A Literary History of the Arabs

by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

"Many citizens of Medína, however, were not so well disposed towards Muḥammad, and neither acknowledged him as a Prophet The Hypocrites. nor would submit to him as their Ruler; but since they durst not come forward against him openly on account of the multitude of his enthusiastic adherents, they met him with a passive resistance which more than once thwarted his plans, their influence was so great that he, on his part, did not venture to take decisive measures against them, and sometimes even found it necessary to give way."[334]

These are the Hypocrites whom Muḥammad describes in the following verses of the Koran:—

THE SÚRA OF THE HEIFER (II).

(7) And there are those among men who say, 'We believe in God and in the Last Day'; but they do not believe. (8) They would deceive God and those who do believe; but they deceive only themselves and they do not perceive. (9) In their hearts is a sickness, and God has made them still more sick, and for them is grievous woe because they lied.[335]

Their leader, ‘Abdulláh b. Ubayy, an able man but of weak character, was no match for Muḥammad, whom he and his partisans only irritated, without ever becoming really dangerous.

The Jews, on the other hand, gave the Prophet serious trouble. At first he cherished high hopes that they would The Jews. accept the new Revelation which he brought to them, and which he maintained to be the original Word of God as it was formerly revealed to Abraham and Moses; but when the Jews, perceiving the absurdity of this idea, plied him with all sorts of questions and made merry over his ignorance, Muḥammad, keenly alive to the damaging effect of the criticism to which he had exposed himself, turned upon his tormentors, and roundly accused them of having falsified and corrupted their Holy Books. Henceforth he pursued them with a deadly hatred against which their political disunion rendered them helpless. A few sought refuge in Islam; the rest were either slaughtered or driven into exile.

It is impossible to detail here the successive steps by which Muḥammad in the course of a few years overcame all opposition and established the supremacy of Islam from one end of Arabia to the other. I shall notice the outstanding events very briefly in order to make room for matters which are more nearly connected with the subject of this History.

Muḥammad's first care was to reconcile the desperate factions within the city and to introduce law and order Beginnings of the Moslem State. among the heterogeneous elements which have been described. "He drew up in writing a charter between the Emigrants and the Helpers, in which charter he embodied a covenant with the Jews, confirming them in the exercise of their religion and in the possession of their properties, imposing upon them certain obligations, and granting to them certain rights."[336] This remarkable document is extant in Ibn Hishám's Biography of Muḥammad, pp. 341-344. Its contents have been analysed in masterly fashion by Wellhausen,[337] who observes with justice that it was no solemn covenant, accepted and duly ratified by representatives of the parties concerned, but merely a decree of Muḥammad based upon conditions already existing which had developed since his arrival in Medína. At the same time no one can study it without being impressed by the political genius of its author. Ostensibly a cautious and tactful reform, it was in reality a revolution. Muḥammad durst not strike openly at the independence of the tribes, but he destroyed it, in effect, by shifting the centre of power from the tribe to the community; and although the community included Jews and pagans as well as Moslems, he fully recognised, what his opponents failed to foresee, that the Moslems were the active, and must soon be the predominant, partners in the newly founded State.

All was now ripe for the inevitable struggle with the Quraysh, and God revealed to His Apostle several verses of the Koran in which the Faithful are commanded to wage a Holy War against them: "Permission is given to those who fight because they have been wronged,—and verily God to help them has the might,—who have been driven forth from their homes undeservedly, only for that they said, 'Our Lord is God'" (xxii, 40-41). "Kill them wherever ye find them, and drive them out from whence they drive you out" (ii, 187). "Fight them that there be no sedition and that the religion may be God's" (ii, 189). In January, 624 a.d., the Moslems, some three hundred strong, won a glorious victory at Badr over a greatly superior force which had marched Battle of Badr, January, 624 a.d. out from Mecca to relieve a rich caravan that Muḥammad threatened to cut off. The Quraysh fought bravely, but were borne down by the irresistible onset of men who had learned discipline in the mosque and looked upon death as a sure passport to Paradise. Of the Moslems only fourteen fell; the Quraysh lost forty-nine killed and about the same number of prisoners. But the importance of Muḥammad's success cannot be measured by the material damage which he inflicted. Considering the momentous issues involved, we must allow that Badr, like Marathon, is one of the greatest and most memorable battles in all history. Here, at last, was the miracle which the Prophet's enemies demanded of him: "Ye have had a sign in the two parties who met; one party fighting in the way of God, the other misbelieving; these saw twice the same number as themselves to the eyesight, for God aids with His help those whom He pleases. Verily in that is a lesson for those who have perception" (Kor. iii, 11). And again, "Ye slew them not, but God slew them" (Kor. viii, 17). The victory of Badr turned all eyes upon Muḥammad. However little the Arabs cared for his religion, they could not but respect the man who had humbled the lords of Mecca. He was now a power in the land— "Muḥammad, King of the Ḥijáz."[338] In Medína his cause flourished mightily. The zealots were confirmed in their faith, the waverers convinced, the disaffected overawed. He sustained a serious, though temporary, check in the following year at Uḥud, where a Moslem army was routed Battle of Uḥud, 625 a.d. by the Quraysh under Abú Sufyán, but the victors were satisfied with having taken vengeance for Badr and made no attempt to follow up their advantage; while Muḥammad, never resting on his laurels, never losing sight of the goal, proceeded with remorseless calculation to crush his adversaries one after the other, until in January, 630 a.d., the Meccans themselves, seeing the futility of further resistance, opened their gates to the Submission of Mecca, 630 a.d. Prophet and acknowledged the omnipotence of Allah. The submission of the Holy City left Muḥammad without a rival in Arabia. His work was almost done. Deputations from the Bedouin tribes poured into Medína, offering allegiance to the conqueror of the Quraysh, and reluctantly subscribing to a religion in which they saw nothing so agreeable as the prospect of plundering its enemies.

Muḥammad died, after a brief illness, on the 8th of June, 632 a.d. He was succeeded as head of the Moslem community Death of Muḥammad, 632 a.d. by his old friend and ever-loyal supporter, Abú Bakr, who thus became the first Khalífa, or Caliph. It only remains to take up our survey of the Koran, which we have carried down to the close of the Meccan period, and to indicate the character and contents of the Revelation during the subsequent decade.