"Is it Mahomet," said he to Omar and the multitude, "or the God of Mahomet, whom you worship?
The God of Mahomet liveth forever; but the apostle was a mortal like ourselves, and according to his own prediction, he has experienced the common fate of mortality." He was piously interred by the hands of his nearest kinsman, on the same spot on which he expired: [151] Medina has been sanctified by the death and burial of Mahomet; and the innumerable pilgrims of Mecca often turn aside from the way, to bow, in voluntary devotion, [152] before the simple tomb of the prophet.

[153] [Footnote 149: The epilepsy, or falling-sickness, of Mahomet is asserted by Theophanes, Zonaras, and the rest of the Greeks; and is greedily swallowed by the gross bigotry of Hottinger, (Hist.Orient.p.10, 11,) Prideaux, (Life of Mahomet, p.

12,) and Maracci, (tom.ii.Alcoran, p.
762, 763.) The titles (the wrapped-up, the covered) of two chapters of the Koran, (73, 74) can hardly be strained to such an interpretation: the silence, the ignorance of the Mahometan commentators, is more conclusive than the most peremptory denial; and the charitable side is espoused by Ockley, (Hist.

of the Saracens, tom.i.p.

301,) Gagnier, (ad Abulfedam, p.9.Vie de Mahomet, tom.i.p.