IV. MOHAMMED…

IV. MOHAMMED

MOHAMMED BEN ABDALLAH BEN ABDUL-MUTTALIB

[Sidenote: [570-632 A.D.]]

While the poets in their stories were moulding the language to a more uniform character, another work was going on in men’s minds which contributed to found Arab nationality in a more decisive manner; there was no more belief in the idols which had, at an early date, taken the place of the one God, Allah; religious sentiment burst out on every side. Already wide schisms were apparent; entire tribes had abandoned the former worship. Besides idolatry, several religions were to be found in Arabia. The Jews, driven from their country by the Assyrians, the Romans, and the Greeks, had been warmly welcomed by the children of Ishmael, who found in the traditions of the exiles a deep respect for the God of Abraham; by means of these souvenirs skilfully evoked, Judaism had made converts. It was principally seen spread throughout Hedjaz, in the neighbourhood of Khaibar and Yathreb, where powerful tribes, those of the Koraizas and the Nadhirites, had long been naturalised. A large portion of the tribes of Yemen had also adopted it; and some of the Tobbas had favoured the introduction of the faith of Moses into their states, principally towards the years 225, 310, and 495 A.D. Sabaism or magianism was also practised by the Himyarites and on the coast of the Persian Gulf; some disciples of Brahmanism were even to be found in the midst of the inhabitants of Oman.

RELIGIOUS UNREST

[Sidenote: [520-580 A.D.]]

Christianity, successfully preached in several parts of Arabia, was professed by the Ghassanides in the year 330, and by various Arab tribes of Irak, Mesopotamia, Bahrein, the desert of Faran, and Damut-Jandal. The combined efforts of the negus of Abyssinia and of the emperor of Constantinople had contributed to spread the Gospel in Yemen. The Christian colony of Nejran had been honoured by persecution under Dhu-Nowas towards 523; fifty years later, Abraha sought to make of the church of Sana the goal of Arab pilgrimages. Lastly several kings of Hira had been favourable to the religion of Christ.

In the midst of the new ideas which preaching had spread throughout the peninsula, idolatry nevertheless remained the dominant religion. The intermediary divinities which certain tribes adored bore no resemblance to those creations of the Greeks and Romans, who worshipped moral beings clothed in bodily forms; they were, as with the ancient Egyptians, animals and plants, the gazelle, the horse, the camel, palm trees, vegetables, or inorganic bodies, rocks, stones, etc. All the Arabs acknowledged one supreme God, Allah; but some of them worshipped under the figure of their idols, the angels Benat-allah (the daughters of God); others, the planets or stars such as Aldebaran, Sirius, Canope, etc. They believed in genii, Jinn, in ogres, Ghol, in witchcraft, Shir, in divination, Kehana, in sacrifices, in oracles; fate was consulted by means of arrows without points, kidah or azlam, and the most blamable superstitious rites were still almost universally practised. A great number of tribes had their special idols, Hobal, Lat, etc., who were honoured by rich offerings, and in whose honour victims were slain; however, no temple had the fame of the Kaaba, whose pre-eminence was universally admitted.

This temple, which Abraha al-Ashram had wished to destroy, had been throughout the ages the object of the greatest veneration; it was looked on as a present made by Jehovah to the Arab race to bear witness to its condition privileged beyond all others. It was the oratory of Abraham and of Ishmael, the house of Allah; on receiving the 360 idols, subordinate powers accepted by the Arabs, it included all their divinities and became the Pantheon of the nation; the traditions connected with it were dear to all. They made the Kaaba a place of pilgrimage. They laboured to adorn it, to beautify it; they would have liked it to surpass in riches all the monuments of the universe; they hung the Moallakat in it, as if to connect with it every form of illustration. The Sabians, the fire-worshippers, sent their offerings to it; even the Jews showed a deep respect for this revered spot. The guardians of the temple, the Koreish clan, had a sort of religious authority which was willingly recognised by all; for instance, they had the right to name the sacred months during which, after the pilgrimage, a suspension of arms should reign throughout Arabia. So those who could attend the fair of Okad placed their weapons in the hands of the Koreish chiefs before entering the meeting, which, without this wise precaution, would often have degenerated into bloody fights. It was therefore necessary to have influence at Mecca and with the Koreish chiefs if one wished to found a uniform and national religion in Arabia, and Mohammed saw this perfectly.

Abdul-Muttalib, the son of Hashim, born in 497, exercised supreme authority in Mecca, from 520 to 579; he had the glory of delivering his country from the invasion of the Abyssinians, and he saw a Himyarite prince drive the foreigners from Yemen with the help of the king of Persia. Father of eighteen children, he believed himself bound by a rash vow to sacrifice one of his sons, in 569, before the idols of the Kaaba; fate fixed on one he loved the most, Abdallah, about twenty-four years of age. At the moment of the sacrifice, some of the Koreish chiefs rose against so barbarous an action and so fatal an example; by their advice a witch, arrafa, was consulted, who declared that Abdallah’s life might be purchased by means of the dia (price of human blood), and by drawing lots. The dia consisting of ten camels, the number ten was inscribed on a pointless arrow, and on another the name of Abdallah; nine times the name of Abdallah appeared, and it was only the tenth time that the camels were condemned. So a hundred were killed instead of Abdallah, and this number became thenceforth among the Koreish chiefs the price of the dia.

A few days later Abdallah married Amina, daughter of Wahb, chief of the family of the Zohri, and from this marriage was born Mohammed, “the glorified,” about the month of August, 570.[b]

MOHAMMED’S LIFE

[Sidenote: [570-595 A.D.]]

Mohammed (properly Muhammad, “the much praised”; and not Mahomet), was born in Mecca five years after the death of Justinian. The small inheritance which his father left him consisted of five camels and a faithful female slave. The biographers inform us that according to the custom which prevailed among the upper classes in Mecca, his mother Amina put the child out to nurse in the country. Halima, the wife of a herdsman, was his foster-mother and nurse till his third year, and the sacred legend tells us of many wonders with which the divine favour surrounded Mohammed’s childhood. Halima’s flocks and herds increased tenfold; her fields bore a superabundant harvest; angels cleansed the child’s heart from all sins and filled it with faith, knowledge and prophetic gifts. As, however, the child suffered from fits of convulsions, at the end of two years Halima brought him back to his mother. With her he remained till his sixth year. She then went with him to Yathreb (Medina), to visit her relatives, but died on the way back in the town of Abwa.

Mohammed now entered the house of his grandfather, Abdul-Muttalib, and when two years later the latter also died, his uncle Abu Talib took him into his family and watched over him with paternal affection. The story that in his twelfth year he accompanied his foster-father on a caravan journey to Syria, and that on this occasion a Christian monk foretold the boy’s future greatness, appears, like many other details of his life, to be a later legend. As he grew older, after having spent some time in guarding the flocks, Mohammed took his share in the business and manner of life of his relatives. He accompanied several of his uncles on warlike and commercial expeditions, in which he learned to know his country and his nation, and beheld the desert with its terrors and its poetry, where he heard the legends and traditions of the wandering tribes and gathered information concerning the teachings of the beliefs of Jew and Christian. He did not himself understand the language of writing, but Mecca as the pilgrim city of the East was one of the world’s centres, a school of culture containing much instruction for a thoughtful youth. The Christian religion, indeed, appears to have been known to him only by a few legends and distorted doctrines; but on the other hand the Jewish sect of the Hanifs, who lived scattered over the oases of the desert, had preserved and handed down Judaism in its original purity and simplicity, together with the belief in divine revelations at the mouth of inspired prophets.

HIS MARRIAGE WITH KHADIJA

[Sidenote: [595-612 A.D.]]

In his twenty-fifth year Khadija, the wealthy widow of a merchant, who like himself was descended from Kussai, intrusted him with the conduct of some caravans going to Syria and southern Arabia. In the execution of these commissions Mohammed showed so much circumspection, skill, and honesty, that Khadija though already forty years old permitted him to make application for her hand. The wedding was solemnly performed and it founded Mohammed’s fortune. Khadija was an intelligent and virtuous woman, and a faithful companion to her husband in good and evil days. “She was his first convert, she comforted him when he was mocked, she encouraged him when he suffered under persecution, she strengthened him when he was wavering.” But for the love and faith of Khadija, Mohammed would never have become the prophet of his nation.

“Although poor in goods which are but transient possessions, inconstant shadows,” said Abu Talib at the marriage feast, “my nephew Mohammed exceeds all the men of the Koreish in nobility of soul, virtue, and understanding.”

The marriage was blessed with children, but the sons died at a tender age; and of the four daughters only the youngest, Fatima, continued the race. Mohammed recognised and valued Khadija’s superior qualities. In spite of his great fondness for the female sex he remained faithful to her so long as she lived, and after her death held her memory in high honour. Aisha, his beloved wife of later days, said she was never so jealous of any of his other wives as she was of the dead Khadija whom he always declared to be a model for all women.

For more than a decade after his marriage Mohammed continued his life as a merchant, but with little success and little content. He was often seen to be deep in thought; he withdrew more and more into solitude, spending many days and generally the whole of the month Ramadhan in a cave in Mount Hira, not far from Mecca. Sometimes he went into this retirement alone, sometimes with Khadija.

There in that gloomy neighbourhood, full of naked rocks, yawning precipices, and grim ravines where no shade affords protection from the blazing sunlight, where no grass, no vegetation, no sound of falling water refreshes the spirit, he gave himself up to religious contemplations and considered how he might save his nation from its degradation. In the city of Mecca, all alive as it was with people, as well as on his journeys, he had been brought much in contact with Jews and Christians; he had not only absorbed their teaching and traditions, but from the effects of their religion on life and character he had perceived the superiority of the belief in one God over the idolatrous heathenism of his own nation; and he had also learned that both religious fraternities still waited for the completion of their religion; the Jews looking for the advent of a messiah, the Christians for the return of Jesus or the appearance of the promised “comforter” (paraclete). Thus there gradually awoke in him the conviction that his people stood in need of a purer revealed religion, that the idols were but vain trifles, and that their worship excited the anger of God; that a new and divinely inspired prophet must come forward, who should overturn the kingdom of darkness and idolatry, and his fiery imagination filled him with the belief that the one God had sent him to convert mankind that they might become participators in the joys of heaven, and escape the fearful chastisements of hell. His nervous, hysterical nature, the violent convulsions and cataleptic fits which seized him from time to time, the vivid dreams and mental delusions produced by his feverish and excited fancy, might well engender in himself and others the belief that he had relations with angels and spirits, and was a sharer in divine visions and inspirations. Mohammed had already passed his fortieth year when he “began to feel the travail of new ideas.”

MOHAMMED AS A PROPHET (610 OR 612 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [610-612 A.D.]]

Once when he was dwelling in the gloomy cavern he had a vision, in which the angel Gabriel approached him and commanded him to publish abroad the revelations which the Lord and Creator had sent. Mohammed felt his spirit illuminated with a divine light; but doubting lest a demon should be playing him an evil trick, he came to Khadija, his face streaming with perspiration and utterly discomposed. She believed in the divine message, and in union with her learned cousin Waraka, who had already denied the pagan beliefs of the fathers, she laboured to dispel his doubt.

Soon the angel appeared to him a second time, and gave him an assurance that he was not possessed by demons but called of God to spread the revelations of heaven. Mohammed now believed and announced that Allah, the lord of heaven and earth, had chosen him as his ambassador to inform men of his holy will; he now believed and taught that the Lord spake by him, and that his utterances were inspirations and revelations from the only and most high God, and being written down separately and eventually put together in the sacred book Koran,[c] they were so regarded by the faithful and accepted with reverence. Thus began Mohammed’s prophetic career in the year 610 or 612 of our era. Like the seers of old, like the prophets in Israel, he took the enthusiasm which dwelt in him as a “charge from the Lord,” and the words which issued from his mouth as the outpourings of the divine spirit.

Convinced of the truth of his prophetic mission, Mohammed now entered on his office of teacher. But with all his devotion to the holy cause he went to work with great caution. He first turned to his kinsmen that he might be recognised by them as the messenger of God. His wife Khadija, his daughters, his cousin Ali, the ten-year-old son of Abu Talib, his friend Abu Bekr, a well-to-do merchant of upright character and clear discernment, and his former slave Zaid to whom he had given his liberty were his first converts. In like manner he avoided anything which might have irritated his compatriots.

“He sought to bring his teaching into harmony with their prejudices and to lead them gradually to a better knowledge. He did not venture to attack the sanctity of the Kaaba, joined in the ceremonies of the pilgrim festival, and sanctioned the adoration of the Black Stone.”

Thus three years went by, during which the number of Mohammed’s adherents did not exceed forty, for the most part young men, foreigners or slaves. It was not till the fourth year that in accordance with another vision he attempted to appear publicly in the character of a prophet. He first addressed himself to the men of his own race, the Koreish; and in the name of the one God who had sent him as his apostle, threatened them with the fire of hell if they did not renounce their unbelief.

“One day ye shall die and rise again; then must ye give account of your deeds and shall be rewarded for your virtue in paradise and punished for your vices in hell.”

But far from winning a hearing he reaped mockery and scorn. Already in the first assembly his uncle Abu Lahab had lifted a stone against him; and although the rest of his kinsmen protected him from ill-treatment, the hatred and opposition of the Koreish increased with each new oration. The more clearly they perceived that Mohammed’s claims as a prophet might endanger their priestly position and their lucrative privileges as guardians of the holy temple, the more fiercely did their anger burn, and the more vehement became their threats and abuse. His chief opponents were the Koreish of the line of the Abd Shams, under the leadership of Abu Sufyan and Abu Hakam, called by Mohammed, Abu Jahl (the father of folly), two bitter enemies of the new prophet. It was only to the protection of his nearest relatives that Mohammed owed his rescue from the violence of his enemies and persecutors. On the other hand the position of his adherents of humble rank, who had no such powerful protectors to stand by them, especially of the slaves and freedmen, grew daily more insecure; so that in order that they might escape torture and scourging the prophet allowed some of his followers to deny him outwardly “if only the heart remained steadfast in the faith,” and on his advice a number of believing men and women, amongst them his daughter Rokayyah and her husband Othman, took ship for Abyssinia, where the king, a Nestorian Christian, assured them a refuge. In vain did the Koreish through Amru and another ambassador, offer the prince rich gifts for the delivery of the refugees; the Abyssinian kept his hands pure of any injury to those who had sought his protection. He may have perceived that the persecuted stood nearer to the true faith than the idol worshippers of the Kaaba.

MOHAMMED AN OUTLAW

[Sidenote: [612-620 A.D.]]

The invective and ill-treatment which Mohammed had to suffer increased the number of his followers, whilst indignation at the abuse and insults to which he was daily exposed without any fault of his own led certain brave men of chivalrous disposition to take his part. Amongst them were Mohammed’s uncle Hamza, “the lion of God,” and Jahl’s nephew Omar. Having been sent by his relatives to kill the prophet for a great reward, on the way to the latter’s dwelling Omar was suddenly and miraculously converted by hearing his sister Fatima read a passage of the Koran, and from being a persecutor he became an earnest believer. Omar, then twenty-six years old, was a man of gigantic stature, of fabulous strength, and great courage. His wild aspect terrified the boldest, and his staff struck more fear into the beholder than would have been inspired by another man’s sword.

But the more devotees “Islam” i.e., “submission” (to the will of God) acquired, the more eagerly did its enemies seek to stifle the work in the blood of its author. New persecutions increased the number of the emigrants; only Mohammed and his most faithful worshippers were protected by Abu Talib from the rage of the sons of Shams and Naufal. He hid them in a strong castle without the city, in the depths of an impassable ravine, and when their powerful enemies laid a ban on all the followers of the prophet and the whole race of Hashim and solemnly declared in a roll which was hung up in the interior of the Kaaba that until he was given up they would treat his protectors as enemies, the faithful uncle betook himself to the rocky fortress with many of his kinsmen. For three years they lived in the barren desert, cut off from all communication with the city, whither they could venture only in the sacred months, and often they were in want of the most necessary means of existence. Finally the ban, which had excited the greatest discontent in Mecca, and of which even the sons of Shams were beginning to grow weary, was removed. The parchment roll disappeared from the Kaaba, according to the legend, by a miracle. Mohammed now returned to Mecca (circa 620); but soon the death of his paternal friend and protector, Abu Talib, who was followed to the grave a few days later by his faithful wife Khadija, exposed him to fresh dangers. Abu Talib died in the religion of his fathers; he had always honoured his nephew as an upright and god-fearing man, but he had never believed in his prophetic mission. Mohammed sincerely mourned them both.

[Sidenote: [620-622 A.D.]]

“Never was there a better wife than Khadija,” he said once to the youthful and beautiful Aisha; “she believed in me when men despised me; she relieved my wants when I was poor and despised by the world.” Nevertheless he soon consoled himself for her loss by his marriage to Sauda and his betrothal to Aisha, the seven-year old daughter of Abu Bekr.

While the prophet was leading a melancholy existence under scorn and ignominy, sometimes in Mecca, sometimes in the society of a few friends in Taif, a place lying in a fruitful region on the borders of the hill country, hiding himself with difficulty from the snares and persecutions of his enemies, his soul felt itself comforted and exalted by new visions. He saw in the spirit how he was borne on a winged horse to the temple at Jerusalem and thence to the seventh heaven to the presence of God, where the patriarchs, the earlier prophets, and the hosts of angels yielded him precedence, and the Lord himself proclaimed him as the crown and aim of creation. He needed this self-confidence, this firm belief in his high message, to keep him from wavering and succumbing to the storms and dangers which gathered over his head.

But whilst the inhabitants of Mecca hardened their hearts against the doctrine of the one God, revealing himself through the new prophet, Mohammed won eager devotees from a host of pilgrims from Yathreb, afterwards called Medina, i.e., the city, to whom he unfolded the principles of Islam on the “mount of homage,” Akaba. They belonged to the distinguished tribe of the Khazraj who, in conjunction with the tribe of Aus had, in the fifth century, wrested the lordship of Medina from the Jews; and on their return to their native city they worked in secret for the new faith for which, in consequence of their relations with the numerous Jewish tribes in the neighbourhood, they were better prepared than the Meccans. In spite of the jealousy of the tribes of Aus towards the Khazraj, by the energy of the learned Masab, whom Mohammed sent to Medina as his forerunner and as reader of the Koran, Islam soon obtained a firm foothold in the city; so that two years later his adherents could venture to invite the prophet to visit them. With this object seventy-three believers journeyed to Mecca and in an assembly held at night on that same hill of homage they made a covenant with Mohammed. They vowed, and gave their hands on the promise, to pray only to the one God and to none other gods, to honour the prophet, to obey him in joy and sorrow, and always confess the truth without fear of man. Under the guidance of twelve leaders, whom Mohammed selected from amongst them, the men of Medina (who thenceforth bore the name of Ansar, i.e., those who give aid) returned to their own city in the company of many believers.

THE HEGIRA (622 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [622 A.D.]]

But Mohammed, with his most faithful adherents Abu Bekr and Ali, remained in Mecca three months longer. Only when he was informed by a secret worshipper that the Koreish had determined to murder him, did he depart on his flight with Abu Bekr, both mounted on swift camels. Whilst the enemy was surrounding his house, the craft and fidelity of Ali, who occupied the prophet’s bed and assumed his garments, enabled him and his friend to flee secretly in the darkness of the night and conceal themselves in a cave. Next morning, when the Koreish discovered the deception, they set a price of a hundred camels on the head of the fugitive and sent in pursuit of him. But Mohammed’s destiny was not yet fulfilled. After having spent three days and nights in the cave of Mount Thaur, he succeeded in escaping with his companion by by-paths to Medina. With this flight, which was afterwards assigned to the 16th of July of the year 622 according to our reckoning, begins the Hegira, the era of the Mohammedans or Moslems (Mussulmans), i.e., the “submissive.” [Ali remained three days after his master had left. Considerable property had been entrusted to Mohammed for safe keeping; and it was Ali’s duty to restore this to its owners.]

The people of Medina received Mohammed with joyous enthusiasm; his entrance into the town resembled that of a triumphant prince rather than a poor fugitive. Soon the rest of his friends and followers gathered round him, amongst them Ali whom the Koreish had allowed to go unharmed, Omar, with his beautiful daughter Hafsa, whom some time afterward the prophet included in the number of his wives, and Othman with his wife Rokayyah. When the last-named died in the following year, Mohammed gave his second daughter Um Kolthum in marriage to his faithful comrade. The case containing the inspired sayings of the Koran was entrusted to the care of Hafsa.

[Sidenote: [622-624 A.D.]]

The prophet’s presence had the most beneficial results for Medina. The two tribes of the Khazraj and the Aus, who in former years had often engaged in bloody conflicts, were united in the new faith as the faithful “helpers” of God’s messenger, and in conjunction with the emigrants from Mecca (Mohajira) formed the kernel of the Moslems. At first Mohammed attempted to win over the numerous Jews of Medina to his cause, and for this reason paid attention in many respects to the Mosaic law; he continued the observance of the Sabbath, and made Jerusalem the Kibla, i.e., the holy place, towards which the faithful had to turn their faces when they prayed. But when the Jews refused to recognise him as the expected Messiah as they had formerly refused to recognise Jesus, but rather made the new prophet an object of their scorn, he once more turned to the old Arab faith. He removed the Kibla to Mecca, appointed Friday as the day of devotion and religious observance, and eventually wielded the scourge of religious persecution over Jews and heathens without distinction.

Many of the emigrant Meccans were overtaken by illness and homesickness in this foreign land, and in order to make up to them for the loss of their relatives and belongings, Mohammed founded a system of brotherhood among fifty-four believers from Mecca and a like number from Medina, so that two men united in this “brotherhood of faith” should stand closer to each other, even in the matter of inheritance, than blood relations,--an institution which lasted, however, only until the foreigners had settled into the new life.

