1 This Sura is probably Muhammad's appeal to the Meccans, intended at the
same time for his own encouragement, on the ground of their deliverance from
the army of Abraha, the Christian King of Abyssinia and Arabia Felix, said to
have been lost in the year of Muhammad's birth in an expedition against Mecca
for the purpose of destroying the Caaba. This army was cut off by small-pox
(Wakidi; Hishami), and there is no doubt, as the Arabic word for small-pox
also means "small stones," in reference to the hard gravelly feeling of the
pustules, what is the true interpretation of the fourth line of this Sura,
which, like many other poetical passages in the Koran, has formed the
starting point for the most puerile and extravagant legends. Vide Gibbon's
Decline and Fall, c. 1. The small-pox first shewed itself in Arabia at the
time of the invasion by Abraha. M. de Hammer Gemaldesaal, i. 24. Reiske
opusc. Med. Arabum. Hal‘, 1776, p. 8.


SURA CVI.-THE KOREISCH [XX.]

MECCA.-4 Verses

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

For the union of the KOREISCH:-

Their union in equipping caravans winter and summer.

And let them worship the Lord of this house, who hath provided them with food
against hunger,

And secured them against alarm.1