After the conquest of Chaibar, Mohammed sent six embassies with letters to the neighbouring princes, calling upon them to embrace the religion of Islam: the seal of the letter bore the inscription, “Mohammed, the Apostle of God.” The Greek emperor, Heraclius, returning in triumph from the Persian war, received and entertained one of these ambassadors with great urbanity at Emesa. Kobad II., of Persia (Siroes)[33] tore the letter, and dismissed the envoy with ignominy. Mokawkas, the Byzantine governor of Memphis, a born Egyptian, and a Jacobite or Monophysite[34] in religion; and who, in the disorder of the Persian war, had aspired to independence, and thereby exposed himself to the resentment of Heraclius, declined, indeed, the proposal of a new religion, but accompanied his refusal with flattering compliments and with gifts; among other, two Coptic damsels, one of whom, Mary, became the favorite concubine of the prophet, to whom she bore a son, Ibrahim, who died, however, at the tender age of fifteen months. The King of Abyssinia also returned a polite answer. But Haris, governor of Damascus, threatened war upon the presumptuous Arabian; and Amru, prince of Gassan, a vassal of the Byzantine emperor, put the envoy to death, for which outrage Mohammed sent afterwards an army into Syria, with what results we shall see hereafter.
According to the stipulations of the treaty of Hodaibeh, Mohammed was permitted to perform, towards the end of 628, at the head of a body of pious pilgrims, his three days’ devotion in the Kaaba; the Koreish retiring, meanwhile, to the hills. After the customary sacrifice, he evacuated the city on the fourth day; but in this short space of time, he had succeeded in sowing the seeds of division between the hostile chiefs, and to gain over to his cause Kaled and Amrou, or Amru, the future conquerors of Syria and Egypt. The interdiction of wine, and of dice and lotteries, falls in this period.
It was after the return from this pilgrimage, that he sent an army of 3000 Moslems against Amru, prince of Gassan, and the Greeks. The army was led by Zeid, Mohammed’s freedman and one of his earliest disciples. At Muta, three days’ journey from Jerusalem, they met the Gassanides and the Greeks: a fierce and bloody battle ensued; Zeid fell fighting in the foremost ranks; the holy banner, which escaped from his relaxing grasp, was seized by Jaafar, the leader appointed by Mohammed to succeed Zeid, in the event of the decease of the latter. Jaafar’s right hand was severed from his body by the sword of a Roman soldier; he shifted the standard to the left hand: this met the same fate; he embraced the holy banner with the bleeding stumps, and thus upheld it, till the tide of life ebbed away from fifty wounds. The vacant place was as worthily filled by Abdallah, the second successor appointed by the prophet in case of accident. He also fell, transfixed by the lance of a Roman. The battle was lost, the flower of the Moslem host annihilated, and the ambitions dreams of empire were dispelled at the very time when they seemed to promise fairest,—had not Kaled, the recent convert of Mecca, at this critical juncture, rescued the falling standard, and assumed the command, with the same bravery as his predecessors, but with still greater prowess, and with greater success. Nine swords were broken in his hand; and every enemy that dared to approach him, was made to bite the dust by his invincible arm. Night put an end to the contest: in the nocturnal council of the camp, Kaled was chosen, or rather confirmed, leader of the gallant band of warriors, who had survived the carnage of the day. Death had been fearfully busy in the ranks of the Moslems; and the Greeks, though awed by the valor of Kaled, had still an immense superiority of number in their favor. Kaled wisely resolved, therefore, to save the wreck of his forces by a skilful retreat. His admirable combinations, and the dread inspired by his prowess, rescued the host of the faithful believers of Islam from all but certain destruction; and the well-earned gratitude of the prophet bestowed upon the hero of Muta, the glorious appellation of the “Sword of God,” a name destined after to ring many a time and oft as the knell of doom in the ears of the affrighted Christians.