A second period in the history of the development of Islam begins in Medina. But however brilliantly and successfully Mohammed’s prophetic labours might continue from this time forward, his character during the period of his fortune was less spotless, his conviction less sincere, his motives less pure than in the dark and suffering time of persecution and oppression. His revelations, which he received from the angel Gabriel as occasion arose, were circulated as inspired sayings amongst the people, partly through oral tradition, partly in fly-leaves until they were put together in one whole as the holy writing (Koran). They were not drawn up without occasional adjustment to the circumstances of the moment and to his own appetites, a transformation which reveals itself even in the form and the language. For whilst in the parts drawn up in Mecca poetic enthusiasm prevails to an undue extent, in Medina the oratorical element is more in the foreground; for Mohammed, all too closely bound to material things, was no longer able to disengage himself from them. In the lack of personal conviction which now supervened, if he wished to rise above the commonplace he had to supply the inner impulse by affected vividness, and the truth firmly believed by empty sophistry; and from his manner of writing it is easy to see that his thoughts no longer spring from a warm heart, but are the products of a cold intellect. No longer following the suggestions of his mind can he allow his discourse to pursue its natural course; all must now be thought out beforehand, for it is no longer guided by the spirit of God but by his own ego. The first mosque, a simple, artless building made of the wood of date trees, which was erected soon after his arrival in Medina, became a sacred centre of his teaching. From its roof, five times each day, the steadfast devotee Bilal summoned the faithful to prayer.

Hitherto Islam had been a religion of peace and love, and Mohammed had inculcated no precept as he had that of gentleness in word and deed. But now that he found himself at the head of a submissive host of followers and in a position to oppose his enemies by force of arms, he declared the struggle against the infidel, the spread of his doctrines by fire and sword, to be the sacred duty binding on all Moslems, a precept which gave Islam an aggressive direction and had in its results a world-shaking significance. Not to bring peace, but a sword, had he, the last and greatest of the prophets, appeared on earth; the struggle against the enemies of Islam was a sacred struggle; he who fell in the contest would pass, free from all sin and punishment, safely into paradise, that abode of the blessed which he had painted to his converts with all the ardour of his imagination as a place of earthly pleasures and all the joys of sense; and still further to inflame their courage he planted in their souls the contempt of death by teaching them that the duration of life as well as the destiny and end of mankind had been fixed beforehand by a divine decree, by an unchangeable fate; if the hour of death had come, none could escape his destiny, if the end of life had not yet approached, he might unhesitatingly venture the utmost.

Relying on the warlike impulse which such doctrines must have engendered in the fiery soul of the Arab, Mohammed, at the head of his fellow tribesmen, allies, and believing followers, now undertook warlike expeditions against the Koreish who had driven him from his native city. He knew that he could not more effectively punish the haughty merchant princes of Mecca than by lying in wait for their caravans and robbing them of the valuable wares which they were accustomed to take to Syria. At the same time he could absolutely rely on the assistance of his new fellow-citizens in these struggles, for the merchants of Mecca looked down with contempt on the agricultural people of Medina. He himself generally marched into the field more to fire the courage of the combatants by his prayers and promises of heavenly support than for the purpose of himself bearing the white standard, which he generally entrusted to the valiant Omar, or the heroic Ali, the “father of the dust.”

Ali, to whom Mohammed gave his favourite daughter Fatima in marriage at Medina, is the purest and noblest figure among the followers of Mohammed, the “Siegfried of Islam,” as a modern writer has designated him. All his life he adhered to the prophet and the faith of his youth with complete submission and eager admiration. If his fiery, pure, and magnanimous character made him the boast and ornament of the Moslems, he was also by his heroism and bravery the bold vindicator of Islam, the trumpet of the strife in struggle and danger.

If at first warfare was suspended during the sacred months, according to the practice of former generations, Mohammed soon tore down this barrier. For instance, Abdallah ben Jash fell on the Koreish in the valley of Nakhla during the sacred month of Rajab, robbed their wagons, and slew some of the escort and took others prisoners; and when the prophet, who had himself recommended this act to the leader in a dubiously worded document, perceived that it had excited general indignation, he issued a proclamation by which war against the infidel was declared to be lawful at any period--a proof “that he was no longer acting according to the will of God but according to his own will”; and that the utterances of the Koran were so many “pictures reflecting” his own position. In the second year of the Hegira the fight of Bedr took place; and here was manifested for the first time how the hope of a blessed hereafter had filled the believing Moslems with an enthusiasm which defied death and despised pain.

THE BATTLE OF BEDR (624 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [624 A.D.]]

In order to rescue a large caravan from danger and distress, the Koreish marched into the field a thousand strong, with seven hundred camels and one hundred horses. The train of merchandise escaped the ambush by the clever management of Abu Sufyan, but nevertheless Abu Jahl persisted in the conflict. At Bedr, a camping ground and market, noted even at the present day for its plentiful supply of water, the Meccans encountered the hostile bands, who were not half so strong, and made ready for battle. Three Meccans, kinsmen of those who had fallen at Nakhla, came forward and challenged three of the opposite party to single combat. Hamza, Ali, and Obaida opposed themselves to them and slew them, whereupon the fight became general. Mohammed, who was watching the encounter from a leafy hut on a rising ground and praying to God with great ardour and excitement that he would not allow his faithful few to be destroyed, suddenly declared that victory had been promised him in a vision, and flinging a handful of dust after the Koreish, he called out, “Shame on their faces!”

Soon confusion seized the enemy and the battle ended with a complete defeat of the Koreish. Seventy heads of distinguished houses were slain during the battle or on the flight. Amongst the fallen were Otba and Shaiba, and, above all Abu Jahl (called the enemy of God), Mohammed’s bitterest opponent; amongst the prisoners were his uncle Abbas and Abul-Aas, the husband of his eldest daughter Zainab. Both were ransomed and returned to Mecca. Abbas probably henceforth served his nephew as a spy and Abul-Aas had to send his wife back to her father. Two other prisoners, Al-Nadr and Okba, who had belonged to Mohammed’s most eager adversaries in Mecca, were executed. But the prophet, always inclined to mildness, deplored the rash act when he heard the touching lament of the former’s daughter, a lament which is still preserved to us. For the rest, the battle of Bedr was of the greatest importance for the victory of Islam, and in consequence all the combatants whose names were entered in the lists henceforth formed the highest nobility of the Moslems. The spoil and the ransoms were equally divided, but soon after a saying of the Koran commanded that in future the fifth part of all spoil should go to the prophet, for himself, his kinsmen, for the poor, orphans, and wanderers.

BATTLE OF OHOD (MARCH, 625 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [625 A.D.]]

The battle of Bedr was the first step of Islam to dominion. Whilst the inhabitants of Medina and the Bedouin tribes of the neighbourhood drew from the prophet’s success a belief in his divine mission and gathered round him with enthusiasm, in Mecca there was great despair. Abu Lahab, Mohammed’s uncle and enemy, died seven days later of a disease resembling smallpox, full of affliction and anger at the success of his nephew; and Okba’s daughter Hind, the passionate wife of Abu Sufyan, cried day and night in ungoverned fury for revenge for her fallen kinsmen. Her lord actually went against Medina with two hundred Koreish; but their belief in their own cause was shaken, and when Mohammed marched against them they fled home in such haste that they left their stock of meal behind.

In the months after this “meal-campaign,” certain Jews in Medina, having made a mock of Mohammed in their verses, were put to death, and their co-religionists who had refused to go over to Islam, in particular the Beni Kainoka, the most skilful of the wealthy goldsmiths in the country, were driven into banishment in Syria. Abu Sufyan now marched a second time to the fight, on this occasion with a force of three thousand Koreish, at whose head stood three brave men, Akrama a son of Abu Jahl, Khalid, and Amru, afterwards the most distinguished heroes of the faithful. In the rearguard was the terrible Hind, with fifteen other women and certain poets who roused the spirit of vengeance in the army by laments over those slain at Bedr.

Mohammed wished to await the enemy in the city, but the young men, in their eagerness for war, demanded a pitched battle. The prophet yielded to their demand with inward misgivings. On the mount Ohod, whose solitary granite mass, bare of tree or bush, rises about a league to the north of Medina, he ranged his warriors, who did not exceed seven hundred, as he had disdained the help of the Jews and thus so deeply offended their patron, the Khazrayite Abdallah ben Obayyah, who apart from this was a secret envier and opponent of Mohammed, that he too had withdrawn with his army. Mohammed himself fought in the front rank; wearing a red fillet round his head and waving “the sword of God and his envoy,” he encouraged his men with axioms of the new faith. Here, too, victory seemed first to incline to the Moslems; strenuously as Hind and her women, “the daughters of the stars, with cloudy hair and pearl-ornamented necks,” might encourage the combatants, promising loving embraces to the victors, and threatening the flying with shame and death, the ranks of the Meccans nevertheless gave way. Seven members of the family of Abd ad-Dar, who each in turn performed the hereditary office of standard-bearer, rolled in the dust. Then the bowmen, fearing to be too late for the spoil, left the secure position which Mohammed had assigned them behind the mountain, and thus gave Khalid an opportunity to fall with his cavalry on the Moslem rear. The battle now suddenly took a new turn; the superior numbers of the Koreish carried the day, Mohammed was wounded and fell, face downwards, into a trench. His standard-bearer Mussab, fell, and as he resembled Mohammed in appearance the rumour, “Mohammed is dead,” was quickly disseminated and proved as encouraging to the infidels as it was destructive to the Moslem. The defeated were already hurrying away towards Medina, when the poet Kaab, the son of Malik, recognised the prophet amongst the wounded, in his helmet and coat of mail.

Encouraged by the joyful tidings that Mohammed was still alive, ten or twelve of his trusty followers, including Abu Bekr and Omar, collected round him and carved themselves a way with the sword towards a rocky height, where they defended themselves bravely until the enemy, who, supposing the prophet to be dead, had paid no special heed to this little band, had begun their homeward march after insulting and mutilating the dead. Hind and her companions took the severed noses and ears of the enemy, strung them together like pearls, and wore them as necklaces and bracelets. The former even carried her rage so far that she tried to tear the heart out of the corpse of Hamza whom the Abyssinian slave Washi had slain in the midst of the fight, and to rend it in pieces.[31] The fall of the faithful Hamza touched Mohammed nearly; he frequently bewailed him, and the women of Medina raised a general lament over the fallen hero, whose name was henceforth mentioned in every death-song.

[Sidenote: [625-627 A.D.]]

After the retreat of the Koreish, Mohammed returned with his men to Medina. Hard as the blow had been it could not shake his belief and confidence in a successful issue. Whilst he consoled the relatives of the slain with the thought of the happy life hereafter, he prohibited the customary mourning usages, the striking of the visage, the shaving of the hair, the rending of the garments, only permitting weeping because “tears give relief to the afflicted heart”; at the same time he took judicious measures for defence, in case the Koreish, hearing that the prophet was still alive, should come back. But they did not venture to expose their weakened army to fresh dangers; they contented themselves with the victory they had won, and hoped that in time they might get the better of religious innovations if they preserved the sacred city with the Kaaba from all pollution, slew all Moslems who fell into their hands, and all the readers of the Koran who should proclaim Islam to the inhabitants of the hill country, and if they permitted no Mohammedan to enter the Kaaba. For years the followers of the prophet might not take part in the pilgrimage to Mecca, which in the sacred months the rest of the Arabs made for the sake of prayer and festival joys. But the time drew slowly near when in Mecca also the consideration of the old heathen gods was to sink in the dust, and even the Koreish would bow the knee before the name of him against whom they now nourished so deadly a hatred and whom they now persecuted in so bloody a fashion.

EXPEDITION AGAINST THE JEWS (626 A.D.)

Mohammed, from the very character of his religion, could not let the sword rust in its sheath so long as Islam had not attained supremacy. Consequently he continued to lead his followers on warlike expeditions against both Jew and heathen. The fact that he himself took part in all the fights was a great spur to the spirit and courage of his troops; more than once his life was in danger, but a higher power protected God’s envoy; the sword fell from a hostile leader who waved it above his head.

Since the battle of Ohod most of the attacks had been directed against the Jews, who showed themselves more and more hostile to the new religion. They found a protector in Abdallah ben Obayyah, the chief of the Khazraj, who, jealous of Mohammed’s growing power amongst his followers, toiled against the prophet. The Beni Nadir were driven from their strong castles, after their date palms had been cut down, in defiance of the usages of Arabian warfare; and they owed their lives solely to the powerful intercession of Abdallah, but were nevertheless compelled to quit the Arabian country like the Beni Kainoka before them. But the “hypocrites” continued to work against Mohammed’s power after a victorious campaign against the powerful tribe of the Beni Mustalik; Abdallah excited a quarrel between the “helpers” and the immigrant believers, which was only adjusted by the skill and prompt decision of the prophet. A saying of the Koran gave warning against hypocrites, but this time also Abdallah escaped punishment. Even the evil reports concerning Aisha’s virtue and marital fidelity, which he and others put into circulation about that time because she was left behind on a night march and entered the camp on the second day in the company of a man, were overlooked. Mohammed, in accordance with a revelation, declared the rumours to be slanders, punished the calumniators who, like the poet Hassan, maintained her guilt, and cherished Aisha with fresh tenderness; but Abdallah remained unpunished. Mohammed dreaded the revenge of the Khazraj.

SIEGE OF MEDINA, EXTERMINATION OF THE JEWS (627-628 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [627-628 A.D.]]

Soon after the Koreish and other Arab tribes made alliance with the Jewish Beni Koraiza against the Moslems, and marched on Medina with a force of ten thousand men. Mohammed did not venture to meet the superior strength of the enemy in the open field for fear lest he should be overtaken by a fate such as he had suffered at Ohod. He had recourse to a method of defence hitherto unknown in Arabia. He drew a trench round the city. By means of this defence he kept off the enemy by small skirmishes for a time, until by crafty negotiations he succeeded in sowing mistrust and division among the allies. The consequence was that the Arabs, who besides this had been disheartened by the wintry weather and cold showers of rain, retreated after an ineffectual blockade of five weeks; thus abandoning their Jewish allies to Mohammed’s vengeance. Besieged in their strong castles the Beni Koraiza had to surrender at discretion. Thereupon in spite of the intercession of their ancient allies the Aus, according to the harsh decision of the chief Zaid ben Muadh, who had been selected as arbitrator, all the men of the tribe, seven hundred in number, were executed on the market-place of Medina, the women and children were led into slavery, and their flocks, lands, and goods were divided among the victors.

“God drove the keepers of the Scriptures (the Jews) from their strong places and put fear in their hearts. One half of them has he slain, the other taken prisoners; he has given you their lands, their dwellings, their goods, for an inheritance. God is almighty.”

In these words a saying of the Koran announced this horrible event, the darkest deed of Mohammed’s life. Zaid died soon after the cruel sentence. Irritated by the continual perfidy and the hostile temper of the Jews, Mohammed had allowed himself to be drawn into a course in which the messenger of God gave way to the passionate Arab, in which not the temper of a prophet but the revenge of the passionate Arab and the cruelty of an oriental despot were manifested, in which “earthly mire choked the sacred flame of prophecy.” And in order finally to destroy the power of the Jews in Medina and the neighbourhood, Mohammed in the following year (628) marched with fourteen hundred believers against their chief fortress of Khaibar.

“We pray to thee, oh Almighty! against the goods of these places and all that they contain,” cried the prophet with a loud voice, when they entered the territory of their strong citadels, “and we implore thee to preserve us from the evil of these places and their inhabitants.”

Mohammed’s prayer was heard. By the bravery of the Moslems, especially of Ali, to whom before the battle the prophet had given his own sword--“Ali, the man who loves God and his envoy, the man who knows no fear and never yet turned his back on the enemy”--the castles were broken into, their treasures and goods carried off, the inhabitants, when they escaped the sword, made tributary so that they had to hold their rich estates and date plantations as hereditary tenants and pay the half of the produce to the new owners. The Mohammedans were roused to these warlike enterprises no less by the greed of spoil than by religious fanaticism. The Jewish chief Kinana was stretched on the rack to make him betray hidden treasures, and when he remained dumb he was beheaded. Mohammed himself not only appropriated the fifth share of the spoil, but also landed property, and he increased the number of his wives by two beautiful Jewish prisoners, Safiya and Zainab. The first was converted to Islam and became a tender wife to the prophet, who celebrated the bridal with her in his tent; on the other hand the second, whose nearest relatives had met their death in the battle, meditated a dark act of vengeance. She placed a poisoned meal before Mohammed. It is true that he ate little of it (in consequence of a miraculous warning, as the legend recounts), but still it was enough to undermine his health for the remainder of his life. Even in his dying hour he is reported to have said that he felt the poison of Khaibar[32] in his veins.

MOHAMMED’S PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA (629 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [629 A.D.]]

Even before this war Mohammed had made a pilgrimage to Mecca with a considerable following, to try whether under shelter of the sacred month he could approach the Kaaba, acting under the just conviction that it would be of great advantage to the spread of his doctrines if he could associate himself with the ancient sanctuary of his people. This time indeed he failed to attain his object; the gates of Mecca remained closed to the Mohammedans; nevertheless by the Peace of Hodaibiya he won a ten years’ truce from the Koreish and the concession that he and his believers should perform their prayers in the Kaaba for three days annually. The zealous Omar was indignant at this agreement. “Art thou not the messenger of the Lord? Are the Meccans not infidels and we believers? Wherefore should we permit our faith to endure such an insult?”

But Mohammed preferred the lesser advantage to the uncertain issue of an armed conflict, convinced that greater successes would soon follow from small beginnings. He was not mistaken. In consequence of this treaty and shortly after the fall of Khaibar, he undertook (March, 629) a pilgrimage to Mecca, together with a party of his faithful followers, and great was the joy of the exiles when for the first time they again trod their native soil. Mohammed, mounted on his camel, accomplished the usual seven circuits of the Kaaba and the pacing to and fro between the hills Safa and Merwa and the rest followed him.

On this occasion Mohammed was united to Maimuna, a widow of fifty-one years. As his former marriages since the death of Khadija were decided by his sensuality and fondness for women and had at times been so scandalous that, as in the case of Zainab, the divorced wife of his adopted son Zaid, the indignation of the faithful at a hitherto unheard of and forbidden alliance had to be quieted by a new command in the Koran concerning relationship; so on the contrary this last marriage was like his first, an act of wisdom, policy, and practical consideration. By this marriage Maimuna’s kinsmen, Khalid and Amru, two distinguished warriors, were won over to the cause of Islam--a victory of greater importance than many a victorious battle.

The converts soon had an opportunity of increasing on a wider battle-field the warlike renown which they had acquired in petty quarrels. Mohammed had already turned his eyes to the frontiers of Arabia. Encouraged by the growing numbers and enthusiasm of his devotees, he believed that the time was not far off when Islam would acquire the dominion of the world. The Jews had been compelled to pay dearly for refusing to recognise him as their messiah; but, since they lived scattered and held in contempt amongst other nations he could well dispense with their homage if he succeeded in bringing the two most powerful religious associations of the time, namely the Christians and the fire-worshippers of Iran, to acknowledge his prophetic mission. With this object he addressed documents to various foreign rulers, calling on them to worship the one true God who had revealed himself through Mohammed. Amongst the Christians especially he might have expected a great welcome, since he not only owned Jesus to be a prophet but also recognised the latter’s mother as a spotless virgin. In one of the finest passages of the Koran it is related how Mary, after the angel of God had informed her that she should bear a “pure son,” had brought a child into the world under a palm tree; how this child had spoken even in the cradle and revealed himself as the “servant of God,” destined to exercise every virtue of life and bring peace to men. According to the Moslems, the ordinances of Mohammed’s religion found a favourable reception amongst Christian princes. The king of Abyssinia, who had always shown himself favourable to the adherents of the new prophet, and the Christian general at Yemen are said to have gone over to Islam; the prefect of Egypt requested time for consideration, but sent costly gifts, among them two fair Coptic slaves for the voluptuous prophet. The messengers of Mohammed invited the princes and nations of the earth to join in the recognition of Islam, and one of them was even received by the emperor Heraclius in a gracious and friendly manner. On the other hand Chosroes II, then at the height of his power, tore the documents unread and at the same time the ruler of Bosrah slew an Arabian envoy who had endeavoured to win new converts for Islam. Against the former, Mohammed launched a prophecy of evil, against the latter sent an army under his former slave Zaid, whom on account of his faithfulness and submission he had taken in the place of a son.

At Muta in Syria the Arabian hosts under the sacred standard had their first encounter with the Græco-Roman legions. Zaid fell like a warrior in the foremost ranks; in his place the brave and handsome Jafar, Ali’s brother, seized Mohammed’s banner. Soon after he lost his right hand; then he waved the standard in his left, and when this too was severed from his body he held the sacred ensign in his bleeding arms till he received the deathstroke. Abdallah ben Rawaha, the poet, now took the standard from the dying hero, crying, “Forward! Either victory or paradise is ours!” And when he too sank under the enemy’s lances Khalid, the new convert of Mecca, grasped the banner and guided the battle to a finish. It was not a decisive victory; but Khalid had given such brilliant proofs of valour that in the nocturnal council of war held in the camp he was chosen commander-in-chief and henceforth bore the famous surname of “Sword of God.” Mournfully, though laden with glory and spoil, the warrior host returned to Medina with the cherished corpses. Mohammed extolled the lot of the fallen martyrs, but with Zaid’s young daughter he mourned in secret for the beloved dead. “These are friendship’s tears at the loss of a friend,” he said in excuse when someone coming in expressed his astonishment that he should weep for him who had secured paradise by his death.

SUBJECTION OF MECCA (630 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [630 A.D.]]

All therefore that Mohammed could hope was that his teaching might obtain general recognition throughout Arabia, if he could once get the sacred city of Mecca into his power. When he first led his armed host of pilgrims into its neighbourhood he had assured his companions that God had lent him the victory. Yet they had been compelled to withdraw, after concluding an inglorious peace without marching round the Kaaba. Nor was the chagrin of the believers relieved in the next year by their having to approach the sanctuary during three days as suppliants; the disgrace could only be wiped out by a brilliant victory. The Koreish themselves played into Mohammed’s hands. They violated the treaty of peace by taking part in a hostile attack on a tribe which had made a defensive alliance with Mohammed. Then when they heard that an expedition for reprisals was being prepared at Medina they were alarmed and sent Abu Sufyan, the proud chief of the race, to the angry prophet, to excuse what had passed and implore his forgiveness.

