Delhi, attest the power at which Christian Europe trembled. And thus, while
the Koran, which underlays this vast energy and contains the principles which
are its springs of action, reflects to a great extent the mixed character of
its author, its merits as a code of laws, and as a system of religious
teaching, must always be estimated by the changes which it introduced into
the customs and beliefs of those who willingly or by compulsion embraced it.
In the suppression of their idolatries, in the substitution of the worship of
Allah for that of the powers of nature and genii with Him, in the abolition
of child murder, in the extinction of manifold superstitious usages, in the
reduction of the number of wives to a fixed standard, it was to the Arabians
an unquestionable blessing, and an accession, though not in the Christian
sense a Revelation, of Truth; and while every Christian must deplore the
overthrow of so many flourishing Eastern churches by the arms of the
victorious Muslims, it must not be forgotten that Europe, in the middle ages,
owed much of her knowledge of dialectic philosophy, of medicine, and
architecture, to Arabian writers, and that Muslims formed the connecting link
between the West and the East for the importation of numerous articles of
luxury and use. That an immense mass of fable and silly legend has been built
up upon the basis of the Koran is beyond a doubt, but for this Muhammad is
not answerable, any more than he is for the wild and bloodthirsty excesses of
his followers in after ages. I agree with Sale in thinking that, "how
criminal soever Muhammad may have been in imposing a false religion on
mankind, the praises due to his real virtues ought not to be denied him"
(Preface), and venture to think that no one can rise from the perusal of his
Koran without argeeing with that motto from St. Augustin, which Sale has
prefixed to his title page, "Nulla falsa doctrina est, quæ non aliquid veri
permisceat." Qu‘st. Evang. ii. 40.

The Arabic text from which this translation has been made is that of Fluegel.
Leips. 1841. The translations of Sale, Ullmann, Wahl, Hammer von Purgstall in