belonged to the wife as well as to the husband; temporary marriages
were also common. As was natural among a nomad race, the marriage bond
was quickly made and easily dissolved. But this was not the case among
the Jews and Christians of Yemen and Nejran. Two kinds of marriage
were in vogue. The _mota’a_ was a purely personal contract between a
man and woman; no witnesses were necessary and the woman did not leave
her home or come under the authority of her husband; even the children
belonged to the wife. This marriage, so frequently described in Arabic
poetry, was not considered illicit but was openly celebrated in verse
and brought no disgrace on the woman. In the other kind of marriage,
called _nikah_, the woman became subject to her husband by capture or
purchase. In the latter case the purchase-money was paid to the bride’s
kin.
The position of women before Islam is thus described in Smith’s
“Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia.” “It is very remarkable that
in spite of Mohammed’s humane ordinances the place of woman in the
family and in society has steadily declined under his law. In ancient
Arabia we find ... many proofs that women moved more freely and
asserted themselves more strongly than in the modern East.... The
Arabs themselves recognized that the position of woman had fallen ...
and it continued still to fall under Islam, because the effect of
Mohammed’s legislation in favor of women was more than outweighed by
the establishment of marriages of dominion as the one legitimate type,
and by the gradual loosening of the principle that married women could
count on their own kin to stand by them against their husbands.”[53]
In “the time of ignorance” writing was well known and poetry
flourished. Three accomplishments were coveted—eloquence, horsemanship
and liberal hospitality. Orators were in demand, and to maintain the
standard and reward excellence there were large assemblies as at Okatz.
These lasted a whole month and the tribes came long journeys to hear
the orators and poets as well as to engage in trade. The learning of
the Arabs was chiefly confined to tribal history, astrology and the
interpretation of dreams; in these they made considerable progress.
According to Moslem tradition the science of writing was not known
in Mecca until introduced by Harb, Father of Abu Scofian, the great
opponent of Mohammed, about A.D. 560. But this is evidently an error,
for close intercourse existed long before this between Mecca and Sana
the capital of Yemen where writing was well known; and in another
tradition Abd el Muttalib is said to have _written_ to Medina for help
in his younger days, _i.e._, about 520 A. D. Both Jews and Christians
also dwelt in the vicinity of Mecca for two hundred years before the
Hegira and used some form of writing. For writing materials they
had abundance of reeds and palm-leaves as well as the flat, smooth
shoulder-bones of sheep. The seven poems are said to have been written
in gold on Egyptian silk and suspended in the Kaaba.
In the earlier part of his mission Mohammed despised the poets for the
good reason that some, among them a poetess, wrote satirical verses
about him. The Koran says “those who go astray follow the poets” (Surah
26: 224) and a more vigorous though less elegant denouncement is
recorded in the traditions (Mishkat Bk. 22, ch. 10): “A belly full of
purulent matter is better than a belly full of poetry.” When two of the
heathen poets, Labid and Hassan embraced Islam, the prophet became more
lenient, and is reported to have said “poetry is a kind of composition
which if it is good, it is good, and if it is bad, it is bad!”
Concerning the religion of the heathen Arabs the Mohammedan writer
Ash-Shahristani says: “The Arabs of pre-islamic times may, with
reference to religion be divided into various classes. Some of them
denied the Creator, the resurrection and men’s return to God, and
asserted that Nature possesses in itself the power of bestowing life,
but that Time destroys. Others believed in a Creator and a creation
produced by Him out of nothing but yet denied the resurrection. Others
believed in a Creator and a creation but denied God’s prophets and
worshipped false gods concerning whom they believed that in the next
world they would become _mediators_ between themselves and God. For
these deities they undertook pilgrimages, they brought offerings to
them, offered them sacrifices and approached them with rites and
ceremonies. Some things they held to be Divinely permitted, others to
be prohibited. This was the religion of the majority of the Arabs.”
This is remarkable evidence for a Mohammedan who would naturally
be inclined to take an unfavorable view. But his absolute silence
regarding the Jews and Christians of Arabia is suggestive.
