Chapter I: Part 1

Transcriber's Note

Italic font is indicated by _underscores_.

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=Mohammed=

BY R. F. DIBBLE

THE VIKING PRESS

NEW YORK ·:· MCMXXVI
]

COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY THE VIKING PRESS, INC.

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

CONTENTS

I. ARABIA: FELIX, PETRÆA, ET DESERTA 9

II. EARLY YEARS 25

III. ALLAH AND MOHAMMED 44

IV. “A PROPHET IS NOT WITHOUT HONOR” 65

V. THE HEGIRA 88

VI. HOLY WARS 112

VII. DEFEAT OF ALL INFIDELS 149

VIII. AVOCATIONS 176

IX. THE TRIUMPHANT RETURN 205

X. MOHAMMED AND ALLAH 229

“... it may perhaps be expected that I should balance his faults and virtues, that I should decide whether the title of enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to that extraordinary man. Had I been intimately conversant with the son of Abdallah, the task would still be difficult, and the success uncertain: at the distance of twelve centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade through a cloud of religious incense; and, could I truly delineate the portrait of an hour, the fleeting resemblance would not equally apply to the solitary of Mount Hira, to the preacher of Mecca, and to the conqueror of Arabia.” --GIBBON

ARABIA: FELIX, PETRÆA ET DESERTA

I

Midway between Asia and Africa lies the giant peninsula of Arabia--the vast, immutable, resplendently mysterious country that bridges the Orient and the Occident. Shaped somewhat like a triangle and somewhat like an oblong, she appears to the vulgar eye more like a boot with its toe lopped off. Three bodies of water--the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, and the Persian Gulf--roll their guardian waves against her rocky, mountainous coasts, while her northern domain is staunchly defended by the impassable Syrian Desert.

Perhaps no other country, not even Switzerland, has been so well protected by nature against the assaults--military, economic or religious--of the outside world. Before the seventh century, the fury of the Roman legions and the enthusiasm of martial Christians had been expended in prodigious but wholly futile efforts to subjugate her: the one because its soldiers died of heat and thirst in her almost uninhabitable interior, and the other because its votaries too often restricted their religious zeal to a general consumption of alcohol and to an individual union with more than one wife or concubine. But in any case, inasmuch as the Arabs were fierce and warlike by nature, and were acquainted with such refinements of wine and concupiscence as even the most aspiring Christians had not achieved, the attacks of Pagan Rome and Christian Palestine would probably have come to naught. Even to this day, indeed, Arabia has been left almost entirely alone by the outside world. Timeless, changeless and unromantic save to the capricious imagination of poets and travelers, her interminable, ocean-like billows of arid sand have saved her from all conquests. As she was in the dim and remote beginnings of history, so she largely remains; and the modern wanderer who penetrates her obscure interior cannot be certain whether he will be greeted with affluent hospitality or a frowning hostility that may prove inimical to life itself.

A land of contrasts! Three-fourths surrounded by water, her extensive interior is a scorched and stony desert; her verdant southern coasts are soon lost in a lifeless and almost level plateau; her abundantly fertile province of Yemen, known to romance as Araby the Blest, fades northward into the ominous wastes of Nejd, or Arabia Deserta, and northwestward into the precipitous wilds of Hejaz, or Arabia Petræa. Short rivers hurl their jagged torrents down her sloping sides, while prolific oases, always placid and unruffled, dot her deserts. The fragrant breezes that come from the Indian Ocean are quickly assimilated into the stagnant, oppressive atmosphere of her centre; her palmy springs may teem with sweet and pure waters, or with saline, sulphurous scum. The broiling rays of the midday sun give way nightly to bitter and frosty dews; her long-slumbering sands are at times whirled violently aloft by sharp, sudden, blinding storms that often overwhelm caravans and tents, to subside as suddenly, leaving her surface forever different--and yet forever the same. A land untouched by time, where time’s oppression is yet most powerfully felt; a land that never alters, though perpetually subject to alteration; a land where the new is eternally old, and the old is eternally new.

Nor does the paradox confine itself to her terrain; her inhabitants and their social institutions, particularly during the seventh century, exhibited corresponding discrepancies. Although all Arabs were ruled by nearly identical codes of honor, morals and manners, spoke a generic tongue, and were passionately patriotic, they were yet divided into tribes that bowed before countless fetishes, conversed in individual dialects, and were ever ready to fight to the death for the supremacy of their particular clan. At times of national danger, it is true, they fervently abandoned all local prejudices in a tumultuous display of chauvinism; but such contingencies were rare and, since the vague, immemorial inception of her history, Arabian tribes, on the slightest pretext or on no pretext at all, had frequently plunged with limitless enthusiasm into the gratifying job of slitting fraternal throats. All these various tribes, moreover, were grouped into two fairly distinct divisions: the city-dwellers and the Bedouins.

From her earliest days, Arabia had depended on caravan trade for her subsistence. In the times of Abraham, Moses and Solomon, her traders had carried the fragrant spices and other products of Palestine and Arabia--cassia, cinnamon, frankincense, myrrh, gums, leather and coffee--into Egypt; and, conversely, the “Kings of Arabia” had also freighted into Judea and their own beloved land the priceless rarities of the Orient: ivory, ebony and precious gems. For the dangers of ocean commerce made a land route absolutely essential for the exchange of merchandise between the East and the West, and Arabia alone supplied the necessary bridge for this extensive barter. Caravans from every nation, therefore, had for centuries passed each other on her sere surface; her oases had thus become cynosures where rest and refreshment could be had; and so by degrees these centres of repose became the sites where marts, temples and sanctuaries sprang indiscriminately up. These nuclei of elementary civilizations led, little by little, to the development of an urban population where those Arabs who chanced to be disposed toward peace and business could lead a moderately serene life. But the instinct of nomadism was incalculably strong in most of Arabia’s sons, and myriads of men, yielding to the powerful atavistic impulse, gladly relinquished the relatively soft environment of urbanism in order to undergo, with fatalistic indifference, the hazards of a roaming, marauding, desert life.

