Chapter II: Early Manhood

'The future comes not from before to meet us, but streams up from behind over our heads.'--RAHEL LEVIN.

[Sidenote: Mohammed's First Fighting.]

So the years passed on, and Mohammed grew from boyhood to youth, fair of character and of honourable bearing among his fellow citizens. Though he shunned the coarser sins and licentious practices of the city he could no longer as a young Meccan hold aloof from the civil and social life of his day. When he was about twenty he received 'his baptism of fire,' and fought in his first battle. The Koreish were at war with a neighbouring tribe. The cause of the war was insignificant enough, but it is typical of the slight causes of the blood-feuds of that day.

At certain seasons of the year it was the custom of the tribes to gather at the larger towns for fairs. Of these the most important was the sacred Fair of {15} Ukaz, a large market town not far from Mecca.

[Sidenote: A Blood-feud.]

It was at one of these annual Ukaz fairs that the trouble arose. An arrogant Koreish poet had been boastfully vaunting the superiority of his tribe, and was struck by a zealot of the Hawazin tribe. A story got about that a Hawazin girl had been ill-treated by some Koreish maidens. A certain man of the Koreish was unable to pay a debt to a man of the Hawazin tribe. Arab blood boiled hot. The Hawazin creditor thereupon seated himself in a conspicuous place in the market with a monkey by his side, and proclaimed to all who passed by, in the true Eastern language of figure of speech: 'If you will give me another such ape, I will give you in exchange my claim on...' naming the debtor, with his full pedigree, back to Kinana, an ancestor of the Koreish. This he kept vociferating to the intense annoyance of the Kinana, till one of them drew his sword and cut off the monkey's head. In an instant the whole Hawazin and Kinana tribes were embroiled in bloody strife.

The trouble was patched up at the time, {16} but only to burst forth into a fiercer fury a few years later, when a spiteful murder supplied more serious cause of offence. Then the fierce fire of tribal hatred was unquenchable, and the whole country was embroiled in a war which lasted for four years, with short truces and respites, and ended at last in the Koreish agreeing to pay blood money in the shape of hostages for the Hawazins they had slain.

Into some, at least, of the battles of this war, Mohammed, then in his teens, accompanied his uncle. He seems to have played no conspicuous or glorious part, and even in later days, when he referred to it, it was without enthusiasm or pride. Perhaps he discharged some arrows at the enemy--more likely he acted as attendant to his uncle, collecting arrows and handing them to him to shoot. Indeed, neither then nor at any later period of his career was Mohammed distinguished for his physical courage or martial daring.

[Sidenote: Mohammed's Appearance.]

Let us now introduce ourselves to our hero himself. His face has taken the set features of manhood, and we may safely apply to him the picture left by his contemporaries of the man as they knew him, {17} and as in later years they bowed beneath his influence and power. He was no Saul in stature, though perhaps above the average height; yet in his countenance there was much that we are accustomed to expect in a leader of men. A Napoleonic nose, a head too big for the body, flowing jet black locks, falling on either side of his face, intense, gleaming black eyes, slightly bloodshot, an ample beard and moustache covering a rather sensuous mouth must have given him a striking and commanding appearance. His skin was slightly fairer than that of most Arabs, with a faint tinge of blue. Across his ample forehead ran a prominent vein, of which much is said, and which used to swell and throb when he was angry. Yet, withal, his face could have its gentler moods; he could be kindly when he would, and to the end he was a lover of children.

[Sidenote: His Manner of Life.]

Such was his outward appearance; we have some records, too, of his manner of life among his fellow-citizens in Mecca--records which show no trace of the man that was to be; he was respected but undistinguished. From early manhood they named him Al Amin--'The Faithful,'--and he seems to have been regarded by {18} his fellow-citizens as a solid, dependable, brotherly, genuine man. Passionate and unrestrained, yet a serious, sincere, character, capable of real amiability, and with a good laugh in him withal.

[Sidenote: Fair of Ukas.]

