The Speeches & Table-Talk of the Prophet Mohammad · Prophet Muhammad
THE LAW GIVEN AT MEDINA.
The forty paragraphs arranged on pp. 133-144, contain, it is believed, all the definite ordinances of Mohammad as set forth in the Medina speeches, with the exception of some regulations relating to women. The bulk of the Medina speeches are indeed rather collections of separate decisions or “rulings” put together for convenience of reference by the Muslims themselves than separate and complete orations. But as the practical teaching is interspersed with frequent and verbose prophetical legends of the kind with which the reader is already perhaps only too familiar and with animadversions on the political parties of Medina, and similar ephemeral matters, it has been thought best to extract the marrow of these lengthy and composite harangues, and place them in some sort of connected order. Chapter II., for instance, “The Cow,” contains 286 verses; the first half is filled with the usual arguments and illustrations, and the old stories about Adam and Moses; whilst the second half contains a certain number of laws and precepts mixed with many repetitions of the proofs and appeals to reason which occur in most of the preceding speeches: altogether, 29 verses out of 286 are needed for the purpose of showing what Mohammad actually prescribed in civil and religious law. For an account of the modern interpretation of this law, see LANE’S _Modern Egyptians_, 5th ed. Ch. III.; SELL’S _Faith of Islam_; and HUGHES’ _Notes on Mohammadanism_, 2d ed. 1877.
P. 134. _Observe the prayer, and the middle prayer._ It is not easy to make out the five daily prayers of Islam in the Korān. In the speech entitled “Hūd” (Mekka, Third Period, xi. 116) it is enjoined: “Observe prayer at two ends of the day, and at two parts of the night”; and again, in “T. H.” (xx. 130), the praises of God are to be celebrated “before the rising of the sun and before its setting, and at times of the night and at the ends of the day”; and in “The Greeks” (xxx. 17) praise is ordained “in the evening and in the morning, and at the evening and at noon.” The Muslim commentators differ as to the application of these injunctions to the five times of prayer recognized throughout the Mohammadan world; which are (1) just after sunset, (2) at nightfall, (3) at daybreak, (4) just after noon, and (5) in the middle of the afternoon. _Turn thy face towards the Sacred Mosque_: _i.e._ towards the Kaaba of Mekka. Originally Mohammad placed the Kibla, or direction of prayer, at Jerusalem; but after his disagreement with the Jews of Medina he reverted to the old Mekkan temple as the focus of Islām. P. 135. It is enacted (ii. 183) that the fast is to be observed from the time when you can distinguish a white thread from a black thread in the morning, till night; but from nightfall till dawn the Muslim may eat and drink and enjoy himself. P. 136. _Make mention of God’s name over the beasts_: _i.e._ Sacrifice them, saying, “In the name of God.” P. 140. The Korān contains a list of prohibited degrees (“Women,” iv. 26, 27), which comprises mothers and stepmothers, daughters, sisters, aunts, nieces, fostermothers, fostersisters, mothers-in-law, stepdaughters, daughters-in-law, and two sisters, and other men’s wives. P. 142. _Keep the women in houses._ Immuring was afterwards changed to stoning both the man and the woman.
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