r
deride his pretensions, would not suffer the orphan of their house, the
relict of their favourite brother, to be insulted, Mahomet now commenced
his public preaching. And the advance which he made during the nine or
ten remaining years of his peaceable ministry was by no means greater
than what, with these advantages, and with the additional and singular
circumstance of there being no established religion at Mecca at that
time to contend with, might reasonably have been expected. How soon his
primitive adherents were let into the secret of his views of empire, or
in what stage of his undertaking these views first opened themselves to
his own mind, it is not now easy to determine. The event however was,
that these, his first proselytes, all ultimately attained to riches and
honours, to the command of armies, and the government of kingdoms.
(Gibbon, vol. ix. p 244.)

_________

* Of which Mr. Gibbon has preserved the following specimen: "When
Mahomet called out in an assembly of his family, Who among you will be
my companion, and my vizir? Ali, then only in the fourteenth year of his
age, suddenly replied, O prophet I am the man;--whosoever rises against
thee, I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip
up his belly. O prophet! I will be thy vizir over them." Vol. ix. p.
215.
_________

3. The Arabs deduced their descent from Abraham through the line of
Ishmael. The inhabitants of Mecca, in common probably with the other
Arabian tribes, acknowledged, as I think may clearly be collected from
the Koran, one supreme Deity, but had associated with him many objects
of idolatrous worship. The great doctrine with which Mahomet set out was
the strict and exclusive unity of God. Abraham, he told them, their
illustrous ancestor; Ishmael, the father of their nation; Moses, the
lawgiver of the Jews; and Jesus, the author of Christianity--had all
asserted the same thing; that their followers had universally corrupted
the truth, and that he was now commissioned to restore it to the world.
Was it to be wondered at, that a doctrine so specious, and authorized by
names, some or other of which were holden in the highest veneration by
every description of his hearers, should, in the hands of a popular
missionary, prevail to the extent in which Mahomet succeeded by his
pacific ministry?

4. Of the institution which Mahomet joined with this fundamental
doctrine, and of the Koran in which that institution is del