As has been seen, Mahomet claimed to introduce a wholly new dispensation, and a maxim of his law is that Islam cancels all that preceded it, except, indeed, pecuniary debts; it is not certain that even this exception always held good. Mahomet’s Reforms. Hence his system swept away a number of practices (chiefly connected with the camel) that were associated with pagan superstitions. The most celebrated of these is the arrow-game, a form of gambling for shares in slaughtered camels, to which poetic allusions are very frequent. More important than this was his attitude towards the blood-feud, or system of tribal responsibility for homicide (whether intentional or accidental), whereby one death regularly led to protracted wars, it being considered dishonourable to take blood-money (usually in the form of camels) or to be satisfied with one death in exchange. This system he endeavoured to break down, chiefly by sinking all earlier tribal distinctions in the new brotherhood of Islam; but also by limiting the vengeance to be demanded to such as was no more than the equivalent of the offence committed, and by urging the acceptance of money-compensation instead, or complete forgiveness of the offence. The remembrance of pre-Islamic quarrels was visited by him with condign punishment on those who had embraced Islam; and though it was long before the tribal system quite broke down, even in the great cities which rose in the new provinces, and the old state of things seems to have quickly been resumed in the desert, his legislation on this subject rendered orderly government among Arabs possible.
Next in importance to this is the abolition of infanticide, which is condemned even in early Suras of the Koran. The scanty notices which we have of the practice are not altogether consistent; at times we are told that it was confined to certain tribes, and consisted in the burying alive of infant daughters; at other times it is extended to a wider area, and said to have been carried out on males as well as females. After the taking of Mecca this prohibition was included among the conditions of Islam.
In the laws relating to women it seems likely that he regulated current practice rather than introduced much that was actually new, though, as has been seen, he is credited with giving them the right to inherit property; the most precise legislation in the Koran deals with this subject, of which the main principle is that the share of the male equals that of two females. Our ignorance of the precise nature of the marriage customs prevalent in Arabia at the rise of Islam renders it difficult to estimate the extent to which his laws on this subject were an improvement on what had been before. The pre-Islamic family, unless our records are wholly misleading, did not differ materially from the Islamic; in both polygamy and concubinage were recognized and normal; and it is uncertain that the text which is supposed to limit the number of wives to four was intended to have that meaning. The “condition of Islam” whereby adultery was forbidden is said to have been ridiculed at the time, on the ground that this practice had never been approved. Yet it would seem that certain forms of promiscuity had been tolerated, though the subject is obscure. Against these services we must set the abrogation of some valuable practices. His unfortunate essay in astronomy, whereby a calendar of twelve lunar months, bearing no relation to the seasons, was introduced, was in any case a retrograde step; but it appears to have been connected with the abrogation of the sanctity of the four months during which raiding had been forbidden in Arabia, which, as has been seen, he was the first to violate. He also, as has been noticed, permitted himself a slight amount of bloodshed in Mecca itself, and that city perhaps never quite recovered its sacrosanct character. Of more serious consequences for the development of the community was his encouragement of the shedding of kindred blood in the cause of Islam; the consequences of the abrogation of this taboo seem to have been felt for a great length of time. His assassinations of enemies were afterwards quoted as precedents in books of Tradition. No less unfortunate was the recognition of the principle whereby atonement could be made for oaths. On the question how far the seclusion of women was enjoined or countenanced by him different views have been held.
