extinct. In particular we have some information about the codex of Obay.
If the list which gives the order of its súras is correct, it must have
contained substantially the same materials as our text; in that case
Obay must have used the original collection of Zaid. The same is true of
the codex of Ibn Mas‘úd, of which we have also a catalogue. It appears
that the principle of putting the longer súras before the shorter was
more consistently carried out by him than by Zaid. He omits i. and the
magical formulæ of cxiii. cxiv. Obay, on the other hand, had embodied
two additional short prayers, whose authenticity I do not now venture to
question, as I formerly did. One can easily understand that differences
of opinion may have existed as to whether and how far formularies of
this kind belonged to the Koran. Some of the divergent readings of both
these texts have been preserved, as well as a considerable number of
other ancient variants. Most of them are decidedly inferior to the
received readings, but some are quite as good, and a few deserve
preference.
The only man who appears to have seriously opposed the general
introduction of Othmán’s text is Ibn Mas‘úd. He was one of the oldest
disciples of the Prophet, and had often rendered him personal service;
but he was a man of contracted views, although he is one of the pillars
of Moslem theology. His opposition had no effect. Now when we consider
that at that time there were many Moslems who had heard the Koran from
the mouth of the Prophet, that other measures of the imbecile Othmán met
with the most vehement resistance on the part of the bigoted champions
of the faith, that these were still further incited against him by some
of his ambitious old comrades, until at last they murdered him, and
finally that in the civil wars after his death the several parties were
glad of any pretext for branding their opponents as infidels;—when we
consider all this, we must regard it as a strong testimony in favour of
Othmán’s Koran that no party—that of Alí not excepted—repudiated the
text formed by Zaid, who was one of the most devoted adherents of Othmán
and his family, and that even among the Shíites we detect but very few
marks of dissatisfaction with the Caliph’s conduct in this matter.
But this redaction is not the close of the textual history of the Koran.
The ancient Arabic alphabet was very imperfect; it not only wanted marks
for the short, and in part even for the long vowels, but it often
expressed several consonants by the same sign, the forms of different
letters, formerly clearly distinct, having become by degrees identical.
So, for example, there was but one character to express B, T, Th, and in
the beginning and in the middle of words N and Y (I) also. Though the
reader who was perfectly familiar with the language felt no difficulty,
as a rule, in discovering which pronunciation the writer had in view,
yet as there were many words which admitted of being pronounced in very
different manners, instances were not infrequent in which the
pronunciation was dubious. This variety of possible readings was at
first very great, and many readers seem to have actually made it their
object to discover pronunciations which were new, provided they were at
all appropriate to the ambiguous text. There was also a dialectic
licence in grammatical forms, which had not as yet been greatly
restricted. An effort was made by many to establish a more refined
pronunciation for the Koran than was usual in common life or in secular
literature. The various schools of “readers” differed very widely from
one another; although for the most part there was no important
divergence as to the sense of words. A few of them gradually rose to
special authority, and the rest disappeared. Seven readers are generally
reckoned chief authorities, but for practical purposes this number was
continually reduced in process of time; so that at present only two
“reading styles” are in actual use,—the common style of Ḥafṣ and that
of Náfi‘, which prevails in Africa to the west of Egypt. There is,
however, a very comprehensive massoretic literature in which a number of
other styles are indicated. The invention of vowel-signs, of diacritic
points to distinguish similarly formed consonants, and of other
orthographic signs, soon put a stop to arbitrary conjectures on the part
of the readers. Many zealots objected to the introduction of these
innovations in the sacred text, but theological consistency had to yield
to practical necessity. In accurate codices, indeed, all such additions,
as well as the titles of the súra, etc., are written in coloured ink,
while the black characters profess to represent exactly the original of
Othmán. But there is probably no copy quite faithful in this respect.
The correct recitation of the Koran is an art difficult of acquisition
to the Arabs themselves. Besides the artificial pronunciation mentioned
above, a semi-musical modulation has to be observed. In these things
also there are great differences between the various schools.
In European libraries, besides innumerable modern manuscripts of the
Koran, there are also codices or fragments of high antiquity, some of
them probably dating from the first century of the Flight. For the
restoration of the text, however, the works of ancient scholars on its
readings and modes of writing are more important than the manuscripts,
which, however elegantly they may be written and ornamented, proceed
from irresponsible copyists. The original, written by Othmán himself,
has indeed been exhibited in various parts of the Mohammedan world. The
library of the India Office contains one such manuscript, bearing the
subscription: “Written by Othmán the son of Affán.” These, of course,
are barefaced forgeries, although of very ancient date; so are those
which profess to be from the hand of Alí, one of which is preserved in
the same library. In recent times the Koran has been often printed and
lithographed both in the East and the West.
Shortly after Mohammed’s death certain individuals applied themselves to
the exposition of the Koran. Much of it was obscure from the beginning,
other sections were unintelligible apart from a knowledge of the
circumstances of their origin. Unfortunately those who took possession
of this field were not very honourable. Ibn Abbás, a cousin of
Mohammed’s, and the chief source of the traditional exegesis of the
Koran, has, on theological and other grounds, given currency to a number
of falsehoods; and at least some of his pupils have emulated his
example. These earliest expositions dealt more with the sense and
connection of whole verses than with the separate words. Afterwards, as
the knowledge of the old language declined, and the study of philology
arose, more attention began to be paid to the explanation of vocables. A
good many fragments of this older theological and philological exegesis
have survived from the first two centuries of the Flight, although we
have no complete commentary of this period. Most of the expository
material will perhaps be found in the very large commentary of the
celebrated Tabarí (A.D. 839-923), of which an almost complete copy is in
the Viceregal library at Cairo. Another very famous commentary is that
of Zamakhsharí (A.D. 1075-1144), edited by Nassau-Lees, Calcutta 1859;
but this scholar, with his great insight and still greater subtlety, is
too apt to read his own scholastic ideas into the Koran. The favourite
commentary of Baidáwí (_ob._ A.D. 1286) is little more than an
abridgment of Zamakhsharí’s. Thousands of commentaries on the Koran,
some of them of prodigious size,[12] have been written by Moslems; and
even the number of those still extant in manuscript is by no means
small. Although these works all contain much that is useless or false,
yet they are invaluable aids to our understanding of the sacred book. An
unbiassed European can no doubt see many things at a glance more clearly
than a good Moslem who is under the influence of religious prejudice;
but we should still be helpless without the exegetical literature of the
Mohammedans.
Even the Arab Moslem of the present day can have but a very dim and
imperfect understanding of the Koran, unless he has made a special study
of its exegesis. For the great advantage, boasted by the holy book
itself, of being perspicuous to every one, has in the course of thirteen
centuries vanished. Moreover, the general belief is that in the ritual
use of the Koran, if the correct recitation is observed, it is
immaterial whether the meaning of the words be understood or not.
A great deal remains to be accomplished by European scholarship for the
correct interpretation of the Koran. We want, for example, an exhaustive
classification and discussion of all the Jewish elements in the Koran; a
praiseworthy beginning has already been made in Geiger’s youthful essay,
_Was hat Mahomet aus dem Judenthum aufgenommen?_ We want especially a
thorough commentary, executed with the methods and resources of modern
science. No European language, it would seem, can even boast of a
translation which completely satisfies modern requirements. The best are
in English, where we have the extremely paraphrastic, but for its time
admirable translation of Sale (repeatedly printed), that of Rodwell
(1861), which seeks to give the pieces in chronological order, and that
of Palmer (1880), who wisely follows the traditional arrangements. The
introduction which accompanies Palmer’s translation is not in all
respects abreast of the most recent scholarship. Considerable extracts
from the Koran are well translated in E. W. Lane’s _Selections from the
Kur-án_.
Besides commentaries on the whole Koran, or on special parts and topics,
the Moslems possess a whole literature bearing on their sacred book.
There are works on the spelling and right pronunciation of the Koran,
works on the beauty of its language, on the number of its verses, words,
and letters, etc.; nay, there are even works which would nowadays be
called “historical and critical introductions.” Moreover, the origin of
Arabic philology is intimately connected with the recitation and
exegesis of the Koran. To exhibit the importance of the sacred book for
the whole mental life of the Moslems, would be simply to write the
history of that life itself; for there is no department in which its
all-pervading, but unfortunately not always salutary, influence has not
been felt.
The unbounded reverence of the Moslems for the Koran reaches its climax
in the dogma (which appeared at an early date through the influence of
the Christian doctrine of the eternal Word of God) that this book, as
the divine Word, _i.e._ thought, is immanent in God, and consequently
_eternal_ and _uncreated_. That dogma has been accepted by almost all
Mohammedans since the beginning of the third century. Some theologians
did indeed protest against it with great energy; it was, in fact, too
preposterous to declare that a book composed of unstable words and
letters, and full of variants, was absolutely divine. But what were the
distinctions and sophisms of the theologians for, if they could not
remove such contradictions, and convict their opponents of heresy?
The following works may be specially consulted: Weil, _Einleitung in den
Korán_, 2nd ed. 1878; Th. Nöldeke, _Geschichte des Qorân_, Göttingen,
1860; and the Lives of Mohammed by Muir and Sprenger.
-----
[10] Originally published in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 9th ed.,
vol. xvi. p. 597 sqq.
[11] Since in Arabic also the root _RHM_ signifies “to have pity,” the
Arabs must have at once perceived the force of the new name.
[12] See below, p. 206, on the commentary of Khalaf.
III.
ISLAM.[13]
ON the 14th of September 629, the emperor Heraclius again set up the
true Cross in Jerusalem. He had vanquished the Persians after a
desperate struggle, and compelled them to restore this most sacred of
relics, which they had carried off on their conquest of the Holy Land.
It was a day of triumph for all Christendom, which is still marked in
its calendars as the “Feast of the Elevation of the Cross.” At the very
moment of this striking celebration of the victory of Christendom over
unbelievers, we may suppose tidings to have been brought to the emperor,
that his Arabian troops beyond Jordan had been attacked by a small band
from the interior, and had only with difficulty succeeded in repelling
the violent onset. It is not likely that the news can have struck him as
implying anything very serious. Nevertheless this was the first assault
of the Moslems; it was quickly followed by others, and in a few years
Palestine and many other provinces had been for ever torn away from the
Roman empire, to which they had for seven centuries belonged, the empire
of Persia had been destroyed, and in the native lands of Christianity
and Zoroastrianism a new faith and a new people had attained an enduring
ascendency. No overturn at once so great and so rapid is recorded in
history.
