Chapter XIII: Sickness and Death of Abu Bekr

Jumâd II., A.H. XIII. August, A.D. 634.

[Sidenote: Abu Bekr presides over the pilgrimage at Mecca. Dzul Hijj, A.H. XIII. March, A.D. 634.]

In the first year of his Caliphate, Abu Bekr was hindered by the engrossing work of repressing apostasy and rebellion, from being present at the yearly pilgrimage in Mecca. But next year he presided at the pilgrimage himself. As the party entered the vale of Mecca, the young men hastened to tell his father, who, blind from great age, was seated at his door. On his son’s approach, he arose and stood up to greet him, Abu Bekr made his camel to kneel down at the threshold, and alighting, embraced his father, who was shedding tears of delight, and kissed him between the eyes. Attâb, the governor, Soheil, and the other great men of Mecca, approached and shook the Caliph by the hand. Then they did obeisance to his father, who said: ‘These be our nobles; honour them, my son, and make much of them.’ ‘Make much of them,’ answered Abu Bekr, ‘that I do; but (mindful of his Master’s teaching), as for honour, there is none save that which cometh from the Lord alone.’ After bathing, he went forth in pilgrim garb, to kiss the Black Stone, and encompass the Holy House. The people crowded round him; and as they made mention of the Prophet, Abu Bekr wept. It was but two years since Mahomet had been amongst them, celebrating the same rites, and how much of danger and deliverance had come to pass in this short space! And so they mourned his loss. At midday, he again went through the ceremonies of the Káaba; then, sitting down beneath the shadow of the Hall of Council,[179] he commanded the citizens that, if any had complaint to make or justice to demand, he should speak. All were silent; so he praised the people and their governor. Then he arose and celebrated the midday prayer. After that he sat down again for a little, and bade them all Farewell. Then he turned to go, and departed for Medîna.[180]

[Sidenote: Abu Bekr’s sickness. Jumâd II., A.H. XIII. August, A.D. 634.]

During the summer, Abu Bekr was busied with reinforcements for the Syrian campaign. Born three years after the era of the Elephant,[181] he was now over threescore years of age; but, simple and temperate in his habits, still hale and vigorous. In the autumn, happening to bathe incautiously on a cold day, he was seized with a fever, which laid him low and obliged him to make over the presidency at public prayer to Omar.[182] When the illness had lasted for a fortnight, his friends, coming daily to ask after him, at last became anxious, and said: ‘Shall we send for the physician?’ ‘He[183] hath been to me already,’ answered Abu Bekr. ‘And what said he?’ ‘He saith to me _I am about to do that with thee which I purpose to do_.’ So they understood his meaning and were silent. Aware thus that his end was not far, he made preparation for a successor. His choice was fixed on Omar; but willing to fortify his own conviction by the sense of others, he first consulted Abd al Rahmân, who praised Omar as the fittest man, but withal inclined to be severe.--‘Which,’ responded the dying Caliph, ‘is because he saw me soft and tender-hearted; when himself the Master, he will forego much of what thou sayest. I have watched him narrowly. If I were angry with one, he would intercede in his behalf; if over lenient, then he would be severe.’ Othmân, too, confirmed his choice. ‘What is hidden of Omar,’ he said, ‘is better than that which doth appear. There is not his equal amongst us all.’[184] Talha, on the other hand, expostulated: ‘If we have suffered so much from Omar whilst thou wast yet with us to temper his severity, what will it be when thou art gone to thy Lord, there to answer for having left His people to the care of so hard a master?’ ‘Set me up,’ cried the Caliph, much excited; ‘dost thou seek to frighten me? I swear that when I meet my Lord, I will say to Him, “I have appointed as ruler over Thy people him that is the best amongst them.”’

[Sidenote: Abu Bekr appoints Omar his successor.]

Thereupon Abu Bekr called for Othmân and dictated an ordinance appointing Omar his successor. He fainted while it was being written down. On recovering, he bade Othmân to read it over. When he had heard it all, he was satisfied, and praised the Lord; ‘for,’ said he, ‘I saw thee apprehensive lest, if in the swoon I had passed away, then the people had been left in doubt.’ Upon this, he desired that the ordinance should be read in the hearing of the citizens, who had assembled in the court of the Great Mosque. Omar himself was present, and hushed the noise, that they might hear. Then, desiring to obtain the assent of the people, the dying Caliph bade his wife Asma raise him up to the window (for the Caliph’s house looked out upon the court); so she bore him, in her beautifully tattooed arms, to the window, from whence, with a great effort, he called out: ‘Are ye satisfied with him whom I have appointed over you? It is none of mine own kin, but Omar, son of Khattâb. Verily I have done my best to choose the fittest. Wherefore, ye will obey him loyally.’ The people answered with one voice, ‘Yea, we will obey.’[185]

[Sidenote: His death, 21st Jumâd II., A.H. XIII. August 22, A.D. 634.]