When the Arabian tribes lost their earliest monotheism (the religion
of Job and their patriarchs) they first of all adopted Sabeanism or
the worship of the hosts of heaven. A proof of this is their ancient
practice of making circuits around the shrines of their gods as well
as their skill in astrology. Very soon however the star-worship became
greatly corrupted and other deities, superstitions and practices
were introduced. Ancient Arabia was a refuge for all sorts of
religious-fugitives, and each band added something to the national
stock of religious ideas. The Zoroastrians came to East Arabia; the
Jews settled at Kheibar, Medina, and in Yemen; Christians of many sects
lived in the north and in the highlands of Yemen. For all pagan Arabia
Mecca was the centre many centuries before Mohammed. Here stood the
Kaaba, the Arabian Pantheon, with its three hundred and sixty idols,
one for each day in the year. Here the tribes of Hejaz met in annual
pilgrimage to rub themselves on the Black Stone, to circumambulate
the Beit Allah or Bethel of their creed and to hang portions of their
garments on the sacred trees. At Nejran a sacred date-palm was the
centre of pilgrimage. Everywhere in Arabia there were sacred stones
or stone-heaps where the Arab devotees congregated to obtain special
blessings. The belief in jinn or genii was well-nigh universal,
but there was a distinction between them and gods. The gods have
individuality while the jinn have not; the gods are worshipped, the
jinn are only feared; the god has one form; the jinn appear in many.
All that the Moslem world believes in regard to jinn is wholly borrowed
from Arabian heathenism and those who have read the Arabian Nights know
what a large place they hold in the everyday life of Moslems.
The Arabs were always superstitious, and legends of all sorts cluster
around every weird desert rock, gnarled tree or intermittent fountain
in Arabia. The early Arabs therefore marked off such sacred territory
by pillars or cairns and considered many things such as shedding of
blood, cutting of trees, killing game, etc, forbidden within the
enclosure. This is the origin of the _Haramain_ or sacred territory
around Mecca and Medina. Sacrifices were common, but not by fire. The
blood of the offering was smeared over the rude stone altars and the
flesh was eaten by the worshipper. First fruits were given to the gods
and libations were poured out; a hair-offering formed a part of the
ancient pilgrimage; this also is imitated to-day.
W. Robertson Smith tries to prove that _totemism_ was the earliest
form of Arabian idolatry and that each tribe had its sacred animal.
The strongest argument for this is the undoubted fact that many of the
tribal names were taken from animals and that certain animals were
regarded as sacred in parts of Arabia. The theory is too far-reaching
to be adopted at haphazard and the author’s ideas of the significance
of animal sacrifice are not in accord with the teaching of Scripture.
It is however interesting to know that the same authority thinks the
Arabian tribal marks or _wasms_ were originally totem-marks and must
have been tattooed on the body even as they are now used to mark
property. The _washm_ of the idolatrous Arabs seems related to their
_wasms_ and was a kind of tattooing of the hands, arms and gums. It was
forbidden by Mohammed but is still widely prevalent in North Arabia
among the Bedouin women.
Covenants of blood and of salt are also very ancient Semitic
institutions and prevailed all over Arabia. The form of the oath was
various. At Mecca the parties dipped their hands in a pan of blood and
tasted the contents; in other places they opened a vein and mixed their
fresh blood; again they would each draw the others’ blood and smear it
on seven stones set up in the midst. The later Arabs substituted the
blood of a sheep or of a camel for human blood.
The principal idols of Arabia were the following; ten of them are
mentioned by name in the Koran.
_Hubal_ was in the form of a man and came from Syria; he was the god
of rain and had a high place of honor.
_Wadd_ was the god of the firmament.
_Suwah_, in the form of a woman, was said to be from antediluvian
times.
_Yaghuth_ had the shape of a lion.
_Ya’ook_ was in the form of a horse, and was worshipped in Yemen.
Bronze images of this idol are found in ancient tombs.
_Nasr_ was the eagle-god.
_El Uzza_, identified by some scholars with Venus, was worshipped at
times under the form of an acacia tree.
_Allat_ was the chief idol of the tribe of Thakif at Taif who tried to
compromise with Mohammed to accept Islam if he would not destroy their
god for three years. The name appears to be the feminine of Allah.
_Manat_ was a huge stone worshipped as an altar by several tribes.
_Duwar_ was the virgin’s idol and young women used to go around it in
procession; hence its name.