The founder of this new religion, Mohammed, son of Abdalláh, was no
martial hero. It was under the pressure of circumstances, and by the
necessities of thoughts which carried him much farther than he could
possibly have divined, that he became a prince and a conqueror. The
hysterical enthusiast, conscious of a vocation to make known the Oneness
of God, was forced into a career of battle by the opposition of his
kinsfolk and neighbours. The conviction that his light came from God
gave him strength and confidence, and raised him above every prejudice
and scruple. The character of the new religion was very powerfully
influenced by the manly spirit of some of its first confessors and
champions; both the good and the bad qualities of the Arabs, among whom
it arose, and for whom it was in the first instance promulgated, have
stamped their unmistakable impress upon it.
It may be doubted if the original teaching of any other founder of a new
religion is known to us so exactly as Mohammed’s. For the sacred book of
Mohammedanism, the Koran, consists entirely of his own revelations,
given in the name of God; and among his spoken utterances which have
been handed down by tradition there is, mixed up with a great deal that
is spurious, so much of what is genuine, that by its aid we are able at
many points to supplement the Koran. And Koran and _Sunna_, that is,
“the rule,” given by the tradition of the Prophet’s words and deeds,
have ever been regarded by Mohammedans as the sources of their religion.
In the several heads of Mohammed’s doctrine there is practically nothing
original. The Arabs of that time had outgrown their crude heathenism,
and it was only by force of habit, without real attachment, that, a
highly conservative people as they were, they held firmly by the ancient
practices. In particular, isolated ideas originating in Christianity had
become widely diffused through the agency of wandering bards. Very many
Arabs were already Christians. Their Christianity, it is true, sat but
loosely on them; for the finest elements of that religion they had no
organ. Moreover, there were in Arabia many Jews who here also
occasionally, as in Abyssinia, made numerous proselytes; but the rigid
and irksome ordinances of Judaism were suited to the nature of the proud
and untamed inhabitants of the Arabian desert as little as were the
mystical doctrines and the too ideal ethics of Christianity. Mohammed
borrowed from both religions, but especially from Judaism, those
elements which instinct rather than reflection taught him to be suited
to his countrymen. The main lines of his doctrine are a further
development of Judaism, only simpler and coarser; speaking generally, it
stands much nearer to the religion of the Old Testament than the
Christianity of the Church does.
Mohammed’s idea of God is essentially that of the Old Testament, only he
gives greater prominence to the divine omnipotence and arbitrary
sovereignty, and less to the divine holiness. He attributes to God many
human features, but these no longer have the naïve and poetic charm
possessed by so many of the Old Testament anthropomorphisms. Everything
is done and determined by God; man must submit himself blindly; whence
the religion is called _Islám_ (“surrender”), and its professor _Muslim_
(“one who surrenders himself”). Mohammed had the strongest antipathy for
the doctrines of the Trinity and the divine Sonship of Christ. True, his
acquaintance with these dogmas was superficial, and even the clauses of
the Creed that referred to them were not exactly known to him; but he
rightly felt that it was quite impossible to bring them into harmony
with simple genuine Semitic monotheism, and probably it was this
consideration alone that hindered him from embracing Christianity.
According to the Koran, God makes known His will through prophets, of
whom, in the course of time, He has sent many into the world. From Jesus
down to the time of Mohammed, it was the duty of men to follow the
former and His gospel; the Jews incurred grave sin by rejecting Him.
Jesus was greater than all the prophets before Him; but the final
revelation was first made known through Mohammed. The earlier sacred
writings taught the same doctrine as the Koran, and bear witness to
Mohammed; but they had been falsified by the Jews and the Christians.
The laws which God laid down through the prophets are not necessarily in
harmony with each other, for God changes His ordinances at will; even in
the Koran itself He sometimes cancels commandments which He had
previously laid down in that very book. Mohammed is but a frail mortal,
only chosen of God. He is subject to sin, and without the gift of
miracles bestowed on former prophets. This last limitation, which is
clearly expressed in the Koran, was, as was to be expected, very soon
explained away by his followers, and numerous miracles are accordingly
related of him.
God rewards good and punishes evil deeds; only, He is merciful, and is
easily propitiated by repentance. But the punishment of the impenitent
wicked will be fearful. The horrors of hell are vividly presented; we
can see how grievously the thought of them afflicted the Prophet
himself. In accordance with Christian precedent, he conceives of hell as
fire. In his description of the heavenly paradise, or “garden,” also,
Mohammed appropriates representations from the Old and New Testaments,
yet depicts its joys according to his own fancy. His picture of the
glory of the saints above can be properly understood only when the
reader remembers the barrenness of Mohammed’s native land and the
exceedingly simple manner of life of his countrymen. The bright-eyed
maidens who give their society to the righteous in paradise are the
innovation of a sensual nature. The crude representations of hell and
heaven took powerful hold of the Arab imagination, and unquestionably
contributed much to the diffusion and establishment of Islam. Other
eschatological imaginings, about the resurrection and the last judgment,
have an important _rôle_ in the Koran. All of them attach to older
ideas, and particularly to such as had already been borrowed from the
Persians by Judaism, and partly also by Christianity. Awe of the
judgment day was perhaps the most important cause of Mohammed’s becoming
a visionary and a prophet. The Koran has, of course, much to say of
angels and devils. Alongside of these figure also demons or _jinn_,
taken from Arab popular belief, but connected also with late Jewish
notions. The minor contradictions that naturally occur in such myths and
fancies have caused little difficulty to the ingenuity of interpreters,
and still less to the simple faith of the masses.
The ethics of Islam are not so strict or earnest as those of Judaism.
Mohammed, it is true, insists on virtuous disposition and action, and is
energetic in his denunciations of vice: he urges honourable dealing,
benevolence, placability, and so forth, and requires men ever to be
mindful of God and of the retribution beyond the grave. But he is no
rigorist. His very crass doctrine of retribution, which governs the
rules of conduct, admits the application of commercial principles: the
consequences of sins can be averted by certain penances; under certain
circumstances one can rid oneself of the duty of fulfilling an
obligation, and even perjury can be made up for by good works. In dire
necessity even the faith may be denied in words (contrast Matt. x. 32,
33); against making a free use of this permission, Mohammedans have, it
is true, been protected by their pride and the strength of their
conviction. Islam is a thoroughly practical religion, which does not
make it necessary to explain away too high demands (such as those of
Matt. v. 33-41) by artificial interpretations. The Koran also has
comfort for the persecuted and the suffering; but it is too Arab—or,
shall we say, too natural and too manly?—to declare the poor and
oppressed to be in themselves happy. The Koran, further, pronounces all
earthly things to be indeed vain; yet it takes much account of human
wants and desires, and lays down definite regulations about property and
goods. If the Prophet had immediately met with recognition in his native
town, he might perhaps have founded a contemplative monkish community;
but, driven by necessity to become the ruler of a warrior State, he had
to follow another course. After some hesitation he finally preached war
against unbelievers as such; they have no choice but between acceptance
of Islam and extermination. Only to the professors of old religions of
revelation, that is to say, in the first instance, to Jews and
Christians, does it remain lawful to live on as subjects on payment of
tribute. The Moslem’s vocation, alike in this and in the future life, is
to rule the world.
Islam has no mystical sacraments, although it has a number of external
observances. Originally Mohammed himself had attached the greatest value
to severe exercises of penance, such as watching and fasting; gradually
he relaxed much both to himself and to his followers, but an Oriental
religion wholly without mortifications of this kind is quite
unthinkable. Accordingly he made fasting in the month of Ramadán
obligatory in the sense that throughout the entire month, as long as the
sun is above the horizon, both eating and drinking are absolutely
forbidden. In Oriental heat this is a severe burden, and one can readily
believe that in the month of the fast, towards the end of the day, the
majority of the faithful are thinking much more about the enjoyments of
the coming night than about God and the hereafter. Still more important
than fasting is the _salát_. As with all Oriental Christians a certain
number of daily prayers are prescribed to the clergy, and partly also to
the laity, so Mohammed again, after some hesitation, finally fixed for
all believers that there should be five daily “prayers.” This _salát_ is
essentially different from what we call prayer. It consists in a fixed
series of bowings, prostrations, and other attitudes, accompanied by the
recitation of certain religious formulæ. Of course the worshipper is not
forbidden at other times or in other ways to call upon God in words of
his own; but to do so is not the official and obligatory action. Prayer
is preceded by an ablution; when water, a commodity of such rarity in
Arabia, is wanting, rubbing with sand can be substituted.[14] It is more
meritorious to take part in the public _salát_ of the community,
conducted by a leader (_Imám_), than to discharge the _salát_ by
oneself. Public attendance ought to be given, in particular, on Friday,
which is especially set apart for public worship, but in other respects
is regarded as a working day: the Sabbath rest is unknown to Islam. The
common prayer and its formalities have done much to give stability to
Islam. The multitudes, while doing what was indispensable for the
salvation of their souls, became trained to the habit of strictly
following a leader. As Von Kremer has pointed out, the mosque was the
drill ground for the warlike believers of early Islam.
A noteworthy survival of Arab heathenism is the pilgrimage to Mecca. In
Mohammed’s native town there was a temple called the Caaba (“the die”),
with an object of ancient veneration, “the black stone.” This sanctuary
had gradually come to be the centre of pilgrimage for the greater part
of Arabia. In connection with this a lively trade was developed, which
must have been very advantageous to the inhabitants of Mecca, the
Koraish. Still more important for these was the circumstance that their
whole territory was held to be holy and inviolable, and that they had
the most favourable opportunities for entering into friendly relations
with the various Bedouin tribes. They were thus able to maintain a
caravan traffic with the old lands of civilisation beyond the desert and
its predatory nomads. In this way they not only became prosperous, but
also gained a great intellectual superiority over the other Arabs. As a
man of Koraish, Mohammed himself had grown up in pious reverence for the
Caaba and the black stone. Properly speaking, indeed, this reverence was
at variance with the principles of his religion; but he managed to
adjust matters by his theory that these holy things had been established
by Abraham, and only abused by the heathen. Possibly in this view he was
but following some Meccan predecessor whom Jews or Christians had told
about Abraham and Ishmael. The heathen of Mecca, of course, knew nothing
about these or any other characters of the Old Testament. That the
retention of this sanctuary on Mohammed’s part was due less to
calculation than to deeply rooted religious habit, seems to be shown by
this, among other things, that between his emigration and the capture of
Mecca, he frequently expressed his sorrow at being excluded from free
participation in the ceremonies there. When at last he made his entry as
a conqueror, he did away with all the open signs of idolatry, and in his
last Pilgrimage, shortly before his death, he finally fixed the
observances—some of them very peculiar—to be followed. Everything
heathenish was to disappear; or, if various things of that nature
remained, they were uncomprehended, and therefore inoffensive. Yet one
rock of offence was unremoved—the veneration of the old fetish—the
black stone, a veneration to which some consistent Moslems could only
reluctantly bring themselves, and which in later times is occasionally
even scoffed at by less steadfast believers. In strictness it is the
duty of every Moslem to take part in the yearly pilgrimage as often as
he can; but it is not contrary to the intention of Mohammed (who was
always ready to take account of practical difficulties), if the proviso
“as he can” is strongly accentuated in practice, and thus comparatively
few join in the expedition from the more distant lands of Mohammedanism.