To the end the mind of Abu Bekr remained clear and vigorous. On the last day of his life, he gave audience, as we have seen, to Mothanna, and, grasping the critical state of affairs, commanded Omar to raise, with all despatch, a levy for Irâc. During his illness he recited these verses on the vanity of life:

There is none that owneth herds or camels but must leave them
to his heir; And whosoever taketh spoil, one day he shall be
spoiled of the same. Every traveller, wheresoe’er he wander and
however far, returneth; Excepting only the pathway of death,
from which there is no return.

At another time one repeated verses from a heathen poet supposed to be appropriate to the occasion. Abu Bekr was displeased, and said: ‘Not so; say rather (and he quoted from a passage of the Corân relating to death and judgment)--_Then the agony of death shall come in truth_. _This, O man, is what thou soughtest to avoid._’[186]

His last act was to summon Omar to his bedside, and, as his dying charge, to counsel him, which he did at great length, to temper hardness and severity with mildness and moderation. Shortly after, he sank, and feeling the agony approach, breathed his last with these words: ‘Lord, make me to die a true believer. Take me to join the blessed ones on high!’[187]

[Sidenote: and burial.]

Abu Bekr died on August 22, A.D. 634, having reigned two years and three months.[188] His body was laid out, in pursuance of his own wish, by the loving hands of Asma, and of Abd al Rahmân, his son; and he was wound in the same clothes in which he died; ‘for,’ said he, ‘new clothes befit the living, but old the mouldering body.’[189] The same Companions that bore the Prophet’s bier bore also that of Abu Bekr; and they laid him in the same grave, the Caliph’s head resting by his Master’s shoulder. Omar performed the funeral service, praying, as was customary, over the bier. The funeral procession had not far to go; it had only to cross the area in front of the Great Mosque; for Abu Bekr died in the house appointed for him by Mahomet opposite his own, and looking out, like it, upon the open court of the Sanctuary.[190]

[Sidenote: _Abu Bekr’s character._ Simple life at Al Sunh.]

During the greater part of his Caliphate, he had occupied that house. For the first six months, indeed, after Mahomet’s death, he continued to live chiefly, as he had done before, at Al Sunh, a suburb of Upper Medîna. Here he inhabited a simple dwelling made of palm stems, with the family of Habîba, the wife whom he married when he came to Medîna, and who was with child when he died, and bore him a daughter shortly after. Every morning he rode or walked to the Great Mosque, where Mahomet had lived and ruled, for the discharge of the business of the State, and to perform the daily prayers, Omar presiding in his absence. For the more important service of Friday, when a speech or sermon was delivered, he stayed at home to dye his hair and beard, and dress more carefully; and so did not appear till the time of midday prayer. In this primitive home, as elsewhere, he preserved the severe simplicity of early life, and even fed and milked the goats of the household. At the first also he continued to maintain himself by merchandise; but finding it interfere with the proper burdens of the State, he consented to forego all other occupation, and to receive a yearly allowance of six thousand dirhems for his household charges.[191]

[Sidenote: Removes his dwelling to the Great Mosque.]

Finding Al Sunh at an inconvenient distance from the Great Mosque, where, as in the time of Mahomet, the affairs of the kingdom continued to be transacted, he transferred his residence, and with it the Treasury, thither. The Exchequer of Islam was in those days but a simple one. It needed neither guard nor office of account. The tithes were given to the poor, or spent on equipage and arms. The spoil of war, and gold and silver from the mines,[192] or elsewhere, were all distributed as soon as received, or on the following morning.[193] All shared alike, the recent convert and the veteran, male and female, bond and free. As a claimant on the Moslem treasury, every believing Arab was his brother’s equal. When urged to recognise precedence in the faith as a ground of preference, he would reply, ‘That is for the Lord. He will fulfil the reward of such as have excelled, in the world to come. These gifts are but an accident of the present life.’ After his death, Omar had the treasury opened; and they found therein but a solitary golden piece, which had slipped out of the bags; so they lifted up their voices and wept, and blessed his memory. His conscience troubled him for having taken even what he did by way of stipend from the people’s money; on his death-bed, therefore, he gave command that certain lands, his private property, should be sold, and a sum equal to all that he had received refunded.

