THE JEWS AT MEDINA
"And if the people of the Book had believed, it had surely been better
for them: Believers there are among them, but most of them are perverse."
--_The Kuran_.
The songs of triumph over Bedr had scarcely left the lips of Muslim poets
when the voice of faction was heard again in Medina. The Jews, that
"stiff-necked nation," unimpressed by Mahomet's triumph, careful only of
its probable effect on their own position, which effect they could not
but regard as disastrous, seeing that it augured their own submission to
a superior power, murmured against his success, and tried their utmost to
sow dissension by the publication of contemptuous songs through the
mouths of their poets and prophetesses. Not only did the Jews murmur in
secret against him, but they tried hard to induce members of the original
Medinan tribes to join with them in a desperate effort to throw off the
Muslim yoke.
Chief among these defamers of Mahomet's prestige was Asma, a prophetess
of the tribe of Beni Aus. She published abroad several libellous songs
upon Mahomet, but was quickly silenced by Omeir, a blind man devoted to
his leader, who felt his way to her dwelling-place at dead of night, and,
creeping past her servant, slew her in the midst of her children. News of
the outrage was brought to Mahomet; it was expected he would punish
Omeir, but:
"Thou shalt not call him blind, but the seeing," replied the Prophet;
"for indeed he hath done me great service."
The result of this ruthlessness was the official conversion of the tribe,
for resistance was useless, and they had not, like the Jews, the flame of
faith to keep their resistance alive. "The only alternative to a hopeless
blood feud was the adoption of Islam." But the Jews, with stubborn
consciousness of their own essential autonomy, preferred the more
terrible alternative, and so the defamatory songs continued. When it is
remembered that these compositions took the place of newspapers, were as
universal and wielded as such influence, it is not to be expected that
Mahomet could ignore the campaign against him. Abu Afak, a belated
representative of the prophetic spirits of old, fired by the ancient
glory of Israel and its present threatened degradation at the hands of
this upstart, continued, in spite of all warnings, to publish abroad his
contempt and hatred for the Prophet.
It was no time for half-measures. With such a ferment as this universal
abuse was creating, the whole of his hard-won power might crumble. Victor
though he was, it wanted only the torch of some malcontents to set
alight the flame of rebellion. Therefore Mahomet, with his inexorable
determination and force of will, took the only course possible in such a
time. The singer was slain by his express command.
"Who will rid me of this pestilence?" he cried, and like all strong
natures he had not long to wait before his will became the inspired act
of another.
So fear entered into the souls of the people at Medina, and for a time
there were no more disloyal songs, nor did the populace dare to oppose
one who had given so efficient proof of his power.
But it was not enough for Mahomet to have silenced disaffection. He
aimed at nothing less than the complete union of all Medina under his
leadership and in one religious belief. To this end he went in Shawwal of
the second year of the Hegira (Jan. 624) unto the Jewish tribe, the Beni
Kainukaa, goldsmiths of Medina, whose works lay outside the city's
confines. There he summoned their chief men in the bazaar, and exhorted
them fervently to become converted to Islam. But the Kainukaa were firm
in their faith and refused him with contemptuous coldness.
"O Mahomet, thou thinkest we are men akin to thine own race! Hitherto
thou hast met only men unskilled in battle, and therefore couldst thou
slay them. But when thou meetest us, by the God of Israel, thou shalt
know we are men!" Therewith Mahomet was forced to acknowledge defeat, and
he journeyed back to the city, vowing that if Allah were pleased to give
him opportunity he would avenge this slight upon Islam and his own
divinely appointed mission. Friction between him and the Kainukaa
naturally increased, and it was therefore not long before a pretext
arose. The story of a Jew's insult to a Muslim girl and its avenging by
one of her co-religionists is probably only a fiction to explain
Mahomet's aggression against this tribe. It is uncertain how the first
definite breach arose, but it is easy to see that whatever the actual
_casus belli,_ such a development was inevitable.
The anger of the Prophet was aroused, for were they not presuming to
oppose his will and that of Allah, whose instrument he was? He marshalled
his army and put a great white banner at their head, gave the leadership
to Hamza, and so marched forth to attack the rebellious Kainukaa. For
fifteen days the tribe was besieged in its strongholds, until at last,
beaten and discouraged, faced by scarcity of supplies, and the certainty
of disease, it surrendered at discretion.
Then was shown in all its fullness the implacable despotism conceived by
Mahomet as the only possible method of government, which indeed for those
times and with that nation it certainly was. The order went forth for the
slaying and despoiling of the Kainukaa, and the grim work began by the
seizure of their armour, precious stones, gold, and goldsmith's tools.
But Abdallah, chief of the Khazraj, and formerly leader of the
Disaffected, became suppliant for their release. He sought audience of
Mahomet, and there petitioned with many tears for the lives of his
friends and kinsmen. But Mahomet turned his back upon him. Abdallah, in
an ecstacy of importunity, grasped the skirt of Mahomet's garment.
"Loose thou thy hand!" cried Mahomet, while his face grew dark with
anger.
