[Frontispiece: EVENING PRAYER. '_Islam was born in the desert._']
THE STORY OF ISLAM
BY
THEODORE R. W. LUNT
GENERAL SECRETARY, NATIONAL LAYMEN'S
MISSIONARY MOVEMENT
(FORMERLY EDUCATIONAL SECRETARY, CHURCH
MISSIONARY SOCIETY)
THIRD EDITION (REVISED)
LONDON
UNITED COUNCIL FOR MISSIONARY EDUCATION
CATHEDRAL HOUSE, 8 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
1909. _First Edition._
1911. _Second Edition._
1916. _Third Edition_ (_Revised_).
Dedicated
to the Public Schoolboys
of Great Britain, who
have a Big Part yet to play
in shaping the Future
Story of Islam
_In the Same Series_
THE SECRET OF THE RAJ
BY
BASIL MATHEWS, M.A.
Price 1/6, post free
_From all Missionary Societies_
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AUTHOR'S PREFACE
TO THIRD EDITION
It has been strange indeed to revise this book in barracks, amid
efforts to learn to fire big guns--possibly against the Turks. And
yet this necessity which lies upon us Englishmen to-day only
emphasizes afresh the importance of our trying to understand the real
problem of Islam.
When the war is over, Islam will remain. Whatever state of
disorganization it may be in and whatever its centre, it will still
tower up before us gaunt and shadowed as one of the most difficult
problems of civilization and as the great reproach of the Christian
Church.
We can do nothing to help Moslems, or to solve their problem, unless
we know something of their story and have tried to understand the
power and fascination of their rugged simple creed.
Those of us who are called to fight--for honourable necessity--have
the lesser task {vi} though it be costly. The real opportunity will
lie with those who come after--with those, in fact, who are at school
to-day. Their task will be not to destroy but to build, to dream
holy dreams of a great World Kingdom of Love and Gentleness and Truth
and Purity and Honour, and to consecrate their lives to the One from
Whom and through Whom alone these things can come.
THEO. R. W. LUNT.
R.F.A. MESS, BEDFORD BARRACKS,
EDINBURGH, _January_ 1916.
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CONTENTS
CHAP.
Author's Preface
I. 'Youth and its Schooling'
II. Early Manhood
III. The Prophet of Arabia
IV. Life in Mecca
V. The Unsheathing of the Sword
VI. The Sword of Islam
VII. Islam's Success
VIII. Islam's Failure
IX. 'The Challenge of Islam'
X. The World of Islam
XI. Islam and the Church of Christ
XII. Islam and the Christian
Appendices
Index
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Evening Prayer ... Frontispiece
'_Islam was born in the desert._'
The Kaaba at Mecca
'_Recognized as the religious centre of all Arabia._'
A Camel Merchant
'_Mohammed's fame spread along every caravan route of Arabia._'
The Observance of Prayer
'_Typical of Mohammedanism in every century and in every clime._'
The Extent of Islam, 800 A.D. (map)
'_An example in missionary enthusiasm._'
Moslems in the Great Mosque, Delhi
'_It is a problem which concerns us, ... we have a duty to them._'
A Challenge from West Africa
'_Where Moslem mosque and pagan temple are side by side._'
Hon. Ion Keith-Falconer and Dr. Imad-ud-Din
'_Strong men, missionary and convert._'
Moslem Boy-Faces (Tunis)
'_What have we Christians that we can say to them?_'
The Mohammedan World To-day (_map_)
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THE STORY OF ISLAM
CHAPTER I
'YOUTH AND ITS SCHOOLING'
'The boy is father of the man.'
'Islam was born in the desert.'
EDWIN ARNOLD.
[Sidenote: Mecca.]
Close to the focus of three great continents, where East meets West
and North meets South, Asia almost touching both Africa and Europe,
lies the great unknown country of Arabia, the 'Land of the Desert.'
The long, low coast-line of its western shore is familiar enough to
all who travel to the East. About seventy miles behind that coast
lies a wild chain of desert mountains. Here, in a valley snuggling
among massive peaks, is an Arab town, a kind of mountain fastness,
lying in an amphitheatre of rugged hills.
