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Koran   Listen
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 Boudjareah overlooking the sea, who formerly furnished the boldest of the pitiless corsairs. To the iron hooks of the Bab (or gate) of Azoun were hung by the loins our Christian brothers who would not accept the Koran; at the Bab-el-Oued, the Arab rebels, not confounded even in their deaths with the dogs of Christians, were beheaded by the yataghan; and in the blue depths we sail over, whose foam washes the bases of the temples, hapless women have sunk for ever, tied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... O'Reilly, D.D., LL.D. "Written with the Encouragement, Approbation, and Blessings of His Holiness the Pope."]—Clemens and Webster—every one, in fact, who heard of the project—united in the belief that no book, with the exception of the Holy Scripture itself or the Koran, would have a wider acceptance than the biography of the Pope. It was agreed by good judges—and they included Howells and Twichell and even the shrewd general agents throughout the country—that every good Catholic would regard such a book not only as desirable, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... Christ. "All men," says the Koran, "are commanded by the Saint." And no man ever casts the wealth of his life and the crown of his devotion at the feet of Jesus without "quickening the earth with a diviner life, and uplifting it with a new courage." One of the most brilliant of the eighteenth-century poets said: "The ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd

... the Church when Mahometanism came into existence. "There is but one God, and Mahomet is his Prophet." Such was its battle-cry and its creed, and the moral precepts of the Koran were its gospel. There seems nothing in this to account for the mad enthusiasm and the passion for worship in its followers. But in less than a hundred years this lion out of Arabia had subjugated Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Northern Africa, and the Spanish Peninsula. Now, sword in one hand ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele

... swarming in the Golden Horn, and then the eye would turn back again to the city with its thousand minarets. There lay, too, the velvet-carpeted Valley of Sweet Waters, where was the Sultan's serai, looking like some fair scene described in the Koran, so ...
— The Circassian Slave; or, The Sultan's Favorite - A Story of Constantinople and the Caucasus • Lieutenant Maturin Murray

... crowds, a picturesque bridge, gardens, palm-trees, then the river beyond it, the barren yellow cliffs as a frame all around that. At our feet a woman was being carried to the grave, and the boys' voices rang out the Koran full and clear as the long procession—first white turbans and then black veils and robes—wound along. It is all a dream to me. You can't think what an odd effect it is to take up an English book and read it and then look up and hear the men cry, 'Yah Mohammad.' 'Bless thee, ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... Captain Strange story related to Lord Byron by Kien Long, his 'Ode to Tea' Kinnaird, Hon. Douglas Lord Byron's letters to Klopstock Knight, Galley, esq. His 'Persian Tales' Knox, Captain (British resident at Ithaca) Kosciusko, General Koran, sublime ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... N. the Koran, the Alcoran^; Lyking^, Vedas, Zendavesta, Avesta^, Sastra, Shastra, Tantra^, Upanishads, Purana, Edda; Book of Mormon. [Non-Biblical prophets and religious founders] Gautama, Buddha; Zoroaster, Confucius, Bab-ed-Din^, Mohammed. [Idols] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

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

... 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 ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... and it is because their religion is wrought into the very texture of their minds, in the schools as well as in the churches. Go to Turkey, to Persia, to all the lands scorched and blighted by the fiery train of the Crescent, and what school-books will you find but portions of the Koran? Pass to Hindostan, and there you will find the Vedas and Shasters wherever any thing like popular education is attempted. Enter the great empire of China, and, according to the best information we can obtain, their sacred ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew

... in my hands. They say "That is the Koran; that was written by inspiration; read it." I read it. Chapter VII, entitled "The Cow," chapter IX, entitled "The Bee," and so on. I read it. When I get through with it, suppose I think in my heart and in my brain, "I don't believe ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... astonished at his inspirations in private, he might have clad his addled originalities, disjointed commonplaces, blind denials, and balloon-like conclusions, in that mighty sort of language which would have made a new Koran for a knot of followers. I mean no disrespect to the ancient Koran, but one would not desire the roc to lay more eggs and give us a whole wing-flapping brood to soar ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot

... 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 ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... revenge, he fell upon Ganelon's neck and kissed him. Then he bade his attendants bring royal gifts, which he bestowed upon the traitor; after which they both took a solemn oath to compass the fall of Roland,—Ganelon swearing by the cross on his sword-hilt, and Marsilius by the Koran, the sacred book of ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene

