Even the Koran contained little that was new. With the exception of some legends, the addition of some regulations touching the daily prayers and the purification of property, with a few ordinances as that of Diyat or blood-money, disallowed by the Pentateuch (Numb. xxxv. and Deut. xix.), but rendered necessary by the state of Arab society, and some dietetic modifications--the camel for instance and the horse were recognized as pure food,--the Koran might almost be extracted from the Mosaic and Rabbinical writings, from the Evangelists and apocryphalists of the Christian era. There is also but little to commend in it, except its fiery and commanding eloquence. As a code of laws it is eminently defective. He who could write such a work could have written much better. Muhammad, however, relied for the success of his mission upon far higher claims than any book. Muhammad laid no claims to prophecy or to miracles. He called himself El Rasúl, and El Nabbi, the announcer of good tidings from Allah to the Adamites. He did not give his name to a new system of belief; his ordinances were designated in a mass as El Islam, the Salvation or the Saving Faith. His night journey to heaven, the subject of so much opprobrious declamation, was either a vision or a dream. The splitting of the moon, a tale so monstrously told by his posterity, rests upon no broader basis than a line in the Koran which might properly be translated: “The hour [of Judgment] shall come, and the moon shall cleave asunder.” Probably this absurdity was the invention of followers who determined to dispute for their lawgiver with Joshua’s command over the host of heaven. An ignorant Afghan is said to have boasted that his Pir, or spiritual pastor, the celebrated poet Abd el Kahman, was in the habit of making night journeys like Muhammad to Paradise, and to have bastinadoed the holy man severely when, taxed with impiety, he denied the irreverent assertion. Such a Muhaddis, or relater of the Prophet’s sayings, as Abu Hurayrah, the Father of the Kitten, may fairly, to judge him by his recognized writings, be suspected of such a forgery. Muhammad the more especially disdained the claim to miraculous powers which, as those who know Eastern lands, belong to every petty saint and village santon. The “most extraordinary of ordinary men,” the historian Hume, inferred that, because he himself had never seen a miracle, no one else ever saw a miracle. The Oriental traveller will disbelieve in miracles for the opposite reason--because he has seen so many.