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MAHOMET

FOUNDER OF ISLAM

BY G. M. DRAYCOTT

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I. MAHOMET'S BIRTHPLACE

II. CHILDHOOD

III. STRIFE AND MEDITATION

IV. ADVENTURE AND SECURITY

V. INSPIRATION

VI. SEVERANCE

VII. THE CHOSEN CITY

VIII. THE FLIGHT TO MEDINA

IX. THE CONSOLIDATION OF POWER

X. THE SECESSION OF THE JEWS

XI. THE BATTLE OF BEDR

XII. THE JEWS AT MEDINA

XIII. THE BATTLE OF OHOD

XIV. THE TYRANNY OF WAR

XV. THE WAR OF THE DITCH

XVI. THE PILGRIMAGE TO HODEIBIA

XVII. THE FULFILLED PILGRIMAGE

XVIII. THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY

XIX. MAHOMET, VICTOR

XX. ICONOCLASM

XXI. LAST RITES

XXII. THE GENESIS OF ISLAM

INDEX

"Il estimait sincèrement la force…. Jetée dans le monde, son âme se trouva à la mesure du monde et l'embrassa tout…. C'est l'état prodigieux des hommes d'action. Ils sont tout entiers dans la moment qu'ils vivent et leur génie se ramasse sur un point."

ANATOLE FRANCE

MAHOMET

INTRODUCTION

The impetus that gave victory to Islam is spent. Since its material prosperity overwhelmed its spiritual ascendancy in the first years of triumph its vitality has waned under the stress of riches, then beneath lassitude and the slow decrease of power. The Prophet Mahomet is at once the glory and bane of his people, the source of their strength and the mainspring of their weakness. He represents more effectively than any other religious teacher the sum of his followers' spiritual and worldly ideas. His position in religion and philosophy is substantially the position of all his followers; none have progressed beyond the primary thesis he gave to the Arabian world at the close of his career.

He closes a long line of semi-divine teachers and monitors. After him the curtains of heaven close, and its glory is veiled from men's eyes. He is the last great man who imposed enthusiasm for an idea upon countless numbers of his fellow-creatures, so that whole tribes fought and died at his bidding, and at the command of God through him. Now that the vital history of Islam has been written, some decision as to the position and achievements of its founder may be formulated.

Mahomet conceived the office of Prophet to be the result of an irresistible divine call. Verily the angel Gabriel appeared to him, commanding him to "arise and warn." He was the vehicle through whom the will of Allah was revealed. The inspired character of his rule was the prime factor in its prevailing; by virtue of his heavenly authority he exercised his sway over the religious actions of his followers, their aspirations and their beliefs. In order to promulgate the divine ordinances the Kuran was sent down, inspired directly by the angel Gabriel at the bidding of the Lord. Upon all matters of belief and upon all other matters dealt with, however cursorily, in the Kuran Mahomet spoke with the power of God Himself; upon matters not within the scope of religion or of the Sacred Book he was only a human and fallible counsellor.

"I am no more than man; when I order you anything with respect to religion, receive it, and when I order you about the affairs of the world, then am I nothing more than man."

There is no question of his equality with the Godhead, or even of his sharing any part of the divine nature. He is simply the instrument, endowed with a power and authority outside himself, a man who possesses one cardinal thesis which all those within his faith must accept.

The idea which represents at once the scope of his teaching and the source of his triumphs is the unity and indivisibility of the Godhead. This is the sole contribution he has made to the progressive thought of the world. Though he came later in time than the culture of Greece and Rome, he never knew their philosophies or the sum of their knowledge. His religion could never he built upon such basic strength as Christianity. It sprang too rapidly into prominence, and had no foundation of slowly developed ideas upon which to rest both its enthusiasm and its earthly endeavour.

Mahomet bears closer resemblance to the ancient Hebrew prophets than to any Christian leader or saint. His mind was akin to theirs in its denunciatory fury, its prostration before the might and majesty of a single God. The evolution of the tribal deity from the local wonderworker, whose shrine enclosed his image, to the impersonal and distant but awful power who held the earth beneath his sway, was Mahomet's contribution to the mental development of his country, and the achievement within those confines was wonderful. But to the sum of the world's thought he gave little. His central tenet had already gained its votaries in other lands, and, moreover, their form of belief in one God was such that further development of thought was still possible to them. The philosophy of Islam blocks the way of evolution for itself, because its system leaves no room for such pregnant ideas as divine incarnation, divine immanence, the fatherhood of God. It has been content to formulate one article of faith: "There is no God but God," the corollary as to Mahomet's divine appointment to the office of Prophet being merely an affirmation of loyalty to the particular mode of faith he imposed. Therefore the part taken by Islam in the reading of the world's mystery ceased with the acceptance of that previously conceived central tenet.

In the sphere of ideas, indeed, Mahomet gave his people nothing original, for his power did not lie in intellect, but in action. His mind had not passed the stage that has just exchanged many fetishes for one spiritual God, still to be propitiated, not alone by sacrifices, but by prayers, ceremonies, and praise. In the world of action lay the strength of Islam and the genius of its founder; it is therefore in the impress it made upon events and not in its theology and philosophy that its secret is to be found. But besides the acceptance of one God as Lord, Islam forced upon its devotees a still more potent idea, whose influence is felt both in the spheres of thought and action.

As an outcome of its political and military needs Mahomet created and established its unassailable belief in fatality—not the fatalism of cause and effect, bearing within itself the essence of a reason too vast for humanity to comprehend, but the fatalism of an omnipotent and capricious power inherent in the Mahomedan conception of God. With this mighty and irresponsible being nothing can prevail. Before every event the result of it is irrevocably decreed. Mankind can alter no tiniest detail of his destined lot. The idea corresponds with Mahomet's vision of God—an awful, incomprehensible deity, who dwells perpetually in the terrors of earth, not in its gentleness and compassion. The doctrine of fatalism proved Islam's greatest asset during its first hard years of struggle, for it gave to its battlefields the glory of God's surveillance: "Death is a favour to a Muslim." But with prosperity and conquest came inaction; then fatalism, out of the weakening of endurance, created the pessimism of Islam's later years. Being philosophically uncreative, it descended into the sloth of those who believe, without exercise of reason or will, in the uselessness of effort.

Before Islam decayed into inertia it had experienced a fierce and flaming life. The impulse bestowed upon it by its founder operated chiefly in the religious world, and indirectly in the realm of political and military power. How far the religion of Islam is indebted to Mahomet's knowledge of the Jewish and Christian systems becomes clear upon a study of the Kuran and the Muslim institutions. That Mahomet was familiar with Jewish Scriptures and tradition is beyond doubt.

The middle portion of the Kuran is filled to the point of weariness with reiterations of Jewish legend and hero-myths. It is evident that Mahomet took the God of the Jews to be his own deity, combining in his conception also the traditional connection of Jehovah and His Chosen People with the ancient faith and ceremonies of Mecca, purged of their idolatries. From the Jews he took his belief in the might and terror of the Lord and the admonitory character of his mission. From them also he took the separatist nature of his creed. The Jewish teachers postulated a religion distinct from every other belief, self-sufficient, owning no interpreter save the Law and the Scriptures. Mahomet conceived himself also as the sole vehicle during his lifetime and after his death for the commands of the Most High. He aimed at the superseding of Rabbinical power, and hoped to win the Jews into recognition of himself as successor to their own teachers and prophets.

But his claims were met by an unyielding reliance upon the completed Law. If the Jewish religion had rejected a Redeemer from among its own people, it was impossible that it should accept a leader from an alien and despised race. Mahomet, finding coalition impossible, gave free play to his separatist instinct, so that in this respect, and also in its fundamental conception of the deity, as well as in its reliance upon inspired Scriptures and oral traditions, Mahomedanism approximates to the Jewish system. It misses the influence of an immemorial history, and receives no help in its campaign of warfare from the traditional glories of long lines of warrior kings. Chief of all, it lacks the inspiration of the matchless Jewish Scriptures and Sacred Books, depending for instruction upon a document confined to the revelation of one man's personality and view of life.

Still the narrowness of the Mahomedan system provoked its power; its rapid rush to the heights Of dominion was born of the straitening of its impulse into the channel of conquest and the forcible imposition of its faith.

Of Christianity Mahomet knew far less than of Judaism. He went to the Christian doctrines as they were known in heterodox Syria, far off from the main stream of Christian life and teaching. He went to them with a prejudiced mind, full of anger against their exponents for declaring the Messiah to be the Son of God. The whole idea of the Incarnation and the dogma of the Trinity were thoroughly abhorrent to him, and the only conception he entertains as to the personality of Jesus is that of a Prophet even as he is himself, the receiver of divine inspiration, but having no connection in essence with God, whom he conceived pre-eminently as the one supreme Being, indivisible in nature. Certainly he knew far less of the Christian than of the Jewish Scriptures, and necessarily less of the inner meaning of the Christian faith, still in fluid state, unconsidered of its profoundest future exponents. His mind was assuredly not attuned to the reception of its more revolutionary ideas. Very little compassion and no tenderness breathe from the pages of the Kuran, and from a religion whose Founder had laboured to bring just those two elements into the thorny ways of the world, Mahomet could only turn away baffled and uncomprehending. The doctrine of the non-resistance to evil, and indeed all the wisdom of the Sermon on the Mount, he passed by unseeing.

It is useless and indeed unfair to attempt the comparison of Mahomedanism with Christianity, seeing that without the preliminary culture of Greece and Rome modern Christian doctrines would not exist in their present form, and of the former Mahomet had no cognisance. He stands altogether apart from the Christian system, finding no affinity in its doctrines or practices, scorning its monasticism no less than its conception of the Trinity. His position in history lies between the warriors and the saints, at the head of the Prophets, who went, flail in hand, to summon to repentance, but unlike the generality, bearing also the sword and sceptre of a kingdom.

No other religious leader has ever bound his creed so closely to definite political conceptions, Mahomet was not only the instrument of divine revelation, but he was also at the end of his life the head of a temporal state with minutest laws and regulations—chaotic it may be, but still binding so that Islamic influence extended over the whole of the lives of its adherents. This constitutes its strength. Its leader swayed not only the convictions but the activities of his subjects.

His position with regard to the political institution of other countries is unique. His temporal power grew almost in spite of himself, and he unconsciously adopted ideas in connection with it which arose out of the circumstances involved. Any form of government except despotism was impossible among so heterogeneous and unruly a people; despotism also bore out his own idea as to the nature of God's governance. Political ideas were largely built upon religious conceptions, sometimes outstripping, sometimes lagging behind them, but always with some irrefragable connection. Despotism, therefore, was the form best suited to Islam, and becomes its chief legacy to posterity, since without the religious sanction Islam politically could not exist.

Together with despotism and inextricably mingled with it is the second great Islamic enthusiasm—the belief in the supremacy of force. With violence the Muslim kingdom was to be attained. Mahomet gave to the battle lust of Arabia the approval of his puissant deity, bidding his followers put their supreme faith in the arbitrament of the sword. He knew, too, the value of diplomacy and the use of well-calculated treachery, but chief of all he bade his followers arm themselves to seize by force what they could not obtain by cunning. In the insistence upon these two factors, complete obedience to his will as the revelation of Allah's decrees and the justification of violence to proclaim the merits of his faith, we gain the nearest approach to his character and beliefs; for these, together with his conception of fate, are perhaps the most personal of all his institutions.

Mahomet has suffered not a little at the hands of his immediate successors. They have sought to record the full sum of his personality, and finding the subject elude them, as the translation of actions into words must ever fall short of finality, they have overloaded their narrative with minutest and almost always apocryphal details which leave the main outlines blurred. Only two biographies can be said to be in the nature of sources, that of Muhammad ibn Hischam, written on the model of an earlier biography, undertaken about 760 for the Abbasside Caliph Mansur, and of Wakidi, written about 820, which is important as containing the text of many treaties made by Mahomet with various tribes. Al-Tabari, too, included the life of Mahomet in his extensive history of Arabia, but his work serves only as a check, consisting, as it does, mainly of extracts from Wakidi. By far the more valuable is the Kuran and the Sunna of tradition. But even these are fragmentary and confused, bearing upon them the ineradicable stamp of alien writers and much second-hand thought.

In the dim, pregnant dawn of religions, by the transfusing power of a great idea, seized upon and made living by a single personality, the world of imagination mingles with the world of fact as we perceive it. The real is felt to be merely the frail shell of forces more powerful and permanent. Legend and myth crowd in upon actual life as imperfect vehicles for the compelling demand made by that new idea for expression. Moreover, personality, that subtle essence, exercises a kind of centripetal force, attracting not only the devotion but the imaginations of those who come within its influence.

Mahomet, together with all the men of action in history, possessed an energy of will so vast as to bring forth the creative faculties of his adherents, and the legends that cluster round him have a special significance as the measure of his personality and influence. The story, for instance, of his midnight journey into the seven heavens is the symbol of an intense spiritual experience that, following the mental temper of the age in which he lived, had to be translated into the concrete. All the affirmations as to his intercourse with Djinn, his inspiration by the angel Gabriel, are inherent factors in the manifestation of his ceaseless mental activity. His marvellous birth and the myths of his childhood are the sum of his followers' devotion, and reveal their reverence translated into terms of the imagination. Character was the mysterious force that his co-religionists tried unconsciously to portray in all those legends relative to his life at Medina, his ruthlessness and cruelty finding a place no less than his humility, and steadfastness under discouragement.

But beneath the weight of the marvellous the real man is almost buried. He has stood for so long with the mists of obscure imaginings about him that his true lineaments are almost impossible to reproduce. The Western world has alternated between the conception of him as a devil, almost Antichrist himself, and a negligible impostor whose power is transient. It has seldom troubled to look for the human energy that wrought out his successes, the faith that upheld them, and the enthusiasm that burned in the Prophet himself with a sombre flame, lighting his followers to prayer and conquest.

And indeed it is difficult, if not impossible, to re-create effectively the world in which he lived. It is so remote from the seas of the world's progression, an eddy in the tide of belief which loses itself in the larger surging, that it makes no appeal of familiarity. But that a study of the period and Mahomet's own personality operating no less through his deeds, faith, and institutions than in the one doubtfully reliable record of his teachings, will result in the perception of the Prophet of Islam as a man among men, has been the central belief during the writing of this biography. Mahomet's personality is revealed in his dealing with his fellows, in the belief and ritual that he imposed upon Arabia, in the mighty achievement of a political unity and military discipline, and therein he shows himself inexorable, cruel, passionate, treacherous, bad, subject to depression and overwhelming doubt, but never weak or purposeless, continually the master of his circumstances, whom no emergency found unprepared, whose confidence in himself nothing could shake, and who by virtue of enthusiasm and resistless activity wrested his triumphs from the hands of his enemies, and bequeathed to his followers his own unconquerable faith and the means wherewith they might attain wealth and sovereignty.

CHAPTER I

MAHOMET'S BIRTHPLACE

"And how many cities were mightier in strength than thy city that hath cast thee forth?"—The Kuran.