Year by year would come fresh stimulus to his active mind. With his fellow-citizens he went regularly to the annual fair at Ukaz, probably on business as well as pleasure bent. This fair was indeed one of the few institutions of Arabia which could well be called 'national.' Thither during two sacred months of truce the many scattered tribes gathered. It was the 'Olympia' of Arabia. The rivalry was not the rivalry of discus and javelin, but of poetry and eloquence. Ukaz was, indeed, the press, the stage, the pulpit, the parliament, and the 'Academie Française' of the Arab people. It was the focus of all the literature of Arabia. Thither resorted the poets of these rival clans and tribes, to a literary congress without formal judges but with unbounded influence. And because it was the centre of emulation for Arab poets, it was also a kind of annual review of Bedouin virtues and Arabian religion. For it was in poetry {19} that the Arab--as indeed man all the world over--expressed his highest thoughts.

At these fairs a strange assortment of religious opinions would be found. There would be Christian preachers, probably of many rival factions, each not only proclaiming his 'gospel' but disclaiming all the others, Jews and Sabæans, Zoroastrians and Hanîfites, each with complete systems of religion. The orators of each Arab tribe, too, vied with one another in acclaiming the superior powers and merits of their own tribal gods, their own sacred spot or relics, and their particular superstitious traditions.

[Sidenote: Was there Hope of a United Arabia?]

Though the discords were so great and the causes of friction so numerous, these discordant notes were sounding a kind of harmony in the peaceful rivalries of a national fair. For in the long years of history it was seldom that the peace of the fairs was seriously broken, or the two months' truce for attending them violated, or the sacred spots of a tribe desecrated by bloodshed. How was this? There was no central government, no punitive authority other than that of the tribe which was in the ascendant at the time, {20} or the strongest combination of clans allied for the moment by some common interest. It was not in the government that hope for the future lay.

[Sidenote: The Possibilities of the Arabs.]

[Sidenote: (_a_) Germ of Belief in One Supreme God.]

Was it in religion? At the bottom of all mythologies, at the back of the rudest superstitions and crudest idolatries the whole world over, there are fragments of truth. And in Arabia, lying so close to the countries of God's earliest revelation to mankind, we should expect yet more than this. Long centuries before, the Book of Job had been written in Arabia; Moses spent forty years there, leading a Bedouin life in charge of the flocks of his father-in-law; and Jethro, high priest of Midian as he was, had prepared burnt-offerings and sacrifices for the one true God, confessing, 'Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods.' The Queen of Sheba journeying from the South to see the wisdom of Solomon may have taken back with her fragments of the truth.

The wonder is that these sparks of light had never burst into the flame of worship of the one true God. Instead they were all but extinguished; none but a thoughtful {21} man would recognise behind the gross fetishism, and the thousand petty gods of the Arab tribes, acknowledgment of the ancient belief in one supreme Deity. Yet there it was, as history proves. And Mohammed saw it.

[Sidenote: (b) Common Ancestry. (c) Common Tongue.]

There were two other common elements which all Arabia shared: a common ancestry giving them very marked national characteristics and a strong Arabian sentiment or patriotism; and a common tongue spoken (with some variation of dialect) by Bedouin and Hadesi all through that vast land of desert.[1] These were both assets of great value in Mohammed's future schemes. Whether as yet he recognized their possibilities we do not know. Anyhow he was no agitator. After all who was he? Only his uncle's dependent.

[Sidenote: Mohammed's First Marriage.]

As a rule in the East men marry young, but Mohammed was an exception, At twenty-five marriage and love came to him rather than were sought by him, and they were the making of his life. For there is no doubt that his wife Khadîjah deserves to rank among the great women of history. During her {22} lifetime her great and strong influence upon Mohammed kept him from stumbling where afterwards he fell, and as she was a woman of considerable wealth, marriage very greatly altered her husband's material and social position.

It happened in this wise. Abu Talib, finding his own family increasing faster than his ability to provide for them, bethought him of setting his nephew to earn a livelihood for himself, and addressed him in these words:

'I am, as thou knowest, a man of small substance, and truly the times deal hardly with me. Now there is a caravan of thine own tribe about to start for Syria, and Khadîjah needeth men of our tribe to send forth with her merchandise. If thou wert to offer thyself she would readily accept thy services.'

To which Mohammed very respectfully replied: 'Be it so as thou hast said.'

This sent Abu Talib off to visit Khadîjah.

'We hear that thou hast engaged such an one for two camels, and we should not be content that my nephew's hire were less than four.' To this she replied:

'Hadst thou asked this thing for one {23} of a distant or alien tribe, I would have granted it: how much rather now that thou askest it for a near relative and friend?'

