Mahomet, Founder of Islam Part 9

"What doest thou with unrent garments? Knowest thou not the affliction that hath fallen on this thy city?"

"I will not weep," replied Hind, "until this wrong has been avenged. When thou hast gone forth, hast conquered this accursed, then will I mourn for those who are slain this day. Nay, my lord, I will not deck myself, nor perfume my hair, nor come near thy couch until I see the avenging of this humiliation."

Then Abu Sofian swore a great oath that he would immediately collect men and take the field once more against Islam.

There remained now for the victors but the distribution of the spoil and the decision of the fate of the prisoners. The less valuable of these were put to death, their bodies cast into a pit, but the Muslim took the rest with them, hoping for ransom. The spoil was taken up in haste, and the Prophet repaired joyfully to Safra, where he proposed to divide it. But there contention arose, as was almost inevitable, over the distribution of the wealth, and so acute did the disaffection become that Mahomet revealed the will of Allah concerning it:

"And know ye, when ye have taken any booty, a fifth part belongeth to G.o.d and to the Apostle, and to the near of kin and to orphans and to the poor, and to the wayfarer, if ye believe in G.o.d, and in that which we have sent down to our servant on the day of the victory, the day of the meeting of the Hosts." As part of his due, Mahomet took the famous sword Dhul Ficar, which has gathered around it as many legends as the weapons of cla.s.sical heroes, and which hereafter never left him whenever he took command of his followers in battle. So the Muslim, flushed with victory, laden with spoil, returned to Medina, whose entire population a.s.sembled to accord them triumphal entry.

"Abu Jahl, the sinner, is slain," cried the little children, catching the phrase from their parents' lips.

"Abu Jahl, the sinner, is slain, and the foes of Islam laid low!" was cried from the mosque and market-place, from minaret and house-top.

"Allah Akbar Islam!"

The great testing day had come and was past. In open fight, before a host of their foes, the Muslim with smaller numbers had prevailed. The effect upon Medina and upon Mahomet's later career cannot be overestimated. It was indeed a turning point, whence Mahomet proceeded irrevocably upon the road to success and fame. Reverses hereafter he certainly had, and at times the outlook was almost insuperably dark, but no misfortune or gloom could dull the splendour of that day at Bedr, when besides his own slender following, the hosts of the Lord, whose turbans glowed like crowns, led by Gabriel in golden armour, had fought for him and vanquished his foes. The glory of this battle was the lamp by which he planned his future wins.

At Medina the Disaffected were triumphantly gathered beneath his banner; his position became, for the time at least, established. No longer did he need to conciliate, flatter, spy upon the various factions within his walls. His prisoners were kindly treated, and some converted by these means to the faith he had vainly sought to impose upon them. Affairs within the city were organised and consolidated. Registers were prepared, the famous "Registers of Omar," which were to contain the names of all those who had given distinguished service to the cause of Allah, and to confer upon them exalted rank. The three hundred names inscribed therein were the embryo of a Muslim aristocracy, const.i.tuting, in fact, a peerage of Islam. Mahomet's religious ordinances were strengthened and confirmed, while his faith received that homage paid to success which had raised its founder from the commander of a small hand of religionists to the chief of a prosperous city, the leader of an efficient army, the head of a community which held within itself the future dominion of Arabia, of western Asia, southern Europe, in fact, the greater part of the middle world.

More than ever Mahomet perceived that his success lay in the sword. Bedr set the seal upon his acceptance of warfare as a means of propaganda.

Henceforth the sword becomes to him the bright but awful instrument through which the will of Allah is achieved. In the measure that he trusted its power and confided to it his own destiny and that of his followers, so did war exact of him its ceaseless penalty, urging him on continually, through motives of policy and self-defence, until he became its slave, compelled to continue along the path appointed him, or perish by that very instrument by which his power had been wrought. Henceforward his activities consist chiefly of wars aggressive and defensive, while the religion actuating them receives slighter notice, because the main thesis has been established in his own state and requires the force of arms to obtain its supremacy over alien races.

After Bedr, the poet and Prophet becomes the administrator and Prophet.

The quietude and meditation of the Meccan hill-slopes are exchanged for the council-chamber and the battlefield, and appear upon the background of his anxious life with the glamour and aloofness of a dream-country; the inevitable turmoil and preoccupation which accompanies the direction of affairs took hold upon his life. The fervour of his nature, its remorseless activity, compelled him to legislate for his followers with that minute attention to detail almost inconceivable to the modern mind with its conceptions of the various "departments" of state.

