Chapter I (2)

So he went forth at the head of three hundred and thirteen Moslems, to intercept the return of the great caravan from Syria to Mecca, a caravan of a thousand camels, led by Abu Sophian, with only thirty or forty followers. But the Koreish, alarmed for the safety of their merchandise and their provisions, hastened to the rescue. One hundred horse, and eight hundred and fifty foot, advanced from Mecca to about three stations from Medina. Here, in the fertile and famous vale of Beder, they met the band of the prophet. The disproportion of numbers was great; in Mohammed’s ranks were found only two horsemen: informed by his scouts that the caravan was approaching from the one, the Koreish from the other side, Mohammed had hesitated whether to seize upon an easy prey, or to venture on an encounter with vastly superior forces; but the reflection, that a success gained under disadvantageous circumstances, would, with an impulsive people like the Arabs, go far to prove his divine mission, and would embolden his adherents and discourage his enemies, he resolved to give battle. With Abu Bekr by his side, he took his station on a kind of throne or pulpit. The white veil of Ayesha, and two black banners, were borne before his host. “Courage, my children,” he exclaimed, “close your ranks; discharge your arrows, and the day is your own.” Perceiving, however, that the Moslems fainted in their onset, and were hard pressed by the superior numbers of the Koreish, he betook himself with a loud voice to pray the succour of Gabriel and a _legion_ of angels.[29] He then started from his throne, mounted his horse, and, casting a handful of sand into the air, exclaiming, “Let their faces be covered with confusion,” dashed against the hostile ranks. The Arabs were a most superstitious people; their fancy beheld the angelic warriors, or rather _felt_ their presence; the thunder of Mohammed’s voice revived the drooping spirits of his followers; whilst it carried confusion into the ranks of his enemies. The Koreish turned and fled. Seventy of the bravest were slain, and seventy captives fell into the hands of the victorious prophet, who had two of them put to death as a trifling instalment of the debt of revenge which he meant to exact from his foes and revilers. The other sixty-eight were restored for a ransom of four thousand drachms of silver. From the field of Beder, Mohammed started in pursuit of Abu Sophian’s caravan, which, despite of the swiftness of its flight, and the skill of its guides, was overtaken and captured. A booty of 100,000 drachms of silver rewarded the pious robbers. But this great success had well nigh proved fatal to Mohammed and his creed, and to the city of refuge. The fierce resentment of Abu Sophian and of the Koreish, brought into the field against Mohammed a body of three thousand men, among whom were seven hundred armed with cuirasses, and two hundred on horseback; three thousand camels attended the march of this host. Abu Sophian advanced to within six miles of the north of Medina, where he encountered the prophet at the head of nine hundred and fifty followers, on Mount Ohud, (A.D. 624). The Koreish advanced in the form of a crescent. The right wing of the cavalry was led by Kaled, the fiercest and most redoubtable of the Arab warriors. Mohammed had made his dispositions with considerable skill; his troops were successful at first, and broke the centre of the enemy; but their eagerness to seize upon the spoils threw their ranks into disorder, and speedily deprived them of the advantage gained. Kaled, with his cavalry, attacked them in the flank and rear; Mohammed was wounded in the face with a javelin, and two of his teeth were shattered with a stone; Kaled exclaimed, with a loud voice, that the lying prophet was slain; and the followers of Islam, who looked in vain for the appearance of Gabriel and his angelic legion, to avenge the fall of “The beloved of God,” trembled and fled; still, in the midst of tumult and dismay, was heard the thunder of Mohammed’s voice, denouncing the impious tribe of the Koreish, as the murderers of God’s apostle, and calling down upon them the vengeance of heaven. Some of the most devoted followers of the prophet gathered bravely around him, and conveyed him to a place of safety. Seventy of the bravest defenders of Islam lay dead on the field, among them HAMZA, one of Mohammed’s uncles. The inhuman females of Mecca, who had accompanied the expedition, mangled their bodies, and the fierce HENDA, Abu Sophian’s wife, tasted the entrails of Hamza, with the relish of a cannibal. But Mohammed was not discouraged: his wounds had hardly been dressed, when the convenient Gabriel revealed to him that (for some unexplained cause) the powers of darkness had been permitted to prevail against him this once, and that Satan himself had fought in the ranks of the Koreish; he was, however, exhorted to persevere in his propaganda, and was assured of ultimate success. He rallied his troops, and even as early as the next day he led them forth again to battle; on this occasion the fight was, however, only of a desultory character, no great harm being done on either side. Still the result of it was, that the Koreish, having experienced the desperate valor of the Moslems, and more particularly of Ali and Omar, despaired of carrying Medina with their present forces, and retired to Mecca. But in the ensuing year (A.D. 625) Abu Sophian, having formed a league between the Koreish and several tribes of the desert, led a well-appointed host of ten thousand warriors against Medina. The number of the Mussulmans, however, had also considerably increased, and Mohammed’s army of three thousand men, awaited the attack of their foes, securely encamped before the city, and protected by a ditch and some field-works, which had been constructed under the guidance and superintendence of a Persian engineer. A general engagement being prudently declined by the prophet, the hostilities were confined to a number of single combats, in which Ali more especially signalised his formidable strength and prowess. Twenty days passed away in this desultory warfare, the apostle of God having, meanwhile, recourse to every artifice that his crafty mind could devise, to sow disunion in the camp of his enemies. A tempest of wind, rain, and hail, which overturned the tents of the besiegers, and which was, of course, duly claimed as a direct interposition of God in favor of his prophet, put the finishing stroke to the success of this insidious policy: the Koreish, deserted by their allies, were compelled to retire, and to relinquish, henceforth, the attempt to overcome Mohammed by force of arms. This last attack upon Medina is variously named from the _nations_ which marched under Abu Sophian’s banner, and from the _ditch_ which protected the Mussulman camp.

