This work and its commentaries are held in the highest reverence by the Mohammedans. It is the principal book taught in their schools; they never touch it without kissing it, and carrying it to the forehead, in token of their reverence; oaths before the courts are taken upon it; it is learned by heart, and repeated every forty days; many believers copy it several times in their lives, and often possess one or more copies ornamented with gold and precious stones.
The Koran treats of death, resurrection, the judgment, paradise, and the place of torment, in a style calculated powerfully to affect the imagination of the believer. The joys of paradise, promised to all who fall in the cause of religion, are those most captivating to an Arabian fancy. When Al Sirat, or the Bridge of Judgment, which is as slender as the thread of a famished spider, and as sharp as the edge of a sword, shall be passed by the believer, he will be welcomed into the gardens of delight by black-eyed Houris, beautiful nymphs, not made of common clay, but of pure essence and odors, free from all blemish, and subject to no decay of virtue or of beauty, and who await their destined lovers in rosy bowers, or in pavilions formed of a single hollow pearl. The soil of paradise is composed of musk and saffron, sprinkled with pearls and hyacinths. The walls of its mansions are of gold and silver; the fruits, which bend spontaneously to him who would gather them, are of a flavor and delicacy unknown to mortals. Numerous rivers flow through this blissful abode; some of wine, others of milk, honey, and water, the pebbly beds of which are rubies and emeralds, and their banks of musk, camphor, and saffron. In paradise the enjoyment of the believers, which is subject neither to satiety nor diminution, will be greater than the human understanding can compass. The meanest among them will have eighty thousand servants, and seventy-two wives. Wine, though forbidden on earth, will there be freely allowed, and will not hurt or inebriate. The ravishing songs of the angels and of the Houris will render all the groves vocal with harmony, such as mortal ear never heard. At whatever age they may have died, at their resurrection all will be in the prime of manly and eternal vigor. It would be a journey of a thousand years for a true Mohammedan to travel through paradise, and behold all the wives, servants, gardens, robes, jewels, horses, camels, and other things, which belong exclusively to him.