The Quran (Koran), 1st translation - - (top 100 novels .txt) 📗

to him whose balances are heavy-his shall be a life that shall please him well:

And as to him whose balances are light-his dwelling-place1 shall be the pit.

And who shall teach thee what the pit (El-Hawiya) is?

A raging fire!

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1 Lit. Mother.

SURA XCIX.-THE EARTHQUAKE [XXX.]

MECCA.-8 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

WHEN the Earth with her quaking shall quake

And the Earth shall cast forth her burdens,

And man shall say, What aileth her?

On that day shall she tell out her tidings,

Because thy Lord shall have inspired her.

On that day shall men come forward in throngs to behold their works,

And whosoever shall have wrought an atom's weight of good shall behold it,

And whosoever shall have wrought an atom's weight of evil shall behold it.

SURA LXXXII.-THE CLEAVING [XXXI.]

MECCA.-19 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

WHEN the Heaven shall CLEAVE asunder,

And when the stars shall disperse,

And when the seas1 shall be commingled,

And when the graves shall be turned upside down,

Each soul shall recognise its earliest and its latest actions.

O man! what hath misled thee against thy generous Lord,

Who hath created thee and moulded thee and shaped thee aright?

In the form which pleased Him hath He fashioned thee.

Even so; but ye treat the Judgment as a lie.

Yet truly there are guardians over you-

Illustrious recorders-

Cognisant of your actions.

Surely amid delights shall the righteous dwell,

But verily the impure in Hell-fire:

They shall be burned at it on the day of doom,

And they shall not be able to hide themselves from it.

Who shall teach thee what the day of doom is?

Once more. Who shall teach thee what the day of doom is?

It is a day when one soul shall be powerless for another soul: all sovereignty on that day shall be with God.

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1 Salt water and fresh water.

SURA LXXXI.-THE FOLDED UP [XXXII.]

MECCA.-29 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

WHEN the sun shall be FOLDED UP,1

And when the stars shall fall,

And when the mountains shall be set in motion,

And when the she-camels shall be abandoned,

And when the wild beasts shall be gathered together,2

And when the seas shall boil,

And when souls shall be paired with their bodies,

And when the female child that had been buried alive shall be asked

For what crime she was put to death,3

And when the leaves of the Book shall be unrolled,

And when the Heaven shall be stripped away,4

And when Hell shall be made to blaze,

And when Paradise shall be brought near,

Every soul shall know what it hath produced.

It needs not that I swear by the stars5 of retrograde motions

Which move swiftly and hide themselves away,

And by the night when it cometh darkening on,

And by the dawn when it brighteneth,

That this is the word of an illustrious Messenger,6

Endued with power, having influence with the Lord of the Throne,

Obeyed there by Angels, faithful to his trust,

And your compatriot is not one possessed by djinn;

For he saw him in the clear horizon:7

Nor doth he grapple with heaven's secrets,8

Nor doth he teach the doctrine of a cursed9 Satan.

Whither then are ye going?

Verily, this is no other than a warning to all creatures;

To him among you who willeth to walk in a straight path:

But will it ye shall not, unless as God willeth it,10 the Lord of the worlds.

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1 Involutus fuerit tenebris. Mar. Or, thrown down.

2 Thus Bab. Talm. Erchin, 3. "In the day to come (i.e., of judgment) all the beasts will assemble and come, etc."

3 See Sura xvi. 61; xvii. 33.

4 Like a skin from an animal when flayed. The idea is perhaps borrowed from the Sept. V. of Psalm civ. 2. Vulg. sicut pellem.

5 Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn.

6 Gabriel; of the meaning of whose name the next verse is probably a paraphrase.

7 Sura 1iii. 7.

8 Like a mere Kahin, or soothsayer.

9 Lit. stoned. Sura iii. 31. This vision or hallucination is one of the few clearly stated miracles, to which Muhammad appeals in the Koran. According to the tradition of Ibn-Abbas in Waquidi he was preserved by it from committing suicide by throwing himself down from Mount Hira, and that after it, God cheered him and strengthened his heart, and one revelation speedily followed another.

10 Comp. the doctrine of predestination in Sura 1xxvi. v. 25 to end.

SURA LXXXIV.-THE SPLITTING ASUNDER [XXXIII.]

MECCA.-25 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

WHEN the Heaven shall have SPLIT ASUNDER

And duteously obeyed its Lord;1

And when Earth shall have been stretched out as a plain,

And shall have cast forth what was in her and become empty,

And duteously obeyed its Lord;

Then verily, O man, who desirest to reach thy Lord, shalt thou meet him.

And he into whose right hand his Book shall be given,

Shall be reckoned with in an easy reckoning,

And shall turn, rejoicing, to his kindred.

But he whose Book shall be given him behind his back2

Shall invoke destruction:

But in the fire shall he burn,

For that he lived joyously among his kindred,

Without a thought that he should return to God.

Yea, but his Lord beheld him.

