BY ALLAN
MENZIES, D.D.
PROFESSOR OF
BIBLICAL CRITICISM IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS
Known unto
God are all his works from the beginning of the world.—ACTS xv. 18.
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
597-599 FIFTH AVENUE
1917
CHAPTER XIII
ISLAM
In
chronological order Islam stands last of all the great religions; it appeared
six centuries after Christianity, and Christian ideas enter into it. It is,
however, so essentially Semitic that it can only be understood aright if
studied in connection with the group now occupying our attention. In Islam
Semitic religion opens its arms to embrace mankind, and accomplishes, in a
fashion, the destiny to which Judaism was invited, but which Judaism failed to
realise till it was transformed in Christianity. In Islam Semitic religion is
not transformed, but enters in its own stern and uncompromising character into
the position of a universal faith.
This
religion sprang up and entered on its career of conquest with startling
suddenness and even, some scholars hold, without any natural preparation for
its coming in the country of its birth. The Arabs called the period before
Islam the "time of ignorance"; in that period they considered their
race had no history; the new religion, when it arose, had made a clean sweep of
all that had gone before, and had caused a new world to begin. The labours of
Arabic scholars have, however, done something to dispel the mists which hung
over early Arabia, and it is possible both to give a much more satisfactory
sketch than formerly of the earlier religion of the Arabs, and to discern to
some extent the processes which had unconsciously been preparing for the advent
of a higher and stronger faith.
Arabia before Mahomet.—The
Arabs of the central peninsula in the times before Mahomet were not a nation
but a set of tribes—mostly nomadic, but some of them settled in cities, who,
while united by language, custom, and traditions, had no central government or
organisation. The desert which they inhabited, as it admitted no cultivation,
kept human life uniform and unprogressive; external influences penetrated
slowly into this corner of the world, and society was still arranged as it had
been for thousands of years. The strongest tie was that of blood. A man's
fellow-tribesmen were bound to avenge his murder; and so one slaughter led to
another, and from generation to generation the land was filled with a perpetual
series of blood-feuds. Twice a year, however, a cessation of these feuds took
place; a month came round in which there was a universal truce. Men who were
enemies then made the same pilgrimage to a distant shrine; at such a time trade
caravans could set out and travel in safety; and the great markets or festivals
then took place, which, while based at first on religious ideas, had in most
part ceased to have any religious character. Some of these markets were, at the
time of Mahomet, national occasions: men of every tribe met and came to know
each other there; the poetry which had been composed during the preceding
months was publicly recited, so that the rise of a new poet was known to all
Arabia; the news of all the tribes circulated, and foreign ideas and doctrines
were also to be heard. In proportion as the face of nature was hard and
forbidding, social life was bright and gay; wine, women, wit, and war provided
the themes of poets and the ordinary aims of life.
The
Old Religion.—It has generally been said that the
Arabs before Islam were irreligious. They themselves contrasted the sternness
of the new period with the gaiety of the old one. The truth is, as Wellhausen
has admirably shown,1 that the working religion of the country
had become before the period of Islam entirely effete. Arab religion was based
on the ideas and usages which have been described in chap. x.
of this book; it is mainly from Arabia, indeed, that the original character of
Semitic religion is known to us. Each tribe had its god, whom it regarded as a
magnified master or ruler, and with whom it held communion by sacrifice, the
blood being brought in contact with the god and the victim devoured by the
tribesmen. The god is represented sometimes by a tree, generally by a stone; a
piece of fertile land belongs to him, within which the plants and animals are
sacred; the religious meeting can be held in no other spot. Hence the Arabs are
said to be stone worshippers; but the phrase is an awkward one: what they
worshipped was not the stone but a god connected with it. And the early gods of
Arabia are a motley company; it is only in their relations to their worshippers
and in the order of the worship paid them that they have some uniformity. The
greatest and oldest deity of the Arabs is Allat or Alilat, "the
Lady." Like the female deity found in all primitive Semitic religions, she
is a stately and commanding lady. She is not the wife of a god, nor are
unseemly ideas connected with her. She belongs to the early world in which
motherhood was synonymous with rule, since the family had no male head; she has
a character but no history: mythology has not gathered round her. Arabia has
also certain nature-gods. The stellar deities are mostly female; there is a
male sun-god Dusares. Heaven is worshipped by some, not the blue but the rainy
heaven, which is a source of blessings. There are no gods belonging to the
region under the earth. The serpent is the only animal that receives worship.
1 Reste Arabischen Heidenthums, p. 188.
But
the gods of Arabia belong mostly to another class than that of
nature-gods; or at least if they ever were connected with nature, they have
parted with such associations. They are uncouth figures, with vague legends and
miscellaneous attributes. One set of them is said to have been
worshipped by the contemporaries of Noah; they are big men, and it is their
property to drink milk. Hubal was the chief god of Mecca. It was his property
to bring rain. Vadd was a great man, with two garments, and a sword and spear,
bow and quiver. Jaghuth, "the Helper," was a portable god, not a
stone probably, since he was carried into battle by his tribe, as the ark was
by the Israelites. Another god is called "the Burner," no doubt from
the sacrifices offered to him. Each tribe has its god or set of gods, and
certain sacred objects connected with its gods. One god is found by those who
kiss or rub a certain black stone, another in connection with a white stone,
another with a tree. And of many of them there are images; the stone has some
work done on it, or there is a wooden block roughly hewn. The "Caaba"
is originally a black stone which is kissed or rubbed at Mecca. The name was
given, however, to the cube-shaped building, in one of the walls of which the
black stone had been fixed. In this building there stood in old days images of
Abraham and Ishmael, each with divining arrows in his hand. Of such idols a
large number existed in Mahomet's time, and were destroyed by him. In some
cases the image had a house, and a person was needed to guard it; this
functionary also kept some simple apparatus for casting lots or otherwise
obtaining counsel from the deity, and oaths and vows were made before him, to
which the deity became a witness.
