that when Muhammad said this to them, they were astonished, and did not venture to bring forth the Torah." This remark of the commentator is an admission that they then possessed it, as indeed is clear from the whole verse.

In Surah v. (A1 Ma'idah), ver. 47, we read: "And how shall they make thee their judge, since with them is the Torah? in it is God's judgement." Baizawi's note on this is: "An¹ expression of surprise at their making one in whom they do not believe their judge, since the judgement is announced in the Book which is with them."

We content ourselves with quoting these few passages from the Qur'an to prove what men of learning know for a certainty to be true; that is to say, that the Bible² was in existence in Muhammad's time in the hands of the "People of the Book". This proof would of itself suffice; but we have others, one of which we now proceed to adduce.

The Qur'an itself contains certain passages which it actually quotes from the Old and the New Testament. That is to say, certain verses are taken from the Bible into the Qur'an, and the Qur'an states that these verses are to be found in the Bible.

For instance, in Surah v. (Al Ma'idah), ver. 49, it is said: "And We wrote concerning them in it" (that is, in the Torah, as verses 47 and 48 state), that "Life for life, and eye for eye, and nose for nose, and ear for ear, and tooth for tooth." This is a quotation from Exod. xxi. 23-25.

Again in Surah xxi. (Al Anbiya), ver. 105 we read: "And We have written in the Psalms after the Reminder that 'As for the earth, My servants the righteous shall inherit it'." This is a quotation from Ps. xxxvii. 29. Baizawi explains "the Psalms" (ألزَبُور) as "the book of David".³

In Surah vii. (Al A'raf), ver. 38, it is written: "Verily those that have declared Our signs to be lies, and have been too proud for them, unto them the gates of heaven shall not be opened, nor shall they enter Paradise, until the camel shall pass in at the eye of the needle." Here there is a quotation from the Gospel, for the mention of the difficulty of a camel passing through the eye of a needle is found in Matt. xix. 24; Mark x. 25; and Luke xviii. 25.

These three passages, one from the Torah, the second from the Zabur, and the third from the Injil, clearly show that the Sacred Scriptures then in the hands of the Jews and Christians were those which we now possess and call by the very same names. All men of understanding will clearly perceive this. For, just as every learned man who in years to come recognizes the pieces of poetry which we have quoted in the Introduction to this Treatise as taken from such books as the Mathnavi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi, the Diwan of 'Ali ibn Abi Talib, the poems of Sa'di, or some other well-known writer, will at once conclude that these works as a whole were in existence in the present century, so every attentive reader of the Qur'an would recognize that the passages above quoted from the Bible proved the existence of the Bible in Muhammad's time. The proof is still further strengthened by the fact that the Qur'an in two of the cases actually mentions the name of the book from which it is quoting.

Besides this, many of the narratives in the Qur'an, for example that of Joseph in Surah xii. (Yusuf), are clearly those in the Bible, though sometimes told somewhat more in accord with the later traditions (يوقئون) of the Jews than with the text of the Bible, as has been shown in the book styled The Original Sources of the Qur'an (تنوير آلافهام في مصادر الأسلام). So also the Qur'an contains many other references to the Bible, of which it is unnecessary