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

ourself have we given thee admonition.

Whoso shall turn aside from it shall verily carry a burden on the day of
Resurrection:

Under it shall they remain: and grievous, in the day of Resurrection, shall it be to them to bear.

On that day there shall be a blast on the trumpet, and We will gather the wicked together on that day with leaden23 eyes:

They shall say in a low voice, one to another,-"Ye tarried but ten days on earth."

We are most knowing with respect to that which they will say when the most veracious24 of them will say. "Ye have not tarried above a day."

And they will ask thee of the mountains: SAY: scattering my Lord will scatter them in dust;

And he will leave them a level plain: thou shalt see in it no hollows or jutting hills.

On that day shall men follow their summoner25-he marcheth straight on: and low shall be their voices before the God of Mercy, nor shalt thou hear aught but the light footfall.

No intercession shall avail on that day, save his whom the God of Mercy shall allow to intercede, and whose words he shall approve.

He knoweth their future and their past; but in their own knowledge they comprehend it not:-

And humble shall be their faces before Him that Liveth, the Self-subsisting: and undone he, who shall bear the burden of iniquity;

But he who shall have done the things that are right and is a believer, shall fear neither wrong nor loss.

Thus have We sent down to thee an Arabic Koran, and have set forth menaces therein diversely, that haply they may fear God, or that it may give birth to reflection in them.

Exalted then be God, the King, the Truth! Be not hasty in its recital26 while the revelation of it to thee is incomplete. Say rather, "O my Lord, increase knowledge unto me."

And of old We made a covenant with Adam; but he forgat it; and we found no firmness of purpose in him.

And when We said to the angels, "Fall down and worship Adam," they worshipped all, save Eblis, who refused: and We said, "O Adam! this truly is a foe to thee and to thy wife. Let him not therefore drive you out of the garden, and ye become wretched;

For to thee is it granted that thou shalt not hunger therein, neither shalt thou be naked;

But Satan whispered him: said he, "O Adam! shall I shew thee the tree of
Eternity,27 and the Kingdom that faileth not?"

And they both ate thereof, and their nakedness appeared to them, and they began to sew of the leaves of the Garden to cover them, and Adam disobeyed his Lord and went astray.

Afterwards his Lord chose him for himself, and was turned towards him, and guided him.

And God said, "Get ye all down hence, the one of you a foe unto the other.
Hereafter shall guidance come unto you from me;

And whoso followeth my guidance shall not err, and shall not be wretched:

But whoso turneth away from my monition, his truly shall be a life of misery:

And We will assemble him with others on the day of Resurrection, blind."28

He will say, "O my Lord! why hast thou assembled me with others, blind? whereas I was endowed with sight."

He will answer, "Thus is it, because our signs came unto thee and thou didst forget them, and thus shalt thou be forgotten this day."

Even thus will We recompense him who hath transgressed and hath not believed in the signs of his Lord; and assuredly the chastisement of the next world will be more severe and more lasting.

Are not they, who walk the very places where they dwelt, aware how many generations we have destroyed before them? Verily in this are signs to men of insight.

And had not a decree of respite from thy Lord first gone forth, their chastisement had at once ensued. Yet the time is fixed.

Put up then with what they say; and celebrate the praise of thy Lord before the sunrise, and before its setting; and some time in the night do thou praise him, and in the extremes29 of the day, that thou haply mayest please Him.

And strain not thine eye after what We have bestowed on divers of them-the braveries of this world-that we may thereby prove them. The portion which thy Lord will give, is better and more lasting.

Enjoin prayer on thy family, and persevere therein. We ask not of thee to find thine own provision-we will provide for thee, and a happy issue shall there be to piety.

But they say, "If he come not to us with a sign from his Lord . . .!"30 But have not clear proofs for the Koran come to them, in what is in the Books of old?

And had We destroyed them by a chastisement before its time, they would surely have said, "O our Lord! How could we believe if thou didst not send unto us an Apostle that we might follow thy signs ere that we were humbled and disgraced."

SAY: Each one of us awaiteth the end. Wait ye then, and ye shall know which of us have been followers of the even way, and who hath been the rightly guided.

_______________________

1 The first 14 or 16 verses of this Sura are said to have induced Omar to embrace Islam (His. 226. Ibn Sâd, i. and v. Comp. Weil, p. 60. Causs. i. 396 ff.) in the sixth year before the Hejira.

2 Freytag supposes these letters to mean, Hush! but see Sura lxviii. 1, p. 32.

3 Lit. if thou raise thy voice.

4 Lit. guidance. Moses had lost his way, say the Commentators, when journeying to Egypt to visit his mother.

5 The Muhammadan Commentators tell how Moses when a child burnt his tongue with a live coal. The same story is found in Midr. Jalkut on Ex. c. 166, and in Shalsheleth Hakabalah, p. 5, b. Ed. Amsterd.

6 Lit vizir.

7 Or, strengthen my back.

8 The form of the word in the original is not the pure Hebraic, but the later Rabbinic form.

9 See Sura [lxxix.] xxviii. 11, 12.

10 What is their condition after their death as to happiness or misery. Beidh. whom Sale follows. But the word state, which Mar. renders mens, refers rather to their creed. "How," enquires Pharaoh, "do you explain the fact that the generations of men have always practised a different worship?"

