Deut:33-Paran is a name of Meccan Hill ?

Arrival of Mosha in Midian
We all know too well that Moses stayed in Midian which was called Yathrib (Medina), where Jethro taught him how to judge and concealed his identity from Pharoah by giving him the name Moseh. Their (Muhammad and Moses') flight to the same city is not without significance for us. No doubt, The Noble Qur'an and Bible both concur in stating that Moses found shelter in Midian. But in that matter of localising Midian, scholars have differed, even The Bible is not consistent in that. Sometimes it is shown to be situated to the south of Sinai Peninsula on the coast of sea. (Exodus 3:1) Elsewhere, it is shown to lie inland on the route from Aqba to Mecca, thus it is stated in the First Book of the Kings--11:18 to be situated between Edom and Paran on the way to Egypt, id est., to the north-east of Sinai.
This conflict is admitted in Encyclopaedia-Biblica in the following words written in connection with Midianites: 'As to their geographical position which is of the comprehension of HISTORICAL narrative of much importance we also meet with some diversity of tradition.' Ptlomely's view is also mentioned there, who alleged the existence of two Midians,one,to the south of Sinai Peninsula and the other to lie near Haqal and Maqna.Midian which is shown in the maps of today is of much later origin. The original city was destroyed by an earthquake in the time of shu'aib who is known in the bible by the name of jethro and who then migrated and founded another city which he named YATHRIB and which is known as MEDINA to-day.In the bible,the midianites are shown to have descended from Midian, who was the son of Abrham from his thrid wife, keturah (genesis 25:4..chronicles,1--1:32). AT one place Jethro priest is stated to be a MIDIANITE (exodus,3:1), and at another,kenite..o 0(contradiction).. (judges,1:16). But these Midianites are called Ishmaelites at many places (Genesis 37:25- 28; Judges 8:24). Again with reference to their nomadic way of life,they have been called ARABS in Encyclopaedia Biblica, and that Muhammad s.a.w. dwelt in the Northern part of the Hijaz.
It is stated as regard the second son of Midian in Genesis is named Epher who is identified, by Knoble, with the tribe of Ghifar which in the time of Muhammad s.a.w. had encampments near Medina(Encyclopaedia Biblica--see under Midian).
We can easily conclude that bible throws no light on the controversy as regard the place where Moses went after his flight.but all agree in this that Midian is a place somewhere to the northern part of Hijaz, near Medina where Midianites dwelt.
On the contrary,Arabian traditions are more consistent.Rejection of prophet Shu'aib (Jethro a.s.) was punsihed with the destruction of the city of Midian. Jethro or Shu'aib a.s. left that city and founded another and called it Yathrib after his own name; and Midianites dwelt in its suberbs. Almost all the Qur'anic references to Midian stand for the Midianites, Except in one case where a particular place is meant which was destroyed by an earthquake.The Qur'anic episode *wama ward..medina* doesnt refer to the city of Midian where water was available in abundance, being close to the sea, but relates to a well of Midianites which was not properly fed with water. Moses was taught and brought up by jethro,to this Holy Qur'an has refrred in these words:"then you stayed for years among the people of Midian,then you came hither as ordained,O Moses."(Qur'an--20--40)

The Origin of Medina The editor of enclyclopaedia of islam has tried to prove that medina was not an arabic word but an Arminian one and was borrowed by muhammad(s.a.w)from the jews.This thesis was reproduced by Dr.Zwimmer in his periodical,The muslim world, it is stated there that this word has been mentioned eighteen times in the Qur'an--four times in meccan suras and fourteen times in Medinah suras, barring one occasion,it has been used with reference to the jews and israelites or their history;and so Muhammad (s.a.w.) was induced to call his own city after that name.We venture to suggest that there is a word *deen* which is common to Arabic and Hebrew and means to rule,to govern and to judge.In arabic, it has been used for *requittal* and *yaumaddeen* means the day of judgement and *madeena* the place of judgement.

