The aim of this little volume is to present all that is most enduring
and memorable in the public orations and private sayings of the
prophet Mohammad in such a form that the general reader may be tempted
to learn a little of what a great man was and of what made him
great. At present, it must be allowed that although “Auld Mahound”
is a household word, he is very little more than a word. Things are
constantly being said, written, and preached about the Arab prophet
and the religion he taught, of which an elementary acquaintance with
him would show the absurdity. No one would dare to treat the ordinary
classics of European literature in this fashion; or, if he did, his
exposure would immediately ensue. What I wish to do is to enable any
one, at the cost of the least possible exertion, to put himself into
a position to judge of popular fallacies about Mohammad and his
creed as surely and certainly as he can judge of errors in ordinary
education and scholarship. I do not wish to mention the Korān by name
more than can be helped, for I have observed that the word has a
deterrent effect upon readers who like their literary food light and
easy of digestion. It cannot, however, be disguised that a great deal
of this book consists of the Korān, and it may therefore be as well
to explain away as far as possible the prejudice which the ill-fated
name is apt to excite. It is not easy to say for how much of this
prejudice the standard English translator is responsible. The patient
and meritorious George Sale put the Korān into tangled English and
heavy quarto,--people read quartos then and did not call them _éditions
de luxe_,--his version then appeared in a clumsy octavo, with most
undesirable type and paper; finally it has come out in a cheap edition,
of which it need only be said that utility rather than taste has been
consulted. One can hardly blame any one for refusing to look even at
the outsides of these volumes. And the inside,--not the mere outward
inside, if I may so say, the type and paper,--but the heart of hearts,
the matter itself, is by no means calculated to tempt a reluctant
reader. The Korān is there arranged according to the orthodox form,
instead of in chronological order,--it must be allowed that the
chronological order was not discovered in Sale’s time,--and the result
is that impression of chaotic indefiniteness which impressed Carlyle
so strongly, and which Carlyle has impressed upon most of the present
generation. A large disorderly collection of prophetic rhapsody did not
prove inviting, as the state of popular knowledge about Mohammad very
clearly shows.
The attitude of the multitude towards Sale’s Korān was on the whole
reasonable. But if the faults that were found there are shown to belong
to Sale and not to the Korān, or only partly to it, the attitude
should change. In the first place, the Korān is not a large book, and
in the second, it is by no means so disorderly and anarchic as is
commonly supposed. Reckoned by the number of verses, the Korān is only
two-thirds of the length of the New Testament, or, if the wearisome
stories of the Jewish patriarchs which Mohammad told and retold are
omitted, it is no more than the Gospels and Acts. It has been remarked
that the Sunday edition of the _New York Herald_ is three times as
long. But the real permanent contents of the Korān may be taken at
far less even than this estimate. The book is full--I will not say
of vain repetitions, for in teaching and preaching repetition is
necessary--but of reiterations of certain cardinal articles of faith,
and certain standard demonstrations of these articles by the analogy of
nature. Like the numerous stories borrowed by Mohammad from the Talmud,
which have little but an antiquarian interest, many of these reiterated
arguments and illustrations may with advantage be passed over. There
is also a considerable portion of the Korān which is devoted to the
exposure and confutation of those who, from political, commercial, or
religious motives, made it their business to thwart Mohammad in his
efforts to reform his people. These personal, one might say party,
speeches are valuable only to the biographer and historian of the
times. They throw but little light on the character of the man Mohammad
himself. They show him, indeed, to be--what we knew him before--a
sensitive, irritable man, keenly alive to ridicule and scorn. But for
this purpose one instance is sufficient. We do not form our estimate
of a great statesman from his moments of irritation, but from those
larger utterances which reveal the results of a life’s study of men and
government. So with Mohammad, we may abandon the personal and temporary
element in the Korān, and base our judgment upon those utterances
which stand for all time, and deal not with individuals or classes,
but with man as he is, in Arabia or England, or where we will. This
position is not taken with the object of saving Mohammad from himself.
His attacks upon his opponents will bear comparison with those of
other statesmen. They are doubtless couched in more barbaric language
than we are accustomed to, and where we insinuate, Mohammad curses
outright. But in the face of a treacherous and malignant opposition,
the Arabian prophet comported himself with singular self-restraint. He
only threatened hell-fire, and people of all denominations are still
threatened with that every Sunday, to say nothing of Lent. Leaving out
the Jewish stories, needless repetitions, and temporary exhortations
or personal vindications, the speeches of Mohammad may be set forth
in very moderate compass. One speech--_sura_, or chapter, as it is
generally called--follows another so much to the same effect, that a
limited number will be found to contain all the ideas which a minute
study of the whole Korān could collect. I believe there is nothing
important, either in doctrine or style, which is not contained in the
twenty-eight speeches which fill the first hundred and thirty pages of
this small volume. If I were a Mohammadan, I think I could accept the
present collection as a sufficient representation of what the Korān
teaches.
The obscurity of the Korān is largely due to its ordinary arrangement.
This consists merely in putting the longest chapters first and the
shortest last. The Mohammadans appear to be contented with this curious
order, which after all is not more remarkable than that of some other
sacred books. German criticism, however, has discovered the method of
arranging the Korān in approximately chronological sequence. To explain
how this is established would carry me too far, but the results are
certain. We can state positively that the chapters of the Korān--or,
as I prefer to call them, the speeches of Mohammad--fall into certain
definite chronological groups, and if we cannot arrange each individual
speech in its precise place, we can at least tell to which group,
extending over but few years, it belongs. The effect of this critical
arrangement is to throw a perfectly clear light on the development
of Mohammad’s teaching, and the changes in his style and method.
When the Korān is thus arranged--as it is in Mr. Rodwell’s charming
version, which deserves to be better read than it is--the impression
of anarchy disappears, and we see only the growth of a remarkable
mind, the alternations of weakness and strength in a gifted soul, the
inevitable inconsistencies of a great man. I do not believe any one who
reads the speeches of Mohammad as I have arranged them in Professor
Nöldeke’s chronological order will say that they have no definite aim
or coherence. They may be monotonous, and often they are rambling, but
their intention and sequence of thought are to me clear as noonday.
It is something more, however, than any supposed length or obscurity
that has hitherto scared people from the Koran. The truth is that the
atmosphere of our Arabian prophet’s thoughts is so different from what
we breathe ourselves, that it needs a certain effort to transplant
ourselves into it. That it can be done, and done triumphantly, may be
proved by Mr. Browning’s _Saul_, as Semitic a poem as ever came from
the desert itself. We see the whole life and character of the Bedawy in
these lines:--
Oh, our manhood’s prime vigour! No spirit feels waste,
Not a muscle is stopped in its playing nor sinew unbraced.
Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock unto rock,
The strong rending of boughs from the fir-tree, the cool silver
shock
Of the plunge in the pool’s living water, the hunt of the bear,
And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair.
And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold dust divine,
And the locust flesh steeped in the pitcher, the deep draught of
wine,
And the sleep in the dried river-channel, where bulrushes tell
That the water was wont to go warbling so softly and well.
