154 THE REV. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, M.A., ON ISLAM: 
tion. He was not, however, personally acquainted with the 
Hebrew Scriptures, and his Jewish instructors Waraqah,* 
Habib bin Malik, and above all ‘Abdullah ibn Sallam,t were 
far better instructed in tales from the Talmud than in their 
Canonical Scriptures. This accounts for the fact that many 
of the stories told in the Qur’4n regarding Scripture characters 
agree far more closely with Talmudic fables than with Old 
Testament history. The resemblances are, in fact, so great 
as to preclude any possibility of accounting for them except 
by plagiarism on Muhammad's part, although he professed to 
receive his teaching from Divine inspiration. A few examplest 
will suffice. The narrative given in the Qur’an§$ concerning 
Abel’s burial, and how a raven taught Cain how to bury him, 
agrees exactly with the account given in the “ Pirke Rabbil 
Eliezar,” except that im the Jewish Jegend the raven gave 
Adam and not Cain the lesson in question. Such blunders in 
details are not uncommon in other similar plagiarisms in the 
Qur'an. Again Muhammad’s account# of how Abraham in 
his youth was cast into the fire by Nimrod’s order, and 
miraculously delivered from it, is in almost every detail bor- 
rowed from the “Midrash Rabbah.”** R. Abraham Geiger has 
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* Waraqah for a time professed Judaism, as Ibn Ish4q tells us (op. 
cit., Part I, pp. 76, sqq.). 
+ Abt’l Fida, “Annales Moslemici,” Part I, 283; cf. Geiger, op. cit., 
p. 24. 
{ These are all borrowed from Rabbi Geiger’s work, where the Chaldee 
texts may be read in the original. 
§ Sarah V, 30-35. The names of Cain and Abel, however, do not 
occur in the Qur'an. Muslims call them Qabil and Habil. 
|| Chapter XXI; Geiger, p. 103. 
“| Told ina fragmentary way in Sirah XXI, 52-72; Strah II, 260 ; 
VI, 74; XIX, 42-50; XXVI, 69-79; XXIX, 15; XXXVIII, 81-95; 
XLITI, 25-27 ; LX, 4, ete. 
** Midrash Rabbah on Genesis, § 17 ; Geiger, pp. 128, 124. Muhammad 
docs not mention Nimrod by name, but Muhammadan commentators do, 
following Jewish tradition. He also calls Abraham’s father Azar instead 
of Terah, by a corruption of Zarah (his name in the Talmud). 
