of a man, and
abused the claims of a prophet. A special revelation dispensed him from
the laws which he had imposed on his nation: the female sex, without
reserve, was abandoned to his desires; and this singular prerogative
excited the envy, rather than the scandal, the veneration, rather than
the envy, of the devout Mussulmans. If we remember the seven hundred
wives and three hundred concubines of the wise Solomon, we shall applaud
the modesty of the Arabian, who espoused no more than seventeen or
fifteen wives; eleven are enumerated who occupied at Medina their
separate apartments round the house of the apostle, and enjoyed in their
turns the favor of his conjugal society. What is singular enough, they
were all widows, excepting only Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker. She
was doubtless a virgin, since Mahomet consummated his nuptials (such is
the premature ripeness of the climate) when she was only nine years of
age. The youth, the beauty, the spirit of Ayesha, gave her a superior
ascendant: she was beloved and trusted by the prophet; and, after his
death, the daughter of Abubeker was long revered as the mother of the
faithful. Her behavior had been ambiguous and indiscreet: in a nocturnal
march she was accidentally left behind; and in the morning Ayesha
returned to the camp with a man. The temper of Mahomet was inclined
to jealousy; but a divine revelation assured him of her innocence: he
chastised her accusers, and published a law of domestic peace, that no
woman should be condemned unless four male witnesses had seen her in the
act of adultery. In his adventures with Zeineb, the wife of Zeid, and
with Mary, an Egyptian captive, the amorous prophet forgot the interest
of his reputation. At the house of Zeid, his freedman and adopted son,
he beheld, in a loose undress, the beauty of Zeineb, and burst forth
into an ejaculation of devotion and desire. The servile, or grateful,
freedman understood the hint, and yielded without hesitation to the love
of his benefactor. But as the filial relation had excited some doubt and
scandal, the angel Gabriel descended from heaven to ratify the deed, to
annul the adoption, and gently to reprove the apostle for distrusting
the indulgence of his God. One of his wives, Hafna, the daughter of
Omar, surprised him on her own bed, in the embraces of his Egyptian
captive: she promised secrecy and forgiveness, he swore that he would
renounce the possession of Mary. Both parties forgot their en