ARABIA AND ITS INHABITANTS.—LIFE AND DOCTRINE OF MOHAMMED.

The Arabian peninsula, called by the natives Jesira-al-Arab, by the Persians and Turks Arabistan, forms the south-westernmost part of Asia. It is bounded on the north by Syria and the river Euphrates, on the east by the Persian Gulf, on the south by the Indian Ocean, on the west by the Red Sea, or Arabian Gulf. Including the north-eastern desert, it occupies an area ten times the extent of that of Great Britain and Ireland. The connecting link between Asia and Africa, to which latter continent it is joined by the Isthmus of Suez, it presents in its natural features, a faithful copy of its colossal tropical neighbour, modified, however, by the imprint of a strongly marked individual character, the result of its peculiar isolated position. The attempted derivation of the name of the country from Eber[1], the common progenitor of the Joctanites and Ismaelites—the two races which are assumed to constitute the great bulk of the native population of Arabia—is, at the best, but very problematical; that from the word Araba, the name of a district of the province of Tehama, and which signifies a level desert, would seem to rest on a safer and more rational foundation, the far greater part of the country being indeed a dreary waste, a boundless level of sand, destitute of rivers, intersected by naked mountains, and barely relieved here and there by a shady grove or a green sward of aromatic herbs. The date-palm is often the solitary representative of vegetable life in these sterile tracts, which are scorched by a tropical sun, and hardly ever refreshed by a grateful shower. There are, however, some more favored districts, where the fertile soil produces dates and other palms, tamarinds, vines, rice, sugar, figs, tobacco, indigo, cotton, durra,[2] coffee, gum, benzoin, frankincense, manna, balsam, aloe, myrrh, spices, &c. The high lands in the south-west, that border on the Indian Ocean, are distinguished in this respect, above all other parts of Arabia, by a more temperate air, superior fertility, and comparative abundance of wood and water. No wonder, then, that the appellation happy, bestowed upon this blessed region by Ptolemy, should have been generally adopted, although originating in a mistranslation of the word Yemen, the Arabian name of this part of the peninsula, and which does not signify happy, but is simply meant to designate the land lying, with respect to the East, to the right of Mecca, just as Al-Sham (Syria) means the land to the left of that city. Ptolemy’s division of the country into the sandy, the petraie, and the happy (Arabia Deserta, PetrÆa, and Felix), is, however, unknown to the Arabians themselves, who speak only of high land and low land. The epithet stony, so generally applied by geographers to the petraic division, is founded in error: Ptolemy derived the word from Petra, the name of the then flourishing capital of the NabathÆans, and not from the Greek word petra, a rock or stone. Ptolemy’s Arabia PetrÆa forms now part of the province of Hejaz, along the coast of the Red Sea. Yemen, as we have seen, occupies the south-western coast. On the south-eastern coast lies the maritime district of Oman; on the Persian Gulf, the district of Lahsa: the inland space bears the name of Neged, or Naged.

Arabia is the true native country of the horse, and remains even at the present time the seat of the purest and noblest races of that generous animal. Asses, oxen, sheep, goats, and the swift gazelle, are also indigenous; and so is the camel, the “ship of the desert,” nature’s most precious gift in the sands of Africa and Arabia. Monkies, pheasants, and pigeons inhabit the fertile districts. The lion, the panther, the hyena, the jackal, lurk in the desert. Ostriches, and pelicans are among the birds of Arabia; locusts, that “plague of the fields,” are among its insects. The coasts abound in fishes and tortoises; and the pearl-fishery flourishes more especially in the Persian Gulf.

Among the mineral products may be mentioned iron, copper, lead, coals, asphaltum; and precious stones, as the agate, the onyx, the carnelion, &c. Some of the ancient geographers speak also of the soil of Arabia as being impregnated with gold; and though no mines of that precious metal are at present known in the peninsula, who can say but that the treasures of another California lie hidden there?

The inhabitants of Arabia, whose present number may be estimated at about fifteen millions, are supposed to derive their origin partly from Joctan (in the Arabian language Kahtan), one of the sons of Eber; and partly from Ismael, the son of Abraham and Hagar. The Joctanites, as the supposed original inhabitants of the country, have been called also true Arabians; the Ismaelites, as later immigrants, mixed Arabians. The Ismaelites are the Bedoweens, or Bedouins, of our time, who to the present day continue to rove through the interior and the north of Arabia, as they did in the remote times of Job and Sesostris, depending partly on their flocks, partly on the transit trade of the caravans, but chiefly on plunder;[3] which latter is by these wild sons of the desert looked upon in the light of an honorable profession rather than of a disgraceful and criminal pursuit. They are a fine race of men, of middle size, but well proportioned, vigorous, and active; they have regular features; their complexion is mostly dark, rarely of a lighter tint; their eyes sparkle with a fire and lustre unknown among us. They are brave, temperate, generous, and hospitable; enthusiastically addicted to eloquence and poetry. Rapine and revenge are the only dark spots in the national character of the Bedoween.

The Joctanites are the Haddhesies, or settled Arabians, who from the earliest times have been collected into towns and villages, more especially in the maritime districts of the peninsula, employed in the labors of agriculture, trade, and commerce. Though the Arabian house-dwellers cannot be said to possess all the noble qualities of their brethren of the desert, still the description given above of the physical and moral character of the latter applies in a great measure equally to them; they are lively, intelligent, eloquent, and witty; and, with all their habitual haughty demeanour, more particularly to strangers, affable and agreeable in their manners and conversation.

The principal nations of Arabia mentioned by the ancients, are, besides the Skenites (tent-dwellers, or wandering tribes), the NabathÆans, in Arabia PetrÆa (Hejaz); the Thamudites and MinÆans in Hejaz; the SabÆans and Homerites, in Yemen; the Hadhramites, in Hadhramaut on the southern coast; the Omanites, Dacharenians, and GerrhÆans, in Oman and Ul-Ahsa, or Lahsa; the Saranians, in Neged; and the Saracens, an obscure tribe on the borders of Egypt, and remarkable only from the circumstance that, perhaps from a fallacious[4] interpretation of the meaning of the word,—viz: as intended to indicate an Oriental situation—the application of the name has been gradually extended, first to the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula generally, afterwards to all Mohammedans.

The early history of the Arabians is shrouded in obscurity. That the Joctanites were not the true original inhabitants of the country, but simply later immigrants into it, would appear to result from the histories of the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian empires (however so little reliance we may feel inclined to place in these mythical and traditional histories); for we are told that Nimrod was attended by Arabian tribes—and in the list of the Babylonian kings we find six Arabian princes; and, again, among the auxiliaries of Ninus we find Arabs, under a prince named AriÆus. The Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, who are said to have invaded Egypt about 2075 B.C., and to have held sway in that country during more than 500 years, are also generally considered to have come from Arabia. The traditional history of Arabia mentions several kingdoms and dynasties. The two most ancient of these, dating their origin as far back as 2000 B.C., were, 1, the Homerite kingdom in Yemen, which, after a time, split into the two states of Saba, or Sheba, and Hadhramaut. About 1572 B.C., these were re-united into one empire, which about 1075 B.C. was governed by Balkis, the daughter of Hodhad, and who by some historians is thought to have been identical with the Queen of Sheba, the cotemporary of Solomon; 2, the State in Hejaz, in which the NabathÆans held superior sway.

Protected on all sides by the seas of sand and water which encompass the peninsula, the Arabian people—or, at all events, the great body of the nation—had, at all times, escaped the yoke of a foreign conqueror. King Sesostris, of Egypt, is said to have subjected some tribes of Hejaz to his rule; but it would appear they speedily recovered their independence. All the attempts made at different times, by the rulers of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, and Persia, to subjugate the Arabian peninsula, proved either altogether abortive, or, even where they partially succeeded, the conquest was only transient. Thus Arabia PetrÆa was subjugated, for a time, to the Assyrian sway in the eighth century B.C. by Pul, or Phul, and Sennacherib; but in the sixth century B.C. we find it in independent alliance with the Persian kings Cyrus and Cambyses. Alexander the Great had formed the plan to conquer and colonise the coasts of Arabia, and to prepare in this way the ultimate subjugation of the entire peninsula. The genius of the GrÆco-Macedonian conqueror, the immense material means of which he could dispose, and the possession of a powerful fleet (under Nearchus) promised a successful issue to the intended expedition: the death of Alexander (11th June, 323 B.C.) averted the threatening danger.[5] The attempt which Antigonus and Demetrius made upon Arabia in 312 B.C. was a failure; and the trifling conquest achieved in 219 B.C. by Antiochus the Great, of Syria, was speedily wrested again from him by the natives. At a later period, the northern tribes of Arabia were engaged for a time, with varying fortunes, in desultory feuds with the Jews under the MaccabÆans, or Makkabi.[6] The Romans also, that all-grasping nation, cast their covetous eyes upon the flourishing state of PetrÆa; but neither Scaurus nor Gabinius, neither Pompey nor Antony, nor even Augustus, could prevail against the difficulties of the country, and the stubborn valor of the roving tribes of the desert. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, and disease thinned the ranks of the proud legions more effectually still than the bow, the javelin, and the scymetar of the Bedoween; and after a last vain attempt under Ælius Gallus, Imperial Rome reluctantly relinquished for a time the coveted prize. In 106 A.D., Cornelius Palma, a lieutenant of Trajan, conquered the cities of Bostra and Petra, and subdued the NabathÆans. Trajan made, also, some naval inroads, and carried his incursions as far as Katif. Petra lost from this time its importance and splendor; Bostra becoming in its stead the principal seat of the commerce of the Euphrates and the Tigris. After the death of Trajan, the conquered tribes shook off again the Roman yoke. The Emperor Aurelian broke, indeed, the power of the NabathÆans in his celebrated campaign against Zenobia, the great Queen of Palmyra, (272 and 273 A.D.), and his triumphal car was followed by captive Arabian chiefs; but the NabathÆan nation, disdaining to bend to the Roman yoke, abandoned their homes, and fled to that great asylum of Arabian freedom, the desert.

