Note 42 — Chapter VI · STORY OF MALIK IBN NOWEIRA. A.H. XI. A.D. 632.

Sajâh, it is said, lived quietly with her tribe after this in the profession of Christianity, until with them she was converted to Islam. There is a childish tale that on returning from the hasty marriage, her army, scandalised that she had received no dower, made her go back and ask Moseilama, who received her roughly, refusing her admittance; but, in lieu of dower, agreed to remit two of the daily prayers imposed by Mahomet.

By some of the historians the interview between Moseilama and Sajâh is drawn (happily a rare case in these annals) in language of gross indelicacy. The pruriency suggesting this, is the more gratuitous, as we are told, almost in the same breath, that Moseilama’s tenets were rather of an ascetic turn. His system enjoined prayer and fasting, and prohibited (so the tradition runs) cohabitation after the birth of a son, to be resumed only, if the child died, till the birth of another. But our knowledge of the life and doctrines of these pretenders to prophecy is really too scanty to warrant us in pronouncing judgment upon them.

Belâdzori and Ibn Khaldûn are among the few who have here kept their pages clean. Gibbon characteristically seizes on the passage.