How good is man’s life, the mere living! how fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses for ever in joy.
It is not easy to catch the Arab spirit as Mr. Browning has caught it.
Arab poetry is a sealed book to most, even among special Orientalists;
they construe it, but it does not move them. The cause is to be found
in the abrupt transition of thought which is required if we would enter
into the spirit of desert song. The Arab stands in direct contrast to
ourselves of the north. He is not in the least like an Englishman. His
mind travels by entirely different routes from ours, and his body is
built up of much more inflammable materials. His free desert air makes
him impatient of control in a degree which we can scarcely understand
in an organised community. It is difficult now to conceive a nation
without cabinets and secretaries of State and policemen, yet to the
Arab these things were not only unknown but inconceivable. He lived
the free aimless satisfied life of a child. He was supremely content
with the exquisite sense of simple existence, and was happy because
he lived. Throughout a life that was full of energy, of passion, of
strong endeavour after his ideal of desert perfectness, there was yet
a restful sense of satisfied enjoyment, a feeling that life was of a
surety well worth living. What his ideal was, and how different from
any of the ideals of to-day, we know from his own poetry. It was, not
in the gentler virtues that he prided himself:--
Had I been a son of Māzin, there had not plundered my herds
the sons of the child of the dust, Dhuhl, son of Sheybān.
There had straightway arisen to help me a heavy-handed kin,
good smiters when help is needed, though the feeble bend to the
blow:
Men who, when Evil bares before them his hindmost teeth,
fly gaily to meet him in companies or alone.
They ask not their brother, when he lays before them his wrong
in his trouble, to give them proof of the truth of what he says.
But as for my people, though their number be not small,
they are good for naught against evil, however light it be;
They requite with forgiveness the wrong of those that do them wrong,
and the evil deeds of the evil they meet with kindness and love!
As though thy Lord had created among the sons of men
themselves alone to fear him, and never one man more.
Would that I had in their stead a folk who, when they ride forth,
strike swiftly and hard, on horse or on camel borne!
The ideal warrior, however, is not always so fierce as this, as may be
seen in the following lament for a departed hero, where a gentler touch
mingles in its warlike manliness:--
But know ye if Abdallah be gone, and his place a void?
no weakling, unsure of hand, and no holder-back was he!
Alert, keen, his loins well girt, his leg to the middle bare,
unblemished and clean of limb, a climber to all things high:
No wailer before ill-luck, one mindful in all he did,
to think how his work to-day would live in to-morrow’s tale.
Content to bear hunger’s pain, though meat lay beneath his hand,
to labour in ragged shirt that those whom he served might rest.
If Dearth laid her hand on him, and Famine devoured his store,
he gave but the gladlier what little to him they spared.
He dealt as a youth with Youth, until, when his head grew hoar,
and age gathered o’er his brow, to Lightness he said--Begone!
The fierceness of the Arab warrior was tempered by those virtues in
which more civilised nations are found wanting. If he was swift to
strike, the Arab was also prompt to succour, ready to give shelter
and protection even to his worst enemy. The hospitality of the Arab
is a proverb, but unlike many proverbs it is strictly true. The
last milch-camel must be killed rather than the duties of the host
neglected. The chief of a clan--not necessarily the richest man in it,
but the strongest and wisest--set the example in all Arab virtues, and
his tent was so placed in the camp that it was the first the enemy
would attack, and also the first that the wayworn traveller would
approach. Beacons were lighted hard by to guide wanderers to the
hospitable haven, and any man, of whatever condition, who came to the
Arab nobleman’s tent and said, “I throw myself on your honour,” was
safe from pursuit even at the cost of his host’s life. Honour, like
hospitality, meant more than it does now; and the Arab chieftain’s
pledge of welcome meant protection, unswerving fidelity, help, and
succour. Like his pride of birth, devotion to the clan, courage, and
generosity, this hospitable trusty friendship of the Arab belongs no
doubt to the barbarous virtues of the old world; but it is just these
parts of barbarism which civilisation might profitably emulate.
As a friend and as an enemy there was no ambiguity about the Arab. In
both relations he was frank, generous, and fearless. And the same may
be said of his love. The Arab of the Days of Ignorance, as Mohammadans
style the time before the birth of their prophet, was the forerunner
of the best side of mediæval chivalry, which indeed is forced to own
an Arabian origin. The Arab chief was as much a knight-errant in love
as he was a chivalrous opponent in fight. The position of the women
of Arabia before the coming of Mohammad has often been commiserated.
That women were probably held in low esteem in the town-life which
formed an important factor in the Arabian polity is probably true;
savage virtues are apt to disappear in the civilised society of cities.
But poetry is a good test of a nation’s character,--not, perhaps, of
a highly civilised nation, for then affectation and the _vogue_ come
into play,--but undoubtedly of a partly savage nation, where poets only
say what they and their fellow men feel. Arabian poetry is full of a
chivalrous reverence for women. Allowing for difference of language
and the varieties of human nature, it is much more reverent than a
great deal of the poetry of our own country to-day. In the old days,
says an ancient writer, the true Arab had but one love, and her he
loved till death. The Bedawy or Arab of the desert, though he was not
above a certain amount of gallantry of a romantic and exciting order,
regarded women as divinities to be worshipped, not as chattels to
possess. The poems are full of instances of the courtly respect, “full
of state and ancientry,” displayed by the heroes of the desert towards
defenceless maidens, and the mere existence of so general an ideal of
conduct in the poems is a strong argument for Arab chivalry; for with
the Arabs the abyss between the ideal accepted of the mind and the
attaining thereof in action was narrower than it is among more advanced
nations. We remember the story of Antar, the Bayard of pagan Arabia,
who gave his life to guard some helpless women; and recall these verses
of Muweylik, which breathe a tender chivalrous regret for an only
love:--
Take thou thy way by the grave wherein thy dear one lies--
Umm el-´Alā--and lift up thy voice: ah! if she could hear!
How art thou come, for very fearful wast thou, to dwell
in a land where not the most valiant goes but with quaking heart?
God’s love be thine and His mercy, O thou dear lost one!
not meet for thee is the place of shadow and loneliness.
And a little one hast thou left behind--God’s ruth on her!
she knows not what to bewail thee means, yet weeps for thee,
For she misses those sweet ways of thine which thou hadst with her,
and the long night wails, and we strive to hush her to sleep in
vain.
When her crying smites in the night upon my sleepless ears,
straightway mine eyes brimful are filled from the well of tears.
If anywhere poetry is a gauge of national character, it was so in
Arabia, for nowhere was it more a part of the national life. That
line, “to think how his work to-day would live in to-morrow’s tale,”
is a true touch. The Arabs were before all things a poetical people.
