But perhaps Mohammed most enjoyed the multitudinous activities inherent in his position as a kind and fatherly counselor of his people. The matters which he was besought to adjudicate were extraordinary in their range. One day his prayers would be requested by some prospective bridegroom, who hoped, by the aid of such divine sorcery, to win a wife of unusual goodness and humility; next day he would be begged to specify the precise hour when the world was destined to end; another day would find him busily laying down oracles governing the proper boiling of meat. Only two types of interrogation were taboo: matters that were wholly rational or wholly metaphysical; and Mohammed probably barred these topics on the sensible grounds that preceding prophets who had tampered with either of them had almost uniformly come to grief. Thus it came about that countless apothegms, whose absolute authenticity can never be nicely determined, were confidently claimed to be the children of his brain. Yet, despite the fact that most of these sayings betray a hard-headed and close-fisted sagacity, he was in debt when he died; and perhaps, therefore, the stories concerning his senile delight in the children of his body deserve more credence. Sonless though he was, he could partially console himself by playing with his grandsons, Al-Hasan and Al-Hosein, the progeny of Ali and Fatima, and by reflecting on the transcendent heritage that awaited them as male descendants of himself. In fact, legends sprang up that made a Moslem holy family out of Mohammed, the two boys, and their mother, Fatima, who was further honored by being entitled “The Lady of Paradise”; but, unfortunately for his beatific visions concerning Al-Hasan and Al-Hosein—who frequently entertained themselves by clambering upon their grandfather’s broad back while he was bowed in prayer—they turned out to be scurvy fellows who excelled only in incompetence and cowardice.
It may be that Mohammed had a premonition of his imminent death. He decided, at all events, to make a “Farewell Pilgrimage” to Mecca in March, 632, so that he might for the last time feast his eyes on that sacred citadel and undergo the solemn rites of the Greater Pilgrimage—a thing he had not done since the Hegira. He first took a careful bath, then mounted Al-Kaswa, and, accompanied by his entire harem and one hundred votive camels, set forth on the long journey. Having meticulously and painfully performed the prescribed gyrations and genuflections, he cast some small stones at the “Devil’s corner”—a spot near Mecca where Abraham was reputed to have met and conquered Satan—and concluded his toilsome duties by delivering a notable speech. After making many additions to, and revisions upon, the already numberless regulations which he had been formulating for more than twenty years, he concluded with these words: “Verily, I have fulfilled my mission. I have left that amongst you—a plain command, the Book of God, and manifest Ordinances—which, if ye hold fast, ye shall never go astray.” Then, turning his eyes heavenward, he exclaimed: “O Lord! I have delivered my message and discharged my Ministry.” “Yea,” came the deep-throated voice of the throng that hemmed him in, “yea, verily thou hast.” “O Lord!” he continued, unmindful of the pious interruption, “I beseech Thee bear Thou witness unto it.” Returning straightway to Mecca, he encircled the Kaba seven times; thence he went to Zemzem and, having drunk part of the contents of a pitcher filled with its holy water, he rinsed his mouth and asked that the water still remaining in the vessel should be poured back into the well. After abiding three more days at Mecca, he departed from it forever and ambled by easy stages back to Medina.
IV
By this time the sinister tokens of physical decay, unavoidably betrayed by the Prophet, filled everyone with deepest concern. Abu Bekr observed him one day, stroking his beard and looking intently at it; then Abu, his eyes filling with sudden tears, broke out: “Ah, thou, for whom I would sacrifice father and mother, white hairs are hastening upon thee!” “Yes,” came the slow response, “it is the travail of inspiration that hath done this. The Suras Hud, and the Inevitable, and the Striking, with their fellows, these have made white my hair.” Yet when he actually became ill with pleurisy, or some sort of fever, he named a definite source for the malady: the poisoned mutton which Zeinab, the Jewess, had fed him. “This, verily, is the effect of that which I ate at Kheibar,” he declared. “The artery in my back feeleth as though it would just now burst asunder.” If his theory was correct, he doubtless died—as his worshipers fervently claimed—the honorable death of a martyr; but it seems probable that his illness had some more tangible origin. Believing that water could not be contaminated, he sometimes carelessly drank from a cistern that was used for slops; as a medicine man who had often attempted to cure his people by charms, cauterization and cupping, he had submitted himself to these practices so frequently that his system must have been gradually weakened; furthermore, Ayesha stated that his health had been poor for years, and that she had constantly dosed him with a profusion of odd concoctions which she herself compounded from innumerable prescriptions recommended by sympathizing friends.