But Mohammed dismissed the suppliant without an answer and secretly pushed on the preparations for war with great zeal. Suddenly ten thousand watchfires on the neighbouring mountain betrayed the arrival of a powerful enemy to the astonished Meccans. Abu Sufyan hastened out to reconnoitre; Abbas brought him as a prisoner into the camp, where Mohammed protected him from Omar’s anger as soon as he had declared himself ready to honour the son of Abdallah as the messenger of God and to pass to the ranks of Islam. He noted with admiration the excellent discipline and bearing of the Mohammedan army, the multiplicity of weapons and banners, the “helpers” and “refugees” enveloped in iron, the enthusiastic veneration of the holy commander. “None can withstand this man!” Sufyan said to Mohammed’s uncle, Abbas, who was conducting him through the ranks, “by God, the kingdom of thy nephew is grown great!” And he hastened back to his people to persuade them to peaceful submission. In this he was successful. The most part shut themselves up in their houses, as Mohammed had commanded, so that the Moslem army was able to take possession of the city almost without resistance. Only Khalid had to carve a way for himself into the lower city through a host of unbelievers whom Akrama, the son of Abu Jahl, had collected under his banner.

When Mohammed saw the chiefs of the Koreish in the dust at his feet, his pride was satisfied and the nobler feelings of mildness and magnanimity reigned in his breast. The people declared themselves ready to abjure their gods, to honour Mohammed as God’s messenger and obey his behests, whereupon the victor, now throned in his native city as prince and prophet after eight years of banishment, proclaimed a general amnesty. Even of the twelve men and six women whom, after his entry into the city, Mohammed had condemned because in former years they had excited his anger by apostasy, treachery, or mocking ballads, the majority were pardoned. Amongst them was Akrama, the son of Abu Jahl, who had fought so bravely at Ohod and had offered resistance to Khalid’s entrance; his uncle the satirical poet Harith; Safwan, son of Omayyah and Hind, the passionate wife of Abu Sufyan; the poet Kaab; Abdallah, Mohammed’s scribe, who was accused of having defaced the sacred fly-leaves of the Koran and in order to escape punishment had fled as an apostate to Mecca; and many others. They all went over to Islam, and Akrama soon exhibited the same heroism in battle for the new faith which he had formerly displayed against Mohammed. For Abdallah, his kinsman Othman made intercession; Mohammed hesitated for some time over the pardon, in the hope that one of his adherents would kill the traitor; then unwillingly let him go.

When order had been restored in the city Mohammed presented himself at the temple. He went round the Kaaba seven times on his camel, each time touching the sacred stone with his staff, and then broke in pieces the idols, 360 in number, which were placed round the sanctuary. After this he had the doors of the temple thrown open, cleansed the house of the Lord from all images, and commanded Bilal to proclaim to the multitude the call to prayer from the summit.

From the time of the prophet’s entry into Mecca the victory of Islam in Arabia was only a question of time. But no religious organisation is destroyed without some of its adherents contending for it with their hearts’ blood. The old Arabian gods too had their steadfast worshippers, who did not shrink from a martyr’s death for the religion of their youth. When Mohammed’s hosts under fanatical leaders penetrated to the surrounding tribes, the idols were thrown down and the ancient sanctuaries destroyed, and then the infuriated pagans put themselves on the defensive and many a sacrifice bled to the religious frenzy. On one such expedition into the district of Teyma, the zealous Khalid proceeded with such harshness and cruelty that Mohammed shuddered at it, and lifting his hands to heaven cried out, “I have no share in these deeds.” He then endeavoured to appease the sufferers through the medium of Ali’s mildness and magnanimity, offered expiation for those slain, and announced that Mecca and all the country should be as inviolable in the future as in the past.

THE VICTORY OF HONAIN AND AUTAS

The religious frenzy of the Moslems roused the heathen tribes of the mountain districts southeast of Mecca to take arms for the defence of their belief, their life, and their property against the new religious society. The Takifites, who had once driven away the ambassador of the Lord with stones, and the Hawazin tribes headed the alliance of the heathen faith. To animate their courage they took wives, children, and all their possessions into the field with them. At this news Mohammed started with his hosts to subdue his last obstinate enemy. But as they marched through the valley of Honain without taking the necessary precautions, they suddenly beheld the height occupied with bowmen. In a short time the ranks of the Moslems gave way; flight and disorder spread through them; the prophet’s cry, “I am Mohammed, the prophet of God, the proclaimer of the truth; stand fast ye faithful!” was unheeded; the Koreish who had followed the army were already giving vent to their malicious joy in mocking words. At this moment Abbas, Mohammed’s uncle, with his loud voice brought the flying and wavering to their senses. At the cry of need the bravest and most spirited again collected round the holy prince and won a complete victory.

In the valleys of Honain and Autas the power of the infidels was forever broken. Seventy were slain, amongst them the old hero Duraid, and the rest took to flight. Women, children, and spoil fell into the hands of the victors. But Mohammed’s endeavour to conquer the strong city of Taif was thwarted by the bravery of the inhabitants and the strength of the walls; it was in vain that, contrary to his own command, he caused the fruit trees to be felled and the vineyards to be dug up; in vain had the soldiers marched to the storming of the town; after a siege of twenty days’ duration he had to withdraw, having effected nothing. An enormous booty rewarded and consoled the Moslems, but at Mohammed’s instance the prisoners were restored to the newly converted tribes. Of his own fifth he presented the greater part to those among the Koreish who had shown themselves steadfast and faithful, and by this means he won over many influential men to his cause. Abu Sufyan and his two sons each received a hundred camels and forty ounces of silver. The Ansars, who murmured at the favour thus shown to their adversaries, were appeased by an affectionate appeal:

“Be not angry if I seek to win the hearts of a few waverers with perishable goods. Your faith and submission have another reward. The messenger of God intrusts you with his own life and fortune; in your midst he returns to Medina; and as ye were the companions of my exile and believed in me in my abasement, so shall ye be the companions of my royalty and shall share in paradise with me.” They cried out weeping, “We are content with our lot!”

The rest of the idolatrous tribes now no longer withstood a religion which Mohammed’s envoys offered them, the Koran in one hand and a sword in the other. Even the Takifites soon after bought peace and security by the sacrifice of their ancient gods, and opened the gates of their city of their own free will.

The Takifites sent ambassadors to inform the prophet that they would go over to Islam if he would exempt them from prayer and would leave them their idol Lat but for three years more.

“Three years of idolatry is too long; and what is the worship of God without prayers?” said Mohammed. The ambassadors then abated their demands and finally an agreement was arrived at by which the Takifites were to pay no taxes and were to keep their idol Lat for another year. Thereupon he began to dictate the record with the words:

“In the name of God the merciful and long-suffering! By this document an agreement is concluded between Mohammed, the messenger of God and the Takifites, that the latter shall neither pay taxes nor take part in the holy war.” But shame and the reproach of conscience arrested his tongue. “Nor throw themselves on their faces in praying,” added the ambassador; and as Mohammed persisted in his silence the Takifites repeated, as he turned to the scribe:

“Write this; it is agreed upon.”

The scribe looked at Mohammed, waiting for his orders. At this moment the fiery Omar, who had hitherto been a dumb witness of this scene, rose, and drawing his sword, cried out:

“Thou hast defiled the heart of the prophet, and may God fill yours with fire.”

“We speak not to thee, but to Mohammed,” answered the ambassador with composure.

“Good,” said the prophet at this; “I will not hear of such a treaty. Ye have your choice between an unconditional acceptance of Islam and war.”

“At least grant us,” said the thunderstruck Takifites, “the worship of Lat for six months longer!”

“No!”

“Then for but one month!”

“Not for an hour!”

On which the ambassadors went back to their city in the company of Mohammedan soldiers, who broke Lat to pieces amid the lamentations of the women.

THE LAST YEARS OF MOHAMMED’S LIFE (630-632 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [630-632 A.D.]]

Mohammed returned to Medina like a victorious king; from all sides came ambassadors and believing followers, to offer their homage and worship, whilst far to the south his envoys on the seacoast won fresh devotees for Islam.

“We are the helpers of God and the soldiers of his messenger,” said the poet Thabit in a rhetorical contest; “we make war on all men until they believe; only he who believes in God and his messenger saves his goods and his blood; we are at feud with all infidels and our victory is always easy.”

The Arab writers linger affectionately over the different scenes of homage which the chiefs of the desert tribes, as well as the inhabitants of the cities, paid to the prophet, the prince of the faithful, in these first years of youthful enthusiasm. Yet adversities and misfortune troubled the end of his life. A hostile party under the leadership of Abdallah still subsisted in Medina. This was especially prominent when the prophet was arranging a fresh expedition against the Greeks in Syria in an oppressive heat, just when the Arabs were busied with the date harvest. Consequently many evaded the order and Abdallah turned back with his men soon after the start. A severe verse of the Koran rebuked the delay.

“Ye say, ‘go not out during the heat’; but God says by Mohammed, ‘the fire of hell is more scorching.’ Your laughter is but of short duration and ye shall one day weep long for your behaviour. Ye shall go forth no more with me and fight no more by my side.”

At Tabuk, between Medina and Damascus, the army came to a halt, that they might recover in that fertile neighbourhood from the toilsome, painful march. Here Mohammed received the submission of the chiefs of some of the Syrian border towns and the homage of a Christian prince. They purchased peace at the price of an annual tribute. Nevertheless Mohammed did not deem it advisable to advance further into the enemy’s country with his small following; he set out on the return march, and through many hardships and perils arrived at Medina after an absence of twenty days. For a time the disobedient were excluded from the circle of the believers; but when with penitence and contrition they sued for forgiveness they were received back into favour. Soon after this, death freed the prophet from his most dangerous adversary, Abdallah ben Obayyah. This event, as well as the homage of more and more Arab tribes, restored his spirits, which had been deeply affected by the death of his two daughters, Zainab and Umm Kolthum. The ninth Sura of the Koran, the symbol of the religion of the sword which he imparted to a host of pilgrims in a reading at the site of the holy temple at Mecca, may be taken as the outpouring of this exalted state of mind. In this he renounced peace with all unbelievers, heathen, Jews, and Christians, forbade them ever to set foot in the sanctuary, and declared perpetual war against them to be a sacred duty. In it he also reiterated the threats and curses against the hypocrites and loiterers who delayed to march to the holy war. Ali’s delivery of this declaration before all the people had the desired effect. The ambassadors, who in the name of the princes and tribes declared the latter’s accession to Islam, were as numerous “as the dates which fall from the palm tree in the time of ripeness.” From the frontier of Syria to the southern end of the peninsula and to the mountains bordering on the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, tribes of all tongues and religions hastened to find the key of paradise in the faith in the “One God who has no fellow.” When in the tenth year of the Hegira, Mohammed, with his nine wives, proceeded on his last pilgrimage to Mecca, which was to serve the Moslems for all future times as a pattern and example, 40,000 (or according to some accounts as many as 114,000) of the faithful accompanied him.

On this pilgrimage the suffering condition of the prophet first became manifest. With great effort he passed seven times round the Kaaba, and as he did so he prayed: “O Lord, prosper us in this life and the next, and preserve us from the pains of hell.” The unnatural agitations and paroxysms of his soul, the great physical exertions, the insidious poison of Khaibar, and finally his grief at the loss of his young son Ibrahim, whom, to his extreme joy, the Egyptian slave Maria had borne to him in the previous year and on whom he had set all his hopes--all these things undermined his health and hastened his end. The laments into which he broke out at sight of the child’s corpse already contained a foreboding of his own approaching end.

“I am grieved at thy loss,” he said, “mine eye weeps and my heart is sad, yet will I utter no lament which may anger the Lord; were I not convinced that I should follow thee, my grief would be inconsolable, but we are God’s and shall return to him.”

[Sidenote: [632 A.D.]]

Three months after his return Mohammed was overtaken in the house of his spouse, Aisha, by an illness which lasted from eight to fourteen days. Often a fierce fever would rob him of consciousness, but often again he had hours of lucidity which he spent in converse with Aisha, his favourite daughter Fatima, the only one of his children who survived her father, and with the friends and relatives who visited him. Besides this, although already extremely ill, he would still go into the neighbouring mosque and speak words of admonition and farewell to the assembled people. As his weakness increased he allowed the prayers to be spoken by Abu Bekr, but was still always present. On the last day he seemed better, so that all save Aisha left him. But soon his illness returned with renewed severity. Before he lost consciousness he gave his slaves their freedom, caused the six or seven dinars[33] which he had in his house to be given to the poor, and then prayed, “God support me in the death struggle.” Aisha had sent for her father and his other followers, but before they arrived he expired in the arms of his favourite wife. His last words were: “To the glorious comrades in paradise.”

He died in the eleventh year of the Hegira in the three-and-sixtieth year of his life, “the prophet, poet, priest, and king of Arabia.” On the news of his departure a great wailing was raised in Aisha’s dwelling, and the people thronged round the door in wild excitement, which was still further increased by Omar’s assurances that the messenger of God was not dead, but would shortly return to his people. Finally the judicious words of Abu Bekr succeeded in calming the crowd:

“O ye people,” he said, “let him amongst you who served Mohammed know that Mohammed is dead; but let him who served God continue in his service, for Mohammed’s God lives and never dies.” Then he read them a verse of the Koran: “Mohammed is only a messenger, many messengers are already gone before him; whether he died a natural death or was slain, shall ye turn on your heels? He who does this (forsakes his faith), can do no harm to God, but the grateful shall be rewarded.” Despair now passed into quiet grief; Omar himself was so moved that he fell to the earth and acknowledged that Mohammed was really dead.

Three days later Mohammed was lowered into the earth at the spot where he had died. His tomb at Medina was subsequently included within the bounds of the sanctuary by the enlargement of the mosque, which stood next to the house, and like the Kaaba of Mecca it has remained up to the present time to be a place of pilgrimage much resorted to by pious Moslems. Osama, the youthful son of that Zaid who had fallen at Muta, was absent on a new campaign against Syria at the moment when he received tidings of the prophet’s death. He at once led his soldiers back to Medina, and full of sadness set up his banner before the house.[f]

The personal traits of Mohammed are preserved to us in wonderfully minute details and illustrated by numberless anecdotes, many of which are of course apocryphal. We may quote a brief and vivid picture from the Sirat or Biography of Mohammed, written by Ibn Saad,[g] the secretary of the Arab historian Wakidi. The translation is from unpublished manuscript notes by Sir William Muir,[e] the modern biographer of Mohammed.[a]

“He was fair of complexion with a measure of redness; eyes intensely black; his hair not crisp but depending; beard bushy and thick; cheeks not fat; his neck shone like a vessel of silver; he had a line of hair from his breast to his navel like a branch, but besides this he had no hair on his belly or chest. His hands and feet were not hollow, but filled up. When he walked it was as though he walked from a higher to a lower place; and when he walked it was as though he pulled (or wrenched) his feet from the stones; when he turned he turned round entirely. The perspiration on his face was like pearls, and the smell thereof was pleasanter than musk of pure quality. He was neither long nor short; he was neither weakly nor vile; the like of him I never saw before or after.

“Mohammed had a large head, large eyes, large eyelashes; his colour bright and shining; large joints of his limbs; a long narrow line of hair from his chest to his belly. He was not very tall, but above the middle height. When he approached with his people he appeared to cover them (shutting them out of view). His hair was neither crisp nor frizzled; curly nor quite smooth and plain. It was like that of a curly-haired man combed out. His face was neither very fat nor very lean; it was round; he had large joints and a broad chest. His body was free from hair. Who ever saw him for the first time would be awe stricken at his appearance, but on close intimacy this would give way to love. His pupil was intensely black; his back large.”[g]

GIBBON’S ESTIMATE OF MOHAMMED AND MOHAMMEDANISM

[Sidenote: [622-632 A.D.]]

At the conclusion of the life of Mohammed, it may perhaps be expected that I should balance his faults and virtues, that I should decide whether the title of enthusiast or impostor more properly belongs to that extraordinary man. Had I been intimately conversant with the son of Abdallah, the task would still be difficult, and the success uncertain: at the distance of twelve centuries, I darkly contemplate his shade through a cloud of religious incense; and could I truly delineate the portrait of an hour, the fleeting resemblance would not equally apply to the solitary of Mount Hira, to the preacher of Mecca, and to the conqueror of Arabia. The author of a mighty revolution appears to have been endowed with a pious and contemplative disposition; so soon as marriage had raised him above the pressure of want, he avoided the paths of ambition and avarice; and till the age of forty, he lived with innocence, and would have died without a name. The unity of God is an idea most congenial to nature and reason; and a slight conversation with the Jews and Christians would teach him to despise and detest the idolatry of Mecca. It was the duty of a man and a citizen to impart the doctrine of salvation, to rescue his country from the dominion of sin and error. The energy of a mind incessantly bent on the same object, would convert a general obligation into a particular call; the warm suggestions of the understanding or the fancy would be felt as the inspirations of heaven; the labour of thought would expire in rapture and vision; and the inward sensation, the invisible monitor, would be described with the form and attributes of an angel of God.

From enthusiasm to imposture the step is perilous and slippery; the demon of Socrates affords a memorable instance how a wise man may deceive himself, how a good man may deceive others, how the conscience may slumber in a mixed middle state between self-illusion and voluntary fraud. Charity may believe that the original motives of Mohammed were those of pure and genuine benevolence; but a human missionary is incapable of cherishing the obstinate unbelievers who reject his claims, despise his arguments, and persecute his life; he might forgive his personal adversaries, he may lawfully hate the enemies of God; the stern passions of pride and revenge were kindled in the bosom of Mohammed, and he sighed, like the prophet of Nineveh, for the destruction of the rebels whom he had condemned. The injustice of Mecca and the choice of Medina transformed the citizen into a prince, the humble preacher into the leader of armies; but his sword was consecrated by the example of the saints; and the same God who afflicts a sinful world with pestilence and earthquakes might inspire for their conversion or chastisement the valour of his servants. In the exercise of political government he was compelled to abate the stern rigour of fanaticism, to comply, in some measure, with the prejudices and passions of his followers, and to employ even the vices of mankind as the instruments of their salvation. The use of fraud and perfidy, of cruelty and injustice, were often subservient to the propagation of the faith; and Mohammed commanded or approved the assassination of the Jews and idolaters who had escaped from the field of battle.

By the repetition of such acts, the character of Mohammed must have been gradually stained; and the influence of such pernicious habits would be poorly compensated by the practice of the personal and social virtues, which are necessary to maintain the reputation of a prophet among his sectaries and friends. Of his last years, ambition was the ruling passion; and a politician will suspect that he secretly smiled (the victorious impostor!) at the enthusiasm of his youth and the credulity of his proselytes. A philosopher would observe that their credulity and his success would tend more strongly to fortify the assurance of his divine mission, that his interest and religion were inseparably connected, and that his conscience would be soothed by the persuasion that he alone was absolved by the Deity from the obligation of positive and moral laws. If he retained any vestige of his native innocence, the sins of Mohammed may be allowed as the evidence of his sincerity. In the support of truth, the arts of fraud and fiction may be deemed less criminal; and he would have started at the foulness of the means, had he not been satisfied of the importance and justice of the end. The decree of Mohammed that, in the sale of captives, the mothers should never be separated from their children, may suspend or moderate the censure of the historian.

The good sense of Mohammed despised the pomp of royalty; the apostle of God submitted to the menial offices of the family; he kindled the fire, swept the floor, milked the ewes, and mended with his own hands his shoes and his woollen garment. Disdaining the penance and merit of a hermit, he observed, without effort or vanity, the abstemious diet of an Arab and a soldier. On solemn occasions he feasted his companions with rustic and hospitable plenty; but in his domestic life many weeks would elapse without a fire being kindled on the hearth of the prophet. The interdiction of wine was confirmed by his example; his hunger was appeased with a sparing allowance of barley-bread; he delighted in the taste of milk and honey, but his ordinary food consisted of dates and water. Perfumes and women were the two sensual enjoyments which his nature required and his religion did not forbid; and Mohammed affirmed that the fervour of his devotion was increased by these innocent pleasures. The heat of the climate inflames the blood of the Arabs; and their libidinous complexion has been noticed by the writers of antiquity. Their incontinence was regulated by the civil and religious laws of the Koran; their incestuous alliances were blamed; the boundless license of polygamy was reduced to four legitimate wives or concubines; their rights both of bed and of dowry were equitably determined; the freedom of divorce was discouraged; adultery was condemned as a capital offence; and fornication, in either sex, was punished with a hundred stripes.

Such were the calm and rational precepts of the legislator; but in his private conduct Mohammed indulged the appetites of a man and abused the claims of a prophet. A special revelation dispensed him from the laws which he had imposed on his nation; the female sex, without reserve, was abandoned to his desires; and this singular prerogative excited the envy rather than the scandal, the veneration rather than the envy of the devout Mussulmans. If we remember the seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines of the wise Solomon, we shall applaud the modesty of the Arabian, who espoused no more than seventeen or fifteen wives; eleven are enumerated, who occupied at Medina their separate apartments round the house of the apostle, and enjoyed in their turns the favour of his conjugal society. What is singular enough, they were all widows, excepting only Aisha, the daughter of Abu Bekr. She was doubtless a virgin, since Mohammed consummated his nuptials (such is the premature ripeness of the climate) when she was only nine years of age. The youth, the beauty, the spirit of Aisha, gave her a superior ascendant: she was beloved and trusted by the prophet; and after his death the daughter of Abu Bekr was long revered as the mother of the faithful. Her behaviour had been ambiguous and indiscreet; in a nocturnal march she was accidentally left behind, and in the morning Aisha returned to the camp with a man.

