Decorative barIIEARLY YEARS
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Among the numberless misty matters that befog the career of Mohammed is the moot question of his parentage. The voice of Allah, speaking through the lips of his Prophet in the Koran, proclaims that his best beloved son was an orphan, poor and astray; but, while a proper modesty may well make one hesitate to question the smallest decree of such a transcendent authority, one can still scarcely refrain from noting that most boys who attain a position of unrivaled eminence in later life are prone to give a suspicious amount of emphasis to the hardships of their youth. Practically everything that concerns the life of the Prophet is flecked with more or less obscurity—an obscurity that has been intensified by both his friends and his foes. Almost all the Christian commentators have dwelt lovingly upon the worst elements in the life and teachings of Mohammed, and the numerous cliques of Arabs who whined or rebelled against his imperial sway swelled the chorus of malignant defamation; his followers, on the contrary, have been guilty of the most fanaticalpanegyrics. Buffeted and disfigured between these two intensely antagonistic forces of opinion, the massive figure of Mohammed must forever remain largely ambiguous and enigmatical. His Boswells were too Boswellian, and his Froudes were too Froudish. And yet, by steering a zigzag course between the Scylla of rhapsodical praise and the Charybdis of envious detraction, it may be possible to arrive at a relatively detached and peaceful haven where the immeasurable Arab looms a little less vaguely through the remoteness of thirteen centuries.
There seems to be little doubt that he was descended from those lofty Koreish whose opposition, which at first nearly succeeded in holding his name in perpetual oblivion, eventually caused him to emerge into the light of deathless fame. For a century and a half, his forefathers had been rulers among the Koreish. In the middle of the fifth century, Kosai, his ancestor at the fifth remove, had won the distinction of being the first man to advance the Koreish to a position of supremacy over Mecca. At his death his three sons fought for the honor of succeeding him; but Abd Menaf won out, and was followed in turn by Hashim—rich, amorous, charitable, glorious Hashim!—and his son Abd Al-Muttalib, the estimable grandfather of the Prophet.
When Abd Al-Muttalib came into power early inthe sixth century, he fell at first upon evil days. Certain of the Koreish were unfriendly, the caravan business had been in a bad way for some time, and the holy water of Zemzem, no longer used as of yore, had choked up and was almost forgotten. Abd Al-Muttalib, who well knew the traditions of its ancient glory, and who found it difficult to get enough water from lesser Meccan wells for visiting pilgrims, instituted a laborious search for the venerable stonework which was known to have surrounded it. Finally his virtuous efforts were rewarded, and, aided by his son Al-Harith, he began to scoop out the debris with which it was clogged. As he neared the bottom, he came upon the two golden gazelles, and the swords and suits of armor, that had been buried there by a Jurhumite king three centuries before as a suitable hiding place against the despoliations of his enemies. The Koreish, hearing of Abd Al-Muttalib’s lucky find, immediately demanded a share of the booty. It was finally agreed that the dispute should be settled by the casting of lots: one for Abd Al-Muttalib, one for the Koreish, and—inasmuch as all parties concerned in the row were religiously minded—one for the Kaba. Abd Al-Muttalib got the swords and armor, the Kaba got the gazelles, and the Koreish got nothing. That very day, indeed, dated their gradual defection from the faith oftheir fathers; but Abd Al-Muttalib, in an excess of grateful devotion, beat the gazelles into plates of gold with which he decorated the interior door of the Kaba, and, in a similar excess of caution, added a golden lock and key to the door. His faith was properly rewarded, for from that day the waters of Zemzem again flowed without interruption; and so Abd Al-Muttalib grew in social, financial and religious strength, and became the father of many pious and powerful sons. And yet—such a wayward and capricious dame is Clio!—there are those who aver that Mohammed’s grandfather was not the leading Meccan of his time, and that most of the stories connected with his name are fabulous inventions of the Prophet’s hero-worshiping satellites.