It is not strange, therefore, that, shortly after he had presented a banner to a Moslem army which he commanded to march toward Syria on May 27, 632, for the purpose of avenging the defeat at Muta, he found himself curiously listless and weak. Late one subsequent night, accompanied only by a servant, he stole out to the cemetery on the edge of Medina. After a long and melancholy period of meditation, he thus apostrophized the souls of the dead: “Verily, both ye and I have received fulfilment of that which our Lord did promise us. Blessed are ye! for your lot is better than the lot of those that are left behind. Temptation and trial approach like portions of a dark night that follow one upon another, each darker than that preceding it. O Lord! have mercy upon them that lie buried here!” Next morning, as he passed Ayesha’s chamber, he heard her calling out, “My head!—O, my head!” Entering, he gently reproved her thus: “Nay, Ayesha, it is rather I that have need to cry My head, my head! But wouldst thou not,” he continued, in a feeble attempt to be humorous, “desire to be taken whilst I am yet alive; so that I might pray over thee, and wrapping thee, Ayesha, in thy winding-sheet, myself commit thee to the grave?” Then, in spite of her pain, she railed at him. “Ah, that, I see, is what thou wishest for! Truly, I can behold thee, when all was over, returning straightway hither, and sporting with a new beauty in my chamber here!” But, perceiving that he was really ailing, she forgot her own headache and tenderly cared for him.
Multitudes of conflicting stories have been handed down concerning the happenings of the week that preceded his dissolution; but, inasmuch as they emanated from three distinct political groups, each of whom wished to be recognized as the sole source of truth, the precise occurrences of that fateful period will never be accurately known. At the beginning of his illness it appears certain that, on account of his predilection for baths, he commanded his wives to drench him in cold water on the intriguing theory that, since fever was caused by sparks of Hell-fire, it could be summarily squelched by water; but in this case the douche seems to have had the unfortunate result of sending him into convulsions. It is claimed that, during an interval of temporary relief, he went forth and addressed his devotees in the Mosque—a proceeding which, if it was true, was presumably the reason for his consequent relapse. By Saturday, June 6, his temperature is said to have been so high that Omar, having placed his hand on the tormented man’s forehead, quickly withdrew it with the consoling exclamation, “O Prophet, how fierce is the fever upon thee!” “Yea, verily,” Mohammed gasped, “but I have been during the night season repeating in praise of the Lord seventy Suras, and among them the seven long ones”; and a moment later he added, “Just as this affliction prevaileth now against me, even so shall my reward hereafter be.” On Sunday he was delirious much of the time and suffered such excruciating pain that, following a consultation among his wives, it was decided to administer physic; so they forced the drug down his throat, but, notwithstanding his agony, he readily recognized the too familiar noxious taste and bitterly reproached them. When they admitted their guilt, he cried: “Out upon you! this is a remedy for pleurisy ... an evil disease is it which the Lord will not let attack me. Now shall ye all of you within this chamber partake of the same. Let not one remain without being physiked, even as ye have physiked me, excepting only my uncle, Al-Abbas.” The repentant women immediately arose, and each obediently gave the drug to the other until all had swallowed some of it; and this strange scene around the Prophet’s deathbed is one of the small number that are best authenticated.
