THE SECESSION OF THE JEWS
_"Even though thou shouldst bring every kind of sign to those who have
received the Scriptures, yet Thy Kibla they will not adopt; nor shalt
thou adopt their Kibla; nor will one part of them adopt the Kibla of the
other."--The Kuran_.
Mahomet realised the position of affairs at Medina too acutely to allow
of his undertaking in person any predatory expeditions against the
Kureisch during the autumn and winter of 623. The Jews were chafing under
his tacit assumption of State control, and although their murmurings had
not reached the recklessness of strife, still both their leaders and the
Muslim perceived that their disaffection was inevitable. Insecurity at
home, however, did not prevent him from sending out an expedition in
Rajab (October) of that year under Abdallah. Rajab is a sacred month in
the Mohamedan calendar, one in which war is forbidden. Strictly,
therefore, in sending out an expedition at all just then Mahomet was
transgressing against the laws of that religion which, purged of its
idolatries, he claimed as his own. But it was a favourable opportunity to
attack the Kureischite caravan on its way to Taif, and therefore Mahomet
recked nothing of the prohibition.
Taif was a very distant objective for an expeditionary band from Medina,
and that Mahomet contemplated attack upon his enemy by a company so far
removed from its base is convincing proof, should any be needed, of his
confidence in his followers' prowess and his conciliation of the tribes
lying between the two hostile cities.
Sealed orders were given to Abdallah, with instructions not to open the
parchment until he was two days south of Medina. At sunset on the second
day he came with his eight followers to a well in the midst of the
desert. There under the few date palms, which gave them rough shelter, he
broke the seal and read:
"When thou readest this writing depart unto Nakhla, between Taif and
Mecca; there lie in wait for the Kureisch, and bring thy comrades news
concerning them."
As Abdallah read his mind alternated between apprehension and daring, and
turning to his companions he took counsel of them.
"Mahomet has commanded me to go to Nakhla and there await the Kureisch;
also he has commanded me to say unto you whoever desireth martyrdom for
Islam let him follow me, and whoever will not suffer it, let him turn
back. As for me, I am resolved to carry out the commands of God's
Prophet"
Then one and all the eight companions assured him they would not forsake
him until the quest was achieved. At dawn they resumed their march and
arrived at length at Nakhla, where they encountered the Kureisch caravan
laden with spice and leather. Now, it was the last day of the month of
Rajab, wherein it was unlawful to fight, wherefore the Muslim took
counsel, saying:
"If we fight not this day, they will elude us and escape."
But the Prophet's implied command was strong enough to induce initiative
and hardihood in the small attacking party. They bore down upon the
Kureisch, showering arrows in their path, so that one man was killed and
several wounded. The rest forsook their merchandise and fled, leaving
behind them two prisoners, whose retreat had been cut off. Abdallah was
left in possession of the field, and joyfully he returned to Medina,
bearing with him the first plunder captured by the Muslim.
But his return led Mahomet into a quandary from which there seemed
no escape. Politically, he was bound to approve Abdallah's deed;
religiously, he could neither laud it nor share the fruits of it. For
days the spoils remained undivided, but Abdallah was not punished or even
reprimanded. Meanwhile, the Jews and the Kureisch vied with one another
in execrating Mahomet, and even his own people murmured against him. It
was clearly time that an authoritative sanction should be given to the
deed, and accordingly in the sura, "The Cow," we have the revelation from
Allah proclaiming the greater culpability of the Infidels and of those
who would stir up civil strife:
"They will ask thee concerning war in the Sacred Month. Say: To war
therein is bad, but to turn aside from the cause of God, and to have no
faith in Him, and in the Sacred Temple, and to drive out its people, is
worse in the sight of God; civil strife is worse than bloodshed."
