Mohammed assumed now the exercise of the regal and sacerdotal office. He acquired by purchase a small piece of ground, on which he built a house and a mosque. The loyalty and devotion of his followers, and the unhesitating compliance and obedience which his decrees met with on the part of the inhabitants of Medina, convinced him that he was indeed the absolute prince and ruler of that city. But with this conviction the range of his ambition widened, he resolved to extend his creed and his power over all the tribes of Arabia, and even beyond the limits of his native land. He now threw off the cloak of toleration in which he had so carefully enfolded himself at Mecca. There he had asserted the liberty of conscience, and disclaimed the use of religious violence; here, at Medina, he preached a war of extermination against whomsoever should continue in idolatry.[28] The commands and precepts, which Gabriel was now made to transmit to him, breathed a fierce and sanguinary spirit; the creed of Islam was to be propagated henceforth by the sword, and the unbelieving nations of the earth were to be pursued without mercy. To excite in his followers a spirit of martial ardor, he proclaimed the superior sanctity of the sword. “In the shade of the crossing scymitars Paradise is prefigured,” says Mohammed; “the sword is the key of heaven and of hell: a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer. Whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven: at the day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as rubies, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim.” Paradise was the glorious reward of the faithful who fell in battle, and death might thus actually become an object of hope and desire rather than of dread. Moreover, as the Koran inculcates also, in the most absolute sense, the tenets of fate and predestination, it would be little use for the devout Moslem to shirk his military duties through fear of being wounded or killed in battle, since his preordained fate would be sure to overtake him, even in his bed. And as Paradise was the portion of the fallen hero, so wealth and beauty rewarded the warrior who had escaped the dangers of the fight: the apostle gave his followers the license of embracing the female captives as their wives or concubines; he regulated by a law, divine, of course, like all the rest of his laws and precepts, the distribution of the spoil taken in battle, or in a conquered place: the whole was faithfully collected in one common mass, one-fifth of it was reserved for the prophet himself (doubtless, for pious and charitable uses), the remainder was shared among the soldiers, the shares of the slain devolving to their widows and orphans: a horseman received double the share of a foot-soldier.
From the first months of his reign, he prepared for the holy warfare against Jews, Christians, and idolators. At the beginning of the year 623, his white banner was displayed before the gates of Medina. Faithful to the national character, he, the holy prophet of a creed which the nations of the world were invited to look upon as divine, went forth at the head of his pious followers, the future denizens of a Paradise which in his extravagant Oriental fancy he had placed beyond the seventh heaven, to waylay the peaceful merchant, and to rob and maim, or murder him, in the name and for the glory of the Most High.
So he went forth at the head of three hundred and thirteen Moslems, to intercept the return of the great caravan from Syria to Mecca, a caravan of a thousand camels, led by Abu Sophian, with only thirty or forty followers. But the Koreish, alarmed for the safety of their merchandise and their provisions, hastened to the rescue. One hundred horse, and eight hundred and fifty foot, advanced from Mecca to about three stations from Medina. Here, in the fertile and famous vale of Beder, they met the band of the prophet. The disproportion of numbers was great; in Mohammed’s ranks were found only two horsemen: informed by his scouts that the caravan was approaching from the one, the Koreish from the other side, Mohammed had hesitated whether to seize upon an easy prey, or to venture on an encounter with vastly superior forces; but the reflection, that a success gained under disadvantageous circumstances, would, with an impulsive people like the Arabs, go far to prove his divine mission, and would embolden his adherents and discourage his enemies, he resolved to give battle. With Abu Bekr by his side, he took his station on a kind of throne or pulpit. The white veil of Ayesha, and two black banners, were borne before his host. “Courage, my children,” he exclaimed, “close your ranks; discharge your arrows, and the day is your own.” Perceiving, however, that the Moslems fainted in their onset, and were hard pressed by the superior numbers of the Koreish, he betook himself with a loud voice to pray the succour of Gabriel and a legion of angels.