... multitude. This was strangely exemplified to me some few years ago, when engaged in the suppression of the slave trade, on the east coast of Africa. There was a sale of European effects at Zanzibar, and amongst other articles was an Arab Bible—i.e. the Koran, translated into English. British residents bid high for this prize; but the Arabs, determined that their sacred book should not fall into the hands of those whom they deemed as infidels, bid still higher, and eventually ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... said, came in a strange equipage to see her; but her change to a Christian shocked and angered him, so that high words rose and even reached our ears. He spoke of the faith she had forsworn, of Allah, and Mahomet, and the Koran, and she with tears responded Christ, the Saviour of all mankind, and his holy mother, and the cross of Calvary, so that he was made more angry; and then he spoke of Euphrosyne, her mother, as we thought, and again the tears rolled down these cheeks, as she ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... by the Hindoo population with the greatest gratitude. The studies in the Mohammedan schools and colleges have hitherto been confined to Arabic, the Koran, and abstruse studies relating to their religion, having always shown a marked aversion to English literature. Since the publication of the Resolution they have at once determined to change their system in order to participate ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... a power 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 ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... allusion makes it difficult to precisely date 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 ...
— First Book of Adam and Eve • Rutherford Platt

... summer when it should be once a month, while other Hindu authorities say three or four times a month. Solon's requirement of the citizen that intercourse should take place three times a month fairly agrees with Zoroaster's. Mohammed, in the Koran, decrees intercourse once a week. The Jewish Talmud is more discriminating, and distinguishes between different classes of people; on the vigorous and healthy young man, not compelled to work hard, once a day is imposed, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... writing the work,' he told Dawson Turner, 'in precisely the same manner as The Bible in Spain, viz., on blank sheets of old account-books, backs of letters,' etc., and he recalls Mahomet writing the Koran on mutton bones as an analogy to his own 'slovenliness of manuscript.'[174] I have had plenty of opportunity of testing this slovenliness in the collection of manuscripts of portions of Lavengro that have ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter

... style; and a republican politician would scoff at the idea of giving office to such lukewarm followers. Why, here in Christian Chicago the will of God is no more heeded by the majority than that of the Emperor of China, and the Bible might as well be the Koran. Looking at these facts from my impartial standpoint, I am driven to one of two alternatives: either you regard your God as so kind and good, so merciful, that you can trespass on His forbearance to any extent, and treat ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... they so discover in it this, that the Mahometan religion acknowledges our Lord to be the Son of God, the wisest of men, and a grand prophet, who came into the world to instruct mankind; but since the Mahometans have made the Koran the book of their religion, and consequently think much of Mahomet who wrote it, and pay him a degree of worship, therefore they think little respecting our Lord. In order to shew more fully that the Mahometan religion was raised up by the ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg

... 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 ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... 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 the ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... right of redemption is expressly regulated by the Koran. The master is commanded to give to all his slaves, that behave themselves faithfully, a writing, fixing beforehand the price at which they may be redeemed; and which he is bound to accept, when tendered by them, or on ...
— An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans • Lydia Maria Child

... 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, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... I said. "I think I have read somewhere that they were great magicians, whose names these conjurers have taken." (Since then I have discovered that they are mentioned in the Koran as masters of the ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard

... contains: The Four Gospels in Irish, a volume which belonged to King Athelstan, and was given by him to the city of Canterbury; a copy of the Koran written by Sultan Allaruddeen Siljuky in the fifteenth century, taken in the Library of Tippoo Saib at Seringapatam; the Lumley Chronicle of St. Alban's Abbey; Queen Elizabeth's Prayer-Book, with illuminations from Holbein's Dance of Death destroyed in Old ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... under the inspiration of enthusiasm, otherwise he would never by his doctrine have revolutionized the half of the world. What an absurdity to make him merely a cool deceiver! One alone of the many sublime maxims of the Koran would be sufficient to annihilate the whole of these ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... 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 ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox

... Vedic Hymns, Zend-Avesta, Dhammapada, Upanishads, the Koran, and the Life of Buddha, with Critical and Biographical Sketches ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... correctly, and at length they became silent and shame-faced. Then Solomon rose and said (I take the paragraph which follows from the English translation of Dr. Weil's interesting work, The Bible, the Koran, and the Talmud, 1846, p. ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... of Marcus Aurelius Epictetus Aristotle's Ethics Analects of Confucius St. Hilaire's "Le Bouddha et sa religion" Wake's Apostolic Fathers Thos. a Kempis' Imitation of Christ Confessions of St. Augustine (Dr. Pusey) The Koran (portions of) Spinoza's Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Comte's Catechism of Positive Philosophy Pascal's Pensees Butler's Analogy of Religion Taylor's Holy Living and Dying Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress Keble's ...
— The Pleasures of Life • Sir John Lubbock

... system, are now of rare occurrence. But in the late instance, as I have already said to you, and again repeat, positively neither the Ministers nor the Sultan could have saved the life of the Armenian. The laws of the Koran compel no man to become a Mussulman, but they are inexorable both as respects a Mussulman who embraces another religion, and as respects a person not a Mussulman, who, after having of his own accord publicly embraced Islamism, is convicted ...
— Correspondence Relating to Executions in Turkey for Apostacy from Islamism • Various

