George Sale, The Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed, translated into English immediately from the original Arabic; with Explanatory Notes, taken from the most approved Commentators. To which is prefixed A Preliminary Discource (1734)
have gone ten months with young (a most valuable part of the substance of that nation) shall be utterly neglected. A farther effect of this blaft will be that concourse of beasts mentioned in the Korân 1, tho’ some doubt whether it be to precede the resurrection or not. They who suppose it will precede, think that all kinds of animals forgetting their respective natural fierceness and timidity, will run together into one place, being terrified by the sound of the trumpet and the sudden shock of nature.
The Mohammedans believe that this first blast, will be followed by a second, which they call the blast of exanimation 2; when all creatures both in heaven and earth shall die or be annihilated, except those which God shall please to exempt from the common fate 3; and this, they say, shall happen in the twinkling of an eye, nay in an instant; nothing surviving except God alone, with paradise and hell, and the inhabitants of those two places, and the throne of glory 4. The last who shall die, will be the angel of death.
Forty years after this will be heard the blast of resurrection, when the trumpet shall be founded the third time by Israfîl, who, together with Gabriel and Michael, will be previously restored to life, and standing on the rock of the temple of Jerusalem 5, shall at God’s command, call together all the dry and rotten bones, and other dispersed parts of the bodies, and the very hairs to judgment. This angel having, by the divine order, set the trumpet to his mouth, and called together all the souls from all parts, will throw them into his trumpet, from whence, on his giving the last found, at the command of God, they will fly forth like bees, and fill the whole space between heaven and earth, and then repair to their respective bodies, which the opening earth will suffer to arise; and the first who shall so arise, according to a tradition of Mohammed, will be himself. For this birth the earth will be prepared by the rain above-mentioned, which is to fall continually for forty years 6, and will resemble the seed of a man, and be supplied from the water under the throne of God, which is called living water; by the efficacy and virtue of which the dead
1 Chap. 81.
2 Several writers however make no distinction between this blast and the first, supposing the trumpet will sound but twice. See the notes to Kor. chap. 39.
3 Kor: chap. 39.
4 To these some add the spirit who bears the waters, on which the throne is placed, the preserved Table, wherein the decrees of God are registred, and the pen wherewith they are written; all which things the Mohammedans imagine were created before the world.
5 In this circumstance the Mohammedans follow the Jews, who also agree that the trumpet will sound more than once. V. R. Bechai in Biur hattorah, & Otioth shel R. Akiba.
6 Elsewhere (see before, p. 79.) this rain is said to continue only forty days; but it rather seems that it is to fall during the whole interval between the second and third blasts.
