down. Al Baizawi says that it means: "And thou threwest not, (O Muhammad, a throw which thou wouldest cause to reach their eyes, and thou couldest not do so], when thou didst throw [i.e. when thou camest with the appearance of throwing), but God threw (effected what was the object of the throw, and caused it to reach the eyes of them all." But Al Baizawi adds: "It is said that its meaning is, 'Thou didst not cast fear when thou didst cast the gavel, but God cast fear into their hearts.' And it is said that it came down in reference to a spear with which he ¹ pierced Ubai ibn Khalaf on the day of Uhud, and there proceeded no blood from him;² he began to grow feeble until he died: or about the shooting of the arrow which he ¹ shot on the day of Khaibar near the fortress; it reached Kinanah ³ ibn Abi'l Huqaiq on his horse. And the great majority are in favour of the first view." From this commentary it is clear that there is no certainty that the passage which we are considering refers to Badr. In fact, it may refer to Uhud or Khaibar, and not to the gravel which Muhammad threw, but to an arrow which he shot or a spear which he hurled. But in any case it does not prove that a miracle vas wrought by Muhammad on any one of these occasions. Nay, the passage denies that Muhammad succeeded in casting the gravel into his adversaries' eyes or in killing Ubai or Kinanah, saying that the agent was not Muhammad, but God. If we accept the verse as referring to the battle of Badr, we must remember that it is not at all a rare thing for a general to act in some such way, in order to encourage his followers and disconcert his foes. If the result is a victory, no one ever fancies that it is thereby proved that there was anything supernatural or miraculous about the action referred to. Nor can the shooting of a man with an arrow or the

piercing of a man with a spear (if we accept the other traditions) be regarded as miraculous.

Besides these two passages some Muslims are of opinion that the words "evident signs" (ءَآياَتٍ بَيّناَتٍ), which occur in certain other places in the Qur'an, imply that miracles were really wrought by Muhammad. If so, it is very strange that to no such passage does a description of any such miracle or a single detail regarding it occur. When the Qur'an refers to Christ's miracles, on the contrary, it tells what some of them were (Surah iii. 43). But let us examine some of the passages in which it is asserted that the words "evident signs" denote miracles of Muhammad.

One of these is Surah lxi. 6: "Accordingly,. when he came to them with the evident (signs, they said, 'This is manifest sorcery. '" This may refer to what is said in the context regarding the promise of the coming of someone called Ahmad.¹ Or it may refer to Jesus, who is mentioned in the former part of the verse. Al Baizawi takes the latter view, for in his commentary ² he says: "The reference is to that with which he came, or to himself: and the entitling it sorcery is by way of hyperbole. And this view is supported by the reading of Hamzah and Al Kasa'i, 'This is a sorcerer'; so that the reference is to Jesus." If this commentator's explanation is correct, then this verse cannot be said to prove anything about Muhammad's miracles. Otherwise here and elsewhere the "evident signs" denote the verses of the Qur'an, which (as we have already pointed out) are in passage after passage called "signs" and "evident signs".

Should any one say that the mention of "sorcery" or "sorcerer " in Surah lxi. 6, shows that some supernatural work was performed, and that such words could not be used regarding eloquent verses like those of the Qur'an, the answer can readily be given from the Qur'an itself. For example, in Surah xxxviii. 3, we read: "They wondered that there had come to