It marks the spot, so the Arab legend runs, where long years ago
Hagar the {2} bondwoman laid her son, parched and dying of a desert
thirst, while she drew away out of reach of his cries, and 'lifted up
her voice and wept.' Here, too, is the well from which she filled
her bottle and gave the lad to drink, reverenced to-day by all good
Arabs as the sacred well of Zemzem.
[Sidenote: Mohammed's Birth 570 A.D.]
In this town of Mecca there lived in the year 570 A.D. a young Arab
widow mother. She had not been married long when her husband
Abdallah joined a caravan on a long trading journey up to Syria. On
his way back he sickened of some desert fever and died, and a son was
born to her after the father's death. The child's grandfather was a
person of considerable importance, the patriarchal head of the ruling
clan, the Koreish. He took the boy in his arms and went to the
sacred temple of Mecca, and gave thanks to God. The child was named
Mohammed.
[Sidenote: Childhood.]
His mother was poor, but she was of noble family; and so, according
to the custom of Arab aristocracy, the child was not nursed at home
but entrusted to the care of a woman of one of the wild wandering
tribes of the desert for his first five {3} years. The boy's
earliest recollections must have been of wild Bedouin life, in which
he grew strong and robust in frame, trained in the pure speech and
free manners of the desert. For little more than a year he returned
to his mother and his home, but at the age of seven his mother died,
and he was left an orphan. He was old enough to feel her loss very
deeply, and also the desolation of his orphan state. The shadow
overcast his life and turned his thoughts to melancholy. His
grandfather, Abd al Muttalib, was an old man now, and Mohammed was
his favourite grandson. He took the lad to his own home and was more
than ordinarily kind to him; yet Mohammed never forgot his mother,
nor the sorrow of her death. No doubt it did much to make him the
pensive, meditative man he afterwards became--anyhow it set him
thinking.
When he was eight years old the boy's heart was again wounded by the
death of his kind grandfather and guardian. With him he had lived in
the proudest home in Mecca, for Abd al Muttalib had been a kind of
hereditary 'lord mayor' of the town, whose special duty it was to
take {4} charge of the Temple and the Holy Well, and to care for the
many pilgrims that came to visit them. Now the 'clan' was left
without its proper head, and Mohammed was given into the charge of
his uncle, Abu Talib.
[Sidenote: Education.]
There was little ordinary 'schooling' for the Arabs of those days,
except for the favoured few, and Mohammed, fatherless, motherless,
and now grandfatherless, was not among these. Probably he never even
learned to write. His school was the schooling of the desert and the
caravan; he was to become his uncle's 'handy-man,' and for the
present the best thing he could do was to go and help in looking
after the camels and sheep which his uncle kept on the slopes of
Mount Arafat.
[Sidenote: The Arabs.]
Who were these Arabs from whom Mohammed sprang and among whom he
lived? They were cousins of another mighty race, the Jews, their
neighbours, for both traced their descent from Abraham--the Jews
through Isaac and Jacob, the Arabs through Ishmael, and also through
Esau who married the daughter of Ishmael. In a marvellous way have
the Arabs all through their history been fulfilling the old prophecy
of the sons of {5} Ishmael: 'He shall be as a wild ass among men: his
hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him, and
he shall dwell in the presence of his brethren.'[1] How better could
we describe the Arab to-day? The description was equally true in the
days of Mohammed. Customs and ways of men change slowly in the East
when they change at all, and the Arab all through history has clung
to the wandering and warlike habits of his patriarch Ishmael, and
follows the same rude, natural mode of life which existed in Arabia
then.
The wild ass among men--independent, haughty, hater of towns, dweller
in the wilderness, untameable;[2] it is a description that stirs our
blood. The Arab roves through boundless deserts in wild and
unfettered freedom, despising a 'civilized' life, scorning its
comforts, proud and haughty in mien and character, the one untameable
race of all the world.
