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noun
Koran  n.  (Written also Kuran or Quran. Also rarely Coran and Core)  The Scriptures of the Muslims, containing the professed revelations to Mohammed; called also Alcoran. Note: The Koran is the sacred book of the Muslims (sometimes called Mohammedans by non-Muslims, a term considered offensive by some Muslims). It is the most important foundation on which Islam rests and it is held in the highest veneration by all Islamic sects. When being read it must be kept on a stand elevated above the floor. No one may read it or touch it without first making a legal ablution. It is written in the Arabic language, and its style is considered a model. The substance of the Koran is held to be uncreated and eternal. Mohammed was merely the person to whom the work was revealed. At first the Koran was not written, but entirely committed to memory. But when a great many of the best Koran reciters had been killed in battle, Omar suggested to Abu-Bekr (the successor of Mohammed) that it should be written down. Abu-Bekr accordingly commanded Zeid, an amanuensis of the prophet, to commit it to writing. This was the authorized text until 23 years after the death of the prophet. A number of variant readings had, however, crept into use. By order of the calif Osman in the year 30 of the Hejira, Zeid and three assistants made a careful revision which was adopted as the standard, and all the other copies were ordered to be burned. The Koran consists of 114 suras or divisions. These are not numbered, but each one has a separate name. They are not arranged in historical order. These suras purport to be the addresses delivered by Mohammed during his career at Mecca and Medina. As a general rule the shorter suras, which contain the theology of Islam, belong to the Meccan period; while the longer ones, relating to social duties and relationships, to Medina. The Koran is largely drawn from Jewish and Christian sources, the former prevailing. Moses and Jesus are reckoned among the prophets. The biblical narratives are interwoven with rabbinical legends. The customs of the Jews are made to conform to those of the Arabians. Islamic theology consists in the study of the Koran and its commentaries. A very fine collection of Korans, including one in Cufic (the old Arabic character), is to be found in the Khedival Library at Cairo, Egypt.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Koran" Quotes from Famous Books



... of black (top), white, and green with a red isosceles triangle based on the hoist side bearing a small white seven-pointed star; the seven points on the star represent the seven fundamental laws of the Koran ...
— The 1996 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... stammering young ones of the flood's dull ooze, 110 Who failed and fled each other. Why? why, marry, Because no man could understand his neighbour. They are wiser now, and will not separate For nonsense. Nay, it is their brotherhood, Their Shibboleth—their Koran—Talmud—their Cabala—their best brick-work, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... pleasing and agreeable. The Arab soldiers chew the leaves when on sentry duty to keep them from feeling drowsy. Its use is of great antiquity, preceding that of coffee. Its stimulating effects induced some Arabs to class it with intoxicating substances, the use of which is forbidden by the Koran, but a synod of learned Mussulmans decreed that, as it did not impair the health or impede the observance of religious duties, but only increased hilarity and good humor, it was ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders

... Ramadan. . . . All this savours of the past. And what is being taught to-day to the ten thousand students of El-Azhar scarcely differs from what was taught to their predecessors in the glorious reign of the Fatimites—and which was then transcendent and even new: the Koran and all its commentaries; the subtleties of syntax and of pronunciation; jurisprudence; calligraphy, which still is dear to the heart of Orientals; versification; and, last of all, mathematics, of which the Arabs ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... during frequent pilgrimages to the tomb of Christ; and the fanatical crusades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries facilitated and secured the hazardous journey. Mohammedans of the present day preserve the implicit faith of their ancestors in the efficacy of the 113th chapter of the Koran against evil spirits, the spells of witches and sorcerers—a chapter said to have been revealed to the Prophet of Islam on the occasion of his having been bewitched by the daughters of a Jew. The Genii ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams

... only meant for men. They have got to read the Koran, but it is all ugly letters; I ...
— Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe • Charlotte M. Yonge

... aside from historic evidence which we possess, that he drew from the tenets and imagery of the Ghebers, than that they, when subdued by his armies and persecuted by his rule from their native land, introduced new doctrines from the Koran into the ancestral creed which they so revered that neither exile nor death could make them abjure it. For, driven by those fierce proselytes, the victorious Arabs, to the mountains of Kirman and to the Indian coast, they clung with unconquerable tenacity to their ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... exempt from the law of the land himself, he comes down upon others with a judicial severity unknown on the national soil. With the Articles of War in one hand, and the cat-o'-nine-tails in the other, he stands an undignified parody upon Mohammed enforcing Moslemism with the sword and the Koran. ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... viz. We must think of them together, and we must recollect there is a contrast between them. But hypothetical propositions, i.e. both disjunctives and conditionals, are true complex propositions, since with several terms they contain but a single assertion. Thus, in, If the Koran comes from God, Mahomet is God's prophet, we do not assert the truth of either of the simple propositions therein contained (viz. the Koran comes from God, and Mahomet is God's prophet), but only the inferribility ...
— Analysis of Mr. Mill's System of Logic • William Stebbing

... he was pleased to find that Lytton accepted some suggestions. A rather quaint suggestion of a similar kind is discussed in a later letter. Why should not a 'moral text-book' for Indian schools be issued in the Queen's name? It might contain striking passages from the Bible, the Koran, and the Vedas about the Divine Being; with parables and impressive precepts from various sources; and would in time, he thinks, produce an enormous moral effect. In regard to Lytton himself, he was never tired of expressing the warmest approbation. He sympathises with him even painfully ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... to one of the four orthodox sects called Shafees, and using Arabic as their ritual dialect. Their vernacular is Tamil, mixed with a number of Arabic words; and all their religious books, except the Koran, are in that dialect. Casie Chitty, the erudite District Judge of Chilaw, writes to me that "the Moors of Ceylon believe themselves to be of the posterity of Hashem; and, according to one tradition, their progenitors were driven ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... of the papyrus, and when we are told that leaves would not suffice for works of any length or duration, it must not be forgotten that in a much later age it was upon leaves (and mutton bones) that the Koran was transcribed. The rudest materials are sufficient for the preservation of what men deem it their ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... sahibs, to say that if they would give up the place, with the guns and treasure, he would grant a free passage for all; and the Nana and his Hindoo officers have sworn the sacred oath of our religion, and the Mohammedans have sworn on the Koran, that these conditions shall be observed. Boats are to be provided for them all. They leave to-morrow at dawn. Her highness the ranee will shelter you here if you like to stay; but if you wish it you can go at ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... and obtained as interest on private loans, 15 per cent. being the very lowest and deemed most reasonable indeed! (This does not apply to foreign banks.) All this may seem strange in a Mussulman country, where it is against all the laws of the Koran to lend money at usury, and it is more strange still to find that the principal offenders are the Mullahs themselves, who reap large profits from such ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... several times in magazines. See comment in the Introduction, page xxiii. Poe derived the quotation through Moore's "Lalla Rookh," altered it slightly, and interpolated the clause, "whose heart-strings are a lute"; it is from Sale's "Preliminary Discourse" to the Koran. ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill

... tribes nor the Negritos read or write. The Moros, too, are very ignorant, only the priests and students being able to read passages from the Koran and make the Arabic characters. The latest Malay immigrants, who had been influenced by Indian culture, introduced a style of writing that is very queer. Three vowels were used,—a, e, and u. The consonants were represented by as ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... a compound of Paganism, Judaism, and Christianity; and the Koran, which is their Bible, is held in great reverence. It is replete with absurd representations, and is supposed to have been written by a Jew. The most eloquent passage is allowed to be the following, where God is introduced, bidding the ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward

... mounted and he had reined his bay down to the side of her roan, he sat studying her through half-closed, satisfied eyes though he already knew her as the Moslem priest knows the Koran. While they rode in silence he conned the inventory. Slim uprightness like the strength of a young poplar; eyes that played the whole color-gamut between violet and slate-gray, as does the Mediterranean under sun and cloud-bank; lips that in repose hinted at melancholy and that broke ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... an Arabic book, which I at first thought was some commentary on the Koran; but to-day I was undeceived. He related what he read; it reminded me of Gulliver's Travels. A tall man walks through the sea, cooks fish in the sun, and destroys a whole town, whose inhabitants had insulted ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... and others, it took refuge in Syria, where it flourished for many years in the schools of Edessa and Nisibis, the foremost of the time. From these it found its way among the Arabs, and even to the illiterate Muhammad, who gave it (1) theoretic theological expression in the cxii. surah of the Koran: "He is One God, God the Eternal; He neither begets nor is begotten; and to Him there is no peer," in which both the fundamental dogmas of Christianity are denied, and that too on the ground of revelation; (2) practical expression, by forbidding asceticism and monasticism, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... Bombay; he knew French Africa inside out; he could quote poetry and the Koran all day long. He played chess—you don't know what that meant to me—like a master. We used to talk about the regeneration of Turkey and the Sheik-ul-Islam between moves. Oh, everything under the sun we talked ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling

... of the merciful and long-suffering God. The Merciful hath taught the Koran. He hath created man and taught him speech. He hath set the sun and moon in a certain course. Both the trees and the grass ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys

... end, on the governing of the self. That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people. Americans move forward in every generation by reaffirming all that is good and true that came before—ideals of justice and conduct that are the same yesterday, ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... Mohammedanism, as well as the striking similarity that exists between these two systems of false religion. Each one is founded, after a fashion, on the Bible, to which each has supplemented a volume of miserable fables, the one called the Book of Mormon, and the other the Koran. Each has a spurious prophet, who is exalted above the prophets of Scripture. Both systems permit polygamy, and both are most ultra-Protestant in relation to the forms and ceremonies, images and pictures of the Oriental and Latin churches. And as God sent ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... of conscience in the sense of Atheism, but demands that every Mason should profess belief in some form of religion and which insists that the Volume of the Sacred Law—in England the Bible, in Mohammedan countries the Koran, and so on—should be placed on the table in its lodges, thereupon broke off all relations with the Grand Orient. In March 1878 the following ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster

... held possession of Spain until the beginning of the eighth century, when the Saracens crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, destroyed the kingdom of Roderick, the last of the Gothic kings, and established throughout the country the authority of the Koran (A.D. 711). The Visigothic empire when thus overturned had lasted nearly three hundred years. During this time the conquerors had mingled with the old Romanized inhabitants of Spain, so that in the veins of the Spaniard of to-day is blended the blood of Iberian, Celt, ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... of a separate country, and one large room is filled with that of Saxony alone. There is a large number of rare and curious manuscripts, among which are old Greek works of the seventh and eighth centuries, a Koran which once belonged to the Sultan Bajazet, the handwriting of Luther and Melanchthon, a manuscript volume with pen-and-ink sketches by Albert Duerer, and the earliest works after the invention of printing. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various

... walking amongst the fires. They waved their arms and talked together, stopping from time to time; they approached Daman; and the short man with the hair on his face addressed him earnestly and at great length. Daman sat cross-legged upon a little carpet with an open Koran on his knees and chanted the versets swaying to and ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad

... Caliph Omar proclaiming throughout the kingdom, at the taking of Alexandria, that the Koran contained everything which was useful to believe and to know, and therefore he commanded that all the books in the Alexandrian library should be distributed to the masters of the baths, amounting to 4000, to be used in heating their stoves during a period ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... the Word of God; (Catholic) Douay Bible, Vulgate; (Mohammedan) Koran. Associated Words: canonics, canon, canonical, anagogics, anagoge, exegesis, biblical, biblicist, bibliolater, bibliolatry, bibliology, biblist, bibliomancy, Hagiographa, hagiographer, hagiologist, hagiology, commentator, Heptateuch, Hexapla, Octapla, Apocrypha, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... representation—of many different nations changing their many different religions at the simple command of their sovereign, and he too an upstart? In two cases, and in only two, it may be done; first, by an unsparing use of the sword, the brief, simple alternative of Mahomet, Death or the Koran; the other, when the new form of belief has converted the bulk or a large portion of the nation; of which, in this case, the conversion of the army is a tolerably ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... civilized world had had lessons enough, ever since that seventh century burning of the Alexandrian library by the Caliph Omar, with that famous but apocryphal rhetorical dilemma, put in his mouth perhaps by some nimble-witted reporter:—"If these books agree with the Koran, they are useless, and should be burned: if not, they are pernicious, and must not be spared." But the heedless world goes carelessly on, deaf to the voice of reason, and the lessons of history, amid the holocausts of literature and the wreck of blazing libraries, uttering loud newspaper ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... suggestions—through all these various rebellions and disaffections, Mr. Hastings never once lets go this plea—of extinguishable right in the Nabob. He constantly represents the seizing the treasures as a resumption of a right which he could not part with;—as if there were literally something in the Koran, that made it criminal in a true Mussulman to keep his engagements with his relations, and impious in a son to abstain from plundering his mother. I do gravely assure your Lordships that there is no ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... Moslems were weeping over the body of one who had succumbed to the hardships of the journey. They had already dug a hole in the earth to inter the corpse, when it was discovered that not one of them could read the Koran. On their knees they implored the Mongol officer to render this service to the dead. He dismounted from his horse, unable to resist their pleadings, and feeling bound by his religion to ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... N. the Koran, the Alcoran[obs3]; Lyking[obs3], Vedas, Zendavesta, Avesta[obs3], Sastra, Shastra, Tantra[obs3], Upanishads, Purana, Edda; Book of Mormon. [Non-Biblical prophets and religious founders] Gautama, Buddha; Zoroaster, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... acrimonious bigots on earth. Now that they live and feed sensibly, they have learnt to see things in their true perspective—they have become rationalists. Their less fortunate fellow-Semites, the Arabs, have continued to starve and to swear by the Koran—empty in body and empty in mind. No poise or balance is possible to those who live in uneasy conditions. The wisest of them can only attain to stoicism—a dumb protest against the environment. There are no stoics among well-fed people. The Romans made that discovery for themselves, when they abandoned ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... left through a passage which passed under the tower, and had scarcely proceeded a few steps, when I heard a prodigious hubbub of infantine voices: I listened for a moment, and distinguished verses of the Koran; it was a school. Another lesson for thee, papist. Thou callest thyself a Christian, yet the book of Christ thou persecutest; thou huntest it even to the sea- shore, compelling it to seek refuge upon the billows of the sea. ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow

... a deserted camp" (Fison and Howitt, 14). The Indians of both North and South America were addicted to the practice of infanticide. Among the Arabs the custom was so inveterate that as late as our sixth century, Mohammed felt called upon, in various parts of the Koran, to discountenance it. In the words of Professor Robertson ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... his successors on the Byzantine throne—of the manners of the pastoral nations, who, under different names, and for a succession of ages, pressed upon and at last overturned the empire—of the Saracens, who, issuing from the lands of Arabia, with the Koran in one hand and the cimeter in the other, urged on their resistless course, till they were arrested by the Atlantic on the one side, and the Indian ocean on the other—of the stern crusaders, who, nursed amid the cloistered shades and castellated realms of Europe, struggled ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... wine in it?" asked Timea in alarm. Her fear of wine came partly from the recollection of the prohibition in the Koran. ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai

... the writing, however, using other pseudepigraphical works as a reference, it was probably written a few hundred years before the birth of Christ. Parts of this version are found in the Jewish Talmud, and the Islamic Koran, showing what a vital role it played in the original literature of human wisdom. The Egyptian author wrote in Arabic, but later translations were found written in Ethiopic. The present English translation was translated in the late 1800's by Dr. S. C. Malan and ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt

... that the Bible permits Christians to use fermented wine, but the Koran does not allow Mohammedans to use it, I would simply intimate to the reverend gentleman that the Lord, in His good Providence, has permitted, through the Koran, the Mohammedans to be protected from the drinking of fermented wine and other intoxicating ...
— Personal Experience of a Physician • John Ellis

... Magog" from Jeremiah, describing the nomades of Central Asia, appear in the Koran as Yadjoudj and Madjoudj. The complete story, in the tenth century and in Edrisi's day, connects them with Alexander the Great, who is also found in the Koran as Doul-Carnain, and with the Wall of China. "When the Conqueror," ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley

... confederates, who commanded three out of the four divisions of the nabob's army, he need not have hesitated. But he was, till the last moment, in ignorance whether to rely upon them. The nabob, having become suspicious of Meer Jaffier, had obtained from him an oath, sworn on the Koran, of fidelity; and although the traitor continued his correspondence with Clive, his letters were of a very dubious character, and Clive was in total ignorance as to his real intentions. So doubtful, indeed, was he that, when only a few miles of ground and the river Bhagirathi ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty

... to Cairo was uneventful, and he passed the time in improving his Arabic, by the aid of a grammar, dictionary, and Koran. As soon as he had delivered his cargo, and called upon the member of the firm who resided out there, who was as kind and cordial as Mr Williams, ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough

... that has often swept away knowledge like a whirlwind. The Mussulman burns the library of a world, and forces the Koran and the sword from the schools of Byzantium to the colleges ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... as one. So, gloomed in tall and stone-swathed groves, The Buddha walks with Christ! And Al-Koran ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois

... circle within which they seek to bound the human intellect ought therefore to be carefully traced, and beyond its verge the mind should be left in entire freedom to its own guidance. Mahommed professed to derive from Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other—beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... Turkish capital at the time of Ramadan, the period of the year (about a month) during which the Mohammedans are commanded by the Koran to keep a rigorous fast every day from sunrise till sunset. All the followers of the Prophet were therefore busy with their devotions—holding a revival, as it were; hence there was no chance whatever to be presented to the Sultan, Abdul Aziz, it being forbidden during the penitential season ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan

... way sooner or later, and managed to have him sent instead to her brother, a pacha or provincial governor in Tartary. She sent also a letter asking the pacha to be kind to the young English slave and give him a chance of learning Turkish and the principles of the Koran. ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey

... people of Mindanao. In a word, Jolo is an Island governed by a system of administration extremely vigorous and decisive; dread and superstition sustain the throne of the tyrant, and the fame of his greatness frequently brings to his feet the ulemas, or missionaries of the Koran, even as far as from the furthest margin of the Red Sea. The prince and people, unanimous in the implacable odium with which they view all Christians, cannot be divided or kept on terms of peace; and if ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... was brought to me from Sheikh Said, announcing Musa's death, and the fact that Manua Sera was still holding out at Kigue; in answer to which I desired the sheikh to send me as many of Musa's slaves as would take service with me, for they ought now, by the laws of the Koran, to ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... these young people, when you came in, of an ancient Koran which I was given in Alexandria by a learned man whom I operated upon for cataract.' He showed her a beautifully-written Arabic work, with wonderful capitals and headlines in gold. 'You know that it is almost ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... religious, and have their sacred books, which they believe to be divine." A profound generalization indeed! Is a peach-tree just like a horse-chestnut, or a scrub-oak, or a honey-locust? They are all trees, and have leaves on them. The Bible is just as like the Yi King, or the Vedas, or the Koran, as a Christian American is like a Chinaman, a Turk, or a Hindoo. But it is too absurd to begin any discussion with these learned Thebans of the relative merits of the Bible as compared with the Vedas, and the Chinese Classics, of which they have never read a single ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... Hegira, A.D. 624, in a valley near the Red Sea, between Mecca and Medina. The victory sealed the faith not only of his followers but of Mohammed himself in his divine mission. Mohammed refers to this triumph in surah after surah of the Koran, as Napoleon lingers over the memory of Arcola, of ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... resolute mien and dignified carriage of the Sumatran woman denote clear consciousness of her supreme importance. The cringing submission so painfully characteristic of Oriental womanhood is wholly unknown, and though nominally of Mohammedan faith, the humble position prescribed by the Koran to the female sex is a forgotten article of Sumatra's hereditary creed. After marriage (forbidden between members of the same clan) both man and woman remain in their own family circle. The husband is only an occasional visitor, and the wife ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... frowned and left me, and I retired to my apartment, irresolute in mind. As I entered my chamber, I perceived a small book open on a desk before the burning lamps. I went up to it, and found it was the Koran of our holy law. Being little desirous of sleep, I sat down; and as I read, methought I saw the name ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various

... relates the following conversation he had with a Moorish woman of high class: "When ill do you go to the doctor?" he asked. "Oh, no; we go to the Marabout; he writes a few words from the Koran on a piece of paper, which we chew and swallow, with a little water from the sacred well at the Mosque. We need ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various

... make proclamation, that every slave who will embrace the true faith of Islam shall be free, only tarrying here until we be assured of his knowledge of the Koran and steadfastness of purpose, when he shall go forth to the world, his own master, the slave of none but God ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake

... from God. In later years praise and acknowledgment cloy. And one might have expected some passing word from the Master that would have expressed such a feeling as that, if He had been only a young Teacher seeking for recognition. I remember that in that strange medley of beauty and absurdity, the Koran, somewhere or other, there is an outpouring of Mahomet's heart about the blessedness of his first finding a soul that would believe in him. And it is strange that Jesus Christ had no more welcome for this man than the story tells that He had. For He meets him without a word of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren

... This last strong impulse had extended itself gradually from the Christians to their mortal enemies the Saracens, both of Spain and of Palestine. The latter were, indeed, no longer the fanatical savages who had burst from the centre of Arabian deserts, with the sabre in one hand and the Koran in the other, to inflict death or the faith of Mohammed, or, at the best, slavery and tribute, upon all who dared to oppose the belief of the prophet of Mecca. These alternatives indeed had been offered to the unwarlike Greeks ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... people in different postures, but all immovable. The merchants were in their shops, the soldiery on guard; every one seemed engaged in his proper avocation, yet all were become as stone.... I heard the voice of a man reading Al Koran.... Being curious to know why he was the only living creature in the town,... he proceeded to tell me that the city was the metropolis of a kingdom now governed by his father; that the former king and all his subjects ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... enter, the guards stopped me and asked of me who I was. I made answer that I was a Dervish and on my way to the city of Mecca, where there was a green veil on which the Koran was embroidered in silver letters by the hands of the angels. They were filled with wonder, and entreated me ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde

... unprovided. From my own apartments, light, beds and seats were ordered to be brought here, with meats for refreshment, and water for cleansing and draught. The order is in course of execution now. Indeed, your Highness, I swear by the first chapter of the Koran"— ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace

... instead of spending only eighteen months in slavery. A clever drawing of the pirate chief, made on a whitewashed wall with a bit of charcoal from a brazier, saved him. The Moor saw it, was delighted, set him to paint a number of portraits, in defiance of Moses, Mahomet and the Koran, and then, by way of reward, brought him safe across the water to Naples and gave him ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... the Koran!" answered the Arab, promptly. "He who dealt that blow felt the edge of my sword, and lived but a ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... days upon the blood of an animal. The Arabs are invariably infested with lice, not only in their hair, but upon their bodies and clothes; even the small charms or spells worn upon the arm in neatly-sewn leathern packets are full of these vermin. Such spells are generally verses copied from the Koran by the Faky, or priest, who receives some small gratuity in exchange. The men wear several such talismans upon the arm above the elbow, but the women wear a large bunch of charms, as a sort of chatelaine, suspended beneath ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... Government always had an eye on the University for the selection of orators for the House of Commons. There were audacious young free-thinkers, who adored nobody or nothing, except perhaps Robespierre and the Koran, and panted for the day when the pale name of priest should shrink and dwindle away before the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... stagnation, the endeavor, that is, to hit upon dogmatic finality in opinion, is of all things in religion probably the most disastrous in its consequence. Until recent times when reform movements invaded Mohammedanism and higher criticism tackled the problem of the Koran, one could see this achievement of stagnation in Islam in all its inglorious success. The Koran was regarded as having been infallibly written, word for word, in heaven before ever it came to earth. The Koran therefore ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... otherwise than he has been and is (Socialism, by Owen). It is the creed of the Mahometans. According to them every action in a man's life has been written down in the preserved tablets, which have been kept in the seventh heaven from all eternity. "No accident," saith the Koran, "happeneth on the earth, or on your persons, but the same was entered into the book of our decrees before we created it. Verily this is easy with God: and this is written lest ye immoderately grieve for ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace

... have been an epileptic and he suffered from spells of unconsciousness when he dreamed strange dreams and heard the voice of the angel Gabriel, whose words were afterwards written down in a book called the Koran. His work as a caravan leader carried him all over Arabia and he was constantly falling in with Jewish merchants and with Christian traders, and he came to see that the worship of a single God was a very excellent thing. ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... Armenian Archbishop at Amsterdam, that was read in very many churches of Asia and Africa, as the only rule of their faith. Fabricius takes it to be this Gospel. It has been supposed, that Mahomet and his coadjutors used it in compiling the Koran. There are several stories believed of Christ, proceeding from this Gospel; as that which Mr. Sike relates out of La Brosse's Persic Lexicon, that Christ practised the trade of a dyer, and his working a miracle with the colours; from whence the Persian dyers honour him ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... worst class of American politicians, designing demagogues, selfish office-seekers, and bad men, calling themselves Democrats and "Old-Line Whigs!" These politicians know that Popery, as a system, is in the hands of a Foreign despotism, precisely what the Koran is in the hands of the Grand Turk and his partisans. But corrupt and ambitious politicians in this country, are willing to act the part of traitors to our laws and Constitution, for the sake of profitable offices; and they are willing to sacrifice the Protestant Religion, on the ancient and profligate ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... therefore solely entitled to our gratitude and deference for the abundant supply they have furnished to our curiosity, are uniformly treated in these books with disdain and contumely as unworthy of toleration, while the comparative upstart race of the believers in the Koran are held out to us as the only enlightened and upright among ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... still—the most expensive and rottenest system of primary education in the world, the worst that squabbling sectarians can devise. Arab children squatting round the courtyard of a Mosque and swaying backwards and forwards as they get by heart meaningless bits of the Koran, are not sent out into life more inadequately armed with elementary educational weapons than are English children. Our state of education has nominally been systematised for forty-five years, and yet now in our hospitals ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke

... knew that it was the word of God, and was ready to receive all its teachings as of divine authority. To her Moslem sister it is not only an unknown book, but one she is taught to regard as superseded by the Koran. ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... certain law need only be condensed in accordance with another law. How is it to be done? Some have fancied by burying a ray of sunlight, Averroes,—yes, 'tis Averroes,—Averroes buried one under the first pillar on the left of the sanctuary of the Koran, in the great Mahometan mosque of Cordova; but the vault cannot be opened for the purpose of ascertaining whether the operation has succeeded, until after the lapse ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... smiling now, as though all the problems of life and death could be thus dismissed. "As the prophet said: 'I have urged my camel through every desert!' You see I know my Koran well. But how came you here, Ernest? I thought you were ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... vices. The cruel and uncontrolled authority of Pashas, inflated with self-importance in their cordons of the legion of honour, who at their whim have people beaten on the soles of their feet. The so-called justice of bespectacled Cadis, traitors to the koran and to the law, who sell their judgements as did Esau his birthright for a plate of cous-cous. Drunken and libertine headmen, former batmen to General Yussif someone or other, who guzzle champagne in the company of harlots, and indulge in feasts of roast mutton, while before ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... was indeed a puzzle; for, while the handful of Mohammedans in the village were fanatical in their belief in the true prophet and his Koran, and put little faith in miracles and still less in holy men who performed them, the advent of the white priestess deeply mystified them. There was no getting around this: she was there; with their own eyes they saw her. There might be ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... Bunsen in his Oriental studies. The necessary supplies seem to have come partly from Mr. Astor, partly from private lessons for which Bunsen had to make time in the midst of his varied occupations. Plato, Firdusi, the Koran, Dante, Isaiah, the Edda, are mentioned by himself ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... all lifeless, they cannot speak: I know, for I have cried aloud to them. The Purna and the Koran are mere words: lifting up the curtain, I have seen. */ [Footnote: Poems XLII, ...
— Songs of Kabir • Rabindranath Tagore (trans.)

... books, which they call revelation, or the Word of God. The Jews say that their Word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their Word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their Word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven. Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... territory and enjoyed there a recognition entirely beyond that accorded it in England. This book was first given to the world in London as the "Posthumous Works of a late celebrated Genius deceased;"[74] awork in three parts, bearing the further title, "The Koran, or the Life, Character and Sentiments of Tria Juncta in Uno, M.N.A., Master of No Arts." Richard Griffith was probably the real author, but it was included in the first collected edition of Sterne's works, published in Dublin, 1779.[75] The work purports to be, in part, an autobiography ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer

... allowed to raise the province into the most flourishing one of Turkey-in-Europe. But until the Treaty of Paris in 1856, Turkey had no real political organisation. Being a theocratic state, all her public institutions emanated from the Kaliph, as the representative of Mohammed. The Koran took the place of civil and criminal law, and the duty of its ministers was to punish all those who broke its commandments. Every parish had a "cadi," who was appointed by the spiritual chief. The cadi concentrated in his hands all jurisdictions, judging without appeal cases, ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox

... said on the congress platform that Swaraj could be established in one year if there was sufficient response from the nation. Three months of this year are gone. If we are true to our salt, true to our nation, true to the songs we sing, if we are true to the Bhagwad Gita and the Koran, we would finish the programme in the remaining nine months and deliver Islam the ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... shriek, all the women of the household began to wail together; they mourned with shrill cries; the sun was setting, and in the intervals of screamed lamentations the high sing-song voices of two old men intoning the Koran chanted alone. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... Persia was accomplished with surprising rapidity. Shortly after the death of the king, Islamism was imposed upon all; but certain amongst the Mazdiens offered resistance, and even succeeded in remaining in their fatherland; others, unwilling to accept the law of the Koran, abandoned their hearths, and went and dwelt in the mountainous districts of Khorassan, [11] where, for a hundred years, they were enabled to live and practise their religion without being disturbed. They were, however, obliged to quit this asylum and to take ...
— Les Parsis • D. Menant