At the commencement of the sixth century, (502 A.D.), the Homerite kingdom of Yemen[7] was conquered by an Ethiopian prince, the Negus, or King, of Abyssinia,[8] and remained subject or tributary to the Christian princes of the latter country to the time of the conquest of Arabia by Chosroes I. (Nushirvan) of Persia (about 574 A.D.). Still, though Arabia was styled a Persian province, the sway of the Sassanides over the peninsula was more nominal than real: the tribes of the desert remained free, and even in Yemen, we find seven Princes of the Homerites successfully asserting and maintaining the independence of their mountains.[9]

There is some reason to suppose that the original worship of the Arabs was that of one God; clouded and tarnished, indeed, by many superstitious usages, and perhaps even by human sacrifices, yet free from gross idolatry. But this primitive religion was speedily supplanted by the adoration of the sun, the moon, and the fixed stars; a specious superstition which substitutes for the invisible, all-pervading, universal God, the most glorious of his creations, and may well find its excuse in the clear sky and boundless naked plains of Arabia, where the heavenly luminaries shine with a brighter lustre, displaying to the mind of the untutored son of the desert the visible image of a Deity. Intimately connected with this still primitive faith, was the belief in the wonderful powers and attributes of meteoric stones. The most renowned of these, called Hadjar-el-Aswad, is a square-shaped black stone, kept to the present day in Mecca in the Temple of the Kaaba, and which has from time immemorial been, and remains still, the sacred object of the devout pilgrimages and adoration of the Arabs of all tribes. The Kaaba is a square building, thirty-four feet high, and twenty-seven broad; built, according to the Mohammedan tradition, by Abraham, and repeatedly restored, in after ages, by the Amalekites, by the Jorhamites, by Kassa, of the tribe of Koreish, &c.; and the last time by Sultan Mustapha, in 1630. Of the original building there remains thus at present only a small portion of wall, which is held most sacred. A spacious portico[10] encloses the quadrangle of the Kaaba. The holy stone, which is about four feet high, and set in silver, is fixed in the wall, in the southern corner. The Mohammedan tradition relates that this stone was brought to Abraham by the Angel Gabriel, whose tears over the sinfulness of man had changed its original white color to black! Hence Mahomet was induced to make it the Kebla[11] of prayer, and to enjoin the pilgrimage of the faithful to it and the Kaaba. Verily, the idolatry of the ancient Arabs, who worshipped the divine power in the meteoric stone, that had fallen from the skies in a manner miraculous to their untutored understanding, was more natural, and even far more rational, than the present worship of the same stone, based upon this wretched and most absurd legend! The transmigration of souls, the resurrection of bodies, and the invocation of departed spirits, formed also part of the religious belief of the ancient Arabs; the cruel practice of human sacrifices prevailed among them even up to the time of Mohammed, in the course of time the grossest idolatry became an important, and, in the end, a preponderating ingredient in Arabian worship; and the sacred Kaaba was defiled by the gradual introduction of three hundred and sixty idols of men, eagles, lions, and antelopes; among which stood most conspicuous the most popular of them, the statue of Hobal, fashioned of red agate by a Syrian artist, and holding in his hand seven arrows, without heads or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane divination.[12]

But, though each tribe, each family, nay every independent warrior, might freely create new idols and new rites of his fantastic worship, yet the nation, in every age, has bowed to the religion of Mecca, and to the superior sanctity of the Kaaba. An annual truce of two, or, according to some historians, four months, during which the swords of the Arabs were sheathed, both in foreign and domestic warfare, protected the holy pilgrimage to Mecca. The great fair held in connection with this pilgrimage induced those to come whom religious ardor failed to attract. This annual gathering of distant and hostile tribes contributed greatly to harmonise and refine the wild sons of the desert; the exchange of eloquence and poetry usual at these periods, could only heighten the humanizing and elevating influence of the custom. The fanaticism of the first Moslems abolished the fair, inflicting thereby one of the many evils that came in the train of Mohammed’s gigantic imposture. The rites which are, even in the present day, accomplished by the devout Moslems, are still the same they were in the days of the ancient idolators of Arabia. “At a respectful distance from the temple, they threw off their garments; seven times they went round the Kaaba, with quick steps, kissing each time the holy stone with deep reverence;[13] seven times they visited and adored the adjacent mountains; seven times they threw stones into the valley of Mina: and the pilgrimage was completed, as at the present hour, by a sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their hair and nails in the consecrated ground.”[14]

It will be readily understood that the custody of the Kaaba must at all times have proved a most lucrative affair. No wonder, then, that the neighbouring tribes should have hotly contended for it. Originally the Ismaelites held it for a long time, together with the dominion over Mecca, which resulted from it as a natural consequence. The Jorhamites, a branch of the Joctanites, succeeded at last in ousting them from it; these again were expelled by the Khuzaites, who promoted idolatry to a most formidable extent. In the middle of the fifth century, an Ismaelitic tribe, that of Koreish, wrested the custody of the Kaaba, by fraud or force, from the Khuzaites. The sacerdotal office was entrusted by the Koreish to Cosa, of the family of the Hashemites, and devolved through four lineal descents to Abdol Motalleb, the grandfather of Mohammed.[15]

The freedom which Arabia enjoyed, promised a safe asylum to the political and religious exiles and proscripts from the adjacent kingdoms. The intolerance of the Magian Persians had overturned the altars of Babylon, and compelled the votaries of Sabianism[16] to seek a refuge in the desert. The same fate befell the Magians in their turn, when the sword of Alexander had overthrown the Persian monarchy. Multitudes of Jews fled into Arabia, to escape the cruel persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, and greater numbers still followed during the wars of Titus and Hadrian. To all these were added, at a later period, numerous sects of Christians, fleeing from that worst of all persecutions, that of their triumphant co-religionists, from whom they might chance to differ in some abstruse point of doctrine, or in some immaterial rite. Among the persecuted sects, we may mention here more particularly the Marcionites and the ManichÆans, the Jacobites and Nestorians. The latter two sects had gained many proselytes in Yemen, and succeeded even in converting the princes of Hira and Gassan to their faith. The Jews, also, had made numerous and important converts to the Mosaic belief; and we have already seen how the intolerant zeal of a bigoted Jewish neophyte, Dunaan, prince of the Homerites, suddenly interrupted the enjoyment of that absolute liberty of conscience which the Arabian idolaters had hitherto granted to all creeds and all sects, and brought down upon Yemen an Abyssinian invasion to avenge the wrongs of the persecuted Christians.

It was in this country, and among this people, so strangely and peculiarly constituted, that arose the apostle of a new faith, destined to knead the heterogeneous and hostile elements of the nation into one compact mass, and to hurl this with irresistible might against the adjacent empires, and even, far beyond the limits of the latter, against countries and nations formerly scarcely known by name even to the Arabian merchant.

Mahomet, or more properly Mohammed or Muhammed, (i.e. the very famous), the only son of Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca, on the 20th April, 571.[17] His father, Abdallah, was the best beloved of the thirteen sons of Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem, and chief of the family of that name; his mother, Amina, sprang from the noble race of the Zahrites. He had the misfortune to lose in his infancy, his father and mother, and his grandfather. His sole inheritance consisted in a house, an old female slave, and five camels. After the death of his grandfather, he was taken into the house of his uncle, Abu Taleb, who had succeeded Abdol Motalleb in the sacerdotal office. Here he was educated to commercial pursuits; and was, at the age of thirteen, sent with the caravan of his uncle to the fairs of Bosra, or Bostra,[18] and Damascus, in Syria. In his twentieth year[19] he fought in the ranks of the Koreish against some hostile tribes, and, by his valor, gained the appellation El Amin, i.e., the faithful, one of the five hundred and more surnames that have gradually been given to the Prophet of Islam. In his twenty-fifth year, Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca (according to some historians, of Bosra), engaged him as superintendent and manager to carry on the commercial affairs of her late husband. In this capacity he made a second journey to the fairs of Bosra and Damascus.[20]

Nature had bestowed upon Mohammed the gift of personal beauty. His cotemporaries describe him as of commanding figure and majestic aspect; he had regular and most expressive features, piercing black eyes, an aquiline nose, and a well-formed mouth, with pearly teeth; his cheeks were tinged with the ruddy glow of robust health.[21] Art had imparted to his naturally black, flowing hair and beard a lighter chestnut hue. His captivating smile, his rich and sonorous voice, the graceful dignity of his gestures, the apparent frankness and heartiness of his manner, gained him the favorable attention of those whom he addressed. He possessed talents of a superior order—his perception was quick and active, his memory capacious and retentive, his imagination lively and daring, his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive, his courage dauntless;—and, whatever may be our opinion of the sincerity of his convictions, his tenacity of purpose in the pursuit of the great object of his life, and his patient endurance, cannot but extort our admiration. His natural eloquence was enhanced by the use of the purest dialect of Arabia, and adorned by the charm of a graceful elocution.

Cadijah was a widow for the second time; she was in the fortieth year of her age—no wonder then, that a man so bountifully endowed by nature should speedily have gained her affection. She bestowed upon him her hand and her fortune, and restored him thereby to the station of his ancestors. Placed, henceforth, above the petty wants and cares of material subsistence, Mohammed had now full leisure to indulge his love of poetry and eloquence, and his natural predilection for contemplation. His marriage brought him into familiar contact with Waraka (Verka) Ben Naufil, a cousin of Cadijah. This Waraka, it would appear, had first exchanged the adoration of the heavenly bodies for the belief in the two principles of Zoroaster, (Ormuzd and Ahriman). This creed not satisfying his mind, he had embraced with fervor the monotheism of the Jews; but, disgusted with the absurdities of the Talmudists, he had seceded to the profession of the Christian faith, in which he had even assumed the priestly office. That he must have been a man of some talent and learning, is evident from the fact of his having translated the Old and New Testament from the Hebrew into the Arabic tongue. Now this man is usually mentioned by the historians of the time as the pupil of Mohammed, and the second convert to his new doctrine; but there are strong reasons to justify a belief that he was his master and teacher, rather than his pupil and convert.

It has been intimated already, that the history of the life of Mohammed, up to the time when he proclaimed himself the apostle of a new faith, is obscure and doubtful. From the scanty data, and the conjectural and contradictory statements before us, we can only gather one fact as pretty certain, viz: that the prophet of Islam had enjoyed some rabbinical and priestly instruction. Now we have seen that Mohammed was an illiterate barbarian, and not likely, therefore, to derive from conversation with priests in foreign lands that knowledge of the maxims, tenets, and traditions of other religious communities, which is evidenced in the Koran and in the Sonna;[22] whereas Waraka had actually had a practical training in the divers beliefs of the Sabians, Magians, Jews, and Christians; and must, to judge by his translation of the New Testament, have been tolerably versed in the letter, at least, of the doctrine of Christ. From his repeated, and apparently conscientious, changes of faith, we have, perhaps, a right to conclude that he was a man sincerely in search of a religion that might satisfy his mind; nor need we wonder that the so-called “Christianity” of the seventh century should have failed to answer his expectations on this head. It would not be too much to say, indeed, that there existed really no “Christian” church at that period; the multitudinous contending sects who professed the name of Christ had almost entirely forgotten his pure doctrine, and, more especially, the divine principle preached by him of universal charity and good-will to all men. The grossest idolatry had usurped the place of the simple worship, instituted by Jesus, of an All-wise, Almighty, and All-beneficent Being, without equal and without similitude; a new Olympus had been imagined, peopled with a crowd of martyrs, saints, and angels, in lieu of the ancient gods of paganism. There were found Christian sects impious enough to invest the wife of Joseph with the honors and attributes of a goddess;[23] relics, and carved and painted images, were objects of the most fervid adoration on the part of those whom the word of Christ commanded to address their prayer to the Living God alone.

