In spite of Muḥammad's boast that he was the last of the prophets, many of his followers claimed to be prophets. As a rule little is known about these claimants but there are exceptions.

The word gōsān is known to occur twice in Persian literature. One passage is in the poem Vīs u Rāmīn, now shown to be of Parthian origin. Here, while the king Mōbad is feasting with his wife and his brother Rāmīn, a gōsān-i navāgar sings to them. His song is of a lofty tree, shading the whole earth. Beneath it is a sparkling spring, with sand in its sweet water. A bull of Gīlān grazes by it, drinking the water and eating the blossoms at its brink. “May this tree continue to cast its shade,” ends the gōsān, “the water ever flowing from the spring, the bull of Gīlān ever grazing at it!” His pretty song was well calculated, however, to frustrate this pious wish; for it was in fact a dangerous and provocative allegory, the tree representing Mōbad himself, the spring his wife Vīs, and the bull his brother Rāmīn, the queen's lover. This meaning the king instantly divined; but his rage flared up, not against the gōsān, but against his brother, on whom he sprang to kill him.

The appearance of Richard Bell's Introduction to the Qur'ān is a suitable occasion for considering the general principles underlying the detailed dating of the Qur'ān in his translation. This leads on to the question of the extent to which even approximate dates can be assigned to the various sections, and also to an estimate of advances to be expected in this branch of Qur'ānic studies. Bell's work further raises questions of interpretation, but these are not discussed here except in so far as they bear on the dating.

According to the Deb-ther Sṅon-po of ẖgos Lo-tsa-ba the lha-hhaṅ of Rgyal Lug-lhas in Hphan-po was founded by Sna-nam Rdo-rjedbaṅ-phyug in a.d. 1012 during the early years of the restoration of Buddhism after its suppression by Glaṅ-dar-ma. The outline of that revival, known in Tibetan as- Bstan-pa phyi-dar—the Later Spreading of the Doctrine—is vague and the details scanty and uncertain. From the Deb-sṅon (Deb-ther Sṅon-po) it can be gathered that, although in Central Tibet the religion could be practised only in secret, in parts of the kingdom remote from the capital—such as Mṅa-ris in the west and Khams in the east—there remained communities of Buddhist teachers untouched by the persecution.

The contents of the Kano Chronicle have long been known to scholars from the translation by Sir Richmond Palmer. The several Arabic MSS. of the work had, for years, been lost sight of, though it was thought that there must still be copies in Kano. In 1939 an American scholar, Professor J. H. Greenberg, made a microfilm copy of a MS. which he found there. This copy can apparently no longer be traced.

The history of learning among the Arabs in the great age, i.e. from about a.d. 700 to 950 or about 80 to 340 of the Hijrah, is not so well known that we can afford to neglect any source which promises to throw light on it.