During the earlier period of his mission, Mohammed had shown considerable leaning towards the Jews; he had selected Jerusalem for the _Kebla_ of prayer, and had endeavoured to form most of his tenets and precepts upon the model of the Mosaic ordinances. Indeed, there can be no doubt, but that it was for a time the great end and object of his ambition to be accepted by the Jews as their promised Messiah; nor can it be denied, that a deep political idea lay at the bottom of this desire. Had he succeeded in persuading the Jews to believe in his Messiahship, his apostolic course among the Arabs would have run much smoother, and many of the so-called Christian sects might have been readily gained over to his _mixtum compositum_, which might, indeed, be called a creed of creeds in the literal acceptation of the words.

But the imposture was too shallow to take with so clear-sighted a people as the Jews unquestionably were: the pretended Messiah was repudiated by them with disdain, and the hostility of the Koreish against the son of Abdallah, was, in some degree, fomented and fanned by the Jews of Mecca. Hence the implacable and unrelenting hatred with which Mohammed pursued the unfortunate Israelites to the last moment of his life. That he changed the kebla of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca, and that in his nocturnal journey to Heaven, he beheld the divine tabernacle in a straight line above the latter city, instead of Zion, where he undoubtedly originally intended to behold it,--could, at the most, provoke a smile of contempt and derision; but the appalling cruelties which he indicted, both upon individuals and upon entire tribes of the doomed nation, must fill the mind of the impartial explorer of history with deep indignation against the man who could _so_ avenge his offended vanity. His first exploit in this direction, was the expulsion of the KAINOKA tribe from Medina, where they had hitherto been permitted to dwell in peace, by the large toleration of the _Idolators_. The prophet of Islam seized the occasion of an accidental tumult, in which the Kainoka had taken part, to place before them the alternative of embracing his religion, or contending with him in battle. A _brave_ challenge this, to the unfortunate Jews, to do battle with him, and which displayed in the fullest, though certainly not in the most favorable light, the _magnanimous_ disposition of the son of Abdallah, that has been so highly extolled by some historians. Still, even with the fearful odds of number and martial spirit against them, the feeble and unwarlike Israelites preferred the unequal contest to apostacy from the faith of their fathers. It was decided in fifteen days, of course with the total overthrow and capture of the whole tribe; and, had it not been that the Charegites, mindful of the friendship which once existed between them and their humble allies, the Kainoka, warmly interceded on behalf of the wretched captives, the prophet of God would have slain every one of them. As it was, they were despoiled of their homes and property; and driven forth, to the number of seven hundred men, with their wives and children, to seek a refuge on the confines of Syria, to which quarter the blessings of the new creed had not yet extended. The NADHIRITES were the next to feel the weight of his arm. In their case, indeed, some provocation had been given, as they had conspired to assassinate the prophet in a friendly interview. Protected by the walls of their castle (situated about three miles from Medina), they fought with such boldness and resolution, that Mohammed was fain to grant them an honorable capitulation.

The war of the nations interrupted for a time Mohammed’s operations against the Jews; but even on the day that the confederated nations had abandoned the siege of Medina, he marched against the tribe of KORAIDHA. A campaign of twenty-five days sufficed to compel their surrender at discretion. They fondly believed that their old allies of Medina would, by their intercession, preserve them at least from the extreme measure of Mohammed’s wrath;--vain hope: fanaticism had made rapid progress among the Ansars. A venerable elder of the Charegite tribe, to whose judgment they referred their case, pronounced the penalty of death against them for their hostility to Islam. To the number of seven hundred they were led in chains to the market-place of Medina, where a grave had been dug to receive them; into this they were forced to descend, and the apostle of God indulged his vengeful mind with the sight of their slaughter and burial.... Verily, verily, the blackest and most atrocious of crimes are committed in the name of God. A few years after the extirpation of the Koraidha, Mohammed marched, at the head of two hundred horse, and fourteen hundred foot, against the ancient city of CHAIBAR, the seat of the Jewish power in Arabia. Chaibar was protected by eight strong castles, which were successively reduced by the Moslems in sixteen weeks, not, however, without considerable loss on the part of the conquerors. After the fall of the castles, the city was forced to surrender (628). The inhabitants had their lives granted to them, and permission to dwell in the land, on condition that they should pay to the prophet, an annual tribute of the one-half of their revenue. But the chief of Chaibar was subjected to the most cruel tortures, to force from him a confession of his hidden treasures; and when the 100,000 pieces of gold, which had been concealed, were delivered up at last, he and several of the most notable of his people were mercilessly butchered in cold blood. It was in this campaign against Chaibar that Mohammed bestowed upon Ali, the surname of the “Lion of God,” gained by the slaughter of 150 Hebrews, who are stated to have fallen by the irresistible scymitar of Abu Taleb’s illustrious son.[30]

The Jewess ASMA had offended the dignity of the prophet by some satirical strictures on his private life; he bribed a miserable blind Jew, named OMEIR, to assassinate her. This wretched tool murdered the ill-fated woman in her chamber, and nailed her body to the floor; having some misgivings of conscience, he accosted the prophet next morning while at prayer, and asked him whether God might not, perhaps, punish the crime perpetrated? whereupon the pious apostle bade him to be of good cheer, as the killing of a Jew, even if not at all times a meritorious act, was, at least, a matter of perfect indifference to the Ruler of the Universe! In the same way he deputed assassins to slay the learned Jew, ESHREF; in the name of God he sent them on their bloody errand! The venerable ABU AAS was murdered in his sleep at his bidding: the poor old man had reached his hundredth year, and might safely have been permitted to die in peace, but considerations of the kind weighed but little with the son of Abdallah; an insult to his apostolic dignity could only be washed off in the blood of the offender. But why sully our pages with the long list of private and public murders perpetrated by the command, or at the instigation of, this precious pretender to a divine mission, ... sufficient has been stated to illustrate the cruel and sanguinary disposition of the man.

