Among the Prerogatives et Propriétés singulières du Prophète, Gagnier states that, “Il est vivant dans son Tombeau. Il fait la prière dans ce Tombeau à chaque fois que le Crieur en fait la proclamation, et au même tems qu’on la recite. Il y a un Ange posté sur son Tombeau qui a le soin de lui donner avis des Pri res que les Fidèles font pour lui.”—Vie de Mahomet, l. vii. c. 18.
The common notion that the impostor’s tomb is suspended by means of a loadstone is well known. Labat, in his Afrique Occidentale (T. ii. p. 143.) mentions the lie of a Marabout, who, on his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, affirmed, “que le tombeau de Mahomet etoit porté en l’air par le moyen de certains Anges qui se relayent d’heure en heures pour soutenir ce fardeau.” These fables, however, are modest in comparison with those which the Franciscans and Dominicans have invented to magnify their founders.
Hast thou not heard
How when our clay is leaven’d first with life,
The ministering Angel brings it from that spot
Whereon ’tis written in the eternal book
That soul and body must their parting take,
And earth to earth return?—[XXIII. p. 217.]
The Persians in their creed have a pleasant imagination concerning the death of men. They say, that every one must come and die in the place where the Angel took the earth of which he hath been made, thinking that one of these spirits has the care of forming the human creature, which he doth by mingling a little earth with the seed.—Thevenot.