About the middle of the tenth century an epidemic terror of the end of the world had spread over Christendom. The scene of the last judgment was expected to be in Jerusalem. In the year 999 the number of pilgrims proceeding eastwards, to await the coming of the Lord in that city, was so great that they were compared to a desolating army. During the thousandth year the number of pilgrims increased. Every phenomenon of nature filled them with terror. A thunderstorm sent them all upon their knees. Every meteor in the sky seen at Jerusalem brought the whole Christian population into the streets to weep and pray. The pilgrims on the road were in the same alarm. Every shooting star furnished occasion for a sermon, in which the sublimity of the approaching judgment was the principal topic (_vide_ Extraordinary Popular Delusions by Charles Mackay, LL.D., London, pp. 222 and 223). It was a conceit or imposture of the _Kahins_ to pretend that their demons had access to the outskirts of the heavens, and by assiduous eavesdropping secured some of the secrets of the upper world and communicated the same to the soothsayers or diviners upon earth. The Jews had a similar notion of the demons (schedim), learning the secrets of the future by listening behind the veil (pargod). The Koran falsified them in their assertions. It says that the heavens (or the stars) are safe and protected against the eavesdropping (or enchantments) of the soothsayers. "We have set the signs of Zodiac in the heavens, and we have decked them forth for the bewilders." "And we guard them from every stoned satan."--Sura XV, verses 16, 17. "Verily we have adorned the lower heaven with the adornment of the stars;" "And we have guarded them against every rebellious satan."--Sura XXXVII, verses 6, 7. "... And we have furnished the lower heaven with lights and have protected it...."--Sura XLI, verse 11. The Koran further says that the soothsayers impart to their votaries or to those who go to consult them what they have heard from other people and are liars:-- "They impart what they have heard, but most of them are liars."--Sura XXVI, verse 223. It is nowhere said in the Koran that the stars are darted or hurled at the Satans. Sura LXVII, verse 5, literally means, "of a surety we have decked the lower heaven with lights and have made them to be (means of) '_Rojum_' conjectures to the (or for the) devils, _i.e._ the astrologer." The primary meaning of _Rajm_ is a thing that is thrown or cast like a stone: pl. '_Rojum_,' but it generally means speaking of that which is hidden, or conjecturing or speaking by conjecture, as in Sura XVIII, verse 21. In Sura XIX, verse 47, the word "_La-arjomannaka_" has been explained both ways, meaning (1) "I will assuredly cast stones at thee," and (2) "I will assuredly say of thee, (though) speaking of that which is hidden (from me) or unknown (by me), what thou dislikest or hatest." _Vide_ Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, page 1048.]