Note 56 — Chapter X

This miracle has perhaps no other foundation but the atmospheric phenomena of a double moon which was seen in Mecca, four or five years before the Hejira. Some ascribed it to Muhammed on the infidels demanding a sign of him; the moon then appeared cloven in two; one part vanishing and the other remaining: it was affirmed that the mount Hara was seen interposing between the two sections. To this the believers refer chapter LIV of the Koran, entitled the moon, which begins by these words: “The hour approacheth, and the moon hath been split asunder.’ The most intelligent expounders understand in the first word the hour of judgment; others think, that in the rest the preter tense is used, in the prophetic style, for the future; and that the passage should be thus rendered: “The moon shall be split asunder:” for this, they say, is to happen at the resurrection.—(See Sale’s Koran, vol. II. p. 405). In the subsequent section, “upon the interpretation of the prophet’s miracle,” this subject is particularly treated.