[29] He then started from his throne, mounted his horse, and, casting a handful of sand into the air, exclaiming, “Let their faces be covered with confusion,” dashed against the hostile ranks. The Arabs were a most superstitious people; their fancy beheld the angelic warriors, or rather felt their presence; the thunder of Mohammed’s voice revived the drooping spirits of his followers; whilst it carried confusion into the ranks of his enemies. The Koreish turned and fled. Seventy of the bravest were slain, and seventy captives fell into the hands of the victorious prophet, who had two of them put to death as a trifling instalment of the debt of revenge which he meant to exact from his foes and revilers. The other sixty-eight were restored for a ransom of four thousand drachms of silver. From the field of Beder, Mohammed started in pursuit of Abu Sophian’s caravan, which, despite of the swiftness of its flight, and the skill of its guides, was overtaken and captured. A booty of 100,000 drachms of silver rewarded the pious robbers. But this great success had well nigh proved fatal to Mohammed and his creed, and to the city of refuge. The fierce resentment of Abu Sophian and of the Koreish, brought into the field against Mohammed a body of three thousand men, among whom were seven hundred armed with cuirasses, and two hundred on horseback; three thousand camels attended the march of this host. Abu Sophian advanced to within six miles of the north of Medina, where he encountered the prophet at the head of nine hundred and fifty followers, on Mount Ohud, (A.D. 624). The Koreish advanced in the form of a crescent. The right wing of the cavalry was led by Kaled, the fiercest and most redoubtable of the Arab warriors. Mohammed had made his dispositions with considerable skill; his troops were successful at first, and broke the centre of the enemy; but their eagerness to seize upon the spoils threw their ranks into disorder, and speedily deprived them of the advantage gained. Kaled, with his cavalry, attacked them in the flank and rear; Mohammed was wounded in the face with a javelin, and two of his teeth were shattered with a stone; Kaled exclaimed, with a loud voice, that the lying prophet was slain; and the followers of Islam, who looked in vain for the appearance of Gabriel and his angelic legion, to avenge the fall of “The beloved of God,” trembled and fled; still, in the midst of tumult and dismay, was heard the thunder of Mohammed’s voice, denouncing the impious tribe of the Koreish, as the murderers of God’s apostle, and calling down upon them the vengeance of heaven. Some of the most devoted followers of the prophet gathered bravely around him, and conveyed him to a place of safety. Seventy of the bravest defenders of Islam lay dead on the field, among them Hamza, one of Mohammed’s uncles. The inhuman females of Mecca, who had accompanied the expedition, mangled their bodies, and the fierce Henda, Abu Sophian’s wife, tasted the entrails of Hamza, with the relish of a cannibal. But Mohammed was not discouraged: his wounds had hardly been dressed, when the convenient Gabriel revealed to him that (for some unexplained cause) the powers of darkness had been permitted to prevail against him this once, and that Satan himself had fought in the ranks of the Koreish; he was, however, exhorted to persevere in his propaganda, and was assured of ultimate success. He rallied his troops, and even as early as the next day he led them forth again to battle; on this occasion the fight was, however, only of a desultory character, no great harm being done on either side. Still the result of it was, that the Koreish, having experienced the desperate valor of the Moslems, and more particularly of Ali and Omar, despaired of carrying Medina with their present forces, and retired to Mecca. But in the ensuing year (A.D. 625) Abu Sophian, having formed a league between the Koreish and several tribes of the desert, led a well-appointed host of ten thousand warriors against Medina. The number of the Mussulmans, however, had also considerably increased, and Mohammed’s army of three thousand men, awaited the attack of their foes, securely encamped before the city, and protected by a ditch and some field-works, which had been constructed under the guidance and superintendence of a Persian engineer. A general engagement being prudently declined by the prophet, the hostilities were confined to a number of single combats, in which Ali more especially signalised his formidable strength and prowess. Twenty days passed away in this desultory warfare, the apostle of God having, meanwhile, recourse to every artifice that his crafty mind could devise, to sow disunion in the camp of his enemies. A tempest of wind, rain, and hail, which overturned the tents of the besiegers, and which was, of course, duly claimed as a direct interposition of God in favor of his prophet, put the finishing stroke to the success of this insidious policy: the Koreish, deserted by their allies, were compelled to retire, and to relinquish, henceforth, the attempt to overcome Mohammed by force of arms. This last attack upon Medina is variously named from the nations which marched under Abu Sophian’s banner, and from the ditch which protected the Mussulman camp.
