520 HASAN. [APP.

body with a poisoned handkerchief, forwarded to her for this purpose, and thus send him into eternity. The treacherous woman, closing with the offer, received the stipulated 50,000 dirhems, after Hasan's death; but Yezid, on being asked to marry her, replied, 'Jaada has not done her duty to the Prophet's grandson, how can she act well towards me? and how, could any one now desire her for a wife?' There are also a class of people who say, the cause of that Excellency's death was poisoned drink; and others, that he had an illness, for forty days, of which he died. It is also reported that Hasan said during his illness, 'Twice before, they have given me poison to drink, and this is the third time.' It is likewise said, that poison had been given him six times, but that five times it did not kill him, and only the sixth time did its work.

When his brother Hosein visited Hasan in his last illness, and asked him to tell him by whom he had been poisoned, so that he might avenge him after his death, Hasan answered, 'O brother, neither our father Ali, nor our mother Fatima, nor our grandfather Mohammed the chosen, nor our grandmother Khadija the great, made denunciation; therefore, neither shall denunciation come from us, nor from any member of our family. When God pardons me, on the day of the resurrection, and does not also, for my sake, forgive the sin of the person who gave me poison, I shall not enter Paradise.' It is also recorded that Hasan, when visited on his deathbed by Hosein, said to him, 'O brother, when I am dead, bury me near the Apostle of God, if doing so does not cause bloodshed; but if it should, then bury me in the graveyard.' Hosein wished to bury him near the Prophet, but, finding the people opposed to this, had him interred in the graveyard. According to some account, a grave had already been dug near the Prophet's, when Aisha heard of it. She at once mounted a mule and rode to the spot, to prevent the interment. Ali's partisans said to her, 'O Aisha, before this, thou didst mount a camel and make war against his father Ali; to-day thou mountest a mule and preventest the grandson of the Apostle of God from being buried by his side.' But they could not prevail, because the people were divided into two parties; and even arrows were shot, some of which hit Hasan's dead body. Some also affirm that Aisha herself was willing, but that the governor of the town and Othman's partisans prevented the burial near the Prophet.

It is recorded that his Excellency Imam Hasan had the habit of marrying ladies and divorcing them again. Therefore the Commander of the faithful, Ali the favoured, said to the people,
II.] HASAN. 521

Do not marry your daughters to my son Hasan, for he is a taster and a divorcer,' i.e. when a lady whom he has married has gratified his taste for a few days, he is in the habit of divorcing her; but notwithstanding this, virgins and matrons much desired to be married to him, because they had heard that his Excellency the Prophet had frequently kissed the navel of that eye of the lamp of the family of Abd Menaf, in his infancy; and therefore they wished, with all their heart and soul, to bring their own body in contact with the spot which the blessed lips of the Prophet of God had touched, so that, by this means, they might be protected against the power of Hell-fire.

The Mirat ul Kainat (vol. i. p. 697) says, 'In all histories it is mentioned that his Excellency Imam Hasan was such an excessive marrier and divorcer that, during his father's lifetime, he successively married 90 or 110 ladies, and, notwithstanding his extreme good nature, divorced again, for a trifling reason, every one he had taken.1 But his form and fashion being as "beautiful" as his name, 2 every lady separated herself for him with love and fondness. On the occasion of his Excellency Ali saying, "O ye people of Kufa, do not give your ladies in marriage to Hasan, for he is a divorcer," one of those present replied, "Yes, we will surely let him marry, for he takes no pleasure in continence, and has no aversion to divorce." Soon after this, he married another of their ladies, who showed her

1 It must be specially remembered that this hero in the marrying and divorcing line was Mohammed's own cherished grandson. No better illustration than this can be required of the baneful fruits speedily borne by the Prophet's evil example and false teaching on the subject of matrimony. He encouraged a deviation from the Creator's primitive institution, by authorising his followers to have four married wives at one and the same time; and to make room, by means of divorce, for fresh marriages, as often as they might please, whilst he himself left at his death nine living widows, besides his concubines. Such carnal doctrine and practice could not but find a ready acceptance amongst his more sensually inclined admirers, and degrade the holy estate of matrimony into an instrument of immorality and lawlessness. If Hasan died A.H. 53, he can at most have been 50 years old, seeing that his parents only married A.H. 2, and yet he is reported to have successively married and divorced no less than 90 or 110 wives, so that, if he began to marry even at the unusually early age of 10, he must, for the space of 40 years, have married and divorced at the rate of two or three wives annually, but if, as the Mirat affirms, these 90 or 110 marriages and divorces took place before his father's death, their frequency was still more appalling. Yet this debauchee was declared by his Grandfather, the Prophet, as has been reported (p. 514), to be one of the Lords of the youths of Paradise! Such a life as his was matrimony only in appearance, but gross sensuality and abominable fornication in fact. Surely, both the doctrine and practice of Islam must alike fail to convince honest inquirers that it is an improvement on Christianity, or possesses a legitimate claim to supersede it.
2 Hasan, in Arabic, signifies 'beautiful.'