... is called Islam, an Arabic word meaning "surrender," or "resignation." This religion has its sacred book, the Koran ("thing read" or "thing recited"). It contains the speeches, prayers, and other utterances of Mohammed at various times during his career. Some parts of the Koran were dictated by the prophet to his disciples and by them were written out on skins, ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... 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 ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings

... revision of this extraordinary quotation from the Koran, but Mr Dombey felt it necessary to ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... 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 be all free. ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... these prolonged but wholly insufficient observations to a very necessary conclusion. Not a word has been said of the great collection of bibles, or of the unique copies of the Koran and the Talmud and the Arabian Nights, or of the Dante manuscripts, or of Bishop Tanner's books (many bought on the dispersion of Archbishop Sancroft's great library), which in course of removal by water from Norwich to Oxford fell into the river ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... law man needs, the sacred Koran. Here is the beginning and end of law, the source of regulations that ensure righteous conduct, the precepts of Mohammed, prophet of Allah. If other laws agree with those of the Koran, they are needless. If they disagree, they are evil. Study ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis

... story quoted above, tells us that an infant in the cradle spoke up and testified to Joseph's innocence, and that while Joseph was in prison his inamorata daily visited him. More on this topic may be found in the Koran, chap. xii. The amours of Joseph and Zulieka, as told by the glib tongue of tradition, fitly find their consummation in marriage, and certain Moslems affect to see in all this an allegorical type of Divine love, an allegory which some other divines find in ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... rifles. Truth is unknown among them. A single typical incident displays the standpoint from which they regard an oath. In any dispute about a field boundary, it is customary for both claimants to walk round the boundary he claims, with a Koran in his hand, swearing that all the time he is walking on his own land. To meet the difficulty of a false oath, while he is walking over his neighbor's land, he puts a little dust from his own field into his shoes. As both sides are acquainted with the trick, the dismal farce of swearing is usually ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... 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 were Magi, worshipers of fire and of Nardoun. the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various

... story," he said, 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 ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham

... stands at ten thousand dinars, but her owner swears that this sum will not cover the 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

... father sent him to the university in Algiers, because, you see, he was Christian—or, rather, he was nothing at all then; he had not settled to any belief. Tahar was like Aunt Mabrouka, very religious, and did not care much to study, except the Koran and a little French. He went once to Paris, but he didn't stay long. He said he was homesick. Oh, he is clever in his way! He has known how to make himself ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... from the same field," as we say in Russia, as the Spiritualists, by whom he is considered to be a medium and a Calcutta Swedenborg. He spends his time in a dirty tank, singing praises to Chaitanya, Koran, Buddha, and his own person, proclaiming himself their prophet, and performs a mystical dance, dressed in woman's attire, which, on his part, is an attention to a "woman goddess" whom the Babu calls his "mother, ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky

... grants protection to the Jews on payment of tribute. See the Koran, translated by Sale, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... 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 him, by the same means that our comparative giant ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... could offend any of these discordant elements? If there be a Jew in the school, you cannot speak of the Gospel; if there be a Mahometan, nothing could be said against polygamy, and other degrading doctrines of the Koran; due respect must also be paid to the teaching of Arians and Socinians, who deny the Trinity of persons in God, and the Divinity of Christ; and to the opinions of Calvinists and Lutherans, of Methodists and other sectaries, who assail almost ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller

... slightest originality, weight, or importance. But they both thought that their conversation was full of significance; which it was, though they could not explain it to themselves. What they happened to say did not matter in the least. If they had recited the Koran to each other the inexplicable significance of their words ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett

... 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

... to him the religion which he afterwards taught his followers. As he himself could not write, he committed to memory all that the angel told him, and had it written in a book. This book is called the "Koran," which means, like our own word Bible, the "Book." The Koran is ...
— Famous Men of the Middle Ages • John H. Haaren

... day, verses from the Scriptures, the Koran, and other sacred writings are sometimes worn upon the person and are also placed upon horses or camels, by Arabs, Turks, Grecians, and Italians, with the avowed purpose of ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence

... de Pique where feathery palms once had waved above mosques of snowy gleam, with marble domes and jeweled arabesques, and the hush of prayer under columned aisles. "Here are sold wine, liquor and tobacco," was written where once verses of the Koran had been blazoned by reverent hands along porphyry cornices and capitals of jasper. A Cafe Chantant reared its impudent little roof where once, far back in the dead cycles, Phoenician warriors had watched the galleys of the gold-haired favorite of the gods bear ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]

