THE GENESIS OF ISLAM
"The Jews say, 'Ezra is a son of God,' and the Christians say, 'The
Messiah is a son of God' ... they resemble the saying of the Infidels
of old.... They take their teachers and their monks and the Messiah,
son of Mary, for Lords beside God, though bidden to worship one
God only. There is no God but He! Far what from his glory be
what they associate with Him."--_The Kuran_.
The Prophet of Arabia had scarcely been committed to the keeping of
earth, when on all sides rebellion against his rule arose. The unity that
he had laboured so long to create was still in embryo, but the seed of it
was living, and developed rapidly to its full fruition. In the political
sphere his achievement is not limited to the immediate security of his
dominion. He had inculcated, mainly by the forcible logic of the sword,
the idea of union and discipline, and had restored in mightier degree the
fallen greatness of his land. Traditions of Arabian prosperity during the
time when it was the trade route from Persia and the East to Petraea,
Palestine, and even Asia Minor lingered in the native mind. The caravan
routes from Southern Arabia, famous in Biblical story, had made the
importance of such cities as Mecca and Sana, but with the maritime
enterprise of Rome their well-being declined, and the consequent distress
in Yemen induced its tribes to emigrate northwards to Mecca, to Syria,
and the Central Desert. Southern Arabia never recovered from the blow to
its trade, and in the sixth century Yemen became merely a dependency of
Persia. Central Arabia was an unknown country, inhabited by marauding
tribes in a constant state of political flux; while Hira, the kingdom to
the east of the desert on the banks of the Euphrates, had become a
satrapy of Persia early in the century in which Mahomet lived, and
Heraclius by frequent inroads had reduced the kingdom of Palmyra to
impotence. Arabia was ripe for the rise of a strong political leader; for
it was flanked by no powerful kingdom, and within itself there was no
organisation and no reliable political influence.
The material was there, but it needed the shaping of a master-hand at the
instigation of unflagging zeal if it was to be wrought into order and
strength. Tireless energy and unceasing belief in his own power could
alone accomplish the task, and these Mahomet possessed in abundance.
Before his death he had secured the subjection of Yemen and Hadramaut,
had penetrated far into the Syrian borderland, and had made his rule felt
among the nomad tribes of the interior as far as the confines of Persia.
With his rise to power the national feeling of Arabia was born, and under
his successors developed by the enticements of plunder and glory until it
soared beyond mere nationality and dreamt of world-conquest, by which
presumption its ruin was wrought. Mahomet was the instigator of all this
absorbing activity, although he never calculated the extent of his
political impulse. In superseding the already effete tribal ideals he was
to himself only spreading the faith of his inspiration. All governmental
conceptions die slowly, and the tribal life of Arabia was far from
extinguished at the end of his mission. But its vitality was gone, and
the focus of Arabia's obedience had shifted from the clan to the Prophet
as military overlord.
It is pre-eminently in the domain of political actions that Mahomet's
personality is revealed. The living fibres of his unique character pulse
through all his dealings with his fellow-leaders and opponents. Before
all things he possessed the capacity of inspiring both love and fear.
Ali, Abu Bekr, Hamza, Omar, Zeid, every one of his followers, felt the
force of his affection continually upon them, and were bound to him by
ties that neither misfortune nor any unworthy act of his could break. And
their devotion was called upon to suffer many tests. Mahomet was
self-willed and ruthless, subordinating the means to the end without any
misgivings. In his remorseless dealings with the Jews, in his calm
repudiation of obligations with the heathen as soon as he felt himself
strong enough, he shows affinities to the most conscienceless statesman
that ever graced European diplomacy.
His method of conquest and government combines watchfulness and strength.
No help was scorned by this builder of power. What he could not achieve
by force he attempted to gain by cunning. He had a large faith in the
power of argument backed by force, and his winning over of Abbas and Abu
Sofian chiefly by the aid of these two factors, combined with their
personal ambition, is only the supreme instance of his master-strokes of
policy. He knew how to play upon the baser passions of men, and
especially was he mindful of the lure of gold. His first forays against
the Kureisch were set before the eyes of his disciples as much
in the light of plundering expeditions as religious wars against an
infidel and oppressive nation.