Moses is an Arabic name This name was given to moses by jethro who gave him shelter and changed his name to conceal his identity from Pharoah.Moses in Arabic is derived from *ies maas* and means,one touched by G-d or one found by G-d, The pharse one touched by G-d has been interpreted in the bible in two ways.Sometimes,it signifies infliction of pain or punishment as in the case of Jacob a.s. who began to limp with the touch of G-d or Job a.s.who fell in trouble.Again,it is used for being purified and granted favour.Both these interpretations are applicable to Moses,and go to establish his identity with the holy prophet muhammad s.a.w. Both of them were intensely persecuted bu their enemies,on the one hand,and were recipient of divine favours at the same time, on the other.
The Qur'an gives a testimony:"Surely We have sent to you an apostle, a witness,against you, as we sent an apostle to Pharoah."(Qur'an:73:15)

The letter which the holy prophet muhammad s.a.w sent to the christian ruler,begins with this passage
"From Muhammad,prophet of Allah,who is the companion of Moses and his brother and who verifies that which Moses brought,hearken,Allah hath made it known to ye,O ye believers of Torah surely you will find in it news of Muhammad,prophet of Allah.I ask you in the name of Allah to inform me whether you find in the book sent to you by Allah,an injunction to accept Muhammad.If you fo not find this so then i do not urge upon you for verily the right way has become clearly distinct from error."(Ibn-i-hisham..vol,1,p.196)

The Last Prophecy of Moses
Consider the fig and the olive,and mount sinai and this city made secure,certainly we created man in the best make."(Al Qur'an,95:1-4)
The fig and the olive stand for prophethood,spiritual and temporal rule,according to theBible. The fig refers to the blessings of the prophethood and spiritual eminence in the israelites and by the olive is meant their temporal greatness.Mount sinai was the place where the law was given to Moses.
In the Qur'an,the fig and the olive signify respectively the *law given on mount sinai and that revealed in the sacred city of mecca which goes by the name of bacca in bible.
The consideration of the mission of Moses as well as that of muahammad a.s.w.s. leads one to conclude that man has been created in the best moulds viz..good as G-d is good.It is by neglecting the injunctions given to them by prophets that people degenerate.Moses foresaw the subsequent transgression of jewsand so had to exhort them in his last days and gave them his last words.
We give below its translation: "And he said,the L-rd came from sinai and rose up from seir unto them;he shined forth from mount paran, and he came with ten thousands of saints:from his right hand went a fiery law for them."(Deutronomy,33:2)
Coming of the Lord from Mount Sinai
As already pointed out that it was Mount Sinai where Moses received the Law and the Fig was the symbol of the spiritual development of the Israelites.Hosea prophet refers to this as follows:
I found Israel like grapes in the wilderness;I saw your fathers as the first ripe in the FIG tree at her first time."(Hosea,9:10)
While Isaiah says:
And the glorious beauty,which is on the head of the fat valley,shall be a fading flower and as the hasty(fig)fruit before the summer;which when he that looketh upon it seeth,while it is yet in his hand he eateth it up.(Isaiah,28:4)
There are other numerous other places in the bible where a similar refrence is made.(Vide Mosea, 3:12, jeremiah,24:2, kings1=4:25, isaiah,34:4)
Similarly,Olive stood for them as the symbol of their temporal greatness. David is reported to have said:
"But i am in the house of L-rd as the green Olive tree."
Jeremiah says:
"the L-rd called thy name,a green olive tree,fair and of goodly fruit."(jeremiah,11:16, also see Mosea 14:6)

Thus the Fig and the Olive stand with the israelites for the blessings of prophethood and temporal greatness. Both these blessings were promised to the children of Isaac and Ishmael through Abraham a.s.w.s. The promise came to pass.Moses had descended from the Levi who was one of the sons of Jacob,and G-d spoke to him on the Mount Sinai and he was given a comprehensive Law and was responsible for the regeneration of the Israelites,which was identified with the coming of the L-rd on Mount Sinai.

The Lord rose up from Seir
Some scholars hold that the rising of the L-rd from Seir stands for the christ a.s. and the Law which was given to him.But there is nothing in the text of the O.T. to support this allegation;instead,the Bible explicitly states that Edom was the son of Esau who was the son of Isaac and hat the children of Edom dwelt on Seir.Edom is known as the father of Edomites.Gradually these people established their supremacy there and very often came into conflict with the rulers of the house of Judah.Mount Seir is derived from Arabic word "sha3eer" meaninf "hair" and was so-called on the account of its verdant surface in those days. The blessings which Esau and his children received were the result of Isaac's parayer which is mentioned in the book of Genesis in these words:
"And Isaac,his father answered and said unto him,behold,thy dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above;and by thy sword shalt thou live and shalt serve thy brother;and it shall come to pass when thou shalt have the dominion,that thou shalt break his yoke from off thy neck."(Genesis,27,39-40)
The combined prayers of Isaac and Abraham bore fruit (jeremiah,49:7)It is said that prophet job was an edomite. So much do we gather from historical records about the rising up of the L-rd from Seir.

