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103

THIRD ARTICLE

VALUE OF EARLY MAHOMETAN

HISTORICAL SOURCES

From the " Calcutta Review," 1868

1. Des Leben and die Lehre des Mohammad, nach bisher gröosstentheils unbenutzen Quellen, bearbeitet von A. Sprenger. Berlin, 1865.

The Life and Doctrine of Mahomet from Sources hitherto for the most part unused. By A. Sprenger. 3 Vols. Berlin, 1865. Essay prefixed to Vol. III. on the Original Traditional Sources of Islam.

THIS is really a great work, the fruit of prodigious learning, and of a life the greater part spent in India in the unwearying search after materials for the early history of Islam, and in their study. Some twenty years ago, Sprenger published at Allahabad a Life of Mohammed in English; but, compared with the present, it was bald and meagre, and also incomplete since it stopped short at the Flight from Mecca. It was also marked by a love of paradox, and tendency to strike out theories based on but slender grounds. The present work labours, to some extent, under the same defect. For example, from an expression (Hanîf) used in the Coran by Mahomet to signify that he followed the pure and catholic faith of Abraham, Sprenger, assumes the existence of an important sect of "Hanîfites," and of Hanîfite works made use of by the Prophet; and having made the assumption, he proceeds to use it as the premise for still further conclusions. His estimate of the Prophet's character is also essentially inadequate; for, a man of a weak and cunning mind, as Sprenger describes him, could never

           

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