Chapter III: The Prophet of Arabia

'We must be as courteous to a man as to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of a good light.'--EMERSON.

[Sidenote: Mohammed's first 'Revelation.']

We come now to the event in Mohammed's life about which there has been both the keenest investigation and bitterest controversy. Scholars have elaborated very different theories about the 'method' of Mohammed's inspiration, partly because of its true importance as the crisis and turning-point of his life, and partly because men used to think that the understanding of it was the key to the reading of Mohammed's character. Without troubling ourselves with the various conflicting theories, we shall confine ourselves to what is sufficiently difficult--brushing aside all fancies and excrescences with which the records are garnished, we shall tell as nearly as possible what happened, or at any rate give Mohammed's account of it.

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[Sidenote: Scene on Mount Hira.]

It was Mohammed's custom--one not uncommon in Arabia at that time--to retire for a fixed season each year to the seclusion of the rocks and ravines which encircled Mecca. One of these in particular, a cave in Mount Hira, was a favourite resort--a wild, bleak, barren spot, in harmony with troubled heart and wounded spirit. And some suras (i.e. chapters) of the Korân, almost certainly composed at this time, reveal an intensity of anguish and also a growing sense of the reality of God--the following for example:

'BY THE RUSHING PANTING STEEDS,
STRIKING FIRE WITH FLASHING HOOF,
THAT SCOUR THE LAND AT EARLY MORN;
AND, DARKENING IT WITH DUST,
CLEAVE THEREBY THE ENEMY:

VERILY MAN IS TO HIS LORD UNGRATEFUL,
AND HE HIMSELF IS WITNESS OF IT:
VERILY HE is KEEN AFTER THIS WORLD'S GOOD.
AH! WITTETH HE NOT THAT WHEN WHAT IS IN THE
GRAVES SHALL BE BROUGHT FORTH,
AND THAT WHICH IS IN MEN'S BREASTS LAID BARE:--
VERILY IN THAT DAY SHALL THE LORD BE WELL
INFORMED OF THEM.'

To this cave Mohammed had come with his trusted wife, in his fortieth year, to {35} spend the month Ramadân in undisturbed meditation; in wrestling, we may believe, with his own heart, and in contemplating the eternal problem of the world's sin and sorrow. There, in the midst of prayers and supplications, the light of revelation seemed suddenly to burst upon him.

It was midnight in the cave when a glorious angel appeared first in the sky, then approached within two bow-shots' length, holding a silken cloth written all over. The angel roused him from sleep and bade him 'Read.' 'But I am not a reader,' Mohammed replied. Thrice was the injunction repeated, the third time in these words:

'READ, IN THE NAME OF THE LORD WHO CREATED,
CREATED MAN FROM A CLOT OF BLOOD.
READ, FOR THE LORD IS THE MOST BENEFICENT,
HE HATH TAUGHT THE USE OF THE PEN;
HE HATH TAUGHT MAN THAT WHICH HE KNOWETH NOT.'

Then Mohammed repeated the words to himself, and they were 'written upon his heart.' Then, we are told, he went to the door of the cave, and remained standing there till again there appeared his heavenly visitant, 'in the form of a man, with wings, {36} and with his feet upon the horizon,' and saluted him: 'Mohammed, thou art the Prophet of God, and I am Gabriel.'

Trembling and overstrung, Mohammed returned to Khadîjah, and nestling close beside her like a frightened child related what had passed.

'Cover me, cover me,' he said. 'I fear for my soul.' She covered him with a mantle and comforted him, saying:

'Rejoice: God will not put you to shame; thou art so kind to thy relations, sincere in thy words, afraid of no trouble to serve thy neighbour, supporting the poor, given to hospitality, and defending the truth.'

The visitations occurred several times, and each time they were accompanied by violent physical effects upon Mohammed. 'He was angry if anyone looked upon him: his face was covered with foam, his eyes were closed and sometimes he roared like a camel.'

Even the faithful Khadîjah began to have her fears. Demon possession is a common idea in the East. 'Could it be that her exemplary husband was the victim of the wrath of some genius of evil?' She consulted her cousin, Warakah, {37} the sage and _savant_. His answer was wholly satisfactory, for he exclaimed:

'Holy! holy! by Him in Whose hand Warakah's soul is, if thou has told me the truth, then the Greatest Namus (nomos=law) has come to him which also appeared to Moses, and he is the Prophet of this nation. Tell him to be content.'

