Hudhail¹ bin Madrakah, of the same family as Muhammad himself. This man lived only fifteen generations before the "Prophet." There must have been a strong feeling among the Arabs therefore that idolatry was wrong, and that it was an innovation which was directly contrary to the faith of those ancestors² of whom they were so proud. This being the case, and remembering that the worship of the One True GOD had never entirely ceased in the country, we are now able to understand how "Muhammad³ could come forward in the name of the supreme GOD of the nation, the GOD of Abraham, Who had been merely cast into the background by the overgrowth of local cults. In this respect the appearance of Muhammad may be compared with the efforts 

the Old Testament Prophets, when they rendered Jehovah, Who was still remembered in Israel, a living power, in opposition to the prevailing idolatry. As the work of Moses, however, would be historically unintelligible without presupposing a Religion of Abraham, or the labours of Elijah without the presupposition of the revelation at Sinai,—so also would the establishment of Islam be without the hypothesis of a monotheistic basis." Whatever credit therefore may be justly due to Muhammad for firmly re-establishing the worship of One GOD in Arabia, we cannot regard him as having introduced Monotheism into the country for the first time.

§ 5.—An examination of the religious rites and ceremonies of the pre-Islamic Arabs is also

Origin of Islamic Rites.

important as an evidence of the great indebtedness which Muhammadanism acknowledges to them. Most of the rites and ceremonies which form as it were the outward expression or the garb of Islam at the present day were practised in the country from time immemorial. The Arabic historian Abu'1 Fida, treating of this subject, well says,¹