Then looking up to heaven he cried, “O Lord, I have delivered my message and fulfilled my mission.” And all the multitude answered, “Yea, verily hast thou!”—“O Lord, I beseech thee, bear Thou witness to it!” and, like Moses, he lifted up his hands and blessed the people. Three months more and Mohammad was dead,—a.h. 11, a.d. 632.
And when it was noised abroad that the prophet was dead, Omar, the fiery-hearted, the Simon Peter of Islām, rushed among the people and fiercely told them they lied; it could not be true. And Abu-Bekr came and said, “Ye people! he that hath worshipped Mohammad, let him know that Mohammad is dead; but he that hath worshipped God, that the Lord liveth and doth not die.”
The altered circumstances of Mohammad’s life at Medina produced a corresponding change in his speeches. They are now not so much exhortations to unbelievers as directions and encouragements to the faithful; and instead of being one complete oration, as most of the early speeches are, they are a collection of isolated “rulings” on various points of conduct. The prophet’s house at Medina became a court of appeal for the whole body of Muslims. They came to him with all their difficulties,—domestic, social, political, religious,—and asked for direction. Then Mohammad said in few words what he thought right and just; and these decisions have been treated as laws binding upon the Mohammadan world for all time. It is fortunate that Mohammad was a man of sound common sense, or the law of Islām would be a preposterous medley. As it is, it seems clear that the prophet never wished to lay down a code of law, and, instead of volunteering rules of conduct and ritual, used to wait to have them extorted from him by questioning. “God wishes to make things easy for you,” he says, “for man was created weak.” He seems to have distrusted himself as a lawgiver, for there is a tradition which relates a speech of his in which he cautions the people against taking his decision on worldly affairs as infallible. When he speaks of the things of God he is to be obeyed; but when he deals with human affairs he is only a man like those about him. He was contented to leave the ordinary Arab customs in force except when they were manifestly unjust. The truth is that, as in the Mekka speeches so in those of Medina, the legal and dogmatic element is curiously small. The greater part of those long chapters uttered in fragments at Medina, and then pieced together haphazard by the prophet’s amanuenses, consists of diatribes against the Jews and hypocrites, reflections on the conduct of the allies in battle, encouragement after defeat, exhortations as to the future, besides a great deal of personal matter—regulations of the prophet’s harem, vindications of his own or his wives’ conduct,—and similar things of a temporary and local interest. Though the style is monotonous and longwinded, like the third Mekka period, there are still flashes of the old eloquence, though perhaps it is less spontaneous than of old, such as we hear in the chapter of Light—
God is the light of the heavens and the earth; his light is as a niche in which is a lamp, and the lamp in a glass; the glass is as it were a glittering star: it is lit from a blessed tree, an olive neither of the east nor of the west, the oil thereof would well-nigh shine though no fire touched it—light upon light—God guideth to His light whom He pleaseth.
In the houses God hath suffered to be raised, for His name to be commemorated therein, men magnify Him at morn and eve:
Men whom neither merchandise nor trafficking divert from remembering God and being instant in prayer and giving alms, fearing a day when hearts and eyes shall quiver;
That God may recompense them for the best that they have wrought, and give them increase of His grace; for God maketh provision for whom He pleaseth without count.
But those who disbelieve are like a vapour in a plain: the thirsty thinketh it water, till, when he cometh to it, he findeth nothing; but he findeth God with him; and He will settle his account, for God is quick at reckoning:—
Or like black night on a deep sea, which wave above wave doth cover, and cloud over wave, gloom upon gloom,—when one putteth out his hand he can scarcely see it; for to whom God giveth not light, he hath no light.