Ch. IIL] 



ARABIAN WRITERS.— KAZWINI. 



29 



f 



■ 



"•* 





4 







11. 



dk 





i 



at .' 



XnK' 





l! 



. 









- 



The cosmological opinions expressed in the Koran are few, 

 and merely introduced incidentally : so that it is not easy to 

 understand how they could have interfered so seriously with 

 free discussion on the former changes of the globe. The 

 Prophet declares that the earth was created in two days, 

 and the mountains were then placed on it ; and during these, 

 and two additional days, the inhabitants of the earth were 

 formed ; and in two more the seven heavens.* There is no 



and the deluge, which is also 



The waters are 



mor 



mentioned, is discussed with equal brevity. 



represented to have poured out of an oven ; a strange fable, 



from the Persian Magi 



woman, f 



men 



Noah 



< earth, swallow up thy waters ; and thou, heaven, with- 



immediately the waters abated. J 



We may 



represented the desertion 

 of the land by the sea to have been gradual, and that his 

 hypothesis required a greater lapse of ages than was con- 



Moslem 



Koran 



man and this planet were created at the 



same 



mi 



sanction to 



the Mosaic chronology, by the veneration ex- 

 pressed by him for the Hebrew Patriarchs. § 



A manuscript work, entitled the ' Wonders of Nature,' is 

 preserved in the Royal Library at Paris, by an Arabian writer, 

 Mohammed Kazwini, who nourished in the seventh century 



ira, or at the close of the thirteenth century of 



He 



our era. || 



Besides several 



emar 



on aerolites, 



Koran was instituted by God, con- 

 ceived it to have been first made when 

 revealed to the Prophet at Mecca, and 

 accused their opponents of believing in 



- ■ ■ * r 



* Koran, chap. xli. 



f Sale's Koran, chap. xi. see note. 



t Ibid. 



Kossa, appointed master to the Ca- 



two eternal beings, 

 each of these sects were taken up by 

 different caliphs in succession, and the 

 followers of each sometimes submitted 

 to be beheaded, or flogged till at the 

 point of death, rather than renounce 

 their creed.— Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. ii. 



ch. iv. * 



The opinions of liph Al Mamud, was author of a book 



11. 



entitled ' The History of the Patriarchs 



and Prophets, from the Creation of the 



WorW — Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. 

 ch. iv. 



|| Translated by MM. Chezy and De 



Sacy, and cited by M. Elie de Beaumont, 



Ann. des Sci. Nat. 1832. 