Surely, then, we may trust that it will not be imputed to us as a violation of the laws of probability, if we venture to assume that Waraka, finding his religious aspirations disappointed even in the Christian faith, conceived the idea of founding and propagating a doctrine of his own,—a species of eclectic extract from all other religions which he had successively professed; that, void perhaps of personal ambition, or conscious, rather, that he did not himself possess the most indispensable attributes and qualities of a religious and political reformer, he cast his eyes upon Mohammed, who, with his mind attuned to contemplation and to mystic thought, promised to prove a docile disciple, and whose personal beauty and grace seemed made to “persuade ere he ope’d his mouth;” and that he chose him as his organ, as the medium through which he might give currency to the coinage of his mind, content if the people would receive the fruits of his religious experience and ponderings as a new gospel, and cheerfully consenting to yield up the honors of the paternity to him who should succeed in rearing the infant religion.

Waraka found in Mohammed a most zealous disciple, who considerably bettered the instructions which he received. From what we can gather from the scanty sources of information at our command, we think we may fix upon the year 606 A.D. as the period at which Mohammed first became the pupil of Waraka; but it was only five years after, in 611, that Waraka and himself had fully matured their plan to institute a new religion. Worthily to prepare himself for the assumption of the prophetic and apostolic office, Mohammed withdrew this year (as he had indeed done repeatedly before), several weeks, during the month of Ramadan, to the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca. On the morning of the 24th Ramadan, Mohammed appeared before his wife, apparently greatly disturbed in mind. He called out to her to “wrap him up, to affuse him with cold water, as his soul was greatly troubled.” Having thus prepared her for his purpose, by exciting at once both her conjugal solicitude and her female curiosity, he proceeded to break to the amazed matron the great secret of his divine mission. He told her the angel Gabriel had, that night, appeared to him with a message from the Most High, appointing him, Mohammed, the sixth, greatest, and last of His chosen prophets,[24] to reveal His existence and to preach His law to the nations of the world. The angel had brought down with him a paper copy of the uncreated and eternal Koran, enclosed in a volume of silk and gems, and had proposed to reveal to him successively and at his (Mohammed’s) own discretion, the chapters and verses of that everlasting record of the law of God.

Islam (i.e. devout submission to the Divine Will) he had been commanded by the angel to call the new faith which it was to be henceforward his mission to preach; and which, to use the felicitous language of Gibbon, is compounded of an eternal truth—viz., that there is only one God—and of a fiction necessary to further the ambitious designs of the self-appointed missionary of this new gospel—viz., that Mohammed is the apostle and prophet of God. Cadijah believed readily and implicitly—and no marvel either. Mohammed, to his honor be it written, had proved a most kind and attentive husband to the elderly matron who had raised him above the pressure of want. He had abstained—and till her death continued to abstain—from availing himself of the right of polygamy. He had proved his truth to her by unvarying affection. How, then, could she possibly have doubted his word? To her grateful and loving eyes, he must have seemed more than a mere mortal; and she may even have deemed it by no means extraordinary that the Most High should appoint as his organ and missionary one so pure, so good, so perfect, as her husband appeared in her sight.

Cadijah’s conversion was speedily followed by the avowed declaration of Waraka in favor of the new doctrine. The ex-priest of Christ professed to see in Mohammed the Paraclete, or Comforter, promised in the Gospel, and even ventured to support this view upon etymological grounds of somewhat extraordinary character. The Arabic word Mohammed is synonymous with the Greek pe?????t?? (i.e. very famous), which, by an easy change of letters, may be turned into pa?????t??!

The next converts to Mohammed’s new faith were, his servant Zeid, who was positively bribed to it by the promise of freedom; his youthful cousin Ali Ben Abu Taleb, a boy of eleven, and not likely, therefore, to entertain any very deep religious conviction either way; and the wealthy and universally esteemed Abdallah Ben Othman-al-Koreish, called afterwards Abu Bekr (i.e. the father of the maiden); most probably from the circumstance that his daughter Ayesha, born 613, became one of Mohammed’s wives after the death of Cadijah. By the weight and influence of Abu Bekr, ten of the most respectable citizens of Mecca were induced to join the creed of Islam, among whom were Othman, who became afterwards Mohammed’s son-in-law. It had taken three years to accomplish these fourteen private conversions; and, guided probably by the advice of Waraka, the prophet had not yet ventured upon a public profession and propaganda of his creed. In the beginning of 615, however, Waraka died; and the bolder spirit of Mohammed, freed from the restraining influence hitherto exercised by that cautious man, aspired henceforward openly to the dignity of the apostolic office.

We have already seen that Mohammed had informed Cadijah, and, of course, also his other disciples, that the chapters of the Koran were to be communicated to him by the angel Gabriel successively, and at his own discretion,—a master-stroke of policy evidently designed by the crafty Waraka to afford full time for the gradual concoction of the new creed, and worked out afterwards with such admirable skill by his illustrious pupil; indeed, the ingenuity of this provision may be said to be surpassed only by that of another saving maxim introduced into the angelic revelation, viz., that any text of the Koran is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage,—which, of course, at once removed the inconvenience of contradictory texts. Gabriel was accordingly now made to descend again to Mohammed, and to command him in the name of the Most High to throw off the reserve which he had hitherto maintained, and to announce his mission in the open light of day. In obedience to this pretended command, the prophet of Islam invited forty members of the race of Hashem to a banquet. He placed before them, it is said, a lamb and a bowl of milk, and, after the frugal meal, addressed them as follows:—“Friends and kinsmen, I offer you, and I alone can offer, the most precious of gifts—the treasures of this world and of the world to come. God has commanded me to call you to His service. Who among you will support my burthen? Who among you will be my companion and my vizir?” A long silence of doubt and amazement followed this extraordinary allocution; it was broken at last by the impetuous Ali, then in the fourteenth year of his age. “O prophet!” he cried, “I am the man: whosoever rises against thee, I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly. O prophet! I will be thy vizir over them.” This response on the part of one so young, and the fierce threats which it contained, excited the merriment of the assembly, which was increased when Mohammed fervently embraced his young cousin, and declared most seriously that he accepted his offer. Abu Taleb, the father of Ali, was ironically exhorted to respect the superior dignity of his son, and to take care not to provoke his potent wrath. The prince of Mecca took the matter in a more serious light: he advised his nephew to relinquish his design, which he characterised as impious. “Spare your remonstrances,” replied the son of Abdallah; “were you to place the sun on my right hand and the moon on my left, you should not divert me from my course.”

Braving the ridicule and the anger of the Hashemites, as well as the more determined and malignant hostility of the family Ommiyah and the other branches of the Koreish, Mohammed preached his doctrine henceforward publicly, with unflinching courage and untiring zeal, but for a long time with rather indifferent success, at least so far as his native city was concerned.

Mecca was the sacred city of Arabia,—the seat of the great national temple. The annual pilgrimage of the devout Arabians to the shrines of the Kaaba, brought wealth to the coffers of the inhabitants of the favored city; and it was but natural, therefore, that the tribe of Koreish, who held the lucrative office of custodians of the sacred temple, should behold with indignation and dismay the attempt made by one from among themselves to subvert a religion so profitable to their interests. No wonder, then, that when Mohammed, some time after the banquet of the Hashemites, ventured to proclaim his pretended mission before a general assembly of the Koreish, he was received with a perfect storm of disapprobation, and ignominiously pelted with mud and stones.

But the prophet of Islam was not the sort of man to be readily diverted from his fixed purpose. The indifferent success of his first public attempt rather increased his zeal than otherwise: in private converse and in public discourse, he incessantly urged the belief and worship of a sole Deity. He addressed impassioned orations to the citizens and pilgrims gathered within the holy precincts of the Kaaba, and the loudest clamor of his most violent antagonists did not always succeed in silencing his potent voice; and, indeed, after a time he had the satisfaction of beholding the gradual but steady increase of his little congregation of Unitarians. But the hostility of the Koreish assumed now a more decided and more dangerous character; and, had it not been for the powerful protection of Abu Taleb, who, though an uncompromising enemy to the attempted innovation of his nephew, continued to bestow on the son of Abdallah the affection of a parent, Mohammed would most probably have fallen a sacrifice to the rage of his enemies. But even the weight and influence of the Prince of Mecca could not always fully secure the safety of the apostle of the new creed, and Mohammed was repeatedly compelled to withdraw himself to various places of strength in the town and country. The more timid of his disciples were forced to seek in Ethiopia an asylum from the violence of religious faction. The conversion of his uncle Hamza, gave the new faith, most opportunely, a powerful support in the family of Hashem; a perhaps still more important acquisition was made in the person of the fierce and inflexible Omar, the Paul of Islam. On the other hand, the branch of Ommiyah, and the rest of the tribe of Koreish, resolved to put the children of Hashem under a species of religious and civil interdict of the most stringent nature, till they should consent to deliver the person of Mohammed to the justice of the insulted gods. A decree was passed to this effect, and was suspended in the Kaaba before the eyes of the nation; the prophet and his most faithful followers were besieged, and subjected to the greatest hardships. A hollow truce had scarcely restored the appearance of concord, when the death of Abu Taleb (621) left the prophet abandoned to the power of his enemies, and compelled him to seek a refuge in Tayef, whither he proceeded, attended by his faithful Zeid. His somewhat incautious attempts to propagate his creed in that land of grapes excited against him the indignation of the inhabitants, who pelted him with stones and drove him back to Mecca, where he was permitted to dwell yet a little while under the protection of an influential citizen. Three days after the death of Abu Taleb, an equally severe loss had befallen Mohammed—that of Cadijah, by which the ties which bound him to his native city were greatly loosened.