With all this the pilgrimage has been a chief pillar of Islam. In Mecca
the most pious Moslems still meet from year to year out of regions so
remote as Turkestan, British and Dutch India, the Turkish dominions,
Morocco, and Nigritia, and exchange ideas and prejudices; a custom which
naturally helps to maintain the unity of the faith. What is of
particular importance is that many of the most zealous and learned
pilgrims stay permanently in Mecca, and from this centre labour to
promote the pure faith, and hostility against all idolaters (Europeans
in particular).
Another relic of rude heathenism handed down from hoary antiquity is
circumcision. It is not specially enjoined in the Koran, but is taken
for granted as being the custom with all Arabs. It is not, however,
theoretically at least, an integral part of religion, as it is in
Judaism.
Like the Jews, Mohammed puts a high value upon alms. Gradually, however,
he changed the freewill offering of love into a formal and somewhat
heavy tax, out of which not only were the poor supported, but also the
expenses of government were met.
Mohammed’s laws relating to food are not nearly so complicated as those
of the Jews. The animals of which the Moslem, whether by Mohammed’s
injunction or by some later rule, may not eat are mostly such as men are
naturally averse to (_e.g._ carnivora). Only the pig and the dog are
wholly unclean. Moreover, it is lawful to eat only of such animals as
have been duly slaughtered with the formula: “In the name of God, the
compassionate Compassioner.” The Moslem, like the Jew, and, strictly
speaking, the Christian also (Acts xv. 20, 29, xxi. 25), is enjoined to
abstain from blood. But, in danger of death by starvation, he is
permitted the use of any food. Wine is interdicted; and under this name
the legislature meant to include all intoxicating drinks. No impartial
observer will deny that this regulation, much as it has been broken, has
proved a real blessing to all the lands of Islam. It is not certain
whether the prohibition of a favourite Arab game of chance (_meisir_),
in which pointless arrows were used as lots, is intended to include all
forms of gambling; perhaps Mohammed had in view only the heathenish
practices, or the wastefulness, that used to be associated with the
_meisir_.
On the whole the ritual commands and prohibitions of Islam do not bear
with excessive hardness on the life of the Oriental, which in any case
moves somewhat monotonously in fixed forms. Of the anxious scrupulosity
with which Judaism discusses “clean” and “unclean,” “lawful” and
“unlawful,” there are but few traces, even in the writings of the later
theologians of Islam, not to speak of Mohammed himself, or the life of
his followers until now.
Religion and the law of the State are not separated in Islam. Here,
accordingly, properly speaking, would be the place for considering the
whole system of civil and criminal law which Mohammed gave in the Koran
or in his spoken utterances. In his decisions, which were usually
occasioned by some particular case definitely before him at the moment,
he follows partly Arabian partly Jewish custom, but very often also the
promptings of his own mind. Completely to abolish blood revenge would
have been impossible, and probably was never in his thoughts; he only
bound it to the observance of certain forms. It is not the executive,
but the nearest relative of the slain that decides whether the murderer
shall die, or whether he shall buy himself off.
The anomalies that can result when an individual man essays permanently
to fix the order of Church and State according to his own discretion on
the spur of the moment, are exemplified with singular clearness in the
Moslem calendar. The Arabs, like the majority of ancient peoples, had a
year of twelve true (lunar) months; and this, as often as seemed to be
required, they brought roughly into accordance with the solar year by
the intercalation of a thirteenth month. The intercalation was not very
skilful, it is true; still any trifling derangements of the calendar
which may have resulted were not such as could produce any practical
inconveniences in the simple relations of life in those days. But
Mohammed, who objected either to the inequality of the year, now of
twelve now of thirteen months, or to the connection that subsisted
between this arrangement of the calendar and the heathen system, shortly
before his death unfortunately took it into his head to ordain that
Moslems should have a movable lunar year of twelve lunar months, without
any intercalations whatever. Every Mohammedan year is thus some ten days
shorter than the solar year which governs the course of nature; so that
the Mohammedan festivals move in succession through all the seasons.[15]
The husbandman must accordingly everywhere provide himself with a second
(Christian or Persian) calendar, based upon the solar year, in addition
to the ecclesiastical one. A Mohammedan at thirty-three is no older than
a Christian at thirty-two. The conversion of Mohammedan into Julian or
(what is worse) Gregorian dates, is for the student who has not the
requisite tables at hand a very laborious task.
The position of women was left by Mohammed essentially where it had been
among the Arabs. He limited polygamy somewhat, and made the separation
of women from men rather more strict. But Islam changed for the worse
the lot of women in those countries where polygamy had already
disappeared, and divorce was not so easy or so common as among the
Arabs. That the husband can dismiss the wife at any time, a moment of
ill-temper thus very often resulting in a divorce, is, moreover, a far
worse evil for Moslem society than its polygamy (which in practice is
not very extensive), or the permission it gives to take female slaves as
concubines. The Bedouins, who then, as they still do, showed the most
chivalrous respect for a defenceless woman, nevertheless placed the
weaker sex so low that they had no scruple in burying new-born girls
alive. This barbarity, which perhaps never occurred in the more
prosperous towns, was opposed by Mohammed at the very outset of his
career, and he afterwards completely suppressed it. The Arabs, further,
in their wars were accustomed to carry off the wives and children of
their enemies as prisoners or slaves; between Moslems this totally
ceased. On the other hand, by giving up the holy month’s “truce of God,”
Mohammed inflicted a serious injury on his country. His wish was to put
an end to all wars among his followers, but in this he was least
successful of all in Arabia, where to this day the feuds never cease
from year’s end to year’s end.
The thought of abolishing slavery never so much as occurred to Mohammed
any more that it did to the apostles; but he declared manumission of
slaves to be a meritorious deed, and he gave to slaves a certain
security in the eye of the law.
Islam in its original form as a whole ranks far below primitive
Christianity. In many respects it is not to be compared even with such
Christianity as prevailed, and still prevails, in the East; but in other
points, again, the new faith, simple, robust, in the vigour of its
youth, far surpassed the religion of the Syrian and Egyptian Christians,
which was in a stagnating condition, and steadily sinking lower and
lower into barbarism. Above all things, Islam gave, and gives, to those
who profess it a feeling of confidence such as is imparted by hardly any
other faith. The Moslem is proud of being a Moslem; he is convinced that
he is preferred by God before all other men, whom accordingly he
despises as fuel appointed for hell-fire. The Christian is bidden enter
into his closet to pray; the Moslem takes his stand, and especially when
unbelievers are near, in as conspicuous a place as possible for the
performance of his ceremonies of prayer. His heart has little part in
these, but he nevertheless feels himself raised by them, and equally so
whether he rightly understands the Arabic formulæ he repeats or not.
Islam is not very well fitted to produce purity and delicacy of feeling;
we shall be justified if we assume that during the first centuries of
its existence many a deep and finely-touched spirit had to pass through
severe inward struggles because his religious needs were not satisfied
by it. But all such struggles fully fought themselves out long ago, and
deep peace now fills every Moslem’s heart. All those who make faith and
assurance of salvation the chief heads of religion, ought to work for
Islam. A religion amongst the followers of which suicide is almost
absolutely unknown, has surely some claim on our respect.
After Mohammed’s death (8th June 632) the most prominent of his
companions united to elect as his successor Abú Bekr, who had been his
most trusted friend. At first, indeed, it had cost some trouble to get
the Medinites, the old “helpers” of Mohammed, off the idea that one of
themselves ought to become the leader. But no attention was paid to the
sulking of Alí, whose wife, Fátima, was the only surviving child of his
cousin Mohammed. There was no doubt that the choice of Abú Bekr was what
the Prophet himself would have desired. But hardly had the Arabs heard
of Mohammed’s death when they rebelled _en masse_. Many renounced Islam
entirely; many attached themselves to new prophets who arose here and
there after the pattern of the Prophet of Mecca; others were willing to
retain Moslem prayer indeed, but not to pay taxes; in a word, Mohammed’s
whole work was brought into question. Then it was that the strength of
Islam, and of a firm will, was shown. Abú Bekr, assured as he was in his
own faith, scorned, even in the hour of most pressing need, to make any
concession whatever to the insurgents; he insisted on absolute
submission to the commands of Islam. The insurrections, which were
unconnected with each other, were for the most part easily quelled by
the Moslems, led as they were by a single will; but in some instances
torrents of blood had first to be shed. The military merit of these
deeds belongs chiefly to Khálid, “the sword of God,” a man of Koraish,
like almost all the prominent warriors and statesmen of that time, the
same who nine years before had turned the battle in favour of the
unbelieving Meccans against Mohammed at Mount Ohod.
