." On hearing this
Abd al Wahid broke into loud weeping and fainted. Miswar ibn Machramah
was not even able to hear any verse of the Koran read, being so
powerfully affected thereby as to become senseless. Of Jobair ibn Motim
it is reported that he said: "I heard the Prophet recite the following
verses of the Koran:--

1. I swear by Tur.
2. By a book which stands written on outspread parchment.
3. By the house to which pilgrimage is made.
4. By the lofty dome of heaven.
5. And by the swelling ocean.
6. That the judgment of thy Lord is at hand.

Then it appeared to me," said Jobair, "as if my heart would burst in
twain." The pious Cadi Ijad adduces as a special proof of the
inspiration of the Koran the deep impression of fear and terror which
its recital produced on the minds of the hearers.

Muhammad ibn Mansur relates that once passing a house at midnight he
heard the voice of a man praying to God loudly and fervently, lamenting
his sins with deep contrition. Muhammad ibn Mansur could not resist the
temptation; he put his mouth to the keyhole and uttered the verse which
threatens the unbelievers with hell-fire. He heard a heavy fall within
the house, and all was still. As he went down the same street the next
morning he saw a corpse being carried out of the same house, followed by
an old woman. He inquired of her whose body it was, and she answered:
"Last night my son heard a verse of the Koran recited, and it broke his
heart." We are far from believing all these stories, but they show what
a view was held in the earliest times regarding the effect produced by
the Koran on the minds of those who heard it.

The ecstatic bent of mind of the ascetics of Islam and the later Sufis
arose from these beginnings. Then, as now, self-originated phases of
feeling were attributed to outer causes; from the remotest times men
have sought without them the Divinity which they carried within.

The wider spread and greater permanence of ecstatic phenomena among the
Moslems than elsewhere was due to the concurrence of various conditions,
chief among which was the peculiar temperament of the Arab. Capable of
the fiercest momentary excitement, he quickly subsided into a state of
complete apathy which is pain-proof. I[6] have a lively recollection of
the cases mentioned by my late friend Dr. Bilharz, who spoke of the
astonishing anaesthesia which the patients in the medical school of Kasr
al 'ain in Cairo, where he w