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)
inoffensive behaviour towards his friends, and of great condescension towards his inferiors 1. To all which were joined a comely agreeable person, and a polite address; accomplishments of no small service in preventing those in his favour, whom he attempted to persuade.
As to acquired learning, it is confessed he had none at all; having had no other education than what was customary in his tribe, who neglected, and perhaps despised, what we call literature; esteeming no language in comparison with their own, their skill in which they gained by use and not by books, and contenting themselves with improving their private experience by committing to memory such passages of their poets as they judged might be of use to them in life. This defect was so far from being prejudicial or putting a stop to his design, that he made the greatest use of it; insisting that the writings which he produced as revelations from God, could not possibly be a forgery of his own; because it was not conceivable that a person who could neither write nor read should be able to compose a book of such excellent doctrine, and in so elegant a stile; and thereby obviating an objection that might have carried a great deal of weight 2. And for this reason his followers, instead of being ashamed of their master’s ignorance, glory in it, as an evident proof of his divine mission, and scruple not to call him (as he is indeed called in the Korân itself 3) the illiterate prophet.
The first steps of Mahommed towards the executing of this project.
The scheme of religion which Mohammed framed, and the design and artful contrivance of those written revelations (as he pretended them to be) which compose his Korân, shall be the subject of the following sections: I shall therefore in the remainder of this relate, as briefly as possible, the steps he took towards the effecting of his enterprize, and the accidents which concurred to his success therein.
Before he made any attempt abroad, he rightly judged that it was necessary for him to begin by the conversion of his own household. Having therefore retired with his family, as he had done several times before, to the above-mentioned cave in mount Hara, he there opened the secret of his mission to his wife Khadîjah; and acquainted her that the angel Gabriel had just before appeared to him, and told him that he was appointed the apostle of God: he also repeated to her a passage 4 which he pretended had been revealed to him by the ministry of the angel, with those other circumstances of this first appearance, which are related by the Mohammedan writers. Khadîjah
1 V. Abulfed. ubi sup.
2 See Korân chap. 29. Prid. life of Mah. p. 28, &c.
3 Chap. 7.
4 This passage is generally agreed to be the first five verses of the 96th chapter.