But Abdallah in the boldness of desperation replied, "I will not let thee
go until thou hast shown favour to my kinsmen."
Then said Mahomet, "As thou wilt not be silent, I give thee the lives of
those I have taken prisoner."
Nevertheless, the exile of the tribe was enforced, and Mahomet compelled
their immediate removal from the outskirts of Medina. The Prophet's
later policy towards the Jews was hereby inaugurated. He set himself
deliberately to break up their strongholds one by one, and did not swerve
from his purpose until the whole of the hated race had been removed
either by slaughter or by enforced exile from the precincts of his
adopted city. He would suffer no one but himself to govern, and uprooted,
with his unwavering purpose, all who refused to accept him as lord.
For about a month affairs took their normal and uninterrupted course in
Medina, but in the following month, Dzul Higg (March), the last of that
eventful second year, a slight disturbance of his steady work of
government threatened his followers.
Abu Sofian's vow pressed sorely upon his conscience until, unable to
endure inaction further, he gathered together 200 horsemen and took the
highway towards Medina. He travelled by the inland road, and arrived at
length at the settlements of the Beni Nadhir, one of the Jewish tribes in
the vicinity of Medina. He harried their palm-gardens, burnt their
cornfields, and killed two of their men. Mahomet had plundered the Meccan
wealth, his allies should in turn be harassed by his victims. It was
purely a private enterprise undertaken out of bravado and in fulfilment
of a vow. As soon as the predatory attack had been made, Abu Sofian
deemed himself absolved and prepared to return.
But Mahomet was on his traces. For five days he pursued the flying
Kureisch, whose retreat turned into such a headlong rout that they threw
away their sacks of meal so as to travel more lightly. Therefore the
incident has been known ever since, according to the vivid Arab method of
description, as the Battle of the Meal-bags. But the foe was not worthy
of his pursuit, and Mahomet made no further attempt to come up with Abu
Sofian, but returned at once to Medina. The attack had ended more or less
in fiasco, and as a trial of strength upon either side it was negligible.
The sacred month, Dzul Higg, and the only one in which it was lawful to
make the Greater Pilgrimage in far-off Mecca, was now fully upon him, and
Mahomet felt drawn irresistibly to the ceremonies surrounding the ancient
and now to him distorted faith. He felt compelled to acknowledge his
kinship with the ancient ritual of Arabia, and to this end appointed a
festival, Eed-al-Zoha, to be celebrated in this month, which was not only
to take the place of the Jewish sacrificial ceremony, but to strengthen
his connection with the rites still performed at Mecca, of which the
Kaaba and the Black Stone formed the emblem and the goal.
In commemoration of the ceremonial slaying of victims in the vale of Mina
at the end of the Greater Pilgrimage, Mahomet ordered two kids to be
sacrificed at every festival, so that his people were continually
reminded that at Mecca, beneath the infidel yoke, the sacred ritual, so
peculiarly their own by virtue of the Abrahamic descent and their
inexorable monotheism, was being unworthily performed.
The institution is important, as indicating the development of Mahomet's
religious and ritualistic conceptions. In the first days of his
enthusiasm he was content to enjoin worship of one God by prayer and
praise, taking secondary account of forms and ceremonies. Then came the
uprooting of his outward religious life and the demands of his embryo
state for the manifestations essential to a communistic faith. He found
Israelite beliefs uncontaminated by the worship of many Gods, and turned
to their ritual in the hope of establishing with their aid a ceremonial
which should incorporate their system with his own fervent faith. Now,
finding no middle road between separatism and absorption possible with
such a people as the Jews, and unconsciously divining that in no great
length of time Islam would be sufficient unto itself, he turned again to
the practices of his native religion and ancestral ceremonies. Henceforth
he puts forward definitely his conception of Islam as a purified and
divinely regulated form of the worship followed by his Arabian forbears,
purged of its idol-worship and freed from numerous age-long corruptions.
Not only in ritual did his mind turn towards Mecca. It looms before his
eyes still as the Chosen City, the city of his dreams, whose conquest and
rendering back purified to the guidance of Allah he sets before his mind
as the ultimate, dim-descried goal of all his intermediary wars. The
Kibla had long since been changed to Mecca; thither at prayer every
Muslim turned his face and directed his thoughts, and now every possible
detail of ancient Meccan ritual was performed in scrupulous deference to
the one God, so that when the time came and in fulfilment of his desires
he set foot on its soil, no part of the ceremonies, with the lingering
enthusiasm of his youth still sweet upon them, might be omitted or be
allowed to lose its savour through disuse.
The third year of the Hegira began favourably for Mahomet. During the
first month, Muharram, there were three small expeditions against unruly
desert tribes. The Beni Ghatafan on the eastern Babylonian route were
friendly to the Kureisch. This was undesirable, because they might allow
the Meccan caravan to pass through in safety, and the Prophet had
resolved that it should be despoiled by whichever route it journeyed,
coast road or arid tableland. When therefore he received news that they
were assembling in force at Carcarat-al-Kadr, a desert oasis on the
confines of their territory, he marched thither in haste, hoping to catch
and overcome them before they dispersed.