As soon as all Arabia had been again brought into subjection, the great
wars of conquest began. It was certainly good policy to turn the
recently subdued tribes of the wilderness towards an external aim in
which they might at once satisfy their lust for booty on a grand scale,
maintain their warlike feeling, and strengthen themselves in their
attachment to the new faith. But I do not believe those undertakings to
have been mainly the result of cool political calculation. Mohammed
himself had already sent expeditions across the Roman frontier, and
thereby had pointed out the way to his successors. To follow in his
footsteps was in accordance with the innermost being of the youthful
Islam, already grown great amid the tumult of arms. The Bedouins knew
uncommonly little Koran, but on such children of nature it is success
that makes the deepest impression. That faith which had subdued
themselves, and which was now leading them on to victory and plunder,
must be true; very soon there was no one to doubt this. Though the
nomads among the Arabs have naturally few religious needs, they yet
possess as the purest of all Semites a deeply-seated religious
disposition; and this simple religion, which corresponded to their
inclinations and flattered their self-esteem, soon took entire
possession of them. Under the sagacious, clear-headed, and strong-handed
Omar (634-644), the fresh force of the new faith, and the warlike
disposition of the Arab people, now united for the first time, and led
by great generals, speedily achieved successes against the Romans and
the Persians of which Mohammed had never so much as dreamed. This
astonishing overturn is, when all has been said, not easy of
explanation. It is indeed true that both empires were in a state of
decay. Both were at the moment terribly weakened by the wars they had
waged with each other during the first three decades of the century. The
Persian empire, which had finally been vanquished after long years of
victory, had, moreover, been shaken both before and after the conclusion
of the peace by bloody struggles about the succession to the throne. On
the other hand, both Byzantium and Persia had at their command genuine
soldiers regularly armed and disciplined. The traditions of Roman
warfare were not yet entirely lost, and the Persians still possessed
their dreaded cuirassiers, before whom, in better times, even the armies
of Rome had often fled. The reduction of the fortified towns must in any
case have been at least as severe a task to the Arabs as it was to the
Goths and Huns, who were by nature much more warlike peoples. Moreover,
Persia, when the chief attack upon its territory was made, happened to
have come once more under the rule of a firm hand. Its king, indeed,
Yezdegerd III., was a boy; but the royal power and the command of the
army were held by a man of energy and bravery—Rustem, the head of one
of the first princely houses of the empire. Yet these wretchedly armed
Arabs, fighting, not in regularly organised military divisions, but by
families and clans, and under leaders who never before had faced
disciplined troops, after long struggle overcame Rustem and his mighty
hosts (636); soon afterwards took the fortified capital, Ctesiphon
(637); and, a few years later, by the decisive battle of Neháwend (640,
641, or 642), brought the empire itself to the ground. How was such a
thing possible? The Arabs’ own explanation indeed was very simple: “God
took away the courage of the uncircumcised;” “God smote the Persians;”
“God slew Rustem.” In such words, so thoroughly like those of the Old
Testament, we can only recognise how great a force lies in the rudest
religious conviction. Almost more marvellous are the conquests they
gained on Roman territory. The emperor Heraclius was certainly the
greatest man who had held the empire since Constantine and Julian. He
was an astute diplomatist, a very competent general, and, as a soldier,
bold even to rashness. How could it come about that he of all men was
compelled to yield up to the sons of the desert the territories he had
wrested back from the Persians? We certainly are aware of one or two
circumstances which made their conquests easier to the Arabs. Most of
the inhabitants of Syria, and almost all the Egyptians, were Monophysite
heretics, and as such had experienced great oppression at the hands of
the Orthodox Byzantines; they accordingly aided and abetted the Arabs as
occasion offered, especially as they might promise themselves some
relief of the burden of taxation through the latter. The Syrian
Nestorians also, who formed the majority of the inhabitants of the
richest lands of the Persian empire (those on the Tigris and on the
lower Euphrates), we may believe to have been more favourably inclined
to the Arabs than to the Persians. But in connection with conquests like
these, much weight is hardly to be assigned to the sympathies and
antipathies of unwarlike peasants and townsmen. More important, perhaps,
is the circumstance that the numerous Arab tribes, which had been
subject to the Roman and Persian rule although for the most part
nominally Christian, appear to have gone over to the Moslems almost
unanimously soon after the first victories. It would be possible to
multiply explanations still further, yet the phenomenon continues
mysterious as before. Rhetorical expressions about the decaying
condition of both empires, and the youthful energy of the Moslems, are
unsatisfying to the inquirer who keeps the concrete facts before him.
Omar, who became Mohammed’s successor or “substitute” (_Khalífa_) after
Abú Bekr’s brief rule of two years, and who was the first to assume the
title of “Commander of the Faithful” (_Emír almúminín_), organised a
complete military-religious commonwealth. The Arabs, the people of God,
became a nation of warriors and rulers. The precepts of the religion
were strictly maintained; the Caliph lived as simply as the meanest of
his subjects. But the enormous booty and the taxes levied on the
vanquished supplied the means of giving adequate pay to every Arab. This
pay, the amount of which was graduated according to a definite scale,
and in which women and children also participated, was raised as the
revenues increased. For the leading principle was that everything won
from enemies and subjects belonged to Moslems collectively, and
therefore all that remained over after payment of common expenses had to
be divided. But in the conquered territories the Arabs were not allowed
to hold landed property; they were only to set up camps. It was bad for
Islam, but good for the world, that this military communist constitution
did not last long. It was contrary to human nature; and, besides, the
receipts did not permanently continue to come in on such a scale as
afforded adequate pay to every one. The principle also, that new
converts of foreign nationality must be placed on a level with the
Arabs, was not yet capable of being fully carried out; the aristocratic
feeling of the Arabs long stood out against making a reality of that
equality among its professors which Islam demanded.
Under Omar’s successor, Othmán (644-656), the field of conquest was
still further and greatly extended; but the purely warlike character of
the State was nevertheless already somewhat abated, permission being now
given to Arabs to hold landed property in the newly-acquired regions.
The landed proprietor and the peasant are naturally less inclined for
expeditions of distant conquest than is the mere soldier. The principle
of at least relative equality in profit-sharing was violently broken
through by the bestowal of crown domains on persons of prominence. The
conversion of the religious into a secular State followed rapidly and
inevitably. The secular State, it is true, still remained in relations
of the closest kind with religion,—much closer than those of the
so-called Christian State anywhere in modern times,—but the attempts to
set up the empire of Islam again upon a purely religious basis ended in
failure.
In the supreme command there was no hereditary succession. Abú Bekr was,
as we have seen, chosen to be Caliph by the most influential Meccan
Companions of the Prophet. Abú Bekr himself had finally nominated as his
successor Omar, his right-hand man, and the second most intimate friend
and counsellor of the Prophet. Omar, himself the ideal of a Moslem
ruler, clearly thought none of his own companions quite worthy of the
command. He arranged accordingly that after his death five of the most
distinguished of the old friends of Mohammed should decide as to who
among themselves ought to succeed. After long deliberation they united
upon Othmán. Now Othmán had been, it is true, one of the very first to
acknowledge Mohammed as a prophet, and he had successively married two
daughters of the latter; but he belonged to the Omayyads, one of the
most prominent families of pre-Islamite Mecca, the head of which, Abú
Sufyán, had for years been leader in the struggle against Mohammed and
the Medinites. Preference for kinsmen is deeply seated in the blood of
every genuine Arab, and the Prophet himself was not free from it. Omar,
who in many respects was a more consistent exponent of Islam than
Mohammed, never laid himself open to the smallest charge of nepotism,
but Othmán was a weak man; he showed exorbitant favour to his relatives,
and in a short time a number of the most important and profitable posts
were in the hands of Omayyads—able men for the most part, but of an
intensely worldly disposition. The good Othmán was not himself conscious
of anything wrong in this; but many of his subjects saw the matter in
another light. The righteous indignation of some strict Moslems, the
tumultuary disposition of the mass of the people, and very specially
also the instigations of three of the five men who had formed the
electoral college after Omar’s death,—Alí, Talha, and Zubair,—as also
of Aïsha, daughter of Abú Bekr, and the intriguing favourite of the
Prophet, resulted in a rebellion, in which the grey-headed Othmán was
put to death (17th June 656). This deed of violence was an evil
precedent for many subsequent scenes of terror, the beginning of bloody
civil wars, and eventual schisms. The slayers of Othmán called Alí to
the caliphate; Talha and Zubair also acknowledged him, but soon broke
their word, and united with Aïsha against him. Alí’s bravery was soon a
match for these enemies; but already another and more formidable
opponent had arisen in the person of the astute Moáwiya, son of the Abú
Sufyán mentioned above, who had long been governor of Syria, and held
sway there like a prince. The struggle was carried on with animosity for
years. Moáwiya came forward as avenger of his kinsman Othmán. As the
powerful head of the family, he was, according to old Arab ideas, well
entitled, and indeed bound to do this, and Islam had not abolished this
view of his duty. But, as successor of Mohammed, the son of the man who
had led the heathen against him at Ohod and in the battle of the Fosse,
could, of course, set up no other claim than the unconditional
attachment of his troops and the superiority of his own genius. Alí also
was without hereditary right, and the proclamation by Othmán’s slayers
was a very doubtful title in law; but as kinsman, favourite, pupil,
son-in-law of Mohammed, he might well seem better suited to represent
the interests of religion than Moáwiya, who also, however, appears to
have been an acceptable person with the Prophet in his declining years.
The Moslems who were faithful to their convictions accordingly went over
for the most part to Alí’s side, especially the Medinites, who (or their
fathers) had once fought Mohammed’s battles, but were now being more and
more thrust into the background by the lukewarm Moslems of Mecca. In the
heat of controversy the view for the first time germinated that Alí had
a divine right to the supreme power, and that even Abú Bekr, Omar, and
Othmán had been usurpers. Those who hold this view are the Shíites
proper, the partisans (_shía_) of Alí. The great majority of the
Moslems, on the other hand, recognise, indeed, Alí’s right as against
Moáwiya, but also hold the first three caliphs for legitimate. And,
indeed, many good Moslems stood by Moáwiya in this struggle, and by
other sovereigns of his family thereafter, though since the fall of the
Omayyads few Moslems would justify Moáwiya’s appearance against Alí. In
the disorders of this time there now arose also a new extreme radical
party, who denied the right of all claimants, and awarded the command to
“the best.” These people, the Kharijites (_Khawárij_, “dissenters”),
certainly had hold of a fundamental idea of Moslem, which they developed
to the utmost; they were in a certain sense in the right, but on such
principles as theirs it would be impossible to establish any State, and
least of all in the East. They were fanatics who sought to carry out
their ideas with the wildest energy and the most desperate bravery, and
to a certain extent they maintained a loyalty to conviction worthy of
all admiration; but they only caused a great deal of suffering, and
produced nothing. The controversy about the caliphate has long ago
ceased to have any concrete bearings, but it still continues to divide
the Mohammedan world. Historical tradition on the subject is very rich,
but greatly coloured by party feeling. It is much too favourable to Alí,
and fails to show Moáwiya quite in his full historical importance.
