Mohammedan theologians are verj' much divided in regard to the doctrine of the resurrection. Mohammed himself seems to have held that both soul and body will be raised, and the " Bone Luz" of the Jewish Haggadah was by him transformed into the bone Al-Ajb, the rump- bone, which will remain uncorrupted until the last day, and from which the whole body Avill spring anew, after a forty-days' rain. Among the signs by which the ap- proach of the last day may be known — nearly all taken from the legendarj' part of the Talmud and Midrash, where the signs of the coming of the Jlessiah are enu- merated— are the decay of faith among men, the ad- vancing of the meanest persons to highest dignities, wars, seditions, and tumults, and consequent dire dis- tress, so that a man passing another's grave shall say : " Would to God I were in his place !" Certain prov- inces shall revolt, and the buildings of Medina shall reach to Yahab. Again: the sun will rise in the west; the Beast will appear ; Constantinople will be taken by the descendants of Isaac; the Antichrist will come, and be killed by Jesus at Lud. There will further take place a war with the Jews, Gog and Magog's (Jajug and Ma- juj's) eruption, a great smoke, an eclipse, the Moham- medans will return to idolatry, a great treasure will be found in the Euphrates, the Kaaba will be destroyed by the Ethiopians, beasts and inanimate things will speak, and, finally, a wind will sweep away the souls of those who have faith, even if equal only to a grain of mustard seed, so that the world shall be left in ignorance.
The time of the resurrection even Mohammed could not learn from Gabriel : it is a mystery. Three blasts will announce it : that of consternation, of such terrible powers that mothers shall neglect the babes on their breasts, and that heaven and earth will melt ; that of exanimation, which will annihilate all things and be- ings, even the angel of death, save paradise and hell, and their inhabitants; and, forty years later, that of resurrection, when all men, Slohammed first, shall have their souls breathed into their restored bodies, and will sleep in their sepulchres mitil the final doom has been passed upon them. The day of judgment, lasting from one to fifty thousand years, will call up angels, genii, men, and animals. The trial over, the righteous will enter paradise, to the right hand, and the wicked will pass to the left, into hell ; both, however, have first to go over the bridge Al-Sirat, laid over the midst of hell, being finer than a hair, and sharper than the edge of a sword, and beset with thorns on either side. The right- eous will proceed on their path with ease and swiftness, but the wicked will fall down headlong to hell below. Paradise is divided from hell by a partition (Orl"), in which a certain number of half-saints will find place. The blessed, destined for the abodes of eternal delight (Jannat-Aden ; Heb. Gan-Eden)— of which it is, how- ever, not quite certain whether it is already created — will first drink of the Pond of the Prophet, which is
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supplied from the rivers of paradise, whiter than millt, I and more odoriferous than musk. Arrived at one of the eight gates, they will be met by beautiful youths and angels ; and their degree of righteousness (propli- ets, religious teachers, martyrs, believers) will procure i for them the corresponding degree of happiness. It may, however, not be superfluous to add that, according ! to the Mohammedan doctrine, it is not a person's good works or merits which gain his admittance, but solely God's mercy; also that the poor will cuter paradise live hundred years before the rich ; and that the majority of the inhabitants of hell are women.
As to tlie various felicities which await the pious (and of which there are about a hundred degrees), they are a wild conglomeration of Jewish, Christian, Magian, and other fancies on the subject, to which the Prophet's own exceedingly sensual imagination has added very considerabl}-. Feasting in the most gorgeous and deli- cious variety, the most costly and brilliant garments, odors and music of the most ravishing nature, and, above all, the enjoyment of the Hilr Al-Oyun, the black- eyed daughters of paradise, created of pure musk, and free from all the bodily weaknesses of the female sex, are held out as a reward to the commonest inhabitants of paradise, who will always remain in the full vigor of their youth and manhood. For those deserving a higher degree of recom])ense, rewards will be prepared of a purely spiritual kind— i. e. the " beholding of God's face" (Shecliinah) by night and by day. A separate abode of liappiness will also be reserved for women ; but there is considerable doubt as to the manner of their enjoy- ment. That they are not of a prominently spiritual nat- ure is clear from the story of the Prophet and the old woman. The latter solicited Mohammed to intercede with God that she might be admitted into paradise, whereupon he replied that old women were not allowed in paradise; which dictum — causing her to weep — he further explained by saying that they would first be made young again.