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always the same, namely that a little while before, the Prophet has appeared to some devout man (generally called Abdallah or Çâliḥ) and revealed to him that the patience of Allah is exhausted by the ever-increasing sins of the Moslims; that great calamities are soon to come upon the world as a foreshadowing of the day of Judgment, but that the Lord has granted to Mohammad a period of respite in order that he may make some last efforts for the conversion of this people.
If all believers will now show themselves zealous of good works, if they will prepare themselves by fasting and almsgiving and break off all communion with those who refuse to believe in this vision and remain backward in the fulfilment of their duties, there still remains for them a chance of salvation.
A chief object of these waçiyyats, which are usually composed in the most slovenly style, appears to be to assure certain profits to those who distribute them, for they contain repeated and emphatic injunctions to hearers or readers to recompense the bearers of the tidings.
It is especially in the more distant parts of the Mohammedan world, such as West Africa and the East Indies, that the waçiyyat, in spite of its re-appearance at stated intervals, finds most widespread belief. Its dissemination always results in scattered Mohammedan revivals, coupled with religious intolerance.
In the Indische Gids of July 1884 I published a translation, with notes, of such an "admonition". It appeared in 1880 and was circulated during that year throughout the Indian Archipelago, and its consequences excited a good deal of attention. Since that time various Malay, Javanese and Sundanese editions of the wasiat nabi, as the natives call it, have come into my possession. They show different dates, extending over a period of about 200 years.
I discovered also that these treatises are in fact current at Medina[1] but do not attract the serious attention of the public in the holy cities. We learn from Louis Rinn[2] that they enjoy a great reputation in West Africa.
About 1891 there descended again upon the East Indian Archipelago
- ↑ In 1884, when I first obtained a copy, having then no data to guide me, I felt some doubt as to their being genuine Medina publications, owing to their clumsiness of arrangement and defects of style. But these phenomena are fully explained by the low social position of their editors.
- ↑ Marabouts et Khouan (Algiers 1884) p. 130. ff.
