There is much in modern Muslim practice which would have been familiar to seventh-century Christians, and which is likely to have been borrowed from the Christian practice which Muhammad observed: the fast of Ramadan has the intensity of early Christian observance of Lent, and the characteristic prostration of Muslim prayer was then normal in the Christian Middle East, where it still survives in some traditional Christian communities. Prayer mats, still one of the most familiar features of the mosque today, were extensively used by Christian monks as far apart as Syria and Northumbria or
...more
