I
Incessant wars and rumors of wars by no means occupied all of
Mohammed’s attention. He might be prophet, statesman, general and
practically king, but he was also something more: he was a family
man on a large scale. Aloof and reserved on public occasions, he was
excessively affectionate toward his friends, and indeed some of his
wives. Since he no longer had any small children, he was particularly
fond of little tots; while standing at prayer he sometimes held a
child in his arms, and at Medina he often allowed a little girl
to lead him around by the hand. From the plumbless depths of his
character a vast and intricate collection of odd mannerisms, which
occasionally corresponded with the surpassing dignity of his office,
came to the surface; and all the manifold resources of psychology,
philosophy and related branches of erudition have been exhausted
in the attempt to analyze or synthesize his personality from these
_disjecta membra_. But the dry bones still remain scattered and
unfleshed; all the prodigal resources of modern scholarship have
excavated fewer vital facts about the Prophet than one of his
most favored wives or friends might have related in less than a
day. When, therefore, they speak with voices whose authenticity is
generally granted, they should be allowed to hold the stage.
Ayesha, certainly, was one of them. Questioned once about her
illustrious consort, she tartly replied: “He was a man just such
as yourselves; he laughed often and smiled much.” “But how would
he occupy himself at home?” the insistent voice continued. “Even
as any of you occupy yourselves,” came the abrupt response. “He
would mend his clothes, and cobble his shoes. He used to help me
in my household duties; but what he did oftenest was to sew. If
he had the choice between two matters, he would always choose the
easier, so as that no sin accrued therefrom.” Ayesha obviously
had few illusions about Mohammed; but that is one of the peculiar
privileges of great men’s wives, and besides he was her senior by
more than forty years--a fact that probably accounts very largely for
her continual underestimation of his several abilities. Her highly
partial record, accordingly, should be corrected and supplemented
with equally pertinent particulars.
For indeed, despite his felicity in cobbling, sewing, milking his
goats and tarring his camels, there were many things that he did not
like at all. He detested lying on the part of others, and separated
himself from those of his adherents who cultivated a natural taste
for mendacity, until they repented; he held the custom of usury in
special abhorrence: “One dirhem of usury which a man eats, knowing
it to be so, is more grievous than thirty-six fornications,” he
declared. He also loathed dogs and pictures--“Angels will not enter
a house containing a dog or pictures,” and “Every painter will be
in hell,” he oracularly announced, but the reason for this outburst
is obscure. Perhaps it was because Arabian art was notoriously
bad--and then again, perhaps he was jealous of anything that, no
matter how rude and primitive, was entirely beyond his comprehension.
Once, during public prayers, he chanced to notice that his mantle
was richly figured, and when he had ended he said: “Take away that
mantle, for verily it hath distracted me in my prayers, and bring
me a common one”; and on another similar occasion he threw off a
silken robe in disgust, saying, “Such stuff it doth not become the
pious to wear.” He wore a golden ring until he noticed that all the
people were beginning to follow his example, whereupon he went into
the pulpit, pulled the ring off with the words, “By the Lord I will
not wear this ring ever again,” and then prohibited the use of such
adornments. A friend who had sent him a present in the form of a
steaming dinner was much chagrined when it was returned uneaten and
even untouched by his fingers--for he “used to eat with his thumb and
his two forefingers,” and, “after he had finished eating, he licked
his blessed fingers: first the middle one, then the prayer-finger,
and last the thumb”--but he was pacified when the Prophet explained
that he had not tasted it because onions had been cooked with the
food; for Gabriel, he went on to say, strenuously objected to the
odor of both onions and garlic. Furthermore, he abstained from
tasting lizards, for he feared that they were descended, by some
inexplicable metempsychosis, from a certain tribe of Israel. He
commonly reclined during his meals, though sometimes “he would sit
on his left leg, posting up the right; and if he was very hungry,
he would sit down altogether and post up both legs.”
