manner of the deliverance of those believers whose evil actions shall outweigh their good, there is a tradition of Mohammed that they shall be released after they shall have been scorched and their skins burnt black, and shall afterwards be admitted into paradise; and when the inhabitants of that place shall in contempt call them infernals, God will, on their prayers, take from them that opprobrious appellation. Others say he taught, that while they continue in hell they shall be deprived of life, or (as his words are otherwise interpreted) be cast into a most profound sleep, that they may be the less sensible of their torments; and that they shall afterwards be received into paradise, and there revive on their being washed with the water of life; though some suppose they will be restored to life before they come forth from their place of punishment, that at their bidding farewell to their pains, they may have some little taste of them. The time which these believers shall be detained there, according to a tradition handed down from their prophet, will not be less than nine hundred years, nor more than seven thousand. And as to the manner of their delivery, they say that they shall be distinguished by the marks of prostration on those parts of their bodies with which they used to touch the ground in prayer, and over which the fire will therefore have no power; and that being known by this characteristic, they will be

2 Others fill these apartments with different company. Some place in the second, the idolaters; in the third, Gog and Magog, &c.; in the fourth, the devils; in the fifth, those who neglect alms and prayers; and crowd the Jews, Christians, and Magians together in the sixth. Some again will have the first to be prepared for the Dahrians, or those who deny the creation, and believe the eternity of the world; the second, for the Dualists, or Manichees, and the idolatrous Arabs; the third, for the Bramins of the Indics; the fourth, for the Jews; the fifth, for the Christians; and the sixth, for the Magians. But all agree in assigning the seventh to the hypocrites. Vide Millium, de Mohammedismo ante Moham. p. 412. D'Herbel Bibl. Orient. p. 368, &c. Ibid. c. 40, 43.

Kor. c. 40, 43, 74, &c. 4 Ibid. c. 74.

released by the mercy of God, at the intercession of Mohammed and the blessed; whereupon those who shall have been dead will be restored to life, as has been said; and those whose bodies shall have contracted any sootiness or filth from the flames and smoke of hell will be immersed in one of the rivers of paradise, called the river of life, which will wash them whiter than pearls.

For most of these circumstances relating to hell and the state of the damned, Mohammed was likewise in all probability indebted to the Jews and in part to the Magians; both of whom agree in making seven distinct apartments in hell,' though they vary in other particulars. The former place an angel as a guard over each of these infernal apartments, and suppose he will intercede for the miserable wretches there imprisoned, who will openly acknowledge the justice of God in their condemnation. They also teach that the wicked will suffer a diversity of punishments, and that by intolerable cold as well as heat, and that their faces shall become black;' and believe those of their own religion shall also be punished in hell hereafter, according to their crimes, (for they hold that few or none will be found so exactly righteous as to deserve no punishment at all,) but will soon be delivered thence, when they shall be sufficiently purged from their sins, by their father Abraham, or at the intercession of him or some other of the prophets. The Magians allow but one angel to preside over all the seven hells, who is named by them Vanánd Yezád, and, as they teach, assigns punishments proportionate to each person's crimes, restraining also the tyranny and excessive cruelty of the devil, who would, if left to himself, torment the damned beyond their sentence. Those of this religion do also mention and describe various kinds of torments, wherewith the wicked will be punished in the next life; among which though they reckon extreme cold to be one, yet they do not admit fire, out of respect, as it seems, to that element, which they take to be the representation of the divine nature; and therefore they rather choose to describe the damned souls as suffering by other kinds of punishment: such as an intolerable stink, the stinging and biting of serpents and wild beasts, the cutting and tearing of the flesh by the devils, excessive hunger and thirst, and the like.*

5

Before we proceed to a description of the Mohammedan paradise, we must not forget to say something of the wall or partition which they imagine to be between that place and hell, and seems to be copied from the great gulf of separation mentioned in Scripture. They call it al Orf, and more frequently in the plural, al Arâf, a word derived from the verb arafa, which signifies to distinguish between things, or to part them; though some commentators give another reason for the imposition of this name, because, say they, those who stand on this partition will know and distinguish the blessed from the damned, by their respective marks or characteristics : 6 and others say the word properly intends any thing that is high raised or elevated, as such a wall of separation must be supposed to be. The Mohammedan writers greatly differ as to the persons who are to be found on al Arâf. Some imagine it to be a sort of limbo, for the patriarchs and prophets, or for the martyrs and those who have been most eminent for

Poc. Not. in Port. Mosis, p. 289–291. Nishmat hayim, f. 32. Gemar. in Arabin, f. 19. Zohar. ad Exod. xxvi. 2, &c. and Hyde, de Rel. Vet. Pers. p. 245. Midrash, Yalkut Shemuni, part 11, f. 116. Zohar. ad Exod. xix. 1 Yalkut Shemuni, ubi sup. f. 86. Nishmat hayim, f. 82. Gemar. Arubin, f. 19. Vide Kor. e. 2, p. 11, and 3, p. 38, and notes there. Hyde, de Rel. Vet. Pers. p. 182. Eandem, ibid. p 399, &c. Luke xvi. 26. Jallalo'ddin, Vide Kor. c. 7. 7 Al Beidâwi.