[Sidenote: Mild and gentle disposition.]

In disposition Abu Bekr was singularly mild and gentle. Omar used to say that there was no man for whom the people would more readily have laid down their life. They gave him the sobriquet of ‘the Sighing,’ because of his tender-heartedness. Excepting the solitary case in which he committed a traitor-brigand to the flames, no single act of cruelty stands against him; and for that he expressed his sorrow. It was one of the three things, he used to say, which he would wish undone. The others were, that he had pardoned Asháth, who deserved death; and that when he transferred Khâlid to Syria, he had not at the same time sent Omar to Irâc. ‘Then,’ said he, ‘I should have stretched out mine arms, both the right and the left, in the ways of the Lord.’[194]

[Sidenote: His wives and family.]

Unlike his Master, he contented himself with but few wives. He had married two at Mecca before his conversion. On his arrival at Medîna he married the daughter of a Citizen, and, later on, Asma, the widow of Jáfar. By all of these he left issue. There is no mention of any other wives, nor of any slave-girls in his harem.[195] Of his children, he loved Ayesha the best, and, in proof of special affection, had given her a property for her own. On his death-bed, this troubled his conscientious spirit, and he said to her, ‘I wish thee, my daughter, to return it, that it may be divided with the rest of the inheritance amongst you all, not forgetting the one yet unborn.’[196] His father survived him six month, reaching the great age of ninety-seven.’[197]

[Sidenote: Simplicity and diligence in the affairs of state.]

At his court, Abu Bekr maintained the same simple and frugal life as Mahomet. Guards and servitors there were none, nor anything approaching the pomp and circumstance of state. He was diligent in business. He leaned upon Omar as his counsellor, whose judgment (excepting in a few cases in which it was warped by prejudice) had so great weight with him, that he might be said to have shared in the government. Abu Bekr never spared himself, and many incidents are related of the manner in which he descended to the minutest things. Thus, he would sally forth by night to seek for any destitute or oppressed person; and Omar found him one night inquiring into the affairs of a poor blind widow, whose case Omar himself had gone forth to look after. The department of justice was made over to Omar, but for a whole year, we are told, hardly two suitors came before him. The Seal of state bore the legend, _God the best of Potentates_.[198] The despatches were chiefly indited by Aly; and Abu Bekr made use also of Zeid (the amanuensis of the Prophet and compiler of the Corân) and of Othmân, or of any other penman who happened to be at hand.[199] In the choice of his agents for high office or command, he was absolutely free from nepotism or partiality, and was wise and discerning in his estimate of character.

But he had not Omar’s strength or decision; nor was his sense of justice so keen and stern. [Sidenote: Not so strong, or sternly just, as Omar.]This is illustrated in the matter of the two Khâlids. From the one--Khâlid ibn Saîd, though warned by Omar and Aly, he hesitated to withhold a command; and the disaster in Syria was the consequence. On the other hand, by refusing to degrade Khâlid, ‘the Sword of God,’ for injustice and cruelty and the scandal of taking to wife his victim’s widow, he became indirectly responsible for his acts. Yet to this unscrupulous agent it is due, more than to any other, that Islam survived and triumphed. But Abu Bekr was not wanting in firmness when the occasion demanded; for example, the despatch of Osâma’s army, and the defence of Medîna against the apostate tribes, when he stood almost alone and all around was dark, showed a boldness and steadfastness of purpose, which, more than anything else, contributed to turn the tide of rebellion and apostasy.

[Sidenote: Faith in Mahomet the secret of his strength.]

The secret of Abu Bekr’s strength was faith in Mahomet. He would say: ‘Call me not _the Caliph of the Lord_: I am but _the Caliph of the Prophet of the Lord_.’ The question with him ever was, What did Mahomet command? or, What now should he have done? From this he never swerved one hair’s-breadth. And so it was that he crushed apostasy, and laid secure the foundations of Islam, His reign was short, but, after Mahomet himself, there is no one to whom the Faith is more beholden.

[Sidenote: Abu Bekr’s belief in Mahomet; presumptive evidence of Mahomet’s own sincerity.]

For this reason, and because his belief in the Prophet is itself a strong evidence of the sincerity of Mahomet himself, I have dwelt at some length upon his life and character. Had Mahomet been from the first a conscious impostor, he never could have won the faith and friendship of a man who was not only sagacious and wise, but simple and sincere. Abu Bekr had no thought of personal aggrandisement. Endowed with sovereign and irresponsible power, he used it simply for the interests of Islam and the people’s good. He was too shrewd to be himself deceived, and too honest himself to act the part of a deceiver.