During the earlier period of his mission, Mohammed had shown considerable leaning towards the Jews; he had selected Jerusalem for the Kebla of prayer, and had endeavoured to form most of his tenets and precepts upon the model of the Mosaic ordinances. Indeed, there can be no doubt, but that it was for a time the great end and object of his ambition to be accepted by the Jews as their promised Messiah; nor can it be denied, that a deep political idea lay at the bottom of this desire. Had he succeeded in persuading the Jews to believe in his Messiahship, his apostolic course among the Arabs would have run much smoother, and many of the so-called Christian sects might have been readily gained over to his mixtum compositum, which might, indeed, be called a creed of creeds in the literal acceptation of the words.
But the imposture was too shallow to take with so clear-sighted a people as the Jews unquestionably were: the pretended Messiah was repudiated by them with disdain, and the hostility of the Koreish against the son of Abdallah, was, in some degree, fomented and fanned by the Jews of Mecca. Hence the implacable and unrelenting hatred with which Mohammed pursued the unfortunate Israelites to the last moment of his life. That he changed the kebla of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca, and that in his nocturnal journey to Heaven, he beheld the divine tabernacle in a straight line above the latter city, instead of Zion, where he undoubtedly originally intended to behold it,—could, at the most, provoke a smile of contempt and derision; but the appalling cruelties which he indicted, both upon individuals and upon entire tribes of the doomed nation, must fill the mind of the impartial explorer of history with deep indignation against the man who could so avenge his offended vanity. His first exploit in this direction, was the expulsion of the Kainoka tribe from Medina, where they had hitherto been permitted to dwell in peace, by the large toleration of the Idolators. The prophet of Islam seized the occasion of an accidental tumult, in which the Kainoka had taken part, to place before them the alternative of embracing his religion, or contending with him in battle. A brave challenge this, to the unfortunate Jews, to do battle with him, and which displayed in the fullest, though certainly not in the most favorable light, the magnanimous disposition of the son of Abdallah, that has been so highly extolled by some historians. Still, even with the fearful odds of number and martial spirit against them, the feeble and unwarlike Israelites preferred the unequal contest to apostacy from the faith of their fathers. It was decided in fifteen days, of course with the total overthrow and capture of the whole tribe; and, had it not been that the Charegites, mindful of the friendship which once existed between them and their humble allies, the Kainoka, warmly interceded on behalf of the wretched captives, the prophet of God would have slain every one of them. As it was, they were despoiled of their homes and property; and driven forth, to the number of seven hundred men, with their wives and children, to seek a refuge on the confines of Syria, to which quarter the blessings of the new creed had not yet extended. The Nadhirites were the next to feel the weight of his arm. In their case, indeed, some provocation had been given, as they had conspired to assassinate the prophet in a friendly interview. Protected by the walls of their castle (situated about three miles from Medina), they fought with such boldness and resolution, that Mohammed was fain to grant them an honorable capitulation.
The war of the nations interrupted for a time Mohammed’s operations against the Jews; but even on the day that the confederated nations had abandoned the siege of Medina, he marched against the tribe of Koraidha. A campaign of twenty-five days sufficed to compel their surrender at discretion. They fondly believed that their old allies of Medina would, by their intercession, preserve them at least from the extreme measure of Mohammed’s wrath;—vain hope: fanaticism had made rapid progress among the Ansars. A venerable elder of the Charegite tribe, to whose judgment they referred their case, pronounced the penalty of death against them for their hostility to Islam. To the number of seven hundred they were led in chains to the market-place of Medina, where a grave had been dug to receive them; into this they were forced to descend, and the apostle of God indulged his vengeful mind with the sight of their slaughter and burial.... Verily, verily, the blackest and most atrocious of crimes are committed in the name of God. A few years after the extirpation of the Koraidha, Mohammed marched, at the head of two hundred horse, and fourteen hundred foot, against the ancient city of Chaibar, the seat of the Jewish power in Arabia. Chaibar was protected by eight strong castles, which were successively reduced by the Moslems in sixteen weeks, not, however, without considerable loss on the part of the conquerors. After the fall of the castles, the city was forced to surrender (628). The inhabitants had their lives granted to them, and permission to dwell in the land, on condition that they should pay to the prophet, an annual tribute of the one-half of their revenue. But the chief of Chaibar was subjected to the most cruel tortures, to force from him a confession of his hidden treasures; and when the 100,000 pieces of gold, which had been concealed, were delivered up at last, he and several of the most notable of his people were mercilessly butchered in cold blood. It was in this campaign against Chaibar that Mohammed bestowed upon Ali, the surname of the “Lion of God,” gained by the slaughter of 150 Hebrews, who are stated to have fallen by the irresistible scymitar of Abu Taleb’s illustrious son.[30]