The temper of Mohammed was inclined to jealousy; but a divine revelation assured him of her innocence; he chastised her accusers, and published a law of domestic peace, that no woman should be condemned unless four male witnesses had seen her in the act of adultery. In his adventures with Zainab, the wife of Zaid, and with Maria, an Egyptian captive, the amorous prophet forgot the interest of his reputation. At the house of Zaid, his freedman and adopted son, he beheld in a loose undress the beauty of Zainab, and burst forth into an ejaculation of devotion and desire. The servile, or grateful, freedman understood the hint, and yielded without hesitation to the love of his benefactor. But as the filial relation had excited some doubt and scandal, the angel Gabriel descended from heaven to ratify the deed, to annul the adoption, and gently to reprove the apostle for distrusting the indulgence of his God. One of his wives, Hafsa, the daughter of Omar, surprised him on her own bed in the embraces of his Egyptian captive; she promised secrecy and forgiveness, he swore that he would renounce the possession of Maria. Both parties forgot their engagements, and Gabriel again descended with a chapter of the Koran, to absolve him from his oath and to exhort him freely to enjoy his captives and concubines, without listening to the clamours of his wives. In a solitary retreat of thirty days, he laboured, alone with Maria, to fulfil the commands of the angel. When his love and revenge were satiated, he summoned to his presence his eleven wives, reproached their disobedience and indiscretion, and threatened them with a sentence of divorce, both in this world and the next--a dreadful sentence, since those who had ascended the bed of the prophet were forever excluded from the hope of a second marriage.

Perhaps the incontinence of Mohammed may be palliated by the tradition of his natural or preternatural gifts; he united the manly virtue of thirty of the children of Adam, and the apostle might rival the thirteenth labour of the Grecian Hercules. A more serious and decent excuse may be drawn from his fidelity to Khadija. During the twenty-four years of their marriage her youthful husband abstained from the right of polygamy, and the pride or tenderness of the venerable matron was never insulted by the society of a rival. After her death he placed her in the rank of the four perfect women, with the sister of Moses, the mother of Jesus, and Fatima, the best beloved of his daughters. “Was she not old?” said Aisha, with the insolence of a blooming beauty, “has not God given you a better in her place?” “No, by God,” said Mohammed, with an effusion of honest gratitude, “there never can be a better! she believed in me when men despised me; she relieved my wants when I was poor and persecuted by the world.”

In the largest indulgence of polygamy, the founder of a religion and empire might aspire to multiply the chances of a numerous posterity and a lineal succession. The hopes of Mohammed were fatally disappointed. The virgin Aisha, and his ten widows of mature age and approved fertility, were barren in his potent embraces. The four sons of Khadija died in their infancy. Maria, his Egyptian concubine, was endeared to him by the birth of Ibrahim. At the end of fifteen months the prophet wept over his grave; but he sustained with firmness the raillery of his enemies, and checked the adulation or credulity of the Moslems, by the assurance that an eclipse of the sun was not occasioned by the death of the infant. Khadija had likewise given him four daughters, who were married to the most faithful of his disciples; the three eldest died before their father; but Fatima, who possessed his confidence and love, became the wife of her cousin Ali, and the mother of an illustrious progeny.

From his earliest youth, Mohammed was addicted to religious contemplation; each year, during the month of Ramadhan, he withdrew from the world and from the arms of Khadija; in the cave of Hira, three miles from Mecca, he consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens but in the mind of the prophet. The faith which, under the name of Islam, he preached to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth and a necessary fiction--that there is only one God, and that Mohammed is the apostle of God.

The Christians of the seventh century had insensibly relapsed into a semblance of paganism; their public and private vows were addressed to the relics and images that disgraced the temples of the East; the throne of the Almighty was darkened by a cloud of martyrs, and saints, and angels, the objects of popular veneration; and the Collyridian heretics, who flourished in the fruitful soil of Arabia, invested the Virgin Mary with the name and honours of a goddess. The creed of Mohammed is free from suspicion or ambiguity; and the Koran is a glorious testimony to the unity of God. The prophet of Mecca rejected the worship of idols and men, of stars and planets, on the rational principle that whatever rises must set, that whatever is born must die, that whatever is corruptible must decay and perish. In the author of the universe, his rational enthusiasm confessed and adored an infinite and eternal being, without form or place, without issue or similitude, present to our most secret thoughts, existing by the necessity of his own nature, and deriving from himself all moral and intellectual perfection. These sublime truths, thus announced in the language of the prophet, are firmly held by his disciples, and defined with metaphysical precision by the interpreters of the Koran. The first principle of reason and revelation was confirmed by the voice of Mohammed; his proselytes, from India to Morocco, are distinguished by the name of Unitarians; and the danger of idolatry has been prevented by the interdiction of images. The doctrine of eternal decrees and absolute predestination is strictly embraced by the Mohammedans; and they struggle with the common difficulties, how to reconcile the prescience of God with the freedom and responsibility of man; how to explain the permission of evil under the reign of infinite power and infinite goodness.

The liberality of Mohammed allowed to his predecessors the same credit which he claimed for himself; and the chain of inspiration was prolonged from the fall of Adam to the promulgation of the Koran. During that period, some rays of prophetic light had been imparted to 124,000 of the elect, discriminated by their respective measure of virtue and grace; 313 apostles were sent with a special commission to recall their country from idolatry and vice; 104 volumes had been dictated by the holy spirit; and six legislators of transcendent brightness have announced to mankind the six successive revelations of various rites, but of one immutable religion. The authority and station of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ, and Mohammed rise in just gradation above each other; but whosoever hates or rejects any one of the prophets is numbered with the infidels. The writings of the patriarchs were extant only in the apocryphal copies of the Greeks and Syrians; the conduct of Adam had not entitled him to the gratitude or respect of his children; the seven precepts of Noah were observed by an inferior and imperfect class of the proselytes of the synagogue, and the memory of Abraham was obscurely revered by the Sabians in his native land of Chaldea; of the myriads of prophets, Moses and Christ alone lived and reigned; and the remnant of the inspired writings was comprised in the books of the Old and the New Testament. The miraculous story of Moses is consecrated and embellished in the Koran; and the captive Jews enjoy the secret revenge of imposing their belief on the nations whose recent creeds they deride. For the author of Christianity, the Mohammedans are taught by the prophet to entertain a high and mysterious reverence. “Verily, Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, is the Apostle of God, and His word, which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit proceeding from him are honourable in this world, and in the world to come; and He is one of those who approach near to the presence of God.” The piety of Moses and of Christ rejoiced in the assurance of a future prophet, more illustrious than themselves; the evangelic promise of the Paraclete, or Holy Ghost, was prefigured in the name, and accomplished in the person, of Mohammed, the greatest and the last of the apostles of God.

The inspiration of the Hebrew prophets, of the apostles and evangelists of Christ, might not be incompatible with the exercise of their reason and memory; and the diversity of their genius is strongly marked in the style and composition of the books of the Old and New Testament. But Mohammed was content with a character, more humble yet more sublime, of a simple editor; the substance of the Koran, according to himself or his disciples, is uncreated and eternal; subsisting in the essence of the Deity, and inscribed with a pen of light on the table of his everlasting decrees. A paper copy, in a volume of silk and gems, was brought down to the lowest heaven by the angel Gabriel, who, under the Jewish economy, had indeed been despatched on the most important errands; and this trusty messenger successively revealed the chapters and verses to the Arabian prophet. Instead of a perpetual and perfect measure of the divine will, the fragments of the Koran were produced at the discretion of Mohammed; each revelation is suited to the emergencies of his policy or passion; and all contradiction is removed by the saving maxim that any text of Scripture is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage. The word of God, and of the apostle, was diligently recorded by his disciples on palm leaves and the shoulder bones of mutton; and the pages, without order or connection, were cast into a domestic chest in the custody of one of his wives.

Two years after the death of Mohammed the sacred volume was collected and published by his friend and successor Abu Bekr. The work was revised by the caliph Othman, in the thirtieth year of the Hegira; and the various editions of the Koran assert the same miraculous privilege of a uniform and incorruptible text. In the spirit of enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet rests the truth of his mission on the merit of his book, audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate the beauties of a single page, and presumes to assert that God alone could dictate this incomparable performance. This argument is most powerfully addressed to a devout Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith and rapture, whose ear is delighted by the music of sounds, and whose ignorance is incapable of comparing the productions of human genius. The harmony and copiousness of style will not reach, in a version, the European infidel; he will peruse with impatience the endless incoherent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds. The divine attributes exalt the fancy of the Arabian missionary; but his loftiest strains must yield to the sublime simplicity of the book of Job, composed in a remote age, in the same country, and in the same language. If the composition of the Koran exceed the faculties of a man, to what superior intelligence should we ascribe the Iliad of Homer or the Philippics of Demosthenes?

In all religions, the life of the founder supplies the silence of his written revelation; the sayings of Mohammed were so many lessons of truth, his actions so many examples of virtue; and the public and private memorials were preserved by his wives and companions. At the end of two hundred years the sunna, or oral law, was fixed and consecrated by the labours of Al-Buchari, who discriminated 7,275 traditions, from a mass of 300,000 reports of a more doubtful or spurious character. Each day the pious author prayed in the temple of Mecca, and performed his ablutions with the water of Zemzem; the pages were successively deposited on the pulpit and the sepulchre of the apostle; and the work has been approved by the four orthodox sects of the Sunnites.

The mission of the ancient prophets, of Moses, and of Jesus, had been confirmed by many splendid prodigies; and Mohammed was repeatedly urged by the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina to produce a similar evidence of his divine legation; to call down from heaven the angel or the volume of his revelation, to create a garden in the desert, or to kindle a conflagration in the unbelieving city. As often as he is pressed by the demands of the Koreish, he involves himself in the obscure boast of vision and prophecy, appeals to the internal proofs of his doctrine, and shields himself behind the providence of God, who refuses those signs and wonders that would depreciate the merit of faith and aggravate the guilt of infidelity. But the modest or angry tone of his apologies betrays his weakness and vexation; and these passages of scandal establish, beyond suspicion, the integrity of the Koran.

The votaries of Mohammed are more assured than himself of his miraculous gifts, and their confidence and credulity increase as they are further removed from the time and place of his spiritual exploits. They believe or affirm that trees went forth to meet him; that he was saluted by stones; that water gushed from his fingers; that he fed the hungry, cured the sick, and raised the dead; that a beam groaned to him; that a camel complained to him; that a shoulder of mutton informed him of its being poisoned; and that both animate and inanimate nature were equally subject to the apostle of God. His dream of a nocturnal journey is seriously described as a real and corporeal transaction. A mysterious animal, the borak, conveyed him from the temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem; with his companion Gabriel he successively ascended the seven heavens, and received and repaid the salutations of the patriarchs, the prophets, and the angels, in their respective mansions. Beyond the seventh heaven, Mohammed alone was permitted to proceed; he passed the veil of unity, approached within two bow-shots of the throne, and felt a cold that pierced him to the heart when his shoulder was touched by the hand of God. After this familiar, though important conversation, he again descended to Jerusalem, remounted the borak, returned to Mecca, and performed in the tenth part of a night the journey of many thousand years. According to another legend, the apostle confounded in a national assembly the malicious challenge of the Koreish. His resistless word split asunder the orb of the moon; the obedient planet stooped from her station in the sky, accomplished the seven revolutions round the Kaaba, saluted Mohammed in the Arabian tongue, and suddenly contracting her dimensions entered at the collar, and issued forth through the sleeve of his shirt. The vulgar are amused with these marvellous tales; but the gravest of the Mussulman doctors imitate the modesty of their master, and indulge a latitude of faith or interpretation. They might speciously allege that, in preaching the religion, it was needless to violate the harmony of nature; that a creed unclouded with mystery may be excused from miracles; and that the sword of Mohammed was not less potent than the rod of Moses.

The polytheist is oppressed and distracted by the variety of superstition; a thousand rites of Egyptian origin were interwoven with the essence of the Mosaic law, and the spirit of the Gospel had evaporated in the pageantry of the church. The prophet of Mecca was tempted, by prejudice, or policy, or patriotism, to sanctify the rites of the Arabians and the custom of visiting the holy stone of the Kaaba. But the precepts of Mohammed himself inculcate a more simple and rational piety; prayer, fasting, and alms are the religious duties of a Mussulman; and he is encouraged to hope that prayer will carry him half-way to God, fasting will bring him to the door of his palace, and alms will gain him admittance.

(1) According to the tradition of the nocturnal journey, the apostle, in his personal conference with the Deity, was commanded to impose on his disciples the daily obligation of fifty prayers. By the advice of Moses, he applied for an alleviation of this intolerable burden; the number was gradually reduced to five; without any dispensation of business or pleasure, or time or place, the devotion of the faithful is repeated at daybreak, at noon, in the afternoon, in the evening, and at the first watch of the night; and in the present decay of religious fervour our travellers are edified by the profound humility and attention of the Turks and Persians. Cleanliness is the key of prayer; the frequent lustration of the hands, the face, and the body, which was practised of old by the Arabs, is solemnly enjoined by the Koran; and a permission is formally granted to supply with sand the scarcity of water. The words and attitudes of supplication, as it is performed either sitting, or standing, or prostrate on the ground, are prescribed by custom or authority, but the prayer is poured forth in short and fervent ejaculations; the measure of zeal is not exhausted by a tedious liturgy; and each Mussulman, for his own person, is invested with the character of a priest. Among the theists, who reject the use of images, it has been found necessary to restrain the wanderings of the fancy by directing the eye and the thought towards a kibla, or visible point of the horizon. The prophet was at first inclined to gratify the Jews by the choice of Jerusalem, but he soon returned to a more natural partiality; and five times every day the eyes of the nations at Astrakhan, at Fez, at Delhi are devoutly turned to the holy temple of Mecca. Yet every spot for the service of God is equally pure; the Mohammedans indifferently pray in their chamber or in the street. As a distinction from the Jews and Christians, the Friday in each week is set apart for the useful institution of public worship; the people are assembled in the mosque; and the imam, some respectable elder, ascends the pulpit, to begin the prayer and pronounce the sermon. But the Mohammedan religion is destitute of priesthood or sacrifice; and the independent spirit of fanaticism looks down with contempt on the ministers and the slaves of superstition.

(2) The voluntary penance of the ascetics, the torment and glory of their lives, was odious to a prophet who censured in his companions a rash vow of abstaining from flesh, and women, and sleep; and firmly declared that he would suffer no monks in his religion. Yet he instituted, in each year, a fast of thirty days; and strenuously recommended the observance, as a discipline which purifies the soul and subdues the body, as a salutary exercise of obedience to the will of God and his apostle. During the month of Ramadhan, from the rising to the setting of the sun, the Mussulman abstains from eating, and drinking, and women, and baths, and perfumes; from all nourishment that can restore his strength, from all pleasure that can gratify his senses. In the revolution of the lunar year, the Ramadhan coincides by turns with the winter cold and the summer heat; and the patient martyr, without assuaging his thirst with a drop of water, must expect the close of a tedious and sultry day. The interdiction of wine, peculiar to some orders of priests or hermits, is converted by Mohammed alone into a positive and general law; and a considerable portion of the globe has abjured, at his command, the use of that salutary though dangerous liquor. These painful restraints are, doubtless, infringed by the libertine and eluded by the hypocrite; but the legislator by whom they are enacted cannot surely be accused of alluring his proselytes by the indulgence of their sensual appetites.

(3) The charity of the Mohammedans descends to the animal creation; and the Koran repeatedly inculcates, not as a merit but as a strict and indispensable duty, the relief of the indigent and unfortunate. Mohammed, perhaps, is the only lawgiver who has defined the precise measure of charity; the standard may vary with the degree and nature of property, as it consists either in money, in corn or cattle, in fruits or merchandise; but the Mussulman does not accomplish the law unless he bestows a tenth of his revenue; and if his conscience accuses him of fraud or extortion, the tenth, under the idea of restitution, is enlarged to a fifth. Benevolence is the foundation of justice, since we are forbidden to injure those whom we are bound to assist. A prophet may reveal the secrets of heaven and of futurity; but in his moral precepts he can only repeat the lessons of our own hearts.

The two articles of belief and the four practical duties of Islam are guarded by rewards and punishments; and the faith of the Mussulman is devoutly fixed on the event of the judgment and the last day. The prophet has not presumed to determine the moment of that awful catastrophe, though he darkly announces the signs, both in heaven and earth, which will precede the universal dissolution, when life shall be destroyed and the order of creation shall be confounded in the primitive chaos. At the blast of the trumpet, new worlds will start into being; angels, genii, and men will arise from the dead, and the human soul will again be united to the body. The doctrine of the resurrection was first entertained by the Egyptians; and their mummies were embalmed, their pyramids were constructed, to preserve the ancient mansion of the soul during a period of three thousand years. But the attempt is partial and unavailing; and it is with a more philosophic spirit that Mohammed relies on the omnipotence of the Creator, whose word can reanimate the breathless clay, and collect the innumerable atoms that no longer retain their form or substance. The intermediate state of the soul it is hard to decide; and those who most firmly believe in her immaterial nature, are at a loss to understand how she can think or act without the agency of the organs of sense.

The reunion of the soul and body will be followed by the final judgment of mankind; and in his copy of the magian picture the prophet has too faithfully represented the forms of proceeding, and even the slow and successive operations of an earthly tribunal. By his intolerant adversaries he is upbraided for extending, even to themselves, the hope of salvation; for asserting the blackest heresy--that every man who believes in God and accomplishes good works may expect in the last day a favourable sentence. Such rational indifference is ill adapted to the character of a fanatic; nor is it probable that a messenger from heaven should depreciate the value and necessity of his own revelation. In the idiom of the Koran, the belief of God is inseparable from that of Mohammed; the good works are those which he has enjoined; and the two qualifications imply the profession of Islam, to which all nations and all sects are equally invited. Their spiritual blindness, though excused by ignorance and crowned with virtue, will be scourged with everlasting torments; and the tears which Mohammed shed over the tomb of his mother, for whom he was forbidden to pray, display a striking contrast of humanity and enthusiasm.

The doom of the infidels is common; the measure of their guilt and punishment is determined by the degree of evidence which they have rejected, by the magnitude of the errors which they have entertained; the eternal mansions of the Christians, the Jews, the Sabians, the Magians, and the idolaters are sunk below each other in the abyss; and the lowest hell is reserved for the faithless hypocrites who have assumed the mask of religion. After the greater part of mankind has been condemned for their opinions, the true believers only will be judged by their actions. The good and evil of each Mussulman will be accurately weighed in a real or allegorical balance, and a singular mode of compensation will be allowed for the payment of injuries; the aggressor will refund an equivalent of his own good actions for the benefit of the person whom he has wronged; and if he should be destitute of any moral property, the weight of his sins will be loaded with an adequate share of the demerits of the sufferer. According as the shares of guilt or virtue shall preponderate, the sentence will be pronounced, and all, without distinction, will pass over the sharp and perilous bridge of the abyss; but the innocent, treading in the footsteps of Mohammed, will gloriously enter the gates of paradise, while the guilty will fall into the first and mildest of the seven hells. The term of expiation will vary from nine hundred to seven thousand years; but the prophet has judiciously promised that all his disciples, whatever may be their sins, shall be saved, by their own faith and his intercession, from eternal damnation.

It is not surprising that superstition should act most powerfully on the fears of her votaries, since the human fancy can paint with more energy the misery than the bliss of a future life. With the two simple elements of darkness and fire we create a sensation of pain, which may be aggravated to an infinite degree by the idea of endless duration. But the same idea operates with an opposite effect on the continuity of pleasure; and too much of our present enjoyment is obtained from the relief, or the comparison of evil. It is natural enough that an Arabian prophet should dwell with rapture on the groves, the fountains, and the rivers of paradise; but instead of inspiring the blessed inhabitants with a liberal taste for harmony and science, conversation and friendship, he idly celebrates the pearls and diamonds, the robes of silk, palaces of marble, dishes of gold, rich wines, artificial dainties, numerous attendants, and the whole train of sensual and costly luxury which becomes insipid to the owner, even in the short period of this mortal life. Seventy-two houris, or black-eyed girls, of resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite sensibility will be created for the use of the meanest believer; a moment of pleasure will be prolonged to a thousand years, and his faculties will be increased a hundredfold, to render him worthy of his felicity.

Notwithstanding a vulgar prejudice, the gates of heaven will be open to both sexes; but Mohammed has not specified the male companions of the female elect, lest he should either alarm the jealousy of their former husbands, or disturb their felicity by the suspicion of an everlasting marriage. This image of a carnal paradise has provoked the indignation, perhaps the envy, of the monks; they declaim against the impure religion of Mohammed; and his modest apologists are driven to the poor excuse of figures and allegories. But the sounder and more consistent party adheres, without shame, to the literal interpretation of the Koran; useless would be the resurrection of the body, unless it were restored to the possession and exercise of its worthiest faculties; and the union of sensual and intellectual enjoyment is requisite to complete the happiness of the double animal, the perfect man. Yet the joys of the Mohammedan paradise will not be confined to the indulgence of luxury and appetite; and the prophet has expressly declared that all meaner happiness will be forgotten and despised by the saints and martyrs, who shall be admitted to the beatitude of the divine vision.

The talents of Mohammed are entitled to our applause; but his success has perhaps too strongly attracted our admiration. Are we surprised that a multitude of proselytes should embrace the doctrine and the passions of an eloquent fanatic? In the heresies of the church the same seduction has been tried and repeated from the time of the apostles to that of the reformers. Does it seem incredible that a private citizen should grasp the sword and the sceptre, subdue his native country, and erect a monarchy by his victorious arms? In the moving picture of the dynasties of the East, a hundred fortunate usurpers have arisen from a baser origin, surmounted more formidable obstacles, and filled a larger scope of empire and conquest.

Mohammed was alike instructed to preach and to fight, and the union of these opposite qualities, while it enhanced his merit, contributed to his success; the operation of force and persuasion, of enthusiasm and fear, continually acted on each other, till every barrier yielded to their irresistible power. His voice invited the Arabs to freedom and victory, to arms and rapine, to the indulgence of their darling passions in this world and the other; the restraints which he imposed were requisite to establish the credit of the prophet and to exercise the obedience of the people; and the only objection to his success was his rational creed of the unity and perfections of God.