It is not easy to judge of this poetry in translation, even in the
fine renderings which I have taken above from Mr. C. J. Lyall, but its
effect on the Arabs themselves was unmistakeable. Damiri has a saying,
“Wisdom hath alighted on three things, the brain of the Franks, the
hands of the Chinese, and the tongue of the Arabs,” and the last is
not the least true. They had an annual fair, the _Académie française_
of Arabia, where the poets of rival clans recited their masterpieces
before immense audiences, and received the summary criticism of the
multitude. This fair of Okadh was a literary congress, without formal
judges, but with unbounded influence. It was here that the polished
heroes of the desert determined points of grammar and prosody; here
the seven “Golden Songs” were sung, although (alas for the legend!)
they were _not_ afterwards suspended in the Kaaba; and here “a magical
language, the language of the Hijaz,” was built out of the dialects of
Arabia and made ready to the skilful hand of Mohammad, that he might
conquer the world with his Korān.
Hitherto we have been looking at but one side of Arab life. The Bedawis
were indeed the bulk of the race and furnished the swords of the Muslim
conquests; but there was also a vigorous town-life in Arabia, and the
citizens waxed rich with the gains of their trafficking. For through
Arabia ran the trade-route between east and west: it was the Arab
traders who carried the produce of the Yemen to the markets of Syria;
and how ancient was their commerce one may divine from the words of a
poet of Judaea, spoken more than a thousand years before the coming of
Mohammad--
Wedan and Javan from San´a paid for thy produce:
sword-blades, cassia, and calamus were in thy trafficking.
Dedan was thy merchant in saddle-cloths for riding.
Arabia and all the merchants of Kedar, they were the merchants of
thy hand;
in lambs and rams and goats, in these were they thy merchants.
The merchants of Sheba and Raamah, they were thy merchants;
with the chief of all spices, and with every precious stone,
and gold, they paid for thy produce.
EZEKIEL xxvii. 19-22.
Mekka was the centre of this trading life, the typical Arab city of
old times, a stirring little town, with its caravans bringing the
silks and woven stuffs of Syria and the far-famed damask, and carrying
away the sweet-smelling produce of Arabia, frankincense, cinnamon,
sandal-wood, aloe and myrrh, and the dates and leather and metals of
the south, and the goods that came to the Yemen from Africa and even
India; its assemblies of merchant-princes in the Council Hall near the
Kaaba; and again its young poets running over with love and gallantry;
its Greek and Persian slave-girls brightening the luxurious banquet
with their native songs, when as yet there was no Arab school of music
and the monotonous but not unmelodious chant of the camel-driver was
the national song of Arabia; and its club, where busy men spent their
idle hours in playing chess and draughts, or in gossiping with their
acquaintance. It was a little republic of commerce, too much infected
with the luxuries and refinements of the states it traded with,
yet retaining enough of the free Arab nature to redeem it from the
charge of effeminacy. Mekka was a home of music and poetry, and this
characteristic lasted into Muslim times. There is a story of a certain
stonemason who had a wonderful gift of singing. When he was at work
the young men used to come and importune him, and bring him gifts of
money and food to induce him to sing. He would then make a stipulation
that they should first help him with his work. And forthwith they
would strip off their cloaks, and the stones would gather round him
rapidly. Then he would mount a rock and sing, whilst the whole hill was
coloured red and yellow with the variegated garments of his audience.
It was, however, in this town-life that the worst qualities of the
Arab came out; it was here that his raging passion for dicing and his
thirst for wine were most prominent. In the desert there was no great
opportunity for indulging in either luxury, but in a town which often
welcomed a caravan bringing goods to the value of twenty thousand pound
such excesses were to be looked for. Excited by the songs of the Greek
slave-girls, and the fumes of mellow wine, the Mekkan would throw the
dice till, like the German of Tacitus, he had staked and lost his own
liberty.
But Mekka was more than a centre of trade and of song. It was the focus
of the religion of the Arabs. Thither the tribes went up every year
to kiss the black stone which had fallen from heaven in the primeval
days of Adam, and to make the seven circuits of the Kaaba, naked,--for
they would not approach God in the garments in which they had done
their sins,--and to perform the other ceremonies of the pilgrimage. The
Kaaba, a cubical building in the centre of Mekka, was the most sacred
temple in all Arabia, and it gave its sanctity to all the district
around. It was built, saith tradition, by Adam from a heavenly model,
and then rebuilt from time to time by Seth and Abraham and Ishmael,
and less reverend persons, and it contained the sacred things of the
land. Here was the black stone, here the great god of red agate, and
the three hundred and sixty idols, one for each day of the year, which
Mohammad afterwards destroyed in one day. Here was Abraham’s stone, and
that other which marked the tomb of Ishmael, and hard by was Zemzem,
the God-sent spring which gushed from the sand when the forefather of
the Arabs was perishing of thirst.
The religion of the ancient Arabs, little as we know of it, is
especially interesting inasmuch as the Arabs longest retained the
original Semitic character, and hence probably the original Semitic
religion; and thus in the ancient cult of Arabia we may see the
religion once professed by Chaldeans, Canaanites, Israelites, and
Phœnicians. This ancient religion “rises little higher than animistic
polydaemonism; it is a collection of tribal religions standing side
by side, only loosely united, though there are traces of a once closer
connection.” The great objects of worship were the sun, and the stars,
and the three moon-goddesses,--El-Lāt, the bright moon, Menāh, the
dark, and El-´Uzza, the union of the two--whilst a lower cultus of
trees, stones, and mountains shows that the religion had not quite
risen above simple fetishism. There are traces of a belief in a supreme
God behind this pantheon, and the moon-goddesses and other divinities
were regarded as daughters of the Most High God (Allāh ta´āla). The
various deities (but not the supreme Allāh) had their fanes where
human sacrifices, though rare, were not unknown; and their cult was
superintended by a hereditary line of seers, who were held in great
reverence, but never developed into a priestly caste.
Besides the tribal gods, individual households had their special
_penates_, to whom was due the first and the last salām of the
returning or outgoing master. But in spite of all this superstitious
apparatus the Arabs were never a religious people. In the old days,
as now, they were reckless, sceptical, materialistic. They had their
gods and their divining arrows, but they were ready to demolish both
if the responses proved contrary to their wishes. An Arab, who wished
to avenge the death of his father, went to consult the square block
of white stone called El-Khalasa, by means of divining arrows. Three
times he tried, and each time he drew the arrow forbidding vengeance.
Then he broke the arrows, and flung them in the face of the idol,
crying, “Wretch! if it had been _your_ father who was murdered, you
would not have forbidden me to avenge him!” The great majority believed
in no future life, nor in a reckoning day of good and evil. If a few
tied camels to the graves of the dead that the corpse might ride
mounted to the judgment-seat, they must have done so more by force of
superstitious habit than anything else.
Christianity and Judaism had made but small impress upon the Arabs.
There were Jewish tribes in the north, and there is evidence in
the Korān and elsewhere that the traditions and rites of Judaism
were widely known in Arabia. But the creed was too narrow and too
exclusively national to commend itself to the majority of the people.