Certain other tales may be accepted without too much over-scrupulous demur. As he lay alternately drawing the bed-clothes over his face and then tossing them off, he would shriek out unconnected sentences: “The Lord destroy the Jews and Christians!... O Lord, let not my tomb be ever an object of worship!... Verily the chiefest among you all for love and devotion to me is Abu Bekr. If I were to choose a bosom friend it would be he; but Islam hath made a closer brotherhood amongst us.... O my soul! Why seekest thou refuge elsewhere than in God alone?... Fetch me hither pen and ink, that I may make for you a writing which shall hinder you from going astray for ever.” On Monday he seemed a little better, but it was only the final flicker of the dying candle. Toward midday, as Ayesha sat holding his head tenderly on her bosom “between her lungs and her neck,” she noticed that his wandering eye had fixed upon a green toothpick; and, after chewing it so that it might be more pliable, she offered it to the dying man who used it for a moment with all his old vigor. But he soon began to sink rapidly, and, as though realizing the imminence of death, he called aloud: “O Lord, I beseech thee assist me in the agonies of death!” Then, while he spasmodically blew breath over his burning body, he thrice repeated, “Gabriel, come close unto me!” It is a regrettable fact that the interesting question of his final utterance must forever remain undecided. One authority declares that he expressed a wish to have concubines treated with consideration; but it is perhaps more appropriate to accept the story that, as consciousness slowly departed, he gently breathed: “Lord, grant me pardon; and join me to the blessed companionship on high. Eternity in Paradise!... Pardon!... The blessed companionship on high!...”—his head fell lower, a cold drop of moisture trickled down upon Ayesha’s breast, and all was over.
Yet no one, not even Ayesha, could believe it for a time. Thinking that he had only fainted, she called aloud for help; and Omar, who immediately came in, looked lovingly upon the familiar and still lifelike features and exclaimed: “The Prophet is not dead; he hath but swooned away.” But Abu Bekr, who was welcomed into the sacred adytum with the feminine salutation, “Come, for this day no permission needeth to be asked,” at once realized the awful truth, which he cautiously made known by stooping and kissing his master’s face, and saying: “Sweet wast thou in life, and sweet thou art in death. Yes, thou art dead! Alas, my friend, my chosen one!” After kissing the face a second time, he covered it with a striped cloth and gently withdrew from the room, while Mohammed’s wives beat their faces, uttered loud and plaintive ululations, “and there arose a wailing of celestial voices.” The corpse was washed and laid out, and, in addition to the garment which he wore at the time of his death, two sheets of costly white linen were wrapped around it. After some discussion, it was decided on the advice of Islam’s new leader, Abu Bekr—“I have heard it from the lips of Mohammed himself,” he announced, “that in whatsoever spot a prophet dieth, there also should he be buried”—that a deep grave should be excavated beneath the apartment of Ayesha. During the night the ominous thud of pickaxes disturbed the troubled dreams of the Prophet’s widows—“I did not believe that Mohammed was really dead,” confessed Um Selama, “till I heard the sound of the pickaxes at the digging of the grave, from the next room”—and next day a constant stream of weeping Moslems filed by to look for the last time upon the beloved face that now resembled a sheet of withered parchment. That evening the body was lowered into the grave, whose bottom had been covered with the Prophet’s precious red mantle; the gaping hole was built over with unbaked bricks, plain earth was then shoveled upon the tomb, and there, in the august simplicity of his domestic abode, Mohammed’s form has ever since remained.
Meanwhile—since all things are possible with Allah—it may surely be conjectured that Gabriel had abundantly granted the Prophet’s dying request, and had borne him, along the familiar route previously traversed in the midnight journey from Jerusalem, for the second and last time into the presence of his Maker. And there—may not one hope?—at the zenith of the Seventh Heaven, in that ravishing Paradise which so closely resembles an infinitely idealized Arabian oasis, he abides even unto this day and will continue to dwell “For ever therein—a fair abode and resting place!”—enjoying the ineffable entertainments that have been prepared for the Moslem saints and martyrs who, triumphant over sin and suffering, have been welcomed to the indepictable felicities of the divine beatitudes; quaffing deep draughts from those inexhaustible “rivers of wine” which the Koran promises to those who have manfully abstained from all earthly elixirs; continually cherished by seventy dark-eyed, deep-bosomed Houris who, as befits inhabitants of the “Garden of Delight,” individually reside within the modest seclusion of enormous hollow pearls; ever and anon chanting, through his black-bearded lips, the ninety-nine beautiful names of Allah, and concluding with the inevitable refrain, “La ilaha illa Allah, Mohammed rasul Allah!”