Still her fears were not allayed, and a test was proposed. She reasoned thus: 'If it is an evil spirit which visits my husband, it will not be ashamed in the presence of an unveiled woman, but if the spirit is good he will surely be too modest to remain.' So with elaborate ritual the test was laid. Mohammed was to summon her when next his visitant appeared, and she was to take off her veil; should the spirit depart, she would know him for a good spirit. The visitant fully vindicated himself, disappearing from Mohammed's sight at the appearance of an unveiled woman; he never was visible to Khadîjah, From that day onwards, through storm, and shine, darkness and light, contumely ridicule, and persecution, Khadîjah never doubted, never wavered in complete confidence in her husband and his message.

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[Sidenote: Days of Darkness.]

For Mohammed there were yet many searchings of heart. He found himself unable to summon his visitor, or to command hours of inspiration at his will. Three years, it is said, he waited for another revelation, staggering in uncertainty and doubt and darkness, driven sometimes to the brink of despair, saved from suicide once at least only by the intervention of his wife. Light seemed to struggle with darkness in his soul, but gradually certain grand verities stood out clear. 'God, the sole Creator, Ruler, Judge of men and angels; the hopeless wretchedness of his people sunk in darkness and idolatry; Heaven and hell, the Resurrection, Judgment, the Recompense of good and evil in the World to come.' We can gather something of the sombre realities he saw, and something of the conviction with which they came to him from some of the suras written at the time:

'THAT WHICH STRIKETH! WHAT IS IT WHICH STRIKETH?
AND WHAT SHALL CERTIFY THEE WHAT THE STRIKING IS?
THE DAY ON WHICH MANKIND SHALL BE LIKE MOTHS SCATTERED ABROAD,
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AND THE MOUNTAINS LIKE WOOL OF DIVERS COLOURS CARDED;
THEN, AS FOR HIM WHOSE BALANCES ARE HEAVY, HE
SHALL ENTER INTO BLISS;
AND AS FOR HIM WHOSE BALANCES ARE LIGHT, THE
PIT SHALL BE HIS DWELLING-PLACE.
AND WHAT SHALL CERTIFY THEE WHAT IS THE PIT? A RAGING FIRE!'

[Sidenote: The One God.]

One great eternal truth alone stood out before him, 'Lâ ilāha illâ 'llâhu.' 'There is no God but God.' Surely the discovering of this great truth raised him high above all Arabia. 'There is no God but God'--he had discovered it, it had been revealed to him--surely, surely he was the favoured one, the Prophet of God; yes, _The Prophet of God_. It all seemed to stand together, and he set it in one sentence, Lâ ilāha illâ 'llâhu; Muhammadur rasûlu 'llâh.' '_There is no God but God: Mohammed is the Apostle of God_,' and so it stood for his creed, and the creed he taught, and it stands to-day as the creed of 200,000,000 of our fellow-men.

[Sidenote: Early Followers of Mohammed.]

There was another, too, besides Khadîjah who from the first followed Mohammed's fortunes with unwavering faith, a man who is truly said to have saved Islam twice. He was a personal friend of {40} Mohammed's, a popular but unimportant fellow-citizen of Mecca, by name Abu Bakr. Through these early trying years he was the propagandist of the new creed, and won to his friend's side the first little circle of Islam's converts. Years afterwards it was he who, as the first Caliph, took the white banner from his dying master's hands, raised it aloft again, and rallied fortunes that seemed shattered by the master's death.

With these two we must group another--a man of different type and a very different story--Zaid, a slave whom Khadîjah had bought some years before and presented to Mohammed,--this man proved himself a faithful friend in darker days.

The little group was but a poor token of the mighty armies Mohammed would ere long lead. Yet unquestionably a conviction grows infinitely the moment another believes in it; and these three did believe with all their hearts. Progress was slow at first; Mohammed wished to keep the matter as dark as possible, and those who knew of this teacher and his little band of disciples regarded them as a small secret society, more or less {41} harmless--after all, there were other secret societies in Arabia at that time.

In the first three years there were not more than forty converts, won chiefly by Abu Bakr's assiduous work. It is much easier to persuade people to believe in someone else than to persuade them to believe in yourself. Abu Bakr saw this, and right loyally did he play his part. These forty were mostly from the lower ranks of society, including slaves and outcasts, who found here something of a brotherhood and a fraternal generosity, if not a community of goods. As in another small society in a Grecian city five hundred years before, 'not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble' were called in those days.

[Sidenote: Mohammed's 'Revelations.']