_Isaf_ and _Naila_ stood near Mecca on the hills of Safa and Mirwa;
the visitation of these popular shrines is now a part of the Moslem
pilgrimage.
_Habhab_ was a large stone on which camels were slaughtered.
Beside these there were numerous other gods whose names have been
utterly lost and yet who each had a place in the Pantheon at Mecca.
Above all these was the supreme deity whom they called ὁ θεὸς, the God,
or _Allah_. This name occurs several times in the ancient pre-islamic
poems and proves that the Arabs knew the one true God by name even in
the “time of ignorance.” To Him they also made offerings though not of
the first and best; in His name covenants were sealed and the holiest
oaths were sworn. Enemy of _Allah_ was the strongest term of opprobrium
among the Arabs then as it is to-day. Wellhausen says, “In worship
_Allah_ had the last place, those gods being preferred who represented
the interests of a particular circle and fulfilled the private desires
of their worshippers. Neither the fear of _Allah_ nor their reverence
for the gods had much influence. The chief practical consequence of
the great feasts was the observance of a truce in the holy months; and
this in time had become mainly an affair of pure practical convenience.
In general the disposition of the heathen Arabs, if it is at all truly
reflected in their poetry, was profane in an unusual degree. The
ancient inhabitants of Mecca practiced piety essentially as a trade,
just as they do now; their trade depended on the feast and its fair on
the inviolability of the Haram and on the truce of the holy months.”
There is no doubt that at the time of Mohammed’s appearance the old
national idolatry had degenerated. Many of the idols had no believers
or worshippers. Sabeanism had also disappeared except in the north of
Arabia; although it always left its influence which is evident not only
in the Koran but in the superstitious practices of the modern Bedouins.
Gross fetishism was the creed of many. One of Mohammed’s contemporaries
said, “When they found a fine stone they adored it, or, failing that,
milked a camel over a heap of sand and worshipped that.” The better
classes at Mecca and Medina had ceased to believe anything at all. The
forms of religion “were kept up rather for political and commercial
reasons than as a matter of faith or conviction.”[54]
Add to all this the silent but strong influence of the Jews and
Christians who were in constant contact with these idolaters and we
have the explanation of the _Hanifs_. These Hanifs were a small number
of Arabs who worshipped only _Allah_, rejected polytheism, sought
freedom from sin and resignation to God’s will. There were Hanifs at
Taif, Mecca and Medina. They were in fact seekers of truth, weary of
the old idolatry and the prevalent hollow hypocrisy of the Arabs. The
earliest Hanifs of whom we hear, were Waraka, the cousin of the prophet
Mohammed, and Zeid bin Amr, surnamed the Inquirer. Mohammed at first
also adopted this title of Hanif to express the faith of Abraham but
soon after changed it to Moslem.
It is only a step from Hanifism to Islam. Primary monotheism,
Sabeanism, idolatry, fetishism, Hanifism, and then the prophet with the
sword to bring everything back to monotheism—monotheism, as modified
by his own needs and character and compromises. The time of ignorance
was a time of chaos. Everything was ready for one who could take in the
whole situation, social, political and religious and form a cosmos.
That man was Mohammed.
XVII
ISLAM IN ITS CRADLE—THE MOSLEM’S GOD[55]
“Islam was born in the desert, with Arab Sabeanism for its
mother and Judaism for its father; its foster-nurse was Eastern
Christianity.”—_Edwin Arnold._
“A Prophet without miracles; a faith without mysteries; and a morality
without love; which has encouraged a thirst for blood, and which began
and ended in the most unbounded sensuality.”—_Schlegel’s Philosophy of
History._
“As we conceive God, we conceive the universe; a being incapable of
loving is incapable of being loved.”—_Principal Fairbairn._
Libraries have been written, not only in Arabic and Persian, but in
all the languages of Europe, on the origin, character and history of
Islam, the Koran and Mohammed. Views differ “as far as the east is from
the west” and as far as Bosworth Smith is from Prideaux. The earlier
European writers did not hesitate to call Mohammed a false prophet and
his system a clever imposture; some went further and attributed even
satanic agency to the success of Islam and to the words of the prophet.