In Arabia nature cannot be ignored. Pastures and cornland, mountain slopes and quiet rivers may be admired, even reverenced; but they are things external to the gaze, and make no insistent demand upon the spirit for penetration of their mystery. Arabia, and Mecca as typical of Arabia, is a country governed by earth's primal forces. It has not yet emerged from the shadow of that early world, bare and chaotic, where a blinding sun pours down upon dusty mountain ridges, and nothing is temperate or subdued. It fosters a race of men, whose gods are relentless and inscrutable, revealing themselves seldom, and dwelling in a fierce splendour beyond earthly knowledge. To the spirit of a seeker for truth with senses alert to the outer world, this country speaks of boundless force, and impels into activity under the spur of conviction; by its very desolation it sets its ineradicable mark upon the creed built up within it.

Mahomet spent forty years in the city of Mecca, watching its temple services with his grandfather, taking part in its mercantile life, learning something of Christian and Jewish doctrine through the varied multitudes that thronged its public places. In the desert beyond the city boundaries he wandered, searching for inspiration, waiting dumbly in the darkness until the angel Gabriel descended with rush of wings through the brightness of heaven, commanding:

"Cry aloud, in the name of the Lord who created thee. O, thou enwrapped in thy mantle, arise and warn!"

Mecca lies in a stony valley midway between Yemen, "the Blessed," and Syria, in the midst of the western coast-chain of Arabia, which slopes gradually towards the Red Sea. The height of Abu Kobeis overlooks the eastern quarter of the town, whence hills of granite stretch to the holy places, Mina and Arafat, enclosed by the ramparts of the Jebel Kora range. Beyond these mountains to the south lies Taif, with its glory of gardens and fruit-trees. But the luxuriance of Taif finds no counterpart on the western side. Mecca is barren and treeless; its sandy stretches only broken here and there by low hills of quartz or gneiss, scrub-covered and dusty. The sun beats upon the shelterless town until it becomes a great cauldron within its amphitheatre of hills. During the Greater Pilgrimage the cauldron seethes with heat and humanity, and surges over into Mina and Arafat. In the daytime Mecca is limitless heat and noise, but under the stars it has all the magic of a dream-city in a country of wide horizons.

The shadow of its ancient prosperity, when it was the centre of the caravan trade from Yemen to Syria, still hung about it in the years immediately before the birth of Mahomet, and the legends concerning the founding of the city lingered in the native mind. Hagar, in her terrible journey through the desert, reached Mecca and laid her son in the midst of the valley to go on the hopeless quest for water. The child kicked the ground in torment, and God was merciful, so that from his heel marks arose a spring of clear water—the well Zemzem, hallowed ever after by Meccans. In this desolate place part of the Amalekites and tribes from Yemen settled; the child Ishmael grew up amongst them and founded his race by marrying a daughter of the chief. Abraham visited him, and under his guidance the native temple of the Kaaba was built and dedicated to the true God, but afterwards desecrated by the worship of idols within it.

Such are the legends surrounding the foundation of Mecca and of the Kaaba, of which, as of the legends concerning the early days of Rome, it may be said that they are chiefly interesting as throwing light upon the character of the race which produced them. In the case of Mecca they were mainly the result of an unconscious desire to associate the city as far as possible with the most renowned heroes of old time, and also to conciliate the Jewish element within Arabia, now firmly planted at Medina, Kheibar, and some of the adjoining territory, by insisting on a Jewish origin for their holy of holies, and as soon as Abraham and Ishmael were established as fathers of the race, legends concerning them were in perpetual creation.

The Kaaba thus reputed to be the work of Abraham bears evidence of an antiquity so remote that its beginnings will be forever lost to us. From very early times it was a goal of pilgrimage for all Arabia, because of the position of Mecca upon the chief trade route, and united in its ceremonies the native worship of the sun and stars, idols and misshapen stones. The Black Stone, the kissing of which formed the chief ceremonial, is a relic of the rites practised by the stone-worshippers of old; while the seven circuits of the Kaaba, obligatory on all pilgrims, are probably a symbol of the courses of the planets. Arab divinities, such as Alilat and Uzza, were associated with the Kaaba before any records are available, and at the time of Mahomet, idolatry mingled with various rites still held sway among the Meccans, though the leaven of Jewish tradition was of great help to him in the establishment of the monotheistic idea. At Mahomet's birth the Kaaba consisted of a small roofless house, with the Black Stone imbedded in its wall. Near it lay the well Zemzem, and the reputed grave of Ishmael. The Holy Place of Arabia held thus within itself traces of a purer faith, that were to be discovered and filled in by Mahomet, until the Kaaba became the goal of thousands, the recipient of the devotion and longings of that mighty host of Muslim who went forth to subdue the world. Mahomet's ancestors had for some time held a high position in the city. He came of the race of Hashim, whose privilege it was to give service to the pilgrims coming to worship at the Kaaba. The Hashim were renowned for generosity, and Mahomet's grandfather, Abd al Muttalib, was revered by the Kureisch, inhabitants of Mecca, as a just and honourable man, who had greatly increased their prosperity by his rediscovery of the holy well.

Its healing waters had been choked by the accumulations of years, so that even the knowledge of its site was lost, when an angel appeared to Abd al Muttalib, as he slept at the gate of the temple, saying:

"Dig up that which is pure!"

Three times the command fell on uncomprehending ears, until the angel revealed to the sleeper where the precious water might be found. And as he dug, the well burst forth once more, and behold within its deeps lay two golden gazelles, with weapons, the treasure of former kings. And there was strife among the Kureisch for the possession of these riches, until they were forced to draw lots. So the treasure fell to Abd al Muttalib, who melted the weapons to make a door for the Kaaba, and set up the golden gazelles within it.

Abd al Muttalib figures very prominently in the early legends concerning Mahomet, because he was sole guardian of the Prophet during very early childhood. These legends are mainly later accretions, but the kernel of truth within them is not difficult to discover. Like all forerunners of the great teachers, he stands in communion with heavenly messengers, the symbol of his purity of heart. He is humble, compassionate, and devout, living continually in the presence of his god—a fitting guardian for the renewer of the faith of his nation. Most significant of the legends is the story of his vow to sacrifice a son if ten were born to him, and of the choice of Abdullah, Mahomet's father, and the repeated staying of the father's hand, so that the sacrifice could not be accomplished until is son's life was bought with the blood of a hundred camels. This and all allied legends are fruit of a desire to magnify the divine authority of Mahomet's mission by dwelling on the intervention of a higher power in the disposal of his fate.

Of Abd al Muttalib's ten sons, Abdallah was the most handsome in form and stature, so that the fame of his beauty spread into the harems of the city, and many women coveted him in their hearts. But he, after his father had sacrificed the camels in his stead, went straightway to the house of Amina, a maiden well-born and lovely, and remained there to complete his nuptials with her. Then, after some weeks, he departed to Gaza for the exchange of merchandise, but, returning, was overtaken by sickness and died at Medina.

Amina, left thus desolate, sought the house of Abd al Muttalib, where she stayed until her child was born. Visions of his future greatness were vouchsafed to her before his birth by an angel, who told her the name he was to bear, and his destiny as Prophet of his people. Long before the child's eyes opened to the light, a brightness surrounded his mother, so that by it might be seen the far-off towers of the castles in Syrian Bostra. A tenderness hangs over the story of Mahomet's birth, akin to that immortal beauty surrounding the coming of Christ. We have faint glimpses of Amina, in the dignity of her sorrow, waiting for the birth of her son, and in the house of Mecca's leading citizen, hearing around her not alone the celestial voices of her spirit-comforters, but also rumours of earthly strife and the threatenings of strange armies from the south.

At Sana, capital of Yemen, ruled Abraha, king of the southern province. He built a vast temple within its walls, and purposed to make Sana the pilgrim-city for all Arabia. But the old custom still clove to Mecca, and finding he could in nowise coerce the people into forsaking the Kaaba, he determined to invade Mecca itself and to destroy the rival place of worship. So he gathered together a great army, which numbered amongst it an elephant, a fearful sight to the Meccans, who had never seen so great an animal. With this force he marched upon Mecca, and was about to enter the city after fruitless attempts by Abd al Muttalib to obtain quarter, when God sent down a scourge of sickness upon his army and he was forced to retreat, returning miserably to Sana with a remnant of his men. But so much had the presence of the elephant alarmed the Meccans that the year (A.D. 570) was called ever after "The Year of the Elephant," and in August thereof Mahomet was born.

Then Amina sent for Abd al Muttalib and told him the marvels she had seen and heard, and his grandfather took the child and presented him in the Kaaba, after the manner of the Jews, and gave him the name Mahomet (the Praised One), according as the angel had commanded Amina.

The countless legends surrounding Mahomet's birth, even to the physical marvel that accompanied it, cannot be set aside as utterly worthless. They serve to show the temper of the nation producing them, deeply imaginative and incoherently poetical, and they indicate the weight of the personality to which they cling. All the devotion of the East informs them; but since the spirit that caused them to be is in its essence one of relentless activity, neither contemplative nor mystic, they lack that subtle sweetness that belongs to the Buddhist and Christian histories, and dwell rather within the region of the marvellous than of the spiritually symbolic. Neither Mahomet's father nor mother are known to us in any detail; they are merely the passive instruments of Mahomet's prophetic mission. His real parents are his grandfather and his uncle Abu Talib; but more than these, the desert that nurtured him, physically and mentally, that bounded his horizon throughout his life and impressed its mighty mysteries upon his unconscious childhood and his eager, imaginative youth.

CHAPTER II

CHILDHOOD

"Paradise lies at the feet of mothers."—MAHOMET.

No more beautiful and tender legends cluster round Mahomet than those which grace his life in the desert under the loving care of his foster-mother Hailima. She was a woman of the tribe of Beni Sa'ad, who for generations had roamed the desert, tent-dwellers, who visited cities but rarely, and kept about them the remoteness and freedom of their adventurous life beneath the sun and stars.

About the time of Mahomet's birth a famine fell upon the Beni Sa'ad, which left nothing of all their stores, and the women of the tribe journeyed,[28] weary and stricken with hunger, into the city of Mecca that they might obtain foster-children whose parents would give them money and blessings if they could but get their little ones taken away from that unhealthy place. Among these was Hailima, who, according to tradition, has left behind her the narrative of that dreadful journey across the desert with her husband and her child, and with only an ass and a she-camel for transport. Famine oppressed them sorely, together with the heat of desert suns, until there was no sustenance for any living creature; then, faint and travel-weary, they reached the city and began their quest.

Mahomet was offered to every woman of the tribe, but they rejected him as he had no father, and there was little hope of much payment from the mothers of these children. Those of rich parents were eagerly spoken for, but no one would care for the little fatherless child. And it happened that Hailima also was unsuccessful in her search, and was like to have returned to her people disconsolate, but when she saw Mahomet she bethought herself and said to her husband:

"By the God of my fathers, I will not go back to my companions without foster-child. I will take this orphan."

And her husband replied: "It cannot harm thee to do this, and if thou takest him it may be that through him God will bless us."

So Hailima took him, and she relates how good fortune attended her from that day. Her camels gave abundant milk during the homeward journey, and in the unfruitful land of the Beni Sa'ad her cattle were always fattest and yielded most milk, until her neighbours besought her to allow them to pasture their cattle with hers. But, adds the chronicler naively, in spite of this their cattle returned to them thin and yielding little, while Hailima's waxed fat and fruitful. These legends are the translation into poetic fact of the peace and love surrounding Mahomet during the five years he spent with Hailima; for in all primitive communities every experience must pass through transmutation into the definite and tangible and be given a local habitation and a name.

When Mahomet was two years old and the time had come to restore him to his mother, Hailima took him back to Mecca; but his mother gave him to her again because he had thriven so well under desert skies, and she feared the stifling air of Mecca for her only son. So Hailima returned with him and brought him up as one of her children until he was five, when the first signs of his nervous, highly-strung nature showed themselves in a kind of epileptic fit. The Arabians, unskilled as they were in any medical science, attributed manifestations of this kind to evil spirits, and it is not surprising that we find Hailima bringing him back to his grandfather in great alarm. So ended his fostering by the desert and by Hailima.

Of these five years spent among the Beni Sa'ad chroniclers have spoken in much detail, but their confused accounts are so interwoven with legend that it is impossible to re-create events, and we can only obtain a general idea of his life as a tiny child among the children of the tribe, sharing their fortunes, playing and quarrelling with them, and at moments, when the spirit seemed to advance beyond its dwelling-place, gazing wide-eyed upon the limitless desert under the blaze of sun or below the velvet dark, with swift, half-conscious questionings uttering the universal why and how [31] of childhood. Legend regards even this early time as one of preparation for his mission, and there are stories of the coming of two men clothed in white and shining garments, who ripped open his body, took out his heart, and having purged it of all unrighteousness, returned it, symbolically cleansing him of sin that he might forward the work of God. It was an imaginative rightness that decreed that Mahomet's most impressionable years should be spent in the great desert, whose twin influences of fierceness and fatalism he felt throughout his life, and which finally became the key-notes of his worship of Allah.

Hailima, convinced that her foster-son was possessed by evil spirits, resolved to return him to Abd al Muttalib, but as she journeyed through Upper Mecca, the child wandered away and was lost for a time. Hailima hurried, much agitated, to his grandfather, who immediately sent his sons to search, and after a short time they returned with the boy, unharmed and unfrightened by his adventure. The legend—it is quite a late accretion—is interesting, as showing an acquaintance with, and a parallelism to, the story of the losing of Jesus among the Passover crowds, and the search for Him by His kindred. Mahomet was at last lodged with his mother, who indignantly explained to Hailima the real meaning of his malady, and spoke of his future glory as manifested to her by the light that enfolded her before his birth. Not long after, Amina decided to visit her [32] husband's tomb at Medina, and thither Mahomet accompanied her, travelling through the rocky, desolate valleys and hills that separate the two, with just his mother and a slave girl.

Mahomet was too young to remember much about the journey to Medina, except that it was hot and that he was often tired, and since his father was but a name to him, the visit to his tomb faded altogether from his mind. But on the homeward journey a calamity overtook him which he remembered all his life. Amina, weakened by journeying and much sorrow, and perhaps feeling her desire for life forsake her after the fulfillment of her pilgrimage, sickened and died at Abwa, and Mahomet and the slave girl continued their mournful way alone.

Amina is drawn by tradition in very vague outline, and Mahomet's memory of her as given in the Kuran does not throw so much light upon the woman herself as upon her child's devotion and affectionate memory of the mother he lost almost before he knew her. His grief for her was very real; she remained continually in his thoughts, and in after years he paid tribute at her tomb to her tenderness and love for him.

"This is the grave of my mother … the Lord hath permitted me to visit it…. I called my mother to remembrance, and the tender memory of her overcame me and I wept."