These Bedouins, “dwellers in the open land” or “people of the tent,” were at once independent and servile, patriotic and anarchistic, friendly and hostile, thievish and chivalric. A contemptuous impatience of restraints and bonds of any kind made each one of them look upon himself as a king; at the same time each one willingly bowed the knee to the precepts of the most powerful ruler, or sheik, who, through the prestige of inherent or acquired power, automatically guided the shifting destinies of each clan. Their strongest institution was the blood-feud--quickly abandoned, to be sure, when a common enemy appeared on the horizon--and tribal warfare or personal strife was an every-day affair; nevertheless, the centralizing power arising from perpetual traditions of a mutual fraternalism of interests held these roving hordes in an elastic coalescence. The stranger who sought the hospitality of their tents might be greeted by a flashing scimitar or a handclasp and a hearty dinner--he could never tell which fate would be his, except by experiment. If he were successful, he was naturally pleased; whereas, if he failed, his opinion and his life were soon of no moment to anyone save the Bedouins who took his booty. Equally sensitive to insults or compliments, they guarded above all else the honor of their beards and their women: to shake the one was to invite immediate death, and to cast the smallest aspersion on the other was to embrace a corresponding doom. And still, despite the obeisance paid to women, the birth of a daughter was looked upon as a horrible misfortune. The burial alive of female infants was a common custom, and the natural death of one brought hearty congratulations to the fortunate parents; while such girls as managed to remain alive until their seventh or eighth year were summarily disposed of at that tender age to the first suitor who appeared. Women, in brief, were mere chattel: the eldest son commonly inherited his father’s wives as a logical and desirable portion of the parental estate.

Their livelihood was won principally by the robbing of caravans. The plundering of them, in fact, was justly held by the Bedouins to be merely a righteous method of exacting the customs that were levied everywhere; for the land, they maintained, was exclusively theirs by right of domain, and trespassers thereon must pay an appropriate penalty. Mounted upon their swift and spirited horses, sprung from the purest pedigree through many generations of careful selection and trained to respond instantly to the slightest touch of the rein, the Bedouins rarely failed to overtake their fleeing prey. Since the loot of caravans supplied them with all the necessities of life, they naturally worshiped their horses and camels--in particular the ones they had stolen--with a superstitious reverence. Their dromedaries, indeed, offered an escape from every contingency: they furnished transportation, food (both tender flesh and milk), long hair for tent-building, and, in case of a pinch, the water in their capacious reservoirs could be used for drink and their dung for fuel. The supreme height of generosity for a Bedouin was attained on those very rare occasions when he slaughtered his own cherished camel to feed and warm the stranger of a night.

In some respects the most striking and potent social institution among the Arabs, urbanites and nomads alike, was the annual fair. Every year, during certain months that were supposed to be inviolably sacred--so sacred, in fact, that even personal and tribal broils were taboo--a series of pageants was held throughout the whole country; but the most populous and successful of them all was celebrated at Ukaz, near Mecca. To that place came Arabia’s best and fairest: opulent merchants, actors garbed in masks or veils, poets of the desert, sheiks notorious for their proficiency in war and love, dancing girls, and maidens whose alluring sensuousness was subtly dissembled in languorous modesty, met on a common footing. Specimens of trade and primitive art abounded in many booths; the violent contortions of the corybantes, as they whirled dizzily from tent to tent, excited the reckless Bedouins to such a pitch that drunken orgies occasionally followed, during which the sacred season was momentarily forgotten and resolutions of peace and chastity conveniently overlooked. The pious devotions of pilgrims, the piteous moans of beggars for alms, and the quiet exchange of talk between traders, sightseers and friends, was often disturbed by hilarious shrieks of applause for the bacchantes, by the clang of the cymbal, and the clash of the scimitar. If shrines for prayer were open all day, gambling houses did a flourishing business at night; and if poetic and histrionic contests delighted the onlookers, unfortunate results frequently followed. For the poets, chanting a rudely rhythmical verse, incontinently boasted their individual excellence in the manufacture of stanzas; and not seldom did they caustically satirize the members of some other clan, meanwhile boundlessly extolling the bravery of their own warriors and the surpassing beauty and chastity of their women. All this bloated braggadocio paved the way to feuds between different tribes, and thus the fairs, which were supposed to allay hatreds and inculcate friendships, often led to results that were precisely opposite. Thus, for weeks and even months, the glittering, gorgeously colored spectacle went on--a dazzling drama that, in its violent contrasts of mystical adoration and wanton lechery, of humility and gross egotism, of entrancing beauty and fetid squalor, furnishes perhaps the best clue to the complex and divergent character of Arabia’s children.