Mohammed had never ceased to meditate the conquest of Mecca, and his power was now, indeed, sufficiently great and solid to promise an easy accomplishment of this, the darling object of his ambition; but the ten years’ truce seemed an obstacle which it would not be easy to surmount. Notwithstanding, however, he silently prepared the means to carry his plans against the city of his birth into execution, should a favorable opportunity offer. The reverse which his forces had suffered at Muta, impelled the Koreish to furnish him with the desired pretext; they attacked one of the tribes confederated with Mohammed. Ten thousand soldiers were speedily gathered round the banner of the prophet, and led by him against the offending city. A rapid and secret march brought them almost within sight of Mecca, before the Koreish had the least notion of their approach. Unprepared as they were, it would have been sheer madness to contend against the overwhelming forces which now encompassed the city of the Kaaba: they resolved therefore to throw themselves upon the clemency of their triumphant exile. On the 11th of January, 630, the haughty chief of the house of Ommiyah presented the keys of the city; and confessed, under the scymitar of Omar, that the son of Abdallah was the apostle of the true God. The patriotic attachment which Mohammed unquestionably bore the city of his birth, and political considerations of a high order, stayed the avenging hand of the victorious outcast. Kaled had, indeed, slain twenty-eight of the inhabitants, ere the potent command of the prophet to spare the vanquished, could restrain his ruthless arm; but Mohammed blamed the cruelty of his lieutenant, and, though he proscribed eleven men and six women, few only were put to death by him. Among these was Abdolusa, who, after having embraced the faith of Islam, had relapsed into idolatry. Abdallah, once the secretary of Mohammed, and who had been employed by him to note down the fragmentary revelations imparted by Gabriel, had a narrow escape. The clear-sighted man had seen through the shallow imposture palmed upon the people by the pretended apostle; and he had imprudently boasted, that he also might claim the name and rank of a prophet, considering that he had it in his power to change, or to suppress, the holy revelations dictated to him by Mohammed. To escape the vengeance of his offended master, he had fled to Mecca, where he had, however, still continued to provoke his resentment by exposing and ridiculing his ignorance. When Mecca was taken, Abdallah fell prostrate at the feet of Mohammed, and implored his pardon. Othman, Abdallah’s foster-brother, entreated the prophet to spare the life of the humble penitent, a request which was at last most reluctantly granted, Mohammed declaring that he had so long hesitated, to allow time for some zealous disciple to strike the kneeling apostate dead at his feet.[35] The poet, Huires, paid the penalty of his satires on the Apostle of God: but Soheir more wisely purchased, not only forgiveness, but a rich reward in the bargain, by one of the grossest and most extravagant pieces of adulation that ever proceeded even from an Oriental pen.
The Koreish and the other inhabitants of Mecca, professed the religion of Islam, and acknowledged the temporal and spiritual supremacy of the prophet. The 360 idols of the Kaaba were ignominiously broken; Mohammed assisting with his own hands, in the work of destruction, nay, even lending his august shoulders for Ali to mount upon, to accomplish the overthrow of some idols placed a little above ordinary reach. This meritorious feat was performed on a Friday; which day was, therefore, henceforward appointed by the prophet as the holy day of Islam.
But it was by no means the intention of Mohammed to despoil the city of his birth, of the lucrative trade in religion to which it had hitherto been mainly indebted for its pre-eminence among the cities of Arabia. The people of Mecca were agreeably disappointed, when they beheld the Prophet of God solemnly consecrating again the purified Kaaba, and performing the customary circumambulations and sacrifices as of old. They were readily reconciled to the belief in a sole Deity, since their astute townsman assigned a local habitation on earth to the idea of the God whom he commanded them and the nations of the world to worship, and placed this habitation within the walls of their own city. Even the black stone was not forgotten by the crafty politician: his reverential touch cleansed it from the pollution of ages of idolatry, and restored it to the pristine purity and holiness of Gabriel’s celestial gift to Abraham; and to crown all, he still heightened the sanctity of the holy city, by enacting a perpetual law that no unbeliever should ever dare to set his foot within its sacred precincts.
The conquest of Mecca secured Mohammed the allegiance of many of the Bedoween tribes, who, troubling themselves but little about religious opinions and controversies, readily gave their adhesion to the cause which the gods seemed to prosper. But some of the most important tribes of Hejaz, and more especially the people of Tayef, persisted in their idolatry, and a great confederacy was formed among them to break the power of Mohammed. The prophet resolved to meet the threatening danger; he collected a host of 12,000 men, well-armed and well-appointed; the confederates had not one-half the number to oppose him. But the skilful tactics of the pagans, and the overweening confidence of the Mussulmans, brought the apostle and his new faith to the verge of ruin. Having incautiously descended into the valley of Honain, the Moslems were suddenly attacked on all sides by the archers and slingers of the enemy, who occupied the heights; the ranks of the faithful were thrown into confusion by the unexpected and fierce onset of the foe; and the stoutest hearts among them quailed, when they saw themselves caught as in a net. The Koreish secretly rejoiced at the impending destruction of their conquerors, and even prepared to go over to the enemy. All seemed lost;—despairing of victory, the prophet, seeking a glorious death, urged his white mule against the wall of spears that encompassed him: his faithful followers dragged him back, and covered him with their persons from the thrusts and darts aimed at his breast. Three of these devoted followers fell dead at his feet;—but the moment of weak despair was past, and soon the thunder of his voice was heard again, reanimating the sinking courage of the Moslems, and striking terror into the hearts of the idolators. The Koreish forgot their treacherous intentions; the flying Mussulmans returned from all sides to the holy standard; and the attacks of the enemy were now everywhere vigorously repulsed. Defeat was changed into victory, and a merciless slaughter of the conquered and flying pagans, avenged the temporary disgrace of the followers of Islam. From the field of Honain, Mohammed marched without delay to Tayef, the centre and stronghold of the confederacy. He laid siege to that fortress; but the desperate valor of the inhabitants defeated all his efforts to effect its reduction; and after twenty days spent before it, he deemed it the wisest course to rest satisfied for the time with the victory of Honain, and not to court the chances of an inglorious defeat. He, therefore, raised the siege, and marched back to Mecca. In his operations against Tayef, he gave an instance of how cheap he held his own laws and precepts, where they happened to clash with his interests: he ordered the extirpation of all the fruit trees in the fertile lands round the city.
