CHAPTER XIII
ISLAM
In chronological order Islam stands last of all the great religions; it appeared six centuries after Christianity, and Christian ideas enter into it. It is, however, so essentially Semitic that it can only be understood aright if studied in connection with the group now occupying our attention. In Islam Semitic religion opens its arms to embrace mankind, and accomplishes, in a fashion, the destiny to which Judaism was invited, but which Judaism failed to realise till it was transformed in Christianity. In Islam Semitic religion is not transformed, but enters in its own stern and uncompromising character into the position of a universal faith.
This religion sprang up and entered on its career of conquest with startling suddenness and even, some scholars hold, without any natural preparation for its coming in the country of its birth. The Arabs called the period before Islam the "time of ignorance"; in that period they considered their race had no history; the new religion, when it arose, had made a clean sweep of all that had gone before, and had caused a new world to begin. The labours of Arabic scholars have, however, done something to dispel the mists which hung over early Arabia, and it is possible both to give a much more satisfactory sketch than formerly of the earlier religion of the Arabs, and to discern to some extent the processes which had unconsciously been preparing for the advent of a higher and stronger faith.
Arabia before Mahomet.—The Arabs of the central peninsula in the times before Mahomet were not a nation but a set of tribes—mostly nomadic, but some of them settled in cities, who, while united by language, custom, and traditions, had no central government or organisation. The desert which they inhabited, as it admitted no cultivation, kept human life uniform and unprogressive; external influences penetrated slowly into this corner of the world, and society was still arranged as it had been for thousands of years. The strongest tie was that of blood. A man's fellow-tribesmen were bound to avenge his murder; and so one slaughter led to another, and from generation to generation the land was filled with a perpetual series of blood-feuds. Twice a year, however, a cessation of these feuds took place; a month came round in which there was a universal truce. Men who were enemies then made the same pilgrimage to a distant shrine; at such a time trade caravans could set out and travel in safety; and the great markets or festivals then took place, which, while based at first on religious ideas, had in most part ceased to have any religious character. Some of these markets were, at the time of Mahomet, national occasions: men of every tribe met and came to know each other there; the poetry which had been composed during the preceding months was publicly recited, so that the rise of a new poet was known to all Arabia; the news of all the tribes circulated, and foreign ideas and doctrines were also to be heard. In proportion as the face of nature was hard and forbidding, social life was bright and gay; wine, women, wit, and war provided the themes of poets and the ordinary aims of life.
The Old Religion.—It has generally been said that the Arabs before Islam were irreligious. They themselves contrasted the sternness of the new period with the gaiety of the old one. The truth is, as Wellhausen has admirably shown,1 that the working religion of the country had become before the period of Islam entirely effete. Arab religion was based on the ideas and usages which have been described in [chap. x.] of this book; it is mainly from Arabia, indeed, that the original character of Semitic religion is known to us. Each tribe had its god, whom it regarded as a magnified master or ruler, and with whom it held communion by sacrifice, the blood being brought in contact with the god and the victim devoured by the tribesmen. The god is represented sometimes by a tree, generally by a stone; a piece of fertile land belongs to him, within which the plants and animals are sacred; the religious meeting can be held in no other spot. Hence the Arabs are said to be stone worshippers; but the phrase is an awkward one: what they worshipped was not the stone but a god connected with it. And the early gods of Arabia are a motley company; it is only in their relations to their worshippers and in the order of the worship paid them that they have some uniformity. The greatest and oldest deity of the Arabs is Allat or Alilat, "the Lady." Like the female deity found in all primitive Semitic religions, she is a stately and commanding lady. She is not the wife of a god, nor are unseemly ideas connected with her. She belongs to the early world in which motherhood was synonymous with rule, since the family had no male head; she has a character but no history: mythology has not gathered round her. Arabia has also certain nature-gods. The stellar deities are mostly female; there is a male sun-god Dusares. Heaven is worshipped by some, not the blue but the rainy heaven, which is a source of blessings. There are no gods belonging to the region under the earth. The serpent is the only animal that receives worship.
1 Reste Arabischen Heidenthums, p. 188.
But the gods of Arabia belong mostly to another class than that of nature-gods; or at least if they ever were connected with nature, they have parted with such associations. They are uncouth figures, with vague legends and miscellaneous attributes. One set of them is said to have been worshipped by the contemporaries of Noah; they are big men, and it is their property to drink milk. Hubal was the chief god of Mecca. It was his property to bring rain. Vadd was a great man, with two garments, and a sword and spear, bow and quiver. Jaghuth, "the Helper," was a portable god, not a stone probably, since he was carried into battle by his tribe, as the ark was by the Israelites. Another god is called "the Burner," no doubt from the sacrifices offered to him. Each tribe has its god or set of gods, and certain sacred objects connected with its gods. One god is found by those who kiss or rub a certain black stone, another in connection with a white stone, another with a tree. And of many of them there are images; the stone has some work done on it, or there is a wooden block roughly hewn. The "Caaba" is originally a black stone which is kissed or rubbed at Mecca. The name was given, however, to the cube-shaped building, in one of the walls of which the black stone had been fixed. In this building there stood in old days images of Abraham and Ishmael, each with divining arrows in his hand. Of such idols a large number existed in Mahomet's time, and were destroyed by him. In some cases the image had a house, and a person was needed to guard it; this functionary also kept some simple apparatus for casting lots or otherwise obtaining counsel from the deity, and oaths and vows were made before him, to which the deity became a witness.