The sensitive, over-nervous child, left thus solitary, away from all his kindred, must have brought back with him to Mecca confused but vivid impressions of the long journey and of the catastrophe which lay at the end of it. The uncertainty of his future, and the joys of gaining at last a foster-father in Abd al Muttalib, finds reflection in the Kuran in one little burst of praise to God: "Did He not find thee an orphan, and furnish thee with a refuge?"

Life for two years as the foster-child of Abd al Muttalib, the venerable, much honoured chief of the house of Hashim, passed very pleasantly for Mahomet. He was the darling of his grandfather's last years of life; for, perhaps having pity on his defencelessness, perhaps divining with that prescience which often marks old age, something of the revelation this child was to be to his countrymen, he protected him from the harshness of his uncles. A rug used to be placed in the shadow of the Kaaba, and there the aged ruler rested during the heat of the day, and his sons sat around him at respectful distance, listening to his words. But the child Mahomet, who loved his grandfather, ran fearlessly up, and would have seated himself by Abd al Muttalib's side. Then the sons sought to punish him for his lack of reverence, but their father prevented them:

"Leave the child in peace. By the God of my fathers, I swear he will one day be a mighty prophet."

So Mahomet remained in close attendance upon the old man, until he died in the eighth year after the Year of the Elephant, and there was mourning for him in the houses of his sons.

When Abd al Muttalib knew his end was near he sent for his daughters, and bade them make lamentation over him. We possess traditional accounts of these funeral songs; they are representative of the wild rhetorical eloquence of the poetry of the day. They lose immensely in translation, and even in reading with the eye instead of hearing, for they were never meant to find immortality in the written words, but in the speech of men.

"When in the night season a voice of loud lament proclaimed the sorrowful tidings I wept, so that the tears ran down my face like pearls. I wept for a noble man, greater than all others, for Sheibar, the generous, endowed with virtues; for my beloved father, the inheritor of all good things, for the man faithful in his own house, who never shrank from combat, who stood fast and needed not a prop, mighty, well-favoured, rich in gifts. If a man could live for ever by reason of his noble nature—but to none is this lot vouchsafed—he would remain untouched of death because of his fair fame and his good deeds."

The songs furnish ample evidence as to the high position which Abd al Muttalib held among the Kureisch. His death was a great loss to his nation, but it was a greater calamity to his little foster-child, for it brought him from ease and riches to comparative poverty and obscurity with his uncle, Abu Talib. None of Abd al Muttalib's sons inherited the nature of their father, and with his death the greatness of the house of Hashim diminished, until it gave place to the Omeyya branch, with Harb at its head. The offices at Mecca were seized by the Omeyya, and to the descendants of Abd al Muttalib there remained but the privilege of caring for the well Zemzem, and of giving its water for the refreshment of pilgrims. Only two of his sons, except Abu Talib, who earns renown chiefly as the guardian of Mahomet, attain anything like prominence. Hamza was converted at the beginning of Mahomet's mission, and continued his helper and warrior until he died in battle for Islam; Abu Lahab (the flame) opposed Mahomet's teaching with a vehemence that earned him one of the fiercest denunciations in the early, passionate Suras of the Kuran:

"Blasted be the hands of Abu Lahab; let himself perish;
His wealth and his gains shall avail him not;
Burned shall he be with the fiery flame,
His wife shall be laden with firewood—
On her neck a rope of palm fibre."

Mahomet, bereft a second time of one he loved and on whom he depended, passed into the care of his uncle, Abu Talib. This was a man of no great force of character, well-disposed and kindly, but of straitened means, and lacking in the qualities that secure success. Later, he seems to have attained a more important position, mainly, one would imagine, through the lion courage and unfaltering faith in the Prophet of his son, the mighty warrior Ali, of whom it is written, "Mahomet is the City of Knowledge, and Ali is the Gate thereof." But although Abu Talib was sufficiently strong to withstand the popular fury of the Kureisch against Mahomet, and to protect him for a time on the grounds of kinship, he never finally decided upon which side he would take his stand. Had he been a far-seeing, imaginative man, able to calculate even a little the force that had entered into Arabian polity, the history of the foundation of Islam would have been continued, with Mecca as its base, and have probably resolved itself into the war of two factions within the city, wherein the new faith, being bound to the more powerful political party, would have had a speedier conquest.

With Abu Talib Mahomet spent the rest of his childhood and youth—quiet years, except for a journey to Syria, and his insignificant part in the war against the Hawazin, a desert tribe that engaged the Kureisch for some time. In Abu Talib's house there was none of the ease that had surrounded him with Abd al Muttalib. But Mahomet was naturally an affectionate child, and was equally attached to his uncle as he had been to his grandfather.

Two years later Abu Talib set out on a mercantile journey, and was minded to leave his small foster-child behind him, but Mahomet came to him as he sat on his camel equipped for his journey, and clinging to him passionately implored his uncle not to go without him. Abu Talib could not resist his pleading, and so Mahomet accompanied him on that magical journey through the desert, so glorious yet awesome to an imaginative child, Bostra was the principal city of exchange for merchandise circulating between Yemen, Northern Arabia, and the cities of Upper Palestine, and Mahomet must thus have travelled on the caravan route through the heart of Syria, past Jerash, Ammon, and the site of the fated Cities of the Plain. In Syria, too, he first encountered the Christian faith, and planted those remembrances that were to be revived and strengthened upon his second journey through that wonderful land—in religion, and in a lesser degree in polity, a law unto itself, forging out its own history apart from the main stream of Christian life and thought.

Legends concerning this journey are rife, and all emphasise the influence Christianity had upon his mind, and also the ready recognition of his coming greatness by all those Christians who saw him. On the homeward journey the monk Bahirah is fabled to have met the party and to have bidden them to a feast. When he saw the child was not among them he was wroth, and commanded his guests to bring "every man of the company." He interrogated Mahomet and Abu Talib concerning the parentage of the boy, and we have here the first traditional record of Mahomet's speech.

"Ask what thou wilt," he said to Bahirah, "and I will make answer."

So Bahirah questioned him as to the signs that had been vouchsafed him, and looking between his shoulders found the seal of the prophetic office, a mole covered with hair. Then Bahirah knew this was he who was foretold, and counselled Abu Talib to take him to his native land, and to beware [39] of the Jews, for he would one day attain high honour. At this time Mahomet was little more than a child, but although few thoughts of God or of human destiny can have crossed his mind, he retained a vivid impression of the storied places through which he passed—Jerash, Ammon, the valley of Hejr, and saw in imagination the mighty stream of the Tigris, the ruinous cities, and Palmyra with its golden pillars fronting the sun. The tribes which the caravan encountered were rich in legend and myth, and their influence, together with the more subtle spell of the desert vastness, wrought in him that fervour of spirit, a leaping, troubled flame, which found mortal expression in the poetry of the early part of the Kuran, where the vision of God's majesty compels the gazer into speech that sweeps from his mind in a stream of fire:

"By the Sun and his noonday brightness,
By the Moon when she followeth him,
By Day when it revealeth his glory,
By the night when it enshroudeth him,
By the Heaven and Him who built it,
By the Earth and Him who spread it forth,
By the Soul and Him who balanced it,
Breathed into its good, yea, and its evil—
Verily man's lot is cast amid destruction
Save those who believe and deal justly,
And enjoin upon each other steadfastness and truth."

CHAPTER III

STRIFE AND MEDITATION

"God hath treasuries beneath the throne, the keys whereof are the tongues of poets."—MAHOMET.

The Arabian calendar has always been in a distinctive manner subject to the religion of the people. Before Mahomet imposed his faith upon Mecca, there were four sacred months following each other, in which no war might be waged. For four months, therefore, the tumultuous Arab spirit was restrained from that most precious to it; pilgrimages to holy places were undertaken, and there was a little leisure for the cultivation of art and learning.

The Greater Pilgrimage to Mecca, comprising the sevenfold circuit of the Kaaba and the kissing of the sacred Black Stone, and culminating in a procession to the holy places of Mina and Arafat, could only be undertaken in Dzul-Higg, corresponding in the time of Mahomet to our March. The month preceding, Dzul-Cada, was occupied in a kind of preparation and rejoicing, which took the form of a fair at Ocatz, three days' journey east of Mecca, when representatives of all the surrounding nations used to assemble to exchange merchandise, to take part in the games, to listen to the contests in poetry and rhetoric, and sometimes to be roused into sinister excitement at the proximity of so many tribes differing from them in nationality, and often in their religion and moral code.

Into this vast concourse came Mahomet, a lad of fifteen, eager to see, hear, and know. He was present at the poetic contests, and caught from the protagonists a reflection of their vivid, fitful eloquence, with its ceaseless undercurrent of monotony.

Romance, in so far as it represents the love of the strange, is a product of the West. There is a rigidity in the Eastern mind that does not allow of much change or seeking after new things. Wild and beautiful as this poetry of Arabia is, its themes and their manner of treatment seldom vary; as the desert is changeless in contour, filled with a brilliant sameness, whirling at times into sombre fury and as suddenly subsiding, so is the literature which it fostered. The monotony is expressed in a reiteration of subject, barbarous to the intellect of the West; endurance is born of that monotony, and strength, and the acquiescence in things as they are, but not the discovery and development of ideas. Arabia does not flash forth a new presentment of beauty, following the vivid apprehension of some lovely form, but broods over it in a kind of slumbering enthusiasm that mounts at last into a glory of metaphor, drowning the subject in intensest light. The rival poets assembled to discover who could turn the deftest phrases in satire of the opposing tribe, or extol most eloquently the bravery and skill of his own people, the beauty and modesty of their women, and from these wild outpourings Mahomet learnt to clothe his thoughts in that splendid garment whose jewels illumine the earlier part of the Kuran.

Perhaps more important than the poetical contests was the religious aspect of the fair at Ocatz. Here were gathered Jew, Christian, and Arabian worshipper of many gods, in a vast hostile confusion. Mahomet was familiar with Jewish cosmogony from his knowledge of their faith within his own land, and he had heard dimly of the Christian principles during his Syrian journey. But here, though both Jews and Christians claimed to be worshippers of a single God, and although the Jews took for their protector Abraham, the mighty founder of Mahomet's own city, yet there was nothing between all the sects but fruitless strife. He saw the Jews looking disdainfully upon the Christian dogs, and the Christians firmly convinced that an irrevocable doom would shortly descend upon every Jew. Both united in condemning to eternal wrath the idol-worshippers of the Kaaba. It was a fiercely outspoken, remorseless enmity that he saw around him, and the impotence born of distrust he saw also.

It is not possible that any hint of his future mission enlightened him as to the part he was to play in eliminating this conflict, but may it not be that there was sown in his mind a seed of thought concerning the uselessness of all this strife of religions, and the limitless power that might accrue to his nation if it could but be persuaded to become united in allegiance to the one true God? For even at that early stage Mahomet, with the examples of Judaism and Christianity before him, must have rejected, even if unthinkingly, the polytheistic idea.

The poetic and warlike contests partook of the fiery earnestness characteristic of the combatants, and it was seldom that the fair at Ocatz passed by without some hostile demonstration. The greatest rivals were the Kureisch and the Hawazin, a tribe dwelling between Mecca and Taif.

The Hawazin were tumultuous and unruly, and the Kureisch ever ready to rouse their hostility by numerous small slights and taunts. We read traditionally of an insult by some Kureisch youths towards a girl of the Hawazin; this incident was closed peaceably, but some years later the Kureisch (always the aggressive party because of their stronghold in Mecca) committed an outrage that could not be passed over. As the fair progressed, news came of the murder of a Hawazin, chief of a caravan, and the seizure of his treasure by an ally of the Kureisch. That tribe, knowing themselves at a disadvantage and fearing vengeance, fled back to Mecca. The Hawazin pursued them remorselessly to the borders of the sacred precincts, beyond which it was sacrilegious to wage war. Some traditions say they followed their foe undaunted by fear of divine wrath, and thus incurred a double disgrace of having fought in the sacred month and within the sacred territory. But their pursuit cannot have lasted long, because we find them challenging the Kureisch to battle at the same time the next year. All Mahomet's uncles took part in the Sacrilegious War that followed, and stirring times continued for Mahomet until a truce was made after four years. He attended his uncles in warfare, and we hear of his collecting the enemy's arrows that fell harmlessly into their lines, in order to reinforce the Kureisch ammunition.

A vivid picture by the hand of tradition is this period in Mahomet's life, for he was between eighteen and nineteen, just at the age when fighting would appeal to his wild, yet determined nature. He must have learned resource and some of the stratagem of war from this attendance upon warriors, if he did not become filled with much physical daring, never one of his characteristics, nor, indeed, of any man of his nervous temperament, and his imagination was certainly kindled by the spectacle of the horrors and triumphs of strife. Several battles were fought with varying success, until at the end of about five years' fighting both sides were weary and a truce was called. It was found that twenty more Hawazin had been killed than Kureisch, and according to the simple yet equitable custom of the time, a like number of hostages was given to the Hawazin that there might not be blood feud between them.

The Kureisch passed as suddenly into peace as they had plunged into strife. After the Sacrilegious War, a period of prosperity began for the city of Mecca. It was wealthy enough to support its population, and trade flourished with the marts of Bostra, Damascus, and Northern Syria. Its political condition had never been very stable, and it seems to have preserved during the Omeyyad ascendancy the same loose but roughly effective organisation that it possessed under the Hashim branch. The intellect that could see the potentialities of such a polity, once it could be knit together by some common bond, had not arisen; but the scene was prepared for his coming, and we have to think of the Mecca of that time as offering untold suggestions for its religious, and later for its political, salvation to a mind anxious to produce, but uncertain as yet of its medium.

Mahomet returned with Abu Talib, and passed with him into obscurity of a poverty not too burdensome, and to a quiet, somewhat reflective household. He lived under the spell of that tranquillity until he was twenty-five, and of this time there is not much notice in the traditions, but its contemplation is revealed to us in the earlier chapters of the Kuran. At one time Mahomet acted as shepherd upon the Meccan hills—low, rocky ranges covered with a dull scrub, and open to the limitless vaults of sky. Here, whether under sun or stars, he learned that love and awe of Nature that throbs through the early chapters of the Kuran like a deep organ note of praise, dominated almost always with fear.

"Consider the Heaven—with His Hand has He built it up, and given it its vastness—and the Earth has He stretched out like a carpet, smoothly has He spread it forth! Verily, God is the sole sustainer, possessed of might, the unshaken! Fly then to God."

Indeed, a haunting terror broods over all those souls who know the desert, and this fear translated into action becomes fierce and terrible deeds, and into the world of the spirit, angry dogmatic commands. It is the result of the knowledge that to those who stray from the well-known desert track comes death; equally certain is the destruction of the soul for those who transgress against the law of the Ruler of the earth. The God of the early Kuran is the spiritual representative of the forces surrounding Mahomet, whether of Nature or government. The country around Mecca conveys one central thought to one who meditates—the sense of power, not the might of one kindly and familiar, but the unapproachable sovereignty of one alien and remote, a dweller in far-off places, who nevertheless fills the earth with his dominion. Mahomet passing by, as he did, the gaieties and temptations of youth, had his mind alert for the influences of this Nature, full of awful power, and for the contemplation of life and the Universe around him.

