[1] The strict meaning of this term, given by Mohammed (“the true religion with God is Islam”; Sura, iii, 17), is “submission”—such being the attitude demanded by the Prophet. “Moslem” or “Muslim” means one who accepts Islam. Koran means strictly, not “book,” but “reading” or recitation. [↑]
[2] Rodwell’s tr. of the Koran, ed. 1861, pref. p. xv. [↑]
[3] Sale, Preliminary Discourse to tr. of the Koran, ed. 1833, i, 42; Muir’s Life of Mohammad, ed. Weir, 1912, p. 78. Cp. Freeman, History and Conquests of the Saracens, 1856, p. 35. The late Prof. Palmer, in introd. to his tr. of the Koran (Sacred Books of the East series), i, p. xv, says that “By far the greater number had ceased to believe in anything at all”; but this is an extravagance, confuted by himself in other passages—e.g. p. xi. [↑]
[4] These generalizations are always matched, and cancelled, by others from the same sources. Thus Prof. D. B. Macdonald writes of “the always flighty and skeptical Arabs,” and, a few pages later, of the God-fearing fatalism “of all Muslim thought, the faith to which the Semite ever returns in the end.” Development of Muslim Theology, etc. (in “Semitic Series”), New York, 1903, pp. 122, 126. [↑]
[5] The word means either convert or pervert; in Heb. and Syr. “heretic”; in Arabic, “orthodox.” It must not be confounded with Hanyfite, the name of an orthodox sect, founded by one Hanyfa. [↑]
[6] See Rodwell’s tr. of the Koran, ed. 1861, pref. pp. xvi, xvii; and Sura, xvi (lxxiii in Rodwell’s chron. arrangement), v. 121, p. 252, note 2. [↑]
[7] Sprenger, Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammad, 1861–65, i, 83 sq. Cp. p. 60 sq. [↑]
[8] Rodwell, p. 497, note to Sura iii (xcvii) 19; and pref. p. xvi; Caussin de Perceval, Essai sur l’histoire des Arabes avant l’Islamisme, 1847, i, 321–26; Nicholson, Lit. Hist. of the Arabs, pp. 69, 149. “To the great mass of the citizens of Mecca the new doctrine was simply the Hanyfism to which they had become accustomed; and they did not at first trouble themselves at all about the matter.” Palmer, introd. to tr. of Koran, i, p. xxiv. Cp. Sprenger, as cited, i, 46–60, 65. [↑]
[9] The word Hanyf or Hanif recurs in Sura ii, 129; iii, 60, 89; iv, 124; vi, 79, 162; x, 105, xvi, 121; xxii, 32; xxx, 29. Cp. H. Derenbourg, La science des religions et l’Islamisme, 1886, pp. 42–43. Palmer’s translation, marred as it unfortunately is by slanginess, is on such points specially trustworthy. Rodwell’s does not always indicate the use of the word Hanyf; but the German version of Ullmann, the French of Kanimirski, and Sale’s, do not indicate it at all. Sprenger (p. 43) derives the Hanyfs from Essenes who had almost lost all knowledge of the Bible. Cp. p. 67. Prof. Macdonald writes that the word “is of very doubtful derivation. But we have evidence from heathen Arab poetry that these Hanifs were regarded as much the same as Christian monks, and that the term hanif was used as a synonym for rahib, monk.” Work cited, p. 125. [↑]