Kinana’s notoriously beautiful wife, the seventeen-year-old Safiya, and her companion were then fetched up to the Prophet; the companion, seeing the headless trunk, beat her face and howled aloud. “Take that she-devil hence!” snapped Mohammed; but he tenderly folded his mantle around Safiya’s head to screen her from the sight, for he had determined to marry her. His approaching nuptials, however, were nearly ruined by Zeinab, a Jewess who had lost all her male relatives and her husband on that fateful day. She poisoned a kid, tastily garnished it, and then placed it before him, smiling and coaxing him to eat. Having distributed the least desirable parts among his fellows, he bit off a choice mouthful from the shoulder; but barely had his teeth closed on it when he cried, “Hold! surely this shoulder hath been poisoned,” and indecorously spat it out. One man who had partaken of the meat died, and Mohammed himself is reputed to have been afflicted with such violent pains that he was repeatedly cupped between the shoulders; yet within a short time he was observed to disappear with the fickle-hearted and coyly reluctant Safiya behind the bridal tent.
Thus the former Meccan merchant and exile passed from conquest to conquest. He was now not only a prophet—plenty of contemporary men professed a similarly exclusive claim to that commonplace title—but the recognized dictator over Medina and an extensive range of contingent territory; furthermore, the terror inspired by the mere mention of his name had penetrated to the most distant stretches of Arabia, and was beginning to arouse sinister forebodings in adjacent nations. Had his relatively unbroken succession of victories made him an inexorably ruthless tyrant whose actions were wholly prompted by an insatiable ambition, or had they but reaffirmed his ceaselessly reiterated claim that he was only plastic clay in Allah’s hand? Did he delight to glut himself in wanton bloodshed, or, in the inmost regions of his spirit, did he believe that the punishments meted out upon his enemies had actually been self-inflicted inasmuch as they had refused to accept the one true God? “And He hath caused to descend from their strongholds the Jews.... And He struck terror into their hearts. A part ye slaughtered, and a part ye took into captivity. And He hath made you to inherit their land, and their habitations, and their wealth, and a land which ye had not trodden upon; and God is over all things powerful.... I am the strongest, therefore Allah is with me.” Did those exultant words emanate from a profligate, coldly calculating and atrociously barbarous hypocrite, or from a humble and grateful penitent whose sole wish was to be a channel through which Allah’s divine purposes might be made manifest? The answer forever bides.
VIII
AVOCATIONS
I
Incessant wars and rumors of wars by no means occupied all of Mohammed’s attention. He might be prophet, statesman, general and practically king, but he was also something more: he was a family man on a large scale. Aloof and reserved on public occasions, he was excessively affectionate toward his friends, and indeed some of his wives. Since he no longer had any small children, he was particularly fond of little tots; while standing at prayer he sometimes held a child in his arms, and at Medina he often allowed a little girl to lead him around by the hand. From the plumbless depths of his character a vast and intricate collection of odd mannerisms, which occasionally corresponded with the surpassing dignity of his office, came to the surface; and all the manifold resources of psychology, philosophy and related branches of erudition have been exhausted in the attempt to analyze or synthesize his personality from these disjecta membra. But the dry bones still remain scattered and unfleshed; all the prodigal resources of modern scholarship have excavated fewer vital facts about the Prophet than one of his most favored wives or friends might have related in less than a day. When, therefore, they speak with voices whose authenticity is generally granted, they should be allowed to hold the stage.
Ayesha, certainly, was one of them. Questioned once about her illustrious consort, she tartly replied: “He was a man just such as yourselves; he laughed often and smiled much.” “But how would he occupy himself at home?” the insistent voice continued. “Even as any of you occupy yourselves,” came the abrupt response. “He would mend his clothes, and cobble his shoes. He used to help me in my household duties; but what he did oftenest was to sew. If he had the choice between two matters, he would always choose the easier, so as that no sin accrued therefrom.” Ayesha obviously had few illusions about Mohammed; but that is one of the peculiar privileges of great men’s wives, and besides he was her senior by more than forty years—a fact that probably accounts very largely for her continual underestimation of his several abilities. Her highly partial record, accordingly, should be corrected and supplemented with equally pertinent particulars.