In the division of the rich spoils of the expedition of Honain, he acted with consummate skill. Instead of excluding the Koreish from their share, to punish them for their ambiguous conduct during the campaign, he bestowed double measure upon them; the most disaffected of them all, Abu Sophian, being presented with no less than three hundred camels and twenty ounces of silver: no wonder, then, that that rapacious chief and his followers should have, henceforth, become sincere adherents to so profitable a creed. The old companions in arms of the prophet were reconciled to this manifest injustice in the distribution of the spoil, by artful flatteries and promises of heavenly rewards: his own share of the plunder (one-fifth) he assigned to the soldiers.[36]
Although he had failed to reduce Tayef, yet by the extirpation of the fruit trees he had struck a severe blow against the people of that city; the fortifications had been considerably injured by the battering rams and the mining operations, so that there was ample reason to dread the event of a renewal of the siege. The people of Tayef resolved, therefore, to sue for peace; their deputies endeavoured to obtain favorable conditions, and, at least, the toleration of their ancient worship, though even only for a short period. Mohammed would not concede them even one day; at last they simply entreated to be excused from the obligation of prayer to the God of Islam; in vain: Mohammed was inexorable, and Tayef at length submitted to the harsh conditions imposed by the prophet. The idols were broken, their temples demolished, and all the tribes of Hejaz acknowledged the supreme rule of the son of Abdallah. The ruler of Bahrein, the King of Oman, and the King of the Beni Gassan, in Syria, confessed the God of Mohammed, and submitted to the sway of the prophet. Yemen also, and the rest of the peninsula, was reduced to obedience by his victorious lieutenants, and the ambassadors who knelt before the throne of Medina, (631, hence called the year of the embassies), were, in the words of the Arabian proverb, “as numerous as the dates that fall from the palm-tree in the season of ripeness.”
Absolute master of the whole of Arabia, the son of Abdallah resolved to subject Syria also to his sway; he solemnly declared war against the Empire of the East, and summoned the faithful to the holy standard. But the prospect of the difficulties and hardships of a march through the desert, during the intolerable heat of the summer, and, perhaps also, the recollection of Muta, discouraged the Moslems; and the most urgent solicitations of the apostle were disregarded, or met by more or less cogent excuses. Still the great champions of the faith, Ali, Omar, Othman, Kaled, Amru, Abu Bekr, Abu Obeidah, Abbas,[37] and many others, attended by trains of devoted followers, gathered round the prophet, and enabled him thus to take the field, at the head of ten thousand horse and twenty thousand foot.[38] After one of the most distressing marches through the desert, the Moslem host was compelled to halt midway near Tabuc, ten days’ journey from Medina and Damascus. The hardships endured had considerably cooled the ardor of the faithful, and wisely declining to engage the disciplined forces of the Eastern empire with his wearied and dispirited followers, Mohammed contented himself with inviting the Greek Emperor once more to embrace his religion, and retired to Arabia; leaving a body of picked men, under the command of the intrepid Kaled, to prosecute the war. The valor and activity of that leader secured the submission of the tribes and cities from the Euphrates to Ailah, at the head of the Red Sea. Mohammed returned to Medina, where he pronounced a sentence of excommunication for fifty days against those who had been the most disobedient to his call. He then prepared for a great pilgrimage to Mecca, which he accomplished in the early part of 632, attended by 60,000 Moslems.[39] In this, his last visit to the city of his birth, he gave a great number of laws and precepts; and, among others, the interdiction of the private revenge of murder and other injuries.