Fortunately, all parties seem agreed that Abdallah, the youngest and most favored son of Abd Al-Muttalib, was the unambiguous sire of Mohammed. The ways of Allah are not less perplexing than the ways of God, and it appears probable that, had it not been for the direct intervention of the whimsical Arabian Deity, Abdallah would have perished before he had begotten his extraordinary son. During the early years of Abd Al-Muttalib, when he had but one son to aid him in his struggles against his political opponents, he had vowed that, should he ever be favored with ten sons,he would sacrifice one of them to the Deity. This vow—rash enough for any young man, and rashest of all, perhaps, for an Arab—was in the course of time providentially fulfilled; and when lots were cast by the obedient Abd Al-Muttalib, the fatal die fell upon Abdallah, his pet boy. The hitherto invincible faith of Abd Al-Muttalib was tremendously shaken; his weeping daughters—for Allah had been more than generous—also besought him to cast lots between Abdallah and ten camels: the conventional substitute for human bloodshed. For nine successive times the arrow pointed toward Abdallah—could it be that Allah was inexorable? At each throw ten additional camels had been added to the previous number until, on the tenth throw, they amounted to an even hundred. Then at last Allah, who was presumably far more interested in the birth of Mohammed than in a wilderness of camels, relented and released his faithful servant from his oath. Thus a hundred camels perished beneath the sacrificial knife, Abd Al-Muttalib’s piety was recompensed, Abdallah was saved, and the miraculous birth of the Prophet was assured.
It came about thus. Toward the end of 569, Abd Al-Muttalib had betrothed Abdallah to a Meccan maiden named Amina; and at the same time, even though he was over seventy and Allah had abundantlygranted his youthful plea for potency, he himself had married a radiantly youthful cousin of Amina’s. Some months later Mecca was invaded by an army under Abraha, a Christian warrior from Abyssinia, who brought an elephant in his train—a prodigy that so astounded the simple Arabs that the year of the invasion was ever after called “the Elephant.” He had come, he said, merely to destroy the impious Kaba, and he had no desire to shed any man’s blood; but inasmuch as the Meccans knew that Christian Abraha’s fervor had already manifested itself in the plunder of hundreds of camels, they were rightly sceptical of any promise whatever on his part. Overtures of peace were unsuccessful, for on no account would the wealthy Koreish agree to permit the demolition of their most remunerative mercantile house, and preparations were accordingly made to offer some feeble resistance to the invader. Then Abd Al-Muttalib bethought himself of a possible means to thwart the impending peril. Leaning on the door of the Kaba, he prayed aloud thus: “Defend, O Lord, thine own house, and suffer not the Cross to triumph over the Kaba!” He then made haste to join the other refugees, who had betaken themselves to the neighboring crags to watch whatever might betide. Sharp-eared Allah, aloof in his own particular Heaven, heard the prayer and promptly answered itby inflicting a pestilential disease upon the raiding Christian hosts. Overwhelmed by the disaster, they began a confused retreat: hundreds of them died by the wayside, and Abraha himself, covered with a mass of poisonous and putrid ulcers, soon expired in terrible agony. Thus was the Kaba gloriously saved and the Cross ignominiously overthrown—an event so prophetical of coming centuries that its portentous symbolism demanded an incarnate manifestation. The routed Christian warriors had barely left the shores of Arabia when Amina gave birth to a son.
His advent, we are told, was decorously surrounded by all manner of signs and omens. The travail of Amina was entirely painless; earthquakes loosed the bowels of mountains and caused great bodies of water, whose names were unfortunately not specified, to wither away or overflow; the sacred fire of Zoroaster which, under the jealous care of the Magi, had spouted ceaseless flames for nearly a thousand years, was summarily extinguished; indeed, all the idols in the world—except, presumably, the Kaba,—unceremoniously tumbled from their exalted places. Immediately after the babe was born an ethereal light dazzled the surroundingterritory, and, on the very moment when his eyes were first opened, he lifted them to Heaven and exclaimed: “God is great! There is no God but Allah and I am His Prophet!” All these poetic fancies have been appropriately denounced by Christian scribes, who have claimed that nature would never have dignified the birth of a Pagan like Mohammed with such marvelous prodigies as indubitably attended the advent and crucifixion of Christ.
