There was such slight efficacity in miracles! The Israelites bowed down to the Golden Calf immediately after the miracle wrought by Moses to save them from the waves of the Red Sea and Pharaoh's hosts. The idolaters of Makkah would not have been more greatly impressed by the sight of the most astonishing miracle. "With their most binding oath have they sworn by Allah, that if a sign come unto them, they will certainly believe it; Say: Signs are in the power of Allah alone: and what shall make ye to understand that if they were wrought these men would not believe it * And though We had sent down the Angels to them, and the dead had spoken to them, and We had gathered all things about them in hosts, they had not believed, unless Allah willed it." (The Qur'an, vi, 109, 111.)
THE MIRACLE OF THE QUR'AN
Nevertheless there was one miracle, the only one placed to Mohammad's credit, and which was the cause of great anxiety among the Quraish idolaters: the miracle of the "Ayates," a word generally rendered by "Verses," but really meaning: "miraculous signs" of the Qur'an.
The miracles wrought by earlier Prophets had been transient, so to say, and for that very reason, rapidly forgotten, while that of the Verses may be called "The Permanent Miracle." Its activity was unceasing. Everywhere and at all hours, each Believer, by reciting the Verses, helped to realise the miracle, and in this can be found the explanation of many sudden conversions, incomprehensible for the European who knows nothing of the Qur'an, or judges it by cold and inaccurate translations.
The wonderful charm of this Book, resembling no other masterpiece of the literature of mankind, needs not to be explained to us Moslems, because we consider it emanates from the words of Allah Himself, sent down through the mouth of His Prophet. In this connection, we think it will be interesting to quote the opinion of two Orientalists, justly celebrated.
This is the conception of Savary, the first to translate the Qur'an into French: "Mohammad was learned in the study of his language, the richest and the most harmonious in the world, and which, by the composition of its verses, permits thoughts as they soar to be correctly described. By the harmony of its sounds, it imitates the cries of animals, murmuring waters, thunder and the breeze. Mohammad, I repeat, being past master of a language that so many poets have embellished and which exists since the beginning of the world, took great pains to add every charm of elocution to his precepts of morality. Poets were greatly looked up to in Arabia. Labid ibn Rabyah, an illustrious poet, nailed one of his poems on the door of the Temple of Makkah. His reputation and the value of his works kept all competitors away. None came forward to compete for the prize.... The second chapter of the Qur'an—some writers say the 55th—was then placed by the side of the poem. Labid, although a worshipper of graven images, was seized with a fit of admiration after reading the first verses and confessed himself vanquished."
He became a convert very soon after and one day, his admirers being desirous of gathering together his complete works, questioned him on this subject. 'I have no recollection of any of my poetry,' he replied, 'for my entire memory hath been absorbed by the verses of the Book of Revelation.'
We will now give the opinion of Stanley Lane Poole: "The style (of the Surahs) is haughty in every part and full of passion. The words are those of a man who tries with all his heart to convince his readers. Even nowadays, they give an impression of the vehemence and fire with which they were originally hurled forth at Mohammad's hearers surrounding him. These are the broken utterances of a human heart totally incapable of hypocrisy; the heart of a man who has exercised extraordinary influence over mankind."
If the magic of the style and the thoughts of the Qur'an produced this effect on learned men, who were neither Arabs nor Moslems, how great then was the enthusiasm created among the Arabs of the Hijaz, especially as the verses were couched in their own poetical language? You only, travellers who have had an opportunity of seeing the emotion that overcomes the audience of an Imam reciting the Sacred Verses, can have a slight idea of this feeling. You may have seen poor caravaneers, still powdered all over by the sand of their desert, where they have just endured the greatest fatigue, rushing towards the Mosque, instead of seeking refreshing repose; drawn thither, as if hypnotised by the Imam's voice. Sometimes even, in the time of Ramadhan, Moslems, after having fasted all day, pass the whole of the night in ecstasy, as they listen to the Divine Word.
It is certain that the illiterate Bedouins of our day do not always understand the real meaning of the words recited by the Imam, but the rhythm, the cadence, the harmony of the assonances animating the wonderful verses, echoing in their breasts to the beatings of their hearts, convey to them an explanation, vague perhaps, but truly in accordance with the spirit of the text, and above all, full of incomparable suggestion. On the other hand, how vapid would seem to them the explanation, more literal but less emotional, of a "Talib" pedant or a frigid grammarian.