Her religion was an all-pervading form of indigenous and manifold idolatry, tinctured with faint traces of Judaism and Christianity. The worship of the stars, that furnished a nightly quota of detached beauty and--what was more important--utility as a never-failing compass, is easily understandable; but just why she should have reverenced the blazing tropical sun and the tons upon tons of stones that were sprinkled over her parched surface, tempts to a metaphysical speculation which--as certain learned dissertations prove--is more fascinating than illuminating. Perhaps the most original and poetic element in this idol-worship was a vague belief in the Jinn: those vast, inchoate, awe-inspiring creatures, now friendly and now inimical, that--so every devout Arab believed--brooded like gigantic birds in the illimitable heavens that canopied Arabia. Judaism had made some effort to proselytize the Arabs, but had wisely given up the attempt after it realized what fascinating opportunities existed for the profits of trade. Christian Abyssinia, too, had manifested a laudable desire to turn her Pagan neighbor to the right way; but proud and impetuous Arabs were not particularly susceptible to the pleas of negroes, even though they chanced to be Christian negroes; and besides, the dialectical hair-splittings which so enthralled the followers of Arius and Athanasius could hardly be expected to offer much interest to minds that unfortunately had never been given an opportunity to become enraptured by the intricate charms of theology. But, in common with the devotees of Moses and Christ, the Arabs exalted ancestor-worship, and they even claimed, with a faith as touching as it was irrelevant, that Abraham himself was one of their most distinguished forefathers.

Here, then, was a land of marvelous opportunity for the right man. Ruled by rigid taboos and certain patriarchs of exceptional prowess, yet actually without a ruler; devoutly religious as religion goes, yet without a unifying religion; containing an enormous amount of military valor, yet wasting her strength in inter-tribal battles--Arabia, in the seventh century, stood in dire dearth of some commanding personality. The consecutive dominions of Egypt, Assyria, Persia and Greece--nations that had once been supreme in regal splendor--had disintegrated in rapid succession; and Rome, the mightiest of them all, was now nearing her eclipse. Neither Syria nor Persia was of much account any longer, Africa was weak, the Christians had forgotten Christ in their absorption in the more thrilling pursuit of schismatic squabbling, and the Jews too often bartered their sacred phylacteries for the products of Pagan ingenuity. Meanwhile, during the kaleidoscopic evolution and disruption of world-conquering empires, Arabia had dragged out only a ghostly existence; she was a nation that had either been carelessly forgotten or contemptuously disregarded; she had won no place in the sun. The general decadence of nations and faiths at this time offered an unparallelled chance to the mythical Arab who, by evolving a religious and political system based upon the common elements that formed the solid foundation of every Arabian tribe, should fuse the emotional and economic strength of the land into an indivisible unity, and--who knew?--perhaps carry on the torch recently dropped by the expiring Roman Empire. Now, as careful students of history are well aware, great men, whether warriors, statesmen or prophets, have a way of bobbing up at the precise moment when they are most needed. So it happened that, in the city of Mecca, probably in August in the year 570, Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah, was born.

II

For centuries before the birth of the Prophet, Mecca had been the most populous and influential city in Arabia. She owed this eminence to two very different things: to her geographical situation, and to some pretty legends that sought to explain her divine origin.

In the first place, she occupied a convenient and highly strategic position on a great caravan route. She reposed in a natural amphitheatre, partially encompassed by precipitous hills of quartz and granite; touching her southern border lay the pleasant plains of Yemen, while her northern edge was overhung by the lowering rocks of Hejaz. The never-failing well, Zemzem, that gushed from her centre furnished an apparently inexhaustible supply of water for the passing trains of merchandise; it became a refreshing stopping place, and thus by degrees grew to be a focus for commerce. Crowds of traders, coming principally from Yemen, eventually located there and established the beginnings of a mercantile business: they collected the frontier customs, the hire for hauling produce, the dues arising from protection, and, in addition, they started various types of traffic among themselves.

Orthodox Arabs, however, prefer to explain her superiority by giving more credit to her miraculous inception than to dry economic matters. According to them, when Hagar was expelled into the wilderness she chanced in her wanderings to come into the vale of Mecca. Both she and little Ishmael were almost overcome with thirst, when the child accidentally kicked the ground in a paroxysm of passion, and lo! a stream of pure water bubbled forth from the spot struck by his dainty toes. When Abraham heard of this miracle he visited the place, and, aided by his dutiful son Ishmael, now grown to manhood, built a sacred temple and instituted definite rites of pilgrimage. Inasmuch as the Arabs had mingled with the Hebrew race for many generations on matters of business, it was perhaps natural enough that they should have relied on the Jews for a superior facility in poetical imagination as well as a superior business credit.

Whichever explanation is more plausible, there is no doubt that, even before the beginning of the Christian era, Mecca was a well-established mercantile city that included a sacred temple, the Kaba, which was already a national centre of adoration. At some early date there was instituted a carefully systematized, twofold form of worship based upon well-tried Hebrew models: the Lesser and Greater Pilgrimages. Devotees who were able to satisfy their consciences by performing the ritual of the Lesser Pilgrimage only, went about it thus: they came to Mecca, generally during the sacred month of Rejeb, feverishly kissed the blessed Black Stone--the most divinely hallowed rock in a country that reverenced every one of her millions of stones--imbedded in the eastern corner of the Kaba, sedately walked seven times around the saintly edifice, and then marched in a more hasty manner seven times to and fro between two spots near by, over a route which Hagar was supposed to have trod. But the Greater Pilgrimage demanded a more strenuous faith. Those who elected to perform its stricter stipulations could do so only during the month of Dhul-Hijja, which was even more holy than Rejeb; and, besides accomplishing the requirements already specified, they were obliged to travel on foot to Arafat, a small hill some twelve miles east of Mecca, and to struggle manfully up its steep sides. Before entering the hallowed territory of Mecca, the votaries of both pilgrimages donned a special raiment, and, when all the religious activities were completed, they shaved their heads and pared their nails.

