A Literary History of the Arabs Part 19

[Sidenote: Parties in Medina.]

There were in Medina four princ.i.p.al parties, consisting of those who either warmly supported or actively opposed the Prophet, or who adopted a relatively neutral att.i.tude, viz., the Emigrants (_Muhajirun_), the Helpers (_An?ar_), the Hypocrites (_Munafiqun_), and the Jews (_Yahud_).

[Sidenote: The Emigrants.]

The Emigrants were those Moslems who left their homes at Mecca and accompanied the Prophet in his Migration (_Hijra_)--whence their name, _Muhajirun_--to Medina in the year 622. Inasmuch as they had lost everything except the hope of victory and vengeance, he could count upon their fanatical devotion to himself.

[Sidenote: The Helpers.]

The Helpers were those inhabitants of Medina who had accepted Islam and pledged themselves to protect Mu?ammad in case of attack. Together with the Emigrants they const.i.tuted a formidable and ever-increasing body of true believers, the first champions of the Church militant.

[Sidenote: The Hypocrites.]

"Many citizens of Medina, however, were not so well disposed towards Mu?ammad, and neither acknowledged him as a Prophet nor would submit to him as their Ruler; but since they durst not come forward against him openly on account of the mult.i.tude of his enthusiastic adherents, they met him with a pa.s.sive resistance which more than once thwarted his plans, their influence was so great that he, on his part, did not venture to take decisive measures against them, and sometimes even found it necessary to give way."[334]

These are the Hypocrites whom Mu?ammad describes in the following verses of the Koran:--

THE SuRA OF THE HEIFER (II).

(7) And there are those among men who say, 'We believe in G.o.d and in the Last Day'; but they do not believe.

(8) They would deceive G.o.d and those who do believe; but they deceive only themselves and they do not perceive.

(9) In their hearts is a sickness, and G.o.d has made them still more sick, and for them is grievous woe because they lied.[335]

Their leader, 'Abdullah b. Ubayy, an able man but of weak character, was no match for Mu?ammad, whom he and his partisans only irritated, without ever becoming really dangerous.

[Sidenote: The Jews.]

The Jews, on the other hand, gave the Prophet serious trouble. At first he cherished high hopes that they would accept the new Revelation which he brought to them, and which he maintained to be the original Word of G.o.d as it was formerly revealed to Abraham and Moses; but when the Jews, perceiving the absurdity of this idea, plied him with all sorts of questions and made merry over his ignorance, Mu?ammad, keenly alive to the damaging effect of the criticism to which he had exposed himself, turned upon his tormentors, and roundly accused them of having falsified and corrupted their Holy Books. Henceforth he pursued them with a deadly hatred against which their political disunion rendered them helpless. A few sought refuge in Islam; the rest were either slaughtered or driven into exile.

It is impossible to detail here the successive steps by which Mu?ammad in the course of a few years overcame all opposition and established the supremacy of Islam from one end of Arabia to the other. I shall notice the outstanding events very briefly in order to make room for matters which are more nearly connected with the subject of this History.

[Sidenote: Beginnings of the Moslem State.]

Mu?ammad's first care was to reconcile the desperate factions within the city and to introduce law and order among the heterogeneous elements which have been described. "He drew up in writing a charter between the Emigrants and the Helpers, in which charter he embodied a covenant with the Jews, confirming them in the exercise of their religion and in the possession of their properties, imposing upon them certain obligations, and granting to them certain rights."[336] This remarkable doc.u.ment is extant in Ibn Hisham's _Biography of Mu?ammad_, pp. 341-344. Its contents have been a.n.a.lysed in masterly fas.h.i.+on by Wellhausen,[337] who observes with justice that it was no solemn covenant, accepted and duly ratified by representatives of the parties concerned, but merely a decree of Mu?ammad based upon conditions already existing which had developed since his arrival in Medina. At the same time no one can study it without being impressed by the political genius of its author.

