University of Virginia Library

Abraham is the great Patriarch of Arabia; he is declared by Mohammed to be neither a Jew nor a Christian, but a Muslim and the friend of God. The great idol of red agate, with a golden hand holding seven divining arrows, which Mohammed destroyed in the Kaabeh, after his capture of Mekkeh, is supposed to have been a representation of Abraham. The Black Stone set in silver, which the Prophet left there, and which has remained an object of idolatrous homage, is said to be one of the precious stones of Paradise, and to have been brought by the angel Gabriel to Abraham, when he was rebuilding the Kaabeh. The Books of Abraham are spoken of with those of Moses, chap. lxxxvii. v. 19; the Kuràn is full of him: Mohammed seems, whether intentionally or not, to have fused his character into his own; he makes Abraham speak as himself, and he himself speaks in the person of the Patriarch. The following story expresses either the process of Abraham's reasoning with himself, or was used, by way of argument, to convince the idolaters among whom he lived. Josephus (lib. i. cap. 8) writes of Abraham, “that he was the first that ventured to publish this notion, that there was but one God, the Creator of the Universe, and that, as to other gods, if they contributed anything to the happiness of man, each of them afford it only according to his appointment, and not by their own power: this his opinion was derived from the irregular phenomena that were visible both at land and sea, as well as those that happen to the sun and moon, and all the heavenly bodies.”