And Damsels with swelling bosoms, of an equal age,
And a full cup.”
He continued to dilate on this theme, rhyming the heavenly benefactions in pairs; but when he tried to include the angelic young ladies in the divine catalogue, their number utterly ruined his rigid metrical scheme, and he was therefore compelled to expatiate on their charms in prose: “lovely large-eyed girls resembling pearls hidden in their shells, a reward for that which the faithful have wrought.... We have made them virgins, fascinating, of an equal age.” While thus innocently occupied, the faithful were to be further entertained by peering over the celestial battlements and observing the tortures of the unbelievers, who would be vainly trying to quench their thirst by drinking boiling water. “This shall be your entertainment on the Day of reckoning!” promises the Koran.
“Wherefore one day the Faithful shall laugh the Unbelievers to scorn,
Lying upon couches, they shall behold them in Hell.”
Spiritual inducements of this sort, not to mention the mundane rewards soon to be offered to the pious and the swift earthly doom promised for backsliders, did not fail in their effect. And still, despite the accessions to Islam, the Prophet as late as 615 was subject to public insult. The rigorous ban on bloodshed within tribes saved him from serious personal danger, but he nevertheless endured some very scurrilous abuse; his enemies would throw offensive objects at his person, or on his hearth while he was cooking his simple meals. One day they tossed in the entrails of a goat, and Mohammed, putting the refuse on a stick, carried it to the door and shouted: “Ye children of Abd Menaf! What sort of good neighborhood is this?” While at his devotions near the window, he was at times forced to crouch beneath a projecting stone to escape the missiles of his foes. But the prestige of his old protector, Abu Talib, was still very strong and, despite his regrettable adherence to the ancient faith, he staunchly protected his incomprehensible nephew from the Koreish. Once, it is true, Abu Talib’s patience was shaken, and he asked Mohammed not to cast upon him “a burden heavier than I can bear.” The Prophet, perturbed by his uncle’s apparent desertion and by the prospect of his own consequent loss of protection, burst out crying and started to leave the room. Then the aged ruler was so moved that he cried: “Son of my brother, come back! And now depart in peace! and say whatsoever thou wilt. For, by the Lord of the Kaba, I will not, in any wise, give thee up for ever.”
III
Notwithstanding the ubiquitous respect for Abu Talib and the equally widespread fear of Omar and Hamza, the Koreishite hatred of Mohammed became steadily more menacing. The lowborn fakir-Prophet might be a person of despicable origin who mouthed a prodigious amount of insane drivel, but he had certainly succeeded in kicking up a highly exasperating rumpus. The devil of it was that the pernicious fellow so skillfully blended his own revelations with Arabic and Jewish traditions, whose validity nobody impugned, that the Koreish could not denounce the one without laying themselves open to the charge of reviling the other. He appeared to be wholly impervious, not to say sublimely indifferent, to the appeal of common sense; for when the Koreish charged that his Suras were either fabricated by himself or dictated by abler assistants, he would employ the most underhanded means to disprove the accusation. When they suggested that, inasmuch as he identified himself with the prophets of old, he ought to trot out a few miracles, he unwisely obliged them by declaring that the sky would fall upon their impenitent heads. He realized his mistake, however, when they promptly demanded that he should fix a date for the catastrophe; and he then cleverly extricated himself from his predicament by maintaining that his presence in the holy city had averted the disaster. But Mohammed had learnt his lesson, and thereafter he never tampered with miracles—a fact that, perhaps more than any other, indicates his superiority over preceding prophets.
The Koreish, however, had not yet finished with him, and, as they redoubled their assaults, he met them in various ways. When one of them affirmed that the Prophet was a crazy man—“One taught by others, a Madman!”—under the influence of the dreadful Jinn, he retaliated by accusing his accuser of being a bastard who could not write, who was head over heels in debt, and who furthermore deserved a thump on the nose. When they worsted him in debate, he first lost his temper and then announced that he had been divinely commanded not to argue with unbelievers—for often, as Mohammed preached to his followers or fulminated against his antagonists, his cheeks would blaze and his voice would become shrill, and on one occasion he is said to have thrown dust on the heads of his opponents. When another Koreishite accepted the Prophet’s rash challenge to a poetic duel to test the excellence of the Koran, Mohammed could do nothing but squirm in discomfiture; but he amply avenged himself, after the battle of Bedr, by ordering the summary execution of the despicable poet. When they pointed out the many errors of fact that appeared in the Koran, and sneered at his assertion that the revelation was “in pure Arabic,” Mohammed at first replied that Allah must know best—“He hath revealed it who knoweth that which is hidden in heaven and in earth: He is forgiving and merciful”—but, when he was informed that his answer, though doubtless inspired, was hardly to the point, he attempted to dazzle everybody by producing a new Sura that nobody, not even himself, could comprehend. For Mohammed invariably trusted in Suras rather than syllogisms, and wisely quoted no authority save Allah.
If, however, he was safe from direct assault, the more humble of his auxiliaries—the slaves, strangers and lower classes—who lacked the protection of family ties, were not so fortunate. They were apprehended, beaten and jailed, or exposed to the terrific heat of the sun. Under torments of this sort, some of them naturally recanted—a contingency that necessitated swift measures on the part of Allah. Mohammed, sincerely moved by their sufferings, announced that, even though they dissembled to escape torture, Allah was nevertheless All-Merciful and Forgiving if their hearts were right; and a Sura forthwith appeared that poured divine wrath on every backslider, “excepting him who is forcibly compelled thereto, his heart remaining steadfast in the faith.” One day the Prophet met an adherent who was weeping from the anguish of his wounds, and asked what the trouble was. “Evil, O Prophet! They would not let me go until I had abused thee, and spoken well of their gods.” “But how dost thou find thine own heart?” “Secure and steadfast in the faith.” “Then if they repeat their cruelty, repeat thou also thy words,” advised Mohammed. Yet, in spite of this heavenly leniency, incessant persecution continued to diminish his little band, and he therefore counselled those who were defenseless to take refuge in Abyssinia. Some of them did so, but still the odious oppression continued.