In such a race was Mohammed born. True, the Arabs were not all
Bedouins of the desert. Towns had sprung up where caravan routes
crossed, or where rich wells {6} and springs attracted a constant
stream of shepherds and camel drivers, or more often around some spot
consecrated by tradition as holy ground, and by custom as a place of
pilgrimage.
[Sidenote: Mohammed's Shepherd Life.]
Mohammed was a child of the town--a Hadesi--but he was a child of the
desert too. For the town dwellers of Arabia were also her travelling
merchants, and, as in Joseph's time, they were known in distant
countries as men of merchandise and caravan. Like many a seer and
patriarch of old he spent some years in shepherd life among the
Bedouins who tended Abu Talib's camels and sheep on the slopes of
Mount Arafat. It was a wild, open, and lonely life, such as has
developed the thoughtfulness and strong self-reliance of many another
man. Long, hot days under the burning tropical sun, with the
responsibility of valuable flocks to be protected and fed, could not
but train his powers of observation. Long, still nights beneath the
innumerable stars of a rainless sky would develop a deep wondering
thoughtfulness in a boy already inclined to melancholy and
meditation, and naturally taciturn.
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[Sidenote: Mohammed visits Foreign Lands.]
When he was twelve years old there came to Mohammed the chance of
visiting foreign places. Abu Talib proposed joining a caravan that
was going to Syria where he had business to transact. As the caravan
was about to start and Abu Talib was mounting his camel, Mohammed,
overcome by the prospect of a long separation, clung to his uncle,
begging to be allowed to join the party. For some months he served
as his uncle's caravan boy. He had never before been far away from
home, and the long journey through the desert northwards must have
strongly impressed his mind. 'The imagination of the people had
filled the solitudes, as has been the case in all lands, with
supernatural inhabitants, monstrous and malignant, the genii or
djinns of the _Arabian Nights_. The horror of loneliness, either in
the night or in the equally silent noontide, found expression in
mysterious tales and legends haunting every hill and vale of the
regions through which he passed.'
[Sidenote: Mohammed meets Christians.]
The caravan bivouaced wherever there was water, preferably in any
town or trading centre. Round the camp fire in the evening the boy
would hear much {8} that was strange and new. At Mecca he had heard
but little of the Jews and their religion, and less of the
Christians; but there were many Jewish settlements on this road up
north, and at least a few outposts of the Christian Church.
Christian preachers of the Syrian Church preached in the big centres,
and we are told that Abu Talib's caravan was at one time entertained
by Buhaira, a Christian monk.
In some of the places where the caravan encamped they found settled
Christian communities with churches and crosses and pictures, and
other symbols of the Faith. Mohammed would hear how these same rites
were practised in the centre of world-power--his attention would be
arrested by the fact that the great Emperor owed allegiance to the
Gospel. He saw, too, how everywhere the Christians were respected as
men of learning.
But what was the Christian teaching he would hear? Alas! the Church
of Christ was rent by factions, and false teaching prevailed, at any
rate in the East. The simplicity which had characterised the Church
in the earlier days when Christians were oppressed and {9} persecuted
had passed away; as one of their own historians put it, 'the World
had entered the Church.' Christ Jesus had no longer the
pre-eminence; instead of a rich consciousness of His glory and beauty
and power, the minds of Christians were full of theories about Him
and of strange and false ideas of God. The Talmud and the Apocryphal
Gospels, with their crude, strange myths, were set beside the Bible,
and truth and falsehood were dangerously intertwined. Many had
ceased to believe in JESUS as indeed the Son of God. Some deified
the Virgin Mary, giving her a place in the Trinity; to them Jehovah
was no longer the God of the universe but of the Jews only.
'In all probability Mohammed never heard a word of the New Testament;
the pages of the Korân bear silent testimony to the shameful fact
that the only way in which the Christianity of that time and place
reached Mohammed was through the false Gospels.'[3]
Even in these early days Mohammed would ponder these things and sift
them in his mind, and if at this time he had {10} longings and
aspirations for a purer and higher religion than the star worship and
crude idolatry of his countrymen, it need not surprise us that such
Christianity, overlaid with myths and fables, and confused by the
worship of saints and images, failed to satisfy his longings or to
fulfil his aspirations.