In the meantime a tragedy of much moment had occurred. High-spirited Abdallah—the lovely youth whose charms were so compelling that two hundred languishing virgins are said to have perished from jealous disappointment on his wedding night—was already no more. After remaining with his bride for the customary period of three days, he had departed on a business engagement to Gaza; but, on the return trip, he had sickened and died at Medina. The period of mourning for him was barely over when his posthumous son was born. Grief-stricken Abd Al-Muttalib, who was still bewailing his dead son in the repose of the Kaba, was so comforted when Amina’s messenger brought him the glad tidings that he at once headed a procession of relatives to visit his latest grandchild. With the tender babe in his arms, he immediately returned to the Kaba, and, standing beside its holy altar,he gave thanks to Allah for his mercies and benefits. One week later Abd Al-Muttalib gave a feast in honor of the child; and during the course of the festivities the aged ruler presaged an unspeakably glorious destiny for his grandson as the dawning leader of his race, and concluded his remarks by christening him Mohammed, “the Praised.”
Since the suckling of their own children was not considered to be a proper vocation for high-born Arab women, Amina, as a descendant of the lordly Koreish, rightly refused to nurse her child. For the first few days of his precarious existence he was nourished by Thuweiba, a slave of his own uncle, Abu Lahab; yet, in spite of the brevity of this experience, it is confidently claimed that Mohammed never forgot it, and that so long as he lived he regularly sent her clothes and other gifts. A new nurse then had to be found. According to some fairly authentic traditions, he spent his first five years among the Bedouins under the care of a foster-mother named Halima. At the age of two he was weaned and taken back to his mother; but she was so pleased with her lusty-looking baby that she said: “Take him with thee back again to the desert; for I fear the unhealthy air of Mecca.” After two more years the robust but high-strung boy, who, like most embryo prophets, had an acutely sensitive nervoussystem, showed signs of what was probably an epileptic attack. His foster-parents were so disturbed that they at once took him home; and only by the greatest efforts was Amina able to assuage their fears—were not most children normally subject to worms or the croup?—and persuade them to take him back to the desert. So great was their love for the youngster that they did so; but a year later they were again frightened by recurrent symptoms, and the five-year-old boy was then definitely restored to his mother, with whom he remained for nearly another year. Amina then took him to Medina, where his father’s maternal relatives dwelt; for she felt all a mother’s delight in showing off the pretty and playful tricks of her little son. But another momentous tragedy now impended. About a month later she died; and thus Mohammed, at the age of six, was left an orphan.
Had the lad’s parents, or even one of them, lived until his maturity! In either case, incalculable results might have followed: there might have been no Prophet, no Koran, no Islam—one is tempted to say that there might have been no Allah. But they died; and for the next two years the bereaved boy was cared for by Abd Al-Muttalib, who loved him with all the partiality of age. Sometimes, as the old patriarch sat at ease on a rug shaded from the sun, Mohammed wouldperemptorily usurp his seat. Then the old man’s sons would try to push the little rascal off, but Abd Al-Muttalib would say, “Let my little son alone!” and, baked by the burning sun, would pet Mohammed and feast his ears on the childish shouts and gurgles of the victor.
Two years later Abd Al-Muttalib went to join Abdallah and Amina, and Mohammed, weeping bitterly at the loss of his kind-hearted protector, was consigned to the care of his uncle Abu Talib, the second of Abd Al-Muttalib’s five surviving sons. Az-Zubeir, the eldest, inherited the official duties of his deceased father; but he soon passed that honor on to the fourth son, Al-Abbas, a money-lender, owner of Zemzem, rich, but unfortunately weak in character. Abu Lahab, the third son, was destined to be a life-long foe of the Prophet; but the youngest, Hamza the hunter, was from the beginning one of his staunchest supporters. Abu Talib, a dealer in cloths and perfumes, was a poor man, yet he faithfully cared for his nephew, whom he almost never let out of his sight. When Mohammed was twelve, he accompanied Abu Talib on a mercantile journey to Syria; and various writers have mused at length on the probable effects of this strange, wild expedition on his highly susceptible mind. It may be, as some believe, that the seeds of his heavenly mission weresown in his mind during this experience. Whatever else he was, however, Mohammed was not a youthful prodigy, and perhaps, as most lads of his age would have done, he merely had a good time.
