It seems to me very
probable that this practice was an adoption, at any rate in theory, of
the Christian custom of praying for the emperor. The pulpit was then
introduced under Christian influence, which thus completely
transformed the chair (_mimbar_) of the ancient Arab judges and rulers
and made it a piece of church furniture; the Christian _cancelli_ or
choir screens were adopted and the mosque was thus developed. Before
the age of mosques, a lance had been planted in the ground and prayer
offered behind it: so in the mosque a prayer niche was made, a
survival of the pre-existing custom. There are many obscure points in
the development of the worship, but one fact may be asserted with
confidence: the developments of ritual were derived from pre-existing
practices, which were for the most part Christian.
But the religious energy of Islam was not exclusively devoted to the
development and practice of the doctrine of duties; at the same time
this ethical department, in spite of its dependency upon Christian and
Jewish ideas, remains its most original achievement: we have pursued
the subject at some length, because its importance is often overlooked
in the course of attempts to estimate the connection between
Christianity and Islam. On the other hand, affinities in the regions
of mysticism and dogma have long been matter of common knowledge and a
brief sketch of them will therefore suffice. If not essential to our
purpose within the limits of this book, they are none the less
necessary to complete our treatment of the subject.
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