Moreover the body was scarcely cold when the contest about the succession arose between the fugitives of Meccah and the auxiliaries of Al-Madinah:  in the ardour of which, according to the Shi’ahs, the house of Ali and Fatimah-within a few feet of the spot where the tomb of the Apostle is now placed-was threatened with fire, and Abu Bakr was elected Caliph that same evening.  If anyone find cause to wonder that the last resting-place of a personage so important was not fixed for ever, he may find many a parallel case in Al-Madinah.  To quote no other, three several localities claim the honour of containing the Lady Fatimah’s mortal spoils, although one might suppose that the daughter of the Apostle and the mother of the Imams would not be laid in an unknown grave.  My reasons for incredulity are the following:  [p.340] From the earliest days the shape of the Apostle’s tomb has never been generally known in Al-Islam.  For this reason it is that graves are made convex in some countries, and flat in others.  Had there been a Sunnat,[FN#82] such would not have been the case.

The accounts of the learned are discrepant.  Al-Samanhudi, perhaps the highest authority, contradicts himself.  In one place he describes the coffin; in another he expressly declares that he entered the Hujrah when it was being repaired by Kaid-Bey, and saw in the inside three deep graves, but no traces of tombs.[FN#83] Either, then, the mortal remains of the Apostle had, despite Moslem superstition,[FN#84] mingled with the dust, (a probable circumstance

[p.341] after nearly nine hundred years’ interment), or, what is more likely, they had been removed by the Shi’ah schismatics who for centuries had charge of the sepulchre.[FN#85]

And lastly, I cannot but look upon the tale of the blinding light which surrounds the Apostle’s tomb, current for ages past and still universally believed upon the authority of the attendant eunuchs, who must know its falsehood, as a priestly gloss intended to conceal a defect.

I here conclude the subject, committing it to some future and more favoured investigator.  In offering the above remarks, I am far from wishing to throw a doubt upon an established point of history.  But where a suspicion of fable arises from popular “facts,” a knowledge of man and of his manners teaches us to regard it with favouring eye.[FN#86]

[FN#1] Others add a fourth, namely, the Masjid al-Takwa, at Kuba. [FN#2] The Moslem divines, however, naïvely remind their readers, that they are not to pray once in the Al-Madinah Mosque, and neglect the other 999, as if absolved from the necessity of them.  The passage in the text merely promises 1000 blessings upon that man’s devotion who prays at the Prophet’s Mosque. [FN#3] The visitor, who approaches the Sepulchre as a matter of religious ceremony, is called “Zair,” his conductor “Muzawwir,” whereas the pilgrim at Meccah becomes a “Haji.”  The Imam Malik disapproved of a Moslem’s saying,