II

Busily occupied though he had been for several years with the gradual

subjugation of the Koreish, Mohammed had yet found time to compel

a motley group of less important enemies to bow meekly beneath

the yoke of Islam. The extinction of the Beni Koreiza had been but

one link in the long chain of his conquests. His Meccan kinsmen

had naturally been the first to be imperiously brushed aside; but

other temporary impediments had occasionally blocked his way.

Among them the few Christians who were scattered here and there

throughout Arabia were of least moment. Split asunder as they were

into various warring sects--the Monothelites, Jacobites, Melchites

and Nestorians--they worried the Prophet but little; he seems to

have regarded them with a tolerant and mildly amused eye. Having

had scanty intercourse with them, he was probably quite ignorant of

their disputatious creeds; therefore, while the Koran always speaks

respectfully of the Saviour, Who is invariably designated “Jesus,

Son of Mary,” it makes many deplorable errors when it discusses

the tenets and theogony of Christianity. It expressly denies that

Jesus is the Son of God and completely repudiates the established

doctrine of the Holy Trinity: “Wherefore believe in God, and in the

Apostles; and say not, _There are Three_. Refrain: it will be better

for you. Verily the Lord is one God. Glory be to Him! far be it from

Him, that there should be to Him a Son.” And Mohammed seems to have

made the even more egregious error of supposing that the Trinity

which he condemned was composed of the Father, Jesus and Mary; for

the Koran utterly fails to recognize the incontrovertible existence

of the Holy Ghost. Thus, while it has been reasonably urged that

the Prophet both comprehended and hated Roman Catholicism, it may

just as plausibly be argued that the conception of the Holy Spirit

as a separate and distinct entity was too subtle for his eminently

practical mind to grasp.

With Judaism, however, the case was very different. Though the Koran

might place Christ on par with Abraham, Moses, David and other

Hebrew prophets, it was to the customs and rites of the Jews that

Mohammed paid obeisance rather than to those that had clustered

around Christianity. Scarcely had he taken up his residence in Medina

when he deliberately humbled himself in an effort to placate and

win over the Jews; for, knowing their numbers and their power, he

strongly desired to enter into a lasting union with them. To that

end, he bound himself and his adherents to the Jews in a contract

whose obligations were relatively mutual: “The Jews will profess

their religion, the Moslems theirs.... No one shall go forth to

war excepting with the permission of Mohammed; but this shall not

hinder any from seeking lawful revenge.... If attacked, each shall

come to the assistance of the other.... War and Peace shall be

made in common.” There is also every reason to suppose that the

command promulgated by Allah, when the Prophet visited Him in the

Seventh Heaven, to the effect that all loyal Moslems must henceforth

direct their prayers five times daily toward Jerusalem, was given

because Mohammed expected that the Jews, seeing the Moslems thus

busily engaged, would be insidiously flattered and insensibly led

to look favorably upon Islam. Nor did his efforts stop here. The

period of fasting which he had decreed for the Moslems coincided

with that time during which the Hebrews also abstained from food;

when Jewish funeral processions passed, the Prophet and his brethren

honored them by standing until they had disappeared; and the rite

of circumcision--commonly practised by all Arabs out of deference

to Abraham, the supposed founder of their holy city, Mecca--was

also submitted to by the Moslems to the further pleasure of the

Jews, who, however, remained in mystified ignorance as to whether

Mohammed himself had undergone that ceremony. It is furthermore

likely that the Hebraic horror of Christianity made the Jews look

favorably upon this newcomer who, while he might not correspond

exactly with the prophet who had been so long and so unsuccessfully

anticipated by them, at least appeared to approximate their ideal.

What else could be thought of a man who formulated the amazing

doctrine that a Jew might synchronously be a devout follower of

Abraham and Allah, and might therefore attend both the services of

the Mosque and the Synagogue with equal impunity? Indeed, there

is much evidence to support the view that, had the Jews saluted

Mohammed as _the_ prophet who had at last arrived among them, Islam

would have been rapidly absorbed by Hebraism.

But Allah had other plans. A year’s commingled residence in Medina

taught the members of both sects many, many things. Inasmuch as the

Jews literally owned the city, the needy Moslems were compelled to

turn to them for positions, provisions and for money to borrow; and

they soon learnt that their creditors were as merciless as they

were devout. Abu Bekr, having approached a certain Pinchas with the

quaint request, “Who will lend God a good loan?” was rebuffed with

the quick retort, “If God wants a loan, He must be in distressed

circumstances”; whereupon Abu, who had absolutely no flair for

repartee, won some slight consolation by knocking Pinchas down. The

Prophet himself--who, even after he began to extirpate the Hebrews,

invariably turned to them when his financial credit was bad--had

experiences similar to Abu’s; and it is a matter of interest that

he now for the first time began to notice that the odors arising

from the Jewish habitations were decidedly offensive to his

ever-fastidious nose. Another thing that fanned the rising fires

of disaffection was the fact that, for more than a year after the

Hegira, no Moslem woman gave birth to a child; and the Jews openly

bragged that their secret sorceries and enchantments had produced

this barrenness. The Moslems, completely upset over this unheard-of

catastrophe, exhausted themselves in the attempt to discover an

adequate remedy; and the Prophet was so much concerned that he

probably composed two Suras especially designed to frustrate the

Jewish spells. Yet, in spite of the Hebraic incantations, a Moslem

child was born fourteen months after the flight to Medina, and

never again was there any doubt as to the fertility of the Moslem

women.

