The narrowness of his means at Medina limited his gluttonous desires for a time, but his rapid successes soon enabled him to feast upon delectable dainties. He was very fond of sweetmeats, honey, cucumbers and ripe dates (“When he ate fresh dates he would keep such as were bad in his hand”) and he eyed the pumpkin with particular favor. One of his servants, gazing abstractedly at some pumpkins one day, after Mohammed’s death, was overheard saying “Dear little plant, how the Prophet loved thee!” Like a true Arab, he preferred mutton to all other flesh. “I once slew a kid and dressed it,” narrated a Medinan. “The Prophet asked me for the forequarter and I gave it to him. ‘Give me another,’ he said; and I gave him the second. Then he asked for a third. ‘O Prophet!’ I replied, ‘there are but two forequarters to a kid.’” The meal that he relished with most gusto, however, was “a mess of bread cooked with meat, and a dish of dates dressed with butter and milk.” He had a predilection for several wells around Medina whose waters, he said, were both “cold and sweet,” and, after he drank, he sometimes bathed in them or invoked a blessing on their contents by spitting into them. Close-fisted and frugal most of the time, he readily loosed his purse-strings when he saw something whose appeal was irresistible. He once paid about twenty camels for a single dress, and also gave eight golden pieces for a mantle. At bedtime he regularly put antimony on his eyelids, “saying that it made the sight more piercing, and caused the hair to grow”; he had a crystal goblet with silver trimmings, a copper vase for his baths, and an ivory comb; but perhaps his chief fancy inclined toward perfumes. “We always used to know when Mohammed had issued forth from his chamber by the sweet perfume that filled the air,” one of his servants testified. He indulged without stint in musk and ambergris, and he burned camphor on odiferous wood so that he might enjoy the smell. With her customary acumen, Ayesha put the gist of the matter into one pithy sentence when she said: “The Prophet loved three things—women, scents, and food; he had his heart’s desire of the first two, but not of the last.” In fact, Mohammed himself argued that these two innocuous diversions intensified the ecstasy of his prayers.
II
Mohammed’s adoration of particular women was nevertheless tempered with penetrating discretion toward the sex in general. It is true that he abrogated the usage which permitted, and even encouraged, sons to inherit their fathers’ wives, and that the code of Islam allowed single ladies to be mistresses of their own actions; but it is also true that married women continued to be treated merely as sports and playthings for the convenience of their husbands. “Men stand above women,” says the Koran, “because of the superiority which God hath conferred on one of them over the other.... Wherefore let the good Women be obedient.... But such as ye may fear disobedience or provocation from, rebuke them, and put them away in separate apartments, and chastise them. But, if they be obedient unto you, seek not against them an excuse for severity; verily God is lofty and great.” While Moslem husbands might easily obtain an absolute divorce if they chose, the idea that women might occasionally desire the same privilege seems never to have entered the Prophet’s head. Women might win Paradise, to be sure, yet no provision was made whereby they could anticipate such captivating entertainments as were promised to faithful men. Mohammed, in fact, was sagacious enough to entice males to Islam by implying that there would be no occasion for them to lament the loss of their wives in Paradise: “Whenever a woman vexes her husband in this world, his wife among the Houris of Paradise says: ‘Do not vex him (May God slay thee!) for he is only a guest with thee. He will soon leave thee and come to us’”—and indeed, the most subtly cruel punishment that the Prophet ever inflicted upon erring males was to separate them for a period from their wives. If, however, some wives remained refractory in the face of this warning, Mohammed had still another card up his sleeve: “If a man summon his wife to his bed and she refuse to come, so that he spends the night in anger, the angels curse her till morning.”
That the Prophet, as was only natural, allowed himself a wider latitude of encounters than was granted to his adherents—who might espouse only four women, but might also form liaisons “without antecedent ceremony or any guarantee of continuance” with any number of female slaves—was made clear by Ayesha. “I was jealous of the women who gave themselves to the apostle of God,” she admitted, “and said, ‘Does a woman give herself?’ Then when God revealed: ‘Thou mayst decline for the present whom thou wilt of them, and thou mayst take to thy bed her whom thou wilt, and whomsoever thou shalt long for of those thou shalt have before neglected; and this shall not be a crime in thee.’ I said, ‘I see your Lord does nothing but hasten to fulfil your desire!’” Yet due allowance should be made for Ayesha’s jealousy; for, while Mohammed married approximately twelve women, she was the only virgin among them—the others were widows or divorcees who commonly brought him wealth or desirable political connections. For indeed, though he once playfully chided a Moslem who had married a mature woman instead of a “young damsel, who would have sported with thee, and thou with her,” he was too canny to follow his own counsel. At the same time, he preferred women of spirit; in fact, he definitely rejected one girl because “she never cried or complained”—a criticism that certainly could not be aimed against most of his brides.