Favored thus by nature and superstition, Mecca had grown apace. For centuries different clans vied with each other in an effort to gain control of her destiny--a control that was eminently desirable, for by the fifth century Mecca was _Mecca_, in the most modern sense of the word. The dialect spoken by her citizens had come to be regarded as the standard of purity by which all other tribes were judged; and pilgrims from every extraneous Arabian clan, except the untamable Bedouins, came yearly to pay their vows and drink from the sacred fount of Zemzem--whose waters were a bit brackish, to be sure, but still satisfactorily sacred. During that century a sect called the Koreish finally won a foothold that gave every evidence of being permanent. Despite occasional bickerings among themselves as to matters of patronage and patriarchal succession, they always agreed when an outside enemy appeared; and successive victories over those who vainly sought to supplant them led to their exaltation throughout all Arabia.

Elated with the pride of successful conquest, the Koreish were not slow to reap the fruits of power. Although the sanctity of the holy city induced a general atmosphere of peace, forays and brawls occasionally took place, and the Koreish merchants therefore conceived the scheme of wearing badges that kept them moderately safe from assault. But measures of defence soon gave way to offence: “Let us release ourselves from some of the observances imposed upon the multitude,” they said. So they solaced themselves by undergoing the rites of the Lesser Pilgrimage only; they refused to be restricted to the use of the plain butter and cheese that formed the staple pilgrim diet; they adopted the luxury of leathern tents instead of those made from camel-hair. Finally, they formulated stringent rules to be observed by all pilgrims except themselves--rules that smack more of economic pressure than unalloyed faith. All outsiders were forbidden to bring food within the walls of Mecca, and were forced to circumnavigate the Kaba entirely naked or dressed in clothes that could be obtained only from the Meccan merchants. In view of these facts, there can be but little doubt that a prophet who would invent and promulgate a more pure and magnanimous faith was very desirable.

EARLY YEARS

I

Among the numberless misty matters that befog the career of Mohammed is the moot question of his parentage. The voice of Allah, speaking through the lips of his Prophet in the Koran, proclaims that his best beloved son was an orphan, poor and astray; but, while a proper modesty may well make one hesitate to question the smallest decree of such a transcendent authority, one can still scarcely refrain from noting that most boys who attain a position of unrivaled eminence in later life are prone to give a suspicious amount of emphasis to the hardships of their youth. Practically everything that concerns the life of the Prophet is flecked with more or less obscurity--an obscurity that has been intensified by both his friends and his foes. Almost all the Christian commentators have dwelt lovingly upon the worst elements in the life and teachings of Mohammed, and the numerous cliques of Arabs who whined or rebelled against his imperial sway swelled the chorus of malignant defamation; his followers, on the contrary, have been guilty of the most fanatical panegyrics. Buffeted and disfigured between these two intensely antagonistic forces of opinion, the massive figure of Mohammed must forever remain largely ambiguous and enigmatical. His Boswells were too Boswellian, and his Froudes were too Froudish. And yet, by steering a zigzag course between the Scylla of rhapsodical praise and the Charybdis of envious detraction, it may be possible to arrive at a relatively detached and peaceful haven where the immeasurable Arab looms a little less vaguely through the remoteness of thirteen centuries.

There seems to be little doubt that he was descended from those lofty Koreish whose opposition, which at first nearly succeeded in holding his name in perpetual oblivion, eventually caused him to emerge into the light of deathless fame. For a century and a half, his forefathers had been rulers among the Koreish. In the middle of the fifth century, Kosai, his ancestor at the fifth remove, had won the distinction of being the first man to advance the Koreish to a position of supremacy over Mecca. At his death his three sons fought for the honor of succeeding him; but Abd Menaf won out, and was followed in turn by Hashim--rich, amorous, charitable, glorious Hashim!--and his son Abd Al-Muttalib, the estimable grandfather of the Prophet.

When Abd Al-Muttalib came into power early in the sixth century, he fell at first upon evil days. Certain of the Koreish were unfriendly, the caravan business had been in a bad way for some time, and the holy water of Zemzem, no longer used as of yore, had choked up and was almost forgotten. Abd Al-Muttalib, who well knew the traditions of its ancient glory, and who found it difficult to get enough water from lesser Meccan wells for visiting pilgrims, instituted a laborious search for the venerable stonework which was known to have surrounded it. Finally his virtuous efforts were rewarded, and, aided by his son Al-Harith, he began to scoop out the debris with which it was clogged. As he neared the bottom, he came upon the two golden gazelles, and the swords and suits of armor, that had been buried there by a Jurhumite king three centuries before as a suitable hiding place against the despoliations of his enemies. The Koreish, hearing of Abd Al-Muttalib’s lucky find, immediately demanded a share of the booty. It was finally agreed that the dispute should be settled by the casting of lots: one for Abd Al-Muttalib, one for the Koreish, and--inasmuch as all parties concerned in the row were religiously minded--one for the Kaba. Abd Al-Muttalib got the swords and armor, the Kaba got the gazelles, and the Koreish got nothing. That very day, indeed, dated their gradual defection from the faith of their fathers; but Abd Al-Muttalib, in an excess of grateful devotion, beat the gazelles into plates of gold with which he decorated the interior door of the Kaba, and, in a similar excess of caution, added a golden lock and key to the door. His faith was properly rewarded, for from that day the waters of Zemzem again flowed without interruption; and so Abd Al-Muttalib grew in social, financial and religious strength, and became the father of many pious and powerful sons. And yet--such a wayward and capricious dame is Clio!--there are those who aver that Mohammed’s grandfather was not the leading Meccan of his time, and that most of the stories connected with his name are fabulous inventions of the Prophet’s hero-worshiping satellites.