Carlyle, in his “Heroes and Hero-worship,” set the pendulum swinging to
the other side so far that his chapter on the Hero-prophet is published
as a leaflet by the Mohammedan Missionary Society of Lahore. So little
did Carlyle understand the true nature of Islam that he calls it “a
kind of Christianity.” What Carlyle said was only the beginning of a
series of apologies and panegyrics which appeared soon after and placed
Mohammed not only on the pedestal of a great reformer but “a very
prophet of God,” making Islam almost the ideal religion. Syeed Ameer
Ali succeeds in his biography in eliminating every sensual, harsh and
ignorant trait from the character of the noted Meccan; and the recent
valuable book of T. W. Arnold, professor in Aligarh College, India,
attempts to prove most elaborately that Mohammedanism was propagated
without the sword.
In contrast to this read what Hugh Broughton quaintly wrote in 1662:
“Now consider this Moamed or Machumed, whom God gave up to a blind
mind, an Ishmaelite, being a poor man till he married a widow; wealthy
then and of high countenance, having the falling sickness and being
tormented by the devil, whereby the widow was sorry that she matched
with him. He persuaded her by himself and others that his fits were
but a trance wherein he talked with the angel Gabriel. So in time
the impostor was reputed a prophet of God and from Judaism, Arius,
Nestorius and his own brain he frameth a doctrine.” In our day, the
critical labors of scholars like Sprenger, Weil, Muir, Koelle and
others have given us a more correct idea of Mohammed’s life and
character. The pendulum is still swinging but will come to rest between
the two extremes.
We have not space to give the story of Mohammed’s life or of the
religion which he founded. An analysis of the religion has been
attempted by means of two tables, one showing its development from
its creed and the other the philosophy of its origin from outside
sources.[56] The result of a century of critical study by European and
American scholars of every school of thought has certainly established
the fact that Islam is a composite religion. It is not an invention
but a concoction; there is nothing novel about it except the genius
of Mohammed in mixing old ingredients into a new panacea for human
ills and forcing it down by means of the sword. These heterogeneous
elements of Islam were gathered in Arabia at a time when many religions
had penetrated the peninsula, and the Kaaba was a Pantheon. Unless one
has a knowledge of these elements of “the time of ignorance,” Islam
is a problem. Knowing, however, these heathen, Christian and Jewish
factors, Islam is seen to be a perfectly natural and understandable
development. Its heathen elements remain, to this day, perfectly
recognizable in spite of thirteen centuries of explanation by the
Moslem authorities. It is to the Jewish Rabbi Geiger that we owe
our first knowledge of the extent to which Islam is indebted to the
Jews and the Talmud. Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall has recently shown
how Mohammed borrowed even from the Zoroastrians and Sabeans, while
as to the amount of Christian teaching in Islam, the Koran and its
commentators are evidence.
There is a remarkable verse in the twenty-second chapter of the
Koran, in which Mohammed seems to enumerate all the sources that
were accessible to him in forming his new religion; and at that time
he seems to have been in doubt as to which was the most trustworthy
source. The verse reads as follows: “_They who believe and the Jews and
the Sabeans and the Christians and the Magians_ (Zoroastrians) _and
those who join other gods to God, verily God shall decide between them
on the day of Resurrection._”
The God of Islam. GIBBON CHARACTERIZES THE FIRST PART OF the Moslem’s
creed as “an eternal truth “—(“there is no god but God”); but very much
depends on the character of the God, who is affirmed to displace all
other gods. If _Allah’s_ attributes are unworthy of deity then even the
first clause of the briefest of all creeds, is false. There has been a
strange neglect to study the Moslem idea of God and nearly all writers
take for granted that the God of the Koran is the same being and has
like attributes as Jehovah or the Godhead of the New Testament. Nothing
could be further from the truth.
First of all the Mohammedan conception of Allah is purely negative.
