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 Kaạbeh
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 Kaạbeh, 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 had been, saith tradition, first built 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, Hubal, and the three hundred and sixty idols, one
for each day of the year, which Moḥammad afterwards destroyed in one
day. Here was Abraham’s stone and that other which marked the tomb of
Ishmael, and hard by 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 so in the ancient religion of Arabia we see the religion
once professed by Chaldeans, Canaanites, 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.’ [11]
The great objects of worship were the sun and the stars and the three
moon-goddesses—El-Lát the bright moon, Menáh the dark, and El-´Uzzà
the union of the two; whilst a lower cultus of trees, stones, and
mountains, supposed to be dwelt-in by souls, shows that the religion
had not yet quite risen above simple fetishism. At the time of
Moḥammad the Arabs worshipped numerous images, which may have been
merely a development from the previous stone-worship, or may have been
introduced from intercourse with Christians. 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_
(Alláh ta´ála)—a conception also possibly derived from Christianity.
The various deities (but not the Supreme Allah) had their fanes, where
human sacrifices, though rare, were not unknown; and their cultus 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 salám of the returning
or outgoing host. But in spite of all this superstitious apparatus the
Arabs were never a religious people. In the old days, as now, they
were reckless, skeptical, materialistic. They had their gods and their
divining-arrows, but they were ready to demolish both if the responses
proved contrary to their wishes. A 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, it must have been the exception; and if there are
some doubtful traces of the doctrine of metempsychosis, this again
must have been the creed of the very few.
Christianity and Judaism had made but small impress upon the Arabs.
There were Jewish tribes in the north, and there is evidence in the
Ḳur-án 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 Dhafár and Nejrán. 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 set forth. It had
become a thing of the head instead of the heart, and the refinements
of monophysite and monothelite doctrines gained no hold upon the Arab
mind.
Thus Judaism and Christianity, though they were well known, and
furnished many ideas and ceremonies to Islám, 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 before the time of Moḥammad men 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 Ḳur-án relates, were sent in old time to the tribes of ´Ád and
Thamood to convert them, there was, immediately before the preaching
of Moḥammad, 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 _‘Ḥaneefs,’_
or skeptics, 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 Ḥaneefs 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 Moḥammad to
formulate the faith of the Ḥaneefs in the dogmas of Islám. For the
leader of these few ‘skeptics’ was Zeyd ibn ´Amr, to whom Moḥammad
often resorted, and another, Waraḳah, was the cousin of the Prophet
and his near neighbour: and thus the Ḥaneefs were the forerunners of
the man who was to change the destinies of the Arabs.
We can no longer see the true Arab as he was in ‘the Time of
Ignorance,’ and we cannot but regret our loss; for the Pagan Arab is a
noble type of man, though there be nobler. There is much that is
admirable in his high mettle, his fine sense of honour, his
knightliness, his ‘open-handed, both-handed,’ generosity, his frank
friendship, and his manly independent spirit; and the faults of this
wild reckless nature are not to be weighed against its many
excellencies. When Moḥammad turned abroad the current of Arab life, he
changed the character of the people. The mixture with foreign nations,
and the quiet town-life that succeeded to the tumult of conquest,
gradually effaced many of the leading ideas of the old Arab nature,
and the remnant that still dwell in the land of their fathers have
lost much of that nobleness of character which in their ancestors
covered a multitude of sins. Moḥammad in part destroyed the Arab and
created the Muslim. The last is no amends for the first. The modern
Bedawee is neither the one nor the other; he has lost the greatness
of the old type without gaining that of the new. As far as the Arabs
alone are concerned, Moḥammad effected a temporary good and a lasting
harm. As to the world at large, that is matter for another chapter.
II.—_MOḤAMMAD._
For every fiery prophet in old times,
And all the sacred madness of the bard,
When God made music through them, could but speak
His music by the framework and the chord;
And as _he_ saw it _he hath_ spoken truth.
—THE HOLY GRAIL.
A prophet for the Arabs must fulfil two conditions if he will bring
with his good tidings the power of making them accepted: he must
spring from the traditional centre of Arabian religion, and he must
come of a noble family of pure Arab blood. Moḥammad fulfilled both.
His family was that branch of the Ḳureysh which had raised Mekka to
the dignity of the undisputed metropolis of Arabia, and which, though
impoverished, still held the chief offices of the sacred territory.
Moḥammad’s grandfather was the virtual chief of Mekka; for to him
belonged the guardianship of the Kaạbeh, and he it was who used the
generous privilege of giving food and water to the pilgrims who
resorted to the ‘House of God.’ His youngest son, after marrying a
kinswoman belonging to a branch of the Ḳureysh, settled at Yethrib
(Medina), died before the birth of his son (571), and this son,
Moḥammad, lost his mother when he was only six years old. The orphan
was adopted by his grandfather, ´Abd-el-Muṭṭalib; and a tender
affection sprang up between the chief of eighty years and his little
grandson. Many a day the old man might be seen sitting at his wonted
place near the Kaạbeh, and sharing his mat with his favourite. He
lived but two years more; and at his dying request, his son Aboo-Ṭálib
took charge of Moḥammad, for whom he too ever showed a love as of
father and mother.
