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itself, that when Othman came to be Caliph, he found it necessary, to call it in again to be put into a better shape: and therefore having commanded all to bring in their copies under the pretence of correcting them by the original in the keeping of Haspha, he caused them all to be burned, and then published the Alcoran, new modelled by him now used; of which, having ordered four copies to be written out fair, he deposited the first of them at Mecca, and the second in Medina, the third he sent into Erack, or Chaldea, and the fourth into Syria. The three first were after a while all lost but the last of them, several ages after, was said to be preserved at Damascus, in a mosque there, which had been, formerly the church of St. John the Baptist. This was done in the 32nd year of the Hegira, in the year 652, twenty-one years after the death of the Impostor; after which time the book underwent no other correction.
On Mahomet's first appearing publicly as a prophet, the peoplo laughed at him, for the ridiculousness of his pretence, some called him a sorcerer, and a magician; others, a liar, an impostor, and a teller of old fables; of which he often complains in his Alcoran; so that for the first year he prevailed nothing among them, or got any thing else by his publishing those chapters of his Alcoran, which ho had then composed, or his preaching to them the doctrine of them, but scorn and contempt. But this did not discourage him from still proceeding in his design, which he managed with great art; for he was a man of a ready wit, and a very acceptable address. He bore all affronts without seeming to resent any; and applied himself to all sorts of people, without contemning the meanest; was very courteous both in giving and receiving