God is unique and has no relations to any creature that partake of
resemblance. He cannot be defined in terms other than negative. As the
popular song has it,
“Kullu ma yukhtaru fi balik
Fa rabbuna mukhalifun ’an thalik—”[57]
Absolute sovereignty and ruthless omnipotence are his chief attributes
while his character is impersonal—that of a monad. Among the
ninety-nine beautiful names of God, which Edwin Arnold has used in his
poem “Pearls of the Faith,” the ideas of fatherhood, love, impartial
justice and unselfishness are absent. The Christian truth “God is love”
is to the learned, blasphemy and to the ignorant an enigma. Palgrave,
who certainly was not biased against the religion of Arabia and who
lived with the Arabs for long months, calls the theology of Islam
“the pantheism of force.” No one has ever given a better account of
_Allah_, a more faithful portrait of Mohammed’s conception of deity
than Palgrave. Every word of his description tallies with statements
which one can hear daily from pious Moslems. Yet no one who reads
what we quote in all its fullness will recognize here the God whom
David addresses in the Psalms or who became incarnate at Bethlehem and
suffered on Calvary. This is Palgrave’s statement:
“There is no god but God—are words simply tantamount in English to the
negation of any deity save one alone; and thus much they certainly mean
in Arabic, but they imply much more also. Their full sense is, not only
to deny absolutely and unreservedly all plurality, whether of nature
or of person, in the Supreme Being, not only to establish the unity
of the Unbegetting and Unbegot, in all its simple and uncommunicable
Oneness, but besides this the words, in Arabic and among Arabs, imply
that this one Supreme Being is also the only Agent, the only Force,
the only Act existing throughout the universe, and leave to all beings
else, matter or spirit, instinct or intelligence, physical or moral,
nothing but pure, unconditional passiveness, alike in movement or in
quiescence, in action or in capacity. The sole power, the sole motor,
movement, energy, and deed is God; the rest is downright inertia and
mere instrumentality, from the highest archangel down to the simplest
atom of creation. Hence, in this one sentence, ‘La Ilāh illa Allāh,’ is
summed up a system which, for want of a better name, I may be permitted
to call the Pantheism of Force, or of Act, thus exclusively assigned to
God, who absorbs it all, exercises it all, and to whom alone it can be
ascribed, whether for preserving or for destroying, for relative evil
or for equally relative good. I say ‘relative,’ because it is clear
that in such a theology no place is left for absolute good or evil,
reason or extravagance; all is abridged in the autocratic will of the
one great Agent: ‘sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro ratione voluntas’; or,
more significantly still, in Arabic, ‘Kemā yesha’o,’ ‘as he wills it,’
to quote the constantly recurring expression of the Koran.
“Thus immeasurably and eternally exalted above, and dissimilar from,
all creatures, which lie levelled before him on one common plane of
instrumentality and inertness, God is one in the totality of omnipotent
and omnipresent action, which acknowledges no rule, standard, or limit
save his own sole and absolute will. He communicates nothing to his
creatures, for their seeming power and act ever remain his alone, and
in return he receives nothing from them; for whatever they may be,
that they are in him, by him, and from him only. And secondly, no
superiority, no distinction, no preëminence, can be lawfully claimed
by one creature over its fellow, in the utter equalization of their
unexceptional servitude and abasement; all are alike tools of the
one solitary Force which employs them to crush or to benefit, to
truth or to error, to honor or shame, to happiness, or misery, quite
independently of their individual fitness, deserts, or advantage, and
simply because he wills it, and as he wills it.
“One might at first think that this tremendous autocrat, this
uncontrolled and unsympathizing power, would be far above anything
like passions, desires or inclinations. Yet such is not the case, for
he has with respect to his creatures one main feeling and source of
action, namely, jealousy of them lest they should perchance attribute
to themselves something of what is his alone, and thus encroach on his
all-engrossing kingdom. Hence he is ever more prone to punish than to
reward, to inflict than to bestow pleasure, to ruin than to build.
“It is his singular satisfaction to let created beings continually feel
that they are nothing else than his slaves, his tools, and contemptible
tools also, that thus they may the better acknowledge his superiority,
and know his power to be above their power, his cunning above their
cunning, his will above their will, his pride above their pride; or
rather, that there is no power, cunning, will, or pride save his own.
“But he himself, sterile in his inaccessible height, neither loving
nor enjoying aught save his own and self-measured decree, without son,
companion, or counsellor, is no less barren for himself than for his
creatures, and his own barrenness and lone egoism in himself as the
cause and rule of his indifferent and unregarding despotism around. The
first note is the key of the whole tune, and the primal idea of God
runs through and modifies the whole system and creed that centres in
him.