Naturally it does not allow us to see, except dimly, that at bottom the
struggles really had reference merely to the plunder, and were only the
expression in another direction of the same wild warrior spirit which
shortly before had gained the mastery over Persians and Romans. In the
older time, however, people were sometimes able to see rather more
clearly how much of human passion—very often passion of the lowest
kind—was at work in these civil wars in spite of all the religious
party cries. To a truly pious Moslem it must often have caused the
gravest reflections to see how unworthily such persons as Talha, Zubair,
Aïsha, and, essentially, Alí also had conducted themselves, while yet
the Prophet had long before promised a place in heaven to them all.
Alí was a thoroughly brave man, but could hardly be called a general,
was certainly wanting in true insight, and in no sense whatever born to
be a leader. He fell (22nd January 661) by the dagger of one of three
Kharijites who had brought themselves under an oath to remove both the
rivals, and also Amr, the powerful governor of Egypt, so as to make a
free choice possible; but the attempts on Moáwiya and on Amr failed. By
this deed of blood Alí was delivered from the humiliation of living to
see everything fall to the clever Omayyad. The death of the rival left
the road clear; Moáwiya assumed the title of Caliph. Alí’s incapable
son, Hasan, gave in his submission without much difficulty, in
consideration of a handsome pension. The governor of Syria, now
universally recognised as chief of the Believers, paid every regard to
the stricter Moslems; his outward demeanour was entirely that of a
spiritual prince (he preached, for example, every Friday in the mosque,
as the Prophet and previous Caliphs had done, and as was also the
practice of provincial governors and of generals), but he was none the
less a secular ruler. The support of himself and of his house were “the
people of Syria,”—that is to say, not, of course, the old inhabitants
of the country, but the Arab troops that had settled there. The
Omayyads, accordingly, were compelled to retain Damascus, the most
important town in Syria, as their capital, although it had no such
religious nimbus as invested Medina, the residence of the Prophet and
his first successors, and although it lay too far to the west to be a
good point from which to keep watch over the numerous subject countries
in the east. The Omayyad rule set up by Moáwiya had to encounter many
storms. The unchurchly and even frivolous demeanour of some members of
the dynasty embittered the Faithful and encouraged a variety of
pretenders, as well as the wild Kharijites, to repeated outbreaks, which
were not suppressed without much bloodshed. Twice was the holy city of
Mecca desecrated by troops of the Omayyad Caliphs (683 and 692); and the
unruly sons and grandsons of Mohammed’s most faithful champions, the
Medinites, were cut down by the soldiers of Yezíd, Moáwiya’s son, in
their native place, the city of the Prophet (28th August 683). It was
against this same Caliph, a man pretty much without religion, that Alí’s
second son Husain also rose in rebellion. The rising, like most others
that proceeded from the family of Alí, was begun and carried on in a
headless way, and was suppressed with little trouble. To all appearance
it was an affair of absolutely no consequence; but the way in which men
regard a matter is often more important than the matter itself. Even
contemporaries were deeply impressed to see the grandson of the Prophet
put to death by the satellites of the profane Caliph, and his bloody
head set up to open show after the common fashion of the East. Husain,
the thoughtless rebel, was in the eyes of pious Moslems metamorphosed
into a martyr, and his glory grew with time. The cry of “vengeance for
Husain” contributed much to the downfall of the Omayyad throne. To this
day the Shíites observe the anniversary of Husain’s death as a day of
mourning, which never fails to stir up deep emotion and wild rage in
their bosoms; and with them Kerbelá, where he perished on 12th October
681, is a site almost as holy as Mecca and Medina. The non-Shíite
Mohammedans also acknowledge Husain to have been a holy martyr, and hold
in the deepest abhorrence the light-living but by no means wicked
Yezíd.—If the dynasty of the Omayyad Caliphs was imperilled by the
hostility of the stricter Moslems, it received injury from another
quarter through the religious zeal of the only really pious man among
them, the honest but narrow idealist Omar II. (717-720), who sought with
all his might to bring the Koran into practice, and to restore once more
the constitution of Omar, but of course brought about dire
disorganisation as the sole result.
Although the Omayyads produced great rulers, they failed, for various
reasons, to establish an enduring empire. Their fall was inevitable when
they themselves, and with them the Syrian troops on whose support they
were wholly dependent, began to quarrel; and a rival family came upon
the scene, that of the Abbásids. The descendants of Mohammed’s uncle
Abbás, who became a convert to Islam only on the capture of Mecca, and
who never had any conspicuous _rôle_, lived for a long time in
obscurity. But now they had the wit to turn to account the powerful
apparatus which the descendants of Alí had prepared for the undermining
of the empire. Much was made of ambiguous expressions, such as “the
right of the house of Háshim” (which included Abbás as well as Alí) and
“the right of the family of the Prophet” (which might suggest his uncle
quite as readily as his cousin and son-in-law); there was word also of
an alleged transfer of the hereditary right by one of the descendants of
Alí to the Abbásids. The chiefs of the latter family succeeded in
winning over to their side a large portion of the troops in the remoter
part of Eastern Persia (Khorásán), which could not be kept under firm
control from Damascus. These troops consisted for the most part of
Persians who had accepted Islam, but were anything but friendly to the
Arabs. After severe struggles the Abbásids were victorious (750). Few
members of the fallen house escaped the terrible massacre.
The triumph of the Abbásids made an end of the purely Arab, and at the
same time of the purely Semitic, State; in it we see, in a great
measure, a reaction of the Persian element, and a repristination of the
old Asiatic world-empires, the structure of which had been at least a
little more stable. It was not a mere casual circumstance that forthwith
and from the first the seat of government was transferred to where it
had been held successively by Achemenids, Arsacids, and Sásánians,—the
plains of the lower Euphrates and Tigris. There arose the proud city of
the Caliphs, Bagdad. The Abbásids paid more external respect to religion
than the Omayyads had done, but they were in reality quite as
worldly-minded. Over and above this, there showed itself in them a very
unpleasing strain of insincerity. The first two Caliphs of the family
were nevertheless very considerable men. The second in particular,
Mansúr (754-775), was one of the greatest princes, one of the most
unscrupulous also, that ever have guided a mighty empire. He it was who
established the Mohammedan empire on a firm basis.[16] Under his
grandson Hárún ar-Rashíd (786-809) the caliphate unquestionably enjoyed
its period of greatest splendour, although Hárún himself was very far
from being a great ruler. In his day almost all the lands from the
Jaxartes and the Indus to near the Pillars of Hercules obeyed the
Caliph. The Arabs had ceased to be the props of the empire, but the
Arabic language had spread far and wide; it was the language of
religion, of government, of poetry, and of the science that was just
rising. On the banks of the Tigris there flourished a civilisation more
brilliant than under the best of the Sásánians. A fair measure of quiet
prevailed in most of the provinces, and thus the enormous prodigality of
the court did not press upon the subjects beyond endurance. Syria and
the adjoining lands found themselves in better circumstances than they
had for a long time experienced. True, the administration was very
defective if judged according to modern ideas; but good government in
the East must be measured by a very modest standard. The Christian
population had gone over to Islam _en masse_. The desire to stand on an
equality with the conquerors in the eye of the law, and to pay
diminished taxes, was, of course, a powerful motive to this; but no less
strong an influence was the suitability of Islam to Oriental peasants
and townsfolk of the humbler class, especially as God Himself had by the
event declared Himself in its favour. The Christian Churches of the East
have never been very persevering in their zeal to educate and elevate
their adherents on the spiritual side; they have always attached the
principal importance to the externalities of worship, confessional
formulas, and the condemnation of heretics. A fact specially worthy of
note is that Islam was accepted by a majority of the East-Syrian
Christians even,—the Nestorians of the lands watered by the Tigris,
whose ancestors could not be brought to apostasy by all the fierce
persecutions of the Persian kings. In explaining this result, perhaps
some weight ought to be assigned also to the consideration that, in
adopting the priestless religion of Islam, the Christians got rid of the
tutelage and oppression of their own clergy. Speaking generally, the
civilisation of the Syrians, Copts, and other Oriental Christians lost
but little by their change of faith. Islam, of course, severed many old
associations that made for culture, but in compensation for these it
called many new germs into life. Conversions were seldom due to direct
compulsion. The pious rejoiced when Christians accepted Islam in crowds;
but to the rulers these conversions were, for the most part, positively
unwelcome, as the converts were thereby relieved from the heaviest of
the taxes, and their change of faith thus meant a serious decrease of
revenue. Nor were Christians systematically maltreated. They had indeed
to suffer much repression and scorn, and to make up their minds to a
position of inferiority; for, apart from the legal inferiority of
non-Moslems as merely protected aliens, Islam gives to its followers a
tone of haughty contempt for all outsiders.[17] Moreover, the lords,
great and small, whose exactions pressed so hard even on their Moslem
subjects, saw still less reason to spare unbelievers. But this is the
Oriental way in everything. The different Christian Churches might keep
up their controversies as before, if they chose, but they could no
longer actually persecute one another. It was certainly easier for a man
to live as a Christian under the rule of the Caliphs than as a Christian
heretic within the Byzantine empire. The situation of the adherents of
the old Persian religion in the East was similar to that of the
Christians in the West, save that their legal position was not so firmly
secured by unambiguous passages of the Koran. In some parts of the old
Persian empire conversion to Islam on a large scale took place very
early; but in others, and particularly in Persia proper, the national
faith long persisted with great tenacity.
The decline of the Abbásid caliphate begins with the celebrated Mámún
(813-833). Hárún by his last will had foolishly divided the empire
between his sons Amín and Mámún, but reserving for the former the
suzerainty and title of Caliph. The natural consequence was civil war.
After desperate struggles the incapable Amín, who both on the father’s
and on the mother’s side was a descendant of Mansúr, lost his throne and
life through the Khorásán troops of Mámún, whose mother had been a
Persian slave. It was a fresh victory of the Persian over the Arabian
interest. Through these occurrences, which were followed by further
confusions, the governors who headed the troops of their respective
provinces, and also the commanders of the mercenaries, in many cases
reached a dangerous degree of power. Táhir, to whom Mámún was mainly
indebted for his successes, established for himself, and handed on to
his descendants, in the important province of Khorásán, a principality
which was but loosely dependent on the caliphate. Mámún knew neither how
to keep his victorious generals in their proper places, nor how to
destroy them, as Mansúr had done. That he was hindered by scruples of
conscience, no one will believe who duly considers his conduct towards
Músá, the descendant of Alí. In order to win over the still powerful
Shíite party, Mámún had made it great concessions, and had taken steps,
which can hardly have been sincere, to secure the succession to Músá.
