The ridiculous vision they tell of Muhammad,
Chapter 14

Fourteenthly, it is necessary to consider what fictitious vision Muhammad composed, which is an exposition of a certain <chapter> of the Quran ^[1] .

(5) For it is said in the chapter on the Children of Israel : “Praise be to Him who made His servant pass in one night from the oratory of Elharam - which is the house of Mesque - to the most remote oratory - which is the holy house in Jerusalem - about which we have blessed” etc. ^[2]

(8) The explanation of this sentence is that one day Mohammed was singing the morning hymn. And when he had finished he said to the men: O you, he said, men, understand. Late in the evening, after I had departed from you, Gabriel came to me after the last evening hymn and said to me: O Mohammed, God hasten to you that you may visit him. To whom he said: And where shall I visit him? And Gabriel said: In the place where he is.

(13) And he brought me a beast larger than a donkey and smaller than a mule, and his name was Elberahk ^[3] , and he said to me: Mount this one and ride all the way to the holy house. And when I was about to ascend, | 209v | the beast fled. And he said to him: Stand firm, for it is Muhammad who is about to ascend. The beast answered: Has he been sent for him? Gabriel answered: Yes. And the beast said: I will not allow him to ascend unless he first prays to God for me. But I interceded for the beast with my God, and mounted the beast and it walked, sitting on me, with a slow step, and placed the hoof of its foot in the horizon of its sight. And so I came to the holy house in a space less than the twinkling of an eye ^[4] . And Gabriel was with me and brought me to the rock in the holy house in Jerusalem. And Gabriel said: Come down, for from the rock you will ascend into heaven. And I went down. And Gabriel fastened the beast Elberak with a circle to the rock, and carried me on his shoulders up to heaven.

(27) And when we had come to the heaven of the world, Gabriel knocked at the gate and it was said to him: Who is it? He answered: I am Gabriel. And it was said to him again: And who is with you? He answered: Muhammad. And the gatekeeper said: Has he been sent for him? Gabriel answered: Yes. And he opened the gate for us and I saw a nation of angels, and bending my knees twice for them I poured out a prayer.

(32) And after that Gabriel took me and led me to the second heaven. And there was a distance between one heaven and the other of a journey of five hundred years. And as in the first he said that he knocked and answered, so throughout all the heavens, even to the seventh heaven.

(35) In which seventh heaven he describes that he saw a people of angels. The length of each angel was like the world many thousand times, each of whom had seven hundred thousand heads, and on each head seven hundred thousand mouths, and on each mouth seven hundred thousand tongues praising God in seven hundred thousand languages. And he looked upon one angel weeping and asked the cause of his weeping, and answered: They are guilty. But he himself prayed for him.

(41) And thus, he says, Gabriel commended me to another angel and he to another and so on until I stood before God and his tribunal. And ^God touched me with his hand between the shoulders so much so that the coldness of his hand reached even to the marrow of my spine . And God said to me: I have imposed on you and your people fifty prayers.

(46) And when I had descended to the fourth heaven, Moses advised me to ascend again to relieve myself because my people were not able to do so much. And on the first return I obtained remission of ten, up to the fourth time; and on the fifth return from the fourth to the seventh, there remained only five prayers. And when Moses had said, "Nor will they be able to do this," I did not ascend any more because of the confusion of ascending so many times; but returning to Albarak, I rode back to the house of Mesque. And the time of all this was less than a tenth part of the night.

"That vision is more about what we have left behind," says the actor, "than what we have narrated."

(55) And when Muhammad had told this fiction to all nations, sixty thousand men departed from his law. And when they said to him, "Ascend into heaven while we are watching by day and let us see the angels meeting," he did not recognize his falsehood but said, "Praise be to my God! Am I anything but one of men and a messenger?"

(60) And so in the chapter of the Prophets he tells of those who complained that miracles were performed by him thus: They said of Muhammad, namely: "You have listened to dreams, but you have composed blasphemies, or perhaps you have composed poetry; come to us at least with one miracle, as those who were sent before you." He answers: "We have destroyed, says God, cities before those who did not believe. Will they themselves believe?" And how will they demand miracles from him? He will answer them that "those who were before you did not believe in miracles, nor would you believe in miracles, nor will you believe except by the sword."

(67) Listen then, you Mahometists: if you verify the Koran, it is he who affirms that Mahomet performed no miracle. But there were far more whom the sword consumed than who followed him freely ^[6] , as was clear above .

 (71) This mere fabrication of the vision aforesaid should suffice to refute whatever Muhammad said and did. For, as has been often said above, the Holy Spirit did not allow him to lie except in such a way that | 210v | it is clear that every man would easily perceive the fabrication. For sometimes he states unheard-of miracles about himself, sometimes he says that he performed no miracles, sometimes he says that he is only a messenger and a man, sometimes he is more than an angel and intercedes for angels. And why did he need a donkey or a beast from Mecca to Jerusalem who went from Jerusalem to the last heaven without a donkey? And how could heaven endure so many splendors of angels who said that when an angel appeared to him, he always fell to the ground, and foamed and was shaken and his hands and feet were bent? For in the aforesaid vision he does not state that he was raptured, but says that he ascended in body and soul together ^[7] ; a sign of which is that he says that God touched him with his hand between the shoulders and felt a coldness ^[8] down to the marrow of his spine. Therefore, he places both angels and God as situated in a corporeal dimension.