.

[Sidenote: Maria the Coptic.]

8. I will here take the opportunity of noticing Maria the Coptic, who is
alleged to have been a concubine-slave of Mohammad, although she does
not come under the category of prisoners made slaves. According to Sir
W. Muir, the Roman Governor of Egypt had written to Mohammad:--"I send
for thine acceptance two damsels, highly esteemed among the Copts."[352]
The writer converts them at once into "two slave-girls," and remarks, "a
strange present, however, for a Christian Governor to make."[353] She
was neither a captive, nor a slave, nor was she described as such in the
Governor's letter. I am at a loss to know why or how she has been
treated by the biographers of the Prophet as a slave or a concubine.

(1) I have great doubts regarding the truth of the story that Mokowkas
the Governor had sent two maids to Mohammad, and taking it for granted
they were so sent, that one of them was the alleged Maria; (2) it is not
a fact that she was a slave; (3) nor a concubine-slave of the Prophet;
(4) nor she as such bore a son to him; (5) and lastly, the notorious
scandal about her much talked of by European writers is a mere calumny
and a false story.

It will be a very tedious and irksome task to copy the various
traditions bearing on the above subjects and to discuss their
authenticity, and criticise their genuineness, on the principles of the
technicalities peculiar to the Science of Traditions, as well as on the
basis of scientific and rational criticism. Therefore I will notice only
briefly each of the above subjects.

[Sidenote: Dispatch to Mokowkas.]

9. (1) That Mohammad had sent a dispatch to Mokowkas, the Roman Governor
of Egypt, and that in reply he had sent Maria the Coptic maid, together
with other presents, to Mohammad, is not to be found in the traditions
collected by the best critics of Mohammadan traditions like Bokhari and
Muslim, who had sifted the whole incoherent mass of genuine and
apocryphal traditions regarding the Prophet, and had picked up but a
very small portion of them which they thought to be relatively genuine.
We can fairly conclude that such a tradition, which is related by other
non-critics and story-tellers, who have indiscriminately narrated every
tradition--whether genuine or apocryphal--like Wakidi and Ibn Sad, was
surely rejected by these Imams (Doctors in the Science of Tradition) as
having not the least possibility of its genuineness. Even Ibn Ishak
(die