To
these beliefs of early Arabia must be added a lively belief in jinns,
spirits who are not gods, since the gods are above the earth, but the jinn is
compelled to haunt some part of the earth's surface. The jinns can assume any
form they choose, and are often met with in the shape of serpents. Wellhausen
surmises that the seraphs of the Jews are to be traced to some such origin.
They infest desert places, and are nocturnal in their habits. What they do is
often not observed till afterwards. They spy upon the gods,
and may bring information from above to men whom they haunt or with whom they
are in league. Of the magic of Arabia, the signs and omens drawn from birds,
from dreams, and other occurrences, it is not necessary to speak; and we need
only say, in concluding this rough sketch of the ideas of the early Arabs, that
the belief in a life beyond was very faint; they set out food for the dead,
whom they professed to think of as still existing, but the belief, if they
entertained it, was perfunctory and had no influence.
Confusion
of Worship.—At the period of Islam the worship
of Arabia had fallen into great confusion. The gods were stationary, but the
tribes wandered; and the consequence was that the wandering tribe left its
shrine behind it to be cared for by its successors in that piece of country,
and itself also, when it gained a new seat, succeeded to the guardianship of a
new god. Thus, on the one hand, the worship of each shrine was constantly
gathering new associations, as each tribe which had been there left behind it
some new legend or practice; and on the other hand, pilgrimage became
universal, since each tribe had to pay periodical visits to its gods whom it
had left behind. At Mecca we read of hundreds of idols; a hundred tribes have
left there something of their own. Thus Mecca became a sacred place for tribes
far and near, and rose into national importance; and the same was the case to a
less degree in other places also. But as this process went on, it inevitably
led to the weakening of religion. The tie of blood, which was felt always, was
a far stronger thing than the tie of a common worship for which the tribe had
to go to another part of the country, and to come in contact with a multitude
of other cults. Worship therefore became more and more a superstition: a thing,
that is to say, whose real sacredness was in the past, and which was only kept
up from pious habit; it did not supply the inspiration of
ordinary life nor guide the more active minds among the people.
We
have not yet spoken of Allah, who is understood to be the god par
excellence of Arabia. But for this there is a good reason. Allah is not,
like the other beings we have spoken of, a historical god, with a legend, a
shrine, a tribe all to himself. He is not a historical personage, but an idea
consolidated, no doubt at an early period, into a god. Wellhausen traces the
rise of Allah for us in a most interesting way. The name, he shows, is not a
proper name that belonged to one particular figure in the pantheon of Arabia;
it is the title which the Arab conferred on his god, whatever the proper name
of that being might be. Whatever god he worshipped, he called him Allah, Lord;
and thus every Arabic god was Allah, as every head of a household has the name
of "father" and every monarch that of "king." And as every
tribal god was Allah, the thought arose, no doubt in very early times, of one
god who was common to the tribes. Language paved the way for thought; while the
tribal gods were still believed in and adored, this figure rose above them—a
being who has no special worship of his own, who does not ask for it nor need
it, but who yet fills, as none of the lesser beings does, the character of
deity. Allah was the god of all the tribes; and as his figure grew in the mind
of the country, it was inevitable that the worship of the historical gods
should still further lose its importance, till only the women and children
really cared for it. A monotheism of a grave and earnest kind thus made its way
beside the old belief in many gods. Mahomet found that his fellow-countrymen
did not really believe in the minor gods; when they were in danger or in urgent
need of any blessing, it was to Allah that they called. The fall of the idols,
when it came about, took place very easily; they were no longer needed. The
Arabs had come to believe in a god who dwelt in heaven and was
the creator of the world, who ordained man's life with an irreversible decree,
by whom the bitter and the sweet, both the hitting of the mark and the missing
it, were alike fixed. The moral character of Allah was not markedly in advance
of that of his people. What a man gains by robbery he calls the gift of Allah,
while what is gained by industry is called by another name. Yet Allah is also
felt by some to keep them back from robbery; he powerfully upholds the moral
standards which have been reached. He is the defender of strangers, the avenger
of treason. His moral influence is negative, however, rather than positive. He
does not inspire with ideals of goodness; but he holds back from evil. He is
not a being who is ever likely to enter, like the God of the Jews, into
intimate and affectionate relations with men; he is too abstract and has too
little history to be capable of such unbending; his religion, when it comes to
be fully formed, will be one of puritans and fanatics rather than of the meek
and lowly. He is the one great instance of a god without any natural basis who
has come to exercise rule. He is a god of whom reason can thoroughly approve—no
absurd legends cling to him; he is from the first great, mighty, and moral; and
he rules the world in righteousness by inflexible standards. This religion is
coming to the surface even in the "time of ignorance."
