Note 190 — PART THE SECOND.

The number of the prophets which have been from time to time sent by God into the world amounts to no less than 224,000, according to one Moḥammadan tradition, or to 124,000 according to another; among whom 313 were apostles, sent with special commissions to reclaim mankind from infidelity and superstition; and six of them brought new laws or dispensations, which successively abrogated the preceding: these were Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Moḥammad. All the prophets in general the Moḥammadans believe to have been free from great sins and errors of consequence, and professors of one and the same religion, that is, El-Islám, notwithstanding the different laws and institutions which they observed. In this great number of prophets, they not only reckon divers patriarchs and persons named in Scripture but not recorded to have been prophets (wherein the Jewish and Christian writers have sometimes led the way), as Adam, Seth, Lot, Ishmael, Nun, Joshua, &c., and introduce some of them under different names, as Enoch, Heber, and Jethro, who are called in the Ḳur-án, Idrees, Hood, and Sho´eyb; but several others whose very names do not appear in Scripture (though they endeavour to find some persons there to fix them on), as Ṣáliḥ, El-Khiḍr, Dhu-l-Kifl.

As to the Scriptures, the Moḥammadans are taught by the Ḳur-án that God, in divers ages of the world, gave revelations of His will in writing to several prophets, the whole and every word of which it is absolutely necessary for a good Muslim to believe. The number of these sacred books was, according to them, 104; of which ten were given to Adam, fifty to Seth, thirty to Idrees or Enoch, ten to Abraham; and the other four, being the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospel, and the Ḳur-án, were successively delivered to Moses, David, Jesus, and Moḥammad; which last being the seal of the prophets, those revelations are now closed and no more are to be expected. All these divine books, except the four last, they agree to be now entirely lost and their contents unknown; though the Sabians have several books which they attribute to some of the antediluvian prophets. And of those four, the Pentateuch, Psalms, and Gospel, they say, have undergone so many alterations and corruptions, that though there may possibly be some part of the true word of God therein, yet no credit is to be given to the present copies in the hands of the Jews and Christians.—S.