It is not the propagation but the permanency of his religion that deserves our wonder; the same pure and perfect impression which he engraved at Mecca and Medina is preserved after the revolutions of twelve centuries by the Indian, the African, and the Turkish proselytes of the Koran. If the Christian apostles, St. Peter or St. Paul, could return to the Vatican, they might possibly inquire the name of the deity who is worshipped with such mysterious rites in that magnificent temple; at Oxford or Geneva, they would experience less surprise, but it might still be incumbent on them to peruse the catechism of the church and to study the orthodox commentators on their own writings and the words of their master. But the Turkish dome of St. Sophia, with an increase of splendour and size, represents the humble tabernacle erected at Medina by the hands of Mohammed. The Mohammedans have uniformly withstood the temptation of reducing the object of their faith and devotion to a level with the senses and imagination of man. “I believe in one God, and Mohammed the apostle of God,” is the simple and invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible idol; the honours of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human virtue; and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion. The votaries of Ali have indeed consecrated the memory of their hero, his wife, and his children, and some of the Persian doctors pretend that the divine essence was incarnate in the person of the imams; but their superstition is universally condemned by the Sunnites, and their impiety has afforded a seasonable warning against the worship of saints and martyrs.

The metaphysical questions on the attributes of God and the liberty of man have been agitated in the schools of the Mohammedans, as well as in those of the Christians; but among the former they have never engaged the passions of the people or disturbed the tranquillity of the state. The cause of this important difference may be found in the separation or union of the regal and sacerdotal characters. It was the interest of the caliphs, the successors of the prophet and commanders of the faithful, to repress and discourage all religious innovations; the order, the discipline, the temporal and spiritual ambition of the clergy are unknown to the Moslems, and the sages of the law are the guides of their conscience and the oracles of their faith. From the Atlantic to the Ganges the Koran is acknowledged as the fundamental code, not only of theology but of civil and criminal jurisprudence; and the laws which regulate the actions and the property of mankind are guarded by the infallible and immutable sanction of the will of God. This religious servitude is attended with some practical disadvantage; the illiterate legislator had been often misled by his own prejudices and those of his country; and the institutions of the Arabian desert may be ill adapted to the wealth and numbers of Ispahan and Constantinople. On these occasions, the kadi respectfully places on his head the holy volume, and substitutes a dexterous interpretation more apposite to the principles of equity and the manners and policy of the times.

His beneficial or pernicious influence on the public happiness is the last consideration in the character of Mohammed. The most bitter or most bigoted of his Christian or Jewish foes will surely allow that he assumed a false commission to inculcate a salutary doctrine, less perfect only than their own. He piously supposed, as the basis of his religion, the truth and sanctity of their prior revelations, the virtues and miracles of their founders. The idols of Arabia were broken before the throne of God; the blood of human victims was expiated by prayer, and fasting, and alms, the laudable or innocent arts of devotion; and his rewards and punishments of a future life were painted by the images most congenial to an ignorant and carnal generation. Mohammed was, perhaps, incapable of dictating a moral and political system for the use of his countrymen; but he breathed among the faithful a spirit of charity and friendship, recommended the practice of the social virtues, and checked, by his laws and precepts, the thirst of revenge and the oppression of widow and orphans. The hostile tribes were united in faith and obedience, and the valour which had been idly spent in domestic quarrels was vigorously directed against a foreign enemy. Had the impulse been less powerful, Arabia, free at home and formidable abroad, might have flourished under a succession of her native monarchs. Her sovereignty was lost by the extent and rapidity of conquest. The colonies of the nation were scattered over the East and West, and their blood was mingled with the blood of their converts and captives. After the reign of three caliphs, the throne was transported from Medina to the valley of Damascus and the banks of the Tigris; the holy cities were violated by impious war; Arabia was ruled by the rod of a subject, perhaps of a stranger; and the Bedouins of the desert, awakening from their dream of dominion, resumed their old and solitary independence.[d]

FOOTNOTES

[31] [Muir[e] and other accounts say that Hamza’s liver was cut out and brought to Hind; this because he had slain her father at Bedr.]

[32] [The fortress.]

[33] [Dinar--a gold coin. Its original weight was 65.4 grains troy.]

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V. THE SPREAD OF ISLAM

ABU BEKR, FIRST CALIPH AFTER MOHAMMED

[Sidenote: [632-661 A.D.]]

Mohammed, the founder of the Saracenic empire, died at Medina, on Monday the 8th of June, 632 A.D., being the twenty-second year of the reign of Heraclius the Grecian emperor. After he was dead, the next care was to appoint a successor; and it was indeed very necessary that one should be provided as soon as possible. Their government and religion being both in their infancy, and a great many of Mohammed’s followers no great bigots, not having yet forgotten their ancient rights and customs, but rather forced to leave them for fear, than upon any conviction, affairs were in such a posture as could by no means admit of an interregnum. Wherefore the same day that he expired the Mussulmans met together in order to elect a caliph or successor. In that assembly there had like to have been such a fray, as might, in all probability, have greatly endangered, if not utterly ruined, this new religion and polity, had not Omar and Abu Bekr timely interposed. For the prophet having left no positive directions concerning a successor, or at least none that were known to any but his wives, who in all probability might conceal them out of their partiality in favour of Omar, a hot dispute arose between the inhabitants of Mecca and Medina.

At last Omar being wearied out, and seeing no likelihood of deciding the matter, was willing to give over, and bade Abu Bekr give him his hand, which he had no sooner done than Omar promised him fealty. The rest followed his example, and by the consent of both parties Abu Bekr was at last saluted caliph, and being acknowledged the rightful successor of their prophet Mohammed, became the absolute judge of all causes both sacred and civil. Thus, after much ado, that difference was at last composed, which had like to have proved fatal to Mohammedanism. And certainly it was a very great oversight in Mohammed, in all the time of his sickness, never to have named a successor positively and publicly. If he had done so, without question, his authority would have determined the business, and prevented that disturbance which had like to have endangered the religion he had planted with so much difficulty and hazard.

Now though the government was actually settled upon Abu Bekr, all parties were not equally satisfied, for a great many were of opinion that the right of succession belonged to Ali, the son of Abu Talib. Upon which account the Mohammedans have ever since been divided; some maintaining that Abu Bekr, and Omar, and Othman, that came after him, were the rightful and lawful successors of the prophet; and others disclaiming them altogether as usurpers, and constantly asserting the right of Ali. Of the former opinion are the Turks at this day; of the latter, the Persians. And such consequently is the difference between those two nations, that notwithstanding their agreement in all other points of their superstition, yet upon this account they treat one another as most damnable heretics. Ali had this to recommend him, that he was Mohammed’s cousin-german, and was the first that embraced his religion, except his wife Khadija, and his slave Zaid, and was besides Mohammed’s son-in-law, having married his daughter Fatima. Abu Bekr was Mohammed’s father-in-law, by whom he was so much respected that he received from him the surname of As-Siddik (which signifies in Arabic, “a great speaker of truth”), because he resolutely asserted the truth of that story which Mohammed told of his going one night to heaven.

Ali was not present at this election, and when he heard the news was not well pleased, having hoped that the choice would have fallen on himself. Abu Bekr sent Omar to Fatima’s house, where Ali and some of his friends were, with orders to compel them by force to come in and do fealty to him, if they would not be persuaded by fair means. Omar was just going to fire the house, when Fatima asked him what he meant. He told her that he would certainly burn the house down unless they would be content to do as the rest of the people had done. Upon which Ali came forth and went to Abu Bekr, and acknowledged his sovereignty.

Abu Bekr being thus settled in his new government, had work enough to maintain it; for the Mohammedan religion had not as yet taken such deep root in the hearts of men but that they would very willingly have shaken it off had they known how. Accordingly the Arabians, a people of a restless and turbulent disposition, did not neglect the opportunity of rebelling, which they thought was fairly offered them by the death of Mohammed. Immediately taking up arms, they refused to pay the usual tribute, tithes, and alms, and no longer observed the rites and customs which had been imposed upon them by Mohammed.

[Sidenote: [632-633 A.D.]]

Abu Bekr sent Khalid ben Walid, with an army of forty-five hundred men, who, having routed them in a set battle, brought off a great deal of plunder, and made slaves of their children.

Khalid was the best general of his age, and it was chiefly to his courage and conduct that the Saracens owed the subduing of the rebels, the conquest of Syria, and the establishment of their religion and polity. His love and tenderness towards his own soldiers were only equalled by his hatred and aversion to the enemies of the Mohammedan religion. Of both he has given the most signal instances. To those who, having embraced the Mohammedan religion, afterwards apostatised, he was an irreconcilable and implacable foe; nor would he spare them, though they evinced the greatest signs of unfeigned repentance. For his great valour, the Arabs called him “the Sword of God”; which surname of his was known also to his enemies, and is mentioned as well by Greek as Arab authors.

About this time several persons, perceiving the success and prosperity of Mohammed and his followers, set up also for prophets too, in hope of meeting the like good fortune, and making themselves eminent in the world. Such were Aswad al-Ansi and Tulaihah ben Khuwailid, with several others, whose attempts however quickly came to nothing. But the most considerable of these impostors was Musailima, who had been the rival of Mohammed even in his life-time, and trumped up a book in imitation of the Koran. He had now gathered together a very considerable body of men in Yemen, a province of Arabia, and began to be so formidable that the Mussulmans began to feel alarmed at his growing greatness.

It is strange and surprising to consider from how mean and contemptible beginnings the greatest things have been raised in a short time. Of this the Saracenic empire is a remarkable instance. For if we look back but eleven years, we shall see how Mohammed, unable to support his cause, routed and oppressed by the powerful party of the Koreishites at Mecca, fled with a few desponding followers to Medina to preserve his life no less than his imposture. And now, within so short a period, we find the undertakings of his successor prospering beyond expectation, and making him the terror of all his neighbours; and the Saracens in a capacity not only to keep possession of their own peninsula of Arabia, but to extend their arms over larger territories than ever were subject to the Romans themselves. Whilst they were thus employed in Arabia, they were little regarded by the Grecian emperor, who awoke too late to a sense of their formidable power, when he saw them pouring in upon them like a torrent, and driving all before them. The proud Persian, too, who so very lately had been domineering in Syria, and sacked Jerusalem and Damascus, must be forced not only to part with his own dominions, but also to submit his neck to the Saracenic yoke. It may be reasonably supposed that, had the Grecian empire been in the flourishing condition it formerly was, the Saracens might have been checked at least, if not entirely extinguished. But besides that the western part of the empire had been rent from it by the barbarous Goths, the eastern also had received so many shocks from the Huns on the one side, and the Persians on the other, that it was not in a situation to stem the fury of this powerful invasion. Heraclius, indeed, was a prince of admirable courage and conduct, and did all that was possible to restore the discipline of the army, and was very successful against the Persians, not only driving them out of his own dominions, but even wresting from them a part of their own territories. But the empire seemed to labour under an incurable disease, and to be wounded in its very vitals. No time could have been more fatally adverse to its maintenance, nor more favourable to the enterprises of the Saracens.

Abu Bekr had now set affairs at home in pretty good order. The apostates who upon the death of Mohammed had revolted to the idolatry in which they were born and bred, were again reduced to subjection. The forces of Musailima, the false prophet, being dispersed and himself killed, there was now little or nothing left to be done in Arabia. For though there were a great many Christian Arabs, as particularly the tribe of Ghassan, yet they were generally employed in the service of the Greek emperor. The next business, therefore, that the caliph had to do, pursuant to the tenor of his religion, was to make war upon his neighbours, for the propagation of the truth (for so they call their superstition), and compel them either to become Mohammedans or tributaries. For their prophet Mohammed had given them a commission of a very large, nay, unlimited extent, to fight, viz., till all the people were of his religion. The wars which are entered upon in obedience to this command, they call holy wars, with no greater absurdity than we ourselves give the same title to that which was once undertaken against them by Europeans. With this religious object, Abu Bekr sent at this time a force under Khalid into Irak or Babylonia; but his greatest longing was after Syria, which delicious, pleasant, and fruitful country being near to Arabia, seemed to lie very conveniently for him.

[Sidenote: [633-634 A.D.]]

The news of his preparation quickly came to the ears of the emperor Heraclius, who despatched a force with all possible speed to check the advance of the Saracens, but with ill success; for the general, with twelve hundred of his men, was killed upon the field of the battle, and the rest routed, the Arabs losing only 120 men. A number of skirmishes followed, in most of which the Christians came off the worst.[b]

Damascus was besieged for months, and all sorties of the inhabitants crushed with heavy slaughter. Heraclius, at Antioch, sent a great army under Werdan to its relief. Khalid, raising the siege, went to meet it.[a]

The two armies presently came within sight of each other, and the confidence of the Saracens was somewhat checked, when they perceived the strength of the emperor’s forces, which amounted to no less than seventy thousand. Those who had been in Persia, and seen the vast armies of Chosroes, confessed that they had never beheld an enemy equal to the present, either in number or military preparation. On the second morning they moved forward, and engaged in all parts with all imaginable vigour. The fight, or rather the slaughter, continued till evening. The Christian army was entirely routed and defeated. The Saracens killed that day fifty thousand men. Those that escaped fled, some of them to Cæsarea, others to Damascus, and some to Antioch. The Saracens took plunder of inestimable value, and a great many banners, and crosses made of gold and silver, precious stones, silver and gold chains, rich clothes, and arms without number; which Khalid said he would not divide until Damascus was taken.

The Saracens, returning to Damascus, continued vigorously to press the siege, and reduced the inhabitants to very great straits, who every day made a worse defence. For a while, at last, they begged of Khalid to stay the assault, that they might have a little time to deliberate. But he turned a deaf ear to them, for he had rather take the town by force, and put the inhabitants to the sword, and let his Saracens have the plunder, than that they should surrender, and have security for their lives and their property. At length, through treachery, Khalid entered at the east gate with his Saracens, putting all to the sword, and Christian blood streamed down the streets of Damascus.

Abu Bekr the caliph died the same day that Damascus was taken,[34] which was on Friday, the 23rd of August, 634 A.D. There are various reports concerning his death; some say that he was poisoned by the Jews, eating rice with Harith ben Kaldah, and that they both died of it within a twelvemonth after. But Aisha says, that he bathed himself upon a cold day, which threw him into a fever[35] of which he died within fifteen days.[b]

Abu Bekr particularly lamented the number of the prophet’s companions that fell in these campaigns, and fearing that the revelations of Mohammed might be dispersed and lost, he gave orders that they should be collected into the Koran. We shall later have occasion to notice the slovenly manner in which the persons employed performed their task; the compilation was subsequently revised in the reign of the caliph Othman, and it is probable that there are many passages far different from those which Mohammed wrote.

When all things were ready, the caliph reviewed the troops and issued that celebrated code of regulations for the conduct of the army; it was addressed to the general Abu Sufyan, and contained the following directions: “Take care to treat your men with tenderness and lenity. Consult with your officers upon all pressing occasions, and encourage them to face the enemy with bravery and resolution. If you are victorious, spare all the aged, the women, and the children. Neither cut down palm trees nor burn any fields of corn. Spare all fruit trees; slay no cattle but such as are required for your own use. Adhere to your engagements inviolably; spare the inhabitants of monasteries; desecrate no houses of religious worship. Cleave the skulls of those members of the synagogue of Satan, who shave their crowns, give them no quarter, unless they embrace Islamism, or pay tribute.”

The character of the first caliph had a beneficial effect on the Mohammedan religion; for though the partisans of Ali accuse him of ambition, and of uniting with his daughter Aisha to suppress the prophet’s declarations in favour of Ali, yet they do not deny him the praise of disinterestedness, justice, and benevolence. Before his accession, he had bestowed the greater part of his estate to feed the poor, and had been publicly named by the prophet the most charitable of men. When placed at the head of affairs, he only took from the treasury the sum absolutely necessary for his daily support; before entering on the sovereignty, he ordered an exact account to be taken of his personal estate, and at his death it was found to be considerably diminished. In fact the absolute ruler of the richest countries of the world left behind him but a single camel and an Ethiopian slave, and even these he bequeathed to his successor. He dictated his will to Othman in the following terms: “In the Name of the Most Merciful God.--This is the last will and testament of Abu Bekr ben Abi Kohafa, when he was in the last hour of this world, and the first of the next; an hour in which the infidel must believe, the wicked be convinced of their evil ways, and liars speak the truth. I nominate Omar ben al-Khattab my successor; therefore, hearken to him, and obey him. If he acts right, he will confirm my expectations; if otherwise, he must render an account of his own actions. My intentions are good, but I cannot foresee the future results. However, those who do ill shall render a severe account hereafter. Fare-ye-well. May ye be ever attended by the divine favour and blessing.” When Abu Bekr had concluded this dictation, he fainted; on his recovery, he desired Othman to read the document, soon after which he expired. When information of the event was brought to Omar, he exclaimed, “The life of Abu Bekr has been such, that it will be impossible for those who come after, to imitate his sublime example.” Two proverbs attributed to him, deserve to be quoted: “Good actions are a sure protection against the blows of adversity.”--“Death is the most difficult of all things before it comes, and the easiest when it is past.”

THE CALIPH OMAR

[Sidenote: [634-644 A.D.]]

Omar was, like his predecessor, a native of Mecca; he had been originally a camel-herd, and never became quite free from the coarseness and rusticity incident to his humble origin. At first a zealous idolater, he proposed to extirpate all the followers of Mohammed; when he became afterwards a Mussulman, he was just as eager to massacre all who would not believe in the prophet. Violent on every occasion, he breathed nothing but slaughter; and countless anecdotes are related of his unrelenting temper. One of these must suffice. A Mussulman having a suit against a Jew, was condemned by Mohammed, and in consequence, carried his appeal before the tribunal of Omar; scarcely had he stated his case, when Omar, springing from his seat, struck the appellant dead with one blow of his sabre, exclaiming, “So perish all who will not submit to the decision of God’s chosen prophet.” Rigorous justice, as interpreted by the Mohammedan laws, and extreme severity, rendered his character more respected than beloved. Mohammed said of him, “Truth speaks by the mouth of Omar.” He added, that “if God had to send another prophet on the earth, Omar would be the object of his choice.”

When Abu Bekr informed Omar that he had chosen him as his successor, Omar, with mingled pride and humility, answered, “I have no need of the caliphate.” Abu Bekr replied, “But the caliphate has need of you,” and thus removed all further scruple. On his accession, he called himself the “Caliph of the Caliph of God’s apostle,” but finding the title inconveniently long, he changed it into that of “Commander of the Faithful”; and this became, subsequently, the favourite designation of his successors. When first he addressed his subjects, he stood a step lower on the pulpit than Abu Bekr had been accustomed to do; he informed his hearers that he would not have undertaken the arduous task of government, only that he reposed perfect confidence in their intention to observe the law, and adhere to the pure faith; he concluded with these remarkable words, “O Mussulmans, I take God to witness, that none of you shall be too strong for me to sacrifice the rights of the weak, nor too weak for me to neglect the rights of the strong.”

No sooner was Omar placed at the head of affairs than the armies of the Mohammedans seemed to have acquired tenfold vigour; and this was not diminished by the severe treatment which the gallant Khalid, for a trivial offence, received from the jealous caliph. The greater part of Syria and Mesopotamia had been subdued during the life of Abu Bekr, the conquest of these countries was now completed; the ancient empire of the Persians was overthrown at the battle of Kadisiya; Palestine, Phœnicia, and Egypt submitted to the Saracen yoke almost without a struggle; and the standard of the prophet floated in triumph from the sands of the Cyrenian desert to the banks of the Indus. “During the reign of Omar,” says Khondemir, “the Saracens conquered thirty-six thousand cities, towns, and castles, destroyed four thousand Christian, Magian, and pagan temples, and erected fourteen hundred mosques.”

The annals of the world present no parallel to this recital; the Arabs were animated by an enthusiasm which made them despise the most fearful odds; they had ever in their mouths the magnificent orientalism, traditionally ascribed to Mohammed, “in the shades of the scymitars is paradise prefigured”; they sought battle as a feast, and counted danger a sport. A fiercer spirit of course displayed itself in the Mohammedan creed; the sanguinary precepts of propagandism, to which the prophet had given utterance after his power was established at Medina, quite obscured the milder doctrine taught at Mecca; and even these were surpassed in ferocity by traditions which some of the sterner enthusiasts declared that they had derived from the prophet himself. Abu Horeira declared that he heard from Mohammed, “He who shall die without having fought for God, or who never proposed that duty to himself, verily consigns himself to destruction by his hypocrisy,” and also the singular declaration, “He who shall bestow a horse upon one who would enlist himself under the banner of the Most High, and be one who has faith in God and in his promises, surely, both the food of that horse and the sustenance of his rider, with the ordure of the former, shall be placed in the scales for his advantage on the day of judgment.” We shall add one more, preserved on the authority of Ibn Abbas: “There are two descriptions of eyes which the fire of hell shall not destroy; the eyes that weep in contemplating the indignation of God, and the eyes which are closed when in the act of combat for the cause of God.”[f]

THE CONQUEST OF PERSIA

From the rapid conquests of the Saracens a presumption will naturally arise, that the first caliphs commanded in person the armies of the faithful, and sought the crown of martyrdom in the foremost ranks of the battle. The courage of Abu Bekr, Omar, and Othman had indeed been tried in the persecution and wars of the prophet; and the personal assurance of paradise must have taught them to despise the pleasures and dangers of the present world. But they ascended the throne in a venerable or mature age, and esteemed the domestic cares of religion and justice the most important duties of a sovereign. Except the presence of Omar at the siege of Jerusalem, their longest expeditions were the frequent pilgrimage from Medina to Mecca; and they calmly received the tidings of victory as they prayed or preached before the sepulchre of the prophet.

In the sloth and vanity of the palace of Damascus, the succeeding princes of the house of Omayyah were alike destitute of the qualifications of statesmen and of saints. Yet the spoils of unknown nations were continually laid at the foot of their throne, and the uniform ascent of the Arabian greatness must be ascribed to the spirit of the nation rather than the abilities of their chiefs. A large deduction must be allowed for the weakness of their enemies. The birth of Mohammed was fortunately placed in the most degenerate and disorderly period of the Persians, the Romans, and the barbarians of Europe; the empires of Trajan, or even of Constantine or Charlemagne, would have repelled the assault of the naked Saracens, and the torrent of fanaticism might have been obscurely lost in the sands of Arabia.

