144 THE RELIGION OF THE CRESCENT.

yearly festival day, on1 which the Quraish were accustomed to meet together and offer sacrifices to one of their idols, and entered into a compact of firm friendship with one another. Ibn Ishaq tells us that they "said one to another, 'Know that your nation is2 devoid of the true religion, and they have sinned against the religion of their father Abraham. What is a stone that we should circle around it? It neither hears nor sees, neither injures nor profits. O ye people! seek [the truth] for yourselves, for indeed, (we swear) by GOD, ye are based upon nothing.' Then they separated from one another and went into different lands seeking for Orthodoxy, the Religion of Abraham. As for Waraqah, he became firmly established in Christianity, and followed the Scriptures belonging to the people of that faith until he gained much information regarding the People of the Book. 'Ubaidu'llah remained in his confusion of mind until he became a Muslim. Then he fled to Abyssinia along with the Muslims, and with him went his wife, a Muslim woman, daughter of Abu Sufyan. And when he brought her thither he became a Christian and left Islam, and he perished there a Christian . . . . 'Uthman went to Caesar, Emperor of Rum" (the Byzantine Empire), "and

1 Ibn Hisham, "Siratu'r Rasul," Pt. I., pp. 76, 77.
2
فقال بعضهم لبعض تعلموا والله ما قومكم على شئ
literally, "Is based upon nothing," i.e., with regard to religion.
THE ORIGIN OF ISLAM. 145

became a Christian, and he obtained a good position at the Emperor's court . . . . Zaid remained firm and did not enter either the Jewish or the Christian fold, but he left the religion of his people, abstained from idolatry,1 from eating dead carcases and blood, and from the sacrifices which were offered to the idols, and he forbade the slaughter of female infants who used to be buried alive. He said, 'I worship the Lord of Abraham'; and2 he blamed his nation for the faults they persisted in . . . . Asma, daughter of Abu Bakr, used to say, 'I saw Zaid when a very old man3 leaning upon the central part of the Ka'abah outside and saying, 'O Assembly of the Quraish, by Him in Whose hand is the soul of Zaid bin 'Amr, none of you has attained to the Religion of Abraham but I myself."'

When we remember that, of these four Hanifs or 'Orthodox 4 believers,' two, Waraqah and 'Uthman, were cousins 5 of Khadijah, Muhammad's

1 In all these and other matters, Muhammad was Zaid's disciple.
2 Compare this whole speech of Zaid's with Surah iii. 19, and cf. Rodwell's note in loco.
3 He died only five years before Muhammad's supposed call to be a prophet.
4 The word حَنِيفٌ , pl.حُنَفَاءُ from a root meaning to incline, is thus rendered by Penrice, "Dict. of the Qur'an."
5 Muir, "Life of Muhammad," new edit., pp. 33, 34.