Ostensibly a cautious and tactful reform, it was in reality a revolution. Mu?ammad durst not strike openly at the independence of the tribes, but he destroyed it, in effect, by s.h.i.+fting the centre of power from the tribe to the community; and although the community included Jews and pagans as well as Moslems, he fully recognised, what his opponents failed to foresee, that the Moslems were the active, and must soon be the predominant, partners in the newly founded State.

[Sidenote: Battle of Badr, January, 624 A.D.]

[Sidenote: Battle of U?ud, 625 A.D.]

[Sidenote: Submission of Mecca, 630 A.D.]

All was now ripe for the inevitable struggle with the Quraysh, and G.o.d revealed to His Apostle several verses of the Koran in which the Faithful are commanded to wage a Holy War against them: "_Permission is given to those who fight because they have been wronged,--and verily G.o.d to help them has the might,--who have been driven forth from their homes undeservedly, only for that they said, 'Our Lord is G.o.d'_" (xxii, 40-41). "_Kill them wherever ye find them, and drive them out from whence they drive you out_" (ii, 187). "_Fight them that there be no sedition and that the religion may be G.o.d's_" (ii, 189). In January, 624 A.D., the Moslems, some three hundred strong, won a glorious victory at Badr over a greatly superior force which had marched out from Mecca to relieve a rich caravan that Mu?ammad threatened to cut off. The Quraysh fought bravely, but were borne down by the irresistible onset of men who had learned discipline in the mosque and looked upon death as a sure pa.s.sport to Paradise. Of the Moslems only fourteen fell; the Quraysh lost forty-nine killed and about the same number of prisoners. But the importance of Mu?ammad's success cannot be measured by the material damage which he inflicted. Considering the momentous issues involved, we must allow that Badr, like Marathon, is one of the greatest and most memorable battles in all history. Here, at last, was the miracle which the Prophet's enemies demanded of him: "_Ye have had a sign in the two parties who met; one party fighting in the way of G.o.d, the other misbelieving; these saw twice the same number as themselves to the eyesight, for G.o.d aids with His help those whom He pleases. Verily in that is a lesson for those who have perception_" (Kor. iii, 11). And again, "_Ye slew them not, but G.o.d slew them_" (Kor. viii, 17). The victory of Badr turned all eyes upon Mu?ammad. However little the Arabs cared for his religion, they could not but respect the man who had humbled the lords of Mecca. He was now a power in the land--"Mu?ammad, King of the ?ijaz."[338] In Medina his cause flourished mightily. The zealots were confirmed in their faith, the waverers convinced, the disaffected overawed. He sustained a serious, though temporary, check in the following year at U?ud, where a Moslem army was routed by the Quraysh under Abu Sufyan, but the victors were satisfied with having taken vengeance for Badr and made no attempt to follow up their advantage; while Mu?ammad, never resting on his laurels, never losing sight of the goal, proceeded with remorseless calculation to crush his adversaries one after the other, until in January, 630 A.D., the Meccans themselves, seeing the futility of further resistance, opened their gates to the Prophet and acknowledged the omnipotence of Allah. The submission of the Holy City left Mu?ammad without a rival in Arabia. His work was almost done. Deputations from the Bedouin tribes poured into Medina, offering allegiance to the conqueror of the Quraysh, and reluctantly subscribing to a religion in which they saw nothing so agreeable as the prospect of plundering its enemies.

[Sidenote: Death of Mu?ammad, 632 A.D.]

Mu?ammad died, after a brief illness, on the 8th of June, 632 A.D. He was succeeded as head of the Moslem community by his old friend and ever-loyal supporter, Abu Bakr, who thus became the first _Khalifa_, or Caliph. It only remains to take up our survey of the Koran, which we have carried down to the close of the Meccan period, and to indicate the character and contents of the Revelation during the subsequent decade.

[Sidenote: The Medina Suras.]