The Jewess Asma had offended the dignity of the prophet by some satirical strictures on his private life; he bribed a miserable blind Jew, named Omeir, to assassinate her. This wretched tool murdered the ill-fated woman in her chamber, and nailed her body to the floor; having some misgivings of conscience, he accosted the prophet next morning while at prayer, and asked him whether God might not, perhaps, punish the crime perpetrated? whereupon the pious apostle bade him to be of good cheer, as the killing of a Jew, even if not at all times a meritorious act, was, at least, a matter of perfect indifference to the Ruler of the Universe! In the same way he deputed assassins to slay the learned Jew, Eshref; in the name of God he sent them on their bloody errand! The venerable Abu Aas was murdered in his sleep at his bidding: the poor old man had reached his hundredth year, and might safely have been permitted to die in peace, but considerations of the kind weighed but little with the son of Abdallah; an insult to his apostolic dignity could only be washed off in the blood of the offender. But why sully our pages with the long list of private and public murders perpetrated by the command, or at the instigation of, this precious pretender to a divine mission, ... sufficient has been stated to illustrate the cruel and sanguinary disposition of the man.
Mohammed had left Mecca most reluctantly, and only when flight alone could preserve his life from the swords of his then all-powerful enemies. The thought to revisit as a conqueror, the city and the holy temple of the Kaaba, was ever present to his mind. When the Jews, by their disdainful rejection of his advances, had turned his friendship into implacable hatred, he changed the kebla of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca, clearly indicating thereby, that, whatever might be the merits of Medina, the holy city of the Kaaba stood still foremost in his affections. As soon as he had firmly established his empire over Medina, and some powerful tribes of the desert, and had destroyed or expelled the Jewish tribes of the Kainoka, the Nadhirites, and the Koraidha,[31] he projected a scheme for the conquest of Mecca, (towards the end of 627). Conscious that his power was not yet sufficiently great to prevail by force of arms, he craftily disguised his expedition against the city of his birth, in the form of a peaceful and pious pilgrimage. Seventy camels, chosen and bedecked for sacrifice, preceded the van of his host of 1400 picked men. The captives who fell into his hands, in his advance to the territory of the sacred city, were dismissed without ransom, to carry to the Koreish the solemn assurance of his peaceful intentions. All that the good man wanted, was to be permitted to enter the city, with his 1400 armed followers, to sacrifice the camels which he had brought with him for the purpose, and to perform the customary seven circumambulations round the Kaaba. Of course, had the Koreish conceded these points, the rest would have been a task of easy accomplishment. But the Koreish had had opportunities sufficient to know the crafty tongue and the false heart of the son of Abdallah. They encountered him, therefore, in the plain, within a day’s journey of the city, with such numbers and with such resolution, that he was fain to abandon his purpose for the time, and even to consent to the conclusion of a ten years’ truce, with the Koreish and their allies. In the treaty drawn up to that effect,[32] he, the infallible prophet of God, the favored mortal raised by the Divine will to an equality with the cherubim and seraphim in the heavenly hierarchy, the trusted leader who had solemnly promised his believing followers, a triumphal entry into the stronghold of the most formidable and most dreaded of the enemies of Islam,—was obliged even to waive the title of Apostle of God, and to figure as plain Mohammed Abul Kasem. Still the Koreish granted him, for the ensuing year, the privilege of entering the city unarmed and as a friend, and of remaining three days to accomplish the rites of the pilgrimage—a fatal mistake on their part, and which they might have foreseen one so crafty as Mohammed would turn to excellent account. For the time being, however, the authority of the pretended prophet of God was considerably shaken, and some of the newly converted Bedoween tribes showed symptoms of disaffection. The successful campaign against Chaibar revived the faith and courage of his followers, and restored the wavering loyalty of the wandering tribes.