So the matter was settled, and Mohammed went in charge of the caravan. His sagacity and shrewdness carried him prosperously through the undertaking, and when with the caravan he retraced his steps it was with a balance of barter goods more than usually in his favour.

[Sidenote: Mohammed's Wooing.]

It is quite a pretty picture, this, of old-time romance, albeit Khadîjah was fifteen years the senior. She is sitting on the roof surrounded by her maidens, on the watch for the earliest glimpse of the caravan, when a single camel is seen approaching, the rider of which is soon recognized as Mohammed, who has ridden ahead of the caravan to bear his news as quickly as possible. And so, travel-stained, yet flushed with his first success, he is conducted up to the presence of his mistress. 'She was delighted at all she heard: but there was a charm in the dark and pensive eyes, in the noble features, and the graceful form of her assiduous agent which pleased her even {24} more than her good fortune.' And when she had dismissed him with ample wages she did not forget him. Mohammed, too, was heart-whole no longer, and became melancholic and broody.

The ways of love are the same all the world over and in all times, but its etiquettes and customs vary. And in those days things in Arabia were not as they are with us to-day, nor as they are now in the East, where, by a strange irony, owing to the very system which Mohammed inaugurated, women are the mere chattels of men, and know no such liberty as that which brought him his best fortune in his young days.

For it was Khadîjah that played the first move in the game of courtship, and she played it with a woman's adroitness and discernment. Her sister was her accomplice.

'What is it, O Mohammed, which hindereth thee from marriage?'

'I have nothing in my hands wherewith I might marry,' was his very sensible reply.

'But if haply that difficulty were removed and thou wert invited to espouse {25} a beautiful and wealthy lady of noble birth--wouldest thou not desire to have her?'

'And who might that be?' said Mohammed, warming to her questions.

'It is Khadîjah.'

'But how might I attain unto her?' asked Mohammed.

'Let that be my care,' was the reassuring answer.

That was sufficient for him, and the sister returned to Khadîjah, who then lost no time in sending an open message to Mohammed appointing a time when they should meet. Within the year they were married with Arab ceremony by Khadîjah's aged cousin, Warakah, who blessed the union in homely Bedouin language, declaring that Mohammed was 'a camel whose nose would not be struck.'

With Mohammed's marriage to Khadîjah, his opportunity, if he were looking for one, would seem to have come. Free from his uncle's patronage, freed, too, from the carping cares of straitened circumstances, or the necessity of working long hours at some small task to earn his daily bread, he had passed to a position of {26} ease and affluence. Henceforth he led no camels or he led his own. He was free to shape his life as he would, while his wealth and new position made him one of the leading men of Mecca.

Now, if he had great thoughts, was the time to make them known; now, if he felt disquieted about the gross idolatry of the people, was his chance to bear witness against it; now, if he wanted to revolutionize the old-world life of Mecca, he had his vantage ground from which to do so. But instead, during those fifteen years, from twenty-five to forty, so full and strenuous in the life of most men of action, Mohammed played no conspicuous part,--the years passed by, and on none did he write his name.

[Sidenote: Rebuilding of the Kaaba.]

Of many incidents recovered by Mohammedan historians in later days from the scrap-heap of small provincial history, and filled by them with portent and meaning, one at least is worth recalling. It reveals a touch of that capacity for manipulating men and circumstances which contributed so largely to Mohammed's power in later days.

When he was in his thirty-fifth year, one {27} of those sudden, sweeping floods to which all mountain districts are liable swept through Mecca, and struck the Kaaba, tearing a hole in the wall, damaging the contents, and imperilling the roof. To the superstitious Meccans it was a portentous omen, and they waited expectantly for some dread visitation of the wrath of the gods whose shrine had been thus desecrated. As time passed and no calamity befell them, and less superstitious, or less reverent thieves took advantage of its insecure condition to pillage the shrine and plunder the sacred relics, the leading men of Mecca met in solemn conclave and decided that the Kaaba must be rebuilt. News reached them of a Grecian ship wrecked on the Red Sea shores not very far away. The timbers of the broken ship were bought, and her Greek captain, who had some reputation as an architect, was requisitioned to direct the building. The work was entered upon with great trepidation, but when once the ruined walls had been taken down without any visitation upon the workmen or the town, the work of rebuilding was eagerly begun, and the various clans of the Koreish vied with one another for what {28} they began to think the gods might after all consider zeal of religion and not sacrilege.