The Jews, too, had experienced a mental revolution. A prophet who,

as they had discovered, could not speak Hebrew, and who, when put

to the test, betrayed an abysmal ignorance concerning the wealth

of intricate information stored in the Pentateuch, did not wholly

correspond to their idealized conception of their Messiah. They

might blandly admit that his dissertations were satisfactory, but

when he pressed his prophetic claims upon them they courteously

retorted that _their_ particular prophet must be able to trace his

lineage straight back to David. They objected, also, when they

noted how great a proportion of his time Mohammed spent in his

harem, whereas the Jews, of all people, might well have regarded

that harmless idiosyncrasy as a clinching proof that his mission

was divine. Again, when the Prophet vainly tried to save the life

of one of his earliest converts by cauterizing his sore throat, the

Jews poked fun at him. “If this man were a prophet, could he not

have warded off sickness from his friend?” they mockingly asked.

And all that Mohammed could think of to say was this: “I have no

power from my Lord over even mine own life, or over that of any

of my followers. The Lord destroy the Jews that speak thus!” From

this time on, instead of sitting up night after night, as he had

once done, telling affecting tales about the Children of Israel,

he began to belabor their descendants in the pages of the Koran.

Where it had once iterated and reiterated the manifold virtues of

the ancient Hebrews, it now discussed their manifold vices--their

idolatries, backslidings, and betrayals--at even greater length;

and an almost Christian fervor breathes from those pages where the

Prophet asseverates that the wilful stupidity of the Jews caused

them to reject him even as they had previously spurned Jesus.

Some faint-hearted Hebrews, who perhaps suspected what was coming,

were diplomatic enough to swallow the new faith entire, thereby

winning from Mohammed the appellation of “Witnesses.” Abdallah,

son of Salam, was a shining example. Having slyly induced his

brethren to give him a character testimonial before they knew that

he was about to become a renegade, he presented it to the Prophet

who was so pleased that he assured Abdallah he was already in

Paradise--even Sa’d, chief of the Aus, had not received a comparable

congratulation. But Abdallahs among the Jews were rare. Most of

them continued to snicker at the hilarious ignorance and bombast

revealed in Mohammed’s homiletical discourses, to disregard Allah’s

grim warning that they should repent and turn to Islam “before We

deface your countenances, turning the face backwards,” and to wax

fat on the miseries of the Moslems. On the other hand, the Moslems

themselves no longer made any effort to conceal their desire to

hold their noses when they were compelled to approach the Jews on

business matters; and the Prophet himself shortly decided to put

a summary end to all attempts at reconciliation and brotherhood.

Perhaps the success that attended his decision to fight during the

sacred months suggested the idea that he was now strong enough to

break definitely with the Jews. One day, not long afterward, while

he stood at prayer in the Mosque with his face turned as usual

toward the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, he received a lightning

revelation to turn “toward the holy Temple of Mecca. Wheresoever ye

be, when ye pray, turn toward the same.” The divine injunction came

just after he had prostrated himself twice toward Jerusalem; quick

as a flash he reversed himself--an action instinctively followed

by all the automatons in the audience--and faced toward the south

until the service was ended. This symbolic event signalized his

determination henceforth to separate himself wholly from the Jews,

as well as to gratify the atavistic longings of his zealots who had

never quite succeeded in relinquishing their love for the Black

Stone and the Kaba; then too, Mohammed had grown very tired of

listening to a favorite Hebraic taunt: “This Prophet of yours knew

not where to find his Kibla [house of worship] till we pointed it out

to him.” The Jews, who fully understood the sinister significance

of Mohammed’s sudden right-about-face, were much perturbed; and

they had reason to be, for he lost no time in sundering every

tie that connected the worship of Allah with Hebraic ceremonies.

He commanded the Moslems to keep their fast before or after the

Jewish Day of Atonement; he once more followed the Arabic custom

of combing his hair instead of letting it drift loose, as the

Jews did; he altered the Moslem funeral rites so that they again

corresponded to the immemorial Pagan ritual; and he changed the

regulations pertaining to the lunar indisposition of females to a

system that Moses assuredly would not have approved. For it must

be demonstrated that Allah was more powerful than Jehovah; that

Mohammed, as the last of a long line of prophets, had an ultimate

claim upon the sacerdotal office; and that the superior wisdom which

the Jews boasted concerning celestial matters over which he had

hitherto asserted his sole jurisdiction would be of no use whatever

to them--after they were dead.