The Medina Suras faithfully reflect the marvellous change in Mu?ammad's fortunes, which began with his flight from Mecca. He was now recognised as the Prophet and Apostle of G.o.d, but this recognition made him an earthly potentate and turned his religious activity into secular channels. One who united in himself the parts of prince, legislator, politician, diplomatist, and general may be excused if he sometimes neglected the Divine injunction to arise and preach, or at any rate interpreted it in a sense very different from that which he formerly attached to it. The Revelations of this time deal, to a large extent, with matters of legal, social, and political interest; they promulgate religious ordinances--_e.g._, fasting, alms-giving, and pilgrimage--expound the laws of marriage and divorce, and comment upon the news of the day; often they serve as bulletins or manifestoes in which Mu?ammad justifies what he has done, urges the Moslems to fight and rebukes the laggards, moralises on a victory or defeat, proclaims a truce, and says, in short, whatever the occasion seems to require.

Instead of the Meccan idolaters, his opponents in Medina--the Jews and Hypocrites--have become the great rocks of offence; the Jews especially are denounced in long pa.s.sages as a stiff-necked generation who never hearkened to their own prophets of old. However valuable historically, the Medina Suras do not attract the literary reader. In their flat and tedious style they resemble those of the later Meccan period. Now and again the ashes burst into flame, though such moments of splendour are increasingly rare, as in the famous 'Throne-verse' (_ayatu 'l-Kursi_):--

[Sidenote: The 'Throne-verse.']

"G.o.d, there is no G.o.d but He, the living, the self-subsistent.

Slumber takes Him not, nor sleep. His is what is in the heavens and what is in the earth. Who is it that intercedes with Him save by His permission? He knows what is before them and what behind them, and they comprehend not aught of His knowledge but of what He pleases.

His throne extends over the heavens and the earth, and it tires Him not to guard them both, for He is high and grand."[339]

[Sidenote: The nationalisation of Islam.]

The Islam which Mu?ammad brought with him to Medina was almost entirely derived by oral tradition from Christianity and Judaism, and just for this reason it made little impression on the heathen Arabs, whose religious ideas were generally of the most primitive kind.

Notwithstanding its foreign character and the absence of anything which appealed to Arabian national sentiment, it spread rapidly in Medina, where, as we have seen, the soil was already prepared for it; but one may well doubt whether it could have extended its sway over the peninsula unless the course of events had determined Mu?ammad to a.s.sociate the strange doctrines of Islam with the ancient heathen sanctuary at Mecca, the Ka'ba, which was held in universal veneration by the Arabs and formed the centre of a wors.h.i.+p that raised no difficulties in their minds. Before he had lived many months in Medina the Prophet realised that his hope of converting the Jews was doomed to disappointment. Accordingly he instructed his followers that they should no longer turn their faces in prayer towards the Temple at Jerusalem, as they had been accustomed to do since the Flight, but towards the Ka'ba; while, a year or two later, he incorporated in Islam the superst.i.tious ceremonies of the pilgrimage, which were represented as having been originally prescribed to Abraham, the legendary founder of the Ka'ba, whose religion he professed to restore.

[Sidenote: Antagonism of Islamic and Arabian ideals.]

These concessions, however, were far from sufficient to reconcile the free-living and freethinking people of the desert to a religion which restrained their pleasures, forced them to pay taxes and perform prayers, and stamped with the name of barbarism all the virtues they held most dear. The teaching of Islam ran directly counter to the ideals and traditions of heathendom, and, as Goldziher has remarked, its originality lies not in its doctrines, which are Jewish and Christian, but in the fact that it was Mu?ammad who first maintained these doctrines with persistent energy against the Arabian view of life.[340]