Christianity fared even worse. Whether or not St. Paul went there,
it is at least certain that very little effect was produced by the
preaching of Christianity in Arabia. We hear of Christians on the
borders, and even two or three among the Mekkans, and bishops and
churches are spoken of at Dhafār and Nejrān. But the Christianity that
the Arabs knew was, like the Judaism of the northern tribes, a very
imperfect reflection of the faith it professed to be. It had become
a thing of the head instead of the heart, and the refinements of
monophysite and monothelite doctrines gained no hold on the Arab mind.
Thus Judaism and Christianity, though they were well known, and
furnished many of the ideas and most of the ceremonies of Islām, were
never able to effect any general settlement in Arabia. The common Arabs
did not care much about any religion, and the finer spirits found
the wrangling dogmatism of the Christian and the narrow isolation of
the Jew little to their mind. For there were men before the time of
Mohammad who were dissatisfied with the low fetishism in which their
countrymen were plunged, and who protested emphatically against the
idle and often cruel superstitions of the Arabs. Not to refer to
the prophets, who, as the Korān relates, were sent in old times to
the tribes of Ad and Thamūd to convert them, there was, immediately
before the preaching of Mohammad, a general feeling that a change was
at hand; a prophet was expected, and women were anxiously hoping for
male children, if so be they might mother the Apostle of God; and the
more thoughtful minds, tinged with traditions of Judaism, were seeking
for what they called the “religion of Abraham.” These men were called
“Hanīfs,” or “incliners,” and their religion seems to have consisted
chiefly in a negative position,--in denying the superstition of the
Arabs, and in only asserting the existence of one sole-ruling God whose
absolute slaves are all mankind--without being able to decide on any
minor doctrines, or to determine in what manner this One God was to
be worshipped. So long as the Hanīfs could give their countrymen no
more definite creed than this, their influence was limited to a few
inquiring and doubting minds. It was reserved for Mohammad to formulate
the faith of the Hanīfs in the dogmas of Islām.
It is essential to bear in mind all these surroundings of Mohammad if
we would understand his position and influence. A desert Arab in love
of liberty and worship of nature’s beauty, but lacking something of
the frank chivalrous spirit of the desert warrior--more a saint than
a knight,--yet possessing a patient determined perseverance which
belonged to the life of the town, a moral force which the roaming
Bedawy did not need, Mohammad owed something to either side of Arabian
life; whilst without the influence of other religions, especially the
Jewish, he could never have come forward as the preacher of Islām. Even
the old nature worship of the Arabs had its share in the new religion,
and no faith was made up of more varied materials than that which
Mohammad impressed upon so large a portion of mankind.
Of his early life very little is known. He was born in A.D. 571, and
came of the noble tribe of the Koreysh, who had long been guardians of
the sacred Kaaba. He lost both his parents early, and as his branch
of the tribe had become poor, his duty was to betake himself to the
hillsides and pasture the flocks of his neighbours. In after years he
would look back with pleasure on these days, and say that God took
never a prophet save from among the sheep-folds. The life on the hills
gave him the true shepherd’s eye for nature which is seen in every
speech of the Korān; and it was in those solitary watches under the
silent sky, with none near to distract him, that he began those earnest
communings with his soul which made him in the end the prophet of his
nation. Beyond this shepherd life and his later and more adventurous
trade of camel-driver to the Syrian caravans of his rich cousin,
Khadīja, whom he presently married at the age of twenty-five, there
is little that can be positively asserted of Mohammad’s youth. He must
have witnessed the poets’ contests at the Fair of ´Okadh, and listened
to the earnest talk of the Jews and Hanīfs who visited the markets;
he may have heard a little, dimly, of Jesus of Nazareth; what he did
we know not; what he was is expressed in the nickname by which he was
known--“El-Amīn,” the Trusty.
“Mohammad was of the middle height, rather thin, but broad of
shoulders, wide of chest, strong of bone and muscle. His head was
massive, strongly developed. Dark hair, slightly curled, flowed in
a dense mass almost to his shoulders; even in advanced age it was
sprinkled with only about twenty gray hairs, produced by the agonies of
his ‘Revelations.’ His face was oval-shaped, slightly tawny of colour.
Fine long arched eyebrows were divided by a vein, which throbbed
visibly in moments of passion. Great black restless eyes shone out from
under long heavy eyelashes. His nose was large, slightly aquiline.
His teeth, upon which he bestowed great care, were well set, dazzling
white. A full beard framed his manly face. His skin was clear and soft,
his complexion ‘red and white,’ his hands were as ‘silk and satin,’
even as those of a woman. His step was quick and elastic, yet firm as
that of one who steps ‘from a high to a low place.’ In turning his face
he would also turn his whole body. His whole gait and presence were
dignified and imposing. His countenance was mild and pensive. His laugh
was rarely more than a smile.
“In his habits he was extremely simple, though he bestowed great care
on his person. His eating and drinking, his dress and his furniture
retained, even when he had reached the fulness of power, their almost
primitive nature. The only luxuries he indulged in were, besides arms,
which he highly prized, a pair of yellow boots, a present from the
Negus of Abyssinia. Perfumes, however, he loved passionately, being
most sensitive to smells. Strong drink he abhorred.
“His constitution was extremely delicate. He was nervously afraid of
bodily pain; he would sob and roar under it. Eminently unpractical
in all common things of life, he was gifted with mighty powers of
imagination, elevation of mind, delicacy and refinement of feeling.
‘He is more modest than a virgin behind her curtain,’ it was said of
him. He was most indulgent to his inferiors, and would never allow
his awkward little page to be scolded whatever he did. ‘Ten years,’
said Anas his servant, ‘was I about the Prophet, and he never said
as much as “uff” to me.’ He was very affectionate towards his family.
One of his boys died on his breast in the smoky house of the nurse, a
blacksmith’s wife. He was very fond of children; he would stop them in
the streets and pat their little heads. He never struck any one in his
life. The worst expression he ever made use of in conversation was,
‘What has come to him? may his forehead be darkened with mud!’ When
asked to curse some one, he replied, ‘I have not been sent to curse,
but to be a mercy to mankind.’ ‘He visited the sick, followed any bier
he met, accepted the invitation of a slave to dinner, mended his own
clothes, milked the goats, and waited upon himself,’ relates summarily
another tradition. He never first withdrew his hand out of another
man’s palm, and turned not before the other had turned.
“He was the most faithful protector of those he protected, the sweetest
and most agreeable in conversation. Those who saw him were suddenly
filled with reverence; those who came near him loved him; they who
described him would say, ‘I have never seen his like either before or
after.’ He was of great taciturnity, but when he spoke it was with
emphasis and deliberation, and no one could forget what he said. He
was, however, very nervous and restless withal; often low-spirited,
downcast, as to heart and eyes. Yet he would at times suddenly break
through these broodings, become gay, talkative, jocular, chiefly among
his own. He would then delight in telling little stories, fairy tales,
and the like. He would romp with the children and play with their toys.”
“He lived with his wives in a row of humble cottages, separated from
one another by palm-branches, cemented together with mud. He would
kindle the fire, sweep the floor, and milk the goats himself. The
little food he had was always shared with those who dropped in to
partake of it. Indeed, outside the prophet’s house was a bench or
gallery, on which were always to be found a number of poor, who lived
entirely upon his generosity, and were hence called ‘the people of
the bench.’ His ordinary food was dates and water, or barley bread;
milk and honey were luxuries of which he was fond, but which he rarely
allowed himself. The fare of the desert seemed most congenial to him,
even when he was sovereign of Arabia.”