We see him mainly through tradition, but also to a great extent in the Kuran directing the humblest details in the lives of the Muslim, organising their ritual, regulating their commerce, their usury laws, their personal cleanliness, their dietary, their social and moral relations. Regarding the multifarious duties and cares of his growing state, its almost complete helplessness in its hands, for he alone was its guiding force, it is the clearest testimony to his vital energy, his strength and sanity of brain, that he was not overwhelmed by them, and that the creative side of his nature was not crushed beyond recovery; although confronted by the clamorous demands of government and warfare, these could not touch his spiritual enthusiasm nor his glowing and changeless devotion to Allah and his cause. At the end of his long years of rule he could still say with perfect truth, "My chief delight is in prayer."

CHAPTER XII

THE JEWS AT MEDINA

"And if the people of the Book had believed, it had surely been better for them: Believers there are among them, but most of them are perverse."

--_The Kuran_.

The songs of triumph over Bedr had scarcely left the lips of Muslim poets when the voice of faction was heard again in Medina. The Jews, that "stiff-necked nation," unimpressed by Mahomet's triumph, careful only of its probable effect on their own position, which effect they could not but regard as disastrous, seeing that it augured their own submission to a superior power, murmured against his success, and tried their utmost to sow dissension by the publication of contemptuous songs through the mouths of their poets and prophetesses. Not only did the Jews murmur in secret against him, but they tried hard to induce members of the original Medinan tribes to join with them in a desperate effort to throw off the Muslim yoke.

Chief among these defamers of Mahomet's prestige was Asma, a prophetess of the tribe of Beni Aus. She published abroad several libellous songs upon Mahomet, but was quickly silenced by Omeir, a blind man devoted to his leader, who felt his way to her dwelling-place at dead of night, and, creeping past her servant, slew her in the midst of her children. News of the outrage was brought to Mahomet; it was expected he would punish Omeir, but:

"Thou shalt not call him blind, but the seeing," replied the Prophet; "for indeed he hath done me great service."

The result of this ruthlessness was the official conversion of the tribe, for resistance was useless, and they had not, like the Jews, the flame of faith to keep their resistance alive. "The only alternative to a hopeless blood feud was the adoption of Islam." But the Jews, with stubborn consciousness of their own essential autonomy, preferred the more terrible alternative, and so the defamatory songs continued. When it is remembered that these compositions took the place of newspapers, were as universal and wielded as such influence, it is not to be expected that Mahomet could ignore the campaign against him. Abu Afak, a belated representative of the prophetic spirits of old, fired by the ancient glory of Israel and its present threatened degradation at the hands of this upstart, continued, in spite of all warnings, to publish abroad his contempt and hatred for the Prophet.

It was no time for half-measures. With such a ferment as this universal abuse was creating, the whole of his hard-won power might crumble. Victor though he was, it wanted only the torch of some malcontents to set alight the flame of rebellion. Therefore Mahomet, with his inexorable determination and force of will, took the only course possible in such a time. The singer was slain by his express command.

"Who will rid me of this pestilence?" he cried, and like all strong natures he had not long to wait before his will became the inspired act of another.

So fear entered into the souls of the people at Medina, and for a time there were no more disloyal songs, nor did the populace dare to oppose one who had given so efficient proof of his power.

But it was not enough for Mahomet to have silenced disaffection. He aimed at nothing less than the complete union of all Medina under his leaders.h.i.+p and in one religious belief. To this end he went in Shawwal of the second year of the Hegira (Jan. 624) unto the Jewish tribe, the Beni Kainukaa, goldsmiths of Medina, whose works lay outside the city's confines. There he summoned their chief men in the bazaar, and exhorted them fervently to become converted to Islam. But the Kainukaa were firm in their faith and refused him with contemptuous coldness.