He is at once the outcome of circumstances, and independent of them. He
gave coherence to all the unformulated desires for a fuller scope of
military and mercantile power stirring at the fount of Arabia's life, and
at the same time he founded his dominion in a unique and absolutely
personal manner. Within his sphere of governance his will was supreme and
unassailable.
If these mutable tribal entities were to be united at all, despotism was
the only possible form of command. As his polity demanded authority
vested in one person only, so his conception of God is that of an
absolute monarch, resistance to whom is annihilation.
Out of this idea the doctrine of fatalism was evolved. It was necessary
during the first terrible years of uncertainty in Islam, in order to
produce among Mahomet's followers a recklessness in battle, and in the
varying fortunes of their life at Medina, born of the knowledge that
their fate was irrevocably decided. They fought for the true God against
the idolaters; this true God held their destinies in his hand; nothing
could be altered. The result was that the Muslim fought with superhuman
daring, and faced overwhelming forces undaunted. But the time came when
Islam had no longer any need to fight, and the doctrine of fatalism still
lived. It sank into mental and physical inactivity, and of that
inactivity, induced by the knowledge that their energies were unavailing,
pessimism was bred. Despotism and fatality are perhaps the purely
personal ideas that Mahomet gave to his political state, the latter
encroaching, however, as most of his secular principles, upon the realm
of philosophy. Indeed, his political rule is inseparable from his
religion, and as a religious leader he is more justly appraised.
In the sphere of religion the raw material was to his hand. At the
inception of his mission Mecca and Central Arabia, though confirmed in
idolatry, still mingled with their rites some distorted Jewish traditions
and ceremonies, while Yemen had embraced the Christian faith for a short
time as a dependency of Abyssinia, but had relapsed into idolatry with
the interference of Persia. Both the border kingdoms to the north,
Palmyra and Hira, were Christian, and in the time of their prosperity had
influenced Arabia in the direction of Christianity. The Christian
Scriptures were known and respected, but these impulses were feeble and
spasmodic, so that the bulk of Arabia remained fixed in its ancient
idolatry.
By far the more enduring influence was that of Judaism. Many Jewish
tribes were settled in Arabia, and the ancient traditions of the Jewish
race, the great figures of Abraham, Lot, and Noah were set vividly before
the eyes of the Arabs. There was every indication that a religious
teacher might use the existing elements of Judaism and Christianity to
produce a monotheistic faith, partaking of their nature, and for a time
Mahomet endeavoured to bring both forms within the scope of his mission.
But compromise, whether with idolaters or Jews, was found to be
impossible, and here religious and political ideals are inextricably
blended. If Mahomet had acquiesced in the Jewish religion, had submitted
to the sovereignty of Jerusalem as the Holy Place, he would have found it
impossible to have established his supremacy in Medina, and the religion
of Islam as he conceived it would have been overriden by the older and
more hallowed faith of the Jews. He saw the danger, and his dominant
spirit could not allow the existence of an equal or superior power to his
own. With that fiery daring and supreme belief in his destiny which
characterised him in later life, he cast away all pretensions to
friendliness either with the Jews or the Christians, and steered his
followers triumphantly through the perils that beset every adherent to an
idea.
But in compelling acceptance of his central thesis of the unity of the
Godhead, he showed signal wisdom and knowledge of men. He was himself by
no means impervious to the value of tradition, and never conceived his
faith as having no historical basis in the religious legends of his
birthplace. That the Muslim belief possesses institutions such as the
reverence for the Kaaba, the rite of Pilgrimage, the acceptance of Mecca
as its sacred city, is due to its founder's love of his native place, and
the ceremonial of which his own creed was really the inseparable outcome.
Besides his recognition of the need of ritual, he was fully aware of the
repugnance of most men to the wholly new. Whenever possible he emphasized
his connection with the ancient ceremonies of Mecca in their purer form,
and as soon as his power was sufficient, he enforced the recognition of
his claims upon the city itself.
His achievement as religious reformer rests largely upon the state of
preparation in which he found his medium, but it owes its efficiency to
one force alone. Mahomet was possessed of one central idea, the
indivisibility of God, and it was sufficient to uphold him against all
calamities. The Kuran sounds the note of insistence which rings the
clarion call of his message. With eloquence of mind and soul, with a
repetition that is wearisome to the outsider, he forces that dominant
truth into the hearts of his hearers. It cannot escape them, for he will
not cease to remind them of their doom if they do not obey. What he set
out to do for the religious life of Arabia he accomplished, chiefly
because he concentrated the whole of his demands into one formula, "There
is no God but God"; then when success had shown him the measure of his
ascendancy, "There is no God but God, and Mahomet is His prophet."
