Coming centuries after Christ, it is noteworthy to observe that Mohammed was able to instil into his followers such humane doctrines as the freedom of the foundling and its maintenance from the funds drawn from the public treasury at a time when the Christians of Europe were groping vainly as to the proper treatment of infants. “A foundling is free,” says the Shaykh Burhan-ad-din Ali, “because freedom is a quality originally inherent in man; and the Mussulman territory in which the infant is found is a territory of freemen, whence it is also free: moreover, freemen, in a Mussulman territory, abound more than slaves, whence the foundling is free, as the smaller number is dependent to the greater.”[272] Christian philosophy offers few more striking mixtures of humanity and democracy. It was also the law when the foundling was to be maintained, the expense of bringing up the child was to be paid out of the public treasury, and in favor of this law the opinion of Omar was cited. A very good reason given for this was that “where the foundling dies without heirs, his estate goes to the public treasury.” The person who took up the foundling was known as a _Multaqit_ and it was the law of that day that the _Multaqit_ could not exact any return from the foundling on account of maintenance except where he had been ordered by the magistrate to bring up the foundling at its own expense, in which case the maintenance “is a debt upon the foundling, because, the magistrate’s authority being absolute, he is empowered to exact the return from the foundling.”[273] According to Al-Quduri,[274] this was the proper thing to do as the letting out was regarded as conducive to the education of the _Laqeet_. In the Jami Saghir the hiring out of the foundling was opposed on the ground that the _Multaqit_ had no right to turn the faculties of his foundling to his own advantage. The opinion of Shaykh Burhan-ad-din Ali was that Al-Quduri was right and that the child did gain by being let out. In Al-Siyar there is given a specific injunction that children must not be slain: “It does not become Mussulmans to slay women or children or men that are aged, bed-ridden, or blind, because opposition and fighting are the only occasions which make slaughter allowable (according to our doctors), and such persons are incapable of these.”[275] In the minute instructions in regard to divorce, much care is given as to the disposition of a child. Where the husband and wife separate, the law was that the child went with the mother, and this was based on a decision of the Prophet. “It is recorded that a woman once applied to the prophet, saying ‘O, prophet of God! this is my son, the fruit of my womb, cherished in my bosom and suckled at my breast, and his father is desirous of taking him away from me into his own care’; to which the prophet replied, ‘Thou hast a right in the child prior to that of thy husband, so long as thou dost not marry with a stranger.’”[276]