"O Mahomet, thou thinkest we are men akin to thine own race! Hitherto thou hast met only men unskilled in battle, and therefore couldst thou slay them. But when thou meetest us, by the G.o.d of Israel, thou shalt know we are men!" Therewith Mahomet was forced to acknowledge defeat, and he journeyed back to the city, vowing that if Allah were pleased to give him opportunity he would avenge this slight upon Islam and his own divinely appointed mission. Friction between him and the Kainukaa naturally increased, and it was therefore not long before a pretext arose. The story of a Jew's insult to a Muslim girl and its avenging by one of her co-religionists is probably only a fiction to explain Mahomet's aggression against this tribe. It is uncertain how the first definite breach arose, but it is easy to see that whatever the actual _casus belli,_ such a development was inevitable.

The anger of the Prophet was aroused, for were they not presuming to oppose his will and that of Allah, whose instrument he was? He marshalled his army and put a great white banner at their head, gave the leaders.h.i.+p to Hamza, and so marched forth to attack the rebellious Kainukaa. For fifteen days the tribe was besieged in its strongholds, until at last, beaten and discouraged, faced by scarcity of supplies, and the certainty of disease, it surrendered at discretion.

Then was shown in all its fullness the implacable despotism conceived by Mahomet as the only possible method of government, which indeed for those times and with that nation it certainly was. The order went forth for the slaying and despoiling of the Kainukaa, and the grim work began by the seizure of their armour, precious stones, gold, and goldsmith's tools.

But Abdallah, chief of the Khazraj, and formerly leader of the Disaffected, became suppliant for their release. He sought audience of Mahomet, and there pet.i.tioned with many tears for the lives of his friends and kinsmen. But Mahomet turned his back upon him. Abdallah, in an ecstacy of importunity, grasped the skirt of Mahomet's garment.

"Loose thou thy hand!" cried Mahomet, while his face grew dark with anger.

But Abdallah in the boldness of desperation replied, "I will not let thee go until thou hast shown favour to my kinsmen."

Then said Mahomet, "As thou wilt not be silent, I give thee the lives of those I have taken prisoner."

Nevertheless, the exile of the tribe was enforced, and Mahomet compelled their immediate removal from the outskirts of Medina. The Prophet's later policy towards the Jews was hereby inaugurated. He set himself deliberately to break up their strongholds one by one, and did not swerve from his purpose until the whole of the hated race had been removed either by slaughter or by enforced exile from the precincts of his adopted city. He would suffer no one but himself to govern, and uprooted, with his unwavering purpose, all who refused to accept him as lord.

For about a month affairs took their normal and uninterrupted course in Medina, but in the following month, Dzul Higg (March), the last of that eventful second year, a slight disturbance of his steady work of government threatened his followers.

Abu Sofian's vow pressed sorely upon his conscience until, unable to endure inaction further, he gathered together 200 hors.e.m.e.n and took the highway towards Medina. He travelled by the inland road, and arrived at length at the settlements of the Beni Nadhir, one of the Jewish tribes in the vicinity of Medina. He harried their palm-gardens, burnt their cornfields, and killed two of their men. Mahomet had plundered the Meccan wealth, his allies should in turn be hara.s.sed by his victims. It was purely a private enterprise undertaken out of bravado and in fulfilment of a vow. As soon as the predatory attack had been made, Abu Sofian deemed himself absolved and prepared to return.

But Mahomet was on his traces. For five days he pursued the flying Kureisch, whose retreat turned into such a headlong rout that they threw away their sacks of meal so as to travel more lightly. Therefore the incident has been known ever since, according to the vivid Arab method of description, as the Battle of the Meal-bags. But the foe was not worthy of his pursuit, and Mahomet made no further attempt to come up with Abu Sofian, but returned at once to Medina. The attack had ended more or less in fiasco, and as a trial of strength upon either side it was negligible.

The sacred month, Dzul Higg, and the only one in which it was lawful to make the Greater Pilgrimage in far-off Mecca, was now fully upon him, and Mahomet felt drawn irresistibly to the ceremonies surrounding the ancient and now to him distorted faith. He felt compelled to acknowledge his kins.h.i.+p with the ancient ritual of Arabia, and to this end appointed a festival, Eed-al-Zoha, to be celebrated in this month, which was not only to take the place of the Jewish sacrificial ceremony, but to strengthen his connection with the rites still performed at Mecca, of which the Kaaba and the Black Stone formed the emblem and the goal.

In commemoration of the ceremonial slaying of victims in the vale of Mina at the end of the Greater Pilgrimage, Mahomet ordered two kids to be sacrificed at every festival, so that his people were continually reminded that at Mecca, beneath the infidel yoke, the sacred ritual, so peculiarly their own by virtue of the Abrahamic descent and their inexorable monotheism, was being unworthily performed.