... is a very melodramatic person, and its Puritans and Cavaliers strike the English reader with the same sense of absurdity produced by the pictures of English society in "L'Homme qui Rit." But of the famous preface Gautier says: "The Bible among Protestants, the Koran among Mahometans are not the object of a deeper veneration. It was, indeed, for us the book of books, the book which contained the pure doctrine." It consisted in great part of a triumphant attack upon the unities, and upon the verse and style which classic usage had consecrated to French ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers

... as they surely must all do, in duty and docility, the figure I have represented, let it express to him my congratulation on his happiness.' 'I believe,' said he, 'such representations are forbidden by the Koran; but as I do not remember it, I do not sin. There it shall stay, unless the angel Gabriel comes to forbid it.' ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... cultivation, the yellowing crop, the grazing cattle, the cottage smoke curling slowly upward on the back-ground of noble beech, ash, and sycamore. On the summit, the sun gleamed on a rectory house, half buried in roses, where the most learned of our Orientalists perused the Koran in the peace of a Mahometan paradise, and doubtless saw, on the dancing waters of the mighty river at his feet, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... friend. He had been admitted and exceptional courtesy had been extended to him. He was an unbeliever and a despised Christian, yet it had been through his act of charity that one of Allah's children had been nursed back to life and enabled to give his last years to the study of the Koran. He had been allowed to visit the old man from time ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... for two hours every day to a fat old Arab penager, or teacher, whose schoolroom was an open stall, and whose only furniture a bench, on which he sat cross-legged, and flourished a whip in one hand and a chapter of the Koran in the other. ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman

... the Koran direct us to destroy the unbelieving and the impious? Must I then suffer these ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... justice; established schools for public instruction; encouraged poets and men of letters, and cultivated the sciences. He built mosques in every city that he visited; inculcated religion by example as well as by precept; and celebrated all the festivals prescribed by the Koran with the ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... of the sultan, with the exception of a district near the sea-coast, called Salang, where the natives, termed orang kubu, live in the woods like wild animals. The literature of the country is said to be confined to the study of the koran, but opinions of this kind I have found in other instances to be too hastily formed, or by persons not competent to ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... would do. There is no iconoclast in the world like an extreme Mohammedan. Last time they overran this country they burned the Alexandrian library. You know that all representations of the human features are against the letter of the Koran. A statue is always an irreligious object in their eyes. What do these fellows care for the sentiment of Europe? The more they could offend it the more delighted they would be. Down would go the Sphinx, the Colossi, the Statues ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle

... the Koran, though the authors of the Koran, like later makers of Bibles, had the older Bible to help them. The Koran is the best of modern Bibles, because it borrows most freely from ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... historic precedent which would justify me in climbing a tree; but my mind was in a state of such agitation that I could not avail myself of my extensive historical knowledge. "A man may know the seven portions of the Koran by heart, but when a bear gets after him he will not be able to remember his alphabet!" What we should have done in the last extremity will never be known. A shot from the Major's revolver seemed to alter the bear's original ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... save me this day from thee, O Hajjaj." "And dost thou know the Lord?" "Yes, I do." "And whereby hast thou known Him?" "By the book of Him which descended upon His Prophet-Apostle." "And knowest thou the Koran by heart?" "Doth the Koran fly from me that I should learn it by rote?" "Hast thou confirmed knowledge thereof?" "Verily Allah sent down a book confirmed."[FN65] "Hast thou perused and mastered that which is therein?" "I have." "Then, O young man, if thou have read and learned ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... frontier. Religion furnished a plausible pretext for incessant aggression, and disguised the lust of conquest in the Incas, probably, from their own eyes, as well as from those of their subjects. Like the followers of Mahomet, bearing the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, the Incas of Peru offered no alternative but the worship of the Sun ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... the writer. The writer, imagining that his own conversation hitherto had been too trivial and common-place for the Lion to consider worth his while to take much notice of it, determined to assume a little higher ground, and after repeating a few verses of the Koran, and gabbling a little Arabic, asked the Lion what he considered to be the difference between the Hegira and the Christian era, adding, that he thought the general computation was in error by about one year; and being a particularly modest person, chiefly, he believes, owing to ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... pleasant little laugh,—not a harsh, sarcastic one, but playful, and tempered by so kind a look that it seemed as if every wrinkled line about his old eyes repeated, "God bless you," as the tracings on the walls of the Alhambra repeat a sentence of the Koran. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... Council of Trent, and Ruchat's Histoire de la Reformation de la Suisse belong as much to history; and except these the only representatives of theology on Smith's shelves were the English Bible, Watson's edition, 1722—probably his parents' family Bible—a French translation of the Koran, and Van Maestricht's Theologia. The only sermons, except those of Massillon in French, are the Sermons of Mr. Yorick. Those sermons, however, were the only representative of Sterne. Goldsmith was represented by his poems, but not by his fiction; and Defoe, Fielding, Richardson, ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... dressed, and a choir of musicians, who played upon various instruments. The greatest astonishment was shown at the artillery practice, for the invention of gunpowder was not yet known on the east coast of Africa. A solemn treaty was made, ratified by oaths upon the Gospel and the Koran, and cemented by an interchange of presents. From this moment the ill-will, the treachery, the difficulties of all kinds which had hitherto beset the expedition, ceased as if by magic: this must be attributed to the generosity of the King of Melinda, and to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... town limped up with his eye teeth showing and his flapping cotton raiment still unmended where the dog had torn it. Any other wrath, however awful, could be nothing but the shadow of his state of mind; and since he knew the more vindictive portions of the Koran all by heart, and was quoting as he came, there was little need of words to illustrate further ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... gold was the exact amount, deposited at six percent, and interest to be compounded every half-year," said Grim. "And because the Koran denounces usury by Moslems, and you are a pious man—and also perhaps because of the risk attached to using your name in the matter—your wife Jael's name was used. Nevertheless, your seal was used at the time ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy

... Egypt, and Algeria, it was not a great attraction. It was not to be compared with many mosques they had seen. As usual, the party were invited to remove their shoes, though the sight hardly paid for the trouble. The scene was the same as in others of the kind. A venerable Moollah was expounding the Koran to a ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... cost of the chickens she hath eaten, the wine she hath drunken and the dresses of honour bestowed upon her instructor: for she hath learned calligraphy and syntax and etymology; the commentaries of the Koran; the principles of law and religion; the canons of medicine, and the calendar and the art of playing on musical instruments."[FN8] Said the Wazir, "Bring me her master." So the broker brought him at once and, behold, he was a Persian of whom ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... and reverence to be paid to grey hairs, superseding the diabolical custom of exposing or destroying the aged. They have introduced a knowledge of reading and writing. The oases of Ghat and Ghadames furnish more children, in proportion, who can read and write, than any of our English towns. The Koran is transcribed in beautiful characters by Negro Talebs on the banks of the Niger. The Moors have likewise introduced many common useful trades into Central Africa. But above all, the Mohammedans have introduced the knowledge of the one true God! and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... spread in its three great types,—Greek, Romish, and Protestant,—and in the scarce less extended portion occupied by the followers of Mohammed, the Scriptural account of the deluge, or the imperfect reflection of it borrowed by the Koran, has, of course, supplanted the old traditions. But outside these regions we find the traditions existing still. One of the sacred books of the Parsees (representatives of the ancient Persians) records, that "the world having been corrupted by Ahriman ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller

... which often accompany the selections in the text—cardinal examples of which will be found in particular in the section of Religion of this work, in the articles dealing with such subjects as the Book of the Dead, Brahmanism, Confucianism, the Koran, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... Against Mahomet.—The Koran is not more of Mahomet than the Gospel is of Saint Matthew, for it is cited by many authors from age to age. Even its very enemies, Celsus and Porphyry, never ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal

... of our early teaching, and received by us, not for its own sake, but for the sake of those who put it into our hands. What child can, by possibility, go into the evidence which makes it reasonable to believe the Bible, and to reject the authority of the Koran? Our children believe the Bible for our sakes; they look at it with respect, because we tell them that it ought to be respected; they read it, and learn it, because we desire them; they acquire a habit of veneration for it long before they could give any other ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold

... observe, or had observed the laws of Moses, or even spoken favorably of them: if they knew any one who followed, or had followed the doctrines of Luther; any one who had concluded an alliance with the devil, either expressly or virtually; any one who possessed any heretical book, or the Koran, or the Bible in the Spanish tongue; or, in fine, if they knew any one who had harbored, received, or favored heretics. If the accused did not appear at the third summons he was excommunicated. From the moment that the prisoner was in ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... stretched o'er realms that bowed in pale affright; The Moon that rose, as waved the scimetar Where sunk the Cross amid the storm of war, Now pale and dim, is hastening to its wane, The sword is broke that spread the Koran's reign, And soon will minaret and swelling dome Fall, like the fanes of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. On other lands has dawned immortal day, And Superstition's clouds have rolled away; O'er Gallia's mounts and on Iona's shore The Runic ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... that have shaped and are still shaping the destinies of the human race, Islam alone was borne forth into the world on a great wave of forceful conquest. Out of the sun-scorched deserts of Arabia, with the Koran in the one hand and the sword in the other, the followers of Mahomed swept eastward to the confines of China, northward through Asia Minor into Eastern Europe, and westward through Africa into Spain, and even ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol

... copyright of "a poem entitled 'Paradise Lost.'" There was a small stone inscribed in Phoenician, with the name of Nehemiah, the son of Macaiah, and pieces of rock that were brought from the great temple of Diana at Ephesus; a fragment of the Koran; objects illustrating Buddhism in India; books printed by William Caxton, who printed the first book in English; and Greek vases dating back to 600 B.C. In the first verse of the twentieth chapter of Isaiah we have mention of "Sargon, ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes

... ripple, and wave, and stormy billow, but all on the surface. Had Chapman read Proclus and Porphyry?—and did he really believe them,—or even that they believed themselves? They felt the immense power of a Bible, a Shaster, a Koran. There was none in Greece or Rome, and they tried therefore by subtle allegorical accommodations to conjure the poem of Homer into the [Greek (transliterated): biblon ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge

... Grand Vizier of the empire. He also maintains that various illustrious ladies were bestowed as wives upon the new favourite; and among others the daughter of Sultan Achonet, who gave himself birth. According to his own story he was educated by the Moslem muftis in all the lore of the Koran, and by a series of strange accidents was advanced to the governorship of Palestine. Here, in consequence of a marvellous dream, he was converted, and was turned from his original purpose of despoiling the Holy Sepulchre of its beautiful silver lamps and other treasures. ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... the cadi to the Banian, "have you witnesses to prove that Ali deceived you? If not, I shall put the accused on his oath, as the law decrees." A Koran was brought. Ali placed his hand on it, and swore three times that he had not deceived the stranger. "Wretch," said the Banian, "thou art among those whose feet go down to destruction. Thou hast ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... quoting from Al-Koran, "which run swiftly to battle, with a panting noise; and by those who strike fire by dashing their hoofs against the stones; and by those who make a sudden invasion on the enemy early in the morning and therein raise the dust, and therein pass through the midst of the adverse troops . . . . by ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... are, in theory, those inculcated by the Koran and there are one or two officials who have some slight knowledge of Mahomedan law. Owing to the cheap facilities offered by the numerous steamers at Singapore, there are many Hajis—that is, persons who have made the pilgrimage to Mecca—amongst the Brunais and ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher

... a few tiles—and some Jewish embroideries—and bits of jewellery—and a rug or two or a piece of pottery—and maybe one copy of the Koran, and a beggar's bowl," Jeanne Soubise excused herself, hastily adding more and more to her list of exceptions, as her eyes roved wistfully among her treasures. "Oh, and an amphora just dug up near Timgad, with Roman oil still inside. It's a beauty. ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... purpose,—as George Borrow convinced himself that he was actuated by evangelical zeal to spread the Bible in Spain, though one sees, through every line of his narrative, that it was chiefly the adventure which allured him, and that he would as willingly have distributed the Koran in London, had it been equally contraband. No surplices, no libraries, no counting-house desks can eradicate this natural instinct. Achilles, disguised among the maidens, was detected by the wily Ulysses, because he chose arms, not jewels, from the travelling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... away ennui with flowers and fan; And as his gem-tipped chibouque glows, he sees, In dreamy trance, those marvellous mysteries The prophet sings of in the Al-Koran! ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... opinions and dogmas: France was for turning every government in the world into a democratic republic. If every government was against her, it was, because she had declared herself hostile to every government. This strange republic may be compared to the system of Mahomet, who, with the Koran in one hand and a sword in the other, compelled men to adopt his creed. The Koran which France held out was the declaration of the Rights of Man and universal fraternity; and with the sword she was determined to propagate ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... his people back from idolatry and star worship to the primitive and true worship of God. He studied the Old and New Testament, the legends of the Talmud and the traditions of Arabian and Persian mythology, then he wrote the Koran, which became the sacred book of the Arabians, and in which is traced in outline the true plan of man's salvation—Death, Resurrection, the Judgment, Paradise and the place of torment. Good and evil spirits, the four archangels, ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis

... "the dog"), which disputed the passage of the river Styx over which the souls must cross; and with the custom of the vikings, to be buried in a boat so that they might cross the waters of Ginunga-gap to the inviting strands of Godheim. Relics of this belief are found in the Koran which describes the bridge el Sirat, thin as a hair and sharp as a scimetar,[TN-13] stretched in a single span from heaven to earth; in the Persian legend, where the rainbow arch Chinevad is flung across the gloomy depths between this world and the ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton

... sandstone. Broad-roofed arcades, whose exterior marble lattice-work is inimitably executed, form an open square, over which the most beautiful roof—the blue sky—spreads. Here stands the sarcophagus which contains the bones of the sultan. On the arches of the arcades, texts from the Koran are inlaid in characters of ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... only that we have in the New Testament a true account of the teaching of Jesus Christ and His apostles, and that we are able, therefore, to ascertain from its pages what their Christianity was as an historical fact, with as much certainty, surely, as we can learn from the Koran what Mohammedanism was as taught by Mohammed, or from any work of philosophy what were the opinions ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod

... Prelate, and the Peasant, are all deeply concerned in its contents. In truth, a newspaper is so true a mark of the caprice of Englishmen, that it may justly be styled their coat of 211arms. The Turkish Koran is not near so sacred to a rigid Mahometan—a parish-dinner to an Overseer—a turtle-feast to an Alderman, or an election to a Freeholder, as a Gazette or Newspaper to an Englishman: by it the motions of the world are watched, and in some degree governed—the arts and sciences protected and promoted—the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... from a visit to Smith which soon followed his conversion, but his policy was indignant reticence whenever pressed to any decisive point. To an old acquaintance who, after talking the matter over with him at his house, remarked that the Koran of Mohammed stood on as good evidence as the Bible of Smith, Rigdon replied: "Sir, you have insulted me in my own house. I command silence. If people come to see us and cannot treat us civilly, they can walk out of the door ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... has declared that, after all the many versions of the Koran extant, there is none better than that by 'George Sale, Gentleman,' first published in 1734. We therefore welcome the present edition, and with it even the very old-fashioned Life of Mohammed given with it—a 'life' so very narrow in its views and antiquated ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... details of its political, social, and religious life that the antique Hindu world really stands epitomised in them. The Old Testament is not more interwoven with the Jewish race, nor the New Testament with the civilisation of Christendom, nor the Koran with the records and destinies of Islam, than are these two Sanskrit poems—the Mahabharata and Ramayana—with that unchanging and teeming population which Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, rules as Empress of Hindustan. The stories, songs, and ballads, the histories ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold

... reason, no doubt, besides his hatred of the Church, lay at the bottom of Condorcet's tolerance or more towards Mahometanism. The Arabian superstition was not fatal to knowledge, Arabian activity in algebra, chemistry, optics, and astronomy, atoned in Condorcet's eyes for the Koran. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley

... fared with the pilgrims- caravan of Damascus to Aleppo and thence I went on to Baghdad, where I sought out the Shaykh of the Water-carriers of the city and finding his house I went in and repeated the opening chapter of the Koran to him. He questioned me of my case and I told him all that had betided me, whereupon he assigned me a shop and gave me a water-skin and gear. So I sallied forth a-morn trusting in Allah to provide, and went ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton

... the centre of an artificial lake. The two inscriptions that the prince chose for his sepulchre illustrate, appropriately enough, the sharply contrasting qualities of his strange individuality—his romantic sentimentality, and his callous cynicism. The first inscription was a line from the Koran: ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... the roof, was suspended an octagonal bar of brass, to which lamps of different sizes were attached, and from the galleries, which are supported by pillars, hung several square pieces of cloth or pasteboard, painted black, and inscribed with passages from the Koran. ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... at the lettering in black marble inset in the white; right round the tomb run those verses from the Koran. A Mohammedan emperor built it—I am a Hindu," the pause was scarcely noticeable as he added quietly, "as is ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest

... I think, show us the secret of Islam. They are a just comment on that short and rugged chapter of the Koran which is said to have been Mohammed's first attempt either at prophecy or writing; when, after long fasting and meditation among the desert hills, under the glorious eastern stars, he came down and told ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley



Words linked to "Koran" :   religious text, sacred text, Quran, sacred writing



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