Mohammad was forty before he began his mission of reform. He may long
have doubted and questioned with himself, but at least outwardly he
seems to have conformed to the popular religion. At length, as he was
keeping the sacred months, the God’s Truce of the Arabs, in prayer and
fasting on Mount Hirā, “a huge barren rock, torn by cleft and hollow
ravine, standing out solitary in the full white glare of the desert
sun,” he thought he heard a voice say “Cry.” “What shall I cry?” he
answered. And the voice said:--
“Cry! in the name of thy Lord, who created--
Created man from blood.
Cry! for thy Lord is the Bountifullest!
Who taught the pen,
Taught man what he did not know.”
_Korān_, ch. xcvi.
At first he thought he was possessed with a devil, and the refuge of
suicide was often present to his mind. But yet again he heard the
voice--“Thou art the Messenger of God, and I am Gabriel.” He went back
to Khadīja, worn out in body and mind. “Wrap me, wrap me,” he cried.
And then the word came to him:--
“O thou who art wrapped, rise up and warn!
And thy Lord magnify,
And thy raiment purify,
And abomination shun!
And grant not favours to gain increase!
And wait for thy Lord!”
_Korān_, ch. lxxiv.
These are the first two revelations that came to Mohammad. That he
believed he heard them spoken by an angel from heaven is beyond doubt.
His temperament was nervous and excitable from a child up. It is said
he was subject to cataleptic fits, like Swedenborg; and at least it
is certain that his constitution was more delicately and highly strung
than most men’s. If it is any satisfaction to the incredulous to find
evidence of a special tendency towards hallucinations, the proofs are
at hand. But whether the “revelations” were subjective or not makes no
difference to the result. Whencesoever they came, they were real and
potent revelations to the man and to his people.
After this beginning of converse with the supernatural, or whatever we
prefer to term it, the course of Mohammad’s revelations--the speeches
which make up the Korān--flowed unbroken for twenty years and more.
They fall naturally into two great divisions--the period of struggle
at Mekka, and the period of triumph at Medina; and the characteristics
of the two are diverse as the circumstances which called them forth.
For whatever Mohammad himself thought of his revelations, to modern
criticism they are speeches or sermons strictly connected with the
religious and political circumstances of the speaker’s time. In the
first period we see a man possessed of a strong religious idea, an idea
dominating his life, and his one aim is to impress that idea on his
people, the inhabitants of Mekka. He preached to them in season and out
of season; whenever the spirit moved him he poured forth his burning
eloquence into the ears of a suspicious and incredulous audience. Three
years of unwearied effort produced the pitiful result of a score or so
of converts, mainly from the poorest classes. In the fifth year even
these were compelled by the persecutions of the Koreysh to take refuge
in Abyssinia--“a land of righteousness, wherein no man is wronged.”
Mohammad had by this time advanced from a mere inculcation of the
doctrine of one all-powerful God to a plain attack upon the idolatry of
the Mekkans; and the Koreysh, as guardians of the Kaaba and receivers
of the pilgrims’ tolls, were keenly alive to the consequences which
the overthrow of the sacred temple would entail upon its keepers. The
result of Mohammad’s bold denunciations was a cruel persecution of his
humbler followers, and their consequent flight to Abyssinia; he himself
was too nearly allied to powerful chiefs to be lightly injured in a
land where the blood-revenge held sway. Presently the devotion of the
prophet, his manly bearing under obloquy and reproach, and above all,
the winged words of his eloquence, brought several men of influence and
wealth into his faith, and in the sixth year of his mission Mohammad
found himself surrounded no longer by a crowd of slaves and beggars,
but by tried swordsmen, chiefs of great families, leaders in the
councils of Mekka; and the new sect performed their rites no more in
secret, but publicly at the Kaaba, in the face of the whole city. The
Koreysh resolved on stronger measures. After trying vainly to isolate
him from his family--the true Arab spirit of kindred was not so easily
shaken--they put the whole clan under a ban, and swore they would not
marry with them, nor buy nor sell with them, nor hold with them any
intercourse soever. To the credit of Mohammad and of his clan, only one
man of them refused to share his fate, though most of them did not hold
with his doctrines. Sooner than give up their kinsman, they went, every
man of them, save that one, into their own quarter of the city, and
there abode in banishment for two years. Starvation was busy with the
incarcerated family, when the Koreysh grew ashamed of their work, and
five chiefs arose and put on their armour and went to the ravine where
the banished people were shut up, and bade them come forth.
The time of inaction was followed by a time of sorrow. Mohammad
lost his wife and the aged chief, his uncle, who had hitherto been
his protector. All Mekka was against him, and in despair of heart
he journeyed to Taif, seventy miles away, and told his message to
another folk: but they stoned him for three miles from the town. The
time, however, was coming when a distant city would hold out welcoming
hands to the prophet whom Mekka and Taif had rejected. As he dwelt-on
disconsolately at Mekka, pilgrims from Yethrib (soon to be known as
Medina or Medīnet-en-Neby, “the Prophet’s City”) hearkened to the new
doctrine, and carried it home to their own folk. Jews had prepared the
way for Islām at Medina; the new religion did not seem preposterous to
those who had long heard of One God; and presently the Faithful began
to leave Mekka in small companies, and take refuge in the hospitable
city where their prophet was honoured. At length Mohammad, when like
the captain of a sinking ship he had seen his followers safely away,
accompanied by one faithful friend eluded the vigilance of the Koreysh,
and safely arrived at Medina in the early summer of 622. This is the
Hijra or “Flight” of Mohammad, from which the Muslims date their
history.
During these years of struggle and persecution at Mekka 90 out of
the 114 chapters or speeches which compose the Korān were revealed,
amounting to about two-thirds of the whole book. All these speeches
are inspired with but one great design, and are in strong contrast
with the complicated character of the later chapters issued at Medina.
In the Mekka chapters Mohammad appears in the unalloyed character of
a prophet: he has not yet assumed the functions of a statesman and
lawgiver. His object is not to give men a code or a constitution, but
to call them to the worship of the One God. There is hardly a word
of other doctrines, scarcely anything of ritual, or social or penal
regulations. Every speech is directed simply to the grand design of the
Prophet’s life, to convince men of the unutterable majesty of the One
God, who brooks no rivals. Mohammad appeals to the people to credit the
evidence of their own eyes; he calls to witness the wonders of nature,
the stars in their courses, the sun and the moon, the dawn cleaving
asunder the dark veil of night, the life-giving rain, the fruits of the
earth, life and death, change and decay--all are “signs of God’s power,
if only ye would understand.” Or he tells the people how it fared with
older generations, when prophets came to them and exhorted them to
believe in One God and do righteousness, and they rejected them; how
there fell upon the unbelieving nation grievous woe. How was it with
the people of Noah? he asks:--they were drowned in the flood because
they would not hearken to his words. And the people of the Cities of
the Plain? And Pharaoh and his host? And the old tribes of the Arabs
who would not hear the warnings of their prophets? One answer follows
each--there came upon them a great calamity. “These are the true
stories,” he cries, “and there is only One God! and yet ye turn aside.”