But the Beni Ghatafan were too wise to suffer this, and when Mahomet came
to the place he found it deserted, save for some camels, left behind in
the flight, which he captured and brought to Medina, deeming it useless
to attempt the pursuit of his quarry through the trackless desert.
The raid in Jumad II (September) by Zeid was far more successful. Since
the victory at Bedr the coast route had been entirely barred for the
Kureischite caravans, and they were forced to try the central desert,
which road lay through the middle tableland leading on to Babylonia and
the Syrian wastes. The Meccan caravan had only reached Carada when it was
met by a Muslim force under Zeid, sent by the prescience and predatory
instincts of Mahomet. The guard was not strong, possibly because the
Meccans thought there was little fear of attack by this route, and so
Zeid was easily able to overcome his foe and secure the spoil, which
amounted to many bales of goods, camels, trappings, and armour. The
conquerer returned elated to Medina, where he cast the spoil at the feet
of the Prophet. The usual division was made, and the whole city rejoiced
over the wealth it had secured and the increasing discomfiture of its
enemies.
Meanwhile matters were becoming urgent between the Muslim and the Jews.
Neither the murder of their singers, nor the expulsion of the Kainukaa
could silence the voice of Jewish discontent, which found its most
effective mouthpiece in the poet Ka'b al' Ashraf, son of a Jewess of the
tribe of the Beni Nadhir. This man had been righteously indignant at the
slaughter of the Kureischite champions at Bedr. The story seemed to him
so monstrous that he could not believe it.
"Is this true?" he asked the messenger; "has Mahomet verily slain these
men? By the Lord, if he has done this, then is the innermost part of the
earth better than the surface thereof!"
He journeyed in haste to Mecca, and when he heard the dreadful news
confirmed he did his utmost to stir up the Kureisch against the murderer.
As soon as he returned he published verses lamenting the disgraceful
victory purchased at such a price; moreover, he also addressed insulting
love poems to the Muslim women, always with the intent of causing as much
disaffection as possible. At last Mahomet waxed impatient and cried:
"Who will give me peace from this Ka'b al' Ashraf?"
Mahomet Mosleima replied, "I, even I will slay him."
The method of his accomplishment of this deed is instructive of the
estimation in which individual life was then held. Mosleima secured the
assistance of Ka'b's treacherous brother--how, we are not told, but most
probably by bribes. Together the two went to the poet's house by
moonlight, and begged his company on a discussion of much importance. His
young wife would have prevented Ka'b, sensing treachery from the manner
and time of the request, but he disregarded her prayers. In the gleam of
moonbeams the three walked past the outskirts of the city in deepest
converse, the subject of which was rebellion against the Prophet.
They came at length to the ravine Adjuz, a lonely place overhung with
ghastly silence and pallid under the white light. Here they stopped, and
soon his brother began to stroke the hair of Ka'b until he had lulled him
into drowsiness. Then suddenly seizing the forelock he shouted:
"Let the enemy of God perish!"
Ka'b was pinioned, while four men of the Beni Aus slashed at him with
their swords. But he was a brave man and strong, determined to sell his
life dearly. The struggle became furious.
"When I saw that," relates Mosleima through the mouth of tradition, "I
remembered my dagger, and thrust it into his body with such violence that
it penetrated the entire bulk. The enemy of God gave one cry and fell to
the ground."
Then they left him, and hastened to tell their master of the good news.
Mahomet rejoiced, and was at no pains to conceal his satisfaction. Ka'b
had made himself objectionable to the Prophet and dangerous to Islam; Ka'b
was removed; it was well; Allah Akbar Islam.
Eastern nations have never been so careful of human life as Western, and
especially as the Anglo-Saxon peoples. To Mahomet the security of his
state came before all, and if a hundred poets had threatened to undermine
his authority, he would have had them all slain with equal steadfastness.
Men were bound to die, and those who disturbed the progress of affairs
merely suffered more swiftly the universal lot. It is obvious that no
modern Western standard can be set up for Mahomet; the deed must be
interpreted by that inflexible will and determination to achieve his
aims, which lies at the root of all his crimes of state. But the
unfortunate Jews went in fear and trembling, and their panic was
increased when Mahomet issued an order to his followers with permission
to kill them wherever they might be found. He very soon, however, allowed
so drastic a command to lapse, but not before some had taken advantage of
his savage policy, and after a time he made a new treaty with the Jews,
not at all on the old federal lines, but guaranteeing them some sort of
security, provided they showed proper submission to his superior power.
This treaty smoothed over matters somewhat, but nevertheless the Jews
were now thoroughly intimidated, and those who were left lived a
restricted life, wherein fear played the greater part.
But for the time being Mahomet was satisfied, and no further punitive
acts were attempted; not many months later he was faced with a far
greater danger, the appearance in force of his old enemy the Kureisch,
burning for vengeance, fierce in their hatred of such a despoiler, and
before them Mahomet in the new-found arrogance of his dominion was forced
to pause.