Christianity, successfully preached in several parts of Arabia, was professed by the Ghassanides in the year 330, and by various Arab tribes of Irak, Mesopotamia, Bahrein, the desert of Faran, and Damut-Jandal. The combined efforts of the negus of Abyssinia and of the emperor of Constantinople had contributed to spread the Gospel in Yemen. The Christian colony of Nejran had been honoured by persecution under Dhu-Nowas towards 523; fifty years later, Abraha sought to make of the church of Sana the goal of Arab pilgrimages. Lastly several kings of Hira had been favourable to the religion of Christ.
In the midst of the new ideas which preaching had spread throughout the peninsula, idolatry nevertheless remained the dominant religion. The intermediary divinities which certain tribes adored bore no resemblance to those creations of the Greeks and Romans, who worshipped moral beings clothed in bodily forms; they were, as with the ancient Egyptians, animals and plants, the gazelle, the horse, the camel, palm trees, vegetables, or inorganic bodies, rocks, stones, etc. All the Arabs acknowledged one supreme God, Allah; but some of them worshipped under the figure of their idols, the angels Benat-allah (the daughters of God); others, the planets or stars such as Aldebaran, Sirius, Canope, etc. They believed in genii, Jinn, in ogres, Ghol, in witchcraft, Shir, in divination, Kehana, in sacrifices, in oracles; fate was consulted by means of arrows without points, kidah or azlam, and the most blamable superstitious rites were still almost universally practised. A great number of tribes had their special idols, Hobal, Lat, etc., who were honoured by rich offerings, and in whose honour victims were slain; however, no temple had the fame of the Kaaba, whose pre-eminence was universally admitted.
This temple, which Abraha al-Ashram had wished to destroy, had been throughout the ages the object of the greatest veneration; it was looked on as a present made by Jehovah to the Arab race to bear witness to its condition privileged beyond all others. It was the oratory of Abraham and of Ishmael, the house of Allah; on receiving the 360 idols, subordinate powers accepted by the Arabs, it included all their divinities and became the Pantheon of the nation; the traditions connected with it were dear to all. They made the Kaaba a place of pilgrimage. They laboured to adorn it, to beautify it; they would have liked it to surpass in riches all the monuments of the universe; they hung the Moallakat in it, as if to connect with it every form of illustration. The Sabians, the fire-worshippers, sent their offerings to it; even the Jews showed a deep respect for this revered spot. The guardians of the temple, the Koreish clan, had a sort of religious authority which was willingly recognised by all; for instance, they had the right to name the sacred months during which, after the pilgrimage, a suspension of arms should reign throughout Arabia. So those who could attend the fair of Okad placed their weapons in the hands of the Koreish chiefs before entering the meeting, which, without this wise precaution, would often have degenerated into bloody fights. It was therefore necessary to have influence at Mecca and with the Koreish chiefs if one wished to found a uniform and national religion in Arabia, and Mohammed saw this perfectly.
Abdul-Muttalib, the son of Hashim, born in 497, exercised supreme authority in Mecca, from 520 to 579; he had the glory of delivering his country from the invasion of the Abyssinians, and he saw a Himyarite prince drive the foreigners from Yemen with the help of the king of Persia. Father of eighteen children, he believed himself bound by a rash vow to sacrifice one of his sons, in 569, before the idols of the Kaaba; fate fixed on one he loved the most, Abdallah, about twenty-four years of age. At the moment of the sacrifice, some of the Koreish chiefs rose against so barbarous an action and so fatal an example; by their advice a witch, arrafa, was consulted, who declared that Abdallah’s life might be purchased by means of the dia (price of human blood), and by drawing lots. The dia consisting of ten camels, the number ten was inscribed on a pointless arrow, and on another the name of Abdallah; nine times the name of Abdallah appeared, and it was only the tenth time that the camels were condemned. So a hundred were killed instead of Abdallah, and this number became thenceforth among the Koreish chiefs the price of the dia.
A few days later Abdallah married Amina, daughter of Wahb, chief of the family of the Zohri, and from this marriage was born Mohammed, “the glorified,” about the month of August, 570.[b]
Mohammed’s Life
[570-595 A.D.]
Mohammed (properly Muhammad, “the much praised”; and not Mahomet), was born in Mecca five years after the death of Justinian. The small inheritance which his father left him consisted of five camels and a faithful female slave. The biographers inform us that according to the custom which prevailed among the upper classes in Mecca, his mother Amina put the child out to nurse in the country. Halima, the wife of a herdsman, was his foster-mother and nurse till his third year, and the sacred legend tells us of many wonders with which the divine favour surrounded Mohammed’s childhood. Halima’s flocks and herds increased tenfold; her fields bore a superabundant harvest; angels cleansed the child’s heart from all sins and filled it with faith, knowledge and prophetic gifts. As, however, the child suffered from fits of convulsions, at the end of two years Halima brought him back to his mother. With her he remained till his sixth year. She then went with him to Yathreb (Medina), to visit her relatives, but died on the way back in the town of Abwa.
Mohammed now entered the house of his grandfather, Abdul-Muttalib, and when two years later the latter also died, his uncle Abu Talib took him into his family and watched over him with paternal affection. The story that in his twelfth year he accompanied his foster-father on a caravan journey to Syria, and that on this occasion a Christian monk foretold the boy’s future greatness, appears, like many other details of his life, to be a later legend. As he grew older, after having spent some time in guarding the flocks, Mohammed took his share in the business and manner of life of his relatives. He accompanied several of his uncles on warlike and commercial expeditions, in which he learned to know his country and his nation, and beheld the desert with its terrors and its poetry, where he heard the legends and traditions of the wandering tribes and gathered information concerning the teachings of the beliefs of Jew and Christian. He did not himself understand the language of writing, but Mecca as the pilgrim city of the East was one of the world’s centres, a school of culture containing much instruction for a thoughtful youth. The Christian religion, indeed, appears to have been known to him only by a few legends and distorted doctrines; but on the other hand the Jewish sect of the Hanifs, who lived scattered over the oases of the desert, had preserved and handed down Judaism in its original purity and simplicity, together with the belief in divine revelations at the mouth of inspired prophets.