Sect. II.] Arabic Lilcrature, ^C)f^ 



great orientalist, undertook to translate and pub- 

 lish it, but never completed his undertaking. Pro- 

 fessor White, at length, published the original 

 Arabic, with a Latin translation, and learned notes. 

 This has been represented as one of the most curi- 

 ous and valuable specimens of Arabic literature 

 ever imported from the east. 



In the eighteenth century the Koran, or sacred 

 book of the Mahometans *, was, for the hrst time, 

 translated into English from the original Arabic. 

 In the seventeenth century that work was first 

 translated into the French language, by M. du 

 Ryer, consul of the French nation in Egypt, but 

 in a very imperfect manner. Soon afterwards a 

 translation from this version, with all its inaccu- 

 racies and imperfections, was made into English, 

 by Alexander Ross, who knew but little of the 

 French language, and nothing of the Arabic ; and 

 who of course, as might have been expected, 

 added a great mass of mistakes to those of du 



* '' The book which the Mahometans call the Koran or AU 

 coran, is composed of several papers and discourses of Mahomet, 

 which were discovered and collected after his death, and is by no 

 means that same Law whose excellence jNIahomet vaunted so 

 highly. That some parts of the true Koran may be copied in the 

 modern one, is indeed very possible j but that the Koran or Law, 

 given by Mahomet to the Arabians, is entirely distinct from the 

 modern Alcoran, is manifest from this, that in the latter Mahomet 

 appeals to and extols the former, and therefore tliey must be two 

 different compositions. May it not be conjectured that the true 

 Koran was an Arabic Foem, which Mahomet recited to his fol- 

 lowers, without giving it to them in writing, ordering them only 

 to commit it to their memories ? such were the laws of tiie Druids 

 in Gaul, and such also those of the Indians, which the Brahmins 

 receive by oral tradition, and get by heart." Mosheim's licdts. 

 Hist, vol. ii, p. 158, 