It needs not therefore that I swear by the sunset redness,

And by the night and its gatherings,

And by the moon when at her full,

That from state to state shall ye be surely carried onward.3

What then hath come to them that they believe not?

And that when the Koran is recited to them they adore not?

Yea, the unbelievers treat it as a lie.

But God knoweth their secret hatreds:

Let their only tidings4 be those of painful punishment;

Save to those who believe and do the things that be right.

An unfailing recompense shall be theirs.

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1 Lit. and obeyed its Lord, and shall be worthy, or capable, i.e., of obedience.

2 That is, into his left hand. The Muhammadans believe that the right hand of the damned will be chained to the neck; the left chained behind the back.

3 From Life to Death, from the Grave to Resurrection, thence to Paradise.

4 The expression is ironical. See Freyt. on the word. Lit. tell them glad tidings.

SURA C.-THE CHARGERS [XXXIV.]

Mecca.-11 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

By the snorting CHARGERS!

And those that dash off sparks of fire!

And those that scour to the attack at morn!

And stir therein the dust aloft;

And cleave therein their midway through a host!

Truly, Man is to his Lord ungrateful.

And of this he is himself a witness;

And truly, he is vehement in the love of this world's good.

Ah! knoweth he not, that when that which is in the graves shall be laid bare,

And that which is in men's breasts shall be brought forth,

Verily their Lord shall on that day be informed concerning them?

SURA LXXIX.1-THOSE WHO DRAG FORTH [XXXV.]

MECCA.-46 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

By those angels who DRAG FORTH souls with violence,

And by those who with joyous release release them;

By those who swim swimmingly along;

By those who are foremost with foremost speed;2

By those who conduct the affairs of the universe!

One day, the disturbing trumpet-blast shall disturb it,

Which the second blast shall follow:

Men's hearts on that day shall quake:-

Their looks be downcast.

The infidels will say, "Shall we indeed be restored as at first?

What! when we have become rotten bones?"

"This then," say they, "will be a return to loss."

Verily, it will be but a single blast,

And lo! they are on the surface of the earth.

Hath the story of Moses reached thee?

When his Lord called to him in Towa's holy vale:

Go to Pharaoh, for he hath burst all bounds:

And say, "Wouldest thou become just?

Then I will guide thee to thy Lord that thou mayest fear him."

And he showed him a great miracle,-

But he treated him as an impostor, and rebelled;

Then turned he his back all hastily,

And gathered an assembly and proclaimed,

And said, "I am your Lord supreme."

So God visited on him the punishment of this life and of the other.

Verily, herein is a lesson for him who hath the fear of God.

Are ye the harder to create, or the heaven which he hath built?

He reared its height and fashioned it,

And gave darkness to its night, and brought out its light,

And afterwards stretched forth the earth,-

He brought forth from it its waters and its pastures;

And set the mountains firm

For you and your cattle to enjoy.

But when the grand overthrow shall come,

The day when a man shall reflect on the pains that he hath taken,

And Hell shall be in full view of all who are looking on;

Then, as for him who hath transgressed

And hath chosen this present life,

Verily, Hell-that shall be his dwelling-place:

But as to him who shall have feared the majesty of his Lord, and shall have refrained his soul from lust,

Verily, Paradise-that shall be his dwelling-place.

They will ask thee of "the Hour," when will be its fixed time?

But what knowledge hast thou of it?

Its period is known only to thy Lord;

And thou art only charged with the warning of those who fear it.

On the day when they shall see it, it shall seem to them as though they had not tarried in the tomb, longer than its evening or its morn.

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1 This Sura obviously consists of three portions, verses 1-14, 15-26, 27-46, of which the third is the latest in point of style, and the second, more detailed than is usual in the Suras of the early period, which allude to Jewish and other legend only in brief and vague terms. It may therefore be considered as one of the short and early Suras.

2 Or, By those angels which precede, i.e., the souls of the pious into Paradise. Or, are beforehand with the Satans and djinn in learning the decrees of God.

SURA LXXVII.-THE SENT [XXXVI.]

MECCA.-50 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

By the train of THE SENT ones,1

And the swift in their swiftness;

By the scatterers who scatter,

And the distinguishers who distinguish;

And by those that give forth the word

To excuse or warn;

Verily that which ye are promised is imminent.

When the stars, therefore, shall be blotted out,

And when the heaven shall be cleft,

And when the mountains shall be scattered in dust,

And when the Apostles shall have a time assigned them;

Until what day shall that time be deferred?

To the day of severing!

And who shall teach thee what the day of severing is?

Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!

Have we not destroyed them of old?

We will next cause those of later times to follow them.2

Thus deal we with the evil doers.

Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!

Have we not created you of a sorry germ,

Which we laid up in a secure place,

Till the term decreed for birth?

Such is our power! and, how powerful are We!

Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!

Have we not made the earth to hold

The living and the dead?

And placed on it the tall firm mountains, and given you to drink of sweet water.

Woe on that day to those who charged with imposture!

Begone to that Hell which ye called a lie:-

Begone to