For indeed, despite his felicity in cobbling, sewing, milking his goats and tarring his camels, there were many things that he did not like at all. He detested lying on the part of others, and separated himself from those of his adherents who cultivated a natural taste for mendacity, until they repented; he held the custom of usury in special abhorrence: “One dirhem of usury which a man eats, knowing it to be so, is more grievous than thirty-six fornications,” he declared. He also loathed dogs and pictures—“Angels will not enter a house containing a dog or pictures,” and “Every painter will be in hell,” he oracularly announced, but the reason for this outburst is obscure. Perhaps it was because Arabian art was notoriously bad—and then again, perhaps he was jealous of anything that, no matter how rude and primitive, was entirely beyond his comprehension. Once, during public prayers, he chanced to notice that his mantle was richly figured, and when he had ended he said: “Take away that mantle, for verily it hath distracted me in my prayers, and bring me a common one”; and on another similar occasion he threw off a silken robe in disgust, saying, “Such stuff it doth not become the pious to wear.” He wore a golden ring until he noticed that all the people were beginning to follow his example, whereupon he went into the pulpit, pulled the ring off with the words, “By the Lord I will not wear this ring ever again,” and then prohibited the use of such adornments. A friend who had sent him a present in the form of a steaming dinner was much chagrined when it was returned uneaten and even untouched by his fingers—for he “used to eat with his thumb and his two forefingers,” and, “after he had finished eating, he licked his blessed fingers: first the middle one, then the prayer-finger, and last the thumb”—but he was pacified when the Prophet explained that he had not tasted it because onions had been cooked with the food; for Gabriel, he went on to say, strenuously objected to the odor of both onions and garlic. Furthermore, he abstained from tasting lizards, for he feared that they were descended, by some inexplicable metempsychosis, from a certain tribe of Israel. He commonly reclined during his meals, though sometimes “he would sit on his left leg, posting up the right; and if he was very hungry, he would sit down altogether and post up both legs.”
Yet the catalogue of his likes was far more extensive than the list of his aversions. He was so devoted to everlasting prayers that his legs often became swollen from long standing; and when anyone remonstrated with him, he would reply: “What! Shall I not behave as a thankful servant should?” He was very careful not to yawn during his devotions, and if perforce he sneezed, “he made a moderate noise, covering his blessed face with his robe-sleeve and putting his blessed hand before his nostrils,” after which he would ejaculate, “Praise be to Allah!” Before commencing his orisons, he always sniffed up several handfuls of water from his right hand and then blew the liquid out with his left hand. Ordinarily, he prayed with his shoes on, though he once took them off while engaged in public supplication—a deed immediately aped by the entire audience; but the Prophet at once informed them that their action was unnecessary, “for he had merely taken off his own because Gabriel had apprised him that there was some dirty substance attaching to them.” His prayers were so earnest and vehement that “it might be known from a distance that he was speaking by the motion of his beard”—which he had let grow until it reached to the middle of his broad chest; but he regularly clipped his moustache. When it was once suggested to him that his appearance would be vastly improved if he reversed the process, the counselor was properly rebuked. “Nay,” said Mohammed, “for my Lord hath commanded me to clip the moustaches and allow the beard to grow.”
In more mundane matters, too, his tastes were equally pronounced. He affected white clothes chiefly, but was also partial toward red, yellow and green garments, and he sometimes wore woolens. Scrupulously neat in his personal habits, and ever ready to condemn untidiness (yellow teeth, in particular) in his companions, he yet wore a turban, wrapped many times around his head, whose lower edge looked “like the soiled clothes of an oil-dealer.” But such carelessness was uncommon, for his clothes, though mostly inexpensive, were habitually clean and neat. When he donned freshly laundered clothes, he was accustomed to remark: “Praise be to the Lord, who hath clothed me with that which shall hide my nakedness and adorn me while I live.” He had a perfect mania for toothpicks: at night he invariably kept one handy to use before performing his ablutions; while traveling he always carried a generous supply; indeed, he used them so frequently between his wide-spaced teeth, “white as hailstones,” that he gradually wore his gums away; and one person chanced to observe him, toothpick in mouth, making a gurgling, “a-ccha” noise as if he were going to disgorge his food.