At the end of his life idolatry was uprooted from his native country. The
tribes might rebel against the heaviness of his political yoke, and were
often held to him by the slenderest of diplomatic threads, but their
monotheistic beliefs remained intact once Islam had gained the ascendancy
over them. At the end of the Farewell Pilgrimage, he realised with one
grand uplifting of his soul in thanksgiving that he had indeed caught up
the errant attempts of Arabia to remodel its unsatisfying faith, and had
made of them a triumphant reality, in which the conception of Allah's
unity was the essential belief.
Besides his religious and political attainments, he gave to Arabia as a
whole its first written social and moral code. Here the estimate of his
accomplishment is difficult to render, bemuse comparison with the
existing state is almost impossible. Extensively in the Kuran, but to a
greater degree in the mass of his traditional sayings, crystallised into
a standard edition by Al-Bokhari, when due allowance has been made
for the additions and exaggerations of his followers, the chief
characteristic is the casual nature of his laws.
All his dictates as to the control of marriage, the sale and tenure of
land, commerce, plunder, as well as health and dietary are the result of
definite cases coming within his adjudication. Such an idea as the
deliberate compilation of a code never occurred to him, and there is no
evidence that he ever referred to his former decisions in similar cases,
so that possibilities of contradiction and evasion are limitless. Out of
this jumble of inconsistencies Muslim law and practice has grown. He was
enabled to impose his commands upon the conquered peoples by means of his
military organisation, so that it was not long before Arabia was ruled in
rough fashion by his social and moral precepts enforced by the sword. His
wives offend him, and he forthwith sets down the duties and position of
women in his temporal state. He desires the wife of his friend, and the
result is a Kuranic decree sanctioning the taking of a woman under those
conditions. He is jealous of his younger and more comely associates, and
thereupon ordains the perpetual seclusion of women. He is annoyed at the
untimely visits to his house of assembly, and so he commands that no
Believer shall enter another's apartment uninvited. It is inconvenient to
relinquish the watch night or day during the period of siege in Medina,
therefore he institutes a system whereby half the army is to pray while
the other half remains at its post. Instances may be multiplied without
ceasing of this building up of a whole social code upon the most casual
foundations. But unheeding as was its genesis, it was in the main effective
for those times, and in any case it substituted definite laws for the
measureless wastes of tradition and custom.
It is probable that Mahomet relied a great deal upon existing usages. He
was too wise to disturb them unnecessarily. His was a nature of extremes
combined with a wisdom that came as a revelation to his followers. Where
he hates it is with a hurricane of wrath and destruction, where he loves
it is with the same impetuous tenacity. His denunciations of the
infidels, of his enemies among the Kureisch, of the laggards within his
own city, of the defamers of holy things, of drunkards, of the unclean,
of those who even copy the features of their kindred or picture their
idea of God, are written in the most violent words, whose fury seems to
smite upon the ear with the rushing of flame.
And so the prevailing stamp upon Muslim institutions is fanaticism and
intolerance. As the Prophet drew up hard-and-fast rules, so his followers
insisted upon their remorseless continuance. Mahomet found himself
compelled to issue ordinances, often hurried and unreflecting, to meet
immediate needs, to settle disputes whose prolongation would have meant
his ruin. He possessed the qualities of poet, seer, and religious mystic,
but these in his later life were overshadowed by the characteristics of
lawgiver, soldier, and statesman demanded by his position as head of a
body of men. But neither his mysticism nor his poetic feeling entirely
desert him. They flash out at rare moments in the later suras of the
Kuran, and are apparent in his actions and the traditional accounts of
his sayings, while his creed remained steadfast and unassailable with a
strength that neither defeat nor disaffection could shake. With all
the incompleteness and often contradiction of his administration, he
nevertheless was able to satisfy his followers as to its efficacy mainly
by his exhaustless belief in himself and his work.