It is in this period that we may place the miraculous night of Mohammed’s ascension to heaven. Hitherto, Mohammed had been modestly content to place an intermediary between the Deity and himself. Probably reflecting, however, that the Jewish creed asserted direct and personal converse between Jehovah and Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses, and that he, the greatest and last of the prophets, and whose doctrine was to supersede all others, could not well afford to stand inferior in this respect to his predecessors, and anxiously desirous, moreover, to gain over the Jews, whom he wished to believe him the promised Messiah—he put forth one of the wildest flights of fancy that ever issued even from an Oriental brain:—A mysterious animal, the Borak (the cherub of Islam), with human face, the ears of an elephant, the neck of a camel, the body of a horse, the tail of a mule, and the hoofs of a bullock, conveyed him at the dead of night from the temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem, Gabriel and legions of angels attended him. From the temple of Jerusalem he was carried to the rock upon which Abraham intended to sacrifice Isaac, and thence on the wings of Gabriel successively to the seven heavens, where he exchanged civilities with the patriarchs, the prophets, and the angels. He saw the heavenly Lotos tree, with the four springs under it, flowing with water, honey, milk, and wine. Of the three former he tasted; the last he left untouched, in obedience to his own precepts.[25] He saw, also, the heavenly tabernacle, pitched in a straight line above the Kaaba, and hidden by a golden veil. The angels sang, “There is only one God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God.” The same resounded from behind the veil, and the voice of the Lord was heard saying, “My servants speak the words of truth; Mohammed is indeed the most beloved of my prophets and apostles, the most pious of my servants, the most perfect of created beings.” Beyond this part, Mohammed alone was permitted to proceed; he passed through seventy thousand veils of light and darkness, each of them a thousand years thick, and with a space of a thousand years intervening between every two of them. At last he reached the green barrier of green light with emerald lustre; he passed the veil of the Divine unity, and approached within two bow-shots of the throne of the Almighty, where he prostrated himself and adored. The hand of the Lord touched his shoulder, which made a sensation of cold come over him that pierced him to the heart. God commanded him now to impose upon his disciples the daily obligation of fifty prayers; which Mohammed would appear to have looked upon as an intolerable burthen, since he pleaded hard for an alleviation of it.[26] By his supplications he succeeded to reduce it, step by step, at last to the number of five, viz., one prayer at daybreak, one at noon, one in the afternoon, one in the evening, and one at the first watch of the night; but from these five obligatory prayers there was to be no dispensation of business or pleasure, of time or place. In this most important conversation, the Lord enjoined or sanctioned, also, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the bestowal of a certain percentage of the property or revenue of a believer for the relief of the indigent and unfortunate, and the thirty days fast during the month of Ramadan. Then was given to Mohammed, with one drop from the throne, all wisdom, science, and knowledge of the ages past and the time to come; and the angelic choirs recited the two articles of belief, “There is only one God, and Mohammed is the apostle of God.” Mohammed was then finally dismissed; he again descended to Jerusalem, remounted the Borak, and returned to Mecca, having thus performed in the tenth part of a night the journey of many thousand years. Verily, in this precious tale we do not know which to admire most,—whether the audacity of the impostor who could concoct, or the gross credulity of the people who could believe it! Indeed, many endeavours have been made by some of the more rational of the Mohammedan doctors to deny that the prophet of Islam ever ventured to palm off this extravagant story upon his followers; and it has been attempted to make it appear that the narration of it relates to a mere dream or vision. These apologists overlook, however, the important fact that this pretended vision was put forward with all the authority of a divine revelation. Mohammed himself encouraged as much as in him lay the belief in the actual occurrence of the fact; which, with the Sonnites, indeed, is an article of faith, the pious Al Jannabi, among others, declaring that to deny this nocturnal journey of the prophet is to disbelieve the Koran.

Abu Sophian, the chief of the branch of Ommiyah, and the mortal foe of the line of Hashem, had succeeded to the principality of the republic of Mecca. This man resolved to bring the long-pending contest between the Koreish and the self-appointed apostle of the new creed to a speedy and decisive issue. He convened an assembly of the Koreishites and their allies, in which the death of Mohammed was resolved. To baffle the vengeance of the Hashemites, it was agreed that the guilt of his blood should be divided among the several tribes. A spy (duly converted afterwards into an angel by the crafty prophet) revealed the odious plot to Mohammed, who resolved on flight as the only means of escape from the malice of his enemies. In the night of the 13th September, 622,[27] Mohammed, accompanied by his friend Abu Bekr, escaped silently from his house, whilst the assassins, who were watching at the door, were deceived by the figure of Ali, who, covered with the green vestment of the apostle, reposed on the bed, securing thus, at the risk of his own life, the safe retreat of his illustrious and beloved cousin. When the deception practised upon them was at length revealed, the Koreishites dismissed the heroic youth unharmed.

Mohammed and the companion of his flight took refuge first in the cave of Thor, about three miles from Mecca. Three days they remained concealed there, receiving every evening from the son and daughter of Abu Bekr a supply of food, and intelligence of the movements of their enemies. The Koreish explored every hiding-place in the neighbourhood of the city, with the exception of the cave in which the fugitives were hidden, and which the pious Moslem doctors would have us believe was protected from their scrutiny by the providential deceit of a spider’s web and a pigeon’s nest. When the first rigor of the pursuit had somewhat abated, the fugitives left the protection of their cave, and mounted their camels to pursue their flight to Yathreb, called afterwards Medina, or Medina al Nabi (i.e. city of the prophet). On the road, they were overtaken by the emissaries of the Koreish, who were, however, diverted from their murderous purpose by the eloquent appeals of the prophet: indeed it is stated by the Arabian historians that one of his pursuers passed over to him with seventy followers, and attended him to Medina.

The city of Yathreb was inhabited chiefly by the tribes of the Charegites and the Awsites, and by two colonies of Jews, of a sacerdotal race, and who had introduced among their Arab fellow-citizens a taste for science and religion, which had gained Medina the name of the City of the Book. Now whether it might be that, owing to this circumstance, the preaching of Mohammed had made a deeper impression upon the pilgrims and merchants from Medina than upon his own fellow-citizens in Mecca; or that the Yathrebites, who were envious of the flourishing commerce of the latter city, would gladly avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by the bigoted zeal of the Koreish to attract to their own city the exiled disciples of Mohammed, and in fine perhaps that illustrious man himself—certain it is that at an early period of Mohammed’s mission, some of the noblest citizens of Medina, in a pilgrimage to the Kaaba, had been converted by his preaching, and had upon their return home diffused among their fellow-citizens the belief of God and his prophet. The Charegites and Awsites had hitherto lived in perpetual feud, interrupted only by temporary truces, which were broken on the slightest provocation. By the exhortations of these missionaries, the two tribes were henceforth united in faith and love. Ten Charegites and two Awsites were despatched to Mecca, where they held a secret and nocturnal interview with Mohammed on a hill in the suburbs; they protested for themselves and in the name of their wives, their children, and their absent brethren, an inviolable attachment to the person and doctrine of the prophet. At a later period, shortly before Mohammed’s forced departure from Mecca, seventy-three men and two women of Medina came to Mecca, and held a solemn conference with Mohammed, his kinsmen, and his disciples, on the same spot where the interview with the first embassy had taken place. They promised the prophet in the name of their city that should he be compelled to leave Mecca, they would receive him as their prince, and would place their lives and fortunes at his service for the defence and propagation of the new faith preached by him. Mohammed on his part promised never to abandon his new allies, even though the Koreish should repent and should recall him; he declared their blood to be as his blood, their ruin as his ruin, their friends as his friends, their foes as his foes; should they fall in his service, Paradise was to be their reward. A solemn league and covenant was made there and then between the two parties; this was ratified by the people of Medina, who, with the exception of the Jews, unanimously embraced the profession of Islam.

It was accordingly to Medina that the exiled prophet directed his steps. After a rapid though perilous journey along the sea-coast, he reached Medina sixteen days after his flight from Mecca. He was received with acclamations of loyalty and devotion; his disciples who at various times had fled from Mecca, gathered round his person. To eradicate the seeds of jealousy that might spring up between the Moslems of his native city, and his new allies of Medina, he judiciously established a holy brotherhood between his principal followers, coupling always a Mohagerian, or fugitive of Mecca, with an Ansar, or auxiliary of Medina. It so falling out that Ali found himself without a peer, the prophet declared himself the companion and brother of the noble youth.

Mohammed assumed now the exercise of the regal and sacerdotal office. He acquired by purchase a small piece of ground, on which he built a house and a mosque. The loyalty and devotion of his followers, and the unhesitating compliance and obedience which his decrees met with on the part of the inhabitants of Medina, convinced him that he was indeed the absolute prince and ruler of that city. But with this conviction the range of his ambition widened, he resolved to extend his creed and his power over all the tribes of Arabia, and even beyond the limits of his native land. He now threw off the cloak of toleration in which he had so carefully enfolded himself at Mecca. There he had asserted the liberty of conscience, and disclaimed the use of religious violence; here, at Medina, he preached a war of extermination against whomsoever should continue in idolatry.[28] The commands and precepts, which Gabriel was now made to transmit to him, breathed a fierce and sanguinary spirit; the creed of Islam was to be propagated henceforth by the sword, and the unbelieving nations of the earth were to be pursued without mercy. To excite in his followers a spirit of martial ardor, he proclaimed the superior sanctity of the sword. “In the shade of the crossing scymitars Paradise is prefigured,” says Mohammed; “the sword is the key of heaven and of hell: a drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting or prayer. Whosoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven: at the day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as rubies, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his limbs shall be supplied by the wings of angels and cherubim.” Paradise was the glorious reward of the faithful who fell in battle, and death might thus actually become an object of hope and desire rather than of dread. Moreover, as the Koran inculcates also, in the most absolute sense, the tenets of fate and predestination, it would be little use for the devout Moslem to shirk his military duties through fear of being wounded or killed in battle, since his preordained fate would be sure to overtake him, even in his bed. And as Paradise was the portion of the fallen hero, so wealth and beauty rewarded the warrior who had escaped the dangers of the fight: the apostle gave his followers the license of embracing the female captives as their wives or concubines; he regulated by a law, divine, of course, like all the rest of his laws and precepts, the distribution of the spoil taken in battle, or in a conquered place: the whole was faithfully collected in one common mass, one-fifth of it was reserved for the prophet himself (doubtless, for pious and charitable uses), the remainder was shared among the soldiers, the shares of the slain devolving to their widows and orphans: a horseman received double the share of a foot-soldier.

From the first months of his reign, he prepared for the holy warfare against Jews, Christians, and idolators. At the beginning of the year 623, his white banner was displayed before the gates of Medina. Faithful to the national character, he, the holy prophet of a creed which the nations of the world were invited to look upon as divine, went forth at the head of his pious followers, the future denizens of a Paradise which in his extravagant Oriental fancy he had placed beyond the seventh heaven, to waylay the peaceful merchant, and to rob and maim, or murder him, in the name and for the glory of the Most High.