The L-rd shined forth from Mount Paran
According to the christian and jewish scholars,paran is a plain which extends from the northern border of Bar Shaba to Mount Sinai,which is bounded by Canaan in the North and by Mount Sinai in the south with Egypt to its west and Mount Seir to its east.Others think that it is situated on the western slope of Mount Sinai.
But the researchers of Old Arabian geographers and some christian scholars go to prove that Paran was the name given to the hills of Mecca.In the ARABIC translation of the Samiri Torah,which was published in 1851 a.d. Paran is shown to be situated in Hijaz,thus:
And he (Ishmael)dwelt in the wilderness of Paran(situated in hijaz) and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt."(Genesis,21:21)
This translation remained intact for a long time,but when the muslims invited the attention of the christian world to this prophecy as a testimony to the truth of the Prophet Muhammad s.a.w,the translation was amended and subsequent versions now show Paran in the locality of Mount Sinai. WE SHALL NOW TAKE UP THIS MOOT POINT.

Paran is the name of a Meccan hill
Again reference to the Biblical verse which appears thus:
"he dwelt in the un-tilled valley of Paran and his mother took him a wife out of the land of Egypt."
The phrase "madbar paran" is significant,in hebrew "madbar" means "uninhabited tract" of "region un-tilled", " a desert"(genesis,21:21)sterile and solitary region...this word is also used metephorically for a sterile woman(see jeremiah, 2:31, Isaiah,27:1)
It is an admitted fact that the term un-tilled valley,has invariably been used for Mecca. It's an alleged in encyclopaedia Biblica that:it's not easy to understand all the old testament passages relative to Paran." One is thus left with no alternative but to subscribe to the view suggested by Arabian Geographers and consider Paran to be the name of a Meccan Hill.
Jerome the antiquarian of great repute and Eusebius,Ecclesiastical historian writes that'Pharan is a town over against Arabia,southward,three days journey from Aila eastward. Conflicting refrences as given in the bible relative to Paran can guide us but little.All that we can ascertain from the book of Genesis(genesis, 21:21)is this that Ishmael dwelt in the valley of Paran. History tells us that Ishamel had twelve sons who settled down in different parts of Arabia.Thus Paran is the place where the children of Abraham thru Ishmael dwelt at the time when the bible was compiled;and that WAS ARABIA.
Encyclopaedia Biblica further explains that 'the Assyrian inscriptions several time mention the Kidru or Kadru,once in an inscription of Asur-i-Banipal,the name is used even as a synonym of Arabia.'One significant that is recorded on the authority of St.Paul in his epistles to the galatians:'which things are an allegory;for these are the TWO COVENANTS;the one from the mount Sinai,which gendereth to bondage,which is Agar.For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia,and answereth to jerusalem which now is,and is in ondage with her children, but jerusalem which is above is free,which is the mother of us all.'
Mr.Paul, here, refers to two mount Sinai, one in relation to Sarah and the other to Agar,similarly he distiguishes two jerusalems. He regards that the new jerusalem BELONGS TO AGAR.All these places are spoken allegorically to say that there are two tribes, one descended from Isaac thru Sarah and the other from Ishmael thru Agar;and that the coming of the l-rd on mount Sinai stands for the gift of prophethood to Moses who represented the Children of Sarah and also to Muhammad s.a.w. who was like unto Moss and who traced lineage from Agar.Paran may also be considered in this way.
Biblical text does no appear to lend any support to those who hold that Paran existed in the wilderness of Sinai. The fourth book of Moses called numbers distiguishes the wilderness of Sinai from that of Paran.(galatians,4:4-26) The book of Genesis drawa distinction between Mount Seir and Mount Paran.(Numbers,10:12)At another place(genesis,14:6) we are told that Paran is reached after passing thru Hazeroth and that on the way back from Canaan( Palestine), Paran comes before Kadesh(Numbers,12:16,13:3)which thus appears to lie on the northern border of Paran.(numbers,13:25-26)
The first book of Kings tells us that Paran lies on the route to Midian and Egypt and that Midian is situated in Hijaz. The view that Paran is on the western slope of mount Sinai is erroneous for the children of Ishmael never dwelt there. The bible identifies Hagarites with the children of Agar with whom Israelites made war(Genesis,14:67). Later on this name was given to the Muslims by the Christians,while the Assyrians derived the verb "ahgar" and "ethhaggar" from the word Hagar which meant 'become a muslim' and in Assyrian "mahgaraya" stands for a Muslim.
The greeks coined different words from this derivation to apply them to muslims.The book of Baruch,a non-canonical book of Torah also mentions Hagarites and considers them as a people of wisdom and learning.All this goes to show that Ishmael settled down in Arabis and this is further supported by the fact that even Christians themselves called the chidren of Hagar,Muslims.
Habakkuk says:
Habakkuk says:"G-d came from Teman and the HOLY ONE from mount PARAN."(chronicles,1-5:10,20)This clearly implies that Paran was in the South and Hijaz is to the south of Syria.