Judaism
and Christianity in Arabia.—The
question has been much discussed whether the new religion of Arabia was due to
contact with Judaism or with Christianity. Both of these faiths were known in
Arabia before the time of the Prophet. There was a large Jewish population at
Medina, and synagogues existed in many other places; and there were Christians
in Arabia, though their Christianity was that only of small sects and of lonely
ascetics, and had failed to convert the country as a whole. To the Arabs the
Jews were "the people of the Book," the book in the traditions
of which they also had some share. Ignorant themselves for the most part of the
arts of reading and writing, and divided among a multitude of petty worships
which they were ceasing to respect, they looked up with envy to those whose
faith had been fixed for so many ages in a literary standard. But while the Jews
were respected in Arabia, they were far from popular. The qualities which have
drawn down on them the bitter hatred of modern peoples among whom they dwell,
acted there in the same way; their pride and exclusiveness, their keenness in
business, their profession as money-lenders, made them detested in Arabia as in
modern Germany. On the other hand, the ascetic view of life which the
Christians represented had attractions even for some of the higher minds among
the Arabs. A set of men called "Hanyfs" were well known in Mahomet's
time, who were seeking for a better religion than the Arab worships afforded,
and a better life than that of eternal feud. The meaning of the name is
controverted; those to whom it was applied had not attached themselves to Judaism
nor to Christianity; they were people in earnest about religion who had not
reached any definite position. Even where, as with Mahomet himself, the facts
of Judaism and of Christianity were most inaccurately known, the view of God
held in these religions and the moral standard they set up could not fail to
exercise much influence. If in Arab thought itself a god like Allah was rising
to definite personal character and to a position of great superiority over the
old gods, then the inner movement was in the same direction as the influence of
older religions from without, and the time was ripe for a new faith. It was not
to be expected that a people like the Arabs should accept a religion which had
its origin in another country, or which threatened like Christianity to bring
to an end the old tribal system; a new growth from within was needed, and this
was ready to appear.
The
beginnings of most religions are wrapt in obscurity; but the rise of Islam is
known to us with perfect certainty and in considerable detail. The only
difficulties in the way of understanding it are of a psychological nature; we
have to account for the foundation of a religion which spread with lightning
speed over many lands, and which still continues to spread, by one whose
character was in some respects far from noble, and who was capable of stooping
to compromise and to the darkest treachery in order to gain his ends. How a
religion fitted for many races and many generations of men could be founded by
a barbarian and by the aid of barbarous means—that is the problem of this
religion. The materials for solving it lie open before us. The Koran is
undoubtedly the authentic work of Mahomet himself: the suras or chapters are
arranged in a wrong order, and if they are read as they stand do not tell any
intelligible story; but when placed, as has now been done by scholars,2 in the
true historical order, they show the history of Mahomet's mind with great
clearness. After the Koran came the traditions. From the immense volume of
these the industry of the scholars of Islam as well as others has succeeded in
sifting out what is most to be relied on. In no other case is the separation of
the mythical from the historical element in the early traditions so easily
made, and the religion comes into view in the full light of day.
2 S. Lane-Poole, The Speeches of Mohammad, 1882; the
most important parts of the Koran chronologically arranged with a very useful
introduction.
Mahomet.
Early Life.—Mahomet was born about 570 A.D., of a family belonging to the Mecca
branch of the Coreish, a powerful tribe, who carried on a large caravan trade
with Syria, and who were the guardians of the sanctuary which was the central
point of Arabian religion. He entered therefore from his birth into the centre
of the faith of his country. He was early left an orphan, and
was brought up by relatives, who were kind to him but who were very poor. He
had to make his living at an early age by herding sheep, an occupation which
conduced in his case, as it has done in others, to contemplation and thought.
In early manhood he entered the service of Khadija, a rich widow; and he made
journeys in her affairs to Syria and Palestine, where he may have seen places
famous in Jewish history and may also have come in contact with Christianity. At
the age of twenty-five he married Khadija, who was fifteen years older than
himself; the marriage was a happy one, and there were several children. He is
described as a man of middle height, with a fair skin, a pleasant countenance,
and pleasing manners; and he had proved his ability in business. Some years
after his marriage he began to think deeply about religious subjects. He came
into connection apparently with some of those Hanyfs or penitents, mentioned
above, who, without being formed into a sect, were at one in seeking for a more
satisfactory religious position. The religion to which they were feeling their
way was a monotheism, a service of the one God of Abraham, but not that of
Judaism with its exaltation of the Jewish race, nor that of Christianity, in
which God had a Son for his companion. Submission to the one God was to them
the essence of religion. "Islam" means submission, and the
"Moslem" is the person who thus submits himself to the one sole God,
whether he be Jew or Christian or neither. The Hanyfs also held the belief of
the Christians in a coming judgment; and the effect of their beliefs on their
lives was that they practised austerities and often retired from the world.
