On which the ambassadors went back to their city in the company of Mohammedan soldiers, who broke Lat to pieces amid the lamentations of the women.
THE LAST YEARS OF MOHAMMED’S LIFE (630-632 A.D.)
[630-632 A.D.]
Mohammed returned to Medina like a victorious king; from all sides came ambassadors and believing followers, to offer their homage and worship, whilst far to the south his envoys on the seacoast won fresh devotees for Islam.
“We are the helpers of God and the soldiers of his messenger,” said the poet Thabit in a rhetorical contest; “we make war on all men until they believe; only he who believes in God and his messenger saves his goods and his blood; we are at feud with all infidels and our victory is always easy.”
The Arab writers linger affectionately over the different scenes of homage which the chiefs of the desert tribes, as well as the inhabitants of the cities, paid to the prophet, the prince of the faithful, in these first years of youthful enthusiasm. Yet adversities and misfortune troubled the end of his life. A hostile party under the leadership of Abdallah still subsisted in Medina. This was especially prominent when the prophet was arranging a fresh expedition against the Greeks in Syria in an oppressive heat, just when the Arabs were busied with the date harvest. Consequently many evaded the order and Abdallah turned back with his men soon after the start. A severe verse of the Koran rebuked the delay.
“Ye say, ‘go not out during the heat’; but God says by Mohammed, ‘the fire of hell is more scorching.’ Your laughter is but of short duration and ye shall one day weep long for your behaviour. Ye shall go forth no more with me and fight no more by my side.”
At Tabuk, between Medina and Damascus, the army came to a halt, that they might recover in that fertile neighbourhood from the toilsome, painful march. Here Mohammed received the submission of the chiefs of some of the Syrian border towns and the homage of a Christian prince. They purchased peace at the price of an annual tribute. Nevertheless Mohammed did not deem it advisable to advance further into the enemy’s country with his small following; he set out on the return march, and through many hardships and perils arrived at Medina after an absence of twenty days. For a time the disobedient were excluded from the circle of the believers; but when with penitence and contrition they sued for forgiveness they were received back into favour. Soon after this, death freed the prophet from his most dangerous adversary, Abdallah ben Obayyah. This event, as well as the homage of more and more Arab tribes, restored his spirits, which had been deeply affected by the death of his two daughters, Zainab and Umm Kolthum. The ninth Sura of the Koran, the symbol of the religion of the sword which he imparted to a host of pilgrims in a reading at the site of the holy temple at Mecca, may be taken as the outpouring of this exalted state of mind. In this he renounced peace with all unbelievers, heathen, Jews, and Christians, forbade them ever to set foot in the sanctuary, and declared perpetual war against them to be a sacred duty. In it he also reiterated the threats and curses against the hypocrites and loiterers who delayed to march to the holy war. Ali’s delivery of this declaration before all the people had the desired effect. The ambassadors, who in the name of the princes and tribes declared the latter’s accession to Islam, were as numerous “as the dates which fall from the palm tree in the time of ripeness.” From the frontier of Syria to the southern end of the peninsula and to the mountains bordering on the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, tribes of all tongues and religions hastened to find the key of paradise in the faith in the “One God who has no fellow.” When in the tenth year of the Hegira, Mohammed, with his nine wives, proceeded on his last pilgrimage to Mecca, which was to serve the Moslems for all future times as a pattern and example, 40,000 (or according to some accounts as many as 114,000) of the faithful accompanied him.
On this pilgrimage the suffering condition of the prophet first became manifest. With great effort he passed seven times round the Kaaba, and as he did so he prayed: “O Lord, prosper us in this life and the next, and preserve us from the pains of hell.” The unnatural agitations and paroxysms of his soul, the great physical exertions, the insidious poison of Khaibar, and finally his grief at the loss of his young son Ibrahim, whom, to his extreme joy, the Egyptian slave Maria had borne to him in the previous year and on whom he had set all his hopes—all these things undermined his health and hastened his end. The laments into which he broke out at sight of the child’s corpse already contained a foreboding of his own approaching end.
“I am grieved at thy loss,” he said, “mine eye weeps and my heart is sad, yet will I utter no lament which may anger the Lord; were I not convinced that I should follow thee, my grief would be inconsolable, but we are God’s and shall return to him.”