So he went forth at the head of three hundred and thirteen Moslems, to intercept the return of the great caravan from Syria to Mecca, a caravan of a thousand camels, led by Abu Sophian, with only thirty or forty followers. But the Koreish, alarmed for the safety of their merchandise and their provisions, hastened to the rescue. One hundred horse, and eight hundred and fifty foot, advanced from Mecca to about three stations from Medina. Here, in the fertile and famous vale of Beder, they met the band of the prophet. The disproportion of numbers was great; in Mohammed’s ranks were found only two horsemen: informed by his scouts that the caravan was approaching from the one, the Koreish from the other side, Mohammed had hesitated whether to seize upon an easy prey, or to venture on an encounter with vastly superior forces; but the reflection, that a success gained under disadvantageous circumstances, would, with an impulsive people like the Arabs, go far to prove his divine mission, and would embolden his adherents and discourage his enemies, he resolved to give battle. With Abu Bekr by his side, he took his station on a kind of throne or pulpit. The white veil of Ayesha, and two black banners, were borne before his host. “Courage, my children,” he exclaimed, “close your ranks; discharge your arrows, and the day is your own.” Perceiving, however, that the Moslems fainted in their onset, and were hard pressed by the superior numbers of the Koreish, he betook himself with a loud voice to pray the succour of Gabriel and a legion of angels.[29] He then started from his throne, mounted his horse, and, casting a handful of sand into the air, exclaiming, “Let their faces be covered with confusion,” dashed against the hostile ranks. The Arabs were a most superstitious people; their fancy beheld the angelic warriors, or rather felt their presence; the thunder of Mohammed’s voice revived the drooping spirits of his followers; whilst it carried confusion into the ranks of his enemies. The Koreish turned and fled. Seventy of the bravest were slain, and seventy captives fell into the hands of the victorious prophet, who had two of them put to death as a trifling instalment of the debt of revenge which he meant to exact from his foes and revilers. The other sixty-eight were restored for a ransom of four thousand drachms of silver. From the field of Beder, Mohammed started in pursuit of Abu Sophian’s caravan, which, despite of the swiftness of its flight, and the skill of its guides, was overtaken and captured. A booty of 100,000 drachms of silver rewarded the pious robbers. But this great success had well nigh proved fatal to Mohammed and his creed, and to the city of refuge. The fierce resentment of Abu Sophian and of the Koreish, brought into the field against Mohammed a body of three thousand men, among whom were seven hundred armed with cuirasses, and two hundred on horseback; three thousand camels attended the march of this host. Abu Sophian advanced to within six miles of the north of Medina, where he encountered the prophet at the head of nine hundred and fifty followers, on Mount Ohud, (A.D. 624). The Koreish advanced in the form of a crescent. The right wing of the cavalry was led by Kaled, the fiercest and most redoubtable of the Arab warriors. Mohammed had made his dispositions with considerable skill; his troops were successful at first, and broke the centre of the enemy; but their eagerness to seize upon the spoils threw their ranks into disorder, and speedily deprived them of the advantage gained. Kaled, with his cavalry, attacked them in the flank and rear; Mohammed was wounded in the face with a javelin, and two of his teeth were shattered with a stone; Kaled exclaimed, with a loud voice, that the lying prophet was slain; and the followers of Islam, who looked in vain for the appearance of Gabriel and his angelic legion, to avenge the fall of “The beloved of God,” trembled and fled; still, in the midst of tumult and dismay, was heard the thunder of Mohammed’s voice, denouncing the impious tribe of the Koreish, as the murderers of God’s apostle, and calling down upon them the vengeance of heaven. Some of the most devoted followers of the prophet gathered bravely around him, and conveyed him to a place of safety. Seventy of the bravest defenders of Islam lay dead on the field, among them Hamza, one of Mohammed’s uncles. The inhuman females of Mecca, who had accompanied the expedition, mangled their bodies, and the fierce Henda, Abu Sophian’s wife, tasted the entrails of Hamza, with the relish of a cannibal. But Mohammed was not discouraged: his wounds had hardly been dressed, when the convenient Gabriel revealed to him that (for some unexplained cause) the powers of darkness had been permitted to prevail against him this once, and that Satan himself had fought in the ranks of the Koreish; he was, however, exhorted to persevere in his propaganda, and was assured of ultimate success. He rallied his troops, and even as early as the next day he led them forth again to battle; on this occasion the fight was, however, only of a desultory character, no great harm being done on either side. Still the result of it was, that the Koreish, having experienced the desperate valor of the Moslems, and more particularly of Ali and Omar, despaired of carrying Medina with their present forces, and retired to Mecca. But in the ensuing year (A.D. 625) Abu Sophian, having formed a league between the Koreish and several tribes of the desert, led a well-appointed host of ten thousand warriors against Medina. The number of the Mussulmans, however, had also considerably increased, and Mohammed’s army of three thousand men, awaited the attack of their foes, securely encamped before the city, and protected by a ditch and some field-works, which had been constructed under the guidance and superintendence of a Persian engineer. A general engagement being prudently declined by the prophet, the hostilities were confined to a number of single combats, in which Ali more especially signalised his formidable strength and prowess. Twenty days passed away in this desultory warfare, the apostle of God having, meanwhile, recourse to every artifice that his crafty mind could devise, to sow disunion in the camp of his enemies. A tempest of wind, rain, and hail, which overturned the tents of the besiegers, and which was, of course, duly claimed as a direct interposition of God in favor of his prophet, put the finishing stroke to the success of this insidious policy: the Koreish, deserted by their allies, were compelled to retire, and to relinquish, henceforth, the attempt to overcome Mohammed by force of arms. This last attack upon Medina is variously named from the nations which marched under Abu Sophian’s banner, and from the ditch which protected the Mussulman camp.

During the earlier period of his mission, Mohammed had shown considerable leaning towards the Jews; he had selected Jerusalem for the Kebla of prayer, and had endeavoured to form most of his tenets and precepts upon the model of the Mosaic ordinances. Indeed, there can be no doubt, but that it was for a time the great end and object of his ambition to be accepted by the Jews as their promised Messiah; nor can it be denied, that a deep political idea lay at the bottom of this desire. Had he succeeded in persuading the Jews to believe in his Messiahship, his apostolic course among the Arabs would have run much smoother, and many of the so-called Christian sects might have been readily gained over to his mixtum compositum, which might, indeed, be called a creed of creeds in the literal acceptation of the words.

But the imposture was too shallow to take with so clear-sighted a people as the Jews unquestionably were: the pretended Messiah was repudiated by them with disdain, and the hostility of the Koreish against the son of Abdallah, was, in some degree, fomented and fanned by the Jews of Mecca. Hence the implacable and unrelenting hatred with which Mohammed pursued the unfortunate Israelites to the last moment of his life. That he changed the kebla of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca, and that in his nocturnal journey to Heaven, he beheld the divine tabernacle in a straight line above the latter city, instead of Zion, where he undoubtedly originally intended to behold it,—could, at the most, provoke a smile of contempt and derision; but the appalling cruelties which he indicted, both upon individuals and upon entire tribes of the doomed nation, must fill the mind of the impartial explorer of history with deep indignation against the man who could so avenge his offended vanity. His first exploit in this direction, was the expulsion of the Kainoka tribe from Medina, where they had hitherto been permitted to dwell in peace, by the large toleration of the Idolators. The prophet of Islam seized the occasion of an accidental tumult, in which the Kainoka had taken part, to place before them the alternative of embracing his religion, or contending with him in battle. A brave challenge this, to the unfortunate Jews, to do battle with him, and which displayed in the fullest, though certainly not in the most favorable light, the magnanimous disposition of the son of Abdallah, that has been so highly extolled by some historians. Still, even with the fearful odds of number and martial spirit against them, the feeble and unwarlike Israelites preferred the unequal contest to apostacy from the faith of their fathers. It was decided in fifteen days, of course with the total overthrow and capture of the whole tribe; and, had it not been that the Charegites, mindful of the friendship which once existed between them and their humble allies, the Kainoka, warmly interceded on behalf of the wretched captives, the prophet of God would have slain every one of them. As it was, they were despoiled of their homes and property; and driven forth, to the number of seven hundred men, with their wives and children, to seek a refuge on the confines of Syria, to which quarter the blessings of the new creed had not yet extended. The Nadhirites were the next to feel the weight of his arm. In their case, indeed, some provocation had been given, as they had conspired to assassinate the prophet in a friendly interview. Protected by the walls of their castle (situated about three miles from Medina), they fought with such boldness and resolution, that Mohammed was fain to grant them an honorable capitulation.

The war of the nations interrupted for a time Mohammed’s operations against the Jews; but even on the day that the confederated nations had abandoned the siege of Medina, he marched against the tribe of Koraidha. A campaign of twenty-five days sufficed to compel their surrender at discretion. They fondly believed that their old allies of Medina would, by their intercession, preserve them at least from the extreme measure of Mohammed’s wrath;—vain hope: fanaticism had made rapid progress among the Ansars. A venerable elder of the Charegite tribe, to whose judgment they referred their case, pronounced the penalty of death against them for their hostility to Islam. To the number of seven hundred they were led in chains to the market-place of Medina, where a grave had been dug to receive them; into this they were forced to descend, and the apostle of God indulged his vengeful mind with the sight of their slaughter and burial.... Verily, verily, the blackest and most atrocious of crimes are committed in the name of God. A few years after the extirpation of the Koraidha, Mohammed marched, at the head of two hundred horse, and fourteen hundred foot, against the ancient city of Chaibar, the seat of the Jewish power in Arabia. Chaibar was protected by eight strong castles, which were successively reduced by the Moslems in sixteen weeks, not, however, without considerable loss on the part of the conquerors. After the fall of the castles, the city was forced to surrender (628). The inhabitants had their lives granted to them, and permission to dwell in the land, on condition that they should pay to the prophet, an annual tribute of the one-half of their revenue. But the chief of Chaibar was subjected to the most cruel tortures, to force from him a confession of his hidden treasures; and when the 100,000 pieces of gold, which had been concealed, were delivered up at last, he and several of the most notable of his people were mercilessly butchered in cold blood. It was in this campaign against Chaibar that Mohammed bestowed upon Ali, the surname of the “Lion of God,” gained by the slaughter of 150 Hebrews, who are stated to have fallen by the irresistible scymitar of Abu Taleb’s illustrious son.[30]

The Jewess Asma had offended the dignity of the prophet by some satirical strictures on his private life; he bribed a miserable blind Jew, named Omeir, to assassinate her. This wretched tool murdered the ill-fated woman in her chamber, and nailed her body to the floor; having some misgivings of conscience, he accosted the prophet next morning while at prayer, and asked him whether God might not, perhaps, punish the crime perpetrated? whereupon the pious apostle bade him to be of good cheer, as the killing of a Jew, even if not at all times a meritorious act, was, at least, a matter of perfect indifference to the Ruler of the Universe! In the same way he deputed assassins to slay the learned Jew, Eshref; in the name of God he sent them on their bloody errand! The venerable Abu Aas was murdered in his sleep at his bidding: the poor old man had reached his hundredth year, and might safely have been permitted to die in peace, but considerations of the kind weighed but little with the son of Abdallah; an insult to his apostolic dignity could only be washed off in the blood of the offender. But why sully our pages with the long list of private and public murders perpetrated by the command, or at the instigation of, this precious pretender to a divine mission, ... sufficient has been stated to illustrate the cruel and sanguinary disposition of the man.