His
Religious Impressions.—Mahomet
at this part of his life began also to withdraw himself, and to go apart to
lonely spots for meditation. What he meditated we see from his sayings and
doings afterwards. The contrast between the pure religion of Allah, as held by the Hanyfs, and the popular religion of Mecca with which
his birth connected him, with its trade associations, its idols, its
unintelligible rites, was certainly a tremendous one; and if a judgment was
impending over all but the believers in Allah, it was a terrible prospect. For
many years, however, Mahomet was simply a Hanyf. He was one who had surrendered
himself, with a tender and impressionable soul, to the divine will and
guidance, and was filled with the sense of Allah's presence and power, and of
his own accountability to him in the great and tremendous realities of life. In
addition to this, however, we have to mention a circumstance which is generally
thought to have had a determining influence in Mahomet's production of Islam.
He had a peculiar temperament; mental excitement led in him to inner catastrophes
which, whether they are classed under epilepsy or hysteria, caused him to see
visions and to believe that certain words had been addressed to him by heavenly
visitants. The new religious movement in Arabia had secured an adherent in whom
its teachings would be felt with tremendous intensity, and would possibly break
forth with irresistible force.
The
Revelations.—Mahomet was forty years of age when
the thoughts which had long been working within him burst into open expression.
This took place by means of a vision. An angel appeared to him as he slept on
Mount Hira on one of his nightly wanderings, and held a scroll before him which
he bade him read. He had not learned to read, but the angel insisted, and so he
read; and what he read was the earliest revealed piece of the Koran (sura 96):—
Read,3 in the
name of thy Lord who created, created man from a drop. Read, for thy Lord is
the Most High, who hath taught by the pen, hath taught to man what he knew not.
Nay, truly man walketh in delusion when he deemeth that he sufficeth for
himself; to thy Lord they must all return.
All
men, i.e., however they may think, as the Arabs were given to think,
that they need no help but that of their own right arm, must come before
Allah's judgment and render an account to him: this is the doctrine by which
Mahomet first appealed to his fellow-countrymen. It is a revelation. Allah
teaches it by sending down a copy of what is written in the Book in heaven, the
"mother of the Book" from which all revelations, Jewish, Christian,
or Mahomet's own, are alike derived. Mahomet has thus begun to prophesy. The
first outburst of revelation threw him into great agitation; he thought he was
possessed by a jinn; and it tended to his further distress that an interval of
two or three years elapsed before another vision took place. Then the vision
came again. "Rise up and warn!" it said to him; "and thy Lord
magnify, and thy garments purify, and abomination shun, and grant not favours
to gain increase; and wait for thy Lord." The revelations now began to
come in rapid succession, and Mahomet now believed in his own inspiration. In
this conviction he never wavered afterwards; and there can be no doubt that the
earlier revelations were felt by him as if they came from without and were
dictated by a power he could not resist. His fellow-countrymen naturally took
another view; like other prophets, Mahomet was said to be mad and to be
possessed by a spirit; and these accusations stung him, because he himself had
at first apprehended something of the kind. The later pieces were of a
different character; he had the power afterwards of producing a revelation to
suit any situation which arose; but the contents of the earlier ones were not
unworthy of being revelations, and such he felt them to be.
3 Or, Preach!—loud reading or repetition being the mode of
claiming attention for the divine word.
His
Preaching.—He preached the new truth at first
to those with whom he was intimate. It was not new but old; it was the religion
of Abraham that he preached, that of the Book of which both Jews and Christians
had counterparts; he did not think of founding a new religion.
He called his own household and his relatives to submit themselves to Allah,
the supreme Lord and the righteous Judge, before whose judgment they must soon
stand. They were to put away heathen vices and to practise the duty of regular
prayer, of giving alms without hoping for any advantage from it, and of
temperance. After a time he is encouraged by new suras to preach publicly, and
does so. The Meccans, however, do not listen to him. The prophet's preaching
acquires by this opposition a sternness it did not possess at first, and he
proceeds to attack the popular worship in a way fitted to stir up against him
the bitterest hostility. The Meccans hear from him that the religion to which
all Arabia flocks together, and without which they would do little trade, is
not only a vanity but a thing abhorrent to Allah, and undoubtedly drawing down
damnation on all who partake in it; and that their forefathers are
unquestionably in hell. Such preaching could not be tolerated; Mahomet's
friends are appealed to to stop his mouth, but in vain, and his
fellow-tribesmen, though they do not believe in him, yet protect him, as the
laws of kindred require.
Persecution.—Mahomet suffers as other prophets have done; he is
ridiculed, misjudged, threatened. On the other hand he has his consolations;
when depressed he receives encouraging messages from above. His enemies will
perish; his cause will succeed; the day will come when men will flock to his
doctrine in crowds. Persecution, however, is not without effect on him: on one
occasion he attempted to compromise matters with idolatry; in a sura recited at
the Caaba he allowed himself to use certain complimentary expressions about the
three daughters of Allah, in whom the Meccans put their trust. The Meccans were
much pleased with this, but Mahomet had to suffer the reproaches of the angel
Gabriel after he went home, and the concession was erelong withdrawn. If, as
appears likely, the compromise had been deliberately planned,
a strange light is thrown on the nature of the revelations at a time not long
after they had begun to flow. But there is no approach to compromise after
this. The position of the prophet naturally grew worse after this display of
weakness, and the persecution of the townsmen more embittered; for two years
Mahomet and his followers were rigorously cut off from intercourse with their
fellow-citizens. On the other hand the prophet's tone became harder and more sombre
as he saw that no turning back was possible. Never were the terrors of hell
preached with more intensity; it makes one's blood run cold to read the
denunciations of the Mecca unbelievers, men personally known to the prophet,
and to hear him forecast the words with which they will be bidden to take their
place for ever in the fire. Personal irritation gives edge to the denunciations
of fanaticism. Examples are sought in Jewish history of those who rejected
prophets, Moses or Noah, and suffered a prompt and terrible judgment for so
doing. The Meccans were little moved by such threats; they had no real belief
in a future life, and scoffed at the idea of a resurrection of the body; and
for this scepticism also parallels are found by the prophet in history, which
show what fate the doubters may expect.