But when he came to encounter the energetic opposition of his own house
and its immediate dependants, he secretly made away with that
unfortunate prince. Mámún had great interest in art and science, and
favoured the translation into Arabic of Greek scientific works. But
along with this he had an unfortunate liking for theological
controversy.
The Caliphs from this time leaned for support on great bands of foreign
mercenaries, chiefly Turks, and their captains became the real lords of
the empire as soon as they realised their own strength. How thoroughly
the Abbásid caliphate had been undermined was shown all at once in a
shocking manner, when the Caliph Mutawakkil was murdered by his own
servants at the command of his son, and the parricide Muntasir set upon
the throne in his stead (Dec. 861). The power of the Caliphs was now at
an end; they became the mere playthings of their own savage warriors.
The remoter, sometimes even the nearer, provinces were practically
independent. The princes formally recognised the Caliph as their
sovereign, stamped his name upon their coins, and gave it precedence in
public prayer, but these were honours without any solid value. Some
Caliphs, indeed, recovered a measure of real power, but only as rulers
of a much diminished State. Theoretically the fiction of an undivided
empire of Islam was maintained, but it had long ceased to be a reality.
The names of Caliph, Commander of the Faithful, Imám, continued still to
inspire some reverence; the theological doctors of law insisted that the
Caliph, in spiritual things at least, must everywhere bear rule, and
control all judicial posts; but even theoretically his position was far
behind that of a pope, and in practice was not for a moment to be
compared to it. The Caliph never was the head of a true hierarchy;
Islam, in fact, knows no priesthood on which such a system could have
rested. In the tenth century the Búids, three brothers who had left the
hardly converted Gílán (the mountainous district at the south-west angle
of the Caspian Sea) as poor adventurers, succeeded in conquering for
themselves the sovereign command over wide domains, and over Bagdad
itself. They even proposed to themselves to displace the Abbásids and
set descendants of Alí upon the throne, and abandoned the idea only
because they feared that a Caliph of the house of Alí might exercise too
great an authority over their Shíite soldiers, and so become
independent; while, on the other hand, they could make use of these
troops for any violence they chose against the Abbásid puppet who sat in
Mansúr’s seat.
It was this period that for the first time witnessed any great successes
of the Shíites. Out of what had originally been a political party a
sect, or rather a number of sects, had gradually grown. The doctrine of
the divine right of Alí and his descendants had under foreign
influences, Christian and Persian, gradually developed into a complete
or partial deification. At the beginning of the Abbásid period there
were some who taught the divinity of Alí without qualification, and if
the majority of Shíites energetically repudiated this, they nevertheless
believed in a supernatural, divine illumination of Alí and his
descendants the Imáms, or even that the Spirit of God passed from the
one to the other of these. As early as 750, dreams were cherished of the
Messianic return of “a hidden Imám;” and the names of Abú Bekr, Omar,
and Aïsha were cursed more fervently than those of the Omayyads. Here,
as in other things, the ground of Islam was entirely abandoned; but men,
of course, concealed this from themselves, by putting allegorical
interpretations upon the sacred book, and by setting up against the
(certainly much falsified) tradition or “sunna” of the orthodox
(“Sunnites”) a still more falsified sunna of their own. Moreover, from
the simple Shíitism that is still essentially Islamitic, many
intermediate connecting links lead over to strange heathenish sects, as
offshoots of which we still have (for example) the Druses and the
Nosairians. The first actually Shíite empire on a large scale was that
of the Fatimid Caliphs, founded (about 910) by Obaidalláh, a real or
alleged descendant of Alí. He thoroughly understood how to utilise the
credulity of the Berbers so as to become master over large territories
in North Africa. But his connections reached also far into Asia. He and
his successors allowed themselves to be regarded by their intimate
dependants as supernatural beings. A court poet says (about 970) of the
Fatimid, in whose service he is, things which the genuine Moslem could
at most allow to be said of the Prophet himself. Thus in some measure we
are able to understand how it has come to pass that one of them, and he
the crazy Hákim (996-1021), is worshipped by the Druses as God. But
while the Fatimids imposed some reserve upon themselves in their own
proper kingdom, where the Shíites were certainly in the minority, they
gave a free hand to their partisans elsewhere. The Karmatians in Arabia
utilised the plundering zeal of the Bedouins for their own ends,
threatened the capital of the Abbásids, fell upon the pilgrim caravans,
and finally, during the pilgrim festival, forced their way on one
occasion into Mecca, perpetrated a horrible massacre, and carried off
the black stone of the Caaba (930). This was an open breach with Islam.
The Fatimid Caliph disavowed the Karmatians, but we know that they had
acted on his suggestion, and they subsequently (951), at the command of
his successor, again restored the holy stone for a heavy payment. After
their conquest of Egypt (969) the Fatimids were the most powerful
princes of Islam, and it seemed at times as if even the form of power
had passed from the Abbásids. The Fatimids, moreover, governed
excellently as a rule, and brought Egypt to a high pitch of prosperity.
But at last they, too, shared the usual fate of Oriental dynasties; the
Abbásids lived to see the utter downfall (1171) of their worst rivals,
and continued to enjoy for nearly a century longer the empty
satisfaction of being named in public prayer in Egypt as Commanders of
the Faithful. Since then there has never been another Shíite Caliph.
In the history of Islamite peoples the politico-religious controversies
which turned upon the right to the caliphate are by far the most
important. But alongside of these there were a multitude of purely
dogmatic disputes. Above all, Islam was agitated with the old and ever
new question as to whether, and how far, man is a free or a determined
agent in his purposes and actions. The Koran, generally speaking,
teaches a rather crass determinism. According to the Koran, God is the
author of everything, including the dispositions of men; He guides whom
He wills, and leads into error whom He wills. But at a very early period
some pious souls began to take offence at the horrible thought that God
should thus have foreordained multitudes of men to sin and to the
everlasting pains of hell. They could recognise a divine righteousness
only if God leaves men free to choose between good and evil, and
determines the retribution according to the character of the choice.
They found points of support for this doctrine of theirs in the Koran
itself; for Mohammed, who was anything but a consistent thinker, has in
his revelations often treated man as free. A popular teacher of religion
will, it is clear, whatever be his inclination to determinism,
inevitably find himself ever and anon addressing himself to his hearers,
in his exhortations to faith and virtue, as if they were in possession
of freedom of will. The people who taught in this strain were called
Kadarites. Possibly they were not wholly exempt from Christian
influences. The procedure of their successors, the Mutazila
(“Dissidents”), was more systematic. They constituted a school of a
strongly rationalistic tendency, and with the aid of Greek dialectic,
with which the Arabs became acquainted first in a limited degree, and
afterwards much more fully, through the Syrians, reduced their orthodox
opponents to desperation. They also opposed with special zeal the
proposition that the Koran is uncreated.[18] This dogma was certainly in
flagrant contradiction to the fundamental position of the Koran itself.
On this point the Mutazila were in reality the orthodox; but it could
hardly fail to happen that in the heat of debate some went further, and
thought of the Koran altogether more lightly than befits a Moslem. The
fair beginning of a truly progressive movement which was involved in
this was inevitably checked within Islam at a very early stage. The
school of the Mutazila could hardly have attained to any significance at
all had it not been favoured by some of the earlier Abbásids. Mámún
especially took sides with great zeal for the doctrine that the Koran is
created. But that he is not on this account to be designated as in any
sense a “friend of free thought,” is evident from the fact that he
imposed severe punishments on those theologians who publicly avowed
their adherence to the opposite doctrine then generally prevalent. So
also his successors, down to Mutawakkil, who reversed the condition of
matters, and caused it to be taught that the Koran is increate.—Another
controversy had reference to the divine attributes. The Koran in its
unsophisticated anthropomorphism attributes human qualities to God
throughout, speaks also of His hands, of the throne on which He sits,
and so forth. The original Moslems took this up simply as it was
written; but, later, many were stumbled by it, and sought to put such a
construction on the passages as would secure for the Koran a purer
conception of God. Some denied all divine attributes whatever, inasmuch
as, being eternal equally with Himself, they would, if granted,
necessarily destroy the divine unity, and establish a real polytheism.
Many conceded only certain abstract qualities. On the other hand, some
positively maintained the corporeity of God,—in other words, an
anthropomorphism of the crassest kind, which even Mohammed would have
rejected. The Mutazila maintained their dialectical superiority until
Ash‘arí (in the first third of the tenth century), who had been educated
in their schools, took the dialectic method into the service of
orthodoxy. It was he who created the system of orthodox dogmatic. Of
course the later dogmatists did not in all points agree with him, and by
some of them, on account of some remains of rationalism in his teaching,
he was even regarded as heterodox. Since Ash‘arí’s time the commonly
accepted doctrine on the three controverted points just mentioned has
been:—(1) God produces the good as well as the evil deeds of man,
although the latter has a certain measure of independence in his
appropriation of them. (2) The Koran is eternal and increate. Some
maintain this, indeed, only with regard to the original of the sacred
book in heaven, but others hold it also of the words and letters of the
book as it exists on earth. (3) God really has the attributes which are
attributed to Him in the Koran; it is a matter of faith that He has
hands and feet, sits on His throne, and so on, but it is profane
curiosity to inquire as to how these things can be. Whatever be the
exceptions that a man may take to any of these doctrines, the first and
the third at least are in entire accord with the Koran—even in respect
of their illogicality. The Mutazilite, like other rationalistic
movements which make their appearance here and there in Islam, may
awaken our sympathy, but they are too plainly in contradiction with the
essence of a crassly supranaturalistic religion; and this explains how
it is that at a later date only a few isolated after-effects of the
Mutazila continue to be met with. We must be particularly careful not to
attach undue importance to these controversies of the school. The
Mohammedan people as a mass was hardly touched by them. The same holds
good of other dogmatic differences, unless, perhaps, when they happened
to have a political side also; as, for example, the dispute between the
rigorists, who regarded every grave sin as “unbelief,” of which the
punishment is hell; and those who, on the other side, gave prominence to
the divine mercy. The former was the doctrine of the Kharijites, who
declared Othmán, Alí, Aïsha, Moáwiya, and many other “Companions” of
Mohammed to have been unbelievers; while their opponents, more in the
spirit of the Prophet, left it with God to pronounce judgment on these
as well as on others who might have fallen into sin.