Mohammed had left Mecca most reluctantly, and only when flight alone could preserve his life from the swords of his then all-powerful enemies. The thought to revisit as a conqueror, the city and the holy temple of the Kaaba, was ever present to his mind. When the Jews, by their disdainful rejection of his advances, had turned his friendship into implacable hatred, he changed the kebla of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca, clearly indicating thereby, that, whatever might be the merits of Medina, the holy city of the Kaaba stood still foremost in his affections. As soon as he had firmly established his empire over Medina, and some powerful tribes of the desert, and had destroyed or expelled the Jewish tribes of the Kainoka, the Nadhirites, and the Koraidha,[31] he projected a scheme for the conquest of Mecca, (towards the end of 627). Conscious that his power was not yet sufficiently great to prevail by force of arms, he craftily disguised his expedition against the city of his birth, in the form of a peaceful and pious pilgrimage. Seventy camels, chosen and bedecked for sacrifice, preceded the van of his host of 1400 picked men. The captives who fell into his hands, in his advance to the territory of the sacred city, were dismissed without ransom, to carry to the Koreish the solemn assurance of his peaceful intentions. All that the good man wanted, was to be permitted to enter the city, with his 1400 armed followers, to sacrifice the camels which he had brought with him for the purpose, and to perform the customary seven circumambulations round the Kaaba. Of course, had the Koreish conceded these points, the rest would have been a task of easy accomplishment. But the Koreish had had opportunities sufficient to know the crafty tongue and the false heart of the son of Abdallah. They encountered him, therefore, in the plain, within a day’s journey of the city, with such numbers and with such resolution, that he was fain to abandon his purpose for the time, and even to consent to the conclusion of a ten years’ truce, with the Koreish and their allies. In the treaty drawn up to that effect,[32] he, the infallible prophet of God, the favored mortal raised by the Divine will to an equality with the cherubim and seraphim in the heavenly hierarchy, the trusted leader who had solemnly promised his believing followers, a triumphal entry into the stronghold of the most formidable and most dreaded of the enemies of Islam,—was obliged even to waive the title of Apostle of God, and to figure as plain Mohammed Abul Kasem. Still the Koreish granted him, for the ensuing year, the privilege of entering the city unarmed and as a friend, and of remaining three days to accomplish the rites of the pilgrimage—a fatal mistake on their part, and which they might have foreseen one so crafty as Mohammed would turn to excellent account. For the time being, however, the authority of the pretended prophet of God was considerably shaken, and some of the newly converted Bedoween tribes showed symptoms of disaffection. The successful campaign against Chaibar revived the faith and courage of his followers, and restored the wavering loyalty of the wandering tribes.

After the conquest of Chaibar, Mohammed sent six embassies with letters to the neighbouring princes, calling upon them to embrace the religion of Islam: the seal of the letter bore the inscription, “Mohammed, the Apostle of God.” The Greek emperor, Heraclius, returning in triumph from the Persian war, received and entertained one of these ambassadors with great urbanity at Emesa. Kobad II., of Persia (Siroes)[33] tore the letter, and dismissed the envoy with ignominy. Mokawkas, the Byzantine governor of Memphis, a born Egyptian, and a Jacobite or Monophysite[34] in religion; and who, in the disorder of the Persian war, had aspired to independence, and thereby exposed himself to the resentment of Heraclius, declined, indeed, the proposal of a new religion, but accompanied his refusal with flattering compliments and with gifts; among other, two Coptic damsels, one of whom, Mary, became the favorite concubine of the prophet, to whom she bore a son, Ibrahim, who died, however, at the tender age of fifteen months. The King of Abyssinia also returned a polite answer. But Haris, governor of Damascus, threatened war upon the presumptuous Arabian; and Amru, prince of Gassan, a vassal of the Byzantine emperor, put the envoy to death, for which outrage Mohammed sent afterwards an army into Syria, with what results we shall see hereafter.

According to the stipulations of the treaty of Hodaibeh, Mohammed was permitted to perform, towards the end of 628, at the head of a body of pious pilgrims, his three days’ devotion in the Kaaba; the Koreish retiring, meanwhile, to the hills. After the customary sacrifice, he evacuated the city on the fourth day; but in this short space of time, he had succeeded in sowing the seeds of division between the hostile chiefs, and to gain over to his cause Kaled and Amrou, or Amru, the future conquerors of Syria and Egypt. The interdiction of wine, and of dice and lotteries, falls in this period.

It was after the return from this pilgrimage, that he sent an army of 3000 Moslems against Amru, prince of Gassan, and the Greeks. The army was led by Zeid, Mohammed’s freedman and one of his earliest disciples. At Muta, three days’ journey from Jerusalem, they met the Gassanides and the Greeks: a fierce and bloody battle ensued; Zeid fell fighting in the foremost ranks; the holy banner, which escaped from his relaxing grasp, was seized by Jaafar, the leader appointed by Mohammed to succeed Zeid, in the event of the decease of the latter. Jaafar’s right hand was severed from his body by the sword of a Roman soldier; he shifted the standard to the left hand: this met the same fate; he embraced the holy banner with the bleeding stumps, and thus upheld it, till the tide of life ebbed away from fifty wounds. The vacant place was as worthily filled by Abdallah, the second successor appointed by the prophet in case of accident. He also fell, transfixed by the lance of a Roman. The battle was lost, the flower of the Moslem host annihilated, and the ambitions dreams of empire were dispelled at the very time when they seemed to promise fairest,—had not Kaled, the recent convert of Mecca, at this critical juncture, rescued the falling standard, and assumed the command, with the same bravery as his predecessors, but with still greater prowess, and with greater success. Nine swords were broken in his hand; and every enemy that dared to approach him, was made to bite the dust by his invincible arm. Night put an end to the contest: in the nocturnal council of the camp, Kaled was chosen, or rather confirmed, leader of the gallant band of warriors, who had survived the carnage of the day. Death had been fearfully busy in the ranks of the Moslems; and the Greeks, though awed by the valor of Kaled, had still an immense superiority of number in their favor. Kaled wisely resolved, therefore, to save the wreck of his forces by a skilful retreat. His admirable combinations, and the dread inspired by his prowess, rescued the host of the faithful believers of Islam from all but certain destruction; and the well-earned gratitude of the prophet bestowed upon the hero of Muta, the glorious appellation of the “Sword of God,” a name destined after to ring many a time and oft as the knell of doom in the ears of the affrighted Christians.

Mohammed had never ceased to meditate the conquest of Mecca, and his power was now, indeed, sufficiently great and solid to promise an easy accomplishment of this, the darling object of his ambition; but the ten years’ truce seemed an obstacle which it would not be easy to surmount. Notwithstanding, however, he silently prepared the means to carry his plans against the city of his birth into execution, should a favorable opportunity offer. The reverse which his forces had suffered at Muta, impelled the Koreish to furnish him with the desired pretext; they attacked one of the tribes confederated with Mohammed. Ten thousand soldiers were speedily gathered round the banner of the prophet, and led by him against the offending city. A rapid and secret march brought them almost within sight of Mecca, before the Koreish had the least notion of their approach. Unprepared as they were, it would have been sheer madness to contend against the overwhelming forces which now encompassed the city of the Kaaba: they resolved therefore to throw themselves upon the clemency of their triumphant exile. On the 11th of January, 630, the haughty chief of the house of Ommiyah presented the keys of the city; and confessed, under the scymitar of Omar, that the son of Abdallah was the apostle of the true God. The patriotic attachment which Mohammed unquestionably bore the city of his birth, and political considerations of a high order, stayed the avenging hand of the victorious outcast. Kaled had, indeed, slain twenty-eight of the inhabitants, ere the potent command of the prophet to spare the vanquished, could restrain his ruthless arm; but Mohammed blamed the cruelty of his lieutenant, and, though he proscribed eleven men and six women, few only were put to death by him. Among these was Abdolusa, who, after having embraced the faith of Islam, had relapsed into idolatry. Abdallah, once the secretary of Mohammed, and who had been employed by him to note down the fragmentary revelations imparted by Gabriel, had a narrow escape. The clear-sighted man had seen through the shallow imposture palmed upon the people by the pretended apostle; and he had imprudently boasted, that he also might claim the name and rank of a prophet, considering that he had it in his power to change, or to suppress, the holy revelations dictated to him by Mohammed. To escape the vengeance of his offended master, he had fled to Mecca, where he had, however, still continued to provoke his resentment by exposing and ridiculing his ignorance. When Mecca was taken, Abdallah fell prostrate at the feet of Mohammed, and implored his pardon. Othman, Abdallah’s foster-brother, entreated the prophet to spare the life of the humble penitent, a request which was at last most reluctantly granted, Mohammed declaring that he had so long hesitated, to allow time for some zealous disciple to strike the kneeling apostate dead at his feet.[35] The poet, Huires, paid the penalty of his satires on the Apostle of God: but Soheir more wisely purchased, not only forgiveness, but a rich reward in the bargain, by one of the grossest and most extravagant pieces of adulation that ever proceeded even from an Oriental pen.

The Koreish and the other inhabitants of Mecca, professed the religion of Islam, and acknowledged the temporal and spiritual supremacy of the prophet. The 360 idols of the Kaaba were ignominiously broken; Mohammed assisting with his own hands, in the work of destruction, nay, even lending his august shoulders for Ali to mount upon, to accomplish the overthrow of some idols placed a little above ordinary reach. This meritorious feat was performed on a Friday; which day was, therefore, henceforward appointed by the prophet as the holy day of Islam.

