THE DEATH OF MOHAMMED.
"Nothing can we call our own but death"—Shakespeare.
While Musa thus lay dying in the tents of Nejd, the cold hand of death was fast closing upon another in the land of Arabia. Day by day the germs of disease pulsed stronger and stronger through the veins of Mohammed. Monarch of Arabia, originator of a creed which was eventually to push itself throughout Egypt, India, Afghanistan, Persia, and even to the wild steppes of Siberia, he must now die. He viewed the end with firmness, and it has been a matter of controversy as to whether in these later days he still had the hallucination of being a prophet.
Too feeble to walk to the mosque, he lay, tended by his wives, in the tent of Ayesha, his favorite. Not many days before his death he asked that he might be carried to the mosque. Willing arms bore him thither, and placed him in the pulpit, from whence he could look down upon the city, and away to the palm-groves of Kuba. Then, turning his face towards the holy city, Mecca, he addressed the crowds of waiting people below.
"If there be any man," said he, "whom I have unjustly scourged, I submit my own back to the lash of retaliation. Have I aspersed the reputation of any Mussulman?—let him proclaim my faults in the face of the congregation. Has anyone been despoiled of his goods?—the little that I possess shall compensate the principal and the interest of the debt."
He then liberated his slaves, gave directions as to the order of his funeral, and appointed Abu Beker to supply his place in offering public prayer. This seemed to indicate that Abu Beker was to be his successor in office; and the long-tried friend accordingly became the first caliph of the Saracen empire.
After this the prophet was conveyed again to the house of Ayesha. The fever increased, and the pain in his head became so great that he more than once pressed his hands upon it exclaiming, "The poison of Khaïbar! The poison of Khaïbar!"
Once, perceiving the mother of Bashar, the soldier who had died of the poison in the fatal city, he said:
"O mother of Bashar, the cords of my heart are now breaking of the food which I ate with your son at Khaïbar!"
At another time, springing up in delirium, he called for pen and ink that he might write a new revelation; but owing to his weak state, his request was refused. In talking to those about him he said that Azraël, the Angel of Death, had not dared to take his soul until he had asked his permission.