The theologico-juristical schools are of much greater practical
importance than the dogmatic. In Islam “law” embraces ritual also in the
widest sense of the word; for example, the rules of prayer (_salát_),
purification, pilgrimage. Law, like dogma, rests upon the Koran and upon
tradition. But this tradition is a very heterogeneous composition. All
of it is alleged to come from the Prophet, and much of it can, in fact,
be traced back to him; but a great deal has another origin. Mohammed’s
doctrine and example could not in reality suffice as rules of life for
highly-developed peoples. The law and custom of the Arabs, and still
more of the lands of ancient civilisation which accepted Islam, opinions
of the school, political tendencies, and many other such things, are the
real sources of much that is given out as precept or practice of the
Prophet. It is only recently that scholars have begun to see on how
great a scale traditions were fabricated. In many cases it was believed
in good faith that one was justified in ascribing immediately to the
Prophet whatever one held to be right in itself and worthy of him; but
other falsifications arose from baser motives. In this mass of
traditions, which claim to be binding on all true believers, many
contradictions, of course, occur. Hence there arose, from the eighth
century onwards, a variety of schools whose masters determined for their
disciples the rules of law, in the widest sense of that word, on the
basis of those traditions which they themselves regarded as correct. The
impulse to reconcile internal differences, which is exceedingly strong
in Islam, was not successful indeed in removing the discrepancies of the
schools of law, but it was able to extend recognition to four of them
(which had very soon thrown all the others into the shade) as equally
orthodox. These orthodox schools differed from one another in a number
of juristic and ritual particulars, but were practically at one on all
the most important principles. Every Sunnite is under obligation to hold
by the prescriptions of one or other of the four schools. These go
deeply into the affairs of daily life, especially in what relates to
forms of worship and to the regulation of the family; but on another
side, again, they are exceedingly doctrinaire, often presupposing as
they do an ideal State, such as never existed even under Omar, and by no
means the actual conditions of greedy Oriental despotism. Of these the
Hanbalite school has now almost entirely disappeared, and the Hanefites,
Sháfiites, and Málikites are distributed over the countries of Sunnite
Islam.—Shíite law is something different from that of any of these four
schools.
The supreme authority in law, as in other things, is the consensus of
the whole Mohammedan world—that is to say, the generally accepted
opinion. It decides upon the validity of traditions, and also upon the
interpretation of the Koran. For in Islam, as in other Churches, it is
only the accepted interpretation of the sacred book that is of
consequence to believers, however violent may be the disagreement
between this interpretation and the original sense. The consensus of the
entire body of Mohammedanism is, of course, an ideal that is never
actually realised, but nevertheless it has great practical importance.
By its means gradual recognition came to be accorded to things which
were foreign, and even opposed, to the teaching of Mohammed—as, for
example, the worship of saints. It silently tolerates all kinds of local
variations, but exercises a steady pressure towards an ever-extending
realisation of its binding prescriptions.
From the prosperous period of the Abbásids onwards, freethinking spread
to a considerable extent among the more highly-cultivated classes. Some
poets ventured to ridicule or gainsay, more or less openly, fundamental
doctrines of Islam, and even the faith itself. Persian writers
expressed, in prose and verse, their detestation of Arabism; and the
reflecting reader noted that the detestation extended to the Arab
religion. One may imagine what expressions were used in conversation in
such circles. The scholastic philosophers contrived for the most part to
accommodate themselves outwardly to Islamite dogma, and often, we may be
sure, in good faith; but the theologians nevertheless, and with reason,
held them in deep suspicion; the old pagan Aristotle, on whom they
leaned, fits in with Islam even less than with Christianity. All sorts
of ideas—some of them very fantastic, of Persian and other foreign
origin, and distinctly non-Islamite—also from time to time met with
acceptance in the cultivated world. Once and again, indeed, a quite too
audacious freethinker or heretic was executed; but in general people
were allowed to speak and write freely, if only they put on a touch of
Mohammedan varnish. Islam has no inquisition, and accepts as a Moslem
the man who externally professes it, however doubtful his real
sentiments may be. Accordingly, in some instances individuals whose
thinking and teaching was quite un-Islamite, such as the famous mystic
poet Abul-Alá al Maarrí (973-1057), were regarded by the people as
devout, and even as saintly. But even from this very fact we can see
that the danger for Islam was by no means very great. Such ideas were
confined to very narrow circles of thinkers and poets, or of
profligates, and were never long in dying out again. Nothing of it all
penetrated to the great mass of the people, and it is in this that the
strength of Islam lies.
The mysticism of the Súfis was a greater danger to the dominant
religion. The impulse to self-mortification and introspection, which in
Mohammed’s own case was very active at only one period of his life,
found new nourishment after his followers had become masters of the
neighbouring Christian countries, in which this type of piety was only
too flourishing. It was all genuinely Semitic; and during the ascendency
of the youthfully energetic element in Islam there was no danger of its
exercising an enervating influence on the latter. But subsequently
Persian and Indian ideas became associated with this mysticism. The
Súfis sought to submerge themselves in God, and arrived at the Indian
conception of the All-One, which is irreconcilable with Islam. In Indian
fashion, systematic rules were devised for attaining the mystic victory
over earthly limitations. He who believed himself to have succeeded in
this might venture to break away from the precepts of positive religion,
and often enough he allowed the moral law to go in the same way. The
enthusiast, essentially a supernaturalist, who had merged himself in the
All and One, readily held himself to be a worker of wonders; and still
more easily was he so regarded by his adherents. What are the limits of
the laws of nature (which Orientals, in fact, never recognise) to one
who has effected the leap from the finite to the infinite? The finest
and the coarsest attributes of the human spirit often worked together
here. Amongst the Súfis we find deep souls, magnificent enthusiasts,
fantastic dreamers, sensual poets, many fools, and many rogues. The
systematic character of their procedure, which had to be learned, and
the impression produced by the personality of leading Súfis, led to the
formation of schools and orders. We have here a sort of monasticism,
though without celibacy and without permanent vows. The fakírs or
dervishes (_i.e._ “poor”) live on pious gifts or foundations, but often
also carry on some civil calling. They keep up regular ascetic
exercises, often of a very extraordinary character, in order to attain
to the supersensuous. By these means they over-stimulate the nerves,
exhaust body and spirit, and fall into a temporary insanity. However
fine may be the blossoms which Súfic mysticism has produced, and however
quickening its influence upon Persian poetry, the existence of
dervishism, which plays a great part in almost all Mohammedan countries,
is on the whole a mischief. For the rest, most Súfis believed themselves
to be good Moslems. By allegorical interpretation they also were able to
come to an understanding with the Koran. Not many can have clearly seen
how fundamentally opposed is the pantheistic conception of God in
mysticism to the rigid monotheism of the Koran. The great mass of
dervishes are, of course, much too unthinking and superficial to follow
in the fanciful footsteps of the old masters. They dance and howl for
the glory of God, as other men pray. The people regard the dervishes as
the props of Islam, and in fact hostility against all unbelievers is
fomented in a quite special way by some of these brotherhoods. There is
no suspicion how un-Islamic are the fundamental ideas on which these
orders rest. The simple axioms of Islam itself meanwhile remain
unshaken.
About the year 1000, Islam was in a very bad way. The Abbásid caliphate
had long ceased to be of any importance, the power of the Arabs had long
ago been broken. There was a multitude of Islamite States, great and
small; but even the most powerful of these, that of the Fatimids, was
very far from being able to give solidity to the whole, especially as it
was Shíite. In fact, large regions which had been conquered by the first
Caliphs were again lost to the Byzantines, who repeatedly penetrated far
into Mohammedan territory. At this point a new element came to the aid
of the religion, namely, the Turks. Warriors from Turkestan had long
played a part in the history of Moslem kingdoms, but now there came a
wholesale migration. The Turks pressed forward in great masses from
their seats in upper Asia, and, newly converted to Islam, threw
themselves in the first instance upon the lands of Persia. These nomads
caused dreadful devastation, trampled to the ground the flourishing
civilisation of vast territories, and contributed almost nothing to the
culture of the human race; but they mightily strengthened the religion
of Mohammed. The rude Turks took up with zeal the faith which was just
within the reach of their intellectual powers, and they became its true,
often fanatical, champions against the outside world. They founded the
powerful empire of the Seljuks, and conquered new regions for Islam in
the north-west. After the downfall of the Seljuk empire they still
continued to be the ruling people in all its older portions. Had not the
warlike character of Islam been revived by the Turks, the Crusaders
perhaps might have had some prospect of more enduring success.
But this Turkish influx was followed by another of evil augury for
Islam. Jenghiz Khan led his Mongols and Turks into Mohammedan territory
in 1220, and his grandson Hulagu (January 1258) took Bagdad, the
Mohammedan capital, and brought the Abbásid caliphate to an end. The
loathly heathens were masters of Asia. But Islam, with its simple
dogmas, its imposing ceremonial, and its practical character, soon won
over these barbarians. Fifty years after the capture of Bagdad, those
Mongols who had Moslem subjects had themselves accepted Islam. The
frightful injuries they had inflicted on the lands of Islam were,
however, not to be repaired. Babylonia, the home of primeval
civilisation, was till then still the chief seat of Mohammedan culture;
but since the Mongols set foot on it, it has been a desolation.
Through the dynasty of the Ottoman Turks, Islam once more became the
terror of Christendom. The old dream of the conquest of Constantinople,
and of the complete destruction of the Roman empire, was realised
(1453). On his occupation of Egypt in 1517, Selím I. even proclaimed
himself Caliph. The sultans of Egypt had, after the destruction of
Bagdad, given their protection to a scion of the Abbásid family, to whom
they gave the title of Caliph (1261), and similar nominal Caliphs,
without any trace of power, “reigned” there till the Ottoman conquest.