In the victorious days of the Roman republic, it had been the aim of the senate to confine their consuls and legions to a single war, and completely to suppress a first enemy before they provoked the hostilities of a second. These timid maxims of policy were disdained by the magnanimity or enthusiasm of the Arabian caliphs. With the same vigour and success they invaded the successors of Augustus, and those of Artaxerxes; and the rival monarchies at the same instant became the prey of an enemy whom they had been so long accustomed to despise. One hundred years after Mohammed’s flight from Mecca, the arms and the reign of his successors extended from India to the Atlantic Ocean, over the various and distant provinces which may be comprised under the names of, (1) Persia; (2) Syria; (3) Egypt; (4) Africa; and (5) Spain. Under this general division we may proceed to unfold these memorable transactions; despatching with brevity the remote and less interesting conquests of the East, and reserving a fuller narrative for those domestic countries, which had been included within the pale of the Roman Empire.

[Sidenote: [634-637 A.D.]]

In the first year of the first caliph, his lieutenant Khalid, the sword of God, and the scourge of the infidels, advanced to the banks of the Euphrates, and reduced the cities of Anbar and Hira. Westward of the ruins of Babylon a tribe of sedentary Arabs had fixed themselves on the verge of the desert; and Hira was the seat of a race of kings who had embraced the Christian religion, and reigned above six hundred years under the shadow of the throne of Persia. The last of the Mondars was defeated and slain by Khalid; his son was sent a captive to Medina; his nobles bowed before the successor of the prophet; the people were tempted by the example and success of their countrymen; and the caliph accepted as the first-fruits of foreign conquest, an annual tribute of seventy thousand pieces of gold. The conquerors, and even their historians, were astonished by the dawn of their future greatness.

The indignation and fears of the Persians suspended for a moment their intestine divisions. By the unanimous sentence of the priests and nobles, Queen Azarmidokht was deposed--the sixth of the transient usurpers who had arisen and vanished in three or four years, since the death of Chosroes and the retreat of Heraclius. Her tiara was placed on the head of Yezdegerd, the grandson of Chosroes; and the same era, which coincides with an astronomical period, has recorded the fall of the Sassanian dynasty and the religion of Zoroaster. The youth and inexperience of the prince--he was only fifteen years of age--declined a perilous encounter; the royal standard was delivered into the hands of his general Rustem; and a remnant of thirty thousand regular troops was swelled in truth, or in opinion, to 120,000 subjects, or allies, of the great king. The Moslems, whose numbers were reinforced from twelve to thirty thousand, had pitched their camp in the plains of Kadesiya; and their line, though it consisted of fewer men, could produce more soldiers than the unwieldy host of the infidels. The periods of the battle of Kadesiya were distinguished by their peculiar appellations. The first, from the well-timed appearance of six thousand of the Syrian brethren, was denominated the day of succour. The day of concussion might express the disorder of one, or perhaps of both, of the contending armies. The third, a nocturnal tumult, received the whimsical name of the night of barking, from the discordant clamours, which were compared to the inarticulate sounds of the fiercest animals.

The morning of the succeeding day determined the fate of Persia; and a seasonable whirlwind drove a cloud of dust against the faces of the unbelievers. The clangour of arms was re-echoed to the tent of Rustem, who, far unlike the ancient hero of his name, was gently reclining in a cool and tranquil shade, amidst the baggage of his camp, and the train of mules that was laden with gold and silver. On the sound of danger he started from his couch; but his flight was overtaken by a valiant Arab, who caught him by the foot, struck off his head, hoisted it on a lance, and instantly returning to the field of battle, carried slaughter and dismay among the thickest ranks of the Persians. The Saracens confess a loss of 7,500 men; and the battle of Kadesiya is justly described by the epithets of obstinate and atrocious. The standard of the monarchy was overthrown and captured in the field--a leathern apron of a blacksmith, who, in ancient times, had arisen the deliverer of Persia; but this badge of heroic poverty was disguised, and almost concealed, by a profusion of precious gems. After this victory, the wealthy province of Irak or Assyria submitted to the caliph, and his conquests were firmly established by the speedy foundation of Bassora, a place which ever commands the trade and navigation of the Persians.

[Sidenote: [637-651 A.D.]]

After the defeat of Kadesiya, a country intersected by rivers and canals might have opposed an insuperable barrier to the victorious cavalry; and the walls of Ctesiphon or Madain, which had resisted the battering-rams of the Romans, would not have yielded to the darts of the Saracens. But the flying Persians were overcome by the belief that the last day of their religion and empire was at hand; the strongest posts were abandoned by treachery or cowardice; and the king, with a part of his family and treasures, escaped to Holwan at the foot of the Median hills. In the third month after the battle, Said, the lieutenant of Omar, passed the Tigris without opposition; the capital was taken by assault; and the disorderly resistance of the people gave a keener edge to the sabres of the Moslems, who shouted with religious transport, “This is the white palace of Chosroes, this is the promise of the apostle of God!” The naked robbers of the desert were suddenly enriched beyond the measure of their hope or knowledge. Each chamber revealed a new treasure secreted with art, or ostentatiously displayed; the gold and silver, the various wardrobes and precious furniture, surpassed (says Abulfeda) the estimate of fancy or numbers; and another historian defines the untold and almost infinite mass by the fabulous computation of three thousands of thousands of thousands of pieces of gold. The sack of Ctesiphon was followed by its desertion and gradual decay. The Saracens disliked the air and situation of the place, and Omar was advised by his general to remove the seat of government to the western side of the Euphrates.

In every age the foundation and ruin of the Assyrian cities has been easy and rapid; the country is destitute of stone and timber, and the most solid structures are composed of bricks baked in the sun, and joined by a cement of the native bitumen. After the loss of the battle of Jalula, Yezdegerd fled from Holwan, and concealed his shame and despair in the mountains of Farsistan, from whence Cyrus had descended with his equal and valiant companions. The courage of the nation survived that of the monarch; among the hills to the south of Ecbatana or Hamadan, 150,000 Persians made a third and final stand for their religion and country; and the decisive battle of Nehavend was styled by the Arabs the “victory of victories” (641).

The geography of Persia is darkly delineated by the Greeks and Latins; but the most illustrious of her cities appear to be more ancient than the invasion of the Arabs. By the reduction of Hamadan and Ispahan, of Caswin, Tabriz, and Rei, they gradually approached the shores of the Caspian Sea; and the orators of Mecca might applaud the success and spirit of the faithful, who had already lost sight of the Northern Bear, and had almost transcended the bounds of the habitable world. Again turning towards the west and the Roman Empire, they repassed the Tigris over the bridge of Mosul, and, in the captive provinces of Armenia and Mesopotamia, embraced their victorious brethren of the Syrian army. From the palace of Madain their eastern progress was not less rapid or extensive. They advanced along the Tigris and the gulf; penetrated through the passes of the mountains into the valley of Estachar or Persepolis; and profaned the last sanctuary of the Magian empire. The grandson of Chosroes was nearly surprised among the falling columns and mutilated figures; a sad emblem of the past and present fortune of Persia; he fled with accelerated haste over the desert of Kirman, implored the aid of the warlike Segestans, and sought an humble refuge on the verge of the Turkish and Chinese power. But a victorious army is insensible of fatigue; the Arabs divided their forces in the pursuit of a timorous enemy; and the caliph Othman promised the government of Khorasan to the first general who should enter that large and populous country, the kingdom of the ancient Bactrians. The condition was accepted; the prize was deserved; the standard of Mohammed was planted on the walls of Herat, Merou, and Balkh; and the successful leader neither halted nor reposed till his foaming cavalry had tasted the waters of the Oxus. In the public anarchy, the independent governors of the cities and castles obtained their separate capitulations; the terms were granted or imposed by the esteem, the prudence, or the compassion of the victors; and a simple profession of faith established the distinction between a brother and a slave. The administration of Persia was regulated by an actual survey of the people, the cattle, and the fruits of the earth; and this monument, which attests the vigilance of the caliphs, might have instructed the philosophers of every age.

The flight of Yezdegerd had carried him beyond the Oxus, and as far as the Jaxartes, two rivers of ancient and modern renown, which descend from the mountains of India towards the Caspian Sea. He was hospitably entertained by Tarkhan, prince of Fergana, a fertile province on the Jaxartes; the king of Samarcand, with the Turkish tribes of Sogdiana and Scythia, were moved by the lamentations and promises of the fallen monarch; and he solicited by a suppliant embassy, the more solid and powerful friendship of the emperor of China. The virtuous Taitsong, the first of the dynasty of the Tang, may be justly compared with the Antonines of Rome. His people enjoyed the blessings of prosperity and peace, and his dominion was acknowledged by forty-four hordes of the barbarians of Tartary. His last garrisons of Cashgar and Khoten maintained a frequent intercourse with their neighbours of the Jaxartes and Oxus; a recent colony of Persians had introduced into China the astronomy of the magi; and Taitsong might be alarmed by the rapid progress and dangerous vicinity of the Arabs. The influence and perhaps the supplies of China revived the hopes of Yezdegerd and the zeal of the worshippers of the fire; and he returned with an army of Turks to conquer the inheritance of his fathers. The fortunate Moslems, without unsheathing their swords, were the spectators of his ruin and death. The grandson of Chosroes was betrayed by his servant, insulted by the seditious inhabitants of Merou, and oppressed, defeated, and pursued by his barbarian allies. He reached the banks of a river, and offered his rings and bracelets for an instant passage in a miller’s boat. Ignorant or insensible of royal distress, the rustic replied, that four drachms of silver were the daily profit of his mill, and that he would not suspend his work unless the loss were repaid. In this moment of hesitation and delay, the last of the Sassanian kings was overtaken and slaughtered by the Turkish cavalry in the nineteenth year of his unhappy reign. His son Firuz, an humble client of the Chinese emperor, accepted the station of captain of his guards; and the magian worship was long preserved by a colony of loyal exiles in the province of Bokhara. His grandson inherited the regal name; but after a faint and fruitless enterprise, he returned to China and ended his days in the palace of Sigan. The male line of the Sassanids was extinct; but the female captives, the daughters of Persia, were given to the conquerors in servitude, or marriage; and the race of the caliphs and imams was ennobled by the blood of their royal mothers.

After the fall of the Persian kingdom, the river Oxus divided the territories of the Saracens and of the Turks. This narrow boundary was soon overleaped by the spirit of the Arabs; the governors of Khorasan extended their successive inroads; and one of their triumphs was adorned with the buskin of a Turkish queen, which she dropped in her precipitate flight beyond the hills of Bokhara. But the final conquest of Transoxiana, as well as of Spain, was reserved for the glorious reign of the inactive Walid; and the name of Katiba, the camel driver, declares the origin and merit of his successful lieutenant. While one of his colleagues displayed the first Mohammedan banner on the banks of the Indus, the spacious regions between the Oxus, the Jaxartes, and the Caspian Sea, were reduced by the arms of Katiba to the obedience of the prophet, and of the caliph. A tribute of two millions of pieces of gold was imposed on the infidels; their idols were burned or broken; the Mussulman chief pronounced a sermon in the new mosque of Khwarizm; after several battles, the Turkish hordes were driven back to the desert; and the emperors of China solicited the friendship of the victorious Arabs.

Before the invasion of the Saracens, Khwarizm, Bokhara and Samarcand were rich and populous under the yoke of the shepherds of the north. The mutual wants of India and Europe were supplied by the diligence of the Sogdian merchants; and the inestimable art of transforming linen into paper, has been transferred from the manufacture of Samarcand over the western world.

THE SYRIAN CONQUEST COMPLETED

[Sidenote: [636-637 A.D.]]

From the conquest of Damascus the Saracens proceeded to Heliopolis and Emesa. In the prosecution of the war, their policy was not less effectual than their sword. By short and separate truces they dissolved the union of the enemy; accustomed the Syrians to compare their friendship with their enmity; familiarised the idea of their language, religion, and manners; and exhausted, by clandestine purchase, the magazines and arsenals of the cities which they returned to besiege. They aggravated the ransom of the more wealthy or the more obstinate; and Chalcis alone was taxed at five thousand ounces of gold, five thousand ounces of silver, two thousand robes of silk, and as many figs and olives as would load five thousand asses. But the terms of truce or capitulation were faithfully observed; and the lieutenant of the caliph, who had promised not to enter the walls of the captive Baalbec, remained tranquil and immovable in his tent till the jarring factions solicited the interposition of a foreign master. The conquest of the plain and valley of Syria was achieved in less than two years. Yet the commander of the faithful reproved the slowness of their progress, and the Saracens, bewailing their fault with tears of rage and repentance, called aloud on their chiefs to lead them forth to fight the battles of the Lord.

It was incumbent on the Saracens to exert the full powers of their valour and enthusiasm against the forces of the emperor, who was taught by repeated losses, that the rovers of the desert had undertaken, and would speedily achieve, a regular and permanent conquest. From the provinces of Europe and Asia, fourscore thousand soldiers were transported by sea and land to Antioch and Cæsarea; the light troops of the army consisted of sixty thousand Christian Arabs of the tribes of Ghassan. In the neighbourhood of Bosra, the springs of Mount Hermon descend in a torrent to the plain of Decapolis, or ten cities; and the Hieromax, a name which has been corrupted to Yermuk, is lost after a short course in the lake of Tiberias. The banks of this obscure stream were illustrated by a long and bloody encounter. On this momentous occasion, the public voice, and the modesty of Abu Obaidah, restored the command to the most deserving of the Moslems. Khalid assumed his station in the front, his colleague was posted in the rear, that the disorder of the fugitives might be checked by his venerable aspect and the sight of the yellow banner which Mohammed had displayed before the walls of Khaibar.

The last line was occupied by the sister of Derar, with the Arabian women who had enlisted in this holy war, who were accustomed to wield the bow and the lance, and who in a moment of captivity had defended, against the uncircumcised ravishers, their chastity and religion. The exhortation of the generals was brief and forcible: “Paradise is before you, the devil and hell-fire in your rear.” Yet such was the weight of the Roman cavalry, that the right wing of the Arabs was broken and separated from the main body. Thrice did they retreat in disorder, and thrice were they driven back to the charge by the reproaches and blows of the women. Four thousand and thirty of the Moslems were buried in the field of battle; and the skill of the Armenian archers enabled seven hundred to boast that they had lost an eye in that meritorious service. The veterans of the Syrian war acknowledged that it was the hardest and most doubtful of the days which they had seen. But it was likewise the most decisive; many thousands of the Greeks and Syrians fell by the swords of the Arabs; many were slaughtered, after the defeat, in the woods and mountains; many, by mistaking the ford, were drowned in the waters of the Yermuk; and however the loss may be magnified, the Christian writers confess and bewail the bloody punishment of their sins.

After the battle of Yermuk, the Roman army no longer appeared in the field; and the Saracens might securely choose, among the fortified towns of Syria, the first object of their attack. They consulted the caliph whether they should march to Cæsarea or Jerusalem; and the advice of Ali determined the immediate siege of the latter. To a profane eye, Jerusalem was the first or second capital of Palestine; but after Mecca and Medina, it was revered and visited by the devout Moslems, as the temple of the Holy Land, which had been sanctified by the revelation of Moses, of Jesus, and of Mohammed himself.

The siege of Jerusalem lasted four months; not a day was lost without some action of sally or assault; the military engines incessantly played from the ramparts; and the inclemency of the winter was still more painful and destructive to the Arabs. The Christians yielded at length to the perseverance of the besiegers. The patriarch Sophronius appeared on the walls, and by the voice of an interpreter demanded a conference. After a vain attempt to dissuade the lieutenant of the caliph from his impious enterprise, he proposed, in the name of the people, a fair capitulation, with this extraordinary clause, that the articles of security should be ratified by the authority and presence of Omar himself. The question was debated in the council of Medina; the sanctity of the place, and the advice of Ali, persuaded the caliph to gratify the wishes of his soldiers and enemies, and the simplicity of Omar’s journey is more illustrious than the royal pageants of vanity and oppression. The conqueror of Persia and Syria was mounted on a red camel, which carried, besides his person, a bag of corn, a bag of dates, a wooden dish, and a leathern bottle of water. By his command the ground of the temple of Solomon was prepared for the foundation of a mosque; and, during a residence of ten days, he regulated the present and future state of his Syrian conquests. Medina might be jealous, lest the caliph should be detained by the sanctity of Jerusalem or the beauty of Damascus; her apprehensions were dispelled by his prompt and voluntary return to the tomb of the apostle.

To achieve what yet remained of the Syrian war, the caliph had formed two separate armies; a chosen detachment, under Amru and Yazid, was left in the camp of Palestine; while the larger division, under the standard of Abu Obaidah and Khalid, marched away to the north against Antioch and Aleppo. The castle of Aleppo, distinct from the city, stood erect on a lofty artificial mound, and the sides were sharpened to a precipice, and faced with freestone. After the loss of three thousand men, the garrison was still equal to the defence. In a siege of four or five months, the hardest of the Syrian war, great numbers of the Saracens were killed and wounded. The exhortation of the commander of the faithful, not to give up the siege, was responded to by a supply of volunteers from all the tribes of Arabia, who arrived in the camp on horses or camels. Among these was Dames, of a servile birth, but of gigantic size and intrepid resolution. At the darkest hour of the night he scaled the most accessible height, a place where the stones were less entire, or the slope less perpendicular, or the guard less vigilant. Seven of the stoutest Saracens mounted on each other’s shoulders and the weight of the column was sustained on the broad and sinewy back of the gigantic slave.

The foremost in this painful ascent could grasp and climb the lowest part of the battlements; they silently stabbed and cast down the sentinels; and the thirty brethren, repeating a pious ejaculation, “O apostle of God, help and deliver us!” were successively drawn up by the long folds of their turbans. They overpowered the guard, unbolted the gate, let down the drawbridge, and defended the narrow pass till the arrival of Khalid, with the dawn of day, relieved their danger and assured their conquest. After the loss of this important post, and the defeat of the last of the Roman armies, the luxury of Antioch trembled and obeyed. Her safety was ransomed with three hundred thousand pieces of gold; but the throne of the successors of Alexander, the seat of the Roman government in the East, which had been decorated by Cæsar with the titles of free, and holy, and inviolate, was degraded under the yoke of the caliphs to the secondary rank of a provincial town.

The loss of Damascus and Jerusalem, the bloody fields of Aiznadin and Yermuk, may be imputed in some degree to the absence or misconduct of the sovereign. Instead of defending the sepulchre of Christ, he involved the church and state in a metaphysical controversy for the unity of his will; and while Heraclius crowned the offspring of his second nuptials, he was tamely stripped of the most valuable part of their inheritance. In the cathedral of Antioch, in the presence of the bishops, at the foot of the crucifix, he bewailed the sins of the prince and people; but his confession instructed the world, that it was vain, and perhaps impious, to resist the judgment of God. The Saracens were invincible in fact, since they were invincible in opinion. After bidding an eternal farewell to Syria, Heraclius secretly embarked with a few attendants, and absolved the faith of his subjects. From the north and south the Saracen troops of Antioch and Jerusalem advanced along the seashore, till their banners were joined under the walls of the Phœnician cities; Tripolis and Tyre were betrayed; and a fleet of fifty transports, which entered without distrust the captive harbours, brought a seasonable supply of arms and provisions to the camp of the Saracens. Their labours were terminated by the unexpected surrender of Cæsarea. The remainder of the province, Ramlah, Ptolemais or Acre, Nablus or Neapolis, Gaza, Askalon, Berytus, Sidon, Gabala, Laodicea, Apamea, Hierapolis, no longer presumed to dispute the will of the conqueror; and Syria bowed under the sceptre of the caliphs, seven hundred years after Pompey had despoiled the last of the Macedonian kings.

The sieges and battles of six campaigns had consumed many thousands of the Moslems. They died with the reputation and the cheerfulness of martyrs; and the simplicity of their faith may be expressed in the words of an Arabian youth, when he embraced, for the last time, his sister and mother; “It is not,” said he, “the delicacies of Syria, or fading delights of this world, that have prompted me to devote my life in the cause of religion. But I seek the favour of God and his apostle; and I have heard from one of the companions of the prophet, that the spirits of the martyrs will be lodged in the crops of green birds, who shall taste the fruits, and drink of the rivers of paradise. Farewell, we shall meet again among the groves and fountains which God has provided for his elect.”

The more fortunate Arabs who survived the war, and persevered in the faith, were restrained by their abstemious leader from the abuse of prosperity. After a refreshment of three days, Abu Obaidah withdrew his troops from the pernicious contagion of the luxury of Antioch, and assured the caliph that their religion and virtue could only be preserved by the hard discipline of poverty and labour. The year of their triumph was marked by a mortality of men and cattle; and twenty-five thousand Saracens were snatched away from the possession of Syria. The death of Abu Obaidah might be lamented by the Christians; but his brethren recollected that he was one of the ten elect, whom the prophet had named heirs of paradise. Khalid survived his brethren about three years; and the tomb of the Sword of God is shown near Emesa. His valour, which founded in Arabia and Syria the empire of the caliphs, was fortified by the opinion of a special providence; and as long as he wore a cap which had been blessed by Mohammed he deemed himself invulnerable amidst the darts of the infidels.

[Sidenote: [637-640 A.D.]]