... Mfuto, with waving banners denoting the various commanders, with booming horns, and the roar of fifty bass drums, called gomas—with blessings showered on us by the mollahs, and happiest predications from the soothsayers, astrologers, and the diviners of the Koran—who could have foretold that this grand force, before a week passed over its head, would be hurrying into that same stronghold of Mfuto, with each man's heart ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... friend, Miss Snagg, "it was most interesting. We drove away down to the queerest part of the City, and went to the strangest little house imaginable, up the narrowest stairs one ever saw—quite Eastern, in fact, just like a scene out of the Koran." ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock

... respectable-looking man," said he, "and are a good Moslem into the bargain, I warrant." "That I am," said I, "although you be a Jew: but how the faith is to serve me here I am sure I don't know, unless the angel Gabriel, as in the fifty-fifth verse of the twenty-seventh chapter of the Koran——"' ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... the Giaour Sultan. He had destroyed Turkish customs, outraged Turkish feelings, and by the massacre o the Janissaries, in 1826, he had sapped Turkish strength. He now began in his own person to set at nought the precepts of the Koran. All day he worked with frenzy, and at night he indulged himself in frightful orgies, till, dead drunk, he desisted from his madness, and was carried by his slaves ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer

... them of Jews who had been dispersed at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem, and many of the sects of Christians who had been driven from the Roman empire by the more orthodox—were deeply stirred by the new doctrine of Islam, preached by Mahomet, A.D. 622, proclaiming the Koran as the rule of life, and the destruction of the ancient Arabian worship of the stars ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear

... book were destined to live three or four thousand years, to be read and re-read, pondered and studied, phrase by phrase, word by word, and letter by letter, from generation to generation, like a new Koran; if it were to fill the libraries of the world with avalanches of annotations, explanations and paraphrases, I might leave to their fate, in their rather obscure conciseness, the thoughts which precede. But since they ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat

... divided by two sliding doors which were now pushed back in their recesses, giving access to a big balcony that looked out over the Nile and that was protected by an awning. The wooden ceiling was cut up into lozenges of black and gold, and was edged by minute inscriptions from the Koran, in gold on a black ground. All the windows had lattices of mashrebeeyeh work fitted to them, and all these lattices were closed. Against the walls, which were as dark in colour as the mashrebeeyeh work, ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens

... 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 ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... in cut black velvet upon cloth of silver. Louis XIV. had gold embroidered caryatides fifteen feet high in his apartment. The state bed of Sobieski, King of Poland, was made of Smyrna gold brocade embroidered in turquoises with verses from the Koran. Its supports were of silver gilt, beautifully chased, and profusely set with enamelled and jewelled medallions. It had been taken from the Turkish camp before Vienna, and the standard of Mohammed had stood beneath the tremulous gilt ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde

... Tewfikeeyah, and the men were disheartened and depressed. This feeling was increased by the unfortunate recurrence of the fast of Ramadan, during which month the Mohammedans will neither eat, drink, nor smoke from sunrise till sunset. The Koran exempts them from the observance of this pernicious fast when on a long journey, but my people preferred to keep it religiously, as it would be a plausible excuse ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker

... house: sprinkled on heaps of threshed corn it protects them from the evil eye: mixed with an egg, henna, and seeds of cress it is an invaluable medicine for sick cows: poured over a plate, on which a passage of the Koran has been written, it strengthens the memory of schoolboys who drink it; and if you mix it with cowdung and red earth and paint rings with the mixture round the trunks of your fig-trees at sunset on Midsummer Day, ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer

... century that we find the Osmanli Turks, who give their name to that congregation of races known as the Ottoman Empire, established in the north-west corner of Asia Minor. Like all previous Turkish immigrations, they came not in any overwhelming horde, with sword in one hand and Koran in the other, but as a small compact body with a genius for military organisation, and the gift, which they retain to this day, of stalwart fighting. The policy to which they owed their growth was absorption, and the people whom they first began to absorb were Greeks and other Christians, and ...
— Crescent and Iron Cross • E. F. Benson

... Cicero, Cato, Aristophanes, Riscius, Sophocles, Euripides, Tacitus, Sydney, Wisnou, Possidonius, Julian, Argus, Pompey, the Teutates, Gainas, Areadius, Sinon, Asmodeus, Salamanders, Anicetus, Atreus, Thyestus, Cesonius, Barca and Oreb, Omar and the Koran, Ptolomy Philadelphus, Arimanes, Gengis, Themuginus, Tigellinus, Adrean, Cacus, the Fates, Minos and Rhadamanthus," &c. &c. Rapport de Courtois su ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... open streets, and their chiefs, intimidated by the general misery and unable to stand alone, consented to capitulate. Ali, whose intentions as to the fate of this unhappy town were irrevocably decided, agreed to all that they asked. A treaty was signed by both parties, and solemnly sworn to on the Koran, in virtue of which seventy-two beys, heads of the principal Albanian families, were to go to Janina as free men, and fully armed. They were to be received with the honours due to their rank as free tenants of the sultan, their lives and their families were to be spared, and also ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... I was a full-blown sergeant. I made a mistake in walking into the sergeants' mess with the Koran under my arm. It was difficult to explain what sort of book it was. One day ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave

... Longinus, by which modern criticism might profit, and those books of Livy for which the classic student has so long sorrowed without hope. Among these precious tomes I observed the original manuscript of the Koran, and also that of the Mormon Bible in Joe Smith's authentic autograph. Alexander's copy of the Iliad was also there, enclosed in the jewelled casket of Darius, still fragrant of the perfumes which the Persian ...
— A Virtuoso's Collection (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... is a bargain only when two men agree on something, says the Koran," the gipsy chief reminded the Tartar boatman. "I don't want to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... standard of Islem floats on the towers of Tangier. But four leagues of sea separate us from the opposite coast. One word from my sovereign, and the conquerors of Africa will pour their legions into Andalusia, rescue it from the domination of the unbeliever, and subdue it to the law of the Koran.' ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... goods he had expected, to learn that the wretch Shereef, to whom they had been consigned, had sold off the whole, not leaving one yard of calico out of 3000, or one string of beads out of 700 pounds! The scoundrel had divined on the Koran, found that Livingstone was dead, and would need the goods no more. Livingstone had intended, if he could not get men at Ujiji to go with him to the Lualaba, to wait there till suitable men should be sent up from the coast; but he had never thought of having ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... 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, Confucius, Bab-ed-Din[obs3], Mohammed. [Idols] ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... secular books Plato only is entitled to Omar's fanatical compliment to the Koran, when he said, 'Burn the libraries; for their value is in this book.' Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated among ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... 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 lawful to ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders

... 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 such doctrine in the Koran, and no such principle makes a part in the civil or municipal ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... tympanies of ceremonial worship, they denominate 'religions of the book.' There are, of such religions, three, viz., Judaism, Christianity, and Islamism. The first builds upon the Law and the Prophets; or, perhaps, sufficiently upon the Pentateuch; the second upon the Gospel; the last upon the Koran. No other religion can be said to rest upon a book; or to need a book; or even to admit of a book. For we must not be duped by the case where a lawgiver attempts to connect his own human institutes with the venerable sanctions of a national ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... Years' War, the wars of the League, present nearly the same characteristics. Often religion is the pretext to obtain political power, and the war is not really one of dogmas. The successors of Mohammed cared more to extend their empire than to preach the Koran, and Philip II., bigot as he was, did not sustain the League in France for the purpose of advancing the Roman Church. We agree with M. Ancelot that Louis IX., when he went on a crusade in Egypt, thought more of the commerce of the Indies than of gaining possession ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... shadow, they peered out at the slow-moving square beneath them, while women with water-skins and bags of dhoora fluttered from group to group, calling out to each other those fighting texts from the Koran which in the hour of battle are maddening as wine to the true believer. A score of banners waved over the ragged, valiant crew, and among them, upon desert horses and white Bishareen camels, were the Emirs and Sheiks who were to lead them ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle

... more timorous Greeks were awakened by an apprehension that, under the mask of Christianity, they had restored the religion of their fathers. They heard with grief and impatience the name of 'idolaters,' the incessant charge of the Jews and Mahometans, who derived from the Law and the Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all the relative ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... supposed exterminated heathen religions into its cult of local saints, so Islam, to an even higher degree, has been overlaid and almost buried by the superstitions of the peoples to which it has gone. Their religious and legal customs have completely overcome the direct commands of the Koran, the traditions from Mahomet and even the "Agreement" of the rest of the Moslem world (see MAHOMMEDAN LAW). The first step in this, it is true, was taken by Mahomet himself when he accepted the Meccan pilgrimage and the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... to go to Constantinople, and fix on a profession for himself. The choice would be left to him, but he would probably prefer either to be a soldier or one of the doctors learned in the law, who explain the Koran to the ignorant people. 'You know the holy book nearly by heart,' ended the old man, 'so that in a very short time you would be fitted to teach others. But write to us and tell us how you pass your life, and we, on our side, will ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various

... exemplified before them by the Oriental Churches. To them the native Christians represent the Christian religion, and they see that these are no better than themselves. They think them worse; and therefore the Moslem believes the Koran to be ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson

... who was called Bucar, that for the tie there was between them, he would take vengeance for the dishonour which he had received from the Cid Campeador before Valencia; and Bucar promised to do this, and swore also upon the Koran, which is the book of their law. And accordingly he came afterwards across the sea, with nine and twenty Kings, as shall be related when the ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... follows upon the decease of the person; a practice common to all classes at Constantinople. The corpse is carried to the grave on a bier by the friends of the deceased: this is considered as a religious duty, it being declared in the Koran, that he who carries a dead body the space of forty paces, procures for himself the expiation of a great sin.[3] The graves are shallow, and thin boards only, laid over the corpse, protect it from the immediate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 387, August 28, 1829 • Various