No possible doubt must be cast in this and similar cases upon Mahomet's
sincerity. The Kuran was the vehicle of the Lord; he had used it to
proclaim his unity and power and his warnings to the unrighteous. Now
that Islam had recognised his august and indissoluble majesty, and had
accorded the throne of Heaven and the governance of earth to him
indivisibly, the world was split up into Believers and Unbelievers. The
Kuran, therefore, must of necessity cease to be merely the proclamation
of divine unity that it had been and become the vehicle for definite
orders and regulations, the outcome of those theocratic ideas upon which
Mahomet's creed was founded. The justification would not appeal to the
people unless Allah's sanction supported it, and Mahomet realised with
all his ardour of faith that the transgression was slight compared with
the result achieved towards the progress of Islam. The Prophet therefore
received, with Allah's approval, a fifth of the spoil, but the captives
he released after receiving ransom.
"This," says the historian, "was the first booty that Mahomet obtained,
the first captives they seized, and the first life they took." The
significance of the event was vividly felt throughout Islam, and
Abdallah, its hero, received at Mahomet's hands the title of "Amir-al-
Momirim," Commander of the Faithful--a title which recalls inseparably
the cruelty and magnificence, the glamour and rapacity, of Arabian Bagdad
under Haroun-al-Raschid. The valorous enterprise had now been achieved,
the Kureisch caravan was despoiled, and the Kureisch themselves wrought
into fury against the Prophet's insolence; but more than all, the channel
of Mahomet's policy of warfare became thereby so deeply carved that he
could not have effaced it had he desired. Henceforth his creative genius
limited itself to the deepening of its course and the direction of its
outlet.
The Jews had not rested content with murmuring against Mahomet's rule,
they sought to embarrass him by active sedition. One of their first
attempts against Mahomet's regime was to stir up strife between the
Refugees and Helpers. In this they would have been successful but for
Mahomet's efficient system of espionage, a method upon which he relied
throughout his life. Failing to foment a rebellion in secret they
proceeded to open hostilities, and the Muslim, jealous for their faith,
retaliated by contempt and estrangement. During the winter of 623
personal attack was made by the mob upon Mahomet. The people were hounded
on by their leaders to stone the Prophet, but he was warned in time and
escaped their assaults.
The popular fury was merely the reflex of a fundamental division of
thought between the opposing parties. The Jewish and Muslim systems
could never coalesce, for each claimed the dominance and ignored all
compromise. The age-long, hallowed traditions of the Jews which supported
a theocracy as unyielding as any conception of Divine sovereignty
preached by Mahomet, found themselves faced with a new creative force
rapidly evolving its own legends, and strong enough in its enthusiasm to
overwhelm their own. The Rabbis felt that Mahomet and his warrior
heroes--Ali, Omar, Othman, and the rest--would in time dislodge from
their high places their own peculiar saints, just as they saw Mahomet
with Abu Bekr and his personnel of administrators and informers
already overriding their own councillors in the civil and military
departments of their state. The old regime could not amalgamate with the
new, for that would mean absorption by its more vigorous neighbour, and
the Jewish spirit is exclusive in essence and separatist perforce.
Mahomet took no pains to conciliate his allies; they had made a treaty
with him in the days of his insecurity and he was grateful, but now his
position in Medina was beyond assailment, and he was indifferent to their
goodwill. As their aggression increased he deliberately withdrew his
participation in their religious life, and severed his connection with
their rites and ordinances.
The Kibla of the Muslim, whither at every prayer they turned their faces,
and which he had declared to be the Temple at Jerusalem, scene of his
embarkation upon the wondrous "Midnight Journey," was now changed to the
Kaaba at Mecca. What prevision or prophetic inspiration prompted Mahomet
to turn his followers' eyes away from the north and fix them upon their
former home with its fierce and ruthless heat, the materialisation, it
seemed, of his own inexorable and passionate aims? Henceforth Mecca
became unconsciously the goal of every Muslim, the desired city, to be
fought for and died for, the dwelling-place of their Prophet, the crown
of their faith.