The place of the first conquerors was supplied by a new generation of their children and countrymen; Syria became the seat and support of the house of Omayyah; and the revenue, the soldiers, the ships of that powerful kingdom, were consecrated to enlarge on every side the empire of the caliphs. But the Saracens despise a superfluity of fame; and their historians scarcely condescend to mention the subordinate conquests which are lost in the splendour and rapidity of their victorious career. To the north of Syria, they passed Mount Taurus, and reduced to their obedience the province of Cilicia, with its capital Tarsus, the ancient monument of the Assyrian kings. Beyond a second ridge of the same mountains, they spread the flame of war, rather than the light of religion, as far as the shores of the Euxine and the neighbourhood of Constantinople. To the east they advanced to the banks and sources of the Euphrates and Tigris; the long-disputed barrier of Rome and Persia was forever confounded; the walls of Edessa and Amida, of Dara and Nisibis, which had resisted the arms and engines of Sapor or Nushirvan, were levelled in the dust; and the holy city of Abgarus might vainly produce the epistle or the image of Christ to an unbelieving conqueror. To the west the Syrian kingdom is bounded by the sea; and the ruin of Aradus, a small island or peninsula on the coast, was postponed during ten years. But the hills of Libanus abounded in timber; the trade of Phœnicia was populous in mariners; and a fleet of seventeen hundred barks was equipped and manned by the natives of the desert. The imperial navy of the Romans fled before them from the Pamphylian rocks to the Hellespont; but the spirit of the emperor, a grandson of Heraclius, had been subdued before the combat by a dream and a pun. The Saracens rode masters of the sea; and the islands of Cyprus, Rhodes, and the Cyclades, were successively exposed to their rapacious visits. Three hundred years before the Christian era, the memorable, though fruitless siege of Rhodes, by Demetrius, had furnished that maritime republic with the materials and the subject of a trophy. A gigantic statue of Apollo, or the sun, seventy cubits in height, was erected at the entrance of the harbour, a monument of the freedom and the arts of Greece. After standing fifty-six years, the Colossus of Rhodes was overthrown by an earthquake; but the massy trunk, and huge fragments, lay scattered eight centuries on the ground, and are often described as one of the wonders of the ancient world. They were collected by the diligence of the Saracens, and sold to a Jewish merchant of Edessa, who is said to have laden nine hundred camels with the weight of the brass metal: an enormous weight, though we should include the hundred colossal figures, and the three thousand statues which adorned the prosperity of the city of the sun.

EGYPT CAPTURED (639 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [639-654 A.D.]]

The conquest of Egypt may be explained by the character of the victorious Saracen, one of the first of his nation in an age when the meanest of the brethren was exalted above his nature by the spirit of enthusiasm. The birth of Amru was at once base and illustrious; his reason or his interest determined him to renounce the worship of idols; he escaped from Mecca with his friend Khalid, and the prophet of Medina enjoyed at the same moment the satisfaction of embracing the two firmest champions of his cause. His merit was not overlooked by the first two successors of Mohammed; they were indebted to his arms for the conquest of Palestine; and in all the battles and sieges of Syria, he united with the temper of a chief the valour of an adventurous soldier.

From his camp, in Palestine, Amru had surprised or anticipated the caliph’s leave for the invasion of Egypt. The magnanimous Omar trusted in his God and his sword, which had shaken the thrones of Chosroes and Cæsar; but when he compared the slender force of the Moslems with the greatness of the enterprise, he condemned his own rashness and listened to his timid companions. At the head of only four thousand Arabs, the intrepid Amru had marched away from his station of Gaza when he was overtaken by the messenger of Omar. “If you are still in Syria,” said the ambiguous mandate, “retreat without delay; but if, at the receipt of this epistle, you have already reached the frontiers of Egypt, advance with confidence, and depend on the succour of God and of your brethren.” The experience, perhaps the secret intelligence, of Amru had taught him to suspect the mutability of courts; and he continued his march till his tents were unquestionably pitched on Egyptian ground. He there assembled his officers, broke the seal, perused the epistle, gravely inquired the name and situation of the place, and declared his ready obedience to the commands of the caliph.

After a siege of thirty days, he took possession of Farmah or Pelusium, and that key of Egypt, as it has been justly named, unlocked the entrance of the country, as far as the ruins of Heliopolis and the neighbourhood of the modern Cairo.

On the western side of the Nile, at a small distance to the east of the pyramids, at a small distance to the south of the Delta, Memphis, 150 furlongs in circumference, displayed the magnificence of ancient kings. The siege was protracted to seven months; and the rash invaders were encompassed and threatened by the inundation of the Nile. Their last assault was bold and successful; they passed the ditch, which had been fortified with iron spikes, applied their scaling-ladders, entered the fortress with the shout of “God is victorious!” and drove the remnant of the Greeks to their boats, and the isle of Rouda. The spot was afterwards recommended to the conqueror by the easy communication with the gulf and the peninsula of Arabia; the remains of Memphis were deserted; the tents of the Arabs were converted into permanent habitations, and the first mosque was blessed by the presence of fourscore companions of Mohammed. A new city arose in their camp on the eastward bank of the Nile. But the name of Cairo, the town of victory, more strictly belongs to the modern capital, which was founded in the tenth century by the Fatimite caliphs. It has gradually receded from the river; but the continuity of buildings may be traced by an attentive eye from the monuments of Sesostris [Ramses II] to those of Saladin.

Yet the Arabs, after a glorious and profitable enterprise, must have retreated to the desert, had they not found a powerful alliance in the heart of the country.

The persecution of the emperors had converted a sect into a nation, and alienated Egypt from their religion and government. The Saracens were received as the deliverers of the Jacobite church; and a secret and effectual treaty was opened during the siege of Memphis between a victorious army and a people of slaves. A rich and noble Egyptian of the name of Mukawkas, had dissembled his faith to obtain the administration of his province; in the disorders of the Persian War he aspired to independence; the embassy of Mohammed ranked him among princes; but he declined, with rich gifts and ambiguous compliments, the proposal of a new religion.

In his first conference with Amru, he heard without indignation the usual option of the Koran, the tribute or the sword; and he cheerfully submitted to pay tribute and obedience to his temporal successors. The tribute was ascertained at two pieces of gold for the head of every Christian; but old men, monks, women, and children of both sexes, under sixteen years of age, were exempted from this personal assessment. At the pressing summons of Amru, their patriarch Benjamin emerged from his desert; and, after the first interview, the courteous Arab affected to declare that he had never conversed with a Christian priest of more innocent manners and a more venerable aspect. In the march from Memphis to Alexandria, the lieutenant of Omar entrusted his safety to the zeal and gratitude of the Egyptians; the roads and bridges were diligently repaired; and in every step of his progress, he could depend on a constant supply of provisions and intelligence. The Greeks of Egypt, whose numbers could scarcely equal a tenth of the natives, were overwhelmed by the universal defection; they had ever been hated, they were no longer feared; the magistrate fled from his tribunal, the bishop from his altar; and the distant garrisons were surprised or starved by the surrounding multitudes. Had not the Nile afforded a safe and ready conveyance to the sea, not an individual could have escaped who, by birth, or language, or office, or religion, was connected with their odious name.

By the retreat of the Greeks from the provinces of Upper Egypt, a considerable force was collected in the island of Delta; the natural and artificial channels of the Nile afforded a succession of strong and defensible posts; and the road to Alexandria was laboriously cleared by the victory of the Saracens in two-and-twenty days of general or partial combat. In their annals of conquest, the siege of Alexandria is perhaps the most arduous and important enterprise. The first trading city in the world was abundantly replenished with the means of subsistence and defence. Her numerous inhabitants fought for the dearest of human rights, religion and property; and the enmity of the natives seemed to exclude them from the common benefit of peace and toleration. The sea was continually open; and if Heraclius had been awake to the public distress, fresh armies of Romans and barbarians might have been poured into the harbour to save the second capital of the empire.

In every attack, the sword, the banner of Amru, glittered in the van of the Moslems. On a memorable day, he was betrayed by his imprudent valour: his followers who had entered the citadel were driven back; and the general, with a friend and a slave, remained a prisoner in the hands of the Christians. When Amru was conducted before the prefect, he remembered his dignity and forgot his situation; a lofty demeanour and resolute language revealed the lieutenant of the caliph, and the battle-axe of a soldier was already raised to strike off the head of the audacious captive. His life was saved by the readiness of his slave, who instantly gave his master a blow on the face, and commanded him, with an angry tone, to be silent in the presence of his superiors. The credulous Greek was deceived; he listened to the offer of a treaty, and his prisoners were dismissed in the hope of a more respectable embassy, till the joyful acclamations of the camp announced the return of their general, and insulted the folly of the infidels. At length, after a siege of fourteen months, and the loss of three-and-twenty thousand men, the Saracens prevailed.

The commander of the faithful rejected with firmness the idea of pillage, and directed his lieutenant to reserve the wealth and revenue of Alexandria for the public service and the propagation of the faith; the inhabitants were numbered; a tribute was imposed; the zeal and resentment of the Jacobites were curbed, and the Melchites, who submitted to the Arabian yoke, were indulged in the obscure but tranquil exercise of their worship. The intelligence of this disgraceful and calamitous event afflicted the declining health of the emperor; and Heraclius died of a dropsy about seven weeks after the loss of Alexandria.[36] Under the minority of his grandson, the clamours of a people deprived of their daily sustenance compelled the Byzantine court to undertake the recovery of the capital of Egypt. In the space of four years, the harbour and fortifications of Alexandria were twice occupied by a fleet and army of Romans. They were twice expelled by the valour of Amru, who was recalled by the domestic peril from the distant wars of Tripolis and Nubia. But the facility of the attempt, the repetition of the insult, and the obstinacy of the resistance provoked him to swear that, if a third time he drove the infidels into the sea, he would render Alexandria as accessible on all sides as the house of a prostitute. Faithful to his promise, he dismantled several parts of the walls and towers, but the people were spared in the chastisement of the city, and the mosque of Mercy was erected on the spot where the victorious general had stopped the fury of his troops.

THE ALLEGED BURNING OF THE LIBRARY

[Sidenote: [641 A.D.]]

We should deceive the expectation of the reader if we passed in silence the fate of the Alexandrian library, as it is described by the learned Abul-Faraj. The spirit of Amru was more curious and liberal than that of his brethren, and in his leisure hours the Arabian chief was pleased with the conversation of John, the last disciple of Ammonius, and who derived the surname of Philoponus from his laborious studies of grammar and philosophy. Emboldened by this familiar intercourse, Philoponus presumed to solicit a gift, inestimable in his opinion, contemptible in that of the barbarians--the royal library, which alone among the spoils of Alexandria had not been appropriated by the visit and the seal of the conqueror. Amru was inclined to gratify the wish of the grammarian, but his rigid integrity refused to alienate the minutest object without the consent of the caliph; and the well-known answer of Omar was inspired by the ignorance of a fanatic: “If these writings of the Greeks agree with the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved; if they disagree, they are pernicious, and ought to be destroyed.” The sentence was executed with blind obedience; the volumes of paper or parchment were distributed to the four thousand baths of the city; and such was their incredible multitude, that six months was barely sufficient for the consumption of this precious fuel. Since the Dynasties of Abul-Faraj have been given to the world in a Latin version, the tale has been repeatedly transcribed; and every scholar, with pious indignation, has deplored the irreparable shipwreck of the learning, the arts, and the genius of antiquity.

For our own part, we are strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the consequences. The fact is indeed marvellous. “Read and wonder!” says the historian himself; and the solitary report of a stranger, who wrote at the end of six hundred years on the confines of Media, is overbalanced by the silence of two annalists of a more early date, both Christians, both natives of Egypt, and the most ancient of whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has amply described the conquest of Alexandria. The rigid sentence of Omar is repugnant to the sound and orthodox precept of the Mohammedan casuists: they expressly declare that the religious books of the Jews and Christians, which are acquired by the right of war, should never be committed to the flames; and that the works of profane science, historians or poets, physicians or philosophers, may be lawfully applied to the use of the faithful. A more destructive zeal may perhaps be attributed to the first successors of Mohammed; yet, in this instance, the conflagration would have speedily expired in the deficiency of materials. We shall not recapitulate the disasters of the Alexandrian library, the involuntary flame that was kindled by Cæsar in his own defence, or the mischievous bigotry of the Christians, who studied to destroy the monuments of idolatry.[37] But if we gradually descend from the age of the Antonines to that of Theodosius, we shall learn from a chain of contemporary witnesses that the royal palace and the temple of Serapis no longer contained the four, or the seven, hundred thousand volumes, which had been assembled by the curiosity and magnificence of the Ptolemies. Perhaps the church and seat of the patriarchs might be enriched with a repository of books; but if the ponderous mass of Arian and monophysite controversy were indeed consumed in the public baths, a philosopher may allow, with a smile, that it was ultimately devoted to the benefit of mankind. We sincerely regret the more valuable libraries which have been involved in the ruin of the Roman Empire; but when we seriously compute the lapse of ages, the waste of ignorance, and the calamities of war, our treasures, rather than our losses, are the object of our surprise. Many curious and interesting facts are buried in oblivion; the three great historians of Rome have been transmitted to our hands in a mutilated state, and we are deprived of many pleasing compositions of the lyric, iambic, and dramatic poetry of the Greeks. Yet we should gratefully remember that the mischances of time and accident have spared the classic works to which the suffrage of antiquity had adjudged the first place of genius and glory; the teachers of ancient knowledge who are still extant had perused and compared the writings of their predecessors; nor can it fairly be presumed that any important truth, any useful discovery in art or nature, has been snatched away from the curiosity of modern ages.

In the administration of Egypt, Amru balanced the demands of justice and policy. In the management of the revenue he disapproved the simple but oppressive mode of a capitation, and preferred with reason a proportion of taxes, deducted on every branch from the clear profits of agriculture and commerce. A third part of the tribute was appropriated to the annual repairs of the dikes and canals, so essential to the public welfare. Under this administration the fertility of Egypt supplied the dearth of Arabia; and a string of camels, laden with corn and provisions, covered almost without an interval the long road from Memphis to Medina. But the genius of Amru soon renewed the maritime communication which had been attempted or achieved by the Pharaohs, the Ptolemies, or the Cæsars; and a canal, at least eighty miles in length, was opened from the Nile to the Red Sea. This inland navigation, which would have joined the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, was soon discontinued as useless and dangerous: the throne was removed from Medina to Damascus; and the Grecian fleets might have explored a passage to the holy cities of Arabia.[g]

[Sidenote: [637-644 A.D.]]

Amru, being now possessed of Egypt, began to look a little further towards the western part of Africa; and in a short time made himself master of all that country which lies between Barcah and Zeweilah. Shortly after this he took Tripolis. If we consider the extent of his success, it alone is great enough to command our admiration even though nothing else had been accomplished in any other part. But in the East, also, the victorious arms made no less progress, and the Mohammedan crescent now began to shed its malignant influence upon as large and considerable dominions as the Roman eagle ever soared over. About this time, Aderbaijan, Ainwerdah, Harran, Roha, Rakkah, Nisibin, Ehwaz, Siwas, and Khorasan were all brought under subjection to the Saracens.

About two years after this, Omar, the caliph, was killed. The account of his death is as follows: One Firuz, a Persian, of the sect of the magi, or Parsees, as being of a different religion from the Mussulmans, had a daily tribute of two pieces of silver imposed upon him by his master, and made his complaint to Omar, demanding to have a part of it remitted. Omar told him he did not think it at all unreasonable, considering he could well afford it out of what he earned. With his answer Firuz was so provoked that he did as good as threaten the caliph to his face, who, however, took little notice of his passion. Firuz watched his opportunity; and not long after, whilst Omar was saying the morning prayer in the mosque, stabbed him thrice in the belly with a dagger. The Saracens in the mosque rushing upon him immediately, he made a desperate defence, and stabbed thirteen of them, of whom seven died. At last, one that stood by threw his vest over him, and seized him; when, perceiving himself caught, he stabbed himself. Omar lived three days after the wound, and then died, in the month of Dhul-haj, in the twenty-third year of the Hegira, 644 A.D., after he had reigned ten years, six months, and eight days, and was sixty-three years old; which is the same age at which, according to some authors, Mohammed, Abu Bekr, and Aisha, Mohammed’s wife, died.

The conquests gained by the Saracens in his reign were so considerable that, though they had never been extended, the countries they had subdued would have made a very formidable empire. He drove all the Jews and Christians out of Arabia; subdued Syria, Egypt, and other territories in Africa, besides the greater part of Persia. And yet all this greatness, which would have been too weighty for an ordinary man to bear, especially if, as in Omar’s case, it did not descend to him as an hereditary possession, for which he had been prepared by a suitable education, but was gotten on a sudden by men who had been acquainted with, and used to, nothing great before, had no effect upon the caliph.[b]

Neither splendid victories nor extensive dominions changed the stern character of Omar; he still preserved the rustic simplicity of his manners and his ancient contempt for luxurious ornament. When he departed from Medina to receive the submission of Jerusalem, he was mounted on a red camel, having for his entire equipage two sacks, one containing corn and the other fruit; before him was a leathern vessel of water, and behind him a large platter from which he used to take his meals. In this guise he travelled the entire road from Medina to Jerusalem, punishing the Mussulmans who led a scandalous life, and providing for a rigorous administration of justice.

On his arrival, the inhabitants prepared a splendid palace for his reception; but he refused to enter the city, and had a tent erected outside the walls. In this tent the deputies found the master of their destinies sitting on the naked earth. The terms granted to the citizens of Jerusalem are remarkable for their moderation; the security of the persons and properties of the inhabitants was guaranteed, the free exercise of religion permitted, and the churches allowed to remain with their present possessors. Even when the caliph was anxious to erect a mosque, he requested the patriarch to point him out an appropriate situation; that prelate led him to the spot where Solomon’s temple once stood, which was then covered with filth, and the caliph readily accepted the ground as it was. He himself set the example of clearing the rubbish; the army followed with eager emulation, and the mosque of Omar, erected on this spot, is one of the most beautiful specimens of Arabian architecture. But though tolerant to the Christians, the caliph showed himself severe to those of his own followers who had departed from the rigour of the national manners. Having learned that some of his men wore flowing robes of silk, he ordered them to be extended on the earth, with their faces to the ground, and their silken robes to be torn from their shoulders. He punished with the bastinado those convicted of drinking wine; he made proclamation that those who had transgressed, should accuse themselves, and such was the influence he possessed over his troops, that many voluntarily confessed their guilt, and submitted to the degrading punishment.

In the history of Mohammedanism, Omar is a person second only in importance to the founder of Islam. His strict severity was useful at a time when unprecedented success seemed to excuse military violence; his impartiality greatly abated the calamities of the conquest. He did not spare the gallant Khalid, but it is probable that, in his conduct to that hero, he was actuated more by jealousy than by a love of justice; it must however be added, that in no instance did he permit high station to shelter oppressors. A curious circumstance, characteristic of the age, is recorded. Omar carried a cane with which he personally chastised officers even of the highest rank, whom he detected in any guilty action, and hence arose the proverb, “Omar’s cane is more terrible than the sword of the bravest warrior.”

His strictness in enforcing religious ordinances was carried to the very extreme of fanaticism; by his orders the splendid library which the Ptolemies had collected in Alexandria, was said to have been burned to heat the public baths; and the invaluable records of Persia, assembled by the zeal of the Sassanides in Madain, were hurled into the waters of the Tigris. His early education had rendered him insensible to the charms of literature or art; when his generals sent him, from the palace of the Persian kings, an unrivalled piece of tapestry, representing a flower garden, worked with gold and precious stones, he ordered this elaborate piece of workmanship to be cut in pieces, and the fragments distributed to his soldiers. For his own use, he had neither palace, nor court, nor house; during the time of prayer, he publicly officiated in the mosque; the remainder of the day he spent in the streets and squares, and it was there he gave audience to the ambassadors of the most powerful cotemporary princes. His dress was not better than that of his meanest subjects; when reproached for the deficiencies of his appearance, he replied, “I would rather please the Lord by my conduct, than men by my dress.” He was more indiscriminate in his charity than Abu Bekr; the first caliph relieved none whose distress had been occasioned by vicious conduct, Omar gave to all who asked. When reproached for making no distinction, he replied, “Man is placed upon the earth, only to do good to his brethren; the judgment of man’s worthiness should be left to his Creator.” The temperance of Omar was as remarkable as his simplicity; his ordinary food was coarse barley bread seasoned with salt, and on days of abstinence the salt was laid aside; his only beverage was water. When at meals, he invited all who chanced to be present, to take a share.

But the splendour of his public works was a strange contrast to the meanness of his private life. We have already mentioned the mosque he caused to be erected in Jerusalem; he also greatly enlarged and beautified that which Mohammed had built in Medina. By his orders, the foundations were laid of cities that rapidly grew to greatness, Old Cairo, Cufa, and Bassora. He caused the canal between the Nile and the Red Sea to be repaired and opened, in order to facilitate the importation of corn into Arabia, which the recent enlargement of the cities had rendered a matter of prime necessity. It was Omar, who first introduced the custom of dating from the Hegira; before his time the Arabians dated from the last great event which had interested the whole nation,--a war, a famine, or a plague,--and thus rendered their chronology a mass of inextricable confusion. To him also is owing the institution of a police force in Mecca and Medina, the establishment of a fund to provide for the pay of the army, and the preparation of an equitable scale of rewards for those who had distinguished themselves in the propagation of Islam. It is no wonder that, with such claims to admiration, the name of Omar should be so celebrated among the most rigid sects of the Mohammedans. But while the Sunnites labour to extend the fame of Omar, his memory is detested by the partisans of Ali; his name is the proverbial expression for all that is base in the countries where the Shiite principles prevail; no person that bears it, dare own it in public; and to such excess do the Persians carry their hatred, that they celebrate the day of Omar’s assassination as a public festival.

[Sidenote: [644 A.D.]]

Omar, finding death approaching, was at a loss whom to nominate his successor; and, to remedy the difficulty, devised the most extraordinary expedient that can be imagined. He directed that a council of six should be assembled after his death, that three days should be allowed them for deliberation, and that if, at the end of that time, they had not agreed on a new caliph, they should all be slain. The six who met to deliberate under these circumstances, were Ali, cousin and son-in-law of Mohammed, Othman, likewise his son-in-law, Zobair, the cousin of the prophet, and Abd ar-Rahman, Talha, and Saad, his favourite companions. After some deliberation, they elected Othman, and he was installed third caliph.

OTHMAN, THE THIRD CALIPH

[Sidenote: [644-656 A.D.]]