While we must refer the reader to Dr. Goldziher's illuminating pages for a full discussion of the conflict between the new Religion (_Din_) and the old Virtue (_Muruwwa_), it will not be amiss to summarise the chief points at which they clashed with each other.[341] In the first place, the fundamental idea of Islam was foreign and unintelligible to the Bedouins. "It was not the destruction of their idols that they opposed so much as the spirit of devotion which it was sought to implant in them: the determination of their whole lives by the thought of G.o.d and of His pre-ordaining and retributive omnipotence, the prayers and fasts, the renouncement of coveted pleasures, and the sacrifice of money and property which was demanded of them in G.o.d's name." In spite of the saying, _La dina illa bi 'l-muruwwati_ ("There is no religion without virtue"), the Bedouin who accepted Islam had to unlearn the greater part of his unwritten moral code. As a pious Moslem he must return good for evil, forgive his enemy, and find balm for his wounded feelings in the a.s.surance of being admitted to Paradise (Kor. iii, 128). Again, the social organisation of the heathen Arabs was based on the tribe, whereas that of Islam rested on the equality and fraternity of all believers.

The religious bond cancelled all distinctions of rank and pedigree; it did away, theoretically, with clannish feuds, contests for honour, pride of race--things that lay at the very root of Arabian chivalry. "_Lo_,"

cried Mu?ammad, "_the n.o.blest of you in the sight of G.o.d is he who most doth fear Him_" (Kor. xlix, 13). Against such doctrine the conservative and material instincts of the desert people rose in revolt; and although they became Moslems _en ma.s.se_, the majority of them neither believed in Islam nor knew what it meant. Often their motives were frankly utilitarian: they expected that Islam would bring them luck; and so long as they were sound in body, and their mares had fine foals, and their wives bore well-formed sons, and their wealth and herds multiplied, they said, "We have been blessed ever since we adopted this religion," and were content; but if things went ill they blamed Islam and turned their backs on it.[342] That these men were capable of religious zeal is amply proved by the triumphs which they won a short time afterwards over the disciplined armies of two mighty empires; but what chiefly inspired them, apart from love of booty, was the conviction, born of success, that Allah was fighting on their side.

We have sketched, however barely and imperfectly, the progress of Islam from Mu?ammad's first appearance as a preacher to the day of his death.

In these twenty years the seeds were sown of almost every development which occurs in the political and intellectual history of the Arabs during the ages to come. More than any man that has ever lived, Mu?ammad shaped the destinies of his people; and though they left him far behind as they moved along the path of civilisation, they still looked back to him for guidance and authority at each step. This is not the place to attempt an estimate of his character, which has been so diversely judged. Personally, I feel convinced that he was neither a shameless impostor nor a neurotic degenerate nor a socialistic reformer, but in the beginning, at all events, a sincere religious enthusiast, as truly inspired as any prophet of the Old Testament.

[Sidenote: Character of Mu?ammad.]

"We find in him," writes De Goeje, "that sober understanding which distinguished his fellow-tribesmen: dignity, tact, and equilibrium; qualities which are seldom found in people of morbid const.i.tution: self-control in no small degree. Circ.u.mstances changed him from a Prophet to a Legislator and a Ruler, but for himself he sought nothing beyond the acknowledgment that he was Allah's Apostle, since this acknowledgment includes the whole of Islam. He was excitable, like every true Arab, and in the spiritual struggle which preceded his call this quality was stimulated to an extent that alarmed even himself; but that does not make him a visionary. He defends himself, by the most solemn a.s.severation, against the charge that what he had seen was an illusion of the senses. Why should not we believe him?"[343]

CHAPTER V

THE ORTHODOX CALIPHATE AND THE UMAYYAD DYNASTY

The Caliphate--_i.e._, the period of the Caliphs or Successors of Mu?ammad--extends over six centuries and a quarter (632-1258 A.D.), and falls into three clearly-marked divisions of very unequal length and diverse character.

[Sidenote: The Orthodox Caliphate (632-661 A.D.).]

The first division begins with the election of Abu Bakr, the first Caliph, in 632, and comes to an end with the a.s.sa.s.sination of 'Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law and fourth successor, in 661. These four Caliphs are known as the Orthodox (_al-Ras.h.i.+dun_), because they trod faithfully in the footsteps of the Prophet and ruled after his example in the holy city of Medina, with the a.s.sistance of his leading Companions, who const.i.tuted an informal Senate.