THE PROPHET OF ARABIA
'We must be as courteous to a man as to a picture, which we are
willing to give the advantage of a good light.'--EMERSON.
[Sidenote: Mohammed's first 'Revelation.']
We come now to the event in Mohammed's life about which there has
been both the keenest investigation and bitterest controversy.
Scholars have elaborated very different theories about the 'method'
of Mohammed's inspiration, partly because of its true importance as
the crisis and turning-point of his life, and partly because men used
to think that the understanding of it was the key to the reading of
Mohammed's character. Without troubling ourselves with the various
conflicting theories, we shall confine ourselves to what is
sufficiently difficult--brushing aside all fancies and excrescences
with which the records are garnished, we shall tell as nearly as
possible what happened, or at any rate give Mohammed's account of it.
{34}
[Sidenote: Scene on Mount Hira.]
It was Mohammed's custom--one not uncommon in Arabia at that time--to
retire for a fixed season each year to the seclusion of the rocks and
ravines which encircled Mecca. One of these in particular, a cave in
Mount Hira, was a favourite resort--a wild, bleak, barren spot, in
harmony with troubled heart and wounded spirit. And some suras (i.e.
chapters) of the Korân, almost certainly composed at this time,
reveal an intensity of anguish and also a growing sense of the
reality of God--the following for example:
'BY THE RUSHING PANTING STEEDS,
STRIKING FIRE WITH FLASHING HOOF,
THAT SCOUR THE LAND AT EARLY MORN;
AND, DARKENING IT WITH DUST,
CLEAVE THEREBY THE ENEMY:
VERILY MAN IS TO HIS LORD UNGRATEFUL,
AND HE HIMSELF IS WITNESS OF IT:
VERILY HE is KEEN AFTER THIS WORLD'S GOOD.
AH! WITTETH HE NOT THAT WHEN WHAT IS IN THE
GRAVES SHALL BE BROUGHT FORTH,
AND THAT WHICH IS IN MEN'S BREASTS LAID BARE:--
VERILY IN THAT DAY SHALL THE LORD BE WELL
INFORMED OF THEM.'
To this cave Mohammed had come with his trusted wife, in his fortieth
year, to {35} spend the month Ramadân in undisturbed meditation; in
wrestling, we may believe, with his own heart, and in contemplating
the eternal problem of the world's sin and sorrow. There, in the
midst of prayers and supplications, the light of revelation seemed
suddenly to burst upon him.
It was midnight in the cave when a glorious angel appeared first in
the sky, then approached within two bow-shots' length, holding a
silken cloth written all over. The angel roused him from sleep and
bade him 'Read.' 'But I am not a reader,' Mohammed replied. Thrice
was the injunction repeated, the third time in these words:
'READ, IN THE NAME OF THE LORD WHO CREATED,
CREATED MAN FROM A CLOT OF BLOOD.
READ, FOR THE LORD IS THE MOST BENEFICENT,
HE HATH TAUGHT THE USE OF THE PEN;
HE HATH TAUGHT MAN THAT WHICH HE KNOWETH NOT.'
Then Mohammed repeated the words to himself, and they were 'written
upon his heart.' Then, we are told, he went to the door of the cave,
and remained standing there till again there appeared his heavenly
visitant, 'in the form of a man, with wings, {36} and with his feet
upon the horizon,' and saluted him: 'Mohammed, thou art the Prophet
of God, and I am Gabriel.'
Trembling and overstrung, Mohammed returned to Khadîjah, and nestling
close beside her like a frightened child related what had passed.
'Cover me, cover me,' he said. 'I fear for my soul.' She covered
him with a mantle and comforted him, saying:
'Rejoice: God will not put you to shame; thou art so kind to thy
relations, sincere in thy words, afraid of no trouble to serve thy
neighbour, supporting the poor, given to hospitality, and defending
the truth.'
The visitations occurred several times, and each time they were
accompanied by violent physical effects upon Mohammed. 'He was angry
if anyone looked upon him: his face was covered with foam, his eyes
were closed and sometimes he roared like a camel.'
Even the faithful Khadîjah began to have her fears. Demon possession
is a common idea in the East. 'Could it be that her exemplary
husband was the victim of the wrath of some genius of evil?' She
consulted her cousin, Warakah, {37} the sage and _savant_. His
answer was wholly satisfactory, for he exclaimed:
'Holy! holy! by Him in Whose hand Warakah's soul is, if thou has told
me the truth, then the Greatest Namus (nomos=law) has come to him
which also appeared to Moses, and he is the Prophet of this nation.
Tell him to be content.'
