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Show 22 OMAR-TliE KORAN. He was confirmed in this opinion by the numerous salt springs and marshes in the interior of Asia; a phenomenon from which Pallas, in more recent times, has drawn the same. inference. Von Hoff has suggested, with great probability, that the changes in the level of the Caspian, (some of which there is reason to believe have happened within the historical era,) and the geological appearances in that district, indicating the desertion by that sea of its ancient bed, had probably led Omar to his theory of a general subsidence. But whatever may have been the proofs relied on, his system was declared contradictory to certain passages in the Koran, and he was called upon publicly to recant his errors; to avoid which persecution he went into voluntary banishment from Samarkand 'Yc. The cosmological opinions expressed in the Koran are few, and merely introduced incidentally; so that it is not easy to understand how they could have interfered so seriously with free discussion on the former changes of the globe. The Prophet declared that the earth was created in two days, and the mountains were then placed on it; and during these, and two additional days, the inhabitants of the earth were formed; and in two more the seven heavens t. There is no more detail of circumstances; and the deluge, which is also mentioned, is discussed with equal brevity. The waters are represented to have poured out of an oven; a strange fable, said to be borrowed from the Persian Magi, who represented them as issuing from the oven of an old woman t· All men were drowned, save Noah and his family; and then God said, " 0 earth, swallow up thy waters; and thou, 0 heaven, withhold thy rain;" and immediately the waters abated~- • Von HofF, Gcschichte der V eranderungen der Erdo berflachc, vol. i. p. 4 061 who cites Delisle, bey Ilissmann W elt-und Volkergcschichte. Alte Gesch. 1 ter Theil. s. 234.-TheArabian persecutions for heretical dogmas in theology were often very sanguinary. In the same ages wherein learning was most in esteem the Ma· hometans were divided into two sects, one of whom maintained that the Koran was increate, and had subsisted in the very essence of God from all eternity; and the ot~1er t~o Motazalites, who, admitting that the Koran was instituted by God, concelved 1t to have been first made when revealed to U1e Prophet at Mecca, and accused their opponents of believing in two eternal beings. The opinions of each of these sects were taken up by different caliphs in succession and the followers of each sometimes submitted to be beheaded, or flogged till at' tho point of death, rather than renounce their crced.-Mod. Univ. llist. vol. ii. chall· 4. t Koran, chap. 41. t Sale's Koran, chap. 11, see note. 9 Ibid. FRACASTORO. 23 We may suppose Omar to have represented the desertion of the land by the sea to have been gradual, and that his hypothesis required a greater lapse of ages than was consistent with Moslem orthodoxy ; for it is to be inferred from the Koran, that man and this planet were created at the same tim.e; .and although Mahomet did not limit expressly the antlqmty of the human race, yet he gave an implied sanction to the Mosaic chronology by the veneration expressed by him for the Hebrew Patriarchs*. We must now pass over an interval of five centuries wherein .dar~ness enveloped almost every department of science: and buned m profound oblivion all prior investigations into the earth's history and structure. It was not till the earlier part of the sixteenth century that geological phenomena began to attract the attention of the Christian nations. At that peri?d a very animated controversy sprung up in Italy, concermng the true nature and origin of marine shells and other organized fossils, found abundantly in the strata of,the peninsula t. The excavations made in 1517, for repairing the city o.f Verona, brou~ht to light a multitude of curious petrifactiOns, and furmshed matter for speculation to different authors, and among the rest to Fracastoro + who declared his . . +' op1?1on, that fossil ~hells had all belonged to living animals, which had formerly hved and multiplied, where their exuvire are now f?und. He exposed the absurdity of having recourse to a_certru.n ".plastic force," which it was said had power to fashion stones mto organic forms; and, with no less cogent arguments, demonstrated the futility of attributing the situation of the shells in question to the Mosaic deluge, a theory obstinately defended by some. That inundation, he observed was ~oo _transient, it consisted principally of fluviatile waters ; 'and, If It had transported shells to great distances, must have ~tt·ewed _the~ over the surface, not buried them at vast depths m the mterior of mountains, His clear exposition of the * Kossa, appointed master to the Caliph Al Mamtld, was author of a book entitled, " The History of the Patriarchs and Prophets, from the Creatior1 of the World."-Mod. Univ. !list. vol. ii. chap. 4. . t See Brocchi's Discourse on t~e Progress of tho Study of Fossil Conchology m Italy, where some of the followmg notices on Italian writers will be found more at large. t .Musewn Calceol. |