In later days, when Mohammed had become the founder of a new religion
and the ruler of a mighty Empire, and was acclaimed the Prophet of
God, Moslem writers began to weave strange and unworldly incidents
and miraculous signs into the account of his journey--indeed, into
all the stories of his boyhood. Angel wings sheltered him from the
noontide heat, and withered trees were clothed with leaves to give
him shade, and a strange fire is said to have played about his head,
marking him as the future Prophet of God. In reality the long
journey seems to have been uneventful enough.
[Illustration: THE KAABA AT MECCA. '_Recognized as the religious
centre of all Arabia._']
Yet on his return he would look on Mecca with opened eyes.
[Sidenote: The Kaaba.]
We can picture Mohammed going sadly back to the worship of the Kaaba
and {11} the religion of Arabia. The Kaaba was a small and simple
building, almost a cube as the name implies, about 27 feet square and
34 feet high. Originally it had been the local sanctuary of the
Koreish tribe and contained only one image, that of Hobal, their
tribal god. Long before Mohammed's days, however, images of the
local deities of other tribes had been set up beside Hobal, until it
was a veritable pantheon, and was recognised as the religious centre
of all Arabia.
[Sidenote: The 'Black Stone.']
The Kaaba's chief claim to this distinction lay in the famous 'Black
Stone' of Mecca, which, encircled with a band of silver, was built
into its outer wall four feet from the ground.
This stone is described as about six inches by eight inches in size,
of a reddish-black colour, stained by sin, so the Arabs say, and
dotted with coloured crystals. Its history is shrouded in mystery
and myth, but Mohammed was taught to look upon it as one of the
stones of Paradise brought to earth by the angel Gabriel. Probably
it was an aerolite. Then, as now, it was regarded by all true Arabs
as man's most sacred possession, and was the object of {12}
pilgrimage to Arabs of all clans, and from even the most distant
parts, that they might touch or kiss it.
[Sidenote: An Arab Legend.]
The story of the Kaaba is no less mysterious and wonderful.
Originally built to guard or mark a sacred spot connected in Arabian
legend with the story of Ishmael, its true history has been
enshrouded and obscured in a cloud of myths. According to the
inventive genius of Arabian writers it was first constructed in
heaven 2000 years before the creation of the world, and Adam erected
a replica on earth exactly below the spot its perfect model occupies
in heaven. At the Flood the sacred building was destroyed, and God
is said to have instructed Abraham to journey from Syria to rebuild
it with the help of Hagar and Ishmael.
[Sidenote: The Religion of Arabia.]
How uncouth and far behind the times it all seemed! The Jews had
their Prophet and law-giver Moses, the Nazarenes looked to Jesus, the
Persian magicians quoted Zoroaster, even Abyssinia was a homogeneous
kingdom owning allegiance to the Gospel. Every nation had its
revelation and its Book;--Arabia had none at all, no open vision, no
Prophet, {13} nothing certain. It was but a tangle of tribes and
clans with hardly any cohesion at all. Each clan was a law to
itself, a separate unit, in competition with all other clans, and the
law of the blood-feud tyrannized everywhere. Such a social
organization was calculated to ensure the maximum of confusion with
the minimum of achievement. Mohammed could not but contrast it all
with the definiteness, strenuousness, and order of the political and
social organizations which he had seen abroad. There could be no
law, for there was no ruler; no justice, for there was no supreme
authority; no progress, for there was no plan.
QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER I
1. What is known of Mohammed's parents and grandparents?
2. Describe Mohammed's education. What part of it did him most good?
3. Describe the Arab race.
4. Wherein lay the chief interest of Mohammed's caravan journeys? To
what countries would he go?
5. Describe the Kaaba, and the worship of Arabia in olden days.
[1] Gen. xvi. 12.
[2] Job xxxix. 5-8.
[3] J. M. Arnold, _Christianity and Islam_, p. 32.
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