[34] Von Hoff, Geschichte der Veränderungen der Erdoberfläche, vol. i. p. 406, who cites Delisle, bey Hismann Welt- und Völkergeschichte. Alte Geschichte 1ter theil, s. 234.—The Arabian persecutions for heretical dogmas in theology were often very sanguinary. In the same ages wherein learning was most in esteem, the Mahometans were divided into two sects, one of whom maintained that the Koran was increate, and had subsisted in the very essence of God from all eternity; and the other, the Motazalites, who, admitting that the Koran was instituted by God, conceived it to have been first made when revealed to the Prophet at Mecca, and accused their opponents of believing in two eternal beings. The opinions of each of these sects were taken up by different caliphs in succession, and the followers of each sometimes submitted to be beheaded, or flogged till at the point of death, rather than renounce their creed.—Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. ii. ch. iv.
[35] Koran, chap. xli.
[36] Sale's Koran, chap. xi. see note.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Kossa, appointed master to the Caliph Al Mamûd, was author of a book entitled "The history of the Patriarchs and Prophets, from the Creation of the World."—Mod. Univ. Hist. vol. ii. ch. iv.
[39] Translated by MM. Chezy and De Sacy, and cited by M. Elie de Beaumont, Ann. des Sci. Nat. 1832.
[40] See Venturi's extracts from Da Vinci's MMS. now in Library of Institute of France. They are not mentioned by Brocchi, and my attention was first called to them by Mr. Hallam. L. da Vinci died A. D. 1519.
[41] Museum Calceol.—See Brocchi's Discourse on the Progress of the Study of Fossil Conchology in Italy, where some of the following notices on Italian writers will be found more at large.
[42] In Sicily, in particular, the title-deeds of many valuable grants of land to the monasteries are headed by such preambles, composed by the testators about the period when the good King Roger was expelling the Saracens from that island.
[43] De Fossilib. pp. 109, 176.