6

4 Vide

sanctity, among whom they say there will be also angels in the form of men. Others place here such whose good and evil works are so equal that they exactly counterpoise each other, and therefore deserve neither reward nor punishment; and these, they say, will on the last day be admitted into paradise, after they shall have performed an act of adoration, which will be imputed to them as a merit, and will make the scale of their good works to overbalance. Others suppose this intermediate space will be a receptacle for those who have gone to war, without their parents' leave, and therein suffered martyrdom; being excluded paradise for their disobedience, and escaping hell because they are martyrs. The breadth of this partition wall cannot be supposed to be exceeding great, since not only those who shall stand thereon will hold conference with the inhabitants both of paradise and of hell, but the blessed and the damned themselves will also be able to talk to one another.8

If Mohammed did not take his notions of the partition we have been describing from Scripture, he must at least have borrowed it at second-hand from the Jews, who mention a thin wall dividing paradise from hell.9

The righteous, as the Mohammedans are taught to believe, having surmounted the difficulties, and passed the sharp bridge above mentioned, before they enter paradise will be refreshed by drinking at the pond of their prophet, who describes it to be an exact square, of a month's journey in compass; its water, which is supplied by two pipes from al Cawthar, one of the rivers of paradise, being whiter than milk or silver, and more odoriferous than musk, with as many cups set around it as there are stars in the firmament; of which water whoever drinks will thirst no more for ever. This is the first taste which the blessed will have of their future and now near approaching felicity.

Though paradise be so very frequently mentioned in the Korân, yet it is a dispute among the Mohammedans whether it be already created, or to be created hereafter; the Mótazalites and some other sectaries asserting that there is not at present any such place in nature, and that the paradise which the righteous will inhabit in the next life will be different from that from which Adam was expelled. However the orthodox profess the contrary, maintaining that it was created even before the world, and describe it, from their prophet's traditions, in the following manner:

They say it is situate above the seven heavens (or in the seventh heaven), and next under the throne of God; and to express the amenity of the place tell us, that the earth of it is of the finest wheat flour, or of the purest musk; or, as others will have it, of saffron; that its stones are pearls and jacinths, the walls of its buildings enriched with gold and silver, and that the trunks of all its trees are of gold; among which the most remarkable is the tree called Tuba, or the tree of happiness. Concerning this tree they fable that it stands in the palace of Mohammed, though a branch of it will reach to the house of every true believer; that it will be loaden with pomegranates, grapes, dates, and other fruits of surprising bigness, and of tastes unknown to mortals. So that if a man desire to eat of any particular kind of fruit, it will immediately be presented to him, or if he choose flesh, birds ready dressed will be set before him, according to his wish. They add, that the boughs of this tree will spontaneously bend down to the hand of the person who would gather of its fruits, and that it will supply the blessed not only with food, but also with silken garments, and beasts to ride on ready saddled and bridled, and adorned with rich trappings, which Kor. ubi sup. Vide D'Herbel. Bibl. Orient. p. 121, &c. Midrash, Yalkut Sioni, f. 11. 1 Al Ghazâli. Yahya, in Kor. c. 13.

will burst forth from its fruits; and that this tree is so large that a person mounted on the fleetest horse would not be able to gallop from one end of its shade to the other in a hundred years.3

As plenty of water is one of the greatest additions to the pleasantness of any place, the Korân often speaks of the rivers of paradise as a principal ornament thereof: some of these rivers they say, flow with water, some with milk, some with wine, and others with honey; all taking their rise from the root of the tree Tûba; two of which rivers, named al Cawthar and the river of life, we have already mentioned. And, lest these should not be sufficient, we are told this garden is also watered by a great number of lesser springs and fountains, whose pebbles are rubies and emeralds, their earth of camphire, their beds of musk, and their sides of saffron; the most remarkable among them being Salsabîl and Tasnîm.

But all these glories will be eclipsed by the resplendent and ravishing girls of paradise, called, from their large black eyes, Hûr al oyûn, the enjoyment of whose company will be a principal felicity of the faithful. These, they say, are created, not of clay, as mortal women are, but of pure musk; being, as their prophet often affirms in his Korân, free from all natural impurities, defects, and inconveniences incident to the sex, of the strictest modesty, and secluded from public view in pavilions of hollow pearls, so large that, as some traditions have it, one of them will be no less than four parasangs (or as others say, sixty miles) long, and as many broad.