... it was a step in advance to suggest that these captives should be utilised as servants. To a great extent, if not entirely, slavery as an institution is due to the low moral standard set up by the Koran. Were it not for love of sensual indulgence, slavery would long ago have died a natural death. Over and over again has it been proved that voluntary service is far cheaper than enforced labour. An Indian coolie will work all day, and ask for little more than enough to keep body and soul ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... settled in the country. But they have never intermarried since. They have adopted the dress and language of the Chinese, but otherwise they continue almost as distinct as the Jews in America. They instruct their children in the doctrines of Islam, though the Mohammedan rule that the Koran must not be translated has prevented all but a few literati from obtaining any knowledge of the book itself. They have done little proselyting, but natural increase, occasional reenforcements and the adoption of famine children have gradually swelled their ranks until they now number ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN

... the lengua franca "God is great! Be not led by fancy! The world is just so. If it is written on the forehead that one is to live, then he will live; but if not, then he will die here." [158] For their Koran says that each one has his fortune written in the lines of his forehead. These Indians believe the same thing (and they have never seen the Koran), and only because it is great nonsense. They receive no warning from the many misfortunes that happen every ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin

... the same thing, it will not be surprising if a belief of its Divine origin be one of the ineffaceable ideas of the popular mind. It will be a long while before a translation from Homer or a chapter in the Koran, or any of the beauties of Shakespeare, will be read in a stormy night on Orr's Island with the same sense of a Divine presence as the Psalms of David, or the prayer of ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

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

... the penalty which the Koran lays down; he has lost his right hand. But the lord of all evil protects him, else ere this he had lost his life! Move no ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer

... depend upon the Koran nor any written code, human or divine, beyond the whim and caprice of the chief (assassin) and his gang of desperadoes. The Sultan of Pontiana has, however, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... 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. His Christianity ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous

... in due course, nothing loth, for on the veld between our station and Maraisfontein many pauw and koran—that is, big and small bustards—were to be found, to say nothing of occasional buck, and I was allowed to carry a gun, which even in those days I could use fairly well. So to Maraisfontein I rode on the appointed day, attended by a Hottentot after-rider, a certain ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard

... bright-hued Persian carpet. The walls were panelled with stamped leather to the height of six feet from the ground; above the panelling they were painted of a delicate cream colour with here and there a maxim or apophthegm from the Koran, in the Arabic character, picked out in different colours. From the ceiling a silver lamp swung on chains of silver. In the centre of the room was a marble table on which were pipes and hookahs, cigars and tobaccos of ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... demonstration. We have all been educated into false opinions on this subject, and it is almost as difficult for the American scholar to release himself from the influence of education and habit in such matters, as for the Arab to release his mind from the influence of the Koran. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various

... the historian of the Lower Empire maintains that Mohammed speaks in his Koran of his journey into the sky: Mohammed does not say a word about it; we ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... and his 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 ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty

... has, certainly, a rather curious air, as of a highly transcendental Cremorne. There could be no doubt, however, that the Faithful were enjoying themselves amazingly—"right lucky fellows," as we read in the new translation of the Koran. Yet even here all was not peace and pleasantness, for I heard my name called by a small voice, in a tone of patient subdued querulousness. Looking hastily round, I with some difficulty recognized, in a green turban and silk gown to match, my old ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang

... Anti-Servian. Nay, even in the cruel and sterile strength of Turkey, any one with imagination can see something of the tragedy and therefore of the tenderness of true belief. The worst that can be said of the Moslems is, as the poet put it, they offered to man the choice of the Koran or the sword. The best that can be said for the German is that he does not care about the Koran, but is satisfied if he can have the sword. And for me, I confess, even the sins of these three other ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton

... German he deemed unnecessary trivialities, and the Christian religion a banality. Instead of these prosaic lessons the boy was instructed in the Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian tongues, and, in lieu of the Bible, the Koran ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... being believed at all. The 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 ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... is said to stand on the site of a mosque and to have been at first called Al Koran, since corrupted into Alporao, but the present building can hardly have been begun till the early years of the thirteenth century. The church consists of an aisleless nave with good groined vaulting and a five-sided apsidal chancel. The round-arched west door stands under ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... immoralities, such as rebellion, murder, adultery, robbery, revenge, their mission would not only have been disbelieved, but they would have undergone capital punishment by the sentence of the judge, which it was their business to avoid. Mahomet, throughout the Koran, inculcates all the virtues, and pointedly reprobates vice of all kinds. His morality is merely the precepts of the Old and New Testaments, modified a little, and expressed in Arabic. They are good precepts, and always to be listened to with respect, wherever, and ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English