But it was by no means the intention of Mohammed to despoil the city of his birth, of the lucrative trade in religion to which it had hitherto been mainly indebted for its pre-eminence among the cities of Arabia. The people of Mecca were agreeably disappointed, when they beheld the Prophet of God solemnly consecrating again the purified Kaaba, and performing the customary circumambulations and sacrifices as of old. They were readily reconciled to the belief in a sole Deity, since their astute townsman assigned a local habitation on earth to the idea of the God whom he commanded them and the nations of the world to worship, and placed this habitation within the walls of their own city. Even the black stone was not forgotten by the crafty politician: his reverential touch cleansed it from the pollution of ages of idolatry, and restored it to the pristine purity and holiness of Gabriel’s celestial gift to Abraham; and to crown all, he still heightened the sanctity of the holy city, by enacting a perpetual law that no unbeliever should ever dare to set his foot within its sacred precincts.

The conquest of Mecca secured Mohammed the allegiance of many of the Bedoween tribes, who, troubling themselves but little about religious opinions and controversies, readily gave their adhesion to the cause which the gods seemed to prosper. But some of the most important tribes of Hejaz, and more especially the people of Tayef, persisted in their idolatry, and a great confederacy was formed among them to break the power of Mohammed. The prophet resolved to meet the threatening danger; he collected a host of 12,000 men, well-armed and well-appointed; the confederates had not one-half the number to oppose him. But the skilful tactics of the pagans, and the overweening confidence of the Mussulmans, brought the apostle and his new faith to the verge of ruin. Having incautiously descended into the valley of Honain, the Moslems were suddenly attacked on all sides by the archers and slingers of the enemy, who occupied the heights; the ranks of the faithful were thrown into confusion by the unexpected and fierce onset of the foe; and the stoutest hearts among them quailed, when they saw themselves caught as in a net. The Koreish secretly rejoiced at the impending destruction of their conquerors, and even prepared to go over to the enemy. All seemed lost;—despairing of victory, the prophet, seeking a glorious death, urged his white mule against the wall of spears that encompassed him: his faithful followers dragged him back, and covered him with their persons from the thrusts and darts aimed at his breast. Three of these devoted followers fell dead at his feet;—but the moment of weak despair was past, and soon the thunder of his voice was heard again, reanimating the sinking courage of the Moslems, and striking terror into the hearts of the idolators. The Koreish forgot their treacherous intentions; the flying Mussulmans returned from all sides to the holy standard; and the attacks of the enemy were now everywhere vigorously repulsed. Defeat was changed into victory, and a merciless slaughter of the conquered and flying pagans, avenged the temporary disgrace of the followers of Islam. From the field of Honain, Mohammed marched without delay to Tayef, the centre and stronghold of the confederacy. He laid siege to that fortress; but the desperate valor of the inhabitants defeated all his efforts to effect its reduction; and after twenty days spent before it, he deemed it the wisest course to rest satisfied for the time with the victory of Honain, and not to court the chances of an inglorious defeat. He, therefore, raised the siege, and marched back to Mecca. In his operations against Tayef, he gave an instance of how cheap he held his own laws and precepts, where they happened to clash with his interests: he ordered the extirpation of all the fruit trees in the fertile lands round the city.

In the division of the rich spoils of the expedition of Honain, he acted with consummate skill. Instead of excluding the Koreish from their share, to punish them for their ambiguous conduct during the campaign, he bestowed double measure upon them; the most disaffected of them all, Abu Sophian, being presented with no less than three hundred camels and twenty ounces of silver: no wonder, then, that that rapacious chief and his followers should have, henceforth, become sincere adherents to so profitable a creed. The old companions in arms of the prophet were reconciled to this manifest injustice in the distribution of the spoil, by artful flatteries and promises of heavenly rewards: his own share of the plunder (one-fifth) he assigned to the soldiers.[36]

Although he had failed to reduce Tayef, yet by the extirpation of the fruit trees he had struck a severe blow against the people of that city; the fortifications had been considerably injured by the battering rams and the mining operations, so that there was ample reason to dread the event of a renewal of the siege. The people of Tayef resolved, therefore, to sue for peace; their deputies endeavoured to obtain favorable conditions, and, at least, the toleration of their ancient worship, though even only for a short period. Mohammed would not concede them even one day; at last they simply entreated to be excused from the obligation of prayer to the God of Islam; in vain: Mohammed was inexorable, and Tayef at length submitted to the harsh conditions imposed by the prophet. The idols were broken, their temples demolished, and all the tribes of Hejaz acknowledged the supreme rule of the son of Abdallah. The ruler of Bahrein, the King of Oman, and the King of the Beni Gassan, in Syria, confessed the God of Mohammed, and submitted to the sway of the prophet. Yemen also, and the rest of the peninsula, was reduced to obedience by his victorious lieutenants, and the ambassadors who knelt before the throne of Medina, (631, hence called the year of the embassies), were, in the words of the Arabian proverb, “as numerous as the dates that fall from the palm-tree in the season of ripeness.”

Absolute master of the whole of Arabia, the son of Abdallah resolved to subject Syria also to his sway; he solemnly declared war against the Empire of the East, and summoned the faithful to the holy standard. But the prospect of the difficulties and hardships of a march through the desert, during the intolerable heat of the summer, and, perhaps also, the recollection of Muta, discouraged the Moslems; and the most urgent solicitations of the apostle were disregarded, or met by more or less cogent excuses. Still the great champions of the faith, Ali, Omar, Othman, Kaled, Amru, Abu Bekr, Abu Obeidah, Abbas,[37] and many others, attended by trains of devoted followers, gathered round the prophet, and enabled him thus to take the field, at the head of ten thousand horse and twenty thousand foot.[38] After one of the most distressing marches through the desert, the Moslem host was compelled to halt midway near Tabuc, ten days’ journey from Medina and Damascus. The hardships endured had considerably cooled the ardor of the faithful, and wisely declining to engage the disciplined forces of the Eastern empire with his wearied and dispirited followers, Mohammed contented himself with inviting the Greek Emperor once more to embrace his religion, and retired to Arabia; leaving a body of picked men, under the command of the intrepid Kaled, to prosecute the war. The valor and activity of that leader secured the submission of the tribes and cities from the Euphrates to Ailah, at the head of the Red Sea. Mohammed returned to Medina, where he pronounced a sentence of excommunication for fifty days against those who had been the most disobedient to his call. He then prepared for a great pilgrimage to Mecca, which he accomplished in the early part of 632, attended by 60,000 Moslems.[39] In this, his last visit to the city of his birth, he gave a great number of laws and precepts; and, among others, the interdiction of the private revenge of murder and other injuries.

It has already been stated, that Mohammed’s health had been declining ever since the campaign of Chaibar, (see page 34, note); yet such was the strength and vigor of his constitution, that up to the time of his last and fatal illness, he remained equal to the physical and mental fatigues of his mission. However, soon after his return from the last pilgrimage to Mecca, he fell ill of an inflammatory fever, with occasional fits of delirium, which he endeavoured to combat by frequent affusions with cold water. When he became conscious of the fatal nature of his illness, he laid himself out to die, as an accomplished actor, like Octavianus Augustus. Leaning on his cousin and son-in-law, Ali,[40] and on his uncle, Abbas, or the son of the latter, Fadl, he dragged himself to the mosque to perform the functions of public prayer: from the pulpit he called upon his subjects freely and boldly to state any grievance that any one of them might have suffered at his hands, and to prefer any just claims against his estate. A safe challenge indeed: the victims of his lust of power and revenge were laid in their graves, and could not appear against him there; nor could they prefer any claim against his estate, who had been despoiled by him or his lieutenants, in their predatory expeditions. No wonder then that the immaculate justice and piety of the Apostle of God, were fully attested by the silence of the congregation in presence of this challenge,—excepting a paltry claim of three drachms of silver, which was, of course, at once duly settled by Mohammed, with a profusion of thanks into the bargain, that the “creditor” had rather demanded payment in this world, than waited to accuse him at the judgment-seat of God!

Up to the third day before his death, he continued to perform the function of public prayer; on that day his strength failed him, and he deputed Abu Bekr in his place, which was afterwards skilfully laid hold of by the latter and Ayesha, to found a claim to the successorship in the sacerdotal and regal office, in favor of Abu Bekr, to the prejudice of Ali.

He then made his last dispositions, enfranchised his slaves, (seventeen men and eleven women), had alms distributed to the poor of Medina, and minutely directed the order of his funeral. He expressed a desire to dictate to his secretary a new divine book, the sum and accomplishment of all his revelations, and which, according to Mohammed’s convenient maxim, would have superseded the authority of the Koran, in all points in which its teachings might happen to clash with the rules and precepts laid down in the latter. As Mohammed had preached an eternal and immutable God, and had declared the substance of the Koran to be uncreated and eternal, the gross absurdity of attempting a new, revised, and amended edition of it, could not fail to strike the more rational among his disciples. They, with Omar at their head, firmly refused, therefore, to consent to the prophet’s anxiously expressed wish—a curious comment on the sincerity of their professed conviction of his divine mission, and his communings with the messenger of heaven, and for which, their assumed belief that his mental faculties were, at the time, impaired by the effects of illness, afforded but an indifferent apology. Be this however as it may, the point was vehemently discussed between them and the more devout followers of the prophet; and the dispute, which was carried on in the chamber of the dying man, rose at last to such a pitch, that Mohammed reluctantly desisting from his desire, was forced to reprove the indecent vehemence of the disputants on either side.

Even to the last moment of his life, Mohammed consistently carried out his system of deception. He told his friends about him, that he had received a last visit of Gabriel, who had now bidden an everlasting farewell to the earth. In a familiar discourse, he had once boasted of the peculiar and exclusive prerogative granted to him, that the angel of death should respectfully solicit his permission before he was to be allowed to take his soul. When he felt the near approach of his dissolution, he calmly informed the Moslem chiefs assembled round him, that the Great Destroyer had just preferred his request, and that he, Mohammed, had granted the permission asked! Stretched on a carpet spread upon the floor, and with his head reclining on the lap of Ayesha, the best beloved of his wives, he expired on the 7th day of June, 632.[41] His last words were: “O God!... pardon my sins.... Yes, ... I come, ... among my fellow-citizens on high.”