The inst.i.tution is important, as indicating the development of Mahomet's religious and ritualistic conceptions. In the first days of his enthusiasm he was content to enjoin wors.h.i.+p of one G.o.d by prayer and praise, taking secondary account of forms and ceremonies. Then came the uprooting of his outward religious life and the demands of his embryo state for the manifestations essential to a communistic faith. He found Israelite beliefs uncontaminated by the wors.h.i.+p of many G.o.ds, and turned to their ritual in the hope of establis.h.i.+ng with their aid a ceremonial which should incorporate their system with his own fervent faith. Now, finding no middle road between separatism and absorption possible with such a people as the Jews, and unconsciously divining that in no great length of time Islam would be sufficient unto itself, he turned again to the practices of his native religion and ancestral ceremonies. Henceforth he puts forward definitely his conception of Islam as a purified and divinely regulated form of the wors.h.i.+p followed by his Arabian forbears, purged of its idol-wors.h.i.+p and freed from numerous age-long corruptions.

Not only in ritual did his mind turn towards Mecca. It looms before his eyes still as the Chosen City, the city of his dreams, whose conquest and rendering back purified to the guidance of Allah he sets before his mind as the ultimate, dim-descried goal of all his intermediary wars. The Kibla had long since been changed to Mecca; thither at prayer every Muslim turned his face and directed his thoughts, and now every possible detail of ancient Meccan ritual was performed in scrupulous deference to the one G.o.d, so that when the time came and in fulfilment of his desires he set foot on its soil, no part of the ceremonies, with the lingering enthusiasm of his youth still sweet upon them, might be omitted or be allowed to lose its savour through disuse.

The third year of the Hegira began favourably for Mahomet. During the first month, Muharram, there were three small expeditions against unruly desert tribes. The Beni Ghatafan on the eastern Babylonian route were friendly to the Kureisch. This was undesirable, because they might allow the Meccan caravan to pa.s.s through in safety, and the Prophet had resolved that it should be despoiled by whichever route it journeyed, coast road or arid tableland. When therefore he received news that they were a.s.sembling in force at Carcarat-al-Kadr, a desert oasis on the confines of their territory, he marched thither in haste, hoping to catch and overcome them before they dispersed.

But the Beni Ghatafan were too wise to suffer this, and when Mahomet came to the place he found it deserted, save for some camels, left behind in the flight, which he captured and brought to Medina, deeming it useless to attempt the pursuit of his quarry through the trackless desert.

The raid in Jumad II (September) by Zeid was far more successful. Since the victory at Bedr the coast route had been entirely barred for the Kureischite caravans, and they were forced to try the central desert, which road lay through the middle tableland leading on to Babylonia and the Syrian wastes. The Meccan caravan had only reached Carada when it was met by a Muslim force under Zeid, sent by the prescience and predatory instincts of Mahomet. The guard was not strong, possibly because the Meccans thought there was little fear of attack by this route, and so Zeid was easily able to overcome his foe and secure the spoil, which amounted to many bales of goods, camels, trappings, and armour. The conquerer returned elated to Medina, where he cast the spoil at the feet of the Prophet. The usual division was made, and the whole city rejoiced over the wealth it had secured and the increasing discomfiture of its enemies.

Meanwhile matters were becoming urgent between the Muslim and the Jews.

Neither the murder of their singers, nor the expulsion of the Kainukaa could silence the voice of Jewish discontent, which found its most effective mouthpiece in the poet Ka'b al' Ashraf, son of a Jewess of the tribe of the Beni Nadhir. This man had been righteously indignant at the slaughter of the Kureischite champions at Bedr. The story seemed to him so monstrous that he could not believe it.

"Is this true?" he asked the messenger; "has Mahomet verily slain these men? By the Lord, if he has done this, then is the innermost part of the earth better than the surface thereof!"

He journeyed in haste to Mecca, and when he heard the dreadful news confirmed he did his utmost to stir up the Kureisch against the murderer.

As soon as he returned he published verses lamenting the disgraceful victory purchased at such a price; moreover, he also addressed insulting love poems to the Muslim women, always with the intent of causing as much disaffection as possible. At last Mahomet waxed impatient and cried:

"Who will give me peace from this Ka'b al' Ashraf?"