Mohammed had left Mecca most reluctantly, and only when flight alone could preserve his life from the swords of his then all-powerful enemies. The thought to revisit as a conqueror, the city and the holy temple of the Kaaba, was ever present to his mind. When the Jews, by their disdainful rejection of his advances, had turned his friendship into implacable hatred, he changed the kebla of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca, clearly indicating thereby, that, whatever might be the merits of Medina, the holy city of the Kaaba stood still foremost in his affections. As soon as he had firmly established his empire over Medina, and some powerful tribes of the desert, and had destroyed or expelled the Jewish tribes of the Kainoka, the Nadhirites, and the Koraidha,[31] he projected a scheme for the conquest of Mecca, (towards the end of 627). Conscious that his power was not yet sufficiently great to prevail by force of arms, he craftily disguised his expedition against the city of his birth, in the form of a peaceful and pious pilgrimage. Seventy camels, chosen and bedecked for sacrifice, preceded the van of his host of 1400 picked men. The captives who fell into his hands, in his advance to the territory of the sacred city, were dismissed without ransom, to carry to the Koreish the solemn assurance of his peaceful intentions. All that the good man wanted, was to be permitted to enter the city, with his 1400 armed followers, to sacrifice the camels which he had brought with him for the purpose, and to perform the customary seven circumambulations round the Kaaba. Of course, had the Koreish conceded these points, the rest would have been a task of easy accomplishment. But the Koreish had had opportunities sufficient to know the crafty tongue and the false heart of the son of Abdallah. They encountered him, therefore, in the plain, within a day’s journey of the city, with such numbers and with such resolution, that he was fain to abandon his purpose for the time, and even to consent to the conclusion of a ten years’ truce, with the Koreish and their allies. In the treaty drawn up to that effect,[32] he, the infallible prophet of God, the favored mortal raised by the Divine will to an equality with the cherubim and seraphim in the heavenly hierarchy, the trusted leader who had solemnly promised his believing followers, a triumphal entry into the stronghold of the most formidable and most dreaded of the enemies of Islam,--was obliged even to waive the title of Apostle of God, and to figure as plain Mohammed Abul Kasem. Still the Koreish granted him, for the ensuing year, the privilege of entering the city unarmed and as a friend, and of remaining three days to accomplish the rites of the pilgrimage--a fatal mistake on their part, and which they might have foreseen one so crafty as Mohammed would turn to excellent account. For the time being, however, the authority of the pretended prophet of God was considerably shaken, and some of the newly converted Bedoween tribes showed symptoms of disaffection. The successful campaign against Chaibar revived the faith and courage of his followers, and restored the wavering loyalty of the wandering tribes.

After the conquest of Chaibar, Mohammed sent six embassies with letters to the neighbouring princes, calling upon them to embrace the religion of Islam: the seal of the letter bore the inscription, “Mohammed, the Apostle of God.” The Greek emperor, HERACLIUS, returning in triumph from the Persian war, received and entertained one of these ambassadors with great urbanity at Emesa. KOBAD II., of Persia (SIROES)[33] tore the letter, and dismissed the envoy with ignominy. MOKAWKAS, the Byzantine governor of Memphis, a born Egyptian, and a Jacobite or Monophysite[34] in religion; and who, in the disorder of the Persian war, had aspired to independence, and thereby exposed himself to the resentment of Heraclius, declined, indeed, the proposal of a new religion, but accompanied his refusal with flattering compliments and with gifts; among other, two Coptic damsels, one of whom, Mary, became the favorite concubine of the prophet, to whom she bore a son, Ibrahim, who died, however, at the tender age of fifteen months. The King of Abyssinia also returned a polite answer. But HARIS, governor of Damascus, threatened war upon the presumptuous Arabian; and AMRU, prince of Gassan, a vassal of the Byzantine emperor, put the envoy to death, for which outrage Mohammed sent afterwards an army into Syria, with what results we shall see hereafter.

According to the stipulations of the treaty of Hodaibeh, Mohammed was permitted to perform, towards the end of 628, at the head of a body of pious pilgrims, his three days’ devotion in the Kaaba; the Koreish retiring, meanwhile, to the hills. After the customary sacrifice, he evacuated the city on the fourth day; but in this short space of time, he had succeeded in sowing the seeds of division between the hostile chiefs, and to gain over to his cause KALED and AMROU, or AMRU, the future conquerors of Syria and Egypt. The interdiction of wine, and of dice and lotteries, falls in this period.

