LIFE OF MOHAMMED. 223 



row over his whole frame ; but was immediately- 

 succeeded by a sensation of inexpressible sweetness. 

 This was followed, as he pretended, by a long and 

 familiar intercourse with the Supreme Being, who 

 revealed to him many hidden mysteries, instructed 

 him in the knowledge of his law, and conferred on 

 him several extraordinary privileges. The last of 

 his instrtictions was the command of fifty daily 

 praj-ers, afterward reduced by the advice of ]\Ioses 

 to five, enjoined on all IMussulmans. 



Bidding adieu to these glorious regions, Moham- 

 tned rejoined his conductor Gabriel, whom he found 

 by the lotus-tree. The travellers now bent their 

 course towards the earth, receiving everywhere, 

 .as they passed, the compliments and benedictions 

 of angels, who flocked in crowds to salute them. 

 At Jerusalem they found Borak in the exact position 

 they had left him ; and in less than a second they 

 arrived at Mecca, — the slumbering inhabitants bemg 

 quite unconscious of the transactions of that mar- 

 vellous expedition ; for the whole journej^ the labour 

 of so many thousand y^ears, was performed in the 

 tenth part of a night. Such is the celebrated His- 

 tory of the Ascension, as Abu Horaira calls it, whose 

 minute and circumstantial accomit we have abridged 

 from Gagnier. 



A controversy arose, and continued long to divide 

 the ISIohammedan world, whether the nocturnal 

 voyage was a real and corporeal journey, or merely 

 a vision. Ayesha^ his wife, maintained (or tradition 

 in her name) that the prophet never left her bed, 

 and that his spirit, and not his body, travelled. 

 Some compromised the miracle, by admitting a real 

 translation of the body from Mecca to Jerusalem^ 

 but regarding the ascension itself as a dream> 

 Others strenuously maintained the corporeity of 

 the whole voyage from beginning to end ; declaring 

 that to deny this was a damnable error, and as much 

 an act of infidelity as to reject the Koran. The 



