But Mohammed and his followers had to be discredited and recourse was had to foul means as well as fair. Not satisfied with making them favor what they always consistently denounced, trouvères and chroniclers invented a most cruel legend regarding the death of the Prophet. Notwithstanding the concordant and unquestioned verdict of history respecting the demise of Mohammed, the pilgrim Richard, author of the chanson La Conquête de Jerusalem, fabricates the odious fable that the founder of Islam was devoured by swine while helplessly inebriated.[231] And this, despite the well-known fact that Mohammed was during his entire reforming career as much opposed to the use of intoxicating drinks as he was to the use of images! Nevertheless this alleged disgraceful end of the Prophet is assigned by the pilgrim Richard and by Guibert de Nogent in his “Dei Gesta per Francos” as the reason why Mohammedans never eat pork![232]
I call special attention to the erroneous notions regarding Mohammed and Islam which pervade the pages of the chansons de geste, as they are samples of other errors equally preposterous regarding a people who should have been better understood, and as they help to explain the origin of many similar misconceptions which, notwithstanding all that has been said and written to the contrary, still persist, among large masses of people, in all their original force and crudeness.
Even long after the time of the trouvères there were not wanting historians and divines who were willing to repeat the silly legends of the chansons de geste whenever they thought they would thereby give point to their attacks on the Koran or the Prophet. Thus, among the leaders of the Reformation, the distinguished Orientalist, Bibliander, seriously institutes a comparison between Mohammed and the Devil. Melancthon declared him to be either Gog or Magog, if not both together.[233]
Voltaire, in writing of the Koran, of which he had as superficial an acquaintance as of many other things which engaged his flippant and caustic pen, declared it to be “Ce livre unintelligible qui fait fremir le sens commun à chaque page”—that unintelligible book which makes common sense shudder at every page. And, like many writers before and since his time, he was fully aware that his fictions were totally at variance with history. But, as has been well expressed by Hurgronje, “he wanted to put before the public an armed Tartuffe and thought he might lay the part upon Mohammed.”[234]
Others again, like many writers of our own day, had a political as well as a religious object in their attacks upon Islam. For, under pretense of waging war against the nefarious tenets and practices of Moslemism, they secretly had in view an assault on the Turkish Empire, or, as a noted Swiss Orientalist long ago declared, all their efforts were really directed in oppugnationem Mahometanæ perfidiæ et Turcici regni.[235]
From the days of the Crusaders until the present there has been no cessation of the campaign of vilification of everything Mohammedan as there has for long been no abatement in political hostility on the part of certain nations of Europe against everything Ottoman. Centuries ago the cry was “Pestem hanc ferro et flamma ab orbe depellendam esse”—the pest of Islam must be driven from the earth by fire and sword. To-day the war cry is in Gladstonian phrase, “The Turk must, bag and baggage, get out of Europe.” How much of truth and how much of falsehood there have been in the most recent outcries against the Moslems, especially against those living in the Ottoman Empire, will be determined only when the historian shall be free from the violent passions and the selfish interests and the age-long antipathies which blind the writers of the present as they have blinded those of the past.
In the preface to his monumental work on the Koran, the erudite Padre Lodovico Marracci laments the prevailing ignorance of his time regarding everything Mohammedan and the paucity of books of value respecting the religion and practices of so large a part of mankind as the adherents of Islam.
Although [he writes] some have written learnedly and solidly on these subjects, there is nevertheless no concealing the fact that others, through ignorance of things Saracen, often omit the truth and publish fictitious and fabulous things, which excite the laughter of the Mohammedans and cause them to become more obstinate in their error.[236]
But, notwithstanding Marracci’s eloquent plea for a more thorough study of Islam, his words fell, for the most part, on deaf ears.[237] It was not until our own epoch that a critical investigation of the Koran was begun and that a really impartial inquiry into the life of Mohammed was seriously undertaken. Men were still in doubt as to the true character of the Arabian reformer and were still undecided as to whether he was
Hero, impostor, fanatic, priest or sage.