It was in this country, and among this people, so strangely and peculiarly constituted, that arose the apostle of a new faith, destined to knead the heterogeneous and hostile elements of the nation into one compact mass, and to hurl this with irresistible might against the adjacent empires, and even, far beyond the limits of the latter, against countries and nations formerly scarcely known by name even to the Arabian merchant.
Mahomet, or more properly Mohammed or Muhammed, (i.e. the very famous), the only son of Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca, on the 20th April, 571.[17] His father, Abdallah, was the best beloved of the thirteen sons of Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem, and chief of the family of that name; his mother, Amina, sprang from the noble race of the Zahrites. He had the misfortune to lose in his infancy, his father and mother, and his grandfather. His sole inheritance consisted in a house, an old female slave, and five camels. After the death of his grandfather, he was taken into the house of his uncle, Abu Taleb, who had succeeded Abdol Motalleb in the sacerdotal office. Here he was educated to commercial pursuits; and was, at the age of thirteen, sent with the caravan of his uncle to the fairs of Bosra, or Bostra,[18] and Damascus, in Syria. In his twentieth year[19] he fought in the ranks of the Koreish against some hostile tribes, and, by his valor, gained the appellation El Amin, i.e., the faithful, one of the five hundred and more surnames that have gradually been given to the Prophet of Islam. In his twenty-fifth year, Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca (according to some historians, of Bosra), engaged him as superintendent and manager to carry on the commercial affairs of her late husband. In this capacity he made a second journey to the fairs of Bosra and Damascus.[20]
Nature had bestowed upon Mohammed the gift of personal beauty. His cotemporaries describe him as of commanding figure and majestic aspect; he had regular and most expressive features, piercing black eyes, an aquiline nose, and a well-formed mouth, with pearly teeth; his cheeks were tinged with the ruddy glow of robust health.[21] Art had imparted to his naturally black, flowing hair and beard a lighter chestnut hue. His captivating smile, his rich and sonorous voice, the graceful dignity of his gestures, the apparent frankness and heartiness of his manner, gained him the favorable attention of those whom he addressed. He possessed talents of a superior order—his perception was quick and active, his memory capacious and retentive, his imagination lively and daring, his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive, his courage dauntless;—and, whatever may be our opinion of the sincerity of his convictions, his tenacity of purpose in the pursuit of the great object of his life, and his patient endurance, cannot but extort our admiration. His natural eloquence was enhanced by the use of the purest dialect of Arabia, and adorned by the charm of a graceful elocution.
Cadijah was a widow for the second time; she was in the fortieth year of her age—no wonder then, that a man so bountifully endowed by nature should speedily have gained her affection. She bestowed upon him her hand and her fortune, and restored him thereby to the station of his ancestors. Placed, henceforth, above the petty wants and cares of material subsistence, Mohammed had now full leisure to indulge his love of poetry and eloquence, and his natural predilection for contemplation. His marriage brought him into familiar contact with Waraka (Verka) Ben Naufil, a cousin of Cadijah. This Waraka, it would appear, had first exchanged the adoration of the heavenly bodies for the belief in the two principles of Zoroaster, (Ormuzd and Ahriman). This creed not satisfying his mind, he had embraced with fervor the monotheism of the Jews; but, disgusted with the absurdities of the Talmudists, he had seceded to the profession of the Christian faith, in which he had even assumed the priestly office. That he must have been a man of some talent and learning, is evident from the fact of his having translated the Old and New Testament from the Hebrew into the Arabic tongue. Now this man is usually mentioned by the historians of the time as the pupil of Mohammed, and the second convert to his new doctrine; but there are strong reasons to justify a belief that he was his master and teacher, rather than his pupil and convert.
It has been intimated already, that the history of the life of Mohammed, up to the time when he proclaimed himself the apostle of a new faith, is obscure and doubtful. From the scanty data, and the conjectural and contradictory statements before us, we can only gather one fact as pretty certain, viz: that the prophet of Islam had enjoyed some rabbinical and priestly instruction. Now we have seen that Mohammed was an illiterate barbarian, and not likely, therefore, to derive from conversation with priests in foreign lands that knowledge of the maxims, tenets, and traditions of other religious communities, which is evidenced in the Koran and in the Sonna;[22] whereas Waraka had actually had a practical training in the divers beliefs of the Sabians, Magians, Jews, and Christians; and must, to judge by his translation of the New Testament, have been tolerably versed in the letter, at least, of the doctrine of Christ. From his repeated, and apparently conscientious, changes of faith, we have, perhaps, a right to conclude that he was a man sincerely in search of a religion that might satisfy his mind; nor need we wonder that the so-called “Christianity” of the seventh century should have failed to answer his expectations on this head. It would not be too much to say, indeed, that there existed really no “Christian” church at that period; the multitudinous contending sects who professed the name of Christ had almost entirely forgotten his pure doctrine, and, more especially, the divine principle preached by him of universal charity and good-will to all men. The grossest idolatry had usurped the place of the simple worship, instituted by Jesus, of an All-wise, Almighty, and All-beneficent Being, without equal and without similitude; a new Olympus had been imagined, peopled with a crowd of martyrs, saints, and angels, in lieu of the ancient gods of paganism. There were found Christian sects impious enough to invest the wife of Joseph with the honors and attributes of a goddess;[23] relics, and carved and painted images, were objects of the most fervid adoration on the part of those whom the word of Christ commanded to address their prayer to the Living God alone.