From
reading the Koran we should judge Mahomet to have been a disagreeable fanatic;
but he also possessed very different qualities. Those who knew him best were
most devoted to him. His followers adhered to him with a faith which was proof
against all persecutions; we find him even ordaining that slaves who are
converts may dissemble their connection with him in order to avoid the cruel
treatment it drew down on them. Such attachment could only have been inspired
by a noble nature; his followers felt him to be indeed a teacher sent by Allah,
and were enthusiastically convinced of the truth of his doctrine.
Trials. He decides to leave Mecca.—In spite of this his position was a precarious and trying
one. His wife Khadija, to whom he had been most faithful, died; so did his most
powerful protector. The cause, moreover, was not advancing at Mecca, and was
not likely to do so; and Mahomet began to consider the propriety of
transferring it to new ground. The first attempt to do so was not successful;
at Taif, where he asked to be received and to be allowed to preach, he was
rudely repulsed, so that he came back to Mecca in deep dejection. The new
opening which he sought was, however, about to present itself in another quarter.
Among the visitors to one of the feasts he met a company of pilgrims from
Medina, who both addressed him with respect and showed that they understood his
doctrines. Medina was well acquainted with Jewish ideas, and presented a more
favourable soil for the prophet to work on; it is even suggested that the Arabs
of Medina, having heard of the Jewish expectation of a Messiah, considered that
it would be an advantage for them if the Messiah should be of their own race,
and that Mahomet might possibly be He. The transference of the cause to Medina
was, however, brought about with great deliberation. Those who wished Mahomet
to come preached his doctrine at Medina for a year, and with encouraging
success. Pledges were given and repeated by his friends there, that they would
have no god but Allah, that they would withhold their hands from what was not
their own, that they would flee fornication, that they would not kill new-born
infants, that they would shun slander, and that they would obey God's messenger
as far as was reasonable:—these are the practical reforms which Islam at this
time demanded. The result of these proceedings was that Mahomet advised his
followers to go to Medina. He himself waited till nearly all had gone, and did
not set out till a plot had been laid by his enemies the Coreish to assassinate
him. The Hegira or flight took place on 16th June 622 A.D. The flight, not the birth of the
prophet, forms the era of Mohammedan chronology, since it was from the moment
of the flight that Islam entered on its victorious career.
Mahomet
at Medina.—From this point onwards the prophet
is seen in a different position and a different character. At Mecca he is a
persecuted, struggling, and unsuccessful preacher, but at Medina he rapidly
becomes the most powerful person in the commonwealth. He organises the service
of religion, but he also gives new life to the community in other ways,
terminating its feuds, uniting all its forces in the service of Allah, and by
his decisions in the cases which are brought to him laying the foundation of a
new jurisprudence. A pure theocracy was set up at Medina, and he as the prophet
was its sole organ and administrator. In this capacity he displayed consummate
ability. Alike in religious and in civil matters he showed the most perfect
comprehension of his countrymen. He resorted freely to compromise in order to
make his religion and policy suitable to the masses of his people and to secure
their adhesion. In this way he soon secured for himself an absolute authority.
The
new religion thus became the cement by which a strong commonwealth was formed
out of elements formerly at variance. Mahomet's first care on reaching Medina
was to organise the service of the faith. A place was built where the
congregation could meet for prayer and exhortation; the prophet's house beside
it, or rather the apartments of his wives, for he now had two, and was soon to
have more. The mosque, which all over the world is the local habitation of
Islam, may have been derived from the synagogue or the Christian church. The
service which takes place in it is not a sacrifice, but consists of
intellectual exercises which nourish in the hearers the spirit of the religion.
In the Mosque of Medina Mahomet taught his converts the practices and duties
which were required of them. He taught this with great
precision, and himself set an example how each exercise was to be done; so
that, as Wellhausen says, the mosque became the exercise ground where the
people were drilled in the requirements of the new faith. "There the
Moslems acquired the esprit de corps and the rigid discipline which
distinguish their armies."
New
Religious Union.—A new bond of union thus took the
place of the old tie of blood, which had been by far the strongest in Arabia.
