very mountains levelled; that the heavens shall melt, the sun be darkened, the
stars fall, on the death of the angels, who, as some imagine, hold them
suspended between heaven and earth, and the sea shall be troubled and dried
up, or, according ot others, turned into flames, the sun, moon, and stars
being thrown into it: the Korân, to express the greatness of the terror of
that day, adds that women who give suck shall abandon the care of their
infants, and even the she-camels which have gone ten months with young (a most
valuable part of the substance of that nation) shall be utterly neglected. A
farther effect of this blast will be that concourse of beasts mentioned in the
Korân,1 though some doubt whether it be to precede the resurrection or not.
They who suppose it will precede, think that ll kinds of animals, forgetting
their respective natural fierceness and timidity, will run together into one
place, being terrified by the sound of the trumpet and the sudden shock of
nature.
The Mohammedans believe that this first blast will be followed by a second,
which they call the blast of examination,2 when all creatures, both in heaven
and earth, shall die or be annihilated, except those which GOD shall please to
exempt from the common fate;3 and this, they say, shall happen in the
twinkling of an eye, nay, in an instant; nothing surviving except GOD alone,
with paradise and hell, and the inhabitants of those two places, and throne of
glory.4 The last who shall die will be the angel of death.
Forty years after this will be heard the blast of resurrection, when the
trumpet shall be sounded the third time by Israfîl, who, together with Gabriel
and Michael, will be previously restored to life, and standing on the rock of
the temple of Jerusalem,5 shall, at GOD'S command, call together all the dry
and rotten bones, and other dispersed parts of the bodies, and the very hairs,
to judgment. This angel having, by the divine order, set the trumpet to his
mouth, and called together all the souls from all parts, will throw them into
his trumpet, from whence, on his giving the last sound, at the command of GOD,
they will fly forth like bees, and fill the whole space between heaven and
earth, and then repair to their respective bodies, which the opening earth
will suffer to arise; and the first who shall so arise, according to a
tradition of Mohammed, will be himself. For this birth the earth will be
prepared by the rain above mentioned, which is to fall continually for forty
years,6 and will resemble the seed of a man, and be supplied from the water
under the throne of GOD, which is called living water; by the efficacy and
virtue of which the dead bodies shall spring forth from their graves, as they
did in their mother's womb, or as corn sprouts forth by common rain, till they
become perfect; after which breath will be breathed into them, and they will
sleep in their sepulchres till they are raised to life at the last trump.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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