Eloquent appeals to the signs of nature, threats of a day of reckoning
to come, warnings drawn from the legends of the prophets, arguments for
the truth and reality of the revelation, make up the substance of this
first division of the Korān.
In the earliest group of speeches delivered at Mekka, forty-eight in
number, belonging to what is called the First Period, extending over
the first four years of Mohammad’s mission, we feel the poetry of the
man. Mohammad had not lived among the sheep-folds in vain, and spent
long solitary nights gazing at the silent heaven and watching the dawn
break over the mountains. This earliest portion of the Korān is one
long blazonry of nature’s beauty. How can you believe in aught but the
One omnipotent God when you see this glorious world around you and this
wondrous tent of heaven above you? is Mohammad’s frequent question to
his countrymen. “All things in heaven and earth supplicate Him; then
which of the bounties of your Lord will ye deny?” There is little but
this appeal to nature in the first part of the speeches at Mekka. The
prophet was in too exalted a state during these early years to stoop
to argument; he rather seeks to dazzle the sense with brilliant images
of God’s workings in creation. “Verily in the creation of the heavens
and the earth are signs to you, if ye would understand.” His sentences
have a rhythmical ring though they are not in true metre. The lines are
very short, yet with a musical cadence. The meaning is often but half
expressed. The poet seems impatiently to stop as if he despaired of
explaining himself: he has essayed a thing beyond words, has discovered
the impotence of language, and broken off with the sentence unfinished.
The style is throughout fiery and impassioned. The words are those of a
man whose whole heart is bent on convincing, and they carry with them
even now the impression of the burning vehemence with which they were
originally hurled forth. These earliest speeches are generally brief.
They are pitched too high to be long sustained. We feel we have here to
do with a poet as well as a preacher, and that his poetry costs him too
much to be spun out.
In urging to repentance and faith, Mohammad’s great weapon is the
judgment to come--the day of retribution, when all mankind shall be
arraigned before the throne of God; and those who have done good shall
be given the book of the record of their actions in their right hand,
and enjoy abiding happiness in gardens, under which the rivers flow;
whilst the wicked shall receive his damning record in his left hand,
and be dragged by heel and hair to hell, to broil therein for ever. The
day of judgment is a stern reality to Mohammad. It is never out of his
thoughts, and he says himself that if men realised what that day was,
they would weep much and laugh little. He is never tired of depicting
its terrors, and cannot find names enough to describe it. He calls it
the Hour, the Mighty Day, the great Calamity, the Inevitable Fact, the
Smiting, the Overwhelming, the Hard Day, the Promised Day, the Day of
Decision.
The high poetic fervour of the first group of Mekka speeches is to
some extent lost in the Second, and still more in the Third period,
corresponding to the fifth and sixth years, and from thence to the
Hijra, respectively, and each comprising twenty-one speeches. The
change is partly one of style, partly of matter. The verses and the
speeches themselves become longer and more rambling; the resonant oaths
by all the wonders of nature are exchanged for the mild asseveration,
“By the Korān.” There is more self-assertion and formality, and the
special words of God are as it were italicised by the prefixed verb,
“Say.” It must be remembered that the speeches of the Korān are
all supposed to be the utterances of God _in propriâ personâ_, of
whom Mohammad is only the mouthpiece. The apparent vindications and
laudations of the prophet himself are explicable from this point of
view; and the reader must never forget it when he is perplexed by the
“we” (God), and “thou” (Mohammad), and “ye” (the audience), of the
Korān. The most important alteration to be observed in the progress of
the orations at Mekka is the introduction of numerous stories derived,
with considerable corruptions, from the Jewish Haggadah. More than
fifteen hundred verses, nearly a quarter of the Kur-ān, are occupied
with wearisome repetitions of these legends. They are to be seen
methodically arranged in Lane’s _Selections from the Kur-ān_, and I
need only say that, with the exception of one or two typical examples
(like the speech called _The Moon_, p. 41), and a few digressions in
speeches (like _The Children of Israel_, p. 57) that were too important
to be omitted, these tales are excluded from the present collection.
Their only real interest is Mohammad’s use of them as evidence of the
continuity of revelation. He believed that all preceding prophets were
inspired of God, and that they taught the same faith as himself. From
Adam to Jesus they all brought their messages to their people, and were
rejected. He makes them exhort their people in precisely similar words
to those with which he exhorts the Koreysh. There is nothing new in his
own doctrine, he says, it is but the teaching of Abraham, of Moses, of
Christ, of all the prophets. But it is the last and best, the seal of
prophecy, after which no other will be given before the Great Day. It
supersedes or confirms all that goes before.
Quite half of the second group of Mekka speeches consists of these
Jewish legends. There are not so many in the third, and none in the
first. But if the Third does not contain quite so many of these tedious
fables, it is even tamer in style. Mohammad seems to be cataloguing the
signs of nature mechanically, and he is constantly recurring to the
charge of forgery which was often brought against him, or to the demand
for miracles, which he always frankly admitted he could not gratify. I
am only a warner, he said; I cannot show you a sign--a miracle--except
what ye see every day and night. Signs are with God: He who could make
the heavens could easily show you a sign if He pleased; beware, lest
one day ye see a sign indeed, and taste in hell that which ye called
a lie! That the old eloquence, in spite of repetition and wearing
trouble, was not dead, may be seen from the speech called _Thunder_ (p.
104), where the nature painting is as fine as anywhere in the Korān.
The first great division of Mohammad’s speeches, then, is oratorical
rather than dogmatic. He has a great dogma, indeed, and uses every
resource to recommend it. But there is little detail in these ninety
Mekka speeches. Hardly any definite laws or precepts are to be found
in them, and most of these in the speech entitled _The Children of
Israel_ (p. 57). Certain general rules of prayer are given, hospitality
and thrift are commended in a breath, “Let not thy hand be chained to
thy neck, nor yet stretch it out right open;” infanticide, inchastity,
homicide (save in blood-revenge), the robbing of orphans, a false
balance, usury, a broken covenant, and a proud stomach, are denounced;
certain foods are prohibited; and the whole duty of man is thus
briefly summed up:--“Say: I am only a man like you: I am inspired that
your God is but One God. Then let him who hopeth to meet his Lord do
righteousness, and join no (idol) in his worship of God.”
There is little here of a complicated ritual or a metaphysical
theology. Thus far the social and religious laws which we associate
with Islām are not found in the Mohammadan Bible. We hear only the
voice crying in the wilderness, “Hear ye, people! The Lord your God is
one Lord.”
