FOOTNOTES:

After the conquest of Chaibar, Mohammed sent six embassies with letters to the neighbouring princes, calling upon them to embrace the religion of Islam: the seal of the letter bore the inscription, “Mohammed, the Apostle of God.” The Greek emperor,Heraclius, returning in triumph from the Persian war, received and entertained one of these ambassadors with great urbanity at Emesa.Kobad II., of Persia (Siroes)[33]tore the letter, and dismissed the envoy with ignominy.Mokawkas, the Byzantine governor of Memphis, a born Egyptian, and a Jacobite or Monophysite[34]in religion; and who, in the disorder of the Persianwar, had aspired to independence, and thereby exposed himself to the resentment of Heraclius, declined, indeed, the proposal of a new religion, but accompanied his refusal with flattering compliments and with gifts; among other, two Coptic damsels, one of whom, Mary, became the favorite concubine of the prophet, to whom she bore a son, Ibrahim, who died, however, at the tender age of fifteen months. The King of Abyssinia also returned a polite answer. ButHaris, governor of Damascus, threatened war upon the presumptuous Arabian; andAmru, prince of Gassan, a vassal of the Byzantine emperor, put the envoy to death, for which outrage Mohammed sent afterwards an army into Syria, with what results we shall see hereafter.

According to the stipulations of the treaty of Hodaibeh, Mohammed was permitted to perform, towards the end of 628, at the head of a body of pious pilgrims, his three days’ devotion in the Kaaba; the Koreish retiring, meanwhile, to the hills. After the customary sacrifice, he evacuated the city on the fourth day; but in this short space of time, he had succeeded in sowing the seeds of division between the hostile chiefs, and to gain over to his causeKaledandAmrou, orAmru, the future conquerors of Syria and Egypt. The interdiction of wine, and of dice and lotteries, falls in this period.

It was after the return from this pilgrimage, that he sent an army of 3000 Moslems against Amru, prince of Gassan, and the Greeks. The army was led byZeid, Mohammed’s freedman and one of his earliest disciples. At Muta, three days’ journey from Jerusalem, they met the Gassanides and the Greeks: a fierce and bloody battle ensued; Zeid fell fighting in the foremost ranks; the holy banner, which escaped from his relaxing grasp, was seized byJaafar, the leader appointed by Mohammed to succeed Zeid, in the event of the decease of the latter. Jaafar’s right hand was severed from his body by the sword of a Roman soldier; he shifted the standard to the left hand: this met the same fate; he embraced the holy banner with the bleeding stumps, and thus upheld it, till the tide of life ebbed away from fifty wounds. The vacant place was as worthily filled byAbdallah, the second successor appointed by the prophetin case of accident. He also fell, transfixed by the lance of a Roman. The battle was lost, the flower of the Moslem host annihilated, and the ambitions dreams of empire were dispelled at the very time when they seemed to promise fairest,—had notKaled, the recent convert of Mecca, at this critical juncture, rescued the falling standard, and assumed the command, with the same bravery as his predecessors, but with still greater prowess, and with greater success. Nine swords were broken in his hand; and every enemy that dared to approach him, was made to bite the dust by his invincible arm. Night put an end to the contest: in the nocturnal council of the camp, Kaled was chosen, or rather confirmed, leader of the gallant band of warriors, who had survived the carnage of the day. Death had been fearfully busy in the ranks of the Moslems; and the Greeks, though awed by the valor of Kaled, had still an immense superiority of number in their favor. Kaled wisely resolved, therefore, to save the wreck of his forces by a skilful retreat. His admirable combinations, and the dread inspired by his prowess, rescued the host of the faithful believers of Islam from all but certain destruction; and the well-earned gratitude of the prophet bestowed upon the hero of Muta, the glorious appellation of the “Sword of God,” a name destined after to ring many a time and oft as the knell of doom in the ears of the affrighted Christians.

Mohammed had never ceased to meditate the conquest of Mecca, and his power was now, indeed, sufficiently great and solid to promise an easy accomplishment of this, the darling object of his ambition; but the ten years’ truce seemed an obstacle which it would not be easy to surmount. Notwithstanding, however, he silently prepared the means to carry his plans against the city of his birth into execution, should a favorable opportunity offer. The reverse which his forces had suffered at Muta, impelled the Koreish to furnish him with the desired pretext; they attacked one of the tribes confederated with Mohammed. Ten thousand soldiers were speedily gathered round the banner of the prophet, and led by him against the offending city. A rapid and secret march brought them almost within sight of Mecca, before the Koreish had the least notion of their approach.Unprepared as they were, it would have been sheer madness to contend against the overwhelming forces which now encompassed the city of the Kaaba: they resolved therefore to throw themselves upon the clemency of their triumphant exile. On the 11th of January, 630, the haughty chief of the house of Ommiyah presented the keys of the city; and confessed, under the scymitar of Omar, that the son of Abdallah was the apostle of the true God. The patriotic attachment which Mohammed unquestionably bore the city of his birth, and political considerations of a high order, stayed the avenging hand of the victorious outcast. Kaled had, indeed, slain twenty-eight of the inhabitants, ere the potent command of the prophet to spare the vanquished, could restrain his ruthless arm; but Mohammed blamed the cruelty of his lieutenant, and, though he proscribed eleven men and six women, few only were put to death by him. Among these wasAbdolusa, who, after