any connection, as used to be assumed, with the Hebrew pereq (plur. peraqim), used to denote a section of the Mishna. Scholars are now agreed that the word is borrowed from the Syriac purqana, meaning in Christian language "salvation". It is one of the words which came to Muhammad in the course of his inquiries into the religion of those who were already monotheists. But Muhammad always gives his own stamp or twist to everything. To discover the exact sense which the word assumed in his use of it, we shall have to hark back to what was in his mind about the time when the word first occurs.

We have seen that he was intensely interested in the prophetic stories. Now at a certain point Moses begins to stand out from the rest of the prophets whom he mentions. He has discovered that it was Moses to whom "The Book" was given. Muhammad's lists of prophets are worth studying. If you look at them you will find that at this point in his career Moses is said to have received "The Book" and none of the other prophets have. This may indicate that he is now in direct touch with Jews. But at any rate Moses is for him at this stage the great prophet. It was he to whom this wonderful "Book", in which Muhammad was so much interested, had been revealed. It is here, I think, that the idea of the Book which came down from Heaven begins to work in Muhammad's mind, motived by the mechanical idea of inspiration of both Jews and Christians, or more probably, by the story of the giving of the Law on Mount Sinai.

We have seen also that under the influence of these prophetic stories the idea of a special calamity to fall upon unbelievers comes into prominence again after having been for a while overlaid by the Apocalyptic idea. There is no doubt that Muhammad proclaimed the imminence of a special and particular judgement upon the Meccans. We even find him suggesting that the calamity might come by the withholding of rain and the cutting off of water (xxiii. v. 18; lxvii. v. 30).1 He represents this Judgement as following almost immediately upon the rejection of the message, and has some difficulty in explaining the delay. It is usually assumed that having thus got into trouble he covered it up and quietly dropped the idea of this special Judgement. Now, for one thing, Muhammad really believed that such a Judgement must come, and for another, it is just one of the main elements of his greatness that he never does drop an idea that has really taken hold of his mind. Muhammad is as inexorable as fate. He shrinks from no conclusion and from no measure that may appear to him necessary to make these conclusions accomplished facts. He did not drop the idea of a special Judgement upon Mecca until to his mind it had become an accomplished fact.

If you look at his stories of the prophets again you will find that in the later versions he is preoccupied with the question, "What happens to the Believers when the Calamity falls upon the unbelieving people?" In even the shortest