J. F. Campbell Collection > Koran: or, Alcoran of Mohammed

PRELIMINAEY DISCOUESE.
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Holulians, who believed that the divine nature might be united with the
human in the same person ; for they granted it possible that God might
ai>pear in a human form, as Gabriel did : and to confirm their opinion
they allege Mohammed's words, that he saw his lord in a most beautiful
form, and Moses talking with God face to face.* And,
3. The Kerainians, or followers of Mohammed Ebn Keram, called also
Mojassemians, or Corporealists ; who not only admitted a resemblance
between God and created beings, but declared God to be corporeal.' The
more sober among them, indeed, when they applied the word body to God,
would be understood to mean that he is a self-subsisting being, which with
them is the definition of body : but yet some of them affirmed him to be
finite, and circumscribed either on all sides, or on some only (as beneath,
for example), according to different opinions ; '" and others allowed that he
might be felt by the hand, and seen by the eye. Nay, one David al Jawari
went so far as to say, that his deity was a body composed of flesh and
blood, and that he had members, as hands, feet, a head, a tongue, eyes, and
ears ; but that he was a body, however, not like other bodies, neither was
he like to any created being : he is also said farther to have affirmed that
from the crown of the head to the breast he was hollow, and from the
breast downward solid, and that he had black curled hair.' These most
blasphemous and monstrous notions were the consequence of the literal
acceptation of those pas.sages in the Koran, which figuratively attribute cor-
poreal actions to God, and of the words of Mohammed, when he said, that
God created man in his own image, and that he himself had felt the fingei-s
of (jlod, which he laid on his back, to be cold : besides which, this sect are
charged with fathering on their prophet a great number of spurious and
forged traditions to support their opinion, the greater part whereof they
borrowed from the Jews, who are accused as naturally prone to assimilate
God to men, so that they describe him as weeping for Noah's flood till his
eyes were sore.'' And indeed, though we grant the Jews may have im-
posed on Mohammed and his followers in many instances, and told them
as solemn truths things which themselves believed not or had invented, yet
many expressions of this kind are to be found in their writings : as whea
they introduce God roaring like a lion at every watch of the night, and
crying, " Alas ! that I have laid waste my house, and suffered my temple to
be burnt, and sent my children into banishment among the heathen," (fee*
4. The Jabarians ; who are the direct opponents of the Kadarians,
denying free agency in man, and ascribing his actions wholly unto God.*
Tliey take their denomination from al Jabr, which signifies necessity or
compulsion ; because they hold man to be necessarily and inevitably con-
strained to act as he does, by force of God's eternal and immutable decree.*
This sect is distinguished into several species ; some being more rigid and
extreme in their opinion, who are thence called pure Jabarians, and others
more moderate, who are therefore called middle Jabarian.s. The former
will not allow men to be said either to act, or to have any power at all,
either operative or acquiring ; asserting that man can do nothing, but
produces all his actions by necessity, having neither power, nor will, nor
choice, any more than an inanimate agent : they also declare that rewarding
and punishing are also the effects of necessity ; and the same they say of
the imposing of commands. This was the doctrine of the Jahmians, the
5 Uowers of Jahm Ebn Safwan, who likewise held that paradise and hell
'^ Vide I\Iarracc. Prodr. part iii p. 76. » Al Shahrest. ubi sup. i" Idem, ibid,
p. 225. 1 Idem, ibid. p. 226, 227. * Idem, ibid. p. 227, 228. » Ta'.m, Bcrachoth.
c. I. Vide Poc. ubi sup. p. 228. * Vide Abulfarag. p. 168. * Al Shahrest.,
id ^lawakcf, et Ebn al Kossa, apud Poc. ibid. p. 238, &c