RELIGION AND ETHICS.
The Book of Religion and Ftmpire. A Semi-official Defence and Exposition of Islam wlitten by order at the (:curt bpd with the assistance of the Caliph Mutawakkil (A.n. 47-861). By 'Ali Tabari. Translated, with a critical apparatus, from au apparently unique 1.1S. in the john Rylands Library by A. Mingana, D.D. (Manchester -University Press.) The author of this interesting Apologia, 'Ali ibn Rabban of Tabaristan (the Persian Caspian province now called Wizen- dartm), was by birth and education Christian, by nationality a Persian, and by profession a physician. In this last capacity he was attached to Mitzyttr, of the noble Persian house of Qaren, who, striving to rid his country of the Arab yoke imposed upon it two centuries earlier, was defeated, captured and put to death by the Caliph's troops about A.D. 840. Our author, thanks to his skill in medicine (" }thaws," the greatest and most original of all the so-called Arabian " physicians, was his pupil), was taken into the Caliph's service, and, whether from conviction or expediency, embraced Islam. In this book he sets forth in detail the reasons which led him to change his faith and to prefer the religion of Muhammad to that of Christ. As he was a well-educated and scientifically minded man, well acquainted not only with the Christian and Muhammadan but also with the Jewish scriptures, his book should be of exceptional interest to missionaries as well as to Orientalists. The translator seems to have done his work well, but until we have the Arabic text (which Dr. Mingana promises us in the course of this year) it is impossible to speak positively on this point, since the only known manuscript of the book is that now belonging to the John Rylands Library at Manchester. A large portion of the work deals with prophecies in the Old and New Testaments fulfilled, in the author's view, by the advent of the Prophet Muhammad.
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