Fortunately, all parties seem agreed that Abdallah, the youngest and most favored son of Abd Al-Muttalib, was the unambiguous sire of Mohammed. The ways of Allah are not less perplexing than the ways of God, and it appears probable that, had it not been for the direct intervention of the whimsical Arabian Deity, Abdallah would have perished before he had begotten his extraordinary son. During the early years of Abd Al-Muttalib, when he had but one son to aid him in his struggles against his political opponents, he had vowed that, should he ever be favored with ten sons, he would sacrifice one of them to the Deity. This vow--rash enough for any young man, and rashest of all, perhaps, for an Arab--was in the course of time providentially fulfilled; and when lots were cast by the obedient Abd Al-Muttalib, the fatal die fell upon Abdallah, his pet boy. The hitherto invincible faith of Abd Al-Muttalib was tremendously shaken; his weeping daughters--for Allah had been more than generous--also besought him to cast lots between Abdallah and ten camels: the conventional substitute for human bloodshed. For nine successive times the arrow pointed toward Abdallah--could it be that Allah was inexorable? At each throw ten additional camels had been added to the previous number until, on the tenth throw, they amounted to an even hundred. Then at last Allah, who was presumably far more interested in the birth of Mohammed than in a wilderness of camels, relented and released his faithful servant from his oath. Thus a hundred camels perished beneath the sacrificial knife, Abd Al-Muttalib’s piety was recompensed, Abdallah was saved, and the miraculous birth of the Prophet was assured.

It came about thus. Toward the end of 569, Abd Al-Muttalib had betrothed Abdallah to a Meccan maiden named Amina; and at the same time, even though he was over seventy and Allah had abundantly granted his youthful plea for potency, he himself had married a radiantly youthful cousin of Amina’s. Some months later Mecca was invaded by an army under Abraha, a Christian warrior from Abyssinia, who brought an elephant in his train--a prodigy that so astounded the simple Arabs that the year of the invasion was ever after called “the Elephant.” He had come, he said, merely to destroy the impious Kaba, and he had no desire to shed any man’s blood; but inasmuch as the Meccans knew that Christian Abraha’s fervor had already manifested itself in the plunder of hundreds of camels, they were rightly sceptical of any promise whatever on his part. Overtures of peace were unsuccessful, for on no account would the wealthy Koreish agree to permit the demolition of their most remunerative mercantile house, and preparations were accordingly made to offer some feeble resistance to the invader. Then Abd Al-Muttalib bethought himself of a possible means to thwart the impending peril. Leaning on the door of the Kaba, he prayed aloud thus: “Defend, O Lord, thine own house, and suffer not the Cross to triumph over the Kaba!” He then made haste to join the other refugees, who had betaken themselves to the neighboring crags to watch whatever might betide. Sharp-eared Allah, aloof in his own particular Heaven, heard the prayer and promptly answered it by inflicting a pestilential disease upon the raiding Christian hosts. Overwhelmed by the disaster, they began a confused retreat: hundreds of them died by the wayside, and Abraha himself, covered with a mass of poisonous and putrid ulcers, soon expired in terrible agony. Thus was the Kaba gloriously saved and the Cross ignominiously overthrown--an event so prophetical of coming centuries that its portentous symbolism demanded an incarnate manifestation. The routed Christian warriors had barely left the shores of Arabia when Amina gave birth to a son.

II

His advent, we are told, was decorously surrounded by all manner of signs and omens. The travail of Amina was entirely painless; earthquakes loosed the bowels of mountains and caused great bodies of water, whose names were unfortunately not specified, to wither away or overflow; the sacred fire of Zoroaster which, under the jealous care of the Magi, had spouted ceaseless flames for nearly a thousand years, was summarily extinguished; indeed, all the idols in the world--except, presumably, the Kaba,--unceremoniously tumbled from their exalted places. Immediately after the babe was born an ethereal light dazzled the surrounding territory, and, on the very moment when his eyes were first opened, he lifted them to Heaven and exclaimed: “God is great! There is no God but Allah and I am His Prophet!” All these poetic fancies have been appropriately denounced by Christian scribes, who have claimed that nature would never have dignified the birth of a Pagan like Mohammed with such marvelous prodigies as indubitably attended the advent and crucifixion of Christ.

In the meantime a tragedy of much moment had occurred. High-spirited Abdallah--the lovely youth whose charms were so compelling that two hundred languishing virgins are said to have perished from jealous disappointment on his wedding night--was already no more. After remaining with his bride for the customary period of three days, he had departed on a business engagement to Gaza; but, on the return trip, he had sickened and died at Medina. The period of mourning for him was barely over when his posthumous son was born. Grief-stricken Abd Al-Muttalib, who was still bewailing his dead son in the repose of the Kaba, was so comforted when Amina’s messenger brought him the glad tidings that he at once headed a procession of relatives to visit his latest grandchild. With the tender babe in his arms, he immediately returned to the Kaba, and, standing beside its holy altar, he gave thanks to Allah for his mercies and benefits. One week later Abd Al-Muttalib gave a feast in honor of the child; and during the course of the festivities the aged ruler presaged an unspeakably glorious destiny for his grandson as the dawning leader of his race, and concluded his remarks by christening him Mohammed, “the Praised.”

Since the suckling of their own children was not considered to be a proper vocation for high-born Arab women, Amina, as a descendant of the lordly Koreish, rightly refused to nurse her child. For the first few days of his precarious existence he was nourished by Thuweiba, a slave of his own uncle, Abu Lahab; yet, in spite of the brevity of this experience, it is confidently claimed that Mohammed never forgot it, and that so long as he lived he regularly sent her clothes and other gifts. A new nurse then had to be found. According to some fairly authentic traditions, he spent his first five years among the Bedouins under the care of a foster-mother named Halima. At the age of two he was weaned and taken back to his mother; but she was so pleased with her lusty-looking baby that she said: “Take him with thee back again to the desert; for I fear the unhealthy air of Mecca.” After two more years the robust but high-strung boy, who, like most embryo prophets, had an acutely sensitive nervous system, showed signs of what was probably an epileptic attack. His foster-parents were so disturbed that they at once took him home; and only by the greatest efforts was Amina able to assuage their fears--were not most children normally subject to worms or the croup?--and persuade them to take him back to the desert. So great was their love for the youngster that they did so; but a year later they were again frightened by recurrent symptoms, and the five-year-old boy was then definitely restored to his mother, with whom he remained for nearly another year. Amina then took him to Medina, where his father’s maternal relatives dwelt; for she felt all a mother’s delight in showing off the pretty and playful tricks of her little son. But another momentous tragedy now impended. About a month later she died; and thus Mohammed, at the age of six, was left an orphan.