In common with many enthusiasts and men of action, certain sides of his nature, especially the sexual and the practical, awoke late, and were preceded by a reflective period wherein the poet held full sway. He never desired the companionship of those of his own age and their rather debased pleasures. There are legends of his being miraculously preserved from the corruption of the youthful vices of Mecca, but the more probable reason for his shunning them is that they made no appeal to his desires. Some minds and tastes unfold by imperceptible degrees—flowers that attain fruition by the shedding of their earlier petals. Mahomet was of this nature. At this time the poet was paramount in his mental activities He loved silence and solitude, so that he might use those imaginative and contemplative gifts of which he felt himself to possess so large a share.

It is not possible at this distance of time to attempt to estimate the importance of this period in Mahomet's mental development. There are not sufficient data to enable history to fill in any detailed sketch, but the outlines may be safely indicated by the help of his later life and the testimony of that commentary upon his feelings and actions, the Kuran. His nature now seems to be in a pause of expectation, whose vain urgency lasted until he became convinced of his prophetic mission. He must have been at this time the seeker, whose youth, if not his very eagerness, prevented his attaining what he sought. He was earnest and sincere, grave beyond his years, and so gained from his fellows the respect always meted out, in an essentially religion-loving community, to any who give promise of future "inspiration," before its actuality has rendered him too uncomfortable a citizen. He received from his comrades the title of Al-Amin (the Faithful), and continued his life apart from his kind, performing his duties well, but still remaining aloof from others as one not of their world. From his sojourn in the mountains came the inspiration that created the poetry of the Kuran and the reflective interest in what he knew of his world and its religion; both embryos, but especially the latter, germinated in his mind until they emerged into full consciousness and became his fire of religious conviction, and his zeal for the foundation and glory of Islam.

CHAPTER IV

ADVENTURE AND SECURITY

"Women are the twin-halves of men."—MAHOMET.

Abu Talib's straitened circumstances never prevented him from treating his foster-child with all the affection of which his kindly but somewhat weak character was capable. But the cares of a growing family soon became too much for his means, and when Mahomet was about twenty-five his uncle suggested that he should embark upon a mercantile journey for some rich trader in Mecca. We can imagine Mahomet, immersed in his solitudes, responding reluctantly to a call that could not be evaded. He was not by nature a trader, and the proposal was repugnant to him, except for his desire to help his uncle, and more than this, his curiosity to revisit at a more assimilative age the lands that he remembered dimly from childhood.

Khadijah, a beautiful widow, daughter of an honoured house and the cousin of Mahomet, rich and much sought after by the Kureisch, desired someone to accompany her trading venture to Bostra, and hearing of the wisdom and faithfulness of Mahomet, sent for him, asking if he would travel for her into Syria and pursue her bargains in that northern city. She was willing to reward him far more generously than most merchants. Mahomet, anxious to requite his uncle in some way, and with his young imagination kindled at the prospect of new scenes and ideas, prepared eagerly for the journey. With one other man-servant, Meisara, he set out with the merchandise to Bostra, traversing as a young man the same desert path he had journeyed along in boyhood.

He was of an age to appreciate all that this experience could teach, in the regions both of Nature and religion. The lonely desert only increased his pervading sense of the mystery lying beyond his immediate knowledge, and its vastness confirmed his vague belief in some kind of a power who alone controlled so mighty a creation as the abounding spaces around him, and the "star-bespangled" heaven above. On this journey, too, he first saw with conscious eyes the desert storms in all the splendour and terror of their fury, and caught the significance of those sudden squalls that urge the waters of the upper Syrian lakes into a tumult of destruction. Frequent allusions to sea and lake storms are to be found in the earlier part of the Kuran: "When the seas shall be commingled, when the seas shall boil, then shall man tremble before his creator." "By the swollen sea, verily a chastisement from thy Lord is imminent." In every natural manifestation that struck Mahomet's imagination in these early days, God appeared to him as the sovereign of power, as terrible and as remote as He was in the lightnings on Sinai. What wonder, then, that when the call came to him to take up his mission it became a command to "arise and warn"?

The chroniclers would have us believe that his contact with Christianity was more important than his communion with Nature. Most of the legends surrounding his relations with Christian Syria may be safely accepted as later additions, but it is certain that he paid some attention to the religion of those people through whose country he passed. A Syrian monk is said to have seen Mahomet sitting beneath a tree, and to have hailed him as a prophet; there is even a traditional account of an interview with Nestorius, but this must be set aside at once as pure fiction.

The kernel of these legends seems to be the desire to show that Mahomet had studied Christianity, and was not imposing a new religion without having considered the potentialities of those already existing. However that may be, Christianity certainly interested Mahomet, and must have influenced him towards the monotheistic idea. The Arabians themselves were not entirely ignorant of it; they witnessed the worship of one God by the Jews and Christians on the borders of their territory, and although it is a very debatable point how far the idea of one God had progressed in Arabia when Mahomet began his mission, it may fairly be accepted that dissatisfaction with the old tribal gods was not wanting. Mahomet saw the countries through which he passed in a state of religious flux, and heard around him diverse creeds, detecting doubtless an undercurrent of unrest and a desire for some religion of more compelling power.

With the single slave he reached Bostra in safety with the merchandise, and having concluded his barter very successfully, and retaining in his mind many impressions of that crowded city, returned to Mecca by the same desert route. Meisara, the slave, relates (in what is doubtless a later addition) of the fierce noonday heat that beset the travellers, and how, when Mahomet was almost exhausted, two angels sat on his camel and protected him with their wings. When they reached Mecca, Khadijah sold the merchandise and found her wealth doubled, so careful had Mahomet been to ensure the prosperity of his client, and before long love grew up in her heart for this tall, grave youth, who was faithful in small things as well as in great.

Khadijah had been much sought after by the men of Mecca, both for her riches and for her beauty, but she had preferred to remain independent, and continued her orderly life among her maidens, attending to her household, and finding enough occupation in the supervision of her many mercantile ventures. She was about forty, fair of countenance, and gifted with a rich nature, whose leading qualities were affection and sympathy. She seems to have been pre-eminently one of those receptive women who are good to consult for the clarification of ideas. Her intelligence was quick to grasp another's thought, if she did not originate thought within herself. She was a woman fitted to be the helper and guide of such a man as Mahomet, eager, impulsive, prone to swiftly alternating extremes of depression and elation. A subtle mental attraction drew them together, and Khadijah divined intuitively the power lying within the mind of this youth and also his need of her, both mentally and materially, to enable him to realise his whole self. Therefore as she was the first to awaken to her desire for him, the first advances come from her.

She sent her sister to Mahomet to induce him to change his mind upon the subject of marriage, and when he found that the rich and gracious Khadijah offered him her hand, he could not believe his good fortune, and assured the sister that he was eager to make her his wife. The alliance, in spite of its personal suitability, was far from being advantageous to Khadijah from a worldly point of view, and the traditions of how her father's consent was obtained have all the savour of contemporary evidence.

The father was bidden to a feast, and there plied right royally with wine. When his reason returned he asked the meaning of the great spread of viands, the canopy, and the chapleted heads of the guests. Thereupon he was told it was the marriage-feast of Mahomet and Khadijah, and his wrath and amazement were great, for had he not by his presence given sanction to the nuptials? The incident throws some light upon the marriage laws current at the time. Khadijah, though forty and a widow, was still under the guardianship of her father, having passed to him after the death of her husband, and his consent was needed before she married again.

The marriage contracted by mutual desire was followed by a time of leisure and happiness, which Mahomet remembered all his life. Never did any man feel his marriage gift (in Mahomet's case twenty young camels) more fitly given than the youth whom Khudijah rescued from poverty, and to whom she gave the boon of her companionship and counsel. The marriage was fruitful; two sons were born, the eldest Kasim, wherefore Mahomet received the title of Abu-el-Kasim, the father of Kasim, but both these died in infancy. There were also four daughters born to Mahomet—Zeineb, Rockeya, Umm Kolthum, and Fatima. These were important later on for the marriages they contracted with Mahomet's supporters, and indeed his whole position was considerably solidified by the alliances between his daughters and his chief adherents.

Ten years passed thus in prosperity and study. Mahomet was no longer obscure but the chief of a wealthy house, revered for his piety, and looked upon already as one of those "to whom God whispers in the ear." His character now exhibited more than ever the marks of the poet and seer; the time was at hand when all the subdued enthusiasm of his mind was to break forth in the opening Suras of the Kuran. The inspiration had not yet descended upon him, but it was imminent, and the shadow of its stern requirements was about him as he attended to his work of supervising Khadijah's wealth or took part in the religious life of Mecca.

In A.D. 605, when Mahomet was thirty-five years old, the chief men of Mecca decided to rebuild the Kaaba. The story of its rebuilding is perhaps the most interesting of the many strange, naive tales of this adventurous city. Valley floods had shattered the house of the gods. It was roofless, and so insecure that its treasury had already been rifled by blasphemous men. It stood only as high as the stature of a man, and was made simply of stones laid one above the other. Rebuilding was absolutely necessary, but materials were needed before the work could begin, and this delayed the Kureisch until chance provided them with means of accomplishing their design. A Grecian ship had been driven in a Red Sea storm upon the coast near Mecca and was rapidly being broken up. When the Kureisch heard of it, they set out in a body to the seashore and took away the wood of the ship to build a roof for the Kaaba. It is a significant fact that tradition puts a Greek carpenter in Mecca who was able to advise them as to the construction. The Meccans themselves were not sufficiently skilled in the art of building.

But now a great difficulty awaited them. Who was to undertake the responsibility of demolishing so holy a place, even if it were only that it might be rebuilt more fittingly? Many legends cluster round the demolition. It would seem that the gods only understood gradually that a complete destruction of the Kaaba was not intended. Their opposition was at first implacable. The loosened stones flew back into their places, and finally none could be induced to make the attempt to pull down the Kaaba. There was a pause in the work, during which no one dared venture near the temple, then Al-Welid, being a bold and god-fearing spirit, took an axe, and crying:

"I will make a beginning, let no evil ensue, O Lord!" he began to dislodge the stones.

Then the rest of the Kureisch rather cravenly waited until the next day, but seeing that no calamity had befallen Al-Welid, they were ready to continue the work. The rebuilding prospered until they came to a point where the Black Stone must be embedded in the eastern wall.

At this juncture a vehement dispute arose among the Kureisch as to who was to have the honour of depositing the Black Stone in its place. They wrangled for days, and finally decided to appeal to Mahomet, who had a reputation for wisdom and resource. Mahomet, after carefully considering the question, ordered a large cloth to be brought, and commanded the representatives of the four chief Meccan houses to hold each a corner. Then he deposited the Black Stone in the centre of it, and in this manner, with the help of every party in the quarrel, the sacred object was raised to the proper height. When this was done Mahomet conducted the Black Stone to its niche in the wall with his own hand.

The building of the Kaaba was ultimately completed, and a great festival was held in honour. Many hymns of praise were sung at the accomplishment of so difficult and important a work. The Kaaba has remained substantially the same as it was when it was first rebuilt. It is a small place of no architectural pretensions, merely a square with no windows, and a tiny door raised from the ground, by which the Faithful, duly prepared, are allowed to enter upon rare occasions. The sacred Black Stone lies embedded about three feet from the ground in the eastern wall, at first a dark greenish stone of volcanic or aerolitic origin, now worn black and polished by thousands of kisses. There is little in the Kaaba to account for the reverence bestowed upon it, and its insignificance bears witness to the Eastern capacity for worshipping the idea for which its symbols stand. This was the sacred temple of Abraham and Ishmael, therefore its exterior mattered little.

Mahomet's share in the construction of the Kaaba brought him further honour among the Kureisch. From this time until the beginning of his mission he lived a quiet, easeful domestic life, interrupted only by mental storms and depressions. He found leisure to meditate and observe, and of this necessarily uneventful time there is little or no mention in the histories. He certainly gained an opportunity of examining somewhat closely the tenets of Christianity by the entrance into his household of Zeid, a Christian slave, cultured and well-informed as to the doctrines of his religion, and his presence doubtless influenced Mahomet in the spiritual battles he encountered at a time when as yet he was certain neither of God nor himself. Besides Zeid another important personage entered Mahomet's household, Ali, son of Abu Talib, and future convert and pride of Islam, "the lion of the Faith." The adoption of Ali was Mahomet's small recompense to Abu Talib for his care of him, and the advantages there from to Islam were inestimable. Ali was no statesman, but he was an indomitable fighter, with whose aid Mahomet founded his religion of the sword.

In such quiet manner Mahomet passed the years immediately preceding the discovery of his mission, and as religious doubts and fears alternated in him with fervour and hopefulness, so signs were not wanting of a spirit of inquiry found abroad in Arabia, discontented with the old religions, seeking for a clearer enthusiasm and withheld from its goal. Legends gather round the figures of four inquirers who are reputed to have come to Mahomet for enlightenment, and the story is but the primitive device of rendering concrete and material all those vague stirrings of the communal spirit towards a more convincing conception of the world— legends that embody ideas in personalities, mainly because their language has no words for the expression of the abstract, and also that, clothed in living garments, they may capture the hearts of men. The time for the coming of a prophet and a teacher could not be long delayed, and a foreboding of his imperious destiny, dark with war and aflame with God's judgment, had already begun to steal across Mahomet's hesitant soul.

CHAPTER V

INSPIRATION

"Recite thou in the name of thy Lord who created,
Yan, who hath made man from Clots of Blood,
Recite thou, for thy Lord, he is most bounteous."
The Kuran.

The mental growth by which Mahomet attained the capacity of Prophet and ruler will always have spread about it a misty veil, wherein strange shapes and awful visions are dimly discerned. Did his soul face the blankness that baffles and entices the human spirit with any convictions, the gradual products of thought and experience, or was it with an unmeaning chaos within him that he stumbled into faith and evolved his own creed? His knowledge of Christianity and Judaism undoubtedly helped to foster in him his central idea of the indivisibility of God. But how was this faith wrought out into his conception of himself as the Prophet of his people?

It is impossible for any decision to be made as to the mainspring of his beliefs, except in the light of his character and development of mind. He was passionate and yet practical, holding within himself the elements of seer and statesman, prophet and law-giver, as yet doubtful of the voice which inspired him, but spurred on in his quest for the truth by an intensity of spirit that carried him forward resistlessly as soon as conviction came to him. The man who imposed his dauntless determination upon a whole people, who founded a system of religious and social laws, who moved armies to fight primarily for an idea, could not lightly gain is right to exhort and control. His nature is almost cataclysmic, and once filled with the fire of the Lord, he bursts forth among his fellow-men "with the right hand striking," to use his own vivid metaphor, but before this evidence of power has come an agonising period of doubt.