In military development his contribution was unique. He gathered together
all the war-loving propensities of the Faithful, and wove them into a
solidarity of aim. His personal courage was not great, but his strategy
and above all his invincible confidence, which refused to admit defeat,
were beyond question. Every leader he sent upon plundering or admonitory
expeditions bore witness to his efficiency and his zeal. He subjected the
Muslim to a discipline that brought out their best qualities of tenacity
and daring. He would not allow his soldiery to become individual
plunderers, but insisted that the booty should be equally divided. In the
beginning he possessed few horsemen, but he rapidly produced a squadron
of cavalry as soon as he became convinced of their usefulness. His
readiness to accept advice as to the defence of Medina proved the
salvation of the city. Under him the military prowess of Islam had ample
scope, for he gave his leaders complete freedom of action; the result was
visible in the supreme fighting quality of Ali, Omar, and Hamza, while
the chances of achieving glory under his banner were the moving motives
of the conversion of Khalid and Abbas. He subdued internecine warfare,
and by a bold stroke united the warrior instincts of Arabia against
external foes, laying upon them the sanction of religion and the promise
of eternal happiness.
Though unskilled in the mechanism of knowledge--he could neither read nor
write--he has left his mark upon the literature of his age and the years
succeeding him. The Kuran was the sum of his inspiration, the expression
in poetic and visionary language of his beliefs and ideals. He found the
medium prepared. The Arabs had long previously evolved a poetry of their
own which lived not in written words, but in their traditional songs.
Mahomet's first flush of inspiration, which waned before the heaviness of
his later tasks, is the cumulation of that wild and fervid art with the
breath of the desert urgent within it.
The Kuran was never written down during his lifetime, but was collected
into a jumble of fragments, "gathered together from date-leaves and
tablets of white stone, and from the breasts of men," by Zeid in the
first troublous years of the Caliphate. We have inevitably lost much of
its original fire, and its effect is weakened by any translation into the
unsuitable medium of modern speech. But that it is a valuable
contribution to the literature of its country cannot be doubted,
especially in the earlier portions, before Mahomet's love of harangue and
the necessity of some vehicle by which to make his political dictates
known had transformed its style into the bald reiterative medley of its
later pages.
Through it all runs the fire of his genius; in the later suras it is the
reflection of his energy that looks out from the pages; the flame itself
has now lighted his actions and inspired his dreams of conquest. The
Kuran is the best revelation of Mahomet himself that posterity possesses,
imperfect as was the manner of its handing down to the modern world. It
shows us both the beauty and strength of his personality and his cruelty,
evasions, magnanimities, and lusts. More than all, the passionate zeal
beating through it makes clear the secret of his sustained endeavours
through discouragement and defeat until his triumph dawned.
To those outside the sphere of his magnetism, Mahomet seems urged on by a
power beyond himself and scarcely within his control. His gifts bear
intimate relation to the particular phase in the task of creating a
religion and a political entity that was uppermost at the moment.
In Mecca he is poet and visionary, the man who speaks with angels and has
seen Gabriel and Israfil, "whose heart-strings are a lute, and who has
the sweetest voice of all God's creatures." He penetrates in fancy to the
innermost Holy Place and beholds the God of battles, even feels his
touch, icy-cold upon his shoulder, and returns with the glow of that
immortal intercourse upon him. It sustains him in defeat and danger, and
by the power of it he converts a few in Medina and flees thither to
complete his task. In Medina he becomes a watchful leader, and still
inspired by heavenly visitants, he produces order out of chaos and guards
his power from numberless assaults.
In attempting to explain his achievements, when allowance is made for all
those factors which gave him help, we are compelled to do homage to the
strength of his personality. Neither in his revelations through the Kuran
nor in the traditions of him is his secret to be found. He lived outside
himself, and his actions are the standard of his accomplishments. He
found Arabia the prey of warring tribes, without leader, without laws,
without religion, save an idolatry obstinate but creatively dead, and he
took the existing elements, wrought into them his own convictions,
quickened them with the fire of his zeal, and created an embryo with
effective laws, fitting social and religious institutions, but greater
than all these, with the enthusiasm for an idea that led his followers to
prayer and conquest. The Kuran, tradition, the later histories, all
minister to that personality which informed the Muslim, so that they
swept through the land like flame, impelled not only by religious zeal,
but also by the memory of their leader's struggles and victories, and of
his journey before them on the perilous path of warfare to the Paradise
promised to the Faithful.