Such is the bare outline of Moḥammad’s childhood; and of his youth we
know about as little, though the Arabian biographies abound in
legends, of which some may be true and most are certainly false. There
are stories of his journeyings to Syria with his uncle, and his
encounter with a mysterious monk of obscure faith; but there is
nothing to show for this tale, and much to be brought against it. All
we can say is, that Moḥammad probably assisted his family in the war
of the Fijár, and that he must many a time have frequented the annual
Fair of ´Oḳádh, hearing the songs of the desert chiefs and the praise
of Arab life, and listening to the earnest words of the Jews and
Christians and others who came to the Fair. He was obliged at an early
age to earn his own living; for the noble family of the Háshimees, to
which he belonged, was fast losing its commanding position, whilst
another branch of the Ḳureysh was succeeding to its dignities. The
princely munificence of Háshim and ´Abd-el-Muṭṭalib was followed by
the poverty and decline of their heirs. The duty of providing the
pilgrims with food was given up by the Háshimees to the rival branch
of Umeyyeh, whilst they retained only the lighter office of serving
water to the worshippers. Moḥammad must take his share in the labour
of the family, and he was sent to pasture the sheep of the Ḳureysh on
the hills and valleys round Mekka; and though the people despised the
shepherd’s calling, he himself was wont to look back with pleasure to
these early days, saying that God called never a prophet save from
among the sheep-folds. And doubtless it was then that he developed
that reflective disposition of mind which at length led him to seek
the reform of his people, whilst in his solitary wanderings with the
sheep he gained that marvellous eye for the beauty and wonder of the
earth and sky which resulted in the gorgeous nature-painting of the
Ḳur-án. Yet he was glad to change this menial work for the more
lucrative and adventurous post of camel-driver to the caravans of his
wealthy kinswoman Khadeejeh; and he seems to have taken so kindly to
the duty, which involved responsibilities, and to have acquitted
himself so worthily, that he attracted the notice of his employer, who
straightway fell in love with him, and presented him with her hand.
The marriage was a singularly happy one, though Moḥammad was scarcely
twenty-five and his wife nearly forty, and it brought him that repose
and exemption from daily toil which he needed in order to prepare his
mind for his great work. But beyond that, it gave him a loving woman’s
heart, that was the first to believe in his mission, that was ever
ready to console him in his despair and to keep alive within him the
thin flickering flame of hope when no man believed in him—not even
himself—and the world was black before his eyes.
We know very little of the next fifteen years. Khadeejeh bore him sons
and daughters, but only the daughters lived. We hear of his joining a
league for the protection of the weak and oppressed, and there is a
legend of his having acted with wise tact and judgment as arbitrator
in a dispute among the great families of Mekka on the occasion of the
rebuilding of the Kaạbeh. During this time, moreover, he relieved his
still impoverished uncle of the charge of his son ´Alee—afterwards the
Bayard of Islám,—and he freed and adopted a certain captive, Zeyd; and
these two became his most devoted friends and disciples. Such is the
short but characteristic record of these fifteen years of manhood. We
know very little about what Moḥammad did, but we hear only one voice
as to what he was. Up to the age of forty his unpretending modest way
of life had attracted but little notice from his townspeople. He was
only known as a simple upright man, whose life was severely pure and
refined, and whose true desert sense of honour and faith-keeping had
won him the high title of El-Emeen, ‘the Trusty.’
Let us see what fashion of man this was, who was about to work a
revolution among his countrymen, and change the conditions of social
life in a vast part of the world. The picture[12] is drawn from an
older man than we have yet seen; but Moḥammad at forty and Moḥammad at
fifty or more were probably very little different. ‘He 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 down almost to his
shoulders. Even in advanced age it was sprinkled by only about twenty
grey 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, and as that of one
“who steps from a high to a low place,” In turning his face he would
also turn his full 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 of smell. Strong drinks 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 cheeks. 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 his 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 ever 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. ´Áïsheh
tells us that he slept upon a leathern mat, and that he mended his
clothes, and even clouted his shoes, with his own hand. For months
together ... he did not get a sufficient meal. The little food that 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 the poor, who lived entirely on
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.’ [13]
Moḥammad was full forty before he felt himself called to be an apostle
to his people. If he did not actually worship the local deities of the
place, at least he made no public protest against the fetish worship
of the Ḳureysh. Yet in the several phases of his life, in his contact
with traders, in his association with Zeyd and other men, he had
gained an insight into better things than idols and human sacrifices,
divining-arrows and mountains and stars. He had heard a dim echo of
some ‘religion of Abraham;’ he had listened to the stories of the
Haggadah: he knew a very little about Jesus of Nazareth. He seems to
have suffered long under the burden of doubt and self-distrust. He
used to wander about the hills alone, brooding over these things; he
shunned the society of men, and ‘solitude became a passion to him.’