Besides the contemporary documents enumerated above (Koranic texts, rescripts and authentic traditions) many of the events were celebrated by poets, whose verses were ostensibly incorporated in the standard biography of Ibn Isḥāq; in Sources. the abridgment of that biography which we possess many of these are obelized as spurious, and, indeed, what we know of the procedure of those who professed to collect early poetry gives us little confidence in the genuineness of such odes. A few, however, seem to stand criticism, and the diwan (or collection of poems) attributed to Ḥassan b. Thābit is ordinarily regarded as his. Though they rarely give detailed descriptions of events, their attestation is at times of value, e.g. for the story that the bodies of the slain at Badr were cast by the Prophet into a pit. Besides this, the narratives of eyewitnesses of important events, or of those who had actually taken part in them, were eagerly sought by the second generation, and some of these were committed to writing well before the end of the 1st century. The practice instituted by the second Caliph, of assigning pensions proportioned to the length of time in which the recipient had been a member of the Islamic community, led to the compilation of certain rolls, and to the accurate preservation of the main sequence of events from the commencement of the mission, and for the detailed sequence after the Flight, which presently became an era (beginning with the first month of the year in which the Flight took place). The procedure whereby the original dates of the events (so far as they were remembered) were translated into the Moslem calendar—for something of this sort must have been done—is unknown, and is unlikely to have been scientific.
Mahomet’s conduct being made the standard of right and wrong, there was little temptation to “whitewash” him, although the original biography by Ibn Isḥāq appears to have contained details which the author of the abridgment omitted as scandalous. The preservation of so much that was historical left little room for the introduction of miraculous narrations; these therefore either belong to the obscure period of his life or can be easily eliminated; thus the narratives of the Meccan council at which the assassination of Mahomet was decided, of the battles of Badr, Uḥud and Ḥonain, and the death of Sad‘b. Mu ‘adh, would lose nothing by the omission of the angels and the devil, though a certain part is assigned the one or the other on all these occasions. We should have expected biographies which were published when the ‘Abbasids were reigning to have falsified history for the purpose of glorifying ‘Abbās, their progenitor; the very small extent to which this expectation is justified is a remarkable testimony to their general trustworthiness.
Relatives of the Prohet[1]
1. Family of ‘Abd al-Moṭṭalib, Mahomet’s maternal grandfather:—*‘Abbās (d. A.H. 32 or 34), *Ḥamza (d. A.H. 3), ‘Abdallah, father of the Prophet, *Abū Ṭālib (said to be named ‘Abd Manāf), ? *Zubair, Ḥārith, Ḥajal, Moqawwam, Ḍirār, *Abū Lahab (said to be named ‘Abd al-‘Uzzā, d. A.H. 2), *Ṣafiyyah (d. A.H. 20), Umm Ḥakīm, al-Baiḍā, ‘Ātikah, Umaimah, Arwā, Barrah.
2. Family of Abū Tālib:—*‘Aqīl (d. after A.H. 40), *Ja‘far (d. A.H. 8), Ṭālib, Ṭulaiq, ‘Alī, the caliph, Umm Hāni’, Jumānah, Raiṭah.
3. Family of Mahomet. Wives:—*Khadīja (Children:—Qāsim; ? ‘Abd Manāf (Ṭāhir, Tayyib); *Zainab m. Abu’l-‘Ās b. Rabī’, d. A.H. 7; *Ruqayyah, m. ‘Othmān b. ‘Affān, d. A.H. 2; *Umm Kulthūm m. ‘Othmān b. ‘Affān, d. A.H. 9; *Fāṭimah, m. ‘Alī, d. A.H. 11): *Saudah bint Zam‘ah,? d. A.H. 54, *‘A’ishah (Ayesha) bint Abī Bekr (d. A.H. 56), *Hafṣa bint ‘Omar (d. A.H. 45 or 47), *Zainab bint Khuzaimah, d. before A.H. 11, *Zainab bint Jaḥsh, d. A.H. 20, *Umm Salimah, d. A.H. 59, *Maimūnah, d. A.H. 38, *Juwairiyah, d. A.H. 56, *Umm Ḥabībah Ramlah bint Abī Sofiān, d. A.H. 44.
Concubines:—*Ṣafiyyah bint Ḥuyyay, d. A.H. 36, *Raiḥānah bint Zaid, *Māriyah the Copt, d. A.H. 15 or 16, mother of Ibrāhim. (Other names given by Ibn Sa‘d, vol. viii.)