It was after the return from this pilgrimage, that he sent an army of 3000 Moslems against Amru, prince of Gassan, and the Greeks. The army was led by ZEID, Mohammed’s freedman and one of his earliest disciples. At Muta, three days’ journey from Jerusalem, they met the Gassanides and the Greeks: a fierce and bloody battle ensued; Zeid fell fighting in the foremost ranks; the holy banner, which escaped from his relaxing grasp, was seized by JAAFAR, the leader appointed by Mohammed to succeed Zeid, in the event of the decease of the latter. Jaafar’s right hand was severed from his body by the sword of a Roman soldier; he shifted the standard to the left hand: this met the same fate; he embraced the holy banner with the bleeding stumps, and thus upheld it, till the tide of life ebbed away from fifty wounds. The vacant place was as worthily filled by ABDALLAH, the second successor appointed by the prophet in case of accident. He also fell, transfixed by the lance of a Roman. The battle was lost, the flower of the Moslem host annihilated, and the ambitions dreams of empire were dispelled at the very time when they seemed to promise fairest,--had not KALED, the recent convert of Mecca, at this critical juncture, rescued the falling standard, and assumed the command, with the same bravery as his predecessors, but with still greater prowess, and with greater success. Nine swords were broken in his hand; and every enemy that dared to approach him, was made to bite the dust by his invincible arm. Night put an end to the contest: in the nocturnal council of the camp, Kaled was chosen, or rather confirmed, leader of the gallant band of warriors, who had survived the carnage of the day. Death had been fearfully busy in the ranks of the Moslems; and the Greeks, though awed by the valor of Kaled, had still an immense superiority of number in their favor. Kaled wisely resolved, therefore, to save the wreck of his forces by a skilful retreat. His admirable combinations, and the dread inspired by his prowess, rescued the host of the faithful believers of Islam from all but certain destruction; and the well-earned gratitude of the prophet bestowed upon the hero of Muta, the glorious appellation of the “Sword of God,” a name destined after to ring many a time and oft as the knell of doom in the ears of the affrighted Christians.

Mohammed had never ceased to meditate the conquest of Mecca, and his power was now, indeed, sufficiently great and solid to promise an easy accomplishment of this, the darling object of his ambition; but the ten years’ truce seemed an obstacle which it would not be easy to surmount. Notwithstanding, however, he silently prepared the means to carry his plans against the city of his birth into execution, should a favorable opportunity offer. The reverse which his forces had suffered at Muta, impelled the Koreish to furnish him with the desired pretext; they attacked one of the tribes confederated with Mohammed. Ten thousand soldiers were speedily gathered round the banner of the prophet, and led by him against the offending city. A rapid and secret march brought them almost within sight of Mecca, before the Koreish had the least notion of their approach. Unprepared as they were, it would have been sheer madness to contend against the overwhelming forces which now encompassed the city of the Kaaba: they resolved therefore to throw themselves upon the clemency of their triumphant exile. On the 11th of January, 630, the haughty chief of the house of Ommiyah presented the keys of the city; and confessed, under the scymitar of Omar, that the son of Abdallah was the apostle of the true God. The patriotic attachment which Mohammed unquestionably bore the city of his birth, and political considerations of a high order, stayed the avenging hand of the victorious outcast. Kaled had, indeed, slain twenty-eight of the inhabitants, ere the potent command of the prophet to spare the vanquished, could restrain his ruthless arm; but Mohammed blamed the cruelty of his lieutenant, and, though he proscribed eleven men and six women, few only were put to death by him. Among these was ABDOLUSA, who, after having embraced the faith of Islam, had relapsed into idolatry. ABDALLAH, once the secretary of Mohammed, and who had been employed by him to note down the fragmentary revelations imparted by Gabriel, had a narrow escape. The clear-sighted man had seen through the shallow imposture palmed upon the people by the pretended apostle; and he had imprudently boasted, that he also might claim the name and rank of a prophet, considering that he had it in his power to change, or to suppress, the holy revelations dictated to him by Mohammed. To escape the vengeance of his offended master, he had fled to Mecca, where he had, however, still continued to provoke his resentment by exposing and ridiculing his ignorance. When Mecca was taken, Abdallah fell prostrate at the feet of Mohammed, and implored his pardon. Othman, Abdallah’s foster-brother, entreated the prophet to spare the life of the humble penitent, a request which was at last most reluctantly granted, Mohammed declaring that he had so long hesitated, to allow time for some zealous disciple to strike the kneeling apostate dead at his feet.[35] The poet, HUIRES, paid the penalty of his satires on the Apostle of God: but SOHEIR more wisely purchased, not only forgiveness, but a rich reward in the bargain, by one of the grossest and most extravagant pieces of adulation that ever proceeded even from an Oriental pen.

The Koreish and the other inhabitants of Mecca, professed the religion of Islam, and acknowledged the temporal and spiritual supremacy of the prophet. The 360 idols of the Kaaba were ignominiously broken; Mohammed assisting with his own hands, in the work of destruction, nay, even lending his august shoulders for Ali to mount upon, to accomplish the overthrow of some idols placed a little above ordinary reach. This meritorious feat was performed on a Friday; which day was, therefore, henceforward appointed by the prophet as the holy day of Islam.

But it was by no means the intention of Mohammed to despoil the city of his birth, of the lucrative trade in religion to which it had hitherto been mainly indebted for its pre-eminence among the cities of Arabia. The people of Mecca were agreeably disappointed, when they beheld the Prophet of God solemnly consecrating again the purified Kaaba, and performing the customary circumambulations and sacrifices as of old. They were readily reconciled to the belief in a sole Deity, since their astute townsman assigned a local habitation on earth to the idea of the God whom he commanded them and the nations of the world to worship, and placed this habitation within the walls of their own city. Even the black stone was not forgotten by the crafty politician: his reverential touch cleansed it from the pollution of ages of idolatry, and restored it to the pristine purity and holiness of Gabriel’s celestial gift to Abraham; and to crown all, he still heightened the sanctity of the holy city, by enacting a perpetual law that no unbeliever should ever dare to set his foot within its sacred precincts.

