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)

constant doctrine of the Korân, that the felicity of each person will be proportioned to his deserts, and that there will be abodes of different degrees of happiness; the most eminent degree being reserved for the prophets, the second for the doctors and teachers of God’s worship, the next for the martyrs, and the lower for the rest of the righteous, according to their several merits. There will also some distinction be made in respect to the time of their admission; Mohammed (to whom, if you will believe him, the gates will first be opened) having affirmed, that the poor will enter paradise five hundred years before the rich: nor is this the only privilege which they will enjoy in the next life; since the same prophet has also declared, that when he took a view of paradise, he saw the majority of its inhabitants to be the poor, and when he looked down into hell, he saw the greater part of the wretches confined there, to be women.

For the first entertainment of the blessed on their admission, they fable, that the whole earth will then be as one loaf of bread, which God will reach to them with his hand, holding it like a cake; and that for meat they will have the ox Balâm, and the fish Nûn, the lobes of whose livers will suffice seventy thousand men, being, as some imagine, to be set before the principal guests, viz. those who, to that number, will be admitted into paradise without examination ¹; tho’ others suppose that a definite number is here put for an indefinite, and that nothing more is meant thereby, than to express a great multitude of people.

From this feast every one will be dismissed to the mansion designed for him, where (as has been said) he will enjoy such a share of felicity as will be proportioned to his merits, but vastly exceed comprehension or expectation; since the very meanest in paradise, (as he who, it is pretended, must know best, has declared) will have eighty thousand servants, seventy two wives of the girls of paradise, besides the wives he had in this world, and a tent erected for him of pearls, jacinths, and emeralds, of a very large extent; and, according to another tradition, will be waited on by three hundred attendants while he eats, will be served in dishes of gold, whereof three hundred shall be set before him at once, containing each a different kind of food, the last morsel of which will be as grateful as the first; and will also be supplied with as many sorts of liquors in vessels of the same metal: and, to complete the entertainment, there will be no want of wine, which tho’ forbidden in this life, will yet be freely allowed to be drank in the next, and