Surely, then, we may trust that it will not be imputed to us as a violation of the laws of probability, if we venture to assume that Waraka, finding his religious aspirations disappointed even in the Christian faith, conceived the idea of founding and propagating a doctrine of his own,—a species of eclectic extract from all other religions which he had successively professed; that, void perhaps of personal ambition, or conscious, rather, that he did not himself possess the most indispensable attributes and qualities of a religious and political reformer, he cast his eyes upon Mohammed, who, with his mind attuned to contemplation and to mystic thought, promised to prove a docile disciple, and whose personal beauty and grace seemed made to “persuade ere he ope’d his mouth;” and that he chose him as his organ, as the medium through which he might give currency to the coinage of his mind, content if the people would receive the fruits of his religious experience and ponderings as a new gospel, and cheerfully consenting to yield up the honors of the paternity to him who should succeed in rearing the infant religion.
Waraka found in Mohammed a most zealous disciple, who considerably bettered the instructions which he received. From what we can gather from the scanty sources of information at our command, we think we may fix upon the year 606 A.D. as the period at which Mohammed first became the pupil of Waraka; but it was only five years after, in 611, that Waraka and himself had fully matured their plan to institute a new religion. Worthily to prepare himself for the assumption of the prophetic and apostolic office, Mohammed withdrew this year (as he had indeed done repeatedly before), several weeks, during the month of Ramadan, to the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca. On the morning of the 24th Ramadan, Mohammed appeared before his wife, apparently greatly disturbed in mind. He called out to her to “wrap him up, to affuse him with cold water, as his soul was greatly troubled.” Having thus prepared her for his purpose, by exciting at once both her conjugal solicitude and her female curiosity, he proceeded to break to the amazed matron the great secret of his divine mission. He told her the angel Gabriel had, that night, appeared to him with a message from the Most High, appointing him, Mohammed, the sixth, greatest, and last of His chosen prophets,[24] to reveal His existence and to preach His law to the nations of the world. The angel had brought down with him a paper copy of the uncreated and eternal Koran, enclosed in a volume of silk and gems, and had proposed to reveal to him successively and at his (Mohammed’s) own discretion, the chapters and verses of that everlasting record of the law of God.
Islam (i.e. devout submission to the Divine Will) he had been commanded by the angel to call the new faith which it was to be henceforward his mission to preach; and which, to use the felicitous language of Gibbon, is compounded of an eternal truth—viz., that there is only one God—and of a fiction necessary to further the ambitious designs of the self-appointed missionary of this new gospel—viz., that Mohammed is the apostle and prophet of God. Cadijah believed readily and implicitly—and no marvel either. Mohammed, to his honor be it written, had proved a most kind and attentive husband to the elderly matron who had raised him above the pressure of want. He had abstained—and till her death continued to abstain—from availing himself of the right of polygamy. He had proved his truth to her by unvarying affection. How, then, could she possibly have doubted his word? To her grateful and loving eyes, he must have seemed more than a mere mortal; and she may even have deemed it by no means extraordinary that the Most High should appoint as his organ and missionary one so pure, so good, so perfect, as her husband appeared in her sight.
Cadijah’s conversion was speedily followed by the avowed declaration of Waraka in favor of the new doctrine. The ex-priest of Christ professed to see in Mohammed the Paraclete, or Comforter, promised in the Gospel, and even ventured to support this view upon etymological grounds of somewhat extraordinary character. The Arabic word Mohammed is synonymous with the Greek περικλῠτὸς (i.e. very famous), which, by an easy change of letters, may be turned into παράκλητος!
The next converts to Mohammed’s new faith were, his servant Zeid, who was positively bribed to it by the promise of freedom; his youthful cousin Ali Ben Abu Taleb, a boy of eleven, and not likely, therefore, to entertain any very deep religious conviction either way; and the wealthy and universally esteemed Abdallah Ben Othman-al-Koreish, called afterwards Abu Bekr (i.e. the father of the maiden); most probably from the circumstance that his daughter Ayesha, born 613, became one of Mohammed’s wives after the death of Cadijah. By the weight and influence of Abu Bekr, ten of the most respectable citizens of Mecca were induced to join the creed of Islam, among whom were Othman, who became afterwards Mohammed’s son-in-law. It had taken three years to accomplish these fourteen private conversions; and, guided probably by the advice of Waraka, the prophet had not yet ventured upon a public profession and propaganda of his creed. In the beginning of 615, however, Waraka died; and the bolder spirit of Mohammed, freed from the restraining influence hitherto exercised by that cautious man, aspired henceforward openly to the dignity of the apostolic office.