The conquest of Mecca secured Mohammed the allegiance of many of the Bedoween tribes, who, troubling themselves but little about religious opinions and controversies, readily gave their adhesion to the cause which the gods seemed to prosper. But some of the most important tribes of Hejaz, and more especially the people of Tayef, persisted in their idolatry, and a great confederacy was formed among them to break the power of Mohammed. The prophet resolved to meet the threatening danger; he collected a host of 12,000 men, well-armed and well-appointed; the confederates had not one-half the number to oppose him. But the skilful tactics of the pagans, and the overweening confidence of the Mussulmans, brought the apostle and his new faith to the verge of ruin. Having incautiously descended into the valley of HONAIN, the Moslems were suddenly attacked on all sides by the archers and slingers of the enemy, who occupied the heights; the ranks of the faithful were thrown into confusion by the unexpected and fierce onset of the foe; and the stoutest hearts among them quailed, when they saw themselves caught as in a net. The Koreish secretly rejoiced at the impending destruction of their conquerors, and even prepared to go over to the enemy. All seemed lost;--despairing of victory, the prophet, seeking a glorious death, urged his white mule against the wall of spears that encompassed him: his faithful followers dragged him back, and covered him with their persons from the thrusts and darts aimed at his breast. Three of these devoted followers fell dead at his feet;--but the moment of weak despair was past, and soon the thunder of his voice was heard again, reanimating the sinking courage of the Moslems, and striking terror into the hearts of the idolators. The Koreish forgot their treacherous intentions; the flying Mussulmans returned from all sides to the holy standard; and the attacks of the enemy were now everywhere vigorously repulsed. Defeat was changed into victory, and a merciless slaughter of the conquered and flying pagans, avenged the temporary disgrace of the followers of Islam. From the field of Honain, Mohammed marched without delay to Tayef, the centre and stronghold of the confederacy. He laid siege to that fortress; but the desperate valor of the inhabitants defeated all his efforts to effect its reduction; and after twenty days spent before it, he deemed it the wisest course to rest satisfied for the time with the victory of Honain, and not to court the chances of an inglorious defeat. He, therefore, raised the siege, and marched back to Mecca. In his operations against Tayef, he gave an instance of how cheap he held his own laws and precepts, where they happened to clash with his interests: he ordered the extirpation of all the fruit trees in the fertile lands round the city.

In the division of the rich spoils of the expedition of Honain, he acted with consummate skill. Instead of excluding the Koreish from their share, to punish them for their ambiguous conduct during the campaign, he bestowed double measure upon them; the most disaffected of them all, Abu Sophian, being presented with no less than three hundred camels and twenty ounces of silver: no wonder, then, that that rapacious chief and his followers should have, henceforth, become sincere adherents to so profitable a creed. The old companions in arms of the prophet were reconciled to this manifest injustice in the distribution of the spoil, by artful flatteries and promises of heavenly rewards: his own share of the plunder (one-fifth) he assigned to the soldiers.[36]

Although he had failed to reduce Tayef, yet by the extirpation of the fruit trees he had struck a severe blow against the people of that city; the fortifications had been considerably injured by the battering rams and the mining operations, so that there was ample reason to dread the event of a renewal of the siege. The people of Tayef resolved, therefore, to sue for peace; their deputies endeavoured to obtain favorable conditions, and, at least, the toleration of their ancient worship, though even only for a short period. Mohammed would not concede them even one day; at last they simply entreated to be excused from the obligation of prayer to the God of Islam; in vain: Mohammed was inexorable, and Tayef at length submitted to the harsh conditions imposed by the prophet. The idols were broken, their temples demolished, and all the tribes of Hejaz acknowledged the supreme rule of the son of Abdallah. The ruler of BAHREIN, the King of OMAN, and the King of the BENI GASSAN, in Syria, confessed the God of Mohammed, and submitted to the sway of the prophet. Yemen also, and the rest of the peninsula, was reduced to obedience by his victorious lieutenants, and the ambassadors who knelt before the throne of Medina, (631, hence called the year of the embassies), were, in the words of the Arabian proverb, “as numerous as the dates that fall from the palm-tree in the season of ripeness.”

Absolute master of the whole of Arabia, the son of Abdallah resolved to subject Syria also to his sway; he solemnly declared war against the Empire of the East, and summoned the faithful to the holy standard. But the prospect of the difficulties and hardships of a march through the desert, during the intolerable heat of the summer, and, perhaps also, the recollection of Muta, discouraged the Moslems; and the most urgent solicitations of the apostle were disregarded, or met by more or less cogent excuses. Still the great champions of the faith, Ali, Omar, Othman, Kaled, Amru, Abu Bekr, Abu Obeidah, Abbas,[37] and many others, attended by trains of devoted followers, gathered round the prophet, and enabled him thus to take the field, at the head of ten thousand horse and twenty thousand foot.[38] After one of the most distressing marches through the desert, the Moslem host was compelled to halt midway near TABUC, ten days’ journey from Medina and Damascus. The hardships endured had considerably cooled the ardor of the faithful, and wisely declining to engage the disciplined forces of the Eastern empire with his wearied and dispirited followers, Mohammed contented himself with inviting the Greek Emperor once more to embrace his religion, and retired to Arabia; leaving a body of picked men, under the command of the intrepid Kaled, to prosecute the war. The valor and activity of that leader secured the submission of the tribes and cities from the Euphrates to Ailah, at the head of the Red Sea. Mohammed returned to Medina, where he pronounced a sentence of excommunication for fifty days against those who had been the most disobedient to his call. He then prepared for a great pilgrimage to Mecca, which he accomplished in the early part of 632, attended by 60,000 Moslems.[39] In this, his last visit to the city of his birth, he gave a great number of laws and precepts; and, among others, the interdiction of the private revenge of murder and other injuries.

