, to his home. Upon which our Lord
uttered the verse, "Foxes have holes," &c. Once when entering an Afghan
village the writer was met by a Pathan, who asked if the New Testament
contained that verse. This shows how even garbled traditions may
predispose the Mohammedan mind for the study of the Gospels.

Tabari, the historian (d. 923 A.D.), gives an account of the Last Supper
and of Christ washing the disciples' hands (_sic_)--topics entirely
ignored by the Koran--and quotes the saying of our Lord regarding the
smiting of the Shepherd and the scattering of the sheep.

Sufi literature, representing as it does the mystical side of Islam,
abounds with allusions to Scripture. Al Ghazzali, the great opponent of
Averroes (1058-1111 A.D.), in his _Ihya-ul-ulum_ ("Revival of the
Religious Sciences") quotes the saying of Christ regarding the children
playing in the market-place. In his _Kimiya-i-Saadat_ ("Alchemy of
Happiness") he writes, "It is said that Jesus Christ in a vision saw
this world in the form of an old woman, and asked how many husbands she
had lived with. She said they were innumerable. He asked her if they had
died, or had divorced her. She replied that it was neither, the fact
being that she had killed all." Here we seem to have a confused echo of
the episode of the woman of Samaria. Again in the same work he says, "It
is a saying of Jesus Christ that the seeker of the world is like a man
suffering from dropsy; the more he drinks water the more he feels
thirsty." In the _Ihya-ul-ulum_, the verse "Eye hath not seen," &c., is
quoted as if from the Koran, where it nowhere occurs. Ghazzali was an
ardent student of the Neo-Platonists, and through him the phrases
Aql-i-Kull (--Logos) and Nafs-i-Kull (--Pneuma) passed into Sufi
writings (v. Whinfield, Preface to the _Masnavi_).

Saadi (b. 1184 A.D.), the famous author of the _Gulistan_ and
_Bostan_, was for some time kept in captivity by the Crusaders. This may
account for echoes of the Gospels which we find in his writings. In the
_Gulistan_ he quotes the verse, "We are members of one another," and in
the _Bostan_ the parable of the Pharisee and Publican is told in great
detail.

Nizami (b. 1140) gives a story which, though grotesque, seems to show
that he had apprehended something of the Christian spirit. Some
passers-by were commenting on the body of a dead dog, saying how
abominably it smelt, &c. Christ passed, and said, "Behold, how white its
teeth are!"

But