His death dismayed his followers; the more fanatical among them could not bring themselves to believe in the actual departure of his spirit from this world. The idea of a trance, or of a resurrection after a few days’ apparent death, found ready credence with them. Omar, unsheathing his scymitar, threatened to strike off the heads of the infidels who should dare to affirm that the prophet was no more!—a curious comment upon his refusal to allow the dying prophet to re-write the Koran. At last, Abu Bekr succeeded in making them listen to reason: “Is it Mohammed,” he said, “or Mohammed’s God whom you worship? Has not the apostle himself predicted that he should experience the common fate of mortality?” This calm and rational address had the desired effect; the death of the prophet was admitted by all, and his body was piously interred by the hands of Ali, on the same spot on which he expired, and which is now surrounded by the great mosque of Medina. The story of the hanging coffin at Mecca is a vulgar and puerile invention, not worth the trouble of refutation.

I have been led by the superior importance and interest which attach to the subject, to extend this chapter, perhaps, considerably beyond the limits compatible with the nature and size of the present work; still I cannot abstain from adding a short sketch of Mohammed’s habits of life, and a few brief remarks on the Koran.

In his domestic life and intercourse, Mohammed was most simple and unassuming. The ruler of Arabia fed usually upon barley bread and dates; water was his ordinary drink, though he delighted, and occasionally indulged, in the taste of milk and honey; he never drank wine. The powerful chieftain who could command the services of thousands, did not disdain performing the menial offices of the household: he kindled the fire, swept the floor, milked the ewes, and mended with his own hands, his shoes and his woollen garment (the use of silk he rejected as too effeminate); nor was it an uncommon circumstance to see the Apostle of God barefoot. He slept on the bare ground, or on a carpet or straw mat spread upon the floor. He always performed, with the most rigorous strictness, the prayers and ablutions enjoined by the Koran. With the regal and sacerdotal office, he had assumed the reserve and austerity that befitted his high position; yet he would occasionally unbend in the circle of his friends, when he enchanted all around him by the graceful, though dignified, affability of his manners, and the charms of his conversation. He was passionately fond of fairy tales. He delighted in perfumes and cats, which latter partiality he shared with one of his cotemporaries, the learned Abu Horaira, who gained for himself the surname of “the father of a cat.” His hair, beard, and eyebrows, were the objects of his most anxious care and solicitude; he dyed them with considerable skill, a glossy light-chesnut color.

He was most passionately addicted to the fair sex: in the indulgence of his amorous desires, he set his own laws at nought. The Arabians had enjoyed, from time immemorial, an unbounded licence of polygamy; the Koran limited the number of legitimate wives or concubines to four, the prophet had seventeen wives; but then, Gabriel had descended with a special revelation, dispensing the favored apostle from the laws which he had imposed on the nation. Zeineb, the beautiful wife of Zeid, his freedman and adopted son, excited his desire. The grateful husband consented to a divorce, and the prophet added her to the number of his wives; but as the filial relation in which the young woman stood to Mohammed, even though only by adoption, was likely to produce some scandal, and to raise some scruples in the minds of the faithful, the complaisant Gabriel descended with another verse of the Koran, appropriate to the occasion. Again, in the case of Mary, the Egyptian slave, the indefatigable angel was at hand to oblige the Apostle of God. Had Mohammed liked wine, there can be no doubt, but that Gabriel would have been ready with another verse of the Koran, to dispense the prophet from the restriction imposed upon all other mortals. A better proof than the nature of these successive “revelations,” so entirely subservient to the gratification of his passions, could not well be adduced, to show that Mohammed was not, as some good-natured historians would fain believe him to have been, the enthusiastic dupe of his own illusions, but simply a cool and calculating politician, who made the institution of a new religious system the basis and engine of his power and dominion; most probably, sincerely believing also, that he was really conferring an immense boon upon his people. His vengeful and sanguinary disposition, has been already fully exposed in the narration of his life. The impartiality of history relieves those darker touches in the picture of Mohammed’s character, by a trait of unaffected humanity. His decree that, in the sale of captives, mothers should never be separated from their children, may well, as Gibbon says, moderate the censure of the historian. How the thousands of hapless negro mothers that have had their children ruthlessly torn from their arms in Christian America, would bless the memory of the Arabian legislator, could that humane decree of his find force and application in the Western Hemisphere!

The Koran is the sacred book of Islam; the successive “revelations” imparted to Mohammed, were diligently recorded by his disciples on palm-leaves, skins, and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the fragments, or “pages,” were thrown into a domestic chest, in the custody of one of Mohammed’s wives. In 634, these fragments were collected and published by Abu Bekr; the sacred volume was revised by the Khalif Othman, in 651. It consists of 114 chapters (Surats, i.e. stages or degrees), of very unequal lengths, and jumbled together without chronological order, or systematic arrangement. The chapters are made up of plagiarisms from the Bible, rabbinical and apocryphal legends, religious and moral precepts, descriptions of the joys of paradise and the torments of hell, declamations and rhapsodies. The style is, for the most part, inflated, rarely poetical, never sublime; yet Mohammed had the cool audacity to rest the truth of his mission on the incomparable merit of the Koran, as an intellectual, linguistic, and poetical performance. He blasphemously asserted, that God alone could have penned, or dictated, its divine contents; as no human, nor even an angelic intelligence, could possibly have conceived anything like them!!!

The dogmatic part of the Koran (the Iman), comprises the two articles of faith, viz., the belief in one God, and in his prophet Mohammed; and the four practical duties of Islam, viz., prayer, ablutions, fasting, and alms-giving: these duties are reduced to the level of mere mechanical performances, without one atom of spontaneity about them, and are looked upon by most Mohammedans as irksome tasks, which must be accomplished, however, to secure the reward of paradise; the formal permission granted to supply with sand the scarcity of water, so that the prescribed lustration of the hands, the face, and the body may be practised even in the arid desert, shows how little capable the legislator must have been to conceive and comprehend the true spirit and intention of his own ordinances. The Koran pronounces—of course: is there a religion that does not?—sentence of eternal damnation against all unbelievers; it imagines a gradation of seven inconveniently hot places, of which the highest and least uncomfortable is, of course, appropriated for the exclusive use of Mohammedans who have been lacking in piety during their mortal career; according to the less or greater gravity of their respective offences, they are condemned to remain denizens of this the mildest of the seven hells, for periods varying from 900 to 9000 years, after which they are admitted to the joys of paradise. The place immediately beneath this purgatorial hell is assigned to the Christians; the hell next to this is allotted to the Jews, whom the prophet of Islam would indeed gladly have sent down lower, had he dared to treat monotheists worse than idolators; the Sabians inhabit the fourth, the Magians the fifth, the gross idolators the sixth hell; the deepest and hottest hell is destined to receive hypocrites in religion, and may therefore safely be assumed to be of larger dimensions and infinitely greater capacity than the other six together. The paradise of the Koran abounds in groves, fountains, and rivers; the blessed Moslems who are permitted to enter its gates will dwell in palaces of marble, eat artificial dainties and luscious fruits presented in dishes of gold, drink rich wines,[42] dress in robes of silk, adorned with pearls and diamonds, and have a numerous retinue of attendants; and above all, each Moslem will enjoy the society and possession of seventy-two Houris, or black-eyed girls, of resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite sensibility—rather a pleasant picture for a sensual people like the Arabians. To the female sex also the gates of paradise are open; but the privileges and enjoyments which may await the ladies of the Mohammedan faith, are not specified in the Koran. Still, we must not be unjust: above the vulgar joys and sensual pleasures borrowed from this world, Mohammed places the delights of familiar conversation with the sages, and he expressly declares that all meaner happiness will be forgotten and despised by the saints and martyrs who shall be permitted to behold the face of God.

Mohammed’s assertion that the Koran was the production of the highest intelligence, and comprised within it the knowledge of all times, has, ever since the establishment of his creed, proved a bar to the intellectual culture and progress of his people and of the other nations who were induced or compelled to adopt his faith; his interdiction to reproduce the human face and form on canvas or in marble, or any other material, and which with singular poverty of invention he had devised as the only possible check to idolatry, has had the natural effect to suppress and extinguish in the Moslem nations the love of the fine arts. True, when conquest had placed the wealth of empires at the disposal of the sons of the Desert, many of Mohammed’s followers could not resist the natural longing after the treasures and enjoyments of science, art, and literature; and indeed the republic of letters is vastly indebted to many of them for their labors and researches in various fields of human lore, more especially in geography, history, philosophy, medicine, natural philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and above all, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and astronomy. But then, as A. W. von Schlegel, says, “All this was done, as it were, behind the back of the prophet, and the votaries of art, science, and literature, among the Arabians must, from a Koranic point of view, be regarded in the light of free-thinkers.”

The ritual of the faith of Islam, and the interdictions decreed by the prophet, have been already incidentally touched upon in various parts of this chapter; we have therefore simply to add here that the Koran commands every faithful Moslem to visit, at feast once in his life, the holy city of Mecca, and the Kaaba.

One great redeeming feature of the religion of Islam was that it was originally destitute of a priesthood, and repudiated monachism; the Ulemas were simply intended to be the expounders and interpreters of the law.

On Friday, the appointed day of public worship, when the faithful are assembled in the mosque, any respectable elder may ascend the pulpit to begin the prayer and pronounce the sermon: there is no need of a duly appointed priest. But, unfortunately, the Ulemas and Imams of the present day act very much in the capacity of an actual clergy: and there is indeed no great difference between fakirs and dervishes and Roman Catholic monks.

The Koran contains also the civil and criminal code of the Mussulmans; the punishments decreed in it for injuries, offences, and crimes are mostly based upon the principle of retaliation.

Briefly to sum up: though it must be admitted that the religion of Islam, calmly and dispassionately examined by the light of reason, contains, by the side of the grossest absurdities, the most palpable falsehoods, and the veriest rubbish, much also that is true and of sterling worth; and that it has exercised a certain civilising influence over the barbarous nations to whom it was first preached, yet few only will venture to deny that it lacks altogether the higher and most essential qualities of a universal faith. Even the basis whereon it rests, the great eternal truth of a sole Deity, is tarnished and clouded in it by the companionship which it is forced to bear to a miserable fiction placed by the side of it, and with equal attributes. There are some few, strange though it may appear, who almost regret that the victorious career of the Moslems should have been checked by Leo the Isaurian and by Charles Martel. What would have become of Europe—what of civilisation, had the Moslems conquered? Let the admirers of Islam look at the state of the Mussulman nations of the present day: the fruit shows the quality of the tree. It is also a favorite argument with historians and others, to point to the numbers of believers in Islam, and to the twelve centuries that the Mohammedan faith has endured, as convincing proofs of the truth of that creed, or, at all events, of a preponderating amount of truth in it. If arguments of this kind are to apply, the Mormon faith also may claim admission among the “received” creeds; and the names of Joe Smith and Brigham Young may be expected, in the course of fifty years or so, to figure among the “prophets and apostles of religion.”

CHAPTER II.