Honein was the last of a series of victories that laid the Koreishite ghost forever; the Prophet was now virtually the ruler of the entire Arabian peninsula; and, having made a triumphant entrance into Medina, he proceeded to execute a project that had long been dear to his heart. As early as the year 627, he had sent out feelers to a branch of the empire of Byzantium on the subject of conversion to Islam; his envoy on that occasion, though courteously welcomed and given a special dress of honor, had accomplished little. But now, while embassies from numerous Arabian tribes made haste to present themselves to him, hoping to make a good bargain by trading their recreant idols for the all-conquering Allah, Mohammed’s apparently chimerical fancy to extend Islam in, and even beyond, the bounds of the Roman Empire was again aroused. The lonely visionary of Mount Hira, the Meccan outcast, risen to the imperial position of temporal and spiritual dictator of all Arabia, vibrated with the insatiable desire to make Islam dominant over the world. He might not live to see that glorious fulfilment; yet perhaps his notorious gift of prophecy enabled him to pierce the veil that shadowed the future: the advance of Islam under successive Caliphates until its haughty realm extended from India to the western limits of Spain—the stemming of the onrushing Saracen tide by Charles Martel at Tours—the wayfaring Crusaders bent upon rescuing the Holy Land from Mohammedan dominion—the revival of interest in classic lore which was the direct result of the Crusades—the concomitant Renaissance of learning and of Christianity until Christian warriors, with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other, supplanted the imperial Crescent with the even more imperial Cross—the Cross that has itself become associated with imperialism. Thus, by a grotesque chain of closely linked events, Mohammed might—had his prophetic eye been gifted with sufficient range—have envisaged himself in the odd position of being the chief instrument in the world-wide promulgation of classicism and of Christianity. For, had the Middle Age Crusaders not been inspired with unremitting zeal to wrest the Holy Grail from Islam, there might well have been no Renaissance, no stimulation of mental and spiritual activities, and, consequently, no such Christian imperialism as now holds so much of the world under its righteous sway.
Had Mohammed foreseen all this, however, he might possibly have had less interest in those embassies to and from his house in the Mosque, where, sprawling on his mat and cooling his face with a palm-leaf fan, he issued his endless commands and listened to endless requests from suppliants. Indeed, his office work had become so voluminous that he now made use of an amanuensis, Zeid the son of Thabit, who was specially skilled in the Hebrew and Syriac languages. Though quick-witted and agile of tongue, Zeid was inclined to be so forgetful and generally scatter-brained that the Prophet was obliged to tell him to thrust his pen behind his ear, “for this will bring to remembrance that which the distracted mind is seeking after.”
If tradition may be trusted, Mohammed was not always over-successful in his dealings with prospective converts. The Christian tribe of Nejran, in central Arabia, came to him after an ostentatious exhibition of prayer in the Mosque, and loudly declared that they were Moslems; but the Prophet, observing that they wore silk-lined clothes—which he particularly detested, though it is true that he ordered such hapless Moslems as became afflicted with the itch or “louse-disease” to wear silken shirts—rightly doubted their sincerity and merely turned up his nose at them; they therefore departed and shortly returned in monastic garb. Their leader, doubtless inspired with the hope that a display of knowledge on his part would gain them better terms, offered to debate with Mohammed concerning the mystical nature of Christ, but he wisely declined to comply and stated that he would prefer to engage in a cursing contest; and in fact, while one of his most uncritical admirers affirmed that the worst oath he ever used was “May his forehead be darkened with mud!” the Koran, among other authentic documents, furnishes considerable evidence to the contrary. Realizing that they would be no match for him in such an ordeal, the Nejranites capitulated to the extent of agreeing to pay tribute, though they refused to acknowledge his divine mission; the Prophet acceded to this compromise, but soothed his ruffled dignity by declaring that they were one of the two worst tribes in all Arabia, and by announcing that Christians, as well as Jews, were to act as substitutes for Moslems in Hell-fire. Moreover, believing that Christianity and Judaism were both on their last legs, he devised the humane stipulation that, provided Christians and Hebrews submitted to the earthly rule of Islam and paid “tribute with their hands,” they would be permitted to profess whatever faith they chose. Yet he would presumably have been better pleased had all Arabians manifested the delicate concern shown by a fellow named Al-Jarud. “O Prophet,” said he, “I have hitherto followed the Christian faith, and I am now called on to change it. Wilt thou be Surety for me in the matter of my religion?” “Yea, I am thy surety that God hath guided thee to a better faith than it,” Mohammed gladly answered.
