and al-Shām lay a city larger than Baghdad, Mosul, Isfahan, and Egypt, whose circumference would take three days to travel—and the like—one would immediately know he was lying, for such a matter is precisely the sort of thing people’s energies would surely relay were it real. When no widespread, recurrent report of it exists, the teller is recognized as a liar.

The same holds if someone were to claim that on a Friday—or on the day of Eid—the preacher was killed and the people therefore performed no Friday prayer, yet this news never became common knowledge; or that one of the world’s kings had been assassinated, but the report never spread; or that a prophet had been sent between Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, or after Muhammad, bringing a book equal to the Qur’an or the Gospel, a prophet whom many people followed while many others denied—such a statement is known to be false, for an affair of this magnitude could not but become well known and widely transmitted.

Likewise, if someone alleged that Quraysh—or anyone else—had confronted the Qur’an with a book matching it, publicised it, and thereby nullified the proof of Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, this, too, is decisively false; had such a thing occurred, abundant motives and resolve would have driven people to report it. And likewise, were someone to claim