along with them. When Muhammad heard this assertion made by the Jews regarding their Sacred Books, it was natural for him to assert that his Revelation too was written upon one or the other of these Preserved Tablets. Otherwise he thought he could hardly claim for it a degree of authority equal to that of the Old Testament. It is probable that the Muslims, not understanding to what the words "a Preserved Tablet" referred, gradually invented the whole of the marvellous story about it which we have quoted above.

To ascertain what the Jews thought about the contents of the Tablets, we must consult Tract Berakhoth (fol. 5, col. 1). There we read "Rabbi Simeon ben Laqish saith, ‘What is that which is written, "And I shall give thee the tablets of stone, and the Law, and the commandment which I have written, that thou mayest teach them"? (Ex. xxiv. 12). The Tablets — these are the Ten Commandments; the Law, that which is read; and the Commandment, this is the Mishnah:— which I have written, these are the Prophets and the Hagiographa: that thou mayest teach them, this denotes the Gemara. This teaches that all of them were given to Moses from Sinai.’"

Every learned Jew of the present time acknowledges that we should reject this absurd explanation of the above-quoted verse, because he knows that the Mishnah was compiled about the year 220 of the Christian era, the Jerusalem Gemara about 430,

and the Babylonian Gemara about A.D. 530. But the Muslims, not knowing this seem to have tacitly accepted such assertions as true, and applied them to their own Qur'an also.

To complete the proof that the legend about the Preserved Tablet upon which the Qur'an is said to have been written is derived from a Jewish source, it remains only to state that in the Pirqey Aboth, cap. v. § 6, it is said that the two Tablets of the Law were created, along with nine other things, at the time of the creation of the world, and at sunset before the first Sabbath began.

It is well known that the fabulous Mount Qaf plays an important part in Muhammadan legend. Surah L. is called Qaf and begins with this letter. Hence its name is supposed to refer to the name of the mountain in question. The commentator 'Abbasi accepts this explanation and quotes tradition handed down through Ibn 'Abbas in support of it. Ibn 'Abbas says, "Qaf is a green mountain surrounding the earth, and the greenness of the sky is from it: by it God swears ¹." So in the 'Araisu'l Majalis ² it more fully explained in these words, "God Most High created a great mountain of green emerald. The greenness of the sky is on account of it. It is called Mount