The name which the Mohammedans usually give to this happy mansion is al Jannat, or the garden; and sometimes they call it, with an addition, Jannat al Ferdaws, the garden of paradise, Jannat Aden, the garden of Eden (though they generally interpret the word Eden, not according to its acceptation in Hebrew, but according to its meaning in their own tongue, wherein it signifies a settled or perpetual habitation), Jannat al Máwa, the garden of abode, Jannat al Naïm, the garden of pleasure, and the like; by which several appellations some understand so many different gardens, or at least places of different degrees of felicity (for they reckon no less than a hundred such in all), the very meanest whereof will afford its inhabitants so many pleasures and delights, that one would conclude they must even sink under them, had not Mohammed declared, that, in order to qualify the blessed for a full enjoyment of them, God will give to every one the abilities of a hundred men.

We have already described Mohammed's pond, whereof the righteous are to drink before their admission into this delicious seat; besides which some authors mention two fountains, springing from under a certain tree near the gate of paradise, and say that the blessed will also drink of one of them, to purge their bodies and carry off all excrementitious dregs, and will wash themselves in the other. When they are arrived at the gate itself, each person will there be met and saluted by the beautiful youths appointed to serve and wait upon him, one of them running before, to carry the news of his arrival to the wives destined for him; and also by two angels, bearing the presents sent him by God, one of whom will invest him with a garment of paradise, and the other will put a ring on each of his fingers, with inscriptions on them alluding to the happiness of his condition. By which of the eight gates (for so many they suppose paradise to have) they are respectively to enter, is not worth inquiry; but it must be observed that Mohammed has declared that no person's good works will gain him admittance, and that even himself shall be saved, not by his merits, but merely 'Jallalo'ddin, in Kor, c. 13. * Al Ghazâli, Kenz al Afrâr.

by the mercy of God. It is, however, the constant doctrine of the Korân, that the felicity of each person will be proportioned to his deserts, and that there will be abodes of different degrees of happiness; the most emi→ nent degree being reserved for the prophets, the second for the doctors and teachers of God's worship, the next for the martyrs, and the lower for the rest of the righteous, according to their several merits. There will also some distinction be made in respect to the time of their admission; Mohammed (to whom, if you will believe him, the gates will first be opened) having affirmed, that the poor will enter paradise five hundred years before the rich; nor is this the only privilege which they will enjoy in the next life; since the same prophet has also declared, that when he took a view of paradise, he saw the majority of its inhabitants to be the poor, and when he looked down into hell, he saw the greater part of the wretches confined there to be women.

For the first entertainment of the blessed on their admission, they fable that the whole earth will then be as one loaf of bread, which God will reach to them with his hand, holding it like a cake; and that for meat that will have the ox Balâm, and the fish Nûn, the lobes of whose livers will suffice seventy thousand men, being, as some imagine, to be set before the principal guests, viz. those who, to that number, will be admitted into paradise without examination, though others suppose that a definite number is here put for an indefinite, and that nothing more is meant thereby than to express a great multitude of people.

From this feast every one will be dismissed to the mansion designed for him, where (as has been said) he will enjoy such a share of felicity as will be proportioned to his merits, but vastly exceed comprehension or expectation; since the very meanest in paradise (as he who, it is pretended, must know best, has declared) will have eighty thousand servants, seventy-two wives of the girls of paradise, besides the wives he had in this world, and a tent erected for him of pearls, jacinths, and emeralds, of a very large extent; and, according to another tradition, will be waited on by three hundred attendants while he eats, will be served in dishes of gold, whereof three hundred shall be set before him at once, containing each a different kind of food, the last morsel of which will be as grateful as the first; and will also be supplied with as many sorts of liquors in vessels of the same metal: and, to complete the entertainment, there will be no want of wine, which, though forbidden in this life, will yet be freely allowed to be drank in the next, and without danger, since the wine of paradise will not inebriate, as that we drink here. The flavour of this wine we may conceive to be delicious without a description, since the water of Tasnîm, and the other fountains which will be used to dilute it, is said to be wonderfully sweet and fragrant. If any object to these pleasures, as an impudent Jew did to Mohammed, that so much eating and drinking must necessarily require proper evacuations, we answer, as the prophet did, that the inhabitants of paradise will not need to ease themselves, nor even to blow their nose, for that all superfluities will be discharged and carried off by perspiration, or a sweat as odoriferous as musk, after which their appetite shall return afresh.

The magnificence of the garments and furniture promised by the Korân to the godly in the next life is answerable to the delicacy of their diet: for they are to be clothed in the richest silks and brocades, chiefly of green, which will burst forth from the fruits of paradise, and will be also supplied by the leaves of the tree Tûba; they will be adorned with bracelets of gold *See before, p. 62.