... engaged to help 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 ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... will determine the fate of a dozen of people, and perhaps of an immense treasure. All worship the pickaxe, which is symbolical of their profession, and an oath sworn on it binds closer than on the Koran. The consecration of this weapon is a most elaborate ceremony, and takes place only under certain trees. They rise through various grades: the lowest are scouts; the second, sextons; the third are holders of the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... on the edge of the Desert until he had started for America. He was very homesick, and longed for the time of his return. He had hired himself for a term of years to the master of the circus. He held the Koran in his hand, and was delighted to find a friend who had also read his sacred book. He opened his heart still further then, and said how he longed for his old, wild life in the Desert, for a sight of the palms and the sands, but, above all, for its freedom." This interview made a deep impression, ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields

... 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 ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... in with a strong hand, I leaped from the saddle, and found the sais at hand to hold our horses, while we saw the seventh heaven of the Koran, and by ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various

... me difficult," says Lenormant, "not to recognize an echo of fables popular in all Semitic countries about this chasm of Hierapolis, and the part it played in the Deluge, in the enigmatic expressions of the Koran respecting the oven (tannur) which began to bubble and disgorge water all around at the commencement of the Deluge. We know that this tannur has been the occasion of most grotesque imaginings of Mussulman commentators, who had lost the tradition of the story to which Mohammed made ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... scented with incense and sandalwood, and there is a musical droning from a few worshippers who repeat verses from the Koran in the cool white interior mingled with the cooing of innumerable pigeons, and the faint "kiree, kiree" of a kite a mile above, in the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch

... originate with a deceased Third Force Staff officer, now in the Spirit World. There was considerable detail, all ludicrous to Conn's professional ear. And a fanatic in one of the small towns on the west coast was quoting the Bible, the Koran, and the Bhagavadgita to prove that if Merlin were ever found, Divine vengeance in a spectacular form would fall not only on Poictesme ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper

... 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 and Syrians; but in contending ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... strangely been called Levi. Winifred had joined, not because she had travelled, but because instinct told her that a Club with such a name and such a founder was bound to go far; if one didn't join at once one might never have the chance. Its tent, with a text from the Koran on an orange ground, and a small green camel embroidered over the entrance, was the most striking on the ground. Outside it they found Jack Cardigan in a dark blue tie (he had once played for Harrow), batting with a Malacca cane to show how that fellow ought to have ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... rather believe all the fables in the Talmud and the Koran than that this universal frame ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... of Mormonism and that of 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 ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson

... opinions and ceremonies, of which they knew neither the proof, the meaning, nor the original: lastly, the equal and undoubting confidence with which we hear the doctrines of Christ or of Confucius, the law of Moses or of Mahomet, the Bible, the Koran, or the Shaster, maintained or anathematized, taught or abjured, revered or derided, according as we live on this or on that side of a river; keep within or step over the boundaries of a state; or even in the same country, and by the same people, so often as the ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin

... praise, so overflowing in its abundance, which they bestowed on one another put them both in a very happy humor. From the Koran, from Saadi, Hafiz, and Fizuli, each authenticated the other to be the moving embodiment of all ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... name very well, though he had no idea what it meant. He knew there was a book called the Koran, and would have told you Mr. Mohammed wrote it; but so had Mr. Colburn written an Arithmetic, and whether both these gentlemen were alive, or both dead, was ...
— Captain Horace • Sophie May

... literature and poetry has always been religion—and always will be. The Indian Vedas, the Nackas of Zoroaster, the Tal mud of the Jews, the Old Testament, the Gospel of Christ and his disciples, Plato's works, the Koran of Mohammed, the Edda of Snorro, and so on toward our own day, to Swedenborg, and to the invaluable contributions of Leibnitz, Kant and Hegel—these, with such poems only in which, (while singing well of persons and events, of ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... Catholic vote, are the 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 ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... furnished by the Gospels in the disorder in which tradition supplies it, would only be to write the history of Jesus as the history of a celebrated man would be written, by giving pell-mell the letters and anecdotes of his youth, his old age, and of his maturity. The Koran, which presents to us, in the loosest manner, fragments of the different epochs in the life of Mahomet, has yielded its secret to an ingenious criticism; the chronological order in which the fragments were composed has been discovered so as to leave ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... welcome in Egypt? Above all, will he be welcomed by the Emir Musa, who rules there, when it is known that he comes to seek a woman who has escaped from that Emir's harem? Why, within an hour he'd offer you the choice between death and the Koran. ...
— The Wanderer's Necklace • H. Rider Haggard

