was not of these; although he was not so unlike them as he pretended. His kinship with the pagan _Shá‘ir_ is clearly shown, for example, in the 113th and 114th Súras, which are charms against magic and _diablerie_, as well as in the solemn imprecation calling down destruction upon the head of his uncle, ‘Abdu ’l-‘Uzzá, nicknamed Abú Lahab (Father of Flame). THE SÚRA OF ABÚ LAHAB (CXI). (1) Perish the hands of Abú Lahab and perish he! (2) His wealth shall not avail him nor all he hath gotten in fee. (3) Burned in blazing fire he shall be! (4) And his wife, the faggot-bearer, also she. (5) Upon her neck a cord of fibres of the palm-tree. If, then, we must allow that Muḥammad's contemporaries had some justification for bestowing upon him the title of poet against which he protested so vehemently, still less can his plea be accepted by the modern critic, whose verdict will be that the Koran is not poetical as a whole; that it contains many pages of rhetoric and much undeniable prose; but that, although Muḥammad needed "heaven-sent moments for this skill," in the early Meccan Súras frequently, and fitfully elsewhere, his genius proclaims itself by grand lyrical outbursts which could never have been the work of a mere rhetorician. [Sidenote: The Meccan Súras.] "Muḥammad's single aim in the Meccan Súras," says Nöldeke, "is to convert the people, by means of persuasion, from their false gods to the One God. To whatever point the discourse is directed, this always remains the ground-thought; but instead of seeking to convince the reason of his hearers by logical proofs, he employs the arts of rhetoric to work upon their minds through the imagination. Thus he glorifies God, describes His working in Nature and History, and ridicules on the other hand the impotence of the idols. Especially important are the descriptions of the everlasting bliss of the pious and the torments of the wicked: these, particularly the latter, must be regarded as one of the mightiest factors in the propagation of Islam, through the impression which they make on the imagination of simple men who have not been hardened, from their youth up, by similar theological ideas. The Prophet often attacks his heathen adversaries personally and threatens them with eternal punishment; but while he is living among heathens alone, he seldom assails the Jews who stand much nearer to him, and the Christians scarcely ever."[314]