590 Mohammad's Journey to Syria. [No. 7. 



should be said, be did not return before it was convenient, I would answer 

 there was no necessity for prominently mentioning that Mohammad 

 returned to Makkah unless Abu Talib intended to leave him in Syria 

 and this was certainly not the case. 



Wherever the word xdj occurs in connexion with this story if trans- 

 lated by " Abu Tnlib went back with him," it would give a forced 

 unnatural and incomplete sense, and I therefore think, that it is invari- 

 ably to be rendered by "he sent him back." Thus clearest of all in 

 Tirmidzy (p. 578 supra), but also in the first tradition of Waqidy, 

 thus in that of Ibn Aby Shaybah, thus in Nawawy, and thus in Abu-I- 

 Sa'adat, and finally thus in the second tradition of Waqidy, where 

 &*«* tej can have no other meaning than Abii Talib sent Mohammad 

 back to Makkah with BaAyra, hoc est quod erat demonstrandum. 



But there are much stronger grounds in support of my opinion. 

 The Christians of Syria charged the prophet of the Musalmans with 

 having received his inspirations from an apostate Christian monk of 

 the name of Sergius. I believe the first author who mentions this fact 

 is Joannes Damascenus, who lived at the court of the Omayyide 

 Khalifs. He was prior to any Arabic biographer of Mohammad, and 

 had the very best opportunities of obtaining information. But having 

 no books to refer to, I am unable to ascertain whether Sergius is 

 mentioned by him and in what terms. It is however of no conse- 

 quence by which Christian author the fact is first mentioned, for we 

 obtain a testimony from the camp of the enemy. Mas'udy who wrote 

 in the first half of the fourth century of the Hijrah, tells us very signi- 

 ficantly, that Ba^yra was the person whom the Christians call Sergius. 

 Well, the Christians were talking at that time with the Mo^ammadans 

 of a Sergius. This is quite enough for our purpose. Mas'udy, Ibn Baba- 

 wayh and others place BaAyra among those men whom Mohammad 

 and his followers venerated, because they believed in the unity of God 

 (denying the trinity), and were in fact Moslims before he received 

 his mission. Ibn Qotaybah, edit. Wiistenf. p. 28, my edit. p. 41, the 

 earliest Mohammedan historian, whose work we have, unwittingly con- 

 firms this statement. Are we to believe the fables which the Musalmans 

 tell us regarding Ba/*yra, or are we to suppose that there was another 

 cause for his canonization than one incidental meeting with the prophet 

 and his phrenologizing on him, and pointing out the pomps or his back 