Yet the catalogue of his likes was far more extensive than the list
of his aversions. He was so devoted to everlasting prayers that
his legs often became swollen from long standing; and when anyone
remonstrated with him, he would reply: “What! Shall I not behave as
a thankful servant should?” He was very careful not to yawn during
his devotions, and if perforce he sneezed, “he made a moderate noise,
covering his blessed face with his robe-sleeve and putting his
blessed hand before his nostrils,” after which he would ejaculate,
“Praise be to Allah!” Before commencing his orisons, he always
sniffed up several handfuls of water from his right hand and then
blew the liquid out with his left hand. Ordinarily, he prayed with
his shoes on, though he once took them off while engaged in public
supplication--a deed immediately aped by the entire audience; but
the Prophet at once informed them that their action was unnecessary,
“for he had merely taken off his own because Gabriel had apprised
him that there was some dirty substance attaching to them.” His
prayers were so earnest and vehement that “it might be known from a
distance that he was speaking by the motion of his beard”--which he
had let grow until it reached to the middle of his broad chest; but
he regularly clipped his moustache. When it was once suggested to
him that his appearance would be vastly improved if he reversed the
process, the counselor was properly rebuked. “Nay,” said Mohammed,
“for my Lord hath commanded me to clip the moustaches and allow
the beard to grow.”
In more mundane matters, too, his tastes were equally pronounced.
He affected white clothes chiefly, but was also partial toward
red, yellow and green garments, and he sometimes wore woolens.
Scrupulously neat in his personal habits, and ever ready to condemn
untidiness (yellow teeth, in particular) in his companions, he
yet wore a turban, wrapped many times around his head, whose
lower edge looked “like the soiled clothes of an oil-dealer.” But
such carelessness was uncommon, for his clothes, though mostly
inexpensive, were habitually clean and neat. When he donned freshly
laundered clothes, he was accustomed to remark: “Praise be to the
Lord, who hath clothed me with that which shall hide my nakedness
and adorn me while I live.” He had a perfect mania for toothpicks:
at night he invariably kept one handy to use before performing his
ablutions; while traveling he always carried a generous supply;
indeed, he used them so frequently between his wide-spaced teeth,
“white as hailstones,” that he gradually wore his gums away; and
one person chanced to observe him, toothpick in mouth, making a
gurgling, “a-ccha” noise as if he were going to disgorge his food.
The narrowness of his means at Medina limited his gluttonous desires
for a time, but his rapid successes soon enabled him to feast upon
delectable dainties. He was very fond of sweetmeats, honey, cucumbers
and ripe dates (“When he ate fresh dates he would keep such as were
bad in his hand”) and he eyed the pumpkin with particular favor.
One of his servants, gazing abstractedly at some pumpkins one day,
after Mohammed’s death, was overheard saying “Dear little plant,
how the Prophet loved thee!” Like a true Arab, he preferred mutton
to all other flesh. “I once slew a kid and dressed it,” narrated a
Medinan. “The Prophet asked me for the forequarter and I gave it to
him. ‘Give me another,’ he said; and I gave him the second. Then
he asked for a third. ‘O Prophet!’ I replied, ‘there are but two
forequarters to a kid.’” The meal that he relished with most gusto,
however, was “a mess of bread cooked with meat, and a dish of dates
dressed with butter and milk.” He had a predilection for several
wells around Medina whose waters, he said, were both “cold and
sweet,” and, after he drank, he sometimes bathed in them or invoked
a blessing on their contents by spitting into them. Close-fisted
and frugal most of the time, he readily loosed his purse-strings
when he saw something whose appeal was irresistible. He once paid
about twenty camels for a single dress, and also gave eight golden
pieces for a mantle. At bedtime he regularly put antimony on his
eyelids, “saying that it made the sight more piercing, and caused
the hair to grow”; he had a crystal goblet with silver trimmings,
a copper vase for his baths, and an ivory comb; but perhaps his
chief fancy inclined toward perfumes. “We always used to know when
Mohammed had issued forth from his chamber by the sweet perfume that
filled the air,” one of his servants testified. He indulged without
stint in musk and ambergris, and he burned camphor on odiferous
wood so that he might enjoy the smell. With her customary acumen,
Ayesha put the gist of the matter into one pithy sentence when she
said: “The Prophet loved three things--women, scents, and food; he
had his heart’s desire of the first two, but not of the last.” In
fact, Mohammed himself argued that these two innocuous diversions
intensified the ecstasy of his prayers.