Khadija was barely under ground when the Prophet prepared to embark boldly upon matrimonial seas. About two months later he married Sauda, a tall, corpulent, mature widow whose brother celebrated the event by sprinkling ashes on his head; he synchronously engaged himself to Abu Bekr’s daughter Ayesha, whom he eventually espoused at the age of ten; but it has been suggested that “there may have been something more than ordinarily precocious about the child.” She herself attributed her hold on Mohammed’s affections not only to her childish beauty, but to her plumpness. “When I was betrothed to the Prophet,” she related, “my mother endeavored to make me fat; and she found that with me nothing succeeded so well as gourds and fresh dates. Eating well of them I became round”; yet, as she grew up, she lost her flesh and became thin and willowy. In 624 Omar found himself with Hafsa, a widowed daughter of twenty, upon his hands. Irritated and scandalized by her exhaustive but fruitless endeavors to win a second husband, he offered her in turn to Othman and Abu Bekr, who, knowing that she inherited her father’s cranky temper, refused to accept the honor. Omar was so insulted by this double rebuff that he at once flew angrily to Mohammed to make a complaint. The Prophet, at his wit’s end because of the social uproar that had been started, saved the situation by marrying Hafsa himself, and thus abundantly gratified his wish to have a wife who cried and complained all the time. Zeinab, widow of one of the heroes of Bedr, became his fifth wife in 626; her gentle and charitable disposition perhaps accounts for the fact that she was the only one of his wives who preceded him to Paradise. His sixth bride was won in a peculiar way. As Abu Selama lay expiring of a wound received at Uhud, Mohammed entered and quieted the wailing women with this prayer: “O Lord! give unto him width and comfort in his grave; lighten his darkness; pardon his sins; and raise up faithful followers from his seed.” Just four months later (626), the Prophet pressed his ardent suit upon Abu’s widow Um, who, against her better judgment, finally yielded to his importunity.
Meanwhile the much-married man had discovered that his domestic arrangements were getting more and more complicated. Founding a precedent that has since been followed by many Christian churches, he occupied a part of the Mosque. His domestic quarters were established along its eastern wall; they seem to have been constructed from a series of adjacent huts owned by one Haritha, who retired more or less willingly from each of them whenever Mohammed needed a new shelter for a bride; and as the years passed, poor Haritha would barely fix up a new abode before he was shoved out of it. An entrance for the Prophet’s exclusive use led from each dwelling into the Mosque; having no separate apartment for himself, he rotated daily from one hut to the other according to a fixed schedule: “the day of Hafsa, the day of Um,” ad finem. Before long, however, he deliberately infringed upon the rights of all his other wives by breaking the routine in favor of Ayesha—the now lithe and lissom beauty who still toyed with her playthings and frolicked with Mohammed in nursery games—until the deserted wives raised such a squabble that he was forced to emit the famous revelation, so cuttingly commented on by Ayesha, which gave him license to consort with her who pleased him most at the moment.
Conflicting reports have been handed down concerning the acquisition of the Prophet’s seventh bride. Going one day to visit his adopted son Zeid, who was absent, he was invited in by Zeid’s wife Zeinab, who ... but here the tales diverge. Some say that Mohammed merely saw her unveiled face, while others assert that her carelessly disarranged dress gave him further glimpses; some say that the Prophet, moved by a purely artistic admiration of her beauty, uttered the words, “Praise be to God, the ruler of hearts!” but others insist that his approbation was of a lower sort, and translate his ejaculation thus: “Gracious Lord! Good Heavens! how Thou dost turn the hearts of men!” It is agreed, however, that Zeinab was so elated at the impression she had made on the Prophet’s facile susceptibility to feminine wiles that she took special pains to repeat his compliment over and over to Zeid, who, in addition to being short, pug-nosed and generally ugly, was a mere freedman, and, therefore, had never appealed too strongly to his high-born wife. Hot with jealousy, Zeid went to Mohammed and declared that he wished to divorce Zeinab. “Why,” he was asked, “hast thou found any fault in her?” “No,” groaned Zeid, “but I cannot live with her.” “Go and guard thy wife,” he was told, “treat her well and fear God.” But Zeid, who presumably saw how matters lay, soon divorced her “in spite of the command of the Prophet,” remarks an admirer, who goes on to explain that Mohammed “was grieved at the conduct of Zeid, more especially as it was he who had arranged the marriage of these two uncongenial spirits.” Obviously, the trouble could be mended in but one way. One day, as Mohammed sat by Ayesha’s side, a prophetic spasm gripped him; after it had passed, he smiled and gently inquired, “Who will go and congratulate Zeinab, and say that the Lord hath joined her unto me in marriage?” The wedding soon took place; yet, since many Moslems thought it rather odd that the Prophet, after forbidding sons to wed their bereaved stepmothers, should himself marry the wife of an adopted son, it seemed highly advisable for him to have recourse to Allah. Thus runs the Koran: “And when Zeid had fulfilled her [Zeinab’s] divorce, We joined thee with her in marriage, that there might hereafter be no offence to Believers in marrying the Wives of their adopted sons, when they have fulfilled their divorce; and the command of God is to be fulfilled.” Criticism immediately collapsed. Zeinab proudly boasted that “God had given her in marriage to His Prophet, whereas his other wives were given to him by their relatives”; but Ayesha retorted with the caustic observation that there was no longer the least doubt that Mohammed rendered Allah’s messages verbatim, inasmuch as this last revelation showed the Prophet up most unmercifully. Ayesha, however, was one woman in a thousand.