While Mohammed’s life glided from youth into manhood without many remarkable changes, certain events occurred that indelibly fixed the channels of his future. The death of Abd Al-Muttalib had left the ancient house of Hashim without a strong leader, and so it happened that another branch of the Koreish came into power—a circumstance that marked the beginning of the deadly struggle between the Prophet and many of his kin that attended his whole career. For some years, it is true, this hostility was latent. During a decade—from Mohammed’s tenth to his twentieth year—all the Koreish were banded together against the hostile tribe of the Beni Hawazin in the Sacrilegious War: a struggle that grew out of a violation of the taboo on fighting during the sacred months. When Mohammed was nearly twenty, he accompanied his uncles during one of the many frays that marked this civil strife; but his activities seem to have been confined to picking up the arrows of the enemy and turning them over for the useof his uncles. Many years later he remarked: “I remember being present with my uncles in the Sacrilegious War; I discharged arrows at the enemy, and I do not regret it.” But the Prophet of divinity was always very human, and it seems almost certain that the enormous prestige of his station induced him occasionally to indulge in a verbal license pardonable in prophets if not in lesser men. With a wisdom that has characterized certain other heroes of divinity, Mohammed wisely confined his originality and his daring strictly to his mental activities, and fought only when self-preservation necessitated it.
The war finally ended in an unsatisfactory truce: neither side had won, and no dominant personality had yet emerged from the Koreish. Factionalism soon grew to be so rife that the descendants of Hashim, and families of germane origin, formed a confederacy to punish wrongdoing and secure justice among the different branches of the Koreish. Mohammed himself was an interested spectator of the initial ceremonies of this brotherhood. “I would not exchange for the choicest camel in all Arabia,” he exclaimed on a later day, “the remembrance of being present at the oath which we took in the house of Abdallah when the Beni Hashim, Zuhra ibn Kilab, and Teim ibn Murra swore that they would stand by the oppressed.” Thus, byslow degrees, the breach widened between Mohammed and the majority of the Koreish.
His early manhood was spent in caring for flocks, in attending caravan expeditions, and in certain avocations which, all things considered, indicated that he was more estimable than the common run of youthful Arabs. As a shepherd of sheep and goats on the hills around Mecca, he both conferred benefit upon his penurious uncle, Abu Talib, and engaged in an occupation that, as he was careful to point out on a future occasion, was particularly appropriate for his rank. After commenting on the similarity between himself and Moses, David, Jesus, and other seers, he concluded thus: “Verily there hath been no prophet raised up, who performed not the work of a shepherd.” He often accompanied caravans, traveling possibly as far as Egypt and the Dead Sea. In addition to the money thus earned, he picked up a mass of miscellaneous information that he used both to his advantage and disadvantage in the Koran; for its pages reek with foreign phrases, now beautiful and now outrageously grotesque, which even his most intimate friends failed to comprehend. All writers, including strangely enough those of the Christian faith, coincide in stating that his early manhood was marked by an excess of modesty and a minimum of vice rare, not merely inyoung Arabs, but in the young men of any nation. It has been maintained, with a cogency no less admirable than indemonstrable, that his virtue was miraculously kept immaculate. Mohammed himself, with forgivable modesty, appears to have believed this. “I was engaged one night feeding the flocks in company with a lad of Koreish,” he once narrated, “and I said to him, ‘If thou wilt look after my flock, I will go into Mecca and divert myself there, even as youths are wont by night to divert themselves.’” But the sequel, though divinely ordained, was rather tame. As he neared the outskirts of the city, a marriage feast attracted so much of his time that he fell safely asleep. Another evening, as he approached the city bent upon a similar enterprise, strains of celestially somnolent music made him fall into a second scatheless slumber. “After this I sought no more after vice,” he affirmed; but he thought it wise to add the cryptic phrase, “even until I had attained unto the prophetic office.”