Every Moslem regarded every other Moslem as his brother, even though belonging
to a different tribe. The claims of religion came to supersede all others; all
natural tastes, all family affections, were taught to yield to them. Within a
few years of his coming to Medina Mahomet had forbidden the use of wine and the
pursuit of art, and had imposed on all women who adhered to him the use of the
veil. In every way the community was taught to regard itself as separated from
the former life of the country and from all who did not share the new faith. It
was represented as the duty of believers to fight against all unbelievers: in
this way the universal prevalence of the religion was to be brought about. The
courage of the faithful was stimulated by the promise of rich booty and by the
assurance that those who fell in battle would go straight to the joys of
Paradise; and the wars they waged acquired in consequence a relentless
character which was new in Arabia. They were allowed to fight in the sacred
month, in which ancient custom ordained a universal truce. They fought with a
gloomy determination, and used their victories with a relentless cruelty, which
excited the consternation and horror of all witnesses. They did not scruple, as
other Arabs did, to fight against their kinsmen. "Islam has rent all bonds
asunder, Islam has blotted out all treaties," they said, when reproached
with their disregard of old understandings. The prophet himself was foremost in
this unrelenting policy. Captives taken in battle were slaughtered; a whole tribe was massacred which had joined the enemy, and had
surrendered after a siege in the hope of merciful treatment.
Breach
with Judaism and Christianity.—As
Mahomet thus freed himself, in spreading the faith of "the most merciful
God," from all considerations of mercy and of honour, he also shook off,
as his position grew strong, relations which might have proved embarrassing
with other religions. In his earlier teaching he speaks of his own religion as
being substantially the same as Judaism and Christianity. All three have
"the Book"; the Koran is a continuation and supplement of the Jewish
and Christian revelations, and he is only the last figure in the great line of
prophets who had appeared in these religions. Like other founders, he did not
at first intend to found a new religion, but only to bring to light again and
restore to authority the original truths of these faiths, which had become
obscured. His attitude at first, therefore, was friendly to both Jews and
Christians, and his friendly feelings for the former were likely to be
strengthened by the circumstances of his coming to Medina. Not long after his
arrival, however, his attitude towards the Jews was changed. His followers had
at first prayed with their faces turned in the direction of Jerusalem; but the
prophet ordained that this should be altered, and that they should pray with
their faces turned not towards Jerusalem but towards Mecca. This setting of a
new "kiblah" as it is called, declared that Islam was a different
religion from Judaism, and had an Arab not a Jewish centre. The hostility to
the Jews, of which this was a symptom, grew more intense; quarrels were sought
with them which ended in the utter annihilation of the Jewish power at Medina.
From Christianity also Mahomet was careful to distinguish his religion. The
Christians of Arabia were less tenacious of their faith than were the Jews, and
easily accepted Islam, so that the hostility was not in this case so intense.
The doctrines of the Trinity and of the Incarnation were of course
denounced as intolerable blasphemies against the sole deity of Allah.
Domestic.—The history of Mahomet during the Medina period is taken up
to some extent with the various marriages into which he entered, and with the
scandals of his household. On several occasions he produced revelations to
warrant a step in this connection which he felt to require justification, and
the modern reader is forced to wonder how his credit survived some of those
proceedings. While it is undoubtedly the case that he did much to improve the
position of women in Arabia, the absence of any high ideal in this matter is
very apparent.
Conquest
of Mecca.—In giving his followers a new
kiblah and bidding them turn their faces towards Mecca at their prayers,
Mahomet declared that city to be the religious capital of Arabia. Though he had
left Mecca in anger, he could not forget or ignore the city which held this
place in his eyes. At first his thoughts of Mecca were those of vengeance; he
had a score to settle with the Coreish, who had scorned and persecuted him, and
had driven him forth. For several years there was war between Medina and the
Coreish; the Moslems plundered the rich caravans of Mecca; in the great battle
of Bedr (A.D.
623) Mahomet defeated his enemies and compelled them to respect and fear him;
and they afterwards attacked and besieged him at Medina, with no decisive
result. The next step was that Mahomet made use of the sacred month to attempt
a pilgrimage to Mecca, from which he had been absent for six years (628); and
though he was prevented from performing his devotions at the Caaba on this
occasion, the Coreish found it good to make a treaty with him, thus recognising
him as a potentate, and to promise that he should be allowed to make the
pilgrimage on a future occasion. That pilgrimage took place; and so quickly was
Mahomet's power increasing in the rest of Arabia that the Meccans began to feel
that they could not long resist him. In the year 630 he moved
against Mecca with a large army, and met with but faint opposition. Mecca fell
into his hands. He used his victory nobly: only four persons were put to death.
It was at once shown that no injury was to be done to the city. The old worship
and its various ceremonies were preserved. All idols, of course, were
destroyed, both those about the Caaba, of which there are said to have been one
for each day in the year, and those in private houses.
