The strict monotheism of Islam does not allow for much mythological embellishment, and only reluctantly were the scriptural revelations of the Qurʾān elaborated and enlarged by commentators and popular preachers. Muslim maritime, agricultural, and technological innovations, as well as much East Asian technology via the Muslim world, made their way to western Europe in one of the largest technology transfers in world history. As something else I have deluded myself with I had this kind of fire effect as well on two different occasions much later after the living water. Of the three great civilizations of western Eurasia and North Africa, that of Christian Europe began as the least developed in virtually all aspects of material and intellectual culture, well behind the Islamic states and Byzantium. But as a component of European culture, the Crusade ideal remained prominent, even in the 15th and 16th centuries, when the powerful Ottoman Empire indeed threatened to sweep over Mediterranean and southeastern Europe. While the classical mythology of Islam, as far as it can be properly called so, is spread over the whole area of Islam, the miracles and legends around a particular Muslim saint are found chiefly in the area of his special influence (especially where his order is most popular).

By the late 19th century, it had over 150,000 members. Christian term. It seems to have come into use in the early years of the last century, and it denotes certain Protestant churches and organizations, more particularly, those that maintain the literal divine origin and inerrancy of the Bible. Thus, since the 9th century, commentators on the Qurʾān have been by far the most important witnesses for Islamic “mythology.” They wove into their explanations various strands of Persian and ancient oriental lore and relied heavily on Jewish tradition. However, in the Dialogues Hume considers an ancient argument based on the existence of evil that is intended to establish this negative conclusion. Thus, in the first three centuries, a number of ideas from the ancient Middle East, from Hellenistic and especially from Jewish and Christian traditions, were absorbed into Islam and given at least partial sanction by the theologians. The sources of Islamic mythology are first of all the Qurʾānic revelations. Though inconsistent with historical reality, these legends formed for the masses the main sources of inspiration about the famous figures of the past. Even if the names of the saints differ, the legends woven around them are very similar to each other and almost interchangeable.

You are the sentry at the door of Shri Ram’s Divine Abode. Though the mystics tried to maintain the purity of the divine word, they also attempted a spiritualization of both the Qurʾān and the popular legends that developed around it. In the area where Persian was read-from Ottoman Turkey to India-the mythological concepts of Ferdowsī’s Shāh-nāmeh are found side by side with the legends taken from ʿAṭṭār’s and Rūmī’s works. The quṣṣāṣ, or storytellers, made the Qurʾānic revelation more understandable to the masses by filling in the short texts with detailed descriptions that were not found in scripture. Although early Christian texts and later papal commands had prohibited the persecution and forced conversion of Jews, these doctrines were less carefully observed starting in the 11th century. From the 11th century onward, the biographies of the mystics often show interesting migrations of legendary motifs from one culture to another. Since early times Islamic theologians have sought to disregard the Qurʾānic interpretation of both storytellers and mystics. Heralded by a series of pogroms in both Europe and the Middle East carried out in the course of the First Crusade, a deeper and more widespread anti-Judaism came to characterize much of European history after 1100. There also emerged in this period what some historians have termed “chimeric” anti-Judaism, the conception of the Jew not only as ignorant of spiritual truth and stubbornly resistant to Christian preaching but as actively hostile to Christianity and guilty of ugly crimes against it, such as the ritual murder of Christian children and the desecration of the consecrated host of the mass.

At the age of 40, while engaged in a meditative retreat, Muhammad received his first revelation from God through the Angel Gabriel. The First Crusade had been launched to liberate the Holy Land from Islamic rule, and later Crusades were undertaken to defend the original conquest. Since, for the Muslims, the Qurʾān is the uncreated word of God (the text revealed to Muhammad is considered an earthly manifestation of the eternal and uncreated original in heaven), it contains every truth, and whatever is said in it has been the object of meditation and explanation through the centuries. Muslims, on the other hand, possessed neither the historical status of Jews nor their place in salvation history (the course of events from Creation to the Last Judgment). The Jews’ restricted status after that time encouraged many of them to turn to moneylending, which only served to increase Christian hostility (Christians were forbidden to lend money to other Christians). This form of anti-Judaism resulted in massacres of Jews, usually at moments of high social tension within Christian communities.