Not a whit has Gibbon[15] exaggerated the truth when he wrote “the creed of Mohamed is free from suspicion or ambiguity and the Qur´an is a glorious testimony to the unity of God. The prophet of Mecca rejected the worship of idols and men, of stars and planets, on the rational principle that whatever is born must die, that whatever is corruptible must decay and perish.” And, again, says the historian of the Roman Empire, “these sublime truths, thus announced in the language of the prophet, are firmly held by his disciples and defined with metaphysical precision by the interpreters of the Qur´an. A philosophic atheist might subscribe the popular creed of Mohamedans: a creed too sublime perhaps for our present faculties.” The unity of God, therefore, is the central faith of Islam and connected with it, by natural process as it were, is the belief that man is responsible to the creator for his actions and deeds. This belief, the Pre-Islamic Arab never knew or conceived, and the prophet Mohamed, by inculcating this belief, not only laid the foundation of a spiritual life among his countrymen, but laid the foundation of a well-organized society; soon destined to grow into a magnificent empire. The sphere of duty and obligation, charity and sympathy, confined hitherto merely to tribesmen, was widened and extended and the narrow tribal tie was lost in the larger brotherhood of faith. At this distance of time, it is perhaps difficult for us to fully realize the influence of this teaching, but to it alone must we ascribe the dethronement of those ideals of Arabian Paganism which the author of the _Muhammedanische Studien_ has so graphically described, comparing and contrasting them with the higher ideals substituted by Islam.[16] The religion of the prophet, like the wand of a magician, completely and utterly changed the life of the Arabs. It hushed their tribal disputes into silence, it destroyed their insularity, it set up a purer and a more refined standard of domestic life, it opened before them fresh vistas of spiritual happiness and temporal success. Next to the unity of God, Islam enjoins five daily prayers upon its followers. It is curious that the Qur´an lays down no rule as to the manner in which the prayer should be offered. Apparently, as Mr. Ameer Ali[17] points out, the practice of the prophet has associated certain rights and ceremonies to the due observance of prayers. In the Mohamedan prayer we observe the Jewish practice of standing erect, the Christian of prostration and a third of inclination.[18] Originally the prophet instituted three daily prayers.[19] Their extension to five was an innovation of the late Meccan period; the details of the purity legislation appear to have still later. “Yet the theory,” says Prof. Margoliouth, “that God should be approached only by persons in a state of purity was known in South Arabia before Mohamed’s time, whence it is probable that his earliest converts were instructed therein.”