The Jewish Fast of Atonement, which plays so important a part in Semite
faith and doctrine, had been made part of the Muslim ritual in 622, while
a federal union still seemed possible, but the next year such an
amalgamation could not take place. In Ramadan (Dec. to January),
therefore, Mahomet instituted a separate fast for the Faithful. It was to
extend throughout the Sacred Month in which the Kuran had first been sent
down to men. Its sanctity became henceforth a potent reminder for the
Muslim of his special duties towards Allah, of the reverence meet to be
accorded to the Divine Upholder of Islam. During all the days of Ramadan,
no food or drink might pass a Muslim lip, nor might he touch a woman, but
the moment the sun's rim dipped below the horizon he was absolved from
the fast until dawn. No institution in Islam is so peculiarly sacred as
Ramadan, and none so scrupulously observed, even when, by the revolution
of the lunar year, the fast falls during the bitter heat of summer. It is
a characteristic ordinance, and one which emphasises the vivid Muslim
apprehension of the part played by abstention in their religious code.
At the end of the fast--that is, upon the sight of the next new
moon--Mahomet proclaimed a festival, Eed-al-Fitr, which was to take the
place of the great Jewish ceremony of rejoicing.
At this time, too, Mahomet, evidently bent on consolidating his religious
observances and regulating their conduct, decreed a fresh institution,
with parallels in no religion--the Adzan, or call to prayer. Mahomet
wished to summon the Believers to the Mosque, and there was no way except
to ring a bell such as the Christians use, which rite was displeasing to
the Faithful. Indeed, Mahomet is reported later to have said, "The bell
is the devil's musical instrument."
But Abdallah, a man of profound faith and love for Islam, received
thereafter a vision wherein a "spirit, in the guise of man, clad in green
garments," appeared to him and summoned him to call the Believers to
prayer from the Mosque at every time set apart for devotion.
"Call ye four times 'God is great,' and then, 'I bear witness that there
is no God but God, and Mahomet is His Prophet. Come unto prayer, come
unto salvation. God is great; there is no God but Him.'"
"A true vision," declared Mahomet. "Go and teach it to Bilal, that he may
call to prayer, for he has a better voice than thou."
When Bilal, a slave, received the command, he went up to the Mosque, and
climbing its highest minaret, he cried aloud his summons, adding at each
dawn:
"Prayer is better than sleep, prayer is better than sleep."
And when Omar heard the call, he went to Mahomet and declared that he had
the previous night received the same vision.
And Mahomet answered him, "Praise be to Allah!"
Therewith was inaugurated the most characteristic observance in Islam,
the one which impresses itself very strongly upon the Western traveller
as he hears in the dimness of every dawning, before the sun's edge is
seen in the east, the voices of the Muezzin from each mosque in the city
proclaiming their changeless message, their insistent command to prayer
and praise. He sees the city leap into magical life, the dark figures of
the Muslim hurrying to the Holy Place that lies shimmering in the golden
light of early day, and knows that, behind this outward manifestation,
lies a faith, at root incomprehensible by reason of its aloofness from
the advancing streams of modern thought, a faith spiritually impotent,
since it flees from mysticism, generating an energy which has expended
its vital force in conquest, only to find itself too intellectually
backward and physically sluggish to gather in prosperity the fruits of
its attainments. Its lack of imagination, its utter ignorance of the lure
of what is strange, have been responsible for its achievement of
stupendous tasks, for the driving energy behind was never appalled by
anticipation, nor checked by any realisation of coming stress and terror.
And the same qualities that led the Muslim to world-conquest thereafter
caused their downfall, for their minds could not visualise that world of
imagination necessary for any creative science, while they were not
attuned in intellect for the reception of such generative ideas as have
contributed to the philosophic and speculative development of the Western
world.
All the characteristics which distinguish Islam to the making and the
blasting of its fortunes may be found in embryo in the small Medinan
community; for their leader, by his own creative ardour, imposed upon his
flock every idea which shaped the form and content of its future career
from its rising even to its zenith and decline.