Had the lad’s parents, or even one of them, lived until his maturity! In either case, incalculable results might have followed: there might have been no Prophet, no Koran, no Islam--one is tempted to say that there might have been no Allah. But they died; and for the next two years the bereaved boy was cared for by Abd Al-Muttalib, who loved him with all the partiality of age. Sometimes, as the old patriarch sat at ease on a rug shaded from the sun, Mohammed would peremptorily usurp his seat. Then the old man’s sons would try to push the little rascal off, but Abd Al-Muttalib would say, “Let my little son alone!” and, baked by the burning sun, would pet Mohammed and feast his ears on the childish shouts and gurgles of the victor.

Two years later Abd Al-Muttalib went to join Abdallah and Amina, and Mohammed, weeping bitterly at the loss of his kind-hearted protector, was consigned to the care of his uncle Abu Talib, the second of Abd Al-Muttalib’s five surviving sons. Az-Zubeir, the eldest, inherited the official duties of his deceased father; but he soon passed that honor on to the fourth son, Al-Abbas, a money-lender, owner of Zemzem, rich, but unfortunately weak in character. Abu Lahab, the third son, was destined to be a life-long foe of the Prophet; but the youngest, Hamza the hunter, was from the beginning one of his staunchest supporters. Abu Talib, a dealer in cloths and perfumes, was a poor man, yet he faithfully cared for his nephew, whom he almost never let out of his sight. When Mohammed was twelve, he accompanied Abu Talib on a mercantile journey to Syria; and various writers have mused at length on the probable effects of this strange, wild expedition on his highly susceptible mind. It may be, as some believe, that the seeds of his heavenly mission were sown in his mind during this experience. Whatever else he was, however, Mohammed was not a youthful prodigy, and perhaps, as most lads of his age would have done, he merely had a good time.

III

While Mohammed’s life glided from youth into manhood without many remarkable changes, certain events occurred that indelibly fixed the channels of his future. The death of Abd Al-Muttalib had left the ancient house of Hashim without a strong leader, and so it happened that another branch of the Koreish came into power--a circumstance that marked the beginning of the deadly struggle between the Prophet and many of his kin that attended his whole career. For some years, it is true, this hostility was latent. During a decade--from Mohammed’s tenth to his twentieth year--all the Koreish were banded together against the hostile tribe of the Beni Hawazin in the Sacrilegious War: a struggle that grew out of a violation of the taboo on fighting during the sacred months. When Mohammed was nearly twenty, he accompanied his uncles during one of the many frays that marked this civil strife; but his activities seem to have been confined to picking up the arrows of the enemy and turning them over for the use of his uncles. Many years later he remarked: “I remember being present with my uncles in the Sacrilegious War; I discharged arrows at the enemy, and I do not regret it.” But the Prophet of divinity was always very human, and it seems almost certain that the enormous prestige of his station induced him occasionally to indulge in a verbal license pardonable in prophets if not in lesser men. With a wisdom that has characterized certain other heroes of divinity, Mohammed wisely confined his originality and his daring strictly to his mental activities, and fought only when self-preservation necessitated it.

The war finally ended in an unsatisfactory truce: neither side had won, and no dominant personality had yet emerged from the Koreish. Factionalism soon grew to be so rife that the descendants of Hashim, and families of germane origin, formed a confederacy to punish wrongdoing and secure justice among the different branches of the Koreish. Mohammed himself was an interested spectator of the initial ceremonies of this brotherhood. “I would not exchange for the choicest camel in all Arabia,” he exclaimed on a later day, “the remembrance of being present at the oath which we took in the house of Abdallah when the Beni Hashim, Zuhra ibn Kilab, and Teim ibn Murra swore that they would stand by the oppressed.” Thus, by slow degrees, the breach widened between Mohammed and the majority of the Koreish.

His early manhood was spent in caring for flocks, in attending caravan expeditions, and in certain avocations which, all things considered, indicated that he was more estimable than the common run of youthful Arabs. As a shepherd of sheep and goats on the hills around Mecca, he both conferred benefit upon his penurious uncle, Abu Talib, and engaged in an occupation that, as he was careful to point out on a future occasion, was particularly appropriate for his rank. After commenting on the similarity between himself and Moses, David, Jesus, and other seers, he concluded thus: “Verily there hath been no prophet raised up, who performed not the work of a shepherd.” He often accompanied caravans, traveling possibly as far as Egypt and the Dead Sea. In addition to the money thus earned, he picked up a mass of miscellaneous information that he used both to his advantage and disadvantage in the Koran; for its pages reek with foreign phrases, now beautiful and now outrageously grotesque, which even his most intimate friends failed to comprehend. All writers, including strangely enough those of the Christian faith, coincide in stating that his early manhood was marked by an excess of modesty and a minimum of vice rare, not merely in young Arabs, but in the young men of any nation. It has been maintained, with a cogency no less admirable than indemonstrable, that his virtue was miraculously kept immaculate. Mohammed himself, with forgivable modesty, appears to have believed this. “I was engaged one night feeding the flocks in company with a lad of Koreish,” he once narrated, “and I said to him, ‘If thou wilt look after my flock, I will go into Mecca and divert myself there, even as youths are wont by night to divert themselves.’” But the sequel, though divinely ordained, was rather tame. As he neared the outskirts of the city, a marriage feast attracted so much of his time that he fell safely asleep. Another evening, as he approached the city bent upon a similar enterprise, strains of celestially somnolent music made him fall into a second scatheless slumber. “After this I sought no more after vice,” he affirmed; but he thought it wise to add the cryptic phrase, “even until I had attained unto the prophetic office.”