Still her fears were not allayed, and a test was proposed. She
reasoned thus: 'If it is an evil spirit which visits my husband, it
will not be ashamed in the presence of an unveiled woman, but if the
spirit is good he will surely be too modest to remain.' So with
elaborate ritual the test was laid. Mohammed was to summon her when
next his visitant appeared, and she was to take off her veil; should
the spirit depart, she would know him for a good spirit. The
visitant fully vindicated himself, disappearing from Mohammed's sight
at the appearance of an unveiled woman; he never was visible to
Khadîjah, From that day onwards, through storm, and shine, darkness
and light, contumely ridicule, and persecution, Khadîjah never
doubted, never wavered in complete confidence in her husband and his
message.
{38}
[Sidenote: Days of Darkness.]
For Mohammed there were yet many searchings of heart. He found
himself unable to summon his visitor, or to command hours of
inspiration at his will. Three years, it is said, he waited for
another revelation, staggering in uncertainty and doubt and darkness,
driven sometimes to the brink of despair, saved from suicide once at
least only by the intervention of his wife. Light seemed to struggle
with darkness in his soul, but gradually certain grand verities stood
out clear. 'God, the sole Creator, Ruler, Judge of men and angels;
the hopeless wretchedness of his people sunk in darkness and
idolatry; Heaven and hell, the Resurrection, Judgment, the Recompense
of good and evil in the World to come.' We can gather something of
the sombre realities he saw, and something of the conviction with
which they came to him from some of the suras written at the time:
'THAT WHICH STRIKETH! WHAT IS IT WHICH STRIKETH?
AND WHAT SHALL CERTIFY THEE WHAT THE STRIKING IS?
THE DAY ON WHICH MANKIND SHALL BE LIKE MOTHS SCATTERED ABROAD,
{39}
AND THE MOUNTAINS LIKE WOOL OF DIVERS COLOURS CARDED;
THEN, AS FOR HIM WHOSE BALANCES ARE HEAVY, HE
SHALL ENTER INTO BLISS;
AND AS FOR HIM WHOSE BALANCES ARE LIGHT, THE
PIT SHALL BE HIS DWELLING-PLACE.
AND WHAT SHALL CERTIFY THEE WHAT IS THE PIT? A RAGING FIRE!'
[Sidenote: The One God.]
One great eternal truth alone stood out before him, 'Lâ
ilāha illâ 'llâhu.' 'There is no God but God.' Surely the
discovering of this great truth raised him high above all Arabia.
'There is no God but God'--he had discovered it, it had been revealed
to him--surely, surely he was the favoured one, the Prophet of God;
yes, _The Prophet of God_. It all seemed to stand together, and he
set it in one sentence, Lâ ilāha illâ 'llâhu; Muhammadur
rasûlu 'llâh.' '_There is no God but God: Mohammed is the Apostle of
God_,' and so it stood for his creed, and the creed he taught, and it
stands to-day as the creed of 200,000,000 of our fellow-men.
[Sidenote: Early Followers of Mohammed.]
There was another, too, besides Khadîjah who from the first followed
Mohammed's fortunes with unwavering faith, a man who is truly said to
have saved Islam twice. He was a personal friend of {40} Mohammed's,
a popular but unimportant fellow-citizen of Mecca, by name Abu Bakr.
Through these early trying years he was the propagandist of the new
creed, and won to his friend's side the first little circle of
Islam's converts. Years afterwards it was he who, as the first
Caliph, took the white banner from his dying master's hands, raised
it aloft again, and rallied fortunes that seemed shattered by the
master's death.
With these two we must group another--a man of different type and a
very different story--Zaid, a slave whom Khadîjah had bought some
years before and presented to Mohammed,--this man proved himself a
faithful friend in darker days.
The little group was but a poor token of the mighty armies Mohammed
would ere long lead. Yet unquestionably a conviction grows
infinitely the moment another believes in it; and these three did
believe with all their hearts. Progress was slow at first; Mohammed
wished to keep the matter as dark as possible, and those who knew of
this teacher and his little band of disciples regarded them as a
small secret society, more or less {41} harmless--after all, there
were other secret societies in Arabia at that time.
In the first three years there were not more than forty converts, won
chiefly by Abu Bakr's assiduous work. It is much easier to persuade
people to believe in someone else than to persuade them to believe in
yourself. Abu Bakr saw this, and right loyally did he play his part.
These forty were mostly from the lower ranks of society, including
slaves and outcasts, who found here something of a brotherhood and a
fraternal generosity, if not a community of goods. As in another
small society in a Grecian city five hundred years before, 'not many
wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble' were
called in those days.
[Sidenote: Mohammed's 'Revelations.']