Traces of his mental turmoil are seen abundantly in his physical nature. We read of his exhaustion after the inspiration comes, and of "the terrific Suras" that took their toll of his vitality afterwards. The mission imposed upon him was no light burden, and demanded of him strength both of body and mind. The successive stages by which he became convinced of his divine call are only detailed in the histories with the concurrence of the supernatural; he sees material visions and dreams fervent dreams. With the ecstacy of Heaven about him, according to legend, he holds converse with the angel Gabriel, arch-messenger of God, and the divine injunctions must be translated into mental enthusiasms before the true evolution of Mahomet's mind can be dimly conceived.

When he was forty he sought solitude more constantly than formerly. There were deeps in his own nature of which he was only now becoming aware. A restlessness of mind beset him, and continually he retired to a cave at the base of Mount Hira, where he could meditate undisturbed. This mountain, hallowed for ever by the followers of Islam, is now called somewhat ironically, considering its natural barrenness, Jebel Nur, the mountain of Light. Mahomet was of a nervous temperament, the nature that suffers more intensely through its imaginative foresight than in actual experience. He was of those who see keenly and feel towards their beliefs. His faith in God produced none of that self-abnegating rapture to be found in the devotions of many early Christians; it was a personal passion, sweeping up his whole nature within its folds, and rousing the enfolded not to meditation but to instant action.

Through all the legendary accounts there beats that excitement that tells of a mind wrought to the highest pitch, afire with visions, alive with desire. Then, when his fervour attained its zenith, Gabriel came to him in sleep with a silken cloth in his hand covered with writing and said to Mahomet:

"Read!"

"I cannot read."

Then the angel wrapped the cloth about him and once more commanded,
"Read!"

Again came the answer, "I cannot read," and again the angel covered him, still repeating, "Read!"

Then his mouth was opened and he read the first sura of the Kuran: "Recite thou in the name of thy Lord who created thee," and when he awoke it seemed to him that these words were graven upon his heart.

Mahomet went immediately up into the mountain, and there Gabriel appeared to him waking and said:

"Thou art God's Prophet, and I am Gabriel."

The archangel vanished, but Mahomet remained rooted to the spot, until Khadijah's messengers found him and brought him to her. The simple story of Mahomet's call to the prophetic office from the lips of the old chroniclers is peculiarly fragrant, but it leaves us in considerable doubt as to the real means by which he attained his faith and was emboldened to preach to his people. It is certain that he had no idea at the time when he received his inspiration, of the ultimate political role in store for him. He was now simply the man who warned the people of their sins, and who insisted upon the sovereignty of one God. Very little argument is ever used by Mahomet to spread his faith. He spoke a plain message, and those who disregarded it were infallibly doomed. He saw himself in the forefront as the man who knew God, and strove to win his countrymen to right ways of life; he did not see himself at the head of earthly armies, controlling the nucleus of a mighty and united Arabia, and until his flight from Mecca to Medina he regarded himself merely as a religious teacher, the political side of his mission growing out of the exigencies of circumstance, almost without his own volition.

His exaltation upon the mountain of light soon faded into uncertainty and fearfulness before the influence of the world's harsh wisdom. Mahomet entered upon a period of hesitation and dreariness, doubtful of himself, of his vision, and of the divine favour. His soul voyaged on dark and troubled seas and gazed into abysmal spaces. At one time he would receive the light of the seven Heavens within his mind, and feel upon him the fervour of the Hebrew prophets of old, and again he would call in vain upon God, and, and seeking, would be flung back upon a darkness of doubt more terrible than the lightnings of divine wrath.

In all those exaltations and glooms Khadijah had part; she comforted his distress and shared his elation until the sorrowful period of the Fattrah, the pause in the revelation, was past. The period is variously estimated by the chroniclers, and there are many nebulous and spurious legends attaching to it, but whatever its length it seems certain that Mahomet gained within it a fuller knowledge of Jewish and Christian tenets, probably through Zeid, the Christian slave in his household, and most accounts agree that the Fattrah was ended by the revelation of the sura entitled "The Enwrapped," the mandate of the angel Gabriel:

"O thou enwrapped in thy mantle,
Arise and warn!"

The explanation of the term "enwrapped in thy mantle" shows the prevailing belief in good and evil spirits characteristic of Mahomet's time. Wandering on the mountain, he saw in a vision the angel Gabriel seated on a throne between heaven and earth, and afraid before so much glory, ran to Khadijah, beseeching her to cover him with his mantle that the evil spirits whom he felt so near him might be avoided. Thereupon Gabriel came down to earth and revealed the Sura of Admonition. This supernatural command would appear to be the translation into the imaginative world of the peace of mind that descended upon Mahomet, and the conviction as to the reality of his inspiration following on a time of despair.

The command fell to one who was peculiarly fitted by nature and circumstance to obey it effectively. To Mahomet, who knew somewhat the chaos of religions around him—Pagan, Jewish, and Christian struggling together in unholy strife—the conception of God's unity, once it attained the strength of a conviction, necessarily resolved itself into an admonitory mission. "There is no God but God," therefore all who believe otherwise have incurred His wrath; hasten then to warn men of their sins. So his conviction passed out of the region of thought into action and received upon it the stamp of time and place, becoming thereby inevitably more circumscribed and intense.

From now onwards the course of Mahomet's life is rendered indisputably plainer by our possession of that famous and much-maligned document, the Kuran, virtually a record of his inspired sayings as remembered and written down by his immediate successors. Apart from its intrinsic value as the universally recognised vehicle of the Islamic creed, it is of immense importance as a commentary upon Mahomet's career. When allowance has been made for its numberless contradictions and repetitions, it still remains the best means of tracing Mahomet's mental development, as well as the course of his religious and political dominance. Although the original document was compiled regardless of chronology, expert scholarship has succeeded in determining the order of most of it contents, and if we cannot say the precise sequence of every sura, at least we can classify each as belonging to one of the two great periods, the Meccan and Medinan, and may even distinguish with comparative accuracy three divisions within the former.

After Mahomet's mandate to preach and warn his fellow-men of their peril, the suras continue intermittently throughout his life. Those of the first period, when his mission was hardly accepted outside his family, bear upon them the stamp of a fiery nature, obsessed with its one idea; but behind the wild words lies a store of energy as yet undiscovered, which will find no fulfilment but in action. That zeal for an idea which caused the Kuran to be, expressed itself at first in words alone, but later was translated into political action, and it is the emptying of this vitality from his words into his works that is responsible for the contrasting prose of the later suras.

But no lack of poetic fire is discernible in the suras immediately following his call to the prophetic office, and from them much may be gathered as to the depth and intensity of his faith. They are almost strident with feeling; his sentences fall like blows upon an anvil, crude in their emphasis, and so swiftly uttered forth from the flame of his zeal, that they glow with reflected glory:

"Say, he is God alone,
God the Eternal,
He begetteth not and is not begotten,
There is none like to Him."

"Verily, we have caused It (the Kuran) to descend on the night of
power,
And who shall teach thee what the Night of Power is?
The Night of Power excelleth a thousand months,
Therein descend the angels and the spirit by permission of the Lord."

"By the snorting Chargers,
By those that breathe forth sparks of fire
And those that rush to the attack at morn!
And stir therein the dust aloft,
Cleaving their midmost passage through a host!
Truly man is to his Lord ungrateful,
And of this is himself a witness;
And truly he is covetous in love of this world's good.
Ah, knoweth he not, that when what lies in the grave shall be bared
And that brought forth that is in men's breasts,
Verily in that day shall the Lord be made wise concerning them?"

After the first fire of prophetic zeal had illuminated him, Mahomet devoted himself to the conversion of his own household and family. Khadijah was the first convert, as might have been expected from the close interdependence of their minds. She had become initiated into his prophetship almost equally with her husband, and it was her courage and firm trust in his inspiration that had sustained him during the terrible period of negation. Zeid, the Christian slave who had helped to mould Mahomet's thought by his knowledge of Christian doctrine, was his next convert, but both of these were eclipsed by the devotion to Mahomet's gospel of Ali, the future warrior, son of Abu Talib, and one destined to play a foremost part in the foundation of Islam.

Mahomet's gospel then penetrated beyond the confines of his household with the conversion of his friend Abu Bekr, a successful merchant living in the same quarter of the town as the Prophet. Abu Bekr, whose honesty gained him the title of Al-Siddick (the true), and Ali were by far the most important of Mahomet's "companions." They helped to rule Islam during Mahomet's lifetime, and after his death took successive charge of its fortunes. Ali was too young at this time to manifest his qualities as warrior and ruler, but Abu Bekr was of middle age, and his nature remained substantially the same as at the inception of Islam. He was of short stature, with deep-seated eyes and a thoughtful, somewhat undecided mouth, by nature he was shrewd and intelligent, but possessed little of that original genius necessary to statesmanship in troublous times. His mild, sympathetic character endured him to his fellow-men, and his calm reasonableness earned the gratitude of all who confided in him. He was never ruled by impulse, and of the fire burning almost indestructibly within Mahomet he knew nothing.

It is strange to consider what agency brought these two dissimilar souls into such close relationship. For the rest of his life Mahomet found a never-failing friend in Abu Bekr, and the attachment between the two, apart from their common fount of zeal for Islam, must have been such as is inspired by those of contrasting nature for each other. Mahomet saw a kindly, almost commonplace man, in whose sweet sanity his troubled soul could find a little peace. He was burdened at times with over-resolve that ate into his mind like acid. In Abu Bekr he could find the soothing influence he so often needed, and after the death of Khadijah this friend might be said in a measure to take her place. Abu Bekr, on the other hand, revered his leader as a man of finer, subtler stuff than himself, more alive to the virtue of speed, filled with a greater daring and a profounder impulse than he was. Mahomet, in common with most men meriting the title of great, had a capacity for lifelong friendships as well as the power of inspiring belief and devotion in others.

Through Abu Bekr five converts were gained for the new religion, of whom Othman is the most important. His part in the establishment of the Islamic dominion was no slight one, but at the present he remains simply one of the early enthusiastic converts to Mahomet's evangel, while he enwound himself into the fortunes of his teacher by marrying Rockeya, one of Mahomet's daughters.

The conversion to Islam proceeded slowly but surely among the Kureisch; several slaves were won over, but at the end of four years only forty converts had been made, among whom, however, was Bilal, a slave, who later became the first Muaddzin, or summoner to prayer. During these four years the suras of the first Meccan period were revealed, and enough may be gathered from them to judge both the limits of Mahomet's preaching and the attitude towards it on the part of the Kureisch.

Mahomet was content at this time to emphasise in eloquent, almost incoherent words his central theme—the unity of God. He calls upon the people to believe, and warns them of their fate if they refuse. The suras indicate the attitude of indifference borne by the Kureisch towards Mahomet's mission at its inception. Wherever there are denunciatory suras, they are either for the chastisement of unbelievers or, as in Sura cxi, in revenge for the refusal of his relations to believe in his inspiration. Prophecies of bliss in store for the Faithful are frequent, and of the corresponding woe for Unbelievers. The whole is permeated with the spirit of the poet and visionary, a poetry tumultuous but strong, a vision lurid but inspiring.

The little band of converts under guidance of this fierce rhetoric became united and strengthened in its faith, prepared to defend it, and to spread it as far as possible throughout their kindred.

About three years after Mahomet's receipt of his mission, in A.D. 618, an important change came over the attitude of the Kureisch towards Islam. Hitherto they had jeered or remained indifferent. Mahomet's uncles, Abu Talib and Abu Lahab, represented the two poles of Kureischite feeling. Abu Talib remained untouched by the new faith, but his kindly nature did not allow him to adopt any severe measures for its repression, and, moreover, Mahomet was of his kindred, and he was willing to afford him protection in case of need. Abu Lahab jeered openly, and manifested his scorn by definite speeches. But as the bands of converts grew, the Kureisch found it undesirable to maintain their indifferent attitude. They began to persecute, first refusing to allow the Believers to meet, and then seeking them out individually to endeavour to torture them into recanting.

From this time dates the creation of one of the foremost principles in the creed of the Prophet. If a Believer is in danger of torture, he may dissemble his faith to save himself from infamy and death. Though in striking contrast to the Christian tenets, this exhortation was neither cowardly nor imprudent. In his eyes reckless courting of death would not avail the propagation of Islam, and though a man might die to some good service on the battlefield, smiting his enemies, no wise end could be served when his death would merely gratify the lust of his murderers.

The persecution continued in spite of Mahomet's attempts to withstand it, until he was forced to go to Abu Talib for protection. This was accorded willingly, on account of kindred ties, but there can have been little cordiality between uncle and nephew on the subject, for Mahomet was more than ever determined upon the maintenance and growth of his principles. Still the conversions to Islam continued, and the persecution of its adherents, until there came to the Kureisch a sharp intimation that this new sect arisen in their midst was not an ephemeral affair of a few weeks, but a prolonged endeavour to pursue the ideal of a single God. In 615 the first company of Muslim converts broke from the confined religious area of Mecca and journeyed into Abyssinia, where they could practice their faith in peace. This move convinced the Kureisch of the sincerity of their opponents, for they were almost strong enough to merit the name, and compelled them to believe a little in the force lying behind this strange manifestation of religious zeal in their midst.

Mahomet does not at this time seem to have been definitely ranged against the Kureisch. He was still on negotiable terms with them, and they were a little distrustful of his capacity and ignorant of his power. The stages by which he developed from a discredited citizen, obsessed by one idea, into a political opponent worthy of their best steel and bravest men was necessarily gradual, and indeed the Prophet himself had no knowledge of the role marked out for him by his own personality and the destinies of Arabia. The cause of Islam stood as yet in parlous condition, half-formulated, unwieldy, awaiting the moulding hand of persecution to develop it into a political and social system.

CHAPTER VI

SEVERANCE

"Do you see Al-Lat and Al-Ozza and Manat the third idol beside? These are the exalted females, and truly their intercession is to be expected."—The Kuran (last two lines excised later by Mahomet).

The little band of converts, driven by the Kureisch to seek peace and freedom in Abyssinia, remained for two years in their country of refuge, but in 615 returned to Mecca for reasons which have never been fully explained, though it is easy, in the light of future events, to discover the motive behind such a move.

Mahomet was not yet convinced of the impossibility of compromise, neither was the powerful party among the Kureisch utterly indifferent to Mahomet's ancestry as a member of the house of Hashim, and his position as the husband of Khadijah. He had been respected among men for his uprightness before he affronted their prejudices by scorning their gods. His power was daily becoming a source of strife and faction within the city, and the Kureisch were not averse from attempting to come to terms. Mahomet for his part, as far as the scanty evidence of history unfolds his state of mind, seems to have been almost desperately anxious to effect an understanding with the Kureisch. His cause still journeyed by perilous ways, and at the time hopes of his future achievement were apparently dependent upon the goodwill of the dominant Meccan party.

The story runs that the chief men of Mecca were discussing within the Kaaba the affairs of the city. Mahomet came to them and recited Sura liii—The Star—a fulgent psalm in praise of God and heavenly joys. When he came to the verses:

"Do you see Al-Lat and Al-Ozza and Manat the third beside," he inserted:

"Verily these are the exalted females, and truly their intercession may be expected."