It has already been stated, that Mohammed’s health had been declining ever since the campaign of Chaibar, (see page 34, note); yet such was the strength and vigor of his constitution, that up to the time of his last and fatal illness, he remained equal to the physical and mental fatigues of his mission. However, soon after his return from the last pilgrimage to Mecca, he fell ill of an inflammatory fever, with occasional fits of delirium, which he endeavoured to combat by frequent affusions with cold water. When he became conscious of the fatal nature of his illness, he laid himself out to die, as an accomplished actor, like Octavianus Augustus. Leaning on his cousin and son-in-law, Ali,[40] and on his uncle, Abbas, or the son of the latter, Fadl, he dragged himself to the mosque to perform the functions of public prayer: from the pulpit he called upon his subjects freely and boldly to state any grievance that any one of them might have suffered at his hands, and to prefer any just claims against his estate. A safe challenge indeed: the victims of his lust of power and revenge were laid in their graves, and could not appear against him _there_; nor could _they_ prefer any claim against his estate, who had been despoiled by him or his lieutenants, in their predatory expeditions. No wonder then that the immaculate justice and piety of the Apostle of God, were fully attested by the silence of the congregation in presence of this challenge,--excepting a paltry claim of three drachms of silver, which was, of course, at once duly settled by Mohammed, with a profusion of thanks into the bargain, that the “creditor” had rather demanded payment in this world, than waited to accuse him at the judgment-seat of God!

Up to the third day before his death, he continued to perform the function of public prayer; on that day his strength failed him, and he deputed Abu Bekr in his place, which was afterwards skilfully laid hold of by the latter and Ayesha, to found a claim to the successorship in the sacerdotal and regal office, in favor of Abu Bekr, to the prejudice of Ali.

He then made his last dispositions, enfranchised his slaves, (seventeen men and eleven women), had alms distributed to the poor of Medina, and minutely directed the order of his funeral. He expressed a desire to dictate to his secretary a new divine book, the sum and accomplishment of all his revelations, and which, according to Mohammed’s convenient maxim, would have superseded the authority of the Koran, in all points in which its teachings might happen to clash with the rules and precepts laid down in the latter. As Mohammed had preached an eternal and immutable God, and had declared the substance of the Koran to be uncreated and eternal, the gross absurdity of attempting a new, revised, and amended edition of it, could not fail to strike the more rational among his disciples. They, with Omar at their head, firmly refused, therefore, to consent to the prophet’s anxiously expressed wish--a curious comment on the sincerity of their professed conviction of his divine mission, and his communings with the messenger of heaven, and for which, their _assumed_ belief that his mental faculties were, at the time, impaired by the effects of illness, afforded but an indifferent apology. Be this however as it may, the point was vehemently discussed between them and the more devout followers of the prophet; and the dispute, which was carried on in the chamber of the dying man, rose at last to such a pitch, that Mohammed reluctantly desisting from his desire, was forced to reprove the indecent vehemence of the disputants on either side.

Even to the last moment of his life, Mohammed consistently carried out his system of deception. He told his friends about him, that he had received a last visit of Gabriel, who had now bidden an everlasting farewell to the earth. In a familiar discourse, he had once boasted of the peculiar and exclusive prerogative granted to him, that the angel of death should respectfully solicit his permission before he was to be allowed to take his soul. When he felt the near approach of his dissolution, he calmly informed the Moslem chiefs assembled round him, that the Great Destroyer had just preferred his request, and that he, Mohammed, had granted the permission asked! Stretched on a carpet spread upon the floor, and with his head reclining on the lap of Ayesha, the best beloved of his wives, he expired on the 7th day of June, 632.[41] His last words were: “O God!... pardon my sins.... Yes, ... I come, ... among my fellow-citizens on high.”

His death dismayed his followers; the more fanatical among them could not bring themselves to believe in the actual departure of his spirit from this world. The idea of a trance, or of a resurrection after a few days’ apparent death, found ready credence with them. Omar, unsheathing his scymitar, threatened to strike off the heads of the infidels who should dare to affirm that the prophet was no more!--a curious comment upon his refusal to allow the dying prophet to re-write the Koran. At last, Abu Bekr succeeded in making them listen to reason: “Is it Mohammed,” he said, “or Mohammed’s God whom you worship? Has not the apostle himself predicted that he should experience the common fate of mortality?” This calm and rational address had the desired effect; the death of the prophet was admitted by all, and his body was piously interred by the hands of Ali, on the same spot on which he expired, and which is now surrounded by the great mosque of Medina. The story of the hanging coffin at Mecca is a vulgar and puerile invention, not worth the trouble of refutation.

I have been led by the superior importance and interest which attach to the subject, to extend this chapter, perhaps, considerably beyond the limits compatible with the nature and size of the present work; still I cannot abstain from adding a short sketch of Mohammed’s habits of life, and a few brief remarks on the Koran.