Othman was, like his predecessors, a native of Mecca, sprung from a different branch of the same tribe that had given birth to the prophet. He married successively two daughters of Mohammed, long acted as his secretary, and enjoyed his intimate confidence. It is said, that Mohammed was so delighted with the generosity displayed by his secretary, that he exclaimed, “O my God, I am satisfied with Othman, be thou also satisfied with him.” On another occasion, seeing Othman approach, he covered his face with his robe, and said, “Should not I be ashamed before a man whose merits would put angels to the blush?” At the time of his accession, he was more than eighty years of age, but his health was unshaken, and the vigour of his faculties unabated.

The third caliph pursued the warlike policy of his predecessors; by his orders the Mussulman armies completed the conquest of Persia, and extended the sway of the Saracens to the river Oxus, and the borders of India. Northern Africa, as far as the shores of the Atlantic, was subdued by another army; and a fleet, equipped in the harbours of Egypt and Syria, subdued the island of Cyprus, and menaced the northern coasts of the Mediterranean. But this success produced its natural effect; it required all the energies of Omar’s stern character to resist the progress of luxury and dissipation; the weak Othman was utterly incapable of any similar exertion. The wild sons of the desert began to rival in magnificence the most wealthy monarchs; they became ambitious of palaces and titles, they preferred the splendour of the court, to the glory of the field. Othman’s gentleness and facility accelerated the progress of corruption; naturally generous, he was unwilling to refuse any applicant, and as the foremost candidates for office are generally those least fitted for its duties, the administration fell into the hands of the designing and the profligate. With some show of reason, the old companions of Mohammed complained that they were set aside to make room for the family of Othman; and, with still more justice, that the imprudence and wantonness of youth was preferred to their experience.

Religion did not escape from the general corruption; new sects began to be formed; and the jealousy of the partisans of Ali daily acquired fresh strength. Abu Dar, an old companion of the prophet, misrepresenting some passages of the Koran, declared that the riches of this world were the source of every crime, and that the wealthy should be compelled by force to give their superfluities to the poor. Such doctrine was sure to obtain a favourable hearing in a half-civilised country, where, from the unequal distribution of plunder, a few had been suddenly enriched, but the great bulk of the population reduced to comparative poverty. At the same time another sectary announced that Mohammed was about to reappear, and execute justice on the wicked and cruel men who tyrannised over the Mussulmans. The people, expecting an approaching regeneration, despised their rulers, and neglected the duties of social life. The second revision of the Koran, ordained by Othman, was regarded by many of the Mussulmans as a corruption of the true religion; they suspected that the caliph did not pay sufficient deference to the authority of the prophet; especially as in certain prayers he made four prostrations where Mohammed only used two; and he had rebuilt a chapel destroyed by Mohammed’s special command.

We have been so long accustomed to see the Mohammedan religion united with despotic government, that we are naturally surprised to find a pure democracy under the caliphate; from the very beginning, every affair of importance was submitted to the general assembly; and all, except slaves, were permitted to state their opinions freely. No practical inconvenience arose from this custom, whilst disorder was checked by the sacred character of the prophet, the dignified demeanour of Abu Bekr, or the stern severity of Omar. But Othman possessed no such influence; when he attempted to stem the popular tide, he was attacked in his very pulpit, and driven by volleys of stones from the assembly. Satires and lampoons, “those straws,” which, as Lord Bacon says, “show the direction of the wind,” appeared in countless abundance.

Parties and factions were formed on every side; each province demanded a new governor, every faction desired a new caliph. The leaders in these disturbances were the ancient companions of the prophet; and many of the most devoted Mussulmans were ready to join in a revolution. At length a part of the Egyptian army marched suddenly to Medina and demanded an immediate reform of abuses. By a liberal use of promises and persuasions, they were induced to retire; but it was only to return the following year, irritated by disappointment, and strengthened by large bodies of partisans from Cufa and Bassora. Othman once more soothed the mutineers, but as they were returning home, they learned that the caliph’s secretary had sent official orders that they should be massacred. It is not quite certain that the caliph had sanctioned this perfidy, but that it was meditated does not admit of doubt. The soldiers, justly enraged, again appeared before Medina, demanding the head of the secretary; when that was refused, they slew Othman himself.

[Sidenote: [656 A.D.]]

The fatal day on which this atrocity occurred was Friday, which the Mohammedans keep holy. It was Othman’s custom on this day to fast until he had read through the entire Koran, and he was engaged in the perusal of the sacred volume, when the approach of the assassins was announced. Some of the caliph’s friends advised him to make some preparations for resistance, but he replied that he had seen Mohammed in a dream, and had been informed that they should break their fast together that day in paradise.

In the meantime, the conspirators advanced sword in hand. Five hundred guards attempted to check their progress, but were cut to pieces; the caliph’s wife threw herself in their path and had her hand cut off; the sons of Ali, and some of the old companions of the prophet, endeavoured to propitiate the mutineers, but were forced to consult their own safety by flight. Othman tranquilly read the Koran in the midst of the confusion; he scarcely deigned to raise his head when the enraged soldiers burst into his apartment. At their head was a son of Abu Bekr, named Muhammed, who seized Othman by the beard, and prepared to strike a fatal blow. The caliph, looking him steadily in the face, asked, “O Muhammed! what think you that your sainted father would say, if he saw my beard in your grasp?” Struck with the words, Muhammed drew back in silence; but his companions, less scrupulous, rushed upon Othman, and he fell covered with wounds. His blood gushed upon the Koran which he held in his hand; it is said to be still preserved as a relic in the mosque of Damascus. So great was the terror diffused by this event, that no one dared to perform the funeral obsequies; the body remained three days unburied; at length Ali gave orders for its sepulture, but it was buried by night, and in a private cemetery.

The orthodox Mussulmans reverence Othman in the present day for the action which excited most resentment in his own, namely, the revision of the Koran. They cite respecting him, the following traditionary saying of the prophet, “I have seen the name of Othman written on the gate of paradise; I have seen it marked behind the throne of God, and on the wings of the archangel Gabriel.” The Shiites regard him as a usurper, but they do not execrate his memory so much as that of Omar.

At first the horror inspired by this murder was so great, that all parties were reduced to silence. The surviving companions of Mohammed took advantage of this interval of tranquillity, and nominated Ali fourth caliph.

Ali was the son of Abu Talib, that uncle of Mohammed who had so faithfully watched over his childhood. He had been the first to acknowledge the divine mission of his cousin, and he ever manifested the most devoted attachment to his person. When Mohammed fled from Mecca, Ali disguised himself in the prophet’s robes, and placed himself on his bed, that the Meccans might not suspect his escape. When he followed his patron to Medina, he married the prophet’s favourite daughter Fatima, by whom he had several children. Mohammed on many occasions showed a strong love for Ali; he appointed him his lieutenant in his first expedition against the Greeks, at Tabuc, and during occasional absence, entrusted to him the government of Medina. It is supposed, on very plausible grounds, that Ali was actually nominated his successor by the prophet, but that Aisha prevented the circumstance from being known. This injustice was deeply felt by the son of Abu Talib and his partisans, but particularly by Mohammed’s relations, who thought themselves neglected by the three first caliphs. In vain, however, did his friends endeavour to persuade Ali to attempt the forcible seizure of the reins of government; he replied constantly, that he would never reign except by the free suffrages of the Mussulmans. During the reign of Omar, his loyalty was so notorious, that he was appointed governor of Arabia during the caliph’s absence at Jerusalem; he refused to join those who conspired against Othman, and one of his sons was severely wounded in defence of that sovereign. Finally, when elected, he very reluctantly consented to accept the dignity of caliph, which had twice already proved fatal to its possessors.

ALI (656-661 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [656-657 A.D.]]

Ali commenced his reign by deposing all the governors of the provinces. Amongst these were several men of great influence; especially Moawiyah the son of that Abu Sufyan, who had been long the chief of the Meccan idolaters, and the most bitter enemy of Mohammed. After Mecca had submitted, Mohammed made Moawiyah one of his private secretaries; the caliph Omar had raised him to the government of Syria, and he had now ruled that important province during fifteen years. Crafty, subtle, intriguing, possessing inflexible obstinacy, and boundless ambition, he received Ali’s mandate for his deposition with violent indignation. As he was a near relative of Othman, he resolved to declare himself his avenger, and though that sovereign had left children, Moawiyah claimed to be his heir and successor. He found allies in the centre of Arabia; and while the Syrians were preparing to take arms, Aisha, with a numerous body of followers, was already in the field. Though she had notoriously shared in the conspiracy against Othman, she now proclaimed herself his avenger, and she denounced Ali as the author of his death.

Joined with her were Talha and Zobair, two of Mohammed’s old companions, who well knew the falsehood of Aisha’s allegations. They had been the foremost to swear allegiance to Ali, but not having obtained all that they desired, they ranged themselves in the ranks of the rebels, to whom their presence gave additional confidence. The obligation of their oaths they evaded by the expiatory offerings prescribed in the fifth chapter of the Koran, which is one of the greatest blots on the character both of the book and its author.

Aisha, contrary to the established custom of Arabia, led her forces in person, mounted on a strong camel, and protected by an escort of picked men. When she approached a small village named Jowab, all the dogs in the place rushed out and barked at her with great fury. This she regarded as an evil omen, and declared that Mohammed had told her, “One of my wives, engaged in an evil design, shall be attacked by dogs in Jowab; take care that you be not the wicked person.” Full of alarm, she wished to return; but Zobair and Talha, knowing how important was her presence, suborned fifty false witnesses to swear that the village was never known by the name of Jowab. As she still seemed anxious to depart, they spread a report, that the army of Ali had gained a position in their rear, and consequently that she could not return in safety. “This,” say the Moslem historians, “was the first public lie told since the promulgation of Islam.”

The two armies met at Khoraiba, a place in the neighbourhood of Bassora; Ali’s forces amounted to twenty thousand men, all picked soldiers, those of Aisha were more numerous, but they were, for the most part, raw and undisciplined levies. After a brief contest, the rebels were routed; Talha fell wounded mortally from his horse, and with his dying breath besought pardon from God for his share in the murder of Othman and his treachery to Ali. When told of this, the generous conqueror exclaimed that God had granted Talha time for repentance before receiving his soul into heaven. Zobair escaped from the battle, but was overtaken on the road to Mecca by his pursuers, who cut off his head, and brought it as an acceptable present to the caliph. Ali expressed so much indignation at the sight, that the bearers assailed him with bitter reproaches, saying, “You are the evil genius of the Mussulmans; you consign to hell those who deliver you from your enemies, and you name those who attack your men companions of Satan.” The victory, however, could not be regarded as complete until Aisha had been forced to submission; the strictest orders were given to respect her person, but also it was desired that no pains should be spared to make her prisoner. Seventy men had their hands cut off attempting to seize her camel by the bridle; the pavilion in which she sat, was stuck so full of arrows that it resembled a porcupine; at length a soldier cut the back sinew of the camel, the animal fell helpless on his knees, and Aisha remained a captive. Muhammed, the son of Abu Bekr, was sent to take charge of her; she loaded him with the fiercest invectives, but he did not make any reply. When she was brought before Ali, he received her in the most courteous manner, recommended her to forbear from meddling with public affairs for the future, and sent her under a faithful escort to Medina. Thus ended the first great battle between the opponents and the partisans of Ali; it is frequently called by eastern writers “the battle of the camel” from the animal on which Aisha rode; it was the prelude to many and fearful scenes of slaughter.

The rebellion in Syria next engaged the attention of Ali; Moawiyah had not only rejected his offers of accommodation, but denied his title to the caliphate: in order to justify this rebellion, and strike the eyes of the multitude, Moawiyah procured the bloody robe in which Othman was murdered, and caused it to be borne in solemn procession through the streets of Damascus. This sight so powerfully inflamed the popular passions, that though it was then the middle of summer, more than thirty thousand persons bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to taste fresh water, until they had avenged the death of Othman. Among the leading partisans of the Syrian governor was Amru, the conqueror of Egypt, who seemed to share the general excitement, though well aware that Ali was innocent of the imputed crimes.

[Sidenote: [657-658 A.D.]]

The hostile forces met in the plains of Siffin, on the western bank of the Euphrates, not far from the city of Racca. Neither leader was prepared for general action, and ninety days were wasted in desultory skirmishes between divisions. His impetuous valour gave Ali the victory in most of these encounters; he challenged his rival to decide the dispute by single combat; but Moawiyah would not venture to enter the lists. The last action at Siffin continued all night, to the great disadvantage of the Syrians; they would have been driven from their very entrenchments, had not the crafty Moawiyah made an appeal to the superstitious feelings of Ali’s followers. He ordered some of his men to place copies of the Koran on the points of their lances, and advancing to the front of the lines, exclaim, “This is the book that ought to decide all differences between us; this is the word of God, and the code of our faith; it expressly forbids the shedding of Moslem blood.” Coarse as was the artifice, it had the most complete success; the troops of Irak, the flower of the caliph’s forces, threw down their arms, and clamorously demanded that a negotiation should be commenced. In vain did Ali command them to continue the fight, assuring them that Moawiyah disregarded the Koran, and was equally the enemy of God and man; the soldiers clamorously replied that they would not fight against the book of God, and threatened the caliph with the well-known fate of Othman.

From the moment that he was checked in the midst of victory, Ali seems to have despaired of the issue of the contest; when required to name an arbitrator, he coldly answered, “He that is not at liberty, cannot give his advice; you must now conduct the affair as you think proper.” His soldiers took him at his word, and nominated on the part of the caliph, Abu Musa, whose chief merit was, that he had written a faulty copy of the Koran, and whose fidelity had been long more than suspected. Moawiyah appointed a much more subtle negotiator, Amru, universally regarded as the most able statesman of the period. The arbitrators were enjoined to decide the dispute according to the Koran and the traditions of the prophet, and to pronounce judgment in the next month of Ramadhan.

Amru persuaded Abu Musa, that the best plan that could be adopted, was to declare the throne vacant, and proceed to a new election. When the day for giving judgment arrived, Abu Musa, as had been agreed, first ascended the pulpit, and with a loud voice pronounced the following words; “I depose both Ali and Moawiyah from the caliphate, in the same manner that I draw this ring from my finger.” Amru next ascended, and said, “You have heard Abu Musa pronounce the deposition of Ali: I confirm it; and I invest Moawiyah with the supreme authority in the same manner that I now draw this ring upon my finger. I hail him as the legal successor of Othman, the avenger of his blood, and the most worthy of the Moslems to command the faithful.”

This unexpected declaration created a violent tumult. Abu Musa accused Amru of breach of faith, called him a wretch, a dog, an unclean beast, and imprecated on his grave all nameless desecrations; Amru replied, that his co-arbitrator was a learned blockhead, a jackass loaded with books, and the grandfather of stupidity; at the same time, he stoutly maintained his sentence.

This event was fatal to the cause of Ali; his soldiers, who had forced him to commence the imprudent negotiation, felt that their fidelity must for the future be suspected, and began to desert in whole battalions. The new and formidable sect of the Kharijites, that is, “the deserters,” appeared in the midst of Arabia, declaring that both the rivals had forfeited their right to reign, by submitting to human judgment what God alone should determine. It was necessary to march a large army against these fanatics, and the time which Ali wasted in their subjugation, was employed by Moawiyah in new conquests. It would be difficult to form an idea of the vindictive rage which filled all parties at this period.

We have already mentioned the view taken of affairs, by the fanatical Kharijites. Three of this sect happened to meet at Mecca, and after some discourse agreed that if the three chief causes of discontent were removed, namely, Ali, Moawiyah, and Amru, the affairs of the Mussulmans would soon be restored to their ancient flourishing condition. Finally, they resolved to devote themselves for the common advantage, and agreed, that on a stated day, one should slay Ali at Cufa; another, Moawiyah at Damascus; and the third, Amru in Egypt. The attempt was made; Amru on that day did not appear in public; Moawiyah escaped with a few slight wounds; Ali alone received a mortal stroke.

The respect which the Shiites have for the memory of Ali, borders on idolatry. All the Mussulmans, however, now join in commiserating his calamities, and blaming the violence of which he was the victim. Every time that they pronounce his name, they accompany it with the benediction, “May God render his face glorious.”

[Sidenote: [659-661 A.D.]]

From the contest between Ali and Moawiyah, the first of the Omayyad caliphs, arose the distinction of the Mohammedans into Sunnites and Shiites. The chief points at issue between them, are the following; (1) The Shiites, or as they call themselves, the Adalians, or “lovers of justice,” assert that the three first caliphs were usurpers; the Sunnites declare that they were legitimate monarchs, elected according to the sunna, or traditional law of the prophet. (2) The Shiites regard Ali as the equal of Mohammed; some even assert his superiority, but the Sunnites deny that he possessed any special dignity. (3) The Shiites assert that the Koran is made void by the authority attributed to tradition; the Sunnites say that tradition is necessary to complete and explain the doctrines of the Koran.

The Turks, Egyptians, and Arabs belong to the Sunnite sect; the tenets of the Shiites are professed by the Persians, a great portion of the Tatars, and several of the Mohammedan princes in India.

Ali was buried at Cufa, but the exact place of his sepulchre cannot be determined. A magnificent mosque has been erected in the neighbourhood of the city, which is called Meshed-Ali, the place of Ali’s martyrdom; it is, to this day, a favourite object of pilgrimage to devout Mussulmans.[f]

So, after a most turbulent and unhappy caliphate, Ali died of his wound, in the sixty-third year of his age, and the fifth of his reign, 661 A.D., and the thirty-eighth year of the Hegira; making the third caliph slain within twenty years by the hand of an assassin.

Ali was an upright and honourable man, a patron of literature and the fine arts, and himself a poet. He certainly merited better treatment at the hands of his own subjects, having been a just judge, and a kind and paternal governor; oftener forgiving than punishing the misdeeds of those who were so frequently conspiring against his life and interests. His lineal descendants are sheriffs and emirs; permitted to wear their turbans and hair in a peculiar fashion, differing from the usages of all other Moslems.

Ali left two sons, Hassan and Hosein. Hassan was in his thirty-fifth year when he succeeded his father, as the fifth caliph of the Moslems. The people chose Hassan without opposition, owing to his having been a favourite of his grandfather, the prophet; whom also he is said to have resembled in features. Moreover, he was a benevolent, upright, and devout man; but he grievously lacked the energy so indispensable for a ruler in troubled times. The new caliph would willingly have disbanded the army ready to march upon Syria; for he was no lover of warfare, and would rather have forfeited the Syrian provinces than mixed in battle.

His brother Hosein, however, was a warrior; and so were many of the veteran generals who had sworn allegiance to his father, and whose plans he was therefore compelled to follow up. He accordingly marched upon Syria; sending forward twelve thousand light troops, under Kais, to check the progress of Moawiyah, who was advancing to meet Hassan’s army. Kais succeeded in repelling the Syrians; and secured a position, where he might await the arrival of the main body of the army, which, however, never reached its destination. The troops of Hassan were chiefly from Irak, and not inclined to enter upon the campaign; moreover, they knew him to be an inefficient commander. A revolt broke out amongst the soldiery, in which Hassan was wounded. This occurred at Madain, and the caliph was compelled to seek refuge with the governor in the citadel. He ultimately sent proposals to Moawiyah, offering to abdicate in his favour, under certain stipulations, to which Moawiyah readily agreed. So, to the great indignation of Hosein, Hassan abdicated; and eventually the two brothers settled in Medina, where Moawiyah supplied them liberally with funds.

This act doubtless saved a good deal of bloodshed; and, in the thirty-ninth year of the Hegira, the sixth caliph, Moawiyah I, began to reign. His first act was to almost exterminate the sect of Seceders; a people even more dangerous than the modern Janissaries, and against whom the caliph Moawiyah had deep hatred, owing to the stab he had received in Damascus.[t]

FOOTNOTES

[34] Respecting the date of the capture of Damascus, authorities differ, some placing it in 634 A.D., and others in 635 A.D. The duration of the siege, too, is equally uncertain, El-Makin[c] stating it to be six months, while Abulfeda[d] gives seventy days.

[35] Dr. Weil,[e] on authority of the Zaban, says, that this latter account is the most probable, it being related by Aisha and Abd ar-Rahman, the son and daughter of Abu Bekr.

[36] [Other authorities state that Alexandria fell nine months after Heraclius’ death.]

[37] [The loss sustained in Cæsar’s time was repaired by Antony’s gift to Cleopatra of the library of Pergamus. Alexandria possessed two libraries: one, that of the Bruchion, which was destroyed during the popular tumults in the reign of Gallienus, 263 A.D.; the other, that of the Serapeum, which experienced the same fate from the violence of Theophilus, as related in ch. 28, to which Gibbon[g] has here referred. These valuable collections had, therefore, disappeared 250 years before the invasion of Egypt by Amru; nor in that interval does history record a prince, patriarch, or prefect, who had either the means or the will to replace them. The tale of Abul-Faraj[h] would not have been so industriously circulated, had it not served the purpose of those who wished to impute to the barbarian conquerors of Rome the guilt of darkening the world. Gibbon says he felt strongly tempted to deny both the fact and the consequences of this irreparable shipwreck of learning, as being founded on the simple authority of Abul-Faraj, whilst Eutychius[i] and El-Makin[c] are both silent on the subject. Milman,[j] however, adds that since this period several new Mohammedan authorities have been adduced to support Abul-Faraj: that of (1) Abd al-Latif,[k] by Professor White[l]; (2) of Makrisi[m]; (3) of Ibn Khaldun[n]; and after them Haji Khalfa.[o] Reinhard in a German dissertation, printed at Göttingen, 1792, and St. Croix (Magasin Encyclop., tom. IV, p. 433), have examined the question. Among oriental scholars, Professor White, M. St. Martin,[q] Von Hammer,[r] and Silv. de Sacy[s] consider the fact of the burning of the library, by the command of Omar, beyond question. A Mohammedan writer brings a similar charge against the crusaders. The library of Tripolis is said to have contained the incredible number of three millions of volumes. On the capture of the city, Count Bertram of St. Gilles, entering the first room, which contained nothing but the Koran, ordered the whole to be burned, as the works of the false prophet of Arabia.]

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