But how little the Moslem world troubled itself about them may be judged
from the fact that the great philosophical historian Ibn Khaldún (of
Tunis, 1332-1405), in the introduction to his History of the World,
where he speaks very exhaustively about the caliphate, the spiritual and
the secular State, never once alludes to this make-believe. But, armed
with the enormous power of the then Turkish empire, the caliphate now
once more bore another aspect. Although the sultan of Stamboul was
wanting in one attribute which almost all orthodox teachers had regarded
as essential in Caliphs, namely, descent from the Prophet’s tribe of
Koraish, his claims found wide recognition, for his successes filled
every Moslem heart with pride and joy, and the holy cities of Mecca,
Medina, and Jerusalem did homage to him as their lord. The caliphate,
let it be added, did not bring any actual increase of strength to the
Ottoman sultans, who on the whole have not themselves attached much
value to it; on their coins they do not assert the title either of
“Caliph,” or “Imám,” or “Commander of the Faithful.” They have never
actually possessed spiritual authority over Moslems who were not their
own subjects. At the same time, it might be a serious thing for the
Ottoman empire if the sultan should cease to be mentioned in public
prayer at Mecca and Medina as overlord and Caliph, a thing which might
very well happen if besides Egypt he were to lose Syria. For a kingdom
that is slowly but steadily collapsing, the removal of even a weak
pillar may be of disastrous consequence. It would appear that in the
last confusions in Egypt prior to the English occupation, this idea was
actually made use of, and alarm thereby excited in Constantinople. The
Sherífs of Mecca as Caliphs (a suggestion that has been made) would, it
must be said, play but a poor part. They are descended, indeed, from
Alí, and thus theoretically have a vastly greater claim to the dignity
than the Ottomans have; but their territory is small and excessively
poor, and they of necessity could live only by the favour of other
princes. Moreover, the heads of the different branches of this numerous
family are constantly in conflict with each other in true Arabic
fashion. Lastly, the sultans of Morocco have for a long time been also
in the habit of calling themselves “Commanders of the Faithful,” and
thus, for their own kingdom at least, they expressly lay claim to the
supreme spiritual authority.
In the later Middle Ages the opposition between Sunnites and Shíites
seemed to be dying down. The Sunnites had at an early period accepted
certain Shíite views, particularly the exaggerated respect in which Alí
was held, and on the other hand, all Shíites did not go so far as to
declare Abú Bekr and Omar infidels. The Sherífs of Mecca, just spoken
of, from being moderate Shíites had imperceptibly become Sunnites. But
the enmity of the two parties received a new lease of life when, just
about the time when the Sunnite Ottomans were attaining their highest
power, a great empire arose also for the Shía. In Persia the doctrine of
the divine right of Alí had of old fallen on specially fruitful soil; it
is to Persian influences that the Shíite dogmas chiefly owe their
development. In Persian lands smaller or greater Shíite States have also
arisen at various times, but it was through the founding of the
Sefid[19] empire (about 1500) that Persia first became in a strict sense
the land of the Shíite faith, whilst formerly (what is often overlooked)
it had been in great part Sunnite. This Shíite empire constituted a
weighty counterpoise to the Ottomans, and through it many a diversion
was created in favour of Europe when most distressed by the pressure of
the Turks. Since the fall of the Sefids in last century, Persia has
continued to sink deeper and deeper; the State and the nation are far
feebler than even in Turkey; but Shíitism has taken Persia into its
exclusive possession. So full of life is it, that even in our own time
it was able to throw out a vigorous offshoot—the strange enthusiastic
sect of the Bábís, which has profoundly agitated the entire country, and
has not yet been definitively eradicated. The antithesis between Shía
and Sunna is very sharp to this day. The Orientals, who have
extraordinarily little feeling of patriotism, have all the more zeal for
religion. Bitter hatred still separates the Persians from their Moslem
neighbours,—Ottomans, Arabs, Uzbegs, Afghans, and so on,—because,
forsooth, the Companions of Mohammed were not able to agree as to who
should be the successor of the murdered Othmán.
Islam has, on the whole, undergone but little change during the last
thousand years. The spread of mysticism and dervishism, as we have seen,
did not affect the faith of the multitude. These things, of course, gave
fresh stimulus to the business in saints and miracles. The mystic
submerges himself in God, and ignores earthly things; the masses,
accordingly, are only too much inclined to take for a saint the rogue
who imitates him without scruple and seemingly surpasses him, and the
madman who can make nothing of the world at all. Belief in miracles is
deep-seated in the blood of the Oriental; religious impostors,
themselves often the victims of imposition, have never been wanting
there. That saints are able to work miracles, has been faintly
questioned only by a few theologians. Of long time, accordingly, the
real or alleged sepulchres of saints have been venerated as fountains of
grace. They give rise to local cults, and often are hotbeds of
fanaticism. It is no accident that in the last troubles in Egypt
atrocities were perpetrated upon Europeans at the sepulchre of the most
highly venerated of the Egyptian saints, es-Seyyid el Bedawí, at Tantá.
Of holy places of this class many are of ancient Christian origin, and
some even date from heathen times. All sorts of chicanery, crass
superstition, and much that is totally un-Islamite easily connect
themselves with such places. No Moslem, it is true, is under obligation
to believe in any of these things; there is no such thing as an
authoritative list of saints; and some Mohammedan scholars have even
disputed the legitimacy of saint-worship altogether, but without
success.
Towards the middle of last century there arose in the native land of
Islam a violent storm of puritanism against the prevailing apostasy. The
Wahhabites, or followers of Abdal-Wahháb, brought forward no new
doctrine; they were thoroughly orthodox Moslems; but they broke with
tradition thus far, that they sought to abolish certain abuses which had
been tolerated or even approved by general consent. In this they
proceeded with a strictness which reminds more of Omar than of the
Prophet. They were far from denying Mohammed to have been the Apostle of
God, but they held in detestation the exaggerated honour which was paid
to his name, his dwelling-places, and his grave. The worship of saints
they condemned as idolatry, and wherever they went they destroyed the
saints’ tombs and places of martyrdom. They wanted to restore the
original Islam; for example, they took in serious earnest the legal
prohibition against the wearing of silk, and, in agreement with many
learned theologians, interdicted tobacco as an innovation. The kingdom
which they founded was a copy of the original Islamitic one; it once
more reunited by force almost all the inhabitants of Arabia, but could
not succeed in infusing a real spirit of religion into the great mass of
the Bedouins. Their strict spiritual discipline was particularly irksome
to the inhabitants of Mecca—on the whole a very secularly disposed
people. The armies of Mohammed Alí of Egypt at length broke the power of
the Wahhabites, not without great exertions, took back the sacred
cities, Mecca and Medina, which had fallen into their hands in 1803, and
penetrated into the heart of their kingdom (1814, 1815). They again took
another start at a later period, but neither was this permanent; a
purely Arab State, and that, too, founded upon religion, can be kept
together for any length of time only by rulers of uncommon efficiency.
At present the Wahhabite kingdom, properly so called, is powerless; it
is subject to that of the Shammar, which lies to the north of it, and
the prince of which, Ibn Rashíd, a ruler of extensive tracts, is also a
professor of Wahhabitism, though with none of the fiery zeal of earlier
times. The Wahhabites are no longer a menace to Damascus and Bagdad.
Their reform of Islam has remained confined to Arabia, and even there is
hardly likely to operate long. But it has rightly been remarked as
noteworthy, that this purely Semitic religious movement with all its
energy has produced nothing new; it has been directed exclusively
towards the repristination of pure monotheism.
For a considerable time Islam has seemed to be in a state of deep
humiliation. Even the great Moslem kingdoms are without strength. By far
the larger portion of the Moslem world is ruled by Christian powers. But
let us not deceive ourselves as to the vitality of this religion. How
many catastrophes has it not already survived! Immediately on the death
of its founder the revolt of the Arabs threatened it with extinction.
Soon afterwards, from being a spiritual State (as corresponded with its
essential nature), it was changed into a secular one, and it survived
the transformation. Its united empire was broken up and fell into
fragments. The Moslems tore one another to pieces in fierce party
warfare. The Karmatians carried off the black stone, the palladium of
Islam, and for years made impossible the pilgrimage, one of the most
important expressions of Mohammedan life. The heathen Mongols destroyed
the caliphate, and long ruled over half of the lands of Islam. Instead
of being able to carry on the holy war against the unbeliever, one
Moslem State after another is in these days either directly or
indirectly falling under infidel control. But the faith that there is no
God but Alláh, and that Mohammed is His Prophet, and all that is
involved in this faith, remain unshattered. It would seem as if Islam
were now in course of being driven out from the Balkan peninsula, even
as it was long ago compelled to quit Sicily and Spain; whether it shall
be able to maintain its hold everywhere in Asia and North Africa may be
questioned; but in the Indian Archipelago it is steadily advancing,
among the nomads of Central Asia it has gained strength just as the
Russian sway has extended, and in Central Africa it is achieving
conquest upon conquest. Precisely because the consolidation of European
power in the lands of Nigritia brings with it greater security of
intercourse, it may be presumed that the spread of Islam will be
powerfully promoted there. But in the dark continent, which offers no
favourable soil for Christianity, the acceptance even of Islam means
progress from the deepest savagery to a certain culture, however limited
and limiting, and to association with peoples who in the Middle Ages
were higher in civilisation than the people of Europe. Perhaps
slave-hunting and kidnapping will come to an end only when practically
all the negro peoples shall have become Moslem.
If religion among the higher classes in Turkey is, undeniably, sometimes
a matter of doubt or even of ridicule, more as the result of frivolity
than as a consequence of serious thinking, and if similar phenomena
manifest themselves still more frequently among the light-minded,
bright, and unconscientious Persians, the firmness of the faith
nevertheless remains unshaken with the vast mass of the people, even
with those who are remiss in the discharge of ritual duties. Without any
qualms of doubt, peacefully resigned to the will of God, the Moslem sees
his kingdoms go down. But we must also be prepared to find the strength
of this faith continuing to maintain itself in frightful outbursts of
fanaticism. If the occurrences in Egypt during the last rebellion showed
little of death-defying courage and energy, that is to be attributed to
the languid temper of the Egyptians; a great rising in Syria or Asia
Minor might conceivably give Europeans a good deal more trouble. The
best strength of the great Indian Mutiny of 1856 lay with the Moslems.
The Moslem subjects of Britain and other European States sigh for the
moment when they shall be able to shake off the yoke of the infidel. The
successes of the “dervishes” in the Soudan may serve to warn Europeans
of the strength that still resides in the warrior zeal of Islam.
-----
[13] Originally published in _Deutsche Rundschau_, ix. (1883) p. 378
sqq.
[14] This substitution was also known among the Jews. From them also
were borrowed certain mitigations of the task in time of travel or
circumstances of danger.
[15] One can see how hard is the precept of fasting for the Tartars in
Kasan when Ramadán falls in summer with a day of eighteen hours, as
contrasted with its lightness when it falls at the time of the winter
solstice.
[16] For a fuller treatment of Mansúr and the establishment of the
Abbásid empire, see next essay.
[17] It is not inconsistent with this that individual Christians and
Jews, whether by princely favour or by their own talents, occasionally
rose to positions of power and dignity, especially as physicians; still
less is it so that Coptic clerks were regularly employed in the
administration of Egypt.
[18] See above, p. 58 sq.
[19] In Old English the kingdom of the Sophy.
IV.
CALIPH MANSÚR.