Mohammad’s position at Medina was totally different from that he
occupied at Mekka. Instead of a struggling reformer, despised and
ridiculed by almost every man he met, he was a king, ruling a large
city with despotic power, and needing every resource of statecraft to
maintain order among its contentious elements. There was a large party,
known in the Korān as the “Disaffected” or “Hypocrites,” who found it
politic to profess Islām, but were ready to avail themselves of any
propitious occasion to overturn or injure it. Still more important
were the Jewish Arab tribes settled at Medina, who at first hoped to
find a tool to their hands in the new prophet, who seemed to teach
something very like Judaism; but who, when they found him unmanageable,
straightway turned upon him with double malignity, and exerted
themselves in all treacherous ways to countermine his authority and
help his enemies within and without the city. Mohammad has been blamed
for the severity with which he suppressed the rebellious parties in
his state, and the sentences of exile and death passed upon the Jews
have been regarded as proofs of a vindictive nature. An impartial study
of the facts of the case, however, shows plainly that strong measures
were needed for the preservation of the Muslim religion and polity; and
the vigorous blows struck by Mohammad at rebellion in the beginning
probably saved bloodshed afterwards. Whilst the prophet’s supremacy was
being established and maintained among the mixed population of Medina,
a vigorous warfare was carried on outside with his old persecutors, the
Koreysh. On the history of this war, consisting as it did mainly of
small raids and attacks upon caravans, I need not dwell. Its leading
features were the two battles of Bedr and Ohud, in the first of which
three hundred Muslims, though outnumbered at the odds of three to one,
were completely victorious (A.D. 624, A.H. 2); whilst at Ohud, being
outnumbered in the like proportion, and deserted by the “Disaffected”
party, they were almost as decisively defeated (A.H. 3). Two years
later the Koreysh gathered together their allies, advanced upon Medina,
and besieged it for fifteen days; but the foresight of Mohammad in
digging a trench, and the enthusiasm of the Muslims in defending it,
resisted all assaults, and the coming of the heavy storms for which
the climate of Medina is noted drove the enemy back to Mekka. The next
year (A.H. 6) a ten years’ truce (see _The Victory_, p. 124, and notes)
was concluded with the Koreysh, in pursuance of which a strange scene
took place in the following spring. It was agreed that Mohammad and
his people should perform the Lesser Pilgrimage, and that the Koreysh
should for that purpose vacate Mekka for three days. Accordingly in
March 629, about two thousand Muslims, with Mohammad at their head
on his famous camel, El-Kaswa,--the camel on which he had fled from
Mekka,--trooped down the valley and performed the rites which every
Muslim to this day observes.
“It was surely a strange sight which at this time presented itself
in the vale of Mekka, a sight unique in the history of the world.
The ancient city is for three days evacuated by all its inhabitants,
high and low, every house deserted; and as they retire, the exiled
converts, many years banished from their birthplace, approach in a
great body, accompanied by their allies, revisit the empty homes of
their childhood, and within the short allotted space fulfil the rites
of pilgrimage. The ousted inhabitants, climbing the heights around,
take refuge under tents or other shelter among the hills and glens;
and clustering on the overhanging peak of Abu-Kubeys, thence watch
the movements of the visitors beneath them, as with the Prophet at
their head they make the circuit of the Kaaba and the rapid procession
between Es-Safā and Marwah; and anxiously scan every figure if
perchance they may recognise among the worshippers some long lost
friend or relative. It was a scene rendered possible only by the throes
which gave birth to Islām.” When the three days were over, Mohammad
and his party peaceably returned to Medina, and the Mekkans re-entered
their homes. But this pilgrimage, and the self-restraint of the Muslims
therein, advanced the cause of Islām among its enemies. Converts
increased daily, and some leading men of the Koreysh went over to
Mohammad. The clans around were sending-in deputations of homage. But
the final keystone was set in the 8th year of the flight (A.D. 630),
when a body of Koreysh broke the truce by attacking an ally of the
Muslims, and Mohammad forthwith marched upon Mekka with ten thousand
men, and the city, despairing of defence, surrendered. The day of
Mohammad’s greatest triumph over his enemies was also the day of his
grandest victory over himself. He freely forgave the Koreysh all the
years of sorrow and cruel scorn in which they had afflicted him, and
gave an amnesty to the whole population of Mekka. Four criminals whom
justice condemned made up Mohammad’s proscription list when he entered
as a conqueror to the city of his bitterest enemies. The army followed
his example, and entered quietly and peaceably; no house was robbed,
no women insulted. One thing alone suffered destruction. Going to the
Kaaba, Mohammad stood before each of the three hundred and sixty idols,
and pointed to it with his staff, saying, “Truth is come, and falsehood
is fled away!” and at these words his attendants hewed them down,
and all the idols and household gods of Mekka and round about were
destroyed.
It was thus that Mohammad entered again his native city. Through all
the annals of conquest there is no triumphant entry comparable to this
one.
The taking of Mekka was soon followed by the adhesion of all Arabia.
Every reader knows the story of the spread of Islām. The tribes of
every part of the peninsula sent embassies to do homage to the prophet.
Arabia was not enough: Mohammad had written in his bold uncompromising
way to the great kings of the East--to the Persian Chosroes and the
Greek Emperor; and these little knew how soon his invitation to the
faith would be repeated, and how quickly Islām would be knocking at
their doors with no faltering hand.
The prophet’s career was near its end. In the tenth year of the
flight, twenty-three years after he had first felt the spirit move him
to preach to his people, he resolved once more to leave his adopted
city and go to Mekka to perform a farewell pilgrimage. And when the
rites were done in the valley of Minā, the prophet spake unto the
multitude--the forty thousand pilgrims--with solemn last words:
Ye people, hearken to my words: for I know not whether after this
year I shall ever be amongst you here again.
Your lives and your property are sacred and inviolable amongst
one another until the end of time.
The Lord hath ordained to every man the share of his inheritance;
a testament is not lawful to the prejudice of heirs.
The child belongeth to the parent, and the violater of wedlock
shall be stoned.
Ye people, ye have rights demandable of your wives, and they have
rights demandable of you. Treat your women well.
And your slaves, see that ye feed them with such food as ye eat
yourselves, and clothe them with the stuff ye wear. And if they
commit a fault which ye are not willing to forgive, then sell
them, for they are the servants of the Lord and are not to be
tormented.
Ye people! hearken unto my speech and comprehend it. Know that
every Muslim is the brother of every other Muslim. All of you are
on the same equality: ye are one brotherhood.
Then looking up to heaven he cried, “O Lord, I have delivered my
message and fulfilled my mission.” And all the multitude answered,
“Yea, verily hast thou!”--“O Lord, I beseech thee, bear Thou witness
to it!” and, like Moses, he lifted up his hands and blessed the people.
Three months more and Mohammad was dead,--A.H. 11, A.D. 632.
And when it was noised abroad that the prophet was dead, Omar, the
fiery-hearted, the Simon Peter of Islām, rushed among the people and
fiercely told them they lied; it could not be true. And Abu-Bekr came
and said, “Ye people! he that hath worshipped Mohammad, let him know
that Mohammad is dead; but he that hath worshipped God, that the Lord
liveth and doth not die.”