They Kureisch were rejoiced at this homage to their deities, and speedily welcomed Mahomet's change of front; but he, disquieted, returned moodily to his house, where Gabriel appeared to him in stern rebuke:

"Thou hast repeated before the people words I never gave to thee."

And Mahomet, whether conscience-stricken by his lapse from the Muslim faith, or convinced that compromise with the Kureisch was impossible and also undesirable in face of his growing power, quickly repudiated the whole affair, which had been unquestionably born of impulse, or possibly an adventurous mood that prompted him "to see what would happen" if he ministered to the prejudices of the Kureisch. It must be acknowledged, however, that repentance for his homage to heathen idols was the mainspring of his recantation, for the period immediately following was one of hardship and persecution for him, and his transitory lapse injured his cause appreciably with the brethren of his faith. The attempt was honourably made, and only failed by Mahomet's swift realisation that his acknowledgment of Lat and Ozza as spirits sanctioned the worship of their images by his fellow-citizens, and this his stern monotheism could not for a moment entertain.

The Muslim, with numbers that increased very slowly, were harried afresh by the Kureisch as soon as Mahomet had withdrawn his concessions, and most of them were forced at length to return to Abyssinia. His pathetic little band, wandering from city to city, doubtful of ever attaining security and uncertain of its ultimate destiny, was the prototype in its vagrancy of that larger and confident band which cast aside its traditions and the city of its birth, headed by a spirit heroic in disaster and supreme in faith, to find its goal in the foundation of a new order for Arabia. Chief among them were Othman and Rockeya, and these were the only ones who returned to Mecca, for the rest remained in Abyssinia until after the migration to Medina, in fact until after Mahomet had carried out the expedition to Kheibar.

Left without any supporters within the city, Mahomet was exposed to all the vituperations and insults which his recent refusal of compromise had brought him. The Kureisch now directed all their energies towards persuading Abu Talib to repudiate his nephew. If once this could be effected, the Kureisch would have a free hand to pursue their desire to exterminate the Muslim and to overthrow the Prophet's power. He was immune from bodily attack, chiefly because of Abu Talib's position in the city as nominal head of the house of Hashim. No Kureisch could run the risk of alienating so great a number of fellow-citizens, and a personal attack upon Abu Talib's nephew could but have that result.

Dark and stormy as the Muslim destiny appeared during this period of transition from religious to political conceptions, nevertheless it was now enriched by the conversion of two of the most influential characters upon its later fortunes—Hamza and Omar. Many stories have been woven round their discovery of the truth of Islam, and by reading between the lines later commentators may discover the forces at work to induce them to take this dubious step. It is beyond question that Mahomet's personality was the moving factor in the conversion of each, for each relates an incident which serves peculiarly to illustrate the Prophet's magnetism.

Hamza, "the lion of God," and a son of Abd-al-Muttalib in his old age, was accosted by a slave girl as he passed on his way through the city She told him breathlessly that she had seen "the Lord Mahomet" insulted and reviled by Abu Jahl, and being unprotected and alone, he could only suffer in silence. Hamza listened to her story with indignation, and determined to revenge the insult to his uncle and foster-brother, for by the ties of kinship they were one. In the Kaaba he publicly declared his allegiance to Islam, and revenged upon Abu Jahl the injuries he had inflicted upon his kinsman. Hamza never repented of his championship of Mahomet. The adventurous fortunes of Islam satisfied his warrior-spirit, and under Mahomet's guidance he helped to control and direct its military zeal, until it had perforce established its religion through the sword. Mahomet's personal magnetism had drawn him irresistibly to the religion he upheld so steadfastly, and in the face of revilement and danger.

Omar was Mahomet's bitterest enemy, and had proved his ability by his persistent opposition to Islam. He was feared by all the company of religionists that had taken up their precarious quarters near Mahomet. He was visiting the house of his sister Fatima when he heard murmurs of someone reciting. He inquired what it was, and learned with anger that it was the Sacred Book of the abhorred Muslim sect. His sister and Zeid, her husband, tremblingly confessed their adherence to Islam, and awaited in terror the probable result. Omar was about to fall upon Zeid, but his wife interposed and received the blow herself. At the sight of his sister's blood Omar paused and then asked for the volume, so that he might judge the message for himself, for he was a writer of no mean standing. Fatima insisted that he should first perform ablutions, so that his touch might not defile the Sacred Book.

Then Omar took it and read it, and the strength and beauty of it smote him. He felt upon him the insistence of a divine command, and straightway asked to be led before Mahomet that he might unburden his conviction to him. He girt on his sword and came to the Prophet's house. As he rapped upon the door a Companion of Mahomet's looked through the lattice, and at the sight of Omar with buckled sword fled in despair to his master. But Mahomet replied:

"Let him enter; if he bring good tidings we will reward him; if he bring bad news, we will smite him, yea, with his own sword."

So the door was opened and Mahomet advanced, asking what was his mission.
Omar answered:

"O Prophet of God, I am come to confess that I believe in Allah and in his Prophet."

"Allah Akbar!" (God is great) replied Mahomet gravely, and all the household knew that Omar had become one of themselves.

The conversion of Omar was infinitely important to Islam, and the adherence of this impetuous and dauntless mind was directly due to the strength and steadfastness of Mahomet's faith in himself and his message. Omar was an influential personage among the Kureisch, quick-tempered, but keen as steel, and rejoicing in strife; he stands out among the many warrior-souls to whom Islam gave the opportunity of tasting in its fullness "the splendour of spears." Mahomet had indeed gathered around him a group of men who were remarkable for their character and influence upon Islam. Ali, the warrior par excellence, Abu Bekr, statesman and counsellor, Othman the soldier, Hamza and Omar, are not merely blind followers, but forceful personalities, contributing each in his own manner towards those assets of endurance, leadership, and unshaken faith which ensured the continuance of the Medinan colony and its ultimate victory over the Kureisch.

Omar's conversion did not have the effect of softening the Kureischite fury. On the contrary, the event seems to have stimulated them to further persecution, as if they had some foreshadowings of their waning power, and had determined with a desperate energy to quell for ever, if it might be, this discord in their midst. Their next step was to try an introduce the political element into this conflict of faiths by putting a ban upon the house of Hashim and confining it to Abu Talib's quarter of Sheb. This act, instigated mainly by Abu Jahl, who now becomes prominent as the most terrible of Mahomet's persecutors, had a very notable effect upon his position as well as upon the qualities of the cause for which his party was contending.

For the first time the political aspect of Islam obtrudes itself. Mahomet's followers are now not only the opponents of the Kureischite faith and the enemies of their idols, but they are also their political foes, and have drawn the whole house of Hashim into faction against the ruling power—the Omeyyad house. Moreover, Mahomet and his companions, now shut up and almost besieged within a definite quarter of the city, were precluded from all attempts to spread their faith. Mahomet had secured his little company of followers, but cut off from the rest of the city his cause remained stationary, neither gaining nor losing adherents, during the years 617-619.

The suras of this period show some of the discouragement he felt at the time, but through them all beats a note of endurance and confidence: God is continually behind his cause, therefore that cause will prevail against all obstacles. Mahomet has become more familiar with the Jewish Scriptures, and many of the suras are recapitulations of the lives of Jewish heroes, especial preference being given to Abraham as mythical founder of his race, and to Lot as the typical example of one righteous man sent to warn the iniquitous. The style has certainly matured, and in so doing has lost much of its primal fire. It is still stirring and vibrant, but passages of almost bald narrative are interposed, shadows upon the shining floor of his original zeal. He has become increasingly reiterative, too,—a quality easily attained by those who have but one message, in this case a message of warning and exhortation, and are feverishly anxious to brand its urgency upon the hearts of their fellow-men.

Confined within so limited an area, his energy recoiled upon itself, and the despondency that so easily besets men of action when that necessity is denied them, overcame his mind. Only at the yearly pilgrimage was he able to gain a hearing from his Meccan brethren, and then, says the chronicler bitterly, "none would believe." The Hashim could not trade or intermarry with any outside their clan, and there seemed no chance of circumstances removing their disabilities. Mahomet's hopes of embracing all Mecca in his faith wavered and fled, until it seemed as if Allah no longer protected his chosen.

But after two years of negation and impotence, an end to the persecution of the Muslim was in sight, and in 619 the ban was removed. Legend has it that when the chiefs of the Kaaba went to look upon the document they found it devoured by ants, and took this as a sign of the displeasure of their gods. The ban was thus removed by supernatural agency when its prolongation would have meant final disaster for Mahomet. In the light of later knowledge it is evident that the removal of the ban was the result of the exertions of Abu Talib, and it was owing to his high reputation among the Kureisch that they pardoned his turbulent and blasphemous nephew. At the end of two years also, the Muslim were considerably weakened, both in staying powers and reputation. They were now allowed to go freely in the city, and the immediate prospect seemed certainly brighter for Mahomet when there fell the greatest blow that could have afflicted his sensitive spirit.

Khadijah, his companion and sustainer through so many troublous years, died in 619, having borne with him all his revilings and discouragements, his source of strength even when there appeared no prospect of the abatement of his hardships, much less for the success of his cause. Mahomet's grief was too profound for the passing shadow of it even to darken the pages of the Kuran. He paid her the compliment of silence; but her memory was continually with him, even when he had taken many fairer women to wife. Ayesha, in all the insolence of beauty, scoffed at Khadijah's age and lack of comeliness:

"Am I not dearer to thee than she was?"

"No, by Allah!" cried Mahomet; "for she believed when no one else believed."

It was her strength of character and sweetness of mind that impelled him to utter the amazing words—amazing for his time and environment, seventh-century Arabia—"women are the twin-halves of men."

But fortune or Allah had not finished the "strong affliction" whereby Mahomet was forced to cast off from his moorings and venture into strange and perilous seas. Five weeks after the death of his wife came the death of his uncle, Abu Talib. If the first had been a catastrophe affecting his courage and quietude of mind, this was calculated to crush both himself and his companions. Abu Talib was well loved by Mahomet, who manifested throughout his life the strongest capacity for friendship. But more important than the personal grief was the loss of the one man whose efforts bridged over the widening gulf between himself and the Kureisch. As such, his death was irreparable damage to Mahomet's safety from their hostilities.

Abu Lahab, it is true, touched a little by the sorrows crowding so thickly upon his nephew, protected him for a time, but very soon withdrew his support and joined the opposition. Ranged against Abu Lahab and Abu Jahl, with their influential following, and lacking the support hitherto provided by Abu Talib, Mahomet perceived that a crisis was fast approaching. His band was too numerous to be ignored or even tolerated by the Kureisch, but against such odds as Mecca's most powerful citizens, Mahomet was too wise to attempt to resist. There seemed no other way but the withdrawal of his little concourse to such place of safety as would enable them to strengthen themselves and prepare for the inevitable struggle for supremacy. No more conversions of importance had taken place since Omar's and Hamza's allegiance to Islam, and now three years had passed. Mahomet felt increasingly the need for their exodus from the city of his birth. It is not evident from the chroniclers that he had any definite political aims whatever when he first considered the plan of evacuation. His motive was simply to obtain peace in which he might worship in his own fashion, and win others to worship with him. With this idea in mind he cast about for a suitable resting-place for his small flock, and discovered what he imagined his goal in Taif, a village south-east of Mecca, upon the eastern slopes of Jhebel Kora.

Taif is situated on the fertile side of this mountain range, the side remote from the sea. It stands amid a wealth of gardens, and is renowned for its fruits and flowers. Thither in 620 Mahomet set out, filled with the knowledge of his invincible mission, strong in his power to conquer and persuade. Zeid, his slave and foster-child, was his only companion, and together they had resolved to convert Taif to the one true religion. But their adventure was doomed to failure, and though we have necessarily brief descriptions of it, all Mahomet's biographers naturally passing quickly over so painful a scene, there is sufficient evidence to show how really disastrous their venture proved.

The chief men of the city remained unconvinced, and at last the populace, in one of those blind furies that attack crowds at the sight of impotence, egged on the rabble to stone them. Chased from the city, sore, bleeding and despairing, Mahomet found shelter in one of the hill gardens of the locality. There he was solaced with fruit by some kindly owners of the place, and there he remained, meditating in profound dejection at his failure, but still with supreme trust in the support of his God.

"O Lord, I seek refuge in the light of Thy countenance;
It is Thine to cleanse away the darkness,
And to give peace both for this world and the next."

In this valley of Nakhla, too, so runs the tale, he was consoled by genii, who refreshed him, after the fashion of angels upholding the weary prophets in the wilderness. Mahomet was now in dire straits; he could not return to Mecca at once, because the object of his Taif journey was known; as Taif had spurned him, so he was forced to halt in Hira until he obtained the protection of Mutaim, an influential man in Mecca, and after some difficulty made his way back to the city, discredited and solitary, except for his former followers. For some months he rested in obscurity and contempt at Mecca, gaining none to his cause, but still filled with the fervent conviction of his future triumph, which neither wavered nor faltered. The divine fire which upheld him during the period of his violent persecution burned within his soul, and never was his steadfastness of character and faith in himself and his mission more fully manifested than during these despondent months.

He now began to seek in greater measure the society of women, although the consuming sexual life of his later years had hardly awakened. While Khadijah was with him he remained faithful to her, but her bright presence once withdrawn, he was impelled by a kind of impassioned seeking to the quest for her substitute, and not finding it in one woman, to continue his search among others. He now married Sawda, a nonentity with a certain physical charm but no personality, and sued for the hand of Ayesha, the small daughter of Abu Bekr.

Mahomet at this time was not blessed with many riches. His frugal, anxious life led him to perform many small duties of his household for himself. His food was coarse and often scanty, and he lived among his followers as one of themselves. It is no small tribute to his singleness of mind and lofty character that in the "dreary intercourse of daily life," lived in that primitive, communal fashion, which admits of no illusions and scarcely any secrets, he retained by the force of personality the reverence of the faithful, and ever in this hour of defeat and negation remained their leader and lord—the symbol, in fact, of their loyalty to Allah, and their supreme belief in his guidance and care.

CHAPTER VII

THE CHOSEN CITY

Medina, city of exile and despairing beginnings, destined to achieve glory by difficult ways, only to be eclipsed finally by its mightier neighbour and mistress, became, rather by chance than by design, the scene of Mahomet's struggles for temporal power and his ruthless wielding of the sword for God and Islam. The city lies north-east of Mecca, on the opposite side of the mountain spur that skirts the eastern boundary. Always weakly peopled, it remained from immemorial time an arena of strife, for it was on the borderland, the boundary of several tribes, and was far enough north for the outer waves of Syrian disturbances to fling their varying tides upon its shores—a meagre city, always fiercely at civil warfare, impotent, unfertile.

