shall be said
unto them, 'Taste ye that torment of hell fire which ye rejected
as a falsehood.'" "The unbelievers shall be driven into hell by
troops." "They shall be taken by the forelocks and the feet and
flung into hell, where they shall drink scalding water." "Their
only entertainment shall be boiling water, and they shall be fuel
for hell." "The smoke of hell shall cast forth sparks as big as
towers, resembling yellow camels in color." "They who believe not
shall

18 W. C. Taylor, Mohammedanism and its Sects.

19 Koran, ch. viii. Sale, Preliminary Discourse, p. 125.

have garments of fire fitted on them, and they shall be beaten
with maces of red hot iron." "The true believers, lying on
couches, shall look down upon the infidels in hell and laugh them
to scorn."

There is a tradition that a door shall be shown the damned opening
into paradise, but when they approach it, it shall be suddenly
shut, and the believers within will laugh. Pitiless and horrible
as these expressions from the Koran are, they are merciful
compared with the pictures in the later traditions, of women
suspended by their hair, their brains boiling, suspended by their
tongues, molten copper poured down their throats, bound hands and
feet and devoured piecemeal by scorpions, hung up by their heels
in flaming furnaces and their flesh cut off on all sides with
scissors of fire. 20 Their popular teachings divide hell into
seven stories, sunk one under another. The first and mildest is
for the wicked among the true believers. The second is assigned to
the Jews. The third is the special apartment of the Christians.
They fourth is allotted to the Sabians, the fifth to the Magians,
and the sixth to the most abandoned idolaters; but the seventh the
deepest and worst belongs to the hypocrites of all religions. The
first hell shall finally be emptied and destroyed, on the release
of the wretched believers there; but all the other hells will
retain their victims eternally.

If the visions of hell which filled the fancies of the faithful
were material and glowing, equally so were their conceptions of
paradise. On this world of the blessed were lavished all the
charms so fascinating to the Oriental luxuriousness of sensual
languor, and which the poetic Oriental imagination knew so well
how to depict. As soon as the righteous have passed Sirat, they
obtain the first taste of their approaching felicity by a
refreshing draught from "Mohammed's Pond."