* * * * *
The altered circumstances of Mohammad’s life at Medina produced
a corresponding change in his speeches. They are now not so much
exhortations to unbelievers as directions and encouragements to the
faithful; and instead of being one complete oration, as most of the
early speeches are, they are a collection of isolated “rulings” on
various points of conduct. The prophet’s house at Medina became a court
of appeal for the whole body of Muslims. They came to him with all
their difficulties,--domestic, social, political, religious,--and asked
for direction. Then Mohammad said in few words what he thought right
and just; and these decisions have been treated as laws binding upon
the Mohammadan world for all time. It is fortunate that Mohammad was a
man of sound common sense, or the law of Islām would be a preposterous
medley. As it is, it seems clear that the prophet never wished to lay
down a code of law, and, instead of volunteering rules of conduct and
ritual, used to wait to have them extorted from him by questioning.
“God wishes to make things easy for you,” he says, “for man was created
weak.” He seems to have distrusted himself as a lawgiver, for there
is a tradition which relates a speech of his in which he cautions the
people against taking his decision on worldly affairs as infallible.
When he speaks of the things of God he is to be obeyed; but when he
deals with human affairs he is only a man like those about him. He was
contented to leave the ordinary Arab customs in force except when they
were manifestly unjust. The truth is that, as in the Mekka speeches
so in those of Medina, the legal and dogmatic element is curiously
small. The greater part of those long chapters uttered in fragments at
Medina, and then pieced together haphazard by the prophet’s amanuenses,
consists of diatribes against the Jews and hypocrites, reflections
on the conduct of the allies in battle, encouragement after defeat,
exhortations as to the future, besides a great deal of personal
matter--regulations of the prophet’s harem, vindications of his own
or his wives’ conduct,--and similar things of a temporary and local
interest. Though the style is monotonous and longwinded, like the third
Mekka period, there are still flashes of the old eloquence, though
perhaps it is less spontaneous than of old, such as we hear in the
chapter of _Light_--
God is the light of the heavens and the earth; his light is as a
niche in which is a lamp, and the lamp in a glass; the glass is
as it were a glittering star: it is lit from a blessed tree, an
olive neither of the east nor of the west, the oil thereof would
well-nigh shine though no fire touched it--light upon light--God
guideth to His light whom He pleaseth.
In the houses God hath suffered to be raised, for His name to be
commemorated therein, men magnify Him at morn and eve:
Men whom neither merchandise nor trafficking divert from
remembering God and being instant in prayer and giving alms,
fearing a day when hearts and eyes shall quiver;
That God may recompense them for the best that they have wrought,
and give them increase of His grace; for God maketh provision for
whom He pleaseth without count.
But those who disbelieve are like a vapour in a plain: the thirsty
thinketh it water, till, when he cometh to it, he findeth
nothing; but he findeth God with him; and He will settle his
account, for God is quick at reckoning:--
Or like black night on a deep sea, which wave above wave doth
cover, and cloud over wave, gloom upon gloom,--when one putteth
out his hand he can scarcely see it; for to whom God giveth not
light, he hath no light.
Hast thou not seen that what is in the heavens and the earth
magnifieth God, and the birds on the wing? each one knoweth its
prayer and its praise, and God knoweth what they do:
God’s is the empire of the heavens and the earth, and to Him must
all things return!
Hast thou not seen that God driveth the clouds, and then joineth
them, and then heapeth them up, and thou mayest see the rain
coming forth from their midst; and He sendeth down from the
heaven mountain-clouds with hail therein, and He maketh it
fall on whom He pleaseth, and He turneth it away from whom He
pleaseth: the flashing of His lightning well nigh consumeth the
eyes!
xxiv. 35-43.
The actual legal residue in the Medina chapters is singularly small.
Chapters ii., iv., and v., contain nearly all the law of the Korān; but
it must be allowed they are very long chapters, and form nearly a tenth
part of it. Their practical import,--the definite ruling of Mohammad
on dogmatic, ritual, civil, and criminal matters,--is collected in pp.
133-144, and need not be repeated here. The conclusion, however, is
worth pointing clearly. The Korān does not contain, even in outline,
the elaborate ritual and complicated law which now passes under the
name of Islām. It contains merely those decisions which happened to be
called for at Medina. Mohammad himself knew that it did not provide for
every emergency, and recommended a principle of analogical deduction to
guide his followers when they were in doubt. This analogical deduction
has been the ruin of Islām. Commentators and jurists have set their
nimble wits to work to extract from the Korān legal decisions which an
ordinary mind could never discover there; and the whole structure of
modern Mohammadanism has been built upon this foundation of sand. The
Korān is not responsible for it.
There is, however, another source of information about Mohammad’s
teaching and practice which is largely responsible for the present
form of the once simple creed of Mekka. Besides the public speeches
which were held to be directly inspired by God, and indeed copied from
a book supposed to exist in the handwriting of God,--the chapters
of the Korān,--there were many sayings of Mohammad which were said
in a private unofficial way in his circle of intimate friends, and
which were almost as carefully treasured up as the others. These are
the Traditions, or as I may call them, the Table-Talk of Mohammad,
for they correspond more nearly to what we mean by table-talk than
any other form of composition. The Table-Talk of Mohammad deals with
the most minute and delicate circumstances of life, and is much more
serviceable to the lawyer than the Korān itself. The sayings are
very numerous and very detailed; but how far they are genuine it is
not easy to determine. The Korān is known beyond any doubt to be at
this moment, in all practical respects, identical with the prophet’s
words as collected immediately after his death. How it was edited and
collected may be read elsewhere. The only point to be here insisted
on is that its genuineness is above suspicion. Unfortunately, as much
cannot be said for the Traditions. They were collected at a late
period, subjected to a totally useless and preposterous criticism, and
thus reduced from 600,000 to 7275, without becoming in the least more
trustworthy in the process. It is almost impossible now to sift them
with any certainty. All we can go upon is internal evidence, and a few
obvious contradictions in date--as when people relate things which
they apparently heard before they were born. Beyond this, criticism
is helpless, and all we can do is what I have done here--to collect
those which strike the attention and do not seem peculiarly improbable,
and accept them provisionally as possibly correct reports of
Mohammad’s table-talk. There are six standard collections of orthodox
traditions, but those on pp. 147-182 are taken from an abridgment, the
Mishkāt-el-Masābīh, which Captain A. N. Matthews had the patience to
translate and publish at Calcutta in 1809. In the midst of such doubt,
they are sufficient for the purpose of illustration, without any
pretence of completeness or critical precision.
In conclusion, let us banish from our minds any conception of the
Korān as a code of law, or a systematic exposition of a creed. It is
neither of these. Let us only think of a simple enthusiast confronted
with many and varied difficulties, and trying to meet them as best
he could by the inward light that guided him. The guidance was not
perfect, we know, and there is much that is blameworthy in Mohammad;
but whatever we believe of him, let it be granted that his errors were
not the result of premeditated imposition, but were the mistakes of an
ignorant, impressible, superstitious, but nevertheless noble and great
man.
_March 1882._