Mecca
made the Capital of Islam.—In fact
Mecca gained new importance from this conquest. It was constituted by the
irresistible power of Mahomet the central sanctuary of the true religion. A
year after the victory Mahomet again visited Mecca, and performed the
pilgrimage with all its rites in his own person, setting the correct pattern in
every detail, which all pilgrims were to observe in all time coming. Those who
wish to know what the rites of Mecca are, will find them graphically and
minutely described in Captain Burton's Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Mecca;
that gallant officer was one of the three Europeans who, during the nineteenth
century, assumed the disguise of pilgrims and took part in the observances. The
kissing of the sacred black stone in the wall of the Caaba, the sevenfold
circuit of the building, the drinking of the water of the well Zem-zem, the
race from one hill-top to another in the neighbourhood of Mecca, the throwing
of seven stones at a certain spot, and the sacrifice of an animal in a certain
valley—these form a collection of rites each of which had probably a separate
origin, and of some of which the original meaning can scarcely be made out.4 This
"block of heathenism" Mahomet made part of his religion. He could not
have abolished it, and by adopting it in an improved form as a part of his own
system he served himself heir to the national religious traditions, and
acquired for his own religion the authority of a national faith. "This day
have I appointed your religion unto you," are his words
after fixing the forms of the pilgrimage, "and applied Islam for you to be
your religion." Islam adopts the Mecca rites, and thereby becomes the
national religion of Arabia. Hubal, the chief god of the Caaba, disappears;
Allah becomes the sole god of the shrine. The legend that Abraham founded it is
put in circulation, and it is thus connected with the supposed earliest Arabian
religion, the religion before idolatry, the Islam before Islam. As Paul appeals
to the faith of Abraham as being a Christianity before Christ, so Mahomet
claims the Caaba for the pure worship of Allah in primeval times. It is sacred
henceforth to him alone. The rule was set up that no idolater should be
admitted to the pilgrimage, and it thus lost its character as a heathen, and
became instead a Moslem, institution.
4 See for this Wellhausen's Reste arabischen Heidenthums,
pp. 64-98.
Spread
of Islam.—Mecca once converted, the rest of
Arabia could not long remain outside. There was reluctance in various places to
make the change which Mahomet now required of all his countrymen. But the
penalty of refusing it was the prophet's wrath, with its terrible attendants,
war and rapine, and none of the Arabs cared enough for their old gods to brave
such terrors for their sake. The inhabitants of Taif endeavoured to make terms,
so that the change might be less abrupt. Their ambassadors urged that
fornication, usury, and the use of wine might be allowed them, but this could
not be granted; the Taifites must accept the deprivations to which all the
Moslems had agreed. Then they asked that their Rabba, their goddess, might be
spared to them for three years, and as this was refused, for two years, a year,
a month. But the only concession they could obtain was that they should not be
obliged to destroy their goddess with their own hands. The ancient paganism, it
will be seen, fell easily and without any tragedy.
Mahomet
did not long survive the national acceptance of his religion; he died on 8th
June 632. But he did not die without having opened up to his
followers very wide views for the future of his cause, and started them on a
career of religious war and conquest which was not soon to be arrested. From a
comparatively early period of his career he had considered that Islam was
destined to prevail not only in Arabia but in other lands. Starting with the
idea that his revelation was only a later stage of that which had taken place
in Judaism and Christianity, he had advanced to the position that these were
false religions, and his own the only true one. Wherever he looked in the world
he could see no true religion but his own; it must therefore take the place of
all others. Accordingly he sent embassies from Medina to Heraclius the emperor
of the East, to the king of Persia, to the governor of Egypt, and to other
potentates, announcing himself to be the "Prophet of God," and
calling upon them to give up their idolatrous worships and return to the
religion of the one true God. These embassies had small effect; but Mahomet was
prepared to take much more forcible measures in order to spread the faith. War
against infidels being one of the standing duties of the faithful, various
regulations were laid down for the treatment of captives and the disposal of
booty in such wars. God, who is said in every verse to be forgiving and
merciful, encourages the faithful in such passages to slay and rob, and to make
concubines of women taken in sacred wars. At the moment of his death an
expedition, not the first, was ready to start against the Greek power. It is in
this guise that Islam assumes the rôle of a universal religion.
The
Duties of the Moslem.—The missionary of Islam requires of
his converts nothing very difficult either in the way of belief or in the way
of action. His demands are brief and precise. They consist of the following
five points:—1. The profession of belief in the unity of God and the mission of
Mahomet. The formula runs: "There is no God but Allah, and Mahomet is the
prophet of Allah." 2. Prayer. This consists of the repetition of a certain form of words at five separate times each day, the
worshipper standing up with his face towards Mecca. The mosques are always open
for prayer, and there is a special service on Friday, the day of the week
chosen by Mahomet in contradistinction to the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian
Sunday. 3. Almsgiving. This is done on a fixed scale, and the contributions
were, in Mahomet's time, devoted to the support of war against infidels. 4.
Fasting. This takes place during the month of Ramadan, and the fast is very
strictly observed. 5. The Hagg or pilgrimage to Mecca.
The
Koran is the sacred book of Islam. The
name means "reading"; see above.