Meanwhile the seasons of 'revelation' had returned, and as time went on Mohammed was able to summon them at will. Each time the visitation was accompanied, as before, by mysterious physical symptoms and weird bodily contortions. 'His countenance was troubled; he would turn deadly pale or glowing red. He would cover himself with a blanket. He fell to the ground like one intoxicated; foam {42} would appear at his mouth; on the coldest day the perspiration would pour from his forehead. Sometimes he would hear the coming of the revelation like the ringing of a bell.' Sometimes the inspiration would come in true dreams or 'suggestions of the heart'; more often it was Gabriel, once even it was said to be God Himself speaking to him from behind a curtain. But when it was over he spoke his 'suras' which his hearers laid to heart, and afterwards noted down, and so the Korân (or Recitation) was compiled. As a modern Asian quaintly puts it: 'The heart of Mohammed was the Sinai where he received the revelation, and his tablets of stone were the hearts of true believers.'

But as Mohammed claimed that these physical seizures which he underwent in times of revelation were evidences of the reality of his divine commission, it was natural that men's thoughts should stray in search of other explanations thereof. His friends remembered that as a boy he had some sort of fit; others recollected seizures of the kind; and men of science and learning since, unwilling to ascribe the {43} origin of the Korân to fits of epilepsy, have shown how in such constitutions there do lie rich but dangerous strains of high emotion, and how a hysterical disposition is not inconsistent with strength of will and a high and lofty purpose. It is an obvious danger for such a nature possessing great thoughts to become possessed by them and be carried beyond the depth where man may walk with sure and certain tread.

[Sidenote: Mohammed's Public Avowal.]

After three years of these intermittent revelations, and quiet work and conference with his secret society, Mohammed felt prepared to take the big step of his life,--to come out and openly declare himself the Prophet of Arabia and preach his doctrines. He was the less afraid, perhaps, to do so because he held that, except for the all-important claim of his own Prophetship, he taught no new doctrine at all. Historians and scholars since have abundantly shown that all he taught was there before, hidden, indeed, and scattered, without coherence or cohesion, but there nevertheless. Covered with fable and distorted by superstition, it was part of Arabia's sub-consciousness.

Tradition tells how the Prophet took {44} his stand on Al Safa, a hill outside Mecca, and summoned the Koreish. They were followed by the Meccan mob, and to the whole assembly Mohammed preached his first public sermon. The truths, indeed, awoke an echo in their hearts; they could not gainsay them. But this was not truth as a cold cinder raked out from the past and from their national consciousness, but truth living, burning,--truth on fire. They had heard of Allah before. Here was a man to whom Allah was a reality, so great a reality that there could be no other god but Him. They would not have denied that there was a life beyond the grave. Here was a man to whom God's universe was an awful fact; who, as he poured forth his invective, seemed to have himself gazed upon the flaming fires of hell; to him there was a world of difference between heaven and hell and the paths that lead to each. Then, like some unexpected cataract, he would burst into tumultuous rhapsodies charged with thrilling words of conviction and fervid aspiration, insisting again on the realities of life, the certainty of the Judgment, the peril of the soul,--the soul of one believer outweighs {45} all earthly kingdoms. They could no more ignore this preaching than ignore the pealing of the thunder.

[Sidenote: The Effect on Mecca.]

Mecca was stirred to its depths. What! Was this man who had grown up among on them indeed sent by God to overthrow their sacred Kaaba, to tell them that the gods they worshipped were no gods at all, but wood and stone? Their ancestors had worshipped these same gods for centuries before them. Had not they themselves prayed to Uzza and to Lât, and had they not instances of answers to their prayers?

Besides, if idolatry were a crime, what became of the prestige of Mecca? Where, indeed, was their own livelihood? Like the silver-smiths of Ephesus they saw the axe laid at the root of their prosperity. Mecca owed its pre-eminence above all the cities of Arabia to its guardianship of the sacred shrine. For that reason, too, it was the one city which no Arab dared attack: its people reaped a great benefit from its central mart and a rich harvest from the pilgrims, besides a heavy tribute from the tribes. It was no wonder, then, that the Prophet's denunciations of their {46} idols, his exposures of the grossness of their worship, lashed the Koreish into fury.

Abu Talib, now the head of the clan, expostulated, and sought to bring Mohammed to reason, and begged him to renounce the task he had undertaken, but he was obdurate. 'O, my uncle, if they placed the sun on my right hand and the moon on my left, to force me to renounce my work, verily I would not desist therefrom until God made manifest His Cause, or I perished in the attempt.' There was no persuading a man like that, although it is recorded that in the course of the interview he burst into tears.

Something had happened in Mecca which Mecca could not hide.

QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER III

1. Describe Mohammed's surroundings at the time of his first 'revelation.'

2. Give three possible explanations of Mohammed's 'inspiration.' Can all three be partly true?

3. What is the Mohammedan Creed? Can you account for Mohammed's belief in it?

4. Who were the earliest converts?

5. How did further 'revelations' come to Mohammed? Why did he claim them to be divine? When did he first publicly proclaim his message?

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