(to eat) that which dieth of itself and blood, and swine's flesh, and that on which any other name than God's hath been invoked.' ¹

The word is also used to describe the prohibition of marriages within certain limits of kinship.' ²

Beyond these uses of the word and its derivatives there is a large class of passages where the word has apparently been employed to express prohibition, without conveying the idea of any distinction between sacred and common or profane. It is used in this way; the children of Israel were prevented from entering the promised land for forty years, for God said, 'Verily the land shall be forbidden them forty years . . . .' ³ And the absence of any idea of distinction between sacred and profane is most clearly seen in the following, 'And we suffered him not (harramna 'alaihi) (to take) the breasts of the nurses who were provided before his sister came up.' ⁴

It is by following this general use of the word in the Qur'an, that Muhammadans have come to use the word haram of any sin, or anything which is contrary to justice, divine or human. Yet it would hardly be fair to say that the idea of the distinction between right and wrong is by them conceived as being simply the distinction between those things which God has allowed and those things which He has prohibited. The words haram and hilal may in their root-ideas have had something of this meaning; but they have now, and as used in certain passages of the Qur'an, had already in the

time of Muhammad, come to distinguish, between actions right and wrong in themselves; and they must be interpreted in connexion with the aspects of moral actions which are seen in the employment of the other terms already discussed. They are not to be regarded as meaning 'forbidden', and 'permitted', in the sense of expressing the result of mere arbitrary commands. This is so even when they refer to permission of what was before forbidden, or prohibition of what was before permitted.¹

It is unnecessary to discuss separately the word halla (to permit), and its derivatives. Enough has been said on this point already.

The word sharrun (evil), may be passed by. It is used in the Qur'an almost wholly, not of moral or ethical but of physical evil, though Muhammadan theologians now use it in a moral sense. In Suratu'l-Infal (viii) 22, 57 the word has, perhaps, a moral meaning.²

We come now to the last word which we shall consider, azlama (to act unjustly), and its derivatives. As used in the Qur'an, the various forms which are derived from the root zalama have, to a very large extent, almost a technical meaning. The original sense is seen in Suratu Yusuf (xii) 79. ' (Joseph) answered, God forbid that we should take but him with whom our property was found; for then should we act unjustly.' In Suratu'l-Qasas (xxviii) 59, the word is probably also used in its plain original sense.

This meaning of the word clings to it in those passages in which the word Zalim (an unjust person, or oppressor) is used to describe one who, prompted by