By the time Mohammed was twenty-five, Abu Talib, whose waxing family was constantly restricting his already limited means, decided that it was high time for his dependent nephew to shift for himself. “I am, as thou knowest, a man of small substance,” he remarked one day to Mohammed, “and truly the times deal hardly with me. Now here is a caravan of thine own tribe about to start for Syria, and Khadija, daughter of Khuweilid, needeth men of our tribe to send forth with her merchandise. If thou wert to offer thyself, she would readily accept thy services.” The double-edged nature of the conclusion presumably escaped both men; but the complaisant Mohammed acceded and was soon off on the journey, accompanied by Meisara, the servant of Khadija. Mohammed had thus far had little business experience, but he always showed a many-sided talent for barter and compromise, and he therefore returned with a credit that did him high honor. As the caravan approached Mecca, Meisara induced him to carry the good news to Khadija in person. That lady, a wealthy widow of about forty and the mother of three children, was highly elated at Mohammed’s story; and, as she listened to the proof of his business ability and fondly scanned his large, nobly formed head, his curling, coal-black hair, his dark, piercing eyes, and his comely form, it naturally occurred to her that this vigorous and handsome young fellow would make an excellent successor to her deceased husband. She had turned down the proposals of many vehement Koreishite suitors; but here was one for whom, if necessary, she herself was prepared to do the wooing--for Arab ladies rarely entertained any foolish feminine scruples about such matters.

It was necessary; but she moved with discretion. She sent an envoy, probably Meisara, to find out why Mohammed was so timid about matrimony; for most Arabs married at about eighteen and lived in poverty ever after. “What is it, O Mohammed, that hindereth thee from marriage?” queried the messenger. “I have nothing in my hands wherewithal I might marry,” he replied; for he still retained painful memories of a proposal refused by one of his cousins, on the sensible grounds that he had not the proper means to support her. “But if haply that difficulty were removed,” he was asked, “and thou wert invited to espouse a beautiful and wealthy lady of noble birth, who would place thee in affluence, wouldst thou not desire to have her?” “But who might it be?” he quickly inquired. “It is Khadija.” “But how can I attain unto her?” “Let that be my care,” he was told, and he immediately responded, “I am ready.”

Khadija was overjoyed at this news; but, according to custom, she still had to win the consent of her father despite her age and her manifold attainments. So she prepared a feast and made him drunk; she then commanded that a cow should be killed, and, drenching her intoxicated parent in perfumes, she clothed him in the requisite matrimonial robes. Under such circumstances the old man unconsciously performed the ceremony, but when he recovered he looked with amazement on all the numerous signs of a wedding, and stupidly inquired what it all meant. Upon learning the facts, and upon being misinformed to the effect that “the nuptial dress was put upon thee by Mohammed, thy son-in-law,” he staggered up in high wrath and swore that his daughter, whose hand had been sought by the most eminent Koreishites, should never be the bride of such a shiftless ne’er-do-well as Mohammed. Even after the story had been corrected he still refused to relent, and a tribal war might have followed had he not shortly calmed down and decided to make the best of a bad job. During the next fifteen years Mohammed led a tranquil life. His future was provided for; he had plenty of leisure to occupy himself as he chose, for Khadija insisted upon running her own business affairs; and, notwithstanding her seasoned maturity, there seems to be little reasonable doubt that he became the father of four daughters and an indeterminate number of sons.

Not wishing to remain entirely idle, however, he acquired a partner and established a general barter and trade business in Mecca--a fact that doubtless explains the frequent depiction of Allah as a divine bookkeeper in the Koran: “God is good at accounts,” and so on. Years later, in the heyday of his fame at Medina, he still bought goods wholesale and retailed them at an excellent profit, and he also employed his stentorian voice as an auctioneer. All his children turned out to be sickly. His son, or sons, died in infancy, and his oldest daughter lived less than forty years; hence historians who possess a flair for matters pertaining to medicine have made the deduction that perhaps, after all, his youthful zest was not guarded by Heaven, but was expended in most deplorable channels. During these years Mohammed and his wife continued to be conventional idolators who performed nightly rites in honor of various gods and goddesses--among whom Allah and his female consoler Al-Lat ranked fairly high--and who gave Pagan names to their children. And so, by the year 610, Mohammed at forty was nothing more than a respectable but unknown tradesman who had experienced no extraordinary crisis, whose few extant sayings were flat and insipid, and whose life seemed destined to remain as insignificant and unsung as that of any other Arab.

