Europe in the Middle Ages

by Ierne L. Plunket

The visions, or trances, during which Mahomet received his messages, afterwards collected in the sacred book, the Koran, are thought by many to have been epileptic fits. His face would turn livid and he would cover himself with a blanket, emerging at last exhausted to deliver some command or exhortation. Later it would seem that he could produce this state of insensibility at will and without much effort, whenever questions were asked, indeed, in answering which he required divine guidance. Much of the teaching in the Koran was based, like Judaism or Christianity, on far higher ideals than the fetish worship of the Arabs: it emphasized such things as the duty of almsgiving, the discipline that comes of fasting, the necessity of personal cleanliness, while it forbade the use of wine, declaring drunkenness a crime.

With regard to the position of women the Koran could show nothing of the chivalry that was to develop in Christendom through the respect felt by Christians for the mother of Christ and for the many women martyrs and saints who suffered during the early persecutions. Moslems were allowed by the Koran to have four wives (Mahomet permitted himself ten), and these might be divorced at their husband’s pleasure without any corresponding right on their part. On the other hand the power of holding property before denied was now secured to women, and the murder of female children that had been a practice in the peninsula was sternly abolished.

As the years passed more and more ‘Surahs’, or chapters, were added to the Koran, but at first the Prophet’s messages were few and appealed only to the poor and humble. When the Meccans, told by Abu Bakr that Mahomet was a prophet, came to demand a miracle as proof, he declared that there could be no greater miracle than the words he uttered; but this to the prosperous merchants seemed merely crazy nonsense. When he went farther, and, acting on what he declared was Allah’s revelation, destroyed some of the local idols, contempt changed to anger; for the inhabitants argued that if ‘Ka’bah’ ceased to be a sanctuary their trade with the pilgrims who usually came to Mecca would cease.

For more than eight years, while the Prophet maintained his unpopular mission, his poorer followers were stoned and beaten, and he himself shunned. Perhaps it seems odd that in such a barbarous community he was not killed; but though Arabia possessed no government in any modern sense, yet a system of tribal law existed that went far towards preventing promiscuous murder. Each man of any importance belonged to a tribe that he was bound to support with his sword, and that in turn was responsible for his life. If he were slain the tribe would exact vengeance or demand ‘blood money’ from the murderer. Now the head of Mahomet’s tribe was Abu Talib, his uncle, and, though the old man refused to accept his nephew as a prophet, he would not allow him to be molested.

In spite of persecution the number of believers in Mahomet’s doctrines grew, and when some of those who had been driven out of the city took refuge with the Christian King of Abyssinia and were treated by him with greater kindness than the pagan Arabs, the Meccans at home became so much alarmed that they adopted a new policy of aggression. Henceforward both Mahomet and his followers, the hated ‘Moslems’, or ‘heathen’ as they were nicknamed in the Syriac tongue, were to be outlaws, and no one might trade with them or give them food.

In an undisciplined community like an Arabian town such an order would not be strictly kept, and for three years Mahomet was able to defy the ban, but every day his position grew more precarious and the sufferings of his followers from hunger and poverty increased. During this time too both Khadijah and Abu Talib died, and the Prophet, almost overwhelmed with his misfortunes, was only kept from doubting his mission by the faith and loyalty of those who would not desert him.

Weary of trying to convert Mecca he sent messengers through Arabia to find if there were any tribe that would welcome a prophet, and at last he received an invitation to go to Yathrib. This was a larger town than Mecca, farther to the north, and was populated mainly by Jewish tribes who hated the Arabian idol-worshippers and welcomed the idea of a teacher whose views were based largely on Jewish traditions.

The Hijrah

In 622, therefore, Mahomet and his followers fled secretly from Mecca to Yathrib, later called Medinah or ‘the city of the Prophet’; and this date of the ‘Hijrah’ or ‘Flight’, when the new religion broke definitely with old Arab traditions, was taken as the first year of the Moslem calendar, just as Christians reckon their time from the birth of Christ. Here in Medinah was built the first mosque, or temple of the new faith, a faith christened by its believers Islam, a word meaning ‘surrender’, for in surrender to Allah and to the will of his Prophet lay the way of salvation to the Moslem Garden of Paradise.

So beautiful to the Arab mind were the very material luxuries and pleasures with which Mahomet entranced the imagination of believers that in later years his soldiers would fling themselves recklessly against their enemies’ spears in order to gain Paradise the quicker. The alternative for the unbeliever was Hell, the everlasting fires of the Old Testament that so terrified the minds of mediaeval Christians; and between Paradise and Hell there was no middle way.