He came with ten thousands of Saints.
The recent translation of Bible have substituted millions of angels for "ten thousands of saints" given in the earlier translations,perhaps with a view to render the prophecy obscure,since this portion of the prophecy not only helps to localise the place of Paran but also serves to establish the identity of that prophet beyond the shadow of doubt.
THE HISTORY OF THE SO CALLED "HEBREW" PROPHETS, NAY THE ANNALS OF THE WORLD POIN OUT BUT ONE PERSON AND THAT OF HABIB-UL-ALLAH MUHAMMAD S.A.W,IN THIS CONNECTION MOSES A.S. PROPHESIED ABOUT HIM ONLY TWO THOUSANDS YEARS AGO,BUT ENOHC SAID THE SAME THING MUCH EARLIER ,AND IF WE WERE TO CONSIDER THE PROPHECIES OF THE HINDU SCRIPTURES THEN WE FIND A SIMILAR PROPHECY BEING MENTIONED BY THE RISHIS IN THE VEDAS MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO(THEY,HINDUS,SAY THAT THEIR SCRIPTURE IS THE MOST ANCIENT)THUS THIS PROPHECY STANDS UNRIVALLED AND UNIQUE.
The Hebrew text:
There is a word "raboos"which occurs in the text which is translated as ten thousands.This word has occurred at places in the books of the prophets,and is derived from "rabs" which means "ten thousand"(habakkuk,3:3) The hebrew-english dictionary has shown "raboos" to mean a myriad,ten thousands and "sheetee raboos" twice ten thousand,sometimes "saa" in "raboos" is understood with no alteration in the meaning.(vide,nehemiah,7:71)
Thus the recent attempts to render this word into 'million angels,'are quite ARBITRARY.The next important word in this regard is "qoorash" which is NOW being translated into "angels".Its primary meaning is "pure" and "holy" and is applied to every pure and holy thing, person or people or even to a place,viz., "maqoom ha-qaroosh"(vide chronicles,1,29:7;Ezra 2:64;nehemiah 7:77) Hence "marboos qaroosh", according to the dictionary and usage of the Bible, means: with ten thousands of saints.

FROM HIS "RIGHT" HAND WENT A FIERY LAW
Both Hebrew and Arabic,"ain"(the right hand)stands metaphorically for blessings,power and government.Thus "from his right hand went a fiery law." means that he will have to make religious wars.In the eyes of the Christians,the greatest objectionable feature in the Holy Porphet's life was his striving for religious wars.The books of prophets have met this objection in anticipation by declaring that his(promised prophet's)bow will rest in the cloud(said by noah of bible,manu of hindu scriptures,yim of zuruastrians) meaning thereby that his wars will be tinged deep with clemency.Elsewhere it was declared that when he would come with ten thousands saints,he would lay down his weapons,that is to say,his wars would not be those of bloodshed,but of peace and amity,and his coming would be like the coming of G-d Himself,inasmuch as justice and equity would then predominate and none would be dealt with unjustly.

The prophecy does NOT relate to JesusThe jews and the Christians alike expected punishment for their enemies at the hand of Christ.Christ disappointed them,inspite of his own assertion that he had come to set on fire,i.e.,to annihilate the foes.The Christians then sought the counsel of despair and declared that he would sit at the right hand of G-d in heaven and hold judgement on the people.Since the prophecy was NOT intended for him that FIERY LAW was given to him not in his right hand but IN HIS LEFT, according to the accepted belief of the Christians(most of them,since few sects regard jesus ONLY as a prophet, furthermore there are sects which differ between father and son)and the jews believed that too because with them,a culprit was generally given his chargesheet in his left hand.The Promised Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. alone received the Fiery Law with his right hand.It was truly said by John(Elias):
"I indeed batize you with water into repentance:but he that cometh AFTER me....shall baptize you with ...fire."(Matthew, 3:11)
Jesust too was there in the time of Elias,but he also baptized with water, and it was left to the Holy Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. to fulfill the prophecy of Elias.Only those were called muslims who leapt and plunged into the Fiery War which was,in fact,the Baptism of Fire,and they were baptized therewith. After giving so many proofs one can draw but one conclusion;the prophecy was fulfilled to its minutest detail in the person of Muhammad s.a.w.,and he alone stands forth in the likeness of Moses a.s.