In his domestic life and intercourse, Mohammed was most simple and unassuming. The ruler of Arabia fed usually upon barley bread and dates; water was his ordinary drink, though he delighted, and occasionally indulged, in the taste of milk and honey; he never drank wine. The powerful chieftain who could command the services of thousands, did not disdain performing the menial offices of the household: he kindled the fire, swept the floor, milked the ewes, and mended with his own hands, his shoes and his woollen garment (the use of silk he rejected as too effeminate); nor was it an uncommon circumstance to see the Apostle of God barefoot. He slept on the bare ground, or on a carpet or straw mat spread upon the floor. He always performed, with the most rigorous strictness, the prayers and ablutions enjoined by the Koran. With the regal and sacerdotal office, he had assumed the reserve and austerity that befitted his high position; yet he would occasionally unbend in the circle of his friends, when he enchanted all around him by the graceful, though dignified, affability of his manners, and the charms of his conversation. He was passionately fond of fairy tales. He delighted in perfumes and cats, which latter partiality he shared with one of his cotemporaries, the learned Abu Horaira, who gained for himself the surname of “the father of a cat.” His hair, beard, and eyebrows, were the objects of his most anxious care and solicitude; he dyed them with considerable skill, a glossy light-chesnut color.

He was most passionately addicted to the fair sex: in the indulgence of his amorous desires, he set his own laws at nought. The Arabians had enjoyed, from time immemorial, an unbounded licence of polygamy; the Koran limited the number of legitimate wives or concubines to _four_, the prophet had _seventeen_ wives; but then, Gabriel had descended with a special revelation, dispensing the favored apostle from the laws which he had imposed on the nation. ZEINEB, the beautiful wife of ZEID, his freedman and adopted son, excited his desire. The grateful husband consented to a divorce, and the prophet added her to the number of his wives; but as the filial relation in which the young woman stood to Mohammed, even though only by adoption, was likely to produce some scandal, and to raise some scruples in the minds of the faithful, the complaisant Gabriel descended with another verse of the Koran, appropriate to the occasion. Again, in the case of Mary, the Egyptian slave, the indefatigable angel was at hand to oblige the Apostle of God. Had Mohammed liked wine, there can be no doubt, but that Gabriel would have been ready with another verse of the Koran, to dispense the prophet from the restriction imposed upon all other mortals. A better proof than the nature of these successive “revelations,” so entirely subservient to the gratification of his passions, could not well be adduced, to show that Mohammed was not, as some good-natured historians would fain believe him to have been, the enthusiastic dupe of his own illusions, but simply a cool and calculating politician, who made the institution of a new religious system the basis and engine of his power and dominion; most probably, sincerely believing also, that he was really conferring an immense boon upon his people. His vengeful and sanguinary disposition, has been already fully exposed in the narration of his life. The impartiality of history relieves those darker touches in the picture of Mohammed’s character, by a trait of unaffected humanity. His decree that, in the sale of captives, mothers should never be separated from their children, may well, as Gibbon says, moderate the censure of the historian. How the thousands of hapless negro mothers that have had their children ruthlessly torn from their arms in _Christian_ America, would bless the memory of the Arabian legislator, could that humane decree of his find force and application in the Western Hemisphere!

The KORAN is the sacred book of Islam; the successive “revelations” imparted to Mohammed, were diligently recorded by his disciples on palm-leaves, skins, and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the fragments, or “pages,” were thrown into a domestic chest, in the custody of one of Mohammed’s wives. In 634, these fragments were collected and published by Abu Bekr; the sacred volume was revised by the Khalif Othman, in 651. It consists of 114 chapters (SURATS, _i.e._ stages or degrees), of very unequal lengths, and jumbled together without chronological order, or systematic arrangement. The chapters are made up of plagiarisms from the Bible, rabbinical and apocryphal legends, religious and moral precepts, descriptions of the joys of paradise and the torments of hell, declamations and rhapsodies. The style is, for the most part, inflated, rarely poetical, never sublime; yet Mohammed had the cool audacity to rest the truth of his mission on the incomparable merit of the Koran, as an intellectual, linguistic, and poetical performance. He blasphemously asserted, that God alone could have penned, or dictated, its divine contents; as no human, nor even an angelic intelligence, could possibly have conceived anything like them!!!

The dogmatic part of the Koran (the IMAN), comprises the two articles of faith, viz., the belief in one God, and in his prophet Mohammed; and the four practical duties of Islam, viz., prayer, ablutions, fasting, and alms-giving: these duties are reduced to the level of mere mechanical performances, without one atom of spontaneity about them, and are looked upon by most Mohammedans as irksome tasks, which must be accomplished, however, to secure the reward of paradise; the formal permission granted to supply with sand the scarcity of water, so that the prescribed lustration of the hands, the face, and the body may be practised even in the arid desert, shows how little capable the legislator must have been to conceive and comprehend the true spirit and intention of his own ordinances. The Koran pronounces--of course: is there a religion that does not?--sentence of eternal damnation against all unbelievers; it imagines a gradation of seven inconveniently hot places, of which the highest and least uncomfortable is, of course, appropriated for the exclusive use of Mohammedans who have been lacking in piety during their mortal career; according to the less or greater gravity of their respective offences, they are condemned to remain denizens of this the mildest of the seven hells, for periods varying from 900 to 9000 years, after which they are admitted to the joys of paradise. The place immediately beneath this purgatorial hell is assigned to the Christians; the hell next to this is allotted to the Jews, whom the prophet of Islam would indeed gladly have sent down lower, had he dared to treat monotheists worse than idolators; the Sabians inhabit the fourth, the Magians the fifth, the gross idolators the sixth hell; the deepest and hottest hell is destined to receive hypocrites in religion, and may therefore safely be assumed to be of larger dimensions and infinitely greater capacity than the other six together. The paradise of the Koran abounds in groves, fountains, and rivers; the blessed Moslems who are permitted to enter its gates will dwell in palaces of marble, eat artificial dainties and luscious fruits presented in dishes of gold, drink rich wines,[42] dress in robes of silk, adorned with pearls and diamonds, and have a numerous retinue of attendants; and above all, each Moslem will enjoy the society and possession of seventy-two Houris, or black-eyed girls, of resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite sensibility--rather a pleasant picture for a sensual people like the Arabians. To the female sex also the gates of paradise are open; but the privileges and enjoyments which may await the ladies of the Mohammedan faith, are not specified in the Koran. Still, we must not be unjust: above the vulgar joys and sensual pleasures borrowed from this world, Mohammed places the delights of familiar conversation with the sages, and he expressly declares that all meaner happiness will be forgotten and despised by the saints and martyrs who shall be permitted to behold the face of God.