In the dark days of Judaea's humiliation at the hands of Titus, two Jewish tribes, the Kainukua and the Koreitza, outcast and desolate, even as they had been warned in their time of dominion, lighted upon Medina in desperate search for a dwelling-place and a respite from persecution, and forthwith took possession of the little hill-girt town. They settled there, driving out or conciliating the former inhabitants, until in the fourth century their tenuous prosperity was disturbed by the inroads of two Bedouin tribes, the Beni Aus and the Beni Khazraj. The desert was wide, and these tribes were familiar with its manifold opportunities and devious ways. Against such a foe, who swooped down suddenly upon the city, plundered and then escaped into the limitless unknown, the Jews had no chance of reprisal.

Before long the Beni Aus and Khazraj had subjugated the Jewish communities, and their dominion in Medina was only weakened by their devastating quarrels among themselves. The city therefore offered a peculiar opening for the teaching of Islam within it. Its religious life indeed was varied and chaotic. Jews, Arabian idolaters, immigrants from Christian Syria, torn by schisms, thronged its public places, and this confusion of faiths sharpened the religious and debating instincts of its people. The ground was thus broken up for the reception of the new creed of one God and of his messenger, who had already divided Mecca into believers and heretics, and who was spoken of in the city with that awe that attaches itself to distant marvels.

Intercourse with Mecca was chiefly carried on at the time of the yearly Pilgrimage; the Greater Pilgrimage, only undertaken during Dzul Hijj, corresponding then to our March, and in Dzul Hijj, 620, came a band of strangers over the hills, along the toilsome caravan route to the Kaaba, the goal of their intentions, the shrine of all their prayers. They performed all the necessary ceremonies at Mecca, and were proceeding to Mina, a small valley just east of Mecca, for the completion of their sacred duties, when they were accosted by Mahomet.

The Prophet was despondent and sceptical of his power to persuade, though his belief in Allah's might never wavered. He had failed so far to produce any decisive impression upon the Meccan people, but might there not be another town in Arabia which would receive his message? The little band of pilgrims seemed to him sent in answer to his self-distrust, and his failure at Taif as eclipsed by this sudden success. The caravan returned to its native city, and there remained little for Mahomet to do except to wait for the arrival of next year's pilgrims, and to keep shining and ambient the flame of his religious fervour. He remained in Mecca virtually on sufferance, and rapidly recognised the uselessness of attempting any further conversions. His hopes were now definitely set on Medina, and to this end he seems to devoted himself more than ever to the perusal and interpretation of the Jewish scriptures.

The portion of the Kuran written at this time contains little else than Bible stories told and retold to the point of weariness. Lot, of course, is the characteristic figure; but we also have the life stories of Abraham, Moses, Jonah, Joseph, and many others. The style has suffered a marked diminution in poetic qualities. It has become reiterative and even laboured. He continues his practice of alluding to current events, which at Medina he was to pursue to the extent of making the Kuran a kind of spasmodic history of his time, as well as an elementary text-book of law and morality. In one of the suras—"The Cow"—Mahomet makes first mention of that comfortable doctrine of "cancelling," by which later verses of the Kuran cancel all previous revelations dealing with the same subject if these prove contradictory: "Whatever verses we cancel or cause thee to forget, we bring a better or its like; knowest thou not that God hath power over all things?"

There is not much record in the Kuran of the influence of Christian thought upon Islam. We have a few stories of Elizabeth and Mary, and scattered allusions to the despised "Prophet of the Jews." But the great body of Christian thought, its central dogmas of Incarnation and Redemption, passed Mahomet entirely by, for his mind was practical and not speculative, and indeed to himself no less than to his followers the fundamentals of Christianity were of necessity too philosophic to be realised with any intensity of belief. The Christian virtues of meekness and resignation, too, might be respected in the abstract—passages in the Kuran and tradition assure us they were—but they were so utterly antagonistic to the fierce, free nature of the Arab that they never entered into his religious life. Mahomet revered the Founder of Christianity, and placed Him with John in the second Heaven of his Immortals, but though He is secure among the teachers of the world, He can never compete with the omnipotence and glory of the Prophet.

During the period of Mahomet's life immediately preceding his departure to Medina, we have his personal appearance described in detail by Ali. He is a man of medium stature, with a magnificent head and a thick, flowing beard. His eyes were black and ardent, his jaw firm but not prominent. He looked an upstanding man of open countenance, benignant and powerful, bearing between his shoulders the sign of his divine mission. He had great patience, says Ali, and "in nowise despised the poor for their poverty, nor honoured the rich for their possessions. Nor if any took him by the hand to salute him was he the first to relinquish his grasp."

He lived openly among his disciples, holding frequent converse with them, mending his own clothes and even shoes, a frugal liver and a fervent preacher of the flaming faith within him. He became at this time betrothed to Ayesha, the splendid woman, now just a merry child, who was to keep her reigning place in his affections until the end of his life. Daughter of Abu Bekr, she united in herself for Mahomet both policy and attractiveness, for by this betrothal he became of blood-kin with Abu Bekr, and thereby strengthened his friend's allegiance. The union marks the inauguration of his policy of marriage alliances by which he bound the supporters of his Faith more closely to him, either through his own marriage with their daughters, or the bestowal of his offspring upon them.

Ayesha was lovely and imperious, with a luxurious but shrewd nature, and her counsel was always sought by Mahomet. Other women appeared frequently like comets in his sky, flamed for a little into brightness and disappeared into conjugal obscurity, but Ayesha's star remained fixed, even if it was transitorily eclipsed by the brilliance of a new-comer. Sexual relations held for Mahomet towards the end of his life a peculiar potency, born of his intense energetic nature. He sought the society of woman because of the mental clarity that for him followed any expression of emotion. He was one of those men who must express—the artist, in fact; but an artist who used the medium of action, not that of literature, painting, or music. "Poète, il ne connut que la poésie d'action," and like Napoleon, his introspection was completely overshadowed by his consuming energy. Therefore emotion was to him unconsciously the means by which this immortal energy of mind could be conserved, and he used it unsparingly.

Ayesha has revealed for us the most intimate details of Mahomet's life, and it is due to her that later traditions are enabled to represent him as a man among men. He appears to us fierce and subtle, by turns impetuous and calculating, a man who never missed an opportunity, and gauged exactly the efforts needed to compass any intention. To him "every fortress had its key, and every man his price." He was as keen a politician us he was a religious reformer, but before all he paid homage to the sword, prime artificer in his career of conquest. But in those confidently intimate traditions handed down to us from his immediate entourage, and especially from Ayesha, we find him alternately passionate and gentle, wearing his power with conscious authority, mild in his treatment of the poor, terrible to his enemies, autocratic, intolerant, with a strange magnetism that bound men to him. The mystery enveloping great men even in their lifetime, among primitive races, creeps down in these documents to hide much of his personality from us, but his works proclaim his energy and tireless organising powers, even if the mythical, allegoric element predominates in the earlier traditions. The man who undertook and achieved the gigantic task of organising a new social and political as well as religious order may be justly credited with calling forth and centering in himself the vivid imaginations of that most credulous age.

The year 620-621 passed chiefly in expectation of the Greater Pilgrimage, when the disciples from Medina were to come to report progress and to confirm their faith. The momentous time arrived, and Mahomet went almost fearfully to meet the nucleus of his future kingdom in Acaba, a valley near Mina. But his fears were groundless, for the little party had been faithful to their leader, and had also increased their numbers.

They met in secret, and we may picture them a little diffident in so strange a place, ever expectant of the swift descent of the Kureisch and their own annihilation. Withal they were enthusiastic and confident of their leader. One is irresistibly reminded, in reading of this meeting, of that little outcast band from Judea which ultimately prevailed over Cæsar Imperator through its mighty quality of faith. The accredited words of the first pledge given at Acaba are traditionally extant; they combine curiously religious, moral, and social covenants, and assert even at that early stage the headship of the Prophet over his servants:

"We will not worship any but God; we will not steal, neither will we commit adultery nor kill our children; we will not slander in any wise, nor will we disobey the Prophet in anything that is right."

The converts then departed to their native city, for Mahomet did not deem the time yet ripe enough for migration thither. He possessed the difficult art of waiting until the effectual time should arrive, and there is no doubt that by now he had formed definite plans to set up his rule in Medina when there should be sufficient supporters there to guarantee his success. Musab, a Meccan convert of some learning, was deputed to accompany the Medinan citizens to their city and give instruction therein to all who were willing to study the Muslim creed.

For yet another year Mahomet was to possess his soul in patience, but it was with feelings of far greater confidence that he awaited the passing of time. More than ever he became sure of the guiding hand of Allah, that pointed indisputably to the stranger city as the goal of his strivings. This city held a goodly proportion of Jews, therefore the connection between his faith and that of Judaism must be continually emphasised.

We have seen how large a space Jewish legend and history fill in the contemporary suras of the Kuran, and Mahomet's friendship with Israel increased noticeably during his last two years at Mecca. He paid them the honour of taking Jerusalem as his Kibla, or Holy Place, to which all Believers turn in prayer, and the starting-place for his immortal Midnight Journey was the Sacred City encompassing the Temple of the Lord.

No account of this journey appears except in the traditions crystallized by Al Bokharil, but there is one short mention of it in the Kuran, Sura xviii.

"Glory be to him who carried his servant by night from the sacred temple of Mecca to the temple that is more remote, i.e. Jerusalem."

The vision, however, looms so large in his followers' minds, and exercised so profound an influence over their regard for Mahomet, that it throws some light, upon the measure of his ascendancy during his last years at Mecca, and establishes beyond dispute the inspired character of his Prophetship in the imaginations of the few Believers. There have been solemn and wordy disputes by theologians as to whether he made the journey in the flesh, or whether his spirit alone crossed the dread portals dividing our night from the celestial day.

He was lying in the Kaaba, so runs the legend, when the Angel of the Lord appeared to him, and after having purged his heart of all sin, carried him to the Temple at Jerusalem. He penetrated its sacred enclosure and saw the beast Borak, "greater than ass, smaller than mule," and was told to mount. The Faithful still show the spot at Jerusalem where his steed's hoof marked the ground as he spurned it with flying feet. With Gabriel by his side, mounted on a beast mighty in strength, Mahomet scaled the appalling spaces and came at last to the outer Heaven, before the gate that guards the celestial realms. The angel knocked upon the brazen doors and a voice within cried:

"Who art thou, and who is with thee?"

"I am Gabriel," came the answer, "and this is Mahomet."

And behold, the brazen gates that may not be unclosed for mortal man were flung wide, and Mahomet entered alone with the angel. He penetrated to the first Heaven and saw Adam, who interrogated him in the same words, and received the same reply. And all the heavenly hierarchies, even unto the seventh Heaven, John and Jesus, Joseph, Enoch, Aaron, Moses, Abraham, acknowledged Mahomet in the same words, until the two came to "the tree called Sedrat," beyond which no man may pass and live, whose fruits are shining serpents, and whose leaves are great beasts, round which flow four rivers, the Nile and the Euphrates guarding it without, and within these the celestial streams that water Paradise, too wondrous for a name.

Awed but undaunted, Mahomet passed alone beyond the sacred tree, for even the Angel could not bear any longer so fierce a glory, and came to Al-M'amur, even the Hall of Heavenly Audience, where are seventy thousand angels. He mounted the steps of the throne between their serried ranks, until at the touch of Allah's awful hand he stopped and felt its icy coldness penetrate to his heart. He was given milk, wine, or honey to drink, and he chose milk.

"Hadst thou chosen honey, O Mahomet," said Allah, "all thy people would be saved, now only a part shall find perfection."

And Mahomet was troubled.

"Bid my people pray to Me fifty times a day."

At the resistless mandate Mahomet turned and retraced his steps to the seventh Heaven, where dwelt Abraham.

"The people of the earth will be in nowise constrained to pray fifty times a day. Return thou and beg that the number be lessened."

So Mahomet returned again and again at Abraham's command, until he had reduced the number to five, which the father of his people considered was sufficient burden for his feeble subjects to bear. Wherefore the five periods set apart for prayer in the Muslim faith are proportionately sacred, and with this divine mandate the vision ceased.

With his hopes now set on founding an earthly dominion with the help of Allah, he had perforce to consider the political situation, and to mature his policy for dealing with it as soon as events proved favourable. The achievements of the Persians on the Greek frontier had already attracted his attention in 616; there is an allusion to the battle and the Greek defeat in the Kuran, and a vague prophecy of their ultimate success, for Mahomet was in sympathy with the Greek Empire, seeing that, from the point of view of Arabia, it was the less formidable enemy.

But really the events of such outlying territories only troubled him in regard to Medina, for his whole thoughts were centred now upon the chosen city of his dreams. His followers became less aggressive in Mecca when they knew that the Prophet had the nucleus of a new colony in another city. Persecution within Mecca therefore died down considerably, and the period is one of pause upon either side, the Kureisch watching to see what the next move was to be, Mahomet carefully and secretly maturing his plans.

During this year there fell a drought upon Mecca, followed by a famine, which the devout attributed directly to divine anger at the rejection of the Prophet's heavenly message, and which Mahomet interpreted as the punishment of God, and this doubtless added to the sum of reasons which impelled him to relinquish his native town.

From this time until the Hegira, or Flight from the City, events in the world of action move but slowly for Mahomet. He was careful not to excite undue suspicion among the Kureisch, and we can imagine him silent and preoccupied, fulfilling his duties among them, visiting the Kaaba, and mingling somewhat coldly with their daily life. Still keeping his purpose immutable, he sought to strengthen the faith of his followers for the trials he knew must come. The Kuran thus became more important as the mouthpiece of his exhortations. The suras of this time resound with words of encouragement and confidence. He is about to become the leader of a perilous venture in honour of God. The reflex of the expectancy in the hearts of the Muslim may be traced in his messages to them. Their whole world, as it were, waited breathless, quiet, and tense for the record of the year's achievements in Medina, and for the time appointed by God. But how far their leader's actions were the result of painstaking calculations, an insight into the qualities and energies of men, a prevision startling in its range and accuracy, they never suspected; but, serene in their confidence, they held their magnificent faith in the divine guidance and in the inspiration of their Prophet.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FLIGHT TO MEDINA

"Knowest thou not that the dominion of the Heavens and of the
Earth is God's? and that ye have neither patron nor helper save
God?"—The Kuran.

The expectancy which burned like revivifying fire in the hearts of the Meccan Muslim, kindled and nourished by their leader himself, was to culminate at the time of the yearly pilgrimage in 622. In that month came the great concourse of pilgrims from Yathreb to Mecca, among them seventy of the "Faithful" who had received the faith at Medina, headed by their teacher Musab and strengthened by the knowledge that they were before long to stand face to face with their Prophet.

Musab had reported to Mahomet the success of his mission in the city, and had prepared him for the advent of the little band of followers secured for Islam. Secrecy was essential, for the Muslim from Medina were in heart strangers among their own people, in such a precarious situation that any treachery would have meant their utter annihilation, if not at the hands of their countrymen, who would doubtless throw in their lot with the stronger, certainly at the hands of the Kureisch, the implacable foes of Islam, in whose territory they fearfully were. The rites of pilgrimage were accordingly performed faithfully, though many breathed more freely as they departed for the last ceremony at Mina. All was now completed, and the Medinan party prepared to return, when Mahomet summoned the Faithful by night to the old meeting-place in the gloomy valley of Akaba.