At length came the crisis. He was spending the sacred months on Mount
Ḥirá, ‘a huge barren rock, torn by cleft and hollow ravine, standing
out solitary in the full white glare of the desert sun, shadowless,
flowerless, without well or rill.’ Here in a cave Moḥammad gave
himself up to prayer and fasting. Long months or even years of doubt
had increased his nervous excitable disposition. He had had, they say,
cataleptic fits during his childhood, and was evidently more
delicately and finely constituted than those around him. Given this
nervous nature, and the grim solitude of the hill where he had almost
lived for long weary months, blindly feeling after some truth upon
which to rest his soul, it is not difficult to believe the tradition
of the cave, that Moḥammad heard a voice say, ‘Cry!’ ‘What shall I
cry?’ he answers—the question that has been burning his heart during
all his mental struggles—
Cry[14]! in the name of thy Lord, who hath created;
He hath created man from a clot of blood.
Cry! and thy Lord is the Most Bountiful,
Who hath taught [writing] by the pen:
He hath taught man that which he knew not.
Moḥammad arose trembling, and went to Khadeejeh, and told her what he
had seen; and she did her woman’s part, and believed in him and
soothed his terror, and bade him hope for the future. Yet he could not
believe in himself. Was he not perhaps mad, possessed by a devil? Were
these voices of a truth from God? And so he went again on his solitary
wanderings, hearing strange sounds, and thinking them at one time the
testimony of Heaven, at another the temptings of Satan or the ravings
of madness. Doubting, wondering, hoping, he had fain put an end to a
life which had become intolerable in its changings from the heaven of
hope to the hell of despair, when again he heard the voice, ‘Thou art
the messenger of God, and I am Gabriel.’ Conviction at length seized
hold upon him; he was indeed to bring a message of good tidings to
the Arabs, the message of God through His angel Gabriel. He went back
to Khadeejeh exhausted in mind and body. ‘Wrap me, wrap me,’ he said;
and the word came unto him—
O thou enwrapped in thy mantle
Arise and warn!
And thy Lord,—magnify Him!
And thy raiment,—purify it!
And the abomination,—flee it!
And bestow not favours that thou mayest receive again with increase,
And for thy Lord wait thou patiently.
There are those who see imposture in all this; for such I have no
answer. Nor does it matter whether in a hysterical fit or under any
physical disease soever Moḥammad saw these visions and heard these
voices. We are not concerned to draw the lines of demarcation between
enthusiasm and ecstasy and inspiration. It is sufficient that Moḥammad
_did_ see these things—the subjective creations of a tormented mind.
It is sufficient that he believed them to be a message from on high,
and that for years of neglect and persecution and for years of triumph
and conquest he acted upon his belief.
Moḥammad now (612) came forward as the Apostle of the One God to the
people of Arabia: he was at last well assured that his God was of a
truth _the_ God, and that He had indeed sent him with a message to his
people, that they too might turn from their idols and serve the living
God. He was in the minority of one, but he was no longer afraid; he
had learnt that self-trust which is the condition of all true work. At
first he spoke to his near kinsmen and friends; and it is impossible
to overrate the importance of the fact that his closest relations and
those who lived under his roof were the first to believe and the
staunchest of faith. The prophet who is _with_ honour in his own home
need appeal to no stronger proof of his sincerity, and that Moḥammad
_was_ ‘a hero to his own valet’ is an invincible argument for his
earnestness. The motherly Khadeejeh had at once, with a woman’s
instinct, divined her husband’s heart and confirmed his fainting hope
by her firm faith in him. His dearest friends, Zeyd and ´Alee, were
the next converts; and though, to his grief, he could never induce his
lifelong protector, Aboo-Ṭálib, to abandon the gods of his fathers,
yet the old man loved him none the less, and said, when he heard of
´Alee’s conversion, ‘Well, my son, he will not call thee to aught save
what is good; wherefore thou art free to cleave unto him.’ A priceless
aid was gained in the accession of Aboo-Bekr, who succeeded Moḥammad
as the first Khalif of Islám, and whose calm judgment and quick
sagacity, joined to a gentle and compassionate heart, were of
incalculable service to the faith. Aboo-Bekr was one of the wealthiest
merchants of Mekka, and exercised no small influence among his
fellow-citizens, no less by his character than his position. Like
Moḥammad, he had a nickname, Eṣ-Ṣiddeeḳ, ‘The True:’ _The True_ and
_The Trusty_,—no mean augury for the future of the religion!
Five converts followed in Aboo-Bekr’s steps; among them ´Othmán, the
third Khalif, and Ṭalḥah, the man of war. The ranks of the faithful
were swelled from humbler sources. There were many negro slaves in
Mekka, and of them not a few had been predisposed by earlier teaching
to join in the worship of the One God; and of those who were first
converted was the Abyssinian Bilál, the original Muëddin of Islám, and
ever a devoted disciple of the Prophet. These and others from the
Ḳureysh raised the number of Muslims to more than thirty souls by the
fourth year of Moḥammad’s mission—thirty in three long years, and few
of them men of influence!