Two dispatches were probably sent to Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium, who had just completed a victorious struggle with Persia. The first one, which requested him to cease the idolatrous worship of Jesus and His Mother, to reverence the one true God, and to recognize the mission of Mohammed, was apparently disregarded; a second message, couched in like terms, prompted a vassal of Heraclius to request permission to punish the insolent pretender who sent it, but Heraclius forbade any needless expedition against the contemptible person who had audaciously signed himself “Mohammed the Apostle of God.” The King of Persia, on receiving a similar note, merely tore it up; and the Prophet, on hearing of this outrage, prayed aloud: “Even thus, O Lord! rend thou his kingdom from him!” It may be presumed that neither Heraclius nor the Persian King even suspected that, within a decade or two, their mighty empires would be paying tribute to Islam. A letter that Mohammed sent to Ruayyah, of Suhaim, was treated more respectfully than the one that had been dispatched to the Persian monarch; for Ruayyah used it to mend a hole in his water-skin. Another powerful chief, having listened to Mohammed’s delegate, instructed him to carry back this message: “How excellent is that Revelation to which thou invitest me, and how beautiful! Know that I am the Poet of my tribe, and an Orator. The Arabs revere my dignity. Grant unto me, therefore, a share in the rule, and I will follow thee.” The Prophet, on being informed of this, snarled: “Had this man asked of me but an unripe date, as his share in the land, I would not have given it. Let him perish, and his vainglory with him!”—and it is confidently stated that the presumptuous snob did, in fact, die within a year. The Roman Governor of Egypt, too, refused to endorse Mohammed’s claims—“I am aware,” he said, “that a prophet is yet to arise; but I am of opinion that he will appear in Syria”—yet he atoned for his stubbornness of heart by sending Mohammed a double present in the form of a white mule and a black concubine.
Mohammed, meanwhile, was showing his interest in his recent converts by altering their Pagan names to titles that better suited his almost feminine fondness for daintily euphemistic words. For example, “Zeid of the Stud” right gladly abandoned his plebeian appellation when he was rechristened “Zeid of the Good”; “the Wolf, son of the Cub,” was similarly glorified by becoming “Allah’s Servant”; and an “Oppressor” suffered a welcome sea-change into a “Well-doer.” But when a tribe called the “Sons of Bastardy” were politely accosted as the “Sons of Chastity,” they announced their steadfast desire to remain true to their ancient heritage.
Nor did Mohammed’s reforms stop here. The Koran had already prohibited the use of wine; for, years earlier, the Prophet, while attempting to chide his uncle, Hamza, who was riotously drunk, had received the tipsy response, “Are you not my father’s slave?” Liquor, therefore, had been proscribed as a foe to Islam and the dignity of the prophetic office; this rule was so rigorously enforced, in truth, that even a hero of Bedr had been beaten again and again for perennial intoxication, and on one occasion Mohammed himself hurled clods of dirt at another offender. Gambling, too—the casting of lots and the “arrow-game,” in which camels were the prizes—had been divinely banned as abominations “from amongst the works of Satan.” Mohammed’s acutely sensitive nature now led him to proscribe anything that savored of torture inflicted on animals: living birds might not be used as targets in shooting contests; camels were not to be tied up and left to die on their owners’ graves; cattle were not to be blinded to avert the evil eye; droughts were not to be broken by the common process of affixing flaming torches to the tails of cattle; horses were not to lose their manes and tails, and asses were no longer to be branded or hit in the face. So scrupulously fastidious was the Prophet that he once ordered some Moslems to stop burning an ant-hill, and he also strongly disapproved the ubiquitous practice of cursing camels and cocks.