ALLAH AND MOHAMMED

I

The steps by which Mohammed emerged from obscurity into the full glow of his messianic mission can never be traced with any certainty. Explanations and interpretations in plenty--economic, rationalistic, psychological, mediumistic, and so on--have too often been advanced with placid and perfect assurance; but unfortunately they have not overcome the main difficulty: Mohammed himself. The enigma of his character--a fusion of the furthest limits of charlatanism, demagoguery, bombastic egotism, and general intellectual incompetency, with the opposite extremes of willing martyrdom, unaffected simplicity and sincerity, and lightning flashes of divine poetry--still remains essentially unchallenged and intact. He used tricks common to fakirs--was he therefore a complete and unabashed fakir? He began as a humble religious leader, and he ended as an adroit politician and powerful general--was he therefore dishonest from the start? He hid himself during battles--was he therefore always a coward? He often broke faith with friend and foe alike--was he therefore utterly unscrupulous? And yet.... He quite certainly believed in the divinity of his mission--was he therefore wholly sincere? He wrote some passages almost incomparable in their emotional beauty--was he therefore inspired? He kept Allah in the foreground while he himself remained in the background--why, then, did the influence of Allah wane as the prestige of Mohammed waxed? In short, was he a vicious paranoiac who developed into a maniacal monster, or an unrivaled genius who was all that his worshipers claimed--or both?

Such interrogations face the tracker of Mohammed’s career at every turn of the journey, and, in avoiding the pitfalls on one side, he is very likely to stumble into the abysses on the other. For the facts of his life are at once too abundant and too few; and he who ponders them is ever apt to discover that, just at the moment when he confidently believes he is on the right path, he knows both too much and too little. The rainbow’s end is forever at hand and yet forever distant; and similarly the intangible, chameleon-like personality of Mohammed constantly eludes and mocks one at the precise time when one is most confident of touching and cornering the flitting phantom. Under the circumstances, a rapid recapitulation of such concrete events as have been handed down with a minimum of bias is perhaps least likely to lead one too far astray.

II

When Mohammed was about thirty-five, the holy Kaba, beaten and broken by a violent flood, was in sad need of repair. A Grecian ship, that had been providentially wrecked on the coast of the Red Sea near by, furnished the materials necessary for its reconstruction. So great was the reverence emanating from the sacred walls, however, that the Koreish feared the imposition of heavenly wrath on those who made bold to tear the building down; but one fellow, braver than the rest, raised an apologetic prayer to Allah and simultaneously struck a heavy blow with a pickaxe. All those present, including the assaulter, then fled and lingered timorously until morning, when the incredible fact was noted that Allah had not spoken one way or the other, and so the structure was rapidly demolished. All went well with the building operations until the time came to replace the Black Stone in the eastern corner--an honor so great that each branch of the Koreish contended for it, until bloodshed was imminent. Finally the eldest patriarch in the city arose and advanced this ingenious solution: “O Koreish, hearken unto me! My advice is that the man who chanceth first to enter the court of the Kaba by yonder gate, he shall be chosen either to decide the difference amongst you, or himself to place the stone.” Universal applause followed and everyone waited to learn who should be the lucky man. Just at this moment the unostentatious yet dignified form of Mohammed was seen to approach, and all the people shouted in unison: “Here comes the faithful arbiter; we are content to abide by his decision.” Mohammed, ever cool and composed in public, calmly accepted the appointment and immediately devised a supremely clever diplomatic scheme that would certainly be satisfactory to all. He removed his cloak and laid it on the ground; then, putting the awful stone on it, he said: “Now let one from each of your four divisions come forward, and raise a corner of this mantle.” This was done and, when the rock was level with the cavity, he himself thrust it in position. Thus the unpretentious tradesman rose in the twinkling of an eye to high eminence in the esteem of his townsmen. Since Mohammed’s mind always took to omens and auguries as a duck takes to water, it is possible that this occurrence marked the vague inception of his mission.

At all events, about five years later his neighbors became much mystified by his behavior. He would retire, for days at a stretch, to a cave in the foothills of Mount Hira, a conical hill several miles north of Mecca, whither Khadija too sometimes went with him. Meanwhile his business languished, and various conjectures were advanced to account for his odd conduct--was the fellow crazy, or afflicted with some loathsome disease, or was he perchance engaged in some such nefarious occupation as counterfeiting? As the months passed, he still continued to act in the same incomprehensible manner, and it was noticed that, little by little, certain members of his immediate family attended him to his refuge, or gathered with him in some one of their own houses. This sort of thing went on for several years, until it was noised abroad that the quondam merchant and camel-driver was confidently claiming the honor of having made the epochal discovery which he phrased thus: “_La ilaha illa Allah, Mohammed rasul Allah_”--which, freely interpreted, means: “There is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is His Prophet.”

This brief, twofold credo demands considerable attention. The first postulate was not entirely new, for Allah had hitherto been a well-behaved deity Who was highly regarded by many Arabs; yet, after all, He had been but one of many idols. By what process of thought had Mohammed come to exalt Allah not merely above all Arabian gods, but above the gods of all time? and furthermore, why was he so certain of his own intimate association with Allah?

Various explanations were offered by his simple-minded followers. According to one account, as Mohammed was wandering near the cave, “an angel from the sky cried to him, ‘O Mohammed, I am Gabriel!’ He was terrified, for as often as he raised his head, there was the apparition of the angel. He hurried home to tell his wife. ‘O Khadija,’ he said, ‘I have never abhorred anything as I do these idols and soothsayers; and now verily I fear lest I should become a soothsayer myself.’ ‘Never,’ replied his faithful wife, ‘the Lord will never suffer it thus to be.’” So she made haste to get the opinion of her own relative, the aged visionary Waraka, who, after listening attentively to her tale, cried aloud: “By the Lord he speaketh truth! Doubtless it is the beginning of prophecy, and there shall come upon him the _Great Namus_, like as it came upon Moses.” According to another story that is even more edifying, Khadija discreetly tested the genuineness of the angelic guest by making Mohammed sit first on her right knee, and then on her left; and the spirit did not object to either procedure. But when she took Mohammed in her lap and started to remove some of her garments, the virtuous apparition departed in great haste, and the crafty Khadija then exultantly cried: “Rejoice ... for by the Lord! it is an angel, and no devil.”