Like other sacred books, the Koran is arranged in such an order that he who
reads it as it stands finds it very confused, and fails to grasp its historical
meaning. The claim to divine inspiration is made in every chapter and every
line of it; God himself is the speaker. But the divine oracles refer to very
various matters. All sorts of legal decisions, military orders, injunctions
about religious affairs, legends and speculations, have a place in it. Of
prediction of the future, indeed, there is but one instance; the prophet
disclaimed the power to work miracles, and held that no wonders beyond those of
the splendid order of the universe are necessary to faith; and similarly he
does not pose as a foreteller, but as an organ of the divine will for the
present. As the ruler of a theocracy, the leader of armies, the judge in many a
civil case, the guardian of the manners of the people, the officiating minister
in public worship, and, let it also be mentioned, the head of a very peculiar
domestic establishment, he has a hundred matters of immediate concern to attend
to; and when he has formed his decision on any of these matters, it takes its
place in the Koran. The book thus produced is far from being an attractive one;
even in the translation of Professor Palmer5 it can afford pleasure to no reader. The
translation, it is true, loses the poetry and music of the original, which are
highly spoken of; but the main obstacle to reading the Koran is its want of
arrangement. The earliest suras (chapters; literally courses of bricks) stand
mostly towards the end of the collection; the long ones in the beginning and
middle are later, and many of them are composite: two or several chapters have
been joined into one. When read in their historical order, the suras can be
read with pleasure by the student as showing the growth of the prophet's ideas
and of his cause. The earliest ones are short, poetical, and intense. These are
the suras which threw the prophet into such excitement and distress that his
hair turned white. They are full of the wonders of God in nature and in history,
of fiery denunciation of idolatry, and of fearful threatenings. In later pieces
we come to long legends taken chiefly from the Jewish Haggadah and the
Christian Apocrypha, in which the prophet displays much ignorance of the
commonest facts of the Bible history; and as his power increases and his
functions multiply, we come to the miscellaneous matters spoken of above. The
style, at first poetic and exalted, becomes afterwards prosaic and diffuse; it
is not the inspired seer who speaks, but the statesman or the judge; and the
placing of these later utterances in the mouth of God could not deceive the
original hearers. The Koran, like the Vedas and the Gathas and the Jewish
Scriptures, was exalted in later stages of the religion to the highest conceivable
honours; and one of the greatest controversies of Islam raged round the
question whether it had existed from eternity and was uncreated.
5 Sacred Books of the East, vols. vi. and xi.
Islam
a Universal Religion.—What is most remarkable about Islam
is the rapidity of its growth. Mahomet begins life a poor and lowly herdsman,
and at his death bequeaths to his successors a kingdom which he has formed, and
which is shortly to prevail over all its neighbours. In the same way his
doctrine, confined at first to a small circle and bitterly
opposed, becomes within half a century the faith of his nation, and not only of
his nation, but of many other lands. Within that brief space it has entered on
the career of a national religion, and has also passed beyond the national into
the universal stage, at which only two other religions have arrived at all. The
progress which Christianity took centuries to accomplish, Islam accomplished in
so many decades. The title of a universal religion cannot be denied to it. The
truth which it declared—the doctrine of the unity and the omnipotence of God,
and of the responsibility of every human being to his Creator and Judge—is one
which does not belong to any particular race of men, but to all men. The
attitude of soul which is called Islam—that of implicit surrender to the great
God, of entire acquiescence in his decrees and entire obedience to his will—is
good for all. All should be called to take an earnest view of their life and to
realise their deep responsibilities; and the idea expressed by the title given
to God on every page of the Koran, "The Merciful and Compassionate,"
that God sympathises with the aspirations and efforts of his servants, and that
they may look up to him with love as well as fear, is one which all can understand
and feel helpful. Especially at the stage when the world is given up to
idolatry, Islam may well rank as a universal religion; when each place has its
idol, each nation its greater idols, religion divides instead of uniting, and
the frivolous and senseless service of such petty deities prevents men from
realising their solemn obligations to the great God before whom they are all
alike, since he is the Governor and Judge of all. Islam is an admirable
corrective of heathenism; it brings the scattered and bewildered worshippers of
idols together in one lofty faith and one simple rule.
The
weakness of Islam is that it is not progressive. Its ideas are bald and poor;
it grew too fast; its doctrines and forms were stereotyped at the very outset of its career, and do not admit of change. Its morality is
that of the stage at which men emerge from idolatry, and does not advance
beyond that stage, so that it perpetuates institutions and customs which are a
drag on civilisation. Mahomet's Paradise, in which the warrior is to be
ministered to by beauteous houris (the number of whom is not mentioned), may
not have been an immoral conception in his day; but it is so now, and
apparently cannot be left behind. An admirable instrument for the discipline of
populations at a low stage of culture, and well fitted to teach them a certain
measure of self-restraint and piety, Islam cannot carry them on to the higher
development of human life and thought. It is repressive of freedom, and the
reason is that its doctrine is after all no more than negative. Allah is but a
negation of other gods; there is no store of positive riches in his character,
he does not sympathise with the manifold growth of human activity; the
inspiration he affords is a negative inspiration, an impulse of hostility to
what is over against him, not an impulse to strive after high and fair ideals.
He remains eternally apart upon a frosty throne; his voice is heard, but he
cannot condescend. He does not enter into humanity, and therefore cannot render
to humanity the highest services.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED
The Life of Mahomet, by Sir W. Muir, 1858.
Mohammed, by Wellhausen, and "The Koran," by Nöldeke, in Encyclopædia
Britannica, vol. xvi.
The Preliminary Discourse prefixed
to Sale's Koran; and Professor Palmer's Introduction in S. B. E.,
vol. vi.
Islam, by J. W. H. Stobart, in the "Non-Christian Religious
Systems" Series of the S.P.C.K.
Der Islam, by Houtsma, in De la Saussaye.
Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam
(1885, 1896).
Sell, The Faith of Islam,
Second Edition, 1896.
Stanley Lane-Poole, The Speeches
and Table-talk of Mohammad, 1882; the most important parts of the Koran,
chronologically arranged, with a very useful introduction.
Margoliouth. Mohammed and the
Rise of Islam, 1905.
