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)

lot, and those to whom the blanks fell, were entitled to no part of the camel at all, but were obliged to pay the full price of it. The winners, however, tasted not of the flesh, any more than the losers, but the whole was distributed among the poor; and this they did out of pride and oftentation, it being reckoned a shame for a man to stand out, and not venture his money on such an occasion ¹. This custom, therefore, though it was of some use to the poor, and diversion to the rich, was forbidden by Mohammed ², as the source of greater inconveniences, by occasioning quarrels and heart-burnings, which arose from the winners insulting of those who lost.

Under the name of lots the commentators agree that all other games whatsoever, which are subject to hazard or chance, are comprehended and forbidden, as dice, cards, tables, &c. And they are reckoned so ill in themselves, that the testimony of him who plays at them, is by the more rigid judged to be of no validity in a court of justice. Chess is almost the only game which the Mohammedan doctors allow to be lawful, (though it has been a doubt with some ³,) because it depends wholly on skill and management, and not at all on chance: but then it is allowed under certain restrictions, viz. that it be no hindrance to the regular performance of their devotions, and that no money or other thing be played for or betted; which last the Turks and Sonnites religiously observe, but the Persians and Mogols do not ⁴. But what Mohammed is supposed chiefly to have disliked in the game of chess, was the carved pieces, or men, with which the pagan Arabs played; being little figures of men, elephants, horses, and dromedaries ⁵; and these are thought, by some commentators, to be truly meant by the images prohibited in one of the passages of the Korân ⁶ quoted above. That the Arabs in Mobammed’s time actually used such images for chess-men appears from what is related, in the Sonna, of Ali, who passing accidentally by some who were playing at chess, asked, What images they were which they were so intent upon ⁷? for they were perfectly new to him, that game having been but very lately introduced into Arabia, and not long before into Persia, whither it was first brought from India in the reign of Khosrû Nûshirwân ⁸. Hence the Mohammedan doctors infer that the game was disapproved only for the sake of the