11 Lit. pairs.

12 The Midrasch Tanchumah on Ex. vii. gives a very similar dialogue between Pharaoh and Moses.

13 Lit. the day of ornament.

14 In punishing. Beidh.

15 To recompense. Beidh.

16 As the garden is said in Sura lxxxviii. to be lofty in point of situation, this frequently recurring phrase may mean that rivers run at its base. The Commentators, however, generally understand it to imply that the rivers flow beneath its shades or pavilions.

17 Lit. and there overwhelmed them of the sea that which overwhelmed them.

18 The 70 elders who were to have accompanied him.

19 That is, the Samaritan. This rendering, which is probably the true explanation of the word Samiri, involves a grievous ignorance of history on the part of Muhammad. Selden (de diis Syr. Syn. i. ch. 4) supposes that Samiri is Aaron himself, the Shomeer, or keeper of Israel during the absence of Moses. Many Arabians identify him with the Micha of Judges xvii. who is said to have assisted in making the calf (Raschi, Sanhedr. 102, 2 Hottinger Hist. Orient. p. 84). Geiger suggests that Samiri may be a corruption of Samael. See next note. But it is probable that the name and its application in the present instance, is to be traced to the old national feud between the Jews and Samaritans. See De Sacy, Chrestom. i. p. 189, who quotes Abu Rihan Muhammad as stating that the Samaritans were called Al-limsahsit, the people who say, "Touch me not" (v. 97, below), and Juynboll Chron. Sam. (Leid. 1848) p. 113. Sale also mentions a similar circumstance of a tribe of Samaritan Jews dwelling on one of the islands in the Red Sea.

20 "The calf came forth (Ex. xxxii. 24) lowing and the Israelites beheld it. R. Jehuda saith, Samuel entered into it and lowed in order to mislead Israel." Pirke R. Eliezer, § 45.

21 From the track of Gabriel's horse, or of Gabriel himself.

22 Lit. no touch.

23 I have adopted the word leaden as expressive of the idea implied in the original word, viz. grey or greyish blue; hence, dulled, dimmed. The Arabians have a great aversion to blue and grey eyes as characteristic of their enemies the Greeks. The word, however, may also mean blind. Comp. v. 124, 5.

24 Lit. the most excellent or just of them in his way: dignitate, Mar. But Kam. in Freyt. (iii. 150) justissimus eorum, simillimus veracibus. The sense of the last clause is, "Yes have not tarried even so much as ten days, such, now that we look back upon it, is the brevity of life." See Sura [lxiv.] xxiii. 115.

25 The angel Israfil.

26 Compare Sura lxxv. 16-19, p. 56.

27 It should be observed that here and in Sura vii. 19, Muhammad seems unaware of the distinction between the tree of knowledge, and the tree of life, as given in Gen. ii. 9, and iii. 5.

28 From the intensity of the light, mentioned Sura [1xxx.] xxxix. 69.

29 In order to reconcile this passage with the prescribed hours, some understand the extremes to mean the mid-day, when the day is as it were divided.

30 Supply, we will not believe.

SURA XXVI.-THE POETS1 [LVI.]

MECCA.-228 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

Ta. Sin. Mim.2 These are the signs of the lucid Book.

Haply thou wearest thyself away with grief because they will not believe.

Were it our will we could send down to them a sign from Heaven, before which they would humbly bow.3

But from each fresh warning that cometh to them from the God of Mercy they have only turned aside,

And treated it as a lie: But tidings shall reach them which they shall not laugh to scorn.

Have they not beheld the earth-how we have caused every kind of noble plant to spring up therein?

Verily, in this is a sign: but most of them believe not.

And assuredly, thy Lord!-He is the Mighty, the Merciful.

And remember when thy Lord called to Moses, "Go to the wicked people,

The people of Pharaoh. What! will they not fear me?"

He said, "My Lord, in sooth I fear lest they treat me as a liar:

And my breast is straitened, and I am slow of speech:4 send therefore to
Aaron to be my helpmate.

For they have a charge5 against me, and I fear lest they put me to death."

He said, "Surely not. Go ye therefore with our signs: we will be with you and will hearken.

And go to Pharaoh and say: 'Verily we are the messengers of the Lord of the worlds-

Send forth with us the children of Israel."'

He said, "Did we not rear thee among us when a child? And hast thou not passed years of thy life among us?

And yet what a deed is that which thou hast done!6 Thou art one of the ungrateful."

He said, "I did it indeed, and I was one of those who erred: And I fled from you because I feared you; but my Lord hath given me wisdom and hath made me one of his Apostles.

And is this the favour thou hast conferred on me, that thou hast enslaved the children of Israel?"

Said Pharaoh, "Who then is the Lord of the Worlds?"

He said, "The Lord of the Heavens and of the Earth and of all that is between them, if only ye believe it."

Said Pharaoh to those around him, "Hear ye this?"

"Your Lord," said Moses, "and the Lord of your sires of old."

"In sooth, your Apostle whom He hath sent to you," said Pharaoh, "is certainly possessed."

He said, "Lord is He of the East and of the West, and of all that is between them, if ye can understand."

He said, "If ye take any God beside me, I will surely put thee in ward."

Said Moses,