ANTIQUITY OF SMOKING. 155 



paper in the Quarterly Bevietv, N o. XXV., "that smoking, 

 having at first been prohibited to the Mahommedans 

 as an innovation, and contrary to the principle of their 

 law : the pipe had probably been inserted in the wall 

 by some lover of tobacco, in order to furnish an 

 argument for the antiquity of the custom, and therefore 

 of its lawfulness." Attempts of another kind have been 

 unblushingly made. " The Koran has been appealed 

 to, and its modern versions even furnish the American 

 name. A traditional prophecy of Mahomet is also 

 quoted by Sale, which, while it contradicts the assumed 

 existence of tobacco in his time, foretells that : — ' in 

 the latter days there shall be men bearing the name of 

 Moslem, but not really such, and they shall smoke a 

 certain weed which shall be called tobacco ! ' * If the 

 prophecy did not bear on the face of it such unmis- 

 takeable evidence of being the invention of some 

 Moslem ascetic of later times, it would furnish no bad 

 proof of Mahomet's right to the title of false prophet; 

 for Sale quotes in the same preliminary discourse to 

 his edition of the Koran, the Persian proverb, ' Coffee 

 without tobacco is meat without salt.' " Such are the 

 words of Dr. Wilson,t who, with Dr. Bruce, seems 

 at one time to have been somewhat doubtful of the 

 origin of the pipes found in Scotland and England,! 

 but which doubts both gentlemen have dispelled by 



* Sale's Koran, 8vo, Lond., 1812, p. 164, 

 + In his pamphlet already alluded to, p. 34. 



$ See Dr. Bruce's volume, descriptive of the Eoman Wall extending 

 from the Tyne to the Solway. 2nd edition, 1853, p. 441. 