The tribes of the Koreish were divided into four parties, to each of which one wall was assigned; stones of grey granite from the neighbouring hills were carried on the citizens' heads; soon the walls began to assume their old familiar shape, and all went harmoniously.

When the walls had grown to about four feet high, a new difficulty arose. They had reached the place where the sacred Black Stone must be masoned in, in its accustomed place, in the outside of the wall near the door. Who should have the honour of laying this heaven-given stone, reverenced from time immemorial by all true Arabs? It was a puzzling question and a contentious question, too, where there was no king, nor even a prince with a special genius--as, of course, all princes have--for laying stones, nor was there any sacred order of priest or patriarch to whom appeal could be made--not even a cabinet minister!

It was settled thus. As they stood beside the wall disputing for the honour, the oldest citizen arose and said:

'O Koreish, hearken unto me! My advice is {29} that the man who chanceth first to enter the court of the Kaaba by yonder gate, he shall be chosen either to decide the difference among you, or himself to place the stone.'

The proposal was readily passed by acclamation, and they waited the issue. Presently Mohammed was seen approaching, and all unknowing he entered the chosen door. Calm and self-possessed he rose to the occasion. Taking off his mantle, he spread it on the ground and placed the stone thereon.

'Now,' he said, 'let one from each of your four divisions come forward and raise a corner of this mantle.'

Four chiefs approached, and, holding each a corner, raised the stone to the proper level, and Mohammed with his own hand guided it to its place.

The difficulty was solved and the walls were soon completed, and the roof put on--'of fifteen rafters resting upon six central pillars.' The Kaaba was complete once more, though it is doubtful whether the same respect and veneration could ever again be commanded by gods who had allowed a river to break up their sanctuary, and men to handle and restore it.

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[Sidenote: New Forces at work in Mecca.]

Beyond the confines of Arabia two mighty Empires were throbbing with the activities of strenuous life, and the back-waters of quiet Mecca could not remain undisturbed.

A Meccan caravan expedition penetrated into the heart of Persia with record success; the spirit of enterprise was awake, and new-world thoughts came into the old-world city. The growth of a small but influential religious party called the Hanîfahs, led by the aged Warakah, Khadîjah's cousin, had struck at the roots of idolatry, and raised the cry of 'Back to Abraham and his simple worship of the one true God.' This told of a deepening thought and growing dissatisfaction with the gross idolatry and superstition which had hitherto done duty for religion in Mecca.

By these currents Mohammed's outward life was apparently as untouched as that of any other average citizen. Professor Davidson used to say that in youth men get their visions, and see the glory of the sun upon the distant mountains of life's horizon, and the rest of life is but a following--often through the darkness--towards the light seen in {31} youth. If it were so with Mohammed he gave little evidence of all that was passing in his mind. He lived a domestic life with Khadîjah and a now growing family of children, of whom he was very fond. Every evening he performed idolatrous rites in his home, and he named at any rate some of his children after heathen deities. He filled his place, no doubt, as a wealthy, and therefore leading citizen of Mecca, but beyond that he was known as a retiring, thoughtful man, who preferred the seclusion and quiet of home life to the rush and scramble of the market and the rostrum.

Who would have thought that this man would mightily affect the destiny and history of the whole human race, that he would be the founder of an Empire which within a hundred years would hold sway from Cadiz to Bokhara, would annihilate the Empire of Persia and lay siege to Byzantium?

Who would have thought that twelve hundred years after, this man's name, coupled with that of the Almighty, would be invoked in prayer by just over two hundred millions of mankind, and proclaimed {32} from ten thousand minarets: '_There is no God but God: Mohammed is the Apostle of God_'?

How was it? Why was it?

QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER II

1. What is a blood-feud? Illustrate your answer. How far is the system good which gives rise to blood-feuds?

2. Comment on Mohammed's appearance. In what ways was it an index to his character?

3. Describe the Fair of Ukaz. What was the use of it?

4. What hope existed of the Arabs becoming a united nation?

5. How did Mohammed's marriage come about? What effect did it have upon his life?

[1] The area of Arabia about equals that of India.

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