By the time Mohammed was twenty-five, Abu Talib, whose waxing family was constantly restricting his already limited means, decided that it was high time for his dependent nephew to shift for himself. “I am, as thou knowest, a man of small substance,” he remarked one day to Mohammed, “and truly the times deal hardly with me. Now here is a caravan of thine own tribeabout to start for Syria, and Khadija, daughter of Khuweilid, needeth men of our tribe to send forth with her merchandise. If thou wert to offer thyself, she would readily accept thy services.” The double-edged nature of the conclusion presumably escaped both men; but the complaisant Mohammed acceded and was soon off on the journey, accompanied by Meisara, the servant of Khadija. Mohammed had thus far had little business experience, but he always showed a many-sided talent for barter and compromise, and he therefore returned with a credit that did him high honor. As the caravan approached Mecca, Meisara induced him to carry the good news to Khadija in person. That lady, a wealthy widow of about forty and the mother of three children, was highly elated at Mohammed’s story; and, as she listened to the proof of his business ability and fondly scanned his large, nobly formed head, his curling, coal-black hair, his dark, piercing eyes, and his comely form, it naturally occurred to her that this vigorous and handsome young fellow would make an excellent successor to her deceased husband. She had turned down the proposals of many vehement Koreishite suitors; but here was one for whom, if necessary, she herself was prepared to do the wooing—for Arab ladies rarely entertained any foolish feminine scruples about such matters.
It was necessary; but she moved with discretion. She sent an envoy, probably Meisara, to find out why Mohammed was so timid about matrimony; for most Arabs married at about eighteen and lived in poverty ever after. “What is it, O Mohammed, that hindereth thee from marriage?” queried the messenger. “I have nothing in my hands wherewithal I might marry,” he replied; for he still retained painful memories of a proposal refused by one of his cousins, on the sensible grounds that he had not the proper means to support her. “But if haply that difficulty were removed,” he was asked, “and thou wert invited to espouse a beautiful and wealthy lady of noble birth, who would place thee in affluence, wouldst thou not desire to have her?” “But who might it be?” he quickly inquired. “It is Khadija.” “But how can I attain unto her?” “Let that be my care,” he was told, and he immediately responded, “I am ready.”
Khadija was overjoyed at this news; but, according to custom, she still had to win the consent of her father despite her age and her manifold attainments. So she prepared a feast and made him drunk; she then commanded that a cow should be killed, and, drenching her intoxicated parent in perfumes, she clothed him in the requisite matrimonial robes. Under such circumstances the old man unconsciously performed the ceremony,but when he recovered he looked with amazement on all the numerous signs of a wedding, and stupidly inquired what it all meant. Upon learning the facts, and upon being misinformed to the effect that “the nuptial dress was put upon thee by Mohammed, thy son-in-law,” he staggered up in high wrath and swore that his daughter, whose hand had been sought by the most eminent Koreishites, should never be the bride of such a shiftless ne’er-do-well as Mohammed. Even after the story had been corrected he still refused to relent, and a tribal war might have followed had he not shortly calmed down and decided to make the best of a bad job. During the next fifteen years Mohammed led a tranquil life. His future was provided for; he had plenty of leisure to occupy himself as he chose, for Khadija insisted upon running her own business affairs; and, notwithstanding her seasoned maturity, there seems to be little reasonable doubt that he became the father of four daughters and an indeterminate number of sons.
Not wishing to remain entirely idle, however, he acquired a partner and established a general barter and trade business in Mecca—a fact that doubtless explains the frequent depiction of Allah as a divine bookkeeper in the Koran: “God is good at accounts,” and so on. Years later, in the heyday of his fame at Medina, hestill bought goods wholesale and retailed them at an excellent profit, and he also employed his stentorian voice as an auctioneer. All his children turned out to be sickly. His son, or sons, died in infancy, and his oldest daughter lived less than forty years; hence historians who possess a flair for matters pertaining to medicine have made the deduction that perhaps, after all, his youthful zest was not guarded by Heaven, but was expended in most deplorable channels. During these years Mohammed and his wife continued to be conventional idolators who performed nightly rites in honor of various gods and goddesses—among whom Allah and his female consoler Al-Lat ranked fairly high—and who gave Pagan names to their children. And so, by the year 610, Mohammed at forty was nothing more than a respectable but unknown tradesman who had experienced no extraordinary crisis, whose few extant sayings were flat and insipid, and whose life seemed destined to remain as insignificant and unsung as that of any other Arab.