III
By this time Mohammed had come to be regarded as a highly desirable catch by every widow in Medina, while attractive women came from all the corners of Arabia to offer themselves to the impressionable man. His inordinate masculinity prompted the other Moslems to justify his excess of brides on the judicious ground that his “Excellency had the power of thirty strong men given him”—a consideration that was esteemed by certain discriminating traditionalists to be a proof of what has been characterized as the Prophet’s “divinely conferred preëminence.” In short, he was every inch a man. His spare, well-moulded figure was tall and commanding; he walked so fast that his gait has been compared to that of a man ascending a hill, or of one “wrenching his foot from a stone,” and this rapid locomotion made him unconsciously bend his back until in his last years he became round-shouldered. “That blessed prince’s head was large,” we are told, “and yet he was not big-headed.” His face was lean and rosy, his skin was clear and “soft as woman’s,” his slightly Roman nose was thin and shapely—some people “might regard his nasal bone as exceedingly long, though in reality it was not so”—his neck, on the unimpeachable authority of Ali, was “like that of a silver urn,” and “his blessed mouth was open, but exceedingly graceful.” The quality and abundance of his ebon hair has been explained in great detail. Thick and curly masses of it—“not very frizzled or very dangling but just right”—hung about his ears; his vast expanse of beard presumably concealed from vulgar eyes an otherwise conspicuous peculiarity: “from his chest down to the navel there was drawn a thin line of hair, while the other parts of the chest and stomach were hairless, although there was hair on his blessed arms and shoulders and the upper part of his chest.” Even in his slumbers he retained his appearance of ease and grace, for he “lay on his right side, putting the palm of his right hand under his right cheek.” An admirer summed up his manly comeliness in this poetic outburst: “I saw him at full moon, and he was brighter and more beautiful than she,” and another charming tradition affirms that no fly ever alighted on his body. Yet the handsome man was not flawless. The penetrating eyes, fringed with long and lustrous lashes, were red-lidded and bloodshot; ugly gaps disfigured his dazzling white teeth; and on his back was a birthmark which, though held to be the divine “seal of prophecy” that distinguished him as the last of the authentic prophets, was probably a large mole.
Encompassed by six wives and two slave concubines, Mohammed soon discovered that the most energetic efforts were required to provide for their wishes. They not only made a heavy drain on his purse and his larder, but upon his patience; for, while he was rapidly ageing, several of them were just nearing the height of feminine attractiveness, and many youthful Moslems, envious of the conjugal liberties which Mohammed so prodigally claimed, were in the habit of calling at one or another of his houses on matters that had little to do with religion. The favorite, Ayesha, soon got into a scrape that turned his suspicions into open jealousy. She had accompanied him on one of his martial expeditions—a custom of which his other brides frequently availed themselves by the casting of lots, Ayesha being the fortunate winner on this occasion—in a vehicle drawn by a camel and punctiliously veiled from view; and, after he had victoriously returned to Medina and the cart was opened, he discovered to his great horror that she was not inside. When she came up a little later, escorted by young Safwan, she explained that she had lost her necklace, had gone to search for it, and upon her return had found that her guides, thinking that she was inside, had guided the camel and its supposed burden back to Medina. Shortly afterward, she continued, Safwan had chanced to meet her, “expressed surprise at finding one of the Prophet’s wives in this predicament,” and, upon receiving no reply from the virtuous maiden, had asked her to mount his camel; as she shyly complied, he had averted his face so that he did not see her ascend the beast, and not a word had passed between them on the return journey. No one knows what Mohammed might have done had not scandalous tongues started to wag; but wag they did, and the poor girl, noticing her husband’s cold demeanor, promptly fell ill and went to visit her father. The Prophet meanwhile was much disturbed, for the business was very complicated. Should he punish the daughter of Abu Bekr, his most valued and intimate friend, trouble would almost certainly follow; on the other hand, such fellows as Abdallah ibn Obei and the poet Hassan could not be permitted to go around making lewd jokes at his expense. So, visiting Ayesha in the presence of her father and mother, he said: “Ayesha! thou hearest what men have spoken of thee. Fear God. If indeed thou art guilty, then repent toward God, for the Lord accepteth the repentance of His servants.” The grief-stricken girl burst out weeping and replied: “By the Lord! I say that I will never repent towards God of that which ye speak of. I am helpless. If I confess, God knoweth that I am not guilty. If I deny, no one believeth me.” In this dire predicament, the Prophet fortunately fell into a profound trance; upon his recovery, he wiped great beads of sweat from his brow and exclaimed: “Ayesha! rejoice! Verily, the Lord hath declared thine innocence.” “Embrace thine husband!” cried Abu’s wife, but Ayesha contented herself with the ejaculation, “Praise be to the Lord”—in Whom she apparently recognized a capacity for chivalry that was foreign to her husband. And one night not long afterward, hoping perhaps to turn the tables on him, she secretly followed him when he slipped quietly out of the house on what seemed to be an amorous expedition; but she was grievously disappointed upon discovering that he was bent upon no more exciting errand than going to a graveyard to offer up prayers for the dead.