tainly obliged to keep theirs, there being a permission, as is generally supposed, in the Korân,6 allowing them to return to their employments or diversion after divine service is over; yet the more devout disapprove the applying of any part of that day to worldly affairs, and require it to be wholly dedicated to the business of the life to come.7 Since I have mentioned the Mohammedan weekly feast, I beg leave just to take notice of their two Beirâms,8 or principal annual feasts. The first of them is called, in Arabic, Id al fetr, i.e., The feast of breaking the fast, and begins the first of Shawâl, immediately succeeding the fast of Ramadân; and the other is called Id al korbân, or Id al adhâ, i.e., The feast of the sacrifice, and begins on the tenth of Dhu'lhajja, when the victims are slain at the pilgrimage of Mecca.9 The former of these feasts is properly the lesser Beirâm, and the latter, the greater Beirâm:1 but the vulgar, and most authors who have written of the Mohammedan affairs,2 exchange the epithets, and call that which follows Ramadân the greater Beirâm, because it is observed in an extraordinary manner, and kept for three days together at Constantinople and in other parts of Turkey, and in Persia for five or six days, by the common people, at least, with great demonstrations of public joy, to make themselves amends, as it were, for the mortification of the preceding month;3 whereas, the feast of sacrifices, though it be also kept for three days, and the first of them be the most solemn day of the pilgrimage, the principal act of devotion among the Mohammedans is taken much less notice of by the generality of people, who are not struck therewith, because the ceremonies with which the same is observed are performed at Mecca, the only scene of that solemnity. _______ SECTION VIII. OF THE PRINCIPAL SECTS AMONG THE MOHAMMEDANS; AND OF THOSE WHO HAVE PRETENDED TO PROPHECY AMONG THE ARABS, IN OR SINCE THE TIME OF MOHAMMED. BEFORE we take a view of the sects of the Mohammedans, it will be necessary to say something of the two sciences by which all disputed questions among them are determined, viz., their Scholastic and Practical Divinity. Their scholastic divinity is a mongrel science, consisting of logical, metaphysical, theological, and philosophical disquisitions, and built on 6 Cap. 63, ubi supra. 7 Al Ghazâli, ubi sup. p. 318. 8 The word Beirâm is Turkish, and properly signifies a feast-day or holiday. 9 See c. 9, and before, Sect. IV. p. 94. 1 Vide Reland. de Relig. Moh. p. 109, and D'Herbel. Bibl. Orient. Art. Beirâm. 2 Hyde, in notis ad Bobov. p. 16; Chardin, Voy. de Perse, tom. ii. p. 450; Ricaut's State of the Ottoman Empire, l. 2. c. 24, &c. 3 Vide Chardin and Ricaut, ubi supra.