... his existence in Turkey, is carried early to the mosque; taught to lisp with profound reverence the name of Mohammed; habituated to repeat the prayers and sentences of the Koran as the means of eternal life; and induced, in a manner irresistible, to complete his title to Paradise by ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser

... sight—the great college of Islam, where more than ten thousand students are constantly under preparation as priests of the Prophet. We saw them in hundreds sitting on their mats in the extensive open courts, all busily engaged in learning to recite the Koran to masters, or listening to professors who expounded it. Their intense earnestness soon impresses you. From this centre radiate every year thousands of these propagandists, scattering themselves over Arabia and to the farthest boundaries of Islam, and even beyond, warring upon idolatry ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie

... be sold or pawned by him while he lives. Slaves are in many respects inferior to free persons as to rights and powers. They have no right of property against their owners. They are under milder criminal law than their owners. All this is to be understood of slaves who are Moslems.[877] The Koran often inculcates kindness to slaves.[878] Slaves are goods given to the free by the grace of God. Mohammedans would consider the abolition of slavery a triumph of Christianity over Islam.[879] An unbelieving slave has no guarantees at all against the will of ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner

... 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

... Moros accept the Koran and the teachings of Mahomet: in practice, they omit the virtues of their religious system and follow those precepts which can be construed into favouring vice; hence they interpret guidance of the people by oppression, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... prominent, and the appointed marksman takes aim at them, because, if he succeeds in breaking them, there is no chance of escape, which there would be if almost any other part were wounded. As soon as he falls, the other sportsmen, attracted by the report, run up and bleed him according to the laws of the Koran. They hide the carcass, and cover with sand every trace of the blood that has been shed. When the reumda comes home at night, she appears not uneasy at the absence of her mate, but probably concluding that he was hungry, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 460 - Volume 18, New Series, October 23, 1852 • Various

... of the 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 ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... 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

... the Turks who succeeded the Romans as the rulers of Egypt abhorred all writing that was not connected with their holy book, the Koran. ...
— Ancient Man - The Beginning of Civilizations • Hendrik Willem Van Loon

... the level of the pathway in a deserted corner. Shadows congregated here, and in the gloom Domini saw a bent white figure hunched against the blackened wall, and heard an old voice murmuring like a drowsy bee. The perfume-seller was immersed in the Koran, his back to the buying world. Batouch was about to call upon him, when Domini checked the exclamation with a quick gesture. For the first time the mystery that coils like a great black serpent in the shining heart of the East startled and fascinated her, a ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... 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 something ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... the Koran," she said. "'Paradise is under the shadow of swords.' Here, as on earth, there is no progress without effort, and here, too, there are difficulties to be overcome. Yet even on earth there was one element in the strife which lent dignity even to our failures. Sin and shame are, after all, only ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... words of consolation read to them out of the Koran, and seated himself at the helm. But in vain! The tempest began visibly to rise with a roaring noise, and, before an hour passed by, the ship struck and remained aground. The boats were lowered, and scarcely had the last sailors saved themselves, ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff

... tablet of loyalty to the living Emperor. "May the Emperor reign ten thousand years!" it says, a token of subjection which the mosques of Yunnan have especially been compelled to display since the insurrection. At the time of my visit an aged mollah was teaching Arabic and the Koran to a ragged handful of boys. He spoke to me through an interpreter, and gave me the impression of having some little knowledge of things outside the four seas that surround China. I told him that I ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... Christianity raised her standard. Subsequently Mahomet fused Judaism and Christianity, the Bible and the Gospel, in one book, the Koran, adapting them to the apprehension of the Arab race. Finally, Swedenborg borrowed from Magianism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Christian mysticism all the truth and divine beauty that those four great religious books hold in common, and ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac

... his head to fall on his breast as if in reflection. "'Tis well," he said at last in a peevish tone. "We will receive the spiritual shepherd of our kingdom. Away with these mummers! 'tis not fitting that the expounder of the Koran should find us ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... are the koran of the Mohammedans, the tripitaka of the Buddhists, the five kings of the Chinese, the three vedas of the Hindoos, the zendavesta of the Parsees and the scriptures of the Christians. The koran, says the Chicago Times, is the most recent, dating ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs

... memory. After looking over a few of Patteson's German exercises, Mr. Schier found so little to correct, in the way of grammatical errors, that these studies were almost relinquished, and gave way to Arabic and Hebrew. Before we left Dresden, Patteson had read large portions of the Koran; and, with the aid of Hurwitz's Grammar and Bernhard's Guide to Hebrew Students, books familiar to Cambridge men, he was soon able to read the Psalms in the original. I remember the admiration and despair I felt in witnessing Patteson's progress, and the wonder expressed ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge



Words linked to "Koran" :   book, Koranic, sacred writing, al-Qur'an, religious text, religious writing



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