Читать книгу A Dictionary of Islam. Being a cyclopedia of the doctrines, rites, ceremonies, and customs, together with the technical and theological terms, of the Muhammadan religion онлайн

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Muḥammad T̤āhir (Majmaʿu ʾl-Biḥār, p. 225), in remarking upon the fact that in the Traditions the rivers Jaihūn and Jaihān are said to be rivers in “the garden” (al-Jannah), says the terms are figurative, and mean that the faith extended to those regions and made them rivers of paradise. And in another place (idem, p. 164) the same author says the four rivers Saiḥān (Jaxartes), Jaihān (Jihon), Furāt (Euphrates), and Nil (Nile), are the rivers of Paradise, and that the rivers Saiḥān and Jaihān are not the same as Jaihūn and Jaihān, but that these four rivers already mentioned originally came from Paradise to this earth of ours.

EDUCATION. Education without religion is to the Muḥammadan mind an anomaly. In all books of Traditions there are sections specially devoted to the consideration of knowledge, but only so far as it relates to a knowledge of God, and of “God’s Book.” (See Ṣaḥīḥu ʾl-Buk͟hārī, Bābu ʾl-ʿIlm.) The people who read the “Book of God” are, according to the sayings of the Prophet, described as “assembling together in mosques, with light and comfort descending upon them, the grace of God covering them, and the angels of God encompassing them round about.” The chief aim and object of education in Islām is, therefore, to obtain a knowledge of the religion of Muḥammad, and anything beyond this is considered superfluous, and even dangerous. Amongst Muḥammadan religious leaders there have always been two classes—those who affect the ascetic and strictly religious life of mortification, such as the Ṣūfī mystics and the Faqīrs [FAQIR]; and those who, by a careful study of the Qurʾān, the Traditions, and the numerous works on divinity, have attained to a high reputation for scholarship, and are known in Turkey as the ʿUlamāʾ, or “learned,” and in India, as Maulawīs.