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)
enclosure, distinguished at certain distances by small turrets, some five, some seven, and others ten miles distant from the city 1. Within this compass of ground it is not lawful to attack an enemy, or even to hunt or fowl, or cut a branch from a tree; which is the true reason why the pigeons at Mecca are reckoned sacred, and not that they are supposed to be of the race of that imaginary pigeon which some authors, who should have known better, would persuade us Mohammed made pass for the Holy Ghost 2.
The temple of Mecca was a place of worship, and in singular veneration with the Arabs from great antiquity, and many centuries before Mohammed. Though it was most probably dedicated at first to an idolatrous use 3, yet the Mohammedans are generally persuaded that the Caaba is almost coeval with the world; for they say that Adam, after his expulsion from paradise, begged of God that he might erect a building like that he had seen there, called Beit al Mámûr, or the frequented house, and al Dorâh, towards which he might direct his prayers, and which he might compass, as the angels do the celestial one. Whereupon God let down a representation of that house in curtains of light 4, and set it in Mecca, perpendicularly under its originals 5, ordering the patriarch to turn towards it when he prayed, and to compass it by way of devotion 6. After Adam’s death, his son Seth built a house in the same form, of stones and clay, which being destroyed by the deluge, was rebuilt by Abraham and Ismael 7, at God’s command, in the place where the former had stood, and after the same model, they being directed therein by revelation 8.
After this edifice had undergone feveral reparations, it was a few years after the birth of Mohammed rebuilt by the Koreish on the old
1 Gol. Not. in Alfrag. p. 99.
2 Gab. Sionita, & Joh. Hesronita, de nonnullis Orient. urbib. ad calc. Geogr. Nub. p. 21. Al Mogholtaï, in his life of Mohammed, says the pigeons of the temple of Mecca are of the breed of those which laid their eggs at the mouth of the cave where the prophet and Abu Becr hid themselves, when they fled from that city. See before, p. 51.
3 See before, p. 17.
4 Some say that the Beit al Mámûr itself was the Caaba of Adam, which, having been let down to him from heaven, was, at the flood, taken up again into heaven, and is there kept. Al Zamakh. in Kor. c. 2.
5 Al Jûzi, ex trad. Ebn Abbas. It has been observed, that the primitive Christian church held a parallel opinion as to the situation of the celestial Jerusalem with respect to the terrestrial: for in the apocryphal book of the revelations of S. Peter, (chap. xxvii.) after Jesus has mentioned unto Peter the creation of the seven heavens, (whence, by the way, it appears that this number of heavens was not devised by Mohammed,) and of the angels, begins the description of the heavenly Jerusalem in these words: We have created the upper Jerusalem above the waters which are above the third heaven, banging directly over the lower Jerusalem, &c. V. Gagnier, Not. ad Abulfed. vit. Moh. p. 28.
6 Al Shahrestani.
8 Al Jannâbi, in vita Abrah.