Meanwhile the seasons of 'revelation' had returned, and as time went
on Mohammed was able to summon them at will. Each time the
visitation was accompanied, as before, by mysterious physical
symptoms and weird bodily contortions. 'His countenance was
troubled; he would turn deadly pale or glowing red. He would cover
himself with a blanket. He fell to the ground like one intoxicated;
foam {42} would appear at his mouth; on the coldest day the
perspiration would pour from his forehead. Sometimes he would hear
the coming of the revelation like the ringing of a bell.' Sometimes
the inspiration would come in true dreams or 'suggestions of the
heart'; more often it was Gabriel, once even it was said to be God
Himself speaking to him from behind a curtain. But when it was over
he spoke his 'suras' which his hearers laid to heart, and afterwards
noted down, and so the Korân (or Recitation) was compiled. As a
modern Asian quaintly puts it: 'The heart of Mohammed was the Sinai
where he received the revelation, and his tablets of stone were the
hearts of true believers.'
But as Mohammed claimed that these physical seizures which he
underwent in times of revelation were evidences of the reality of his
divine commission, it was natural that men's thoughts should stray in
search of other explanations thereof. His friends remembered that as
a boy he had some sort of fit; others recollected seizures of the
kind; and men of science and learning since, unwilling to ascribe the
{43} origin of the Korân to fits of epilepsy, have shown how in such
constitutions there do lie rich but dangerous strains of high
emotion, and how a hysterical disposition is not inconsistent with
strength of will and a high and lofty purpose. It is an obvious
danger for such a nature possessing great thoughts to become
possessed by them and be carried beyond the depth where man may walk
with sure and certain tread.
[Sidenote: Mohammed's Public Avowal.]
After three years of these intermittent revelations, and quiet work
and conference with his secret society, Mohammed felt prepared to
take the big step of his life,--to come out and openly declare
himself the Prophet of Arabia and preach his doctrines. He was the
less afraid, perhaps, to do so because he held that, except for the
all-important claim of his own Prophetship, he taught no new doctrine
at all. Historians and scholars since have abundantly shown that all
he taught was there before, hidden, indeed, and scattered, without
coherence or cohesion, but there nevertheless. Covered with fable
and distorted by superstition, it was part of Arabia's
sub-consciousness.
Tradition tells how the Prophet took {44} his stand on Al Safa, a
hill outside Mecca, and summoned the Koreish. They were followed by
the Meccan mob, and to the whole assembly Mohammed preached his first
public sermon. The truths, indeed, awoke an echo in their hearts;
they could not gainsay them. But this was not truth as a cold cinder
raked out from the past and from their national consciousness, but
truth living, burning,--truth on fire. They had heard of Allah
before. Here was a man to whom Allah was a reality, so great a
reality that there could be no other god but Him. They would not
have denied that there was a life beyond the grave. Here was a man
to whom God's universe was an awful fact; who, as he poured forth his
invective, seemed to have himself gazed upon the flaming fires of
hell; to him there was a world of difference between heaven and hell
and the paths that lead to each. Then, like some unexpected
cataract, he would burst into tumultuous rhapsodies charged with
thrilling words of conviction and fervid aspiration, insisting again
on the realities of life, the certainty of the Judgment, the peril of
the soul,--the soul of one believer outweighs {45} all earthly
kingdoms. They could no more ignore this preaching than ignore the
pealing of the thunder.
[Sidenote: The Effect on Mecca.]
Mecca was stirred to its depths. What! Was this man who had grown
up among on them indeed sent by God to overthrow their sacred Kaaba,
to tell them that the gods they worshipped were no gods at all, but
wood and stone? Their ancestors had worshipped these same gods for
centuries before them. Had not they themselves prayed to Uzza and to
Lât, and had they not instances of answers to their prayers?
Besides, if idolatry were a crime, what became of the prestige of
Mecca? Where, indeed, was their own livelihood? Like the
silver-smiths of Ephesus they saw the axe laid at the root of their
prosperity. Mecca owed its pre-eminence above all the cities of
Arabia to its guardianship of the sacred shrine. For that reason,
too, it was the one city which no Arab dared attack: its people
reaped a great benefit from its central mart and a rich harvest from
the pilgrims, besides a heavy tribute from the tribes. It was no
wonder, then, that the Prophet's denunciations of their {46} idols,
his exposures of the grossness of their worship, lashed the Koreish
into fury.
Abu Talib, now the head of the clan, expostulated, and sought to
bring Mohammed to reason, and begged him to renounce the task he had
undertaken, but he was obdurate. 'O, my uncle, if they placed the
sun on my right hand and the moon on my left, to force me to renounce
my work, verily I would not desist therefrom until God made manifest
His Cause, or I perished in the attempt.' There was no persuading a
man like that, although it is recorded that in the course of the
interview he burst into tears.
Something had happened in Mecca which Mecca could not hide.
QUESTIONS ON CHAPTER III
1. Describe Mohammed's surroundings at the time of his first
'revelation.'
2. Give three possible explanations of Mohammed's 'inspiration.' Can
all three be partly true?
3. What is the Mohammedan Creed? Can you account for Mohammed's
belief in it?
4. Who were the earliest converts?
5. How did further 'revelations' come to Mohammed? Why did he claim
them to be divine? When did he first publicly proclaim his message?
{47}