Mohammed’s assertion that the Koran was the production of the highest intelligence, and comprised within it the knowledge of all times, has, ever since the establishment of his creed, proved a bar to the intellectual culture and progress of his people and of the other nations who were induced or compelled to adopt his faith; his interdiction to reproduce the human face and form on canvas or in marble, or any other material, and which with singular poverty of invention he had devised as the only possible check to idolatry, has had the natural effect to suppress and extinguish in the Moslem nations the love of the fine arts. True, when conquest had placed the wealth of empires at the disposal of the sons of the Desert, many of Mohammed’s followers could not resist the natural longing after the treasures and enjoyments of science, art, and literature; and indeed the republic of letters is vastly indebted to many of them for their labors and researches in various fields of human lore, more especially in geography, history, philosophy, medicine, natural philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and above all, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and astronomy. But then, as A. W. VON SCHLEGEL, says, “All this was done, as it were, behind the back of the prophet, and the votaries of art, science, and literature, among the Arabians must, from a Koranic point of view, be regarded in the light of free-thinkers.”

The ritual of the faith of Islam, and the interdictions decreed by the prophet, have been already incidentally touched upon in various parts of this chapter; we have therefore simply to add here that the Koran commands every faithful Moslem to visit, at feast once in his life, the holy city of Mecca, and the Kaaba.

One great redeeming feature of the religion of Islam was that it was originally destitute of a priesthood, and repudiated monachism; the _Ulemas_ were simply intended to be the expounders and interpreters of the law.

On Friday, the appointed day of public worship, when the faithful are assembled in the mosque, any respectable elder may ascend the pulpit to begin the prayer and pronounce the sermon: there is no need of a duly appointed priest. But, unfortunately, the Ulemas and Imams of the present day act very much in the capacity of an actual clergy: and there is indeed no great difference between fakirs and dervishes and Roman Catholic monks.

The Koran contains also the civil and criminal code of the Mussulmans; the punishments decreed in it for injuries, offences, and crimes are mostly based upon the principle of retaliation.

Briefly to sum up: though it must be admitted that the religion of Islam, calmly and dispassionately examined by the light of reason, contains, by the side of the grossest absurdities, the most palpable falsehoods, and the veriest rubbish, much also that is true and of sterling worth; and that it has exercised a certain civilising influence over the barbarous nations to whom it was first preached, yet few only will venture to deny that it lacks altogether the higher and most essential qualities of a universal faith. Even the basis whereon it rests, the great eternal truth of a sole Deity, is tarnished and clouded in it by the companionship which it is forced to bear to a miserable fiction placed by the side of it, and with equal attributes. There are some few, strange though it may appear, who almost regret that the victorious career of the Moslems should have been checked by LEO THE ISAURIAN and by CHARLES MARTEL. What would have become of Europe--what of civilisation, had the Moslems conquered? Let the admirers of Islam look at the state of the Mussulman nations of the present day: the fruit shows the quality of the tree. It is also a favorite argument with historians and others, to point to the _numbers_ of believers in Islam, and to the twelve centuries that the Mohammedan faith has endured, as convincing proofs of the _truth_ of that creed, or, at all events, of a preponderating amount of truth in it. If arguments of this kind are to apply, the Mormon faith also may claim admission among the “received” creeds; and the names of Joe Smith and Brigham Young may be expected, in the course of fifty years or so, to figure among the “prophets and apostles of religion.”

FOOTNOTES:

[1] See Genesis, x. 25. EBER signifies a nomadic shepherd, one leading a roving pastoral life; it signifies, also, in Hebrew, _beyond_, _yon-side_, _the other side_: hence the name HEBREW, or EBREW, has been supposed also to be intended to designate immigrants into Canaan or Palestine from beyond the Euphrates.

[2] A species of millet, which compensates to some extent the scarcity of European grains.

[3] “The Arabian tribes are equally addicted to commerce and rapine,” as Pliny has it.

[4] True, in the Arabic tongue the meaning of the words, of which the name _Saracens_ may be compounded, will bear out the signification of an _Oriental situation_. But the _western_ position of the Saracen tribe mentioned by Ptolemy, negatives the assumption of the Arabic origin of the word as applied in this sense. As Gibbon sagaciously remarks, the appellation being imposed by strangers, its meaning must be sought, not in the Arabic, but in a foreign language.