His humanity and foresight were also manifested in more important matters. Blood-feuds—the time-honored and almost ineradicable system of tribal revenge for homicide—he endeavored, with partial success, to wipe out by emphasizing the brotherhood of Islam, and by advocating the acceptance of money as a partial compensation: ethical and legislative essays that gradually led to a saner and more peaceful system of government. Whatever may be thought of his general attitude toward women, he certainly benefited them incalculably by setting up laws that enabled them to inherit and hold property; and the luridly overemphasized harem system, Pagan though it may be, has some virtues that are perhaps absent from the Occidental system of prostitution. His advocacy of the custom by which the wives of captives automatically became the concubines of Moslem conquerors has especially irritated certain modern moralists, who apparently have not reflected very deeply on certain canons of contemporary conduct, in which wealth and social distinction play the rôle of the victorious Islamites. He accepted slavery as a matter of course—and, indeed, Islam has never indulged in any foolish civil strife over the question of bondage—but he insisted that slaves must be treated with the utmost kindness. Men who beat their slaves were placed by him among the lowest of the low; he stated that manumission was a pious act, and he sometimes let offenders off from any punishment when they agreed to free their serfs—in short, the present industrial system has little to boast of in comparison with Mohammed’s attitude toward serfdom. One other inhuman custom—the ancient practice of female infanticide—was summarily abolished by him; and a tale survives that well illustrates the horror he felt concerning such deeds. Two men, about to yield themselves to the claims of Islam, chanced to question the Prophet about his views on child-murder. “Our mother Muleika was full of good deeds and charity; but she buried a little daughter alive. What is her condition now?” they inquired. “The burier and the buried both in hell,” replied Mohammed, upon which his guests became very angry and started to leave. “Come back,” he requested, “mine own mother, too, is there with yours.” But even this inducement failed to convince them, and so they returned into the outer darkness.
III
Old age, meanwhile, crept gently though inexorably upon the Prophet; but its stealthy approach seemed only to quicken the strength of his arm and the matchless fertility of his intellect. His groveling acolytes, completely bewitched by the magical power of his colossal personality, had exalted him to such a dazzling deification that, had Allah Himself chosen to appear in the streets of Medina, He might easily have passed unnoticed amid the encomiums that were daily showered upon His Apostle—or, rather, Allah might carelessly have been classified with the famous Three Pretenders who, by their conjuring tricks and fake miracles, excited the wrathful amusement of the Prophet in the last year of his earthly life. In fact, it has been pointed out as a matter for deep regret that, while the Koran allows Allah only ninety-nine separate and distinct appellations, His Prophet, at the zenith of his career, was addressed by no fewer than two hundred and one individual titles, including a round score of those that had been applied to Allah Himself.
In the autumn of the year 630, Mohammed conducted his final military expedition. Setting out at the head of a Moslem army that seems to have totaled nearly thirty thousand men, he planned to chastise a Byzantine force that was reputed to have gathered on the Syrian border near Tebuk; but when that place was reached, it was found that there was no Byzantine or any other force to be conquered. Mohammed, thus finding himself in much the same position as the French King in the doggerel ballad, proceeded to march home again after exacting pledges of conversion and immense booty from contingent tribes. His followers, who stated their belief that the “wars for religion now are ended,” foolishly began to sell their weapons; but the far-sighted Prophet sternly stopped them and uttered the fateful remark: “There shall not cease from the midst of my people a party engaged in fighting for the truth, until Antichrist appear.” Scarcely had he returned to Medina when his heart was gladdened by two events: the death of his only important rival, Abdallah ibn Obei—to whom the Prophet deemed it safe and expedient to pay tribute by following his bier and praying at his grave—and the surrender of At-Taif, the single stronghold that had ever successfully defied his might. He was so exhilarated by the downfall of this fort, indeed, that he let its defenders off from the necessity of breaking their own idols, and, in their stead, elected two Moslems to perform the peculiarly pleasant task.