About seventy men and two women of both Medinan tribes, the Beni Khazraj and the Beni Aus, assembled thus in that barren place, under the brilliant night skies of Arabia, to pledge themselves anew to an unseen, untried God and to the service of his Prophet, who as yet counted but few among his followers, and whose word carried no weight with the great ones of their world.

To this meeting Mahomet brought Abbas, his uncle, younger son of Abd-al-Muttalib, a weak and insignificant character, who had endeared himself to Mahomet chiefly because of his doglike devotion. He was not a convert, but he revered his energetic nephew too highly and was also too greatly in awe of him to imagine such a thing as treachery. He was in part a guarantee to the Khazraj of Mahomet's good faith, in part an asset for him against the Kureisch, for his family were still influential in Mecca.

The two made their way from the city unaccompanied, by steep and stony ways, until they came to Akaba, and Mahomet saw awaiting him that concourse summoned by his persistence and tireless faith—a concourse part of himself, almost his own child, upon which all his hopes were now set. Coming thus into that circle of faces, illumined dimly by the torches, which prudence even now urged them to extinguish, he could not but feel some foreshadowing of the mighty future that awaited this little gathering, as yet impotent and tremulous, but bearing within itself the seeds of that loyalty and courage that were to spread "the Faith" over half the world.

When the greetings were over, Abbas stepped forward and spoke, while the lines of dark faces closed around him in earnest scrutiny.

"Ye men of the Beni Khazraj, this my kinsmen dwelleth amongst us in honour and safety; his clan will defend him, but he preferreth to seek protection from you. Wherefore, ye Khazraj, consider the matter well and count the cost."

Then answered Bara, who stood for them in position of Chief:

"We have listened to your words. Our resolution is unshaken. Our lives are at the Prophet's service. It is now for him to speak."

Mahomet stepped forward into the circle of their glances, and with the solemnity of the occasion urgent within him recited to them verses of the Kuran, whose fire and eloquence kindled those passionate souls into an enthusiasm glowing with a sombre resolve, and prompted them to stake all upon their enterprise. At the end of those tumultuous words he assured them that he would be content if they would pledge themselves to defend him.

"And if we die in thy defence, what reward have we?"

"Paradise!" replied Mahomet, exalted, raising his hand in token of his belief in Allah and the certitude of his cause.

Then arose a murmur deep and long, the protestation of loyalty that threatened to rise into triumphant acclamation, but Abbas, the fearful of the party, stayed them in dread of spies. So the tumult died down, and Bara, taking upon himself the authority of his fellows, stretched forth his hand to Mahomet, and with their clasping the Second Pledge of the Akaba was sealed. They broke up swiftly, dreading to prolong their meeting, for danger was all around them and the air heavy with suspected treacheries.

And their apprehension was not groundless, for the Kureisch had heard of their assembly through some secret messenger, though not until the Medinan caravan with its concourse of the Faithful and the Unbelievers was well on its homeward way across the dreary desert paths which lead to Mecca from Medina. Their wrath was intense, and in fury they pursued it; but either they were ignorant as to which road the party had taken, or the Medinans eluded them by greater speed, for they returned disconsolate from the pursuit, having only succeeded in finding two luckless men, one of whom escaped, but the other, Sa'd ibn Obada, was dragged back to Mecca and subjected to much brutality before he ultimately made his escape to his native city.

The Kureisch were not content with attempting reprisals against Medina, or possibly they were enraged because they had effected so little, for they recommenced the persecution of Islam at Mecca with much violence. From March until April they harassed the Believers in their city, imposing restrictions upon them, and in many cases inflicting bodily harm upon Mahomet's unfortunate and now defenceless followers. The renewed persecution doubtless gave an added impetus to the Prophet's resolve to quit Mecca.

Indeed, the time was fully ripe, and with the prescience that continually characterised him in his role of leader of a religious state, he felt that now the ground was prepared at Medina, emigration of the Muslim from Mecca could not fail to be advantageous to him.

The command was given in April 622, and found immediate popularity, except with a few malcontents who had large interests in their native city. Then began the slow removal of a whole colony. The families of Abu Talib's quarter of Mecca tranquilly forsook their birthplace in orderly groups, taking with them their household treasures, until the neighbourhood showed tenantless houses falling into the swift decay accompanying neglect in such a climate, barricaded doors and gaping windows, filled only with an immense feeling of desolation and the blankness which overtakes a city when its humanity has deputed to another abiding place. Weeds grew in the deserted streets, and over all lay a fine film of dust, the almost impalpable effort of the desert to merge once more into itself the territory wrung from it by human will.

The effect of this emigration upon the Kureisch can hardly be estimated. They were amazed and helpless before it; for with their wrath hot against Mahomet, it was as if their antagonist had melted into insubstantial vapours to leave them enraged and breathless, pursuing a phantom continually elusive. So silent was the emigration that they were only made aware of it when the quarter was almost deserted. Scattered groups of travellers journeying along the desert tracks had evoked no hostilities, and no treachery broke the loyalty to Islam at Mecca. The Kureisch were indeed outwitted, and only became conscious of the subtleties of their antagonist when his plan was accomplished.

But in spite of the seemingly favourable situation, the leader tarried because "the Lord had not as yet given him command to emigrate." The very natural hesitation of Mahomet is only characteristic of him. He knew very well what issues were at stake, and was not anxious to burn his boats rashly; indeed, he bore upon his shoulders at this time all the responsibility of the future of his little flock, who so confidently resigned their fortunes into his hands. If his scheme at Medina should fail, he knew that nothing would save him from Kureischite fury, and he also felt great reluctance in leaving Mecca himself, for at that time it could not but mean the knell of his hopes of gaining his native city to his creed. He must have foreseen his establishment of power in Medina, and possibly he had visions of its extension to neighbouring tribes, but he could not have foreseen the humiliation of his native city at his feet, glad at last to receive the faith of one whom she now regarded as the sovereign potentate of Arabian territory.

And with their friend and guide remained Abu Bekr and Ali—Abu Bekr because he would not leave his companion in prayer and persecution, and Ali because his valour and enthusiasm made him a protector against possible attacks. Here was the opportunity for the Kureisch. They knew the extent of the emigration, and that Abu Bekr and Ali were the only Muslim of importance left except the Prophet. They determined to make one last attempt to coerce into submission this fantastic but resolute leader, who possessed in supreme measure the power of winning the faith and devotion of men.

Tradition has it that Mahomet's assassination was definitely planned, and Mahomet assuredly thought so too, when he discovered that a man from each tribe had been chosen to visit his home at night. The motive can hardly have been assassination, but doubtless the chiefs were prepared to take rather strong measures to restrain Mahomet, and this action finally decided the Prophet that delay was dangerous.

At this crisis in his fortunes he had two staunch helpers, who did not hesitate to risk their lives in his service, and with them he anticipated his foes. Ali was chosen to represent his beloved master before the menaces of the Kureisch. Mahomet put him into his own bed and arrayed him in his sacred green mantle; then, as legend has it, taking a handful of dust, he recited the sura "Ya Sin," which he himself reverenced as "the heart of the Kuran," and scattering the dust abroad, he called down confusion upon the heads of the Unbelievers. With Abu Bekr he then fled swiftly and silently from the city and made his way unseen to the cave of Thaur, a few miles outside its boundaries.

Around the cave of Thaur cluster as many and as beautiful legends as surround the stable at Bethlehem. The wild pigeons flew out and in unharmed, screening the Prophet by their untroubled presence from the searchings of the Kureisch, and a thorn tree spread her branches across the mouth of the cave supporting a spider's frail and glistening web, which was renewed whenever a friend visited the two prisoners to bring food and tidings.

Here Mahomet and Abu Bekr, henceforward known as the "Second of Two," remained until the fierceness of the pursuit slackened. Asma, Abu Bekr's daughter, brought them food at sundown, and what news she could glean from the rumours that were abroad, and from the lips of Ali. There was very real danger of their surprise and capture, but once more Mahomet's magnificent faith in God and his cause never wavered. Abu Bekr was afraid for his master:

"We are but two, and if the Kureisch find us unarmed, what chance have we?"

"We are but two," replied Mahomet, "but God is in the midst a third."

He looked unflinchingly to Allah for succour and protection, and his faith was justified. His thanksgiving is contained in the Kuran: "God assisted your Prophet formerly, when the Unbelievers drove him forth in company with a second only; when they two were in the cave; when the Prophet said to his companion, 'Be not distressed; verily God is with us.' And God sent down his tranquillity upon him and strengthened him with hosts ye saw not, and made the word of those who believed not the abased, and the word of God was the exalted."

At the end of three days the Kureischite search abated, and that night Mahomet and Abu Bekr decided to leave the cave. Two camels were brought, and food loaded upon them by Asma and her servants. The fastenings were not long enough to tie on the food wallet; wherefore Asma tore her girdle in two and bound them round it, so that she is known to this day among the Faithful as "She of Two Shreds." After a prayer to Allah in thanks for their safety, Mahomet and Abu Bekr mounted the camels and sallied forth to meet what unknown destiny should await them on the road to Medina. They rapidly gained the sea-coast near Asfan in comparative safety, secure from the attacks of the Kureisch, who would not pursue their quarry so far into a strange country.

The Kureisch had indeed considerably abated their anger against Mahomet. He was now safely out of their midst, and possibly they thought themselves well rid of a man whose only object, from their point of view, was to stir up strife, and they felt that any resentment against either himself or his kin would be unnecessary and not worth their pains. With remarkable tolerance for so revengeful an age, they left the families of Mahomet and Abu Bekr quite free from molestation, nor did they offer any opposition to Ali when they found he had successfully foiled them, and he made his way out of the city three days after his leader had quitted it.

Mahomet and Abu Bekr journeyed on, two pilgrims making their way, solitary but unappalled, to a strange city, whose temper and disposition they but faintly understood. But evidences as to its friendliness were not wanting, and these were renewed when Abu Bekr's cousin, a previous emigrant to Medina, met them half-way and declared that the city waited in joy and expectation for the coming of its Prophet. After some days they crossed the valley of Akik in extreme heat, and came at last to Coba, an outlying suburb at Medina, where, weary and apprehensive, Mahomet rested for a while, prudently desiring that his welcome at Medina might be assured before he ventured into its confines.

His entry into Coba savoured of a triumphal procession; the people thronged around his camel shouting, "The Prophet; he is come!" mingling their cries with homage and wondering awe, that the divine servant of whom they had heard so much should appear to them in so human a guise, a man among them, verily one of themselves. Mahomet's camel stopped at the house of Omm Kolthum, and there he elected to abide during his stay in Coba, for he possessed throughout his life a reverence for the instinct in animals that characterises the Eastern races of all time. There, dismounting, he addressed the people, bidding them be of good cheer, and giving them thanks for their joyous welcome:

"Ye people, show your joy by giving your neighbours the salvation of peace; send portions to the poor; bind close the ties of kinship, and offer up your prayers whilst others sleep. Thus shall ye enter Paradise in peace."

For four days Mahomet dwelt in Coba, where he had encountered unfailing support and friendship, and there was joined by Ali. His memories of Coba were always grateful, for at the outset of his doubtful and even dangerous enterprise he had received a good augury. Before he set out to Medina he laid the foundations of the Mosque at Coba, where the Faithful would be enabled to pray according to their fashion, undisturbed and beneath the favour of Allah, and decreed that Friday was to be set apart as a special day of prayer, when addresses were to be given at the Mosque and the doctrines of Islam expounded.

Even as early as this Mahomet felt the mantle of sovereignty descending upon him, for we hear now of the first of those ordinances or decrees by which in later times he rules the lives and actions of his subjects to the last detail. Clearly he perceived himself a leader among men, who had it within his power to build up a community following his own dictates, which might by consolidation even rival those already existent in Arabia. He was taking command of a weak and factious city, and he realised that in his hands lay its prosperity or downfall; he was, in fact, the arbiter of its fate and of the fate of his colleagues who had dared all with him.

But he could not stay long in Coba, while the final assay upon the Medinans remained to be undertaken, and so we find him on the fourth day of his sojourn making preparations for the entry into the city. It was undertaken with some confidence of success from the messages already sent to Coba, and proved as triumphal an entry as his former one. The populace awaited him in expectation and reverence, and hailed him as their Prophet, the mighty leader who had come to their deliverance. They surrounded his camel Al-Caswa, and the camels of his followers, and when Al-Caswa stopped outside the house of Abu Ayub, Mahomet once more received the beast's augury and sojourned there until the building of the Mosque. As Al-Caswa entered the paved courtyard, Mahomet dismounted to receive the allegiance of Abu Ayub and his household; then, turning to the people, he greeted them with words of good cheer and encouragement, and they responded with acclamations.

For seven months the Prophet lodged in the house of Abu Ayub, and he bought the yard where Al-Caswa halted as a token of his first entry into Medina, and a remembrance in later years of his abiding place during the difficult time of his inception. The decisive step had been taken. The die was now cast. It was as if the little fleet of human souls had finally cast its moorings and ventured into the unpathed waters of temporal dominion under the command of one whose skill in pilotage was as yet unknown. Many changes became necessary in the conduct of the enterprise, of which not the least was the change of attitude between the leader and his followers. Mahomet, heretofore religious visionary and teacher, became the temporal head of a community, and in time the leader of a political State. The changed aspect of his mission can never be over-emphasised, for it altered the tenor of his thoughts and the progress of his words. All the poetry and fire informing the early pages of the Kuran departs with his reception at Medina, except for occasional flashes that illumine the chronicle of detailed ordinances that the Book has now become.

This apparent death of poetic energy had crept gradually over the Kuran, helped on by the controversial character of the last two Meccan periods, when he attempted the conciliation of the Jewish element within Arabia with that long-sightedness which already discerned Medina as his possible refuge. In reality the whole energy of his nature was transmuted from his words to his actions and therein he found his fitting sphere, for he was essentially the doer, one whose works are the expression of his secret, whose personality, in fact, is only gauged by his deeds. As a result of his political leadership, the despotism of his nature, inherent in his conception of God, inevitably revealed itself; he had postulated a Being who held mankind in the hollow of his hand, whose decrees were absolute among his subjects; now that he was to found an earthly kingdom under the guidance of Allah, the majesty of divine despotism overshadowed its Prophet, and enabled him to impose upon a willing people the same obedience to authority which fostered the military idea.

We must perforce believe in Mahomet's good faith. There is a tendency in modern times to think of him as a man who knowingly played upon the credulity of his followers to establish a sovereignty whereof he should be head. But no student of psychology can support this conception of the Prophet of Islam. There is a subtle rapprochement between leader and people in all great movements that divines instinctively any imposture. Mahomet used and moulded men by reason of his faith in his own creed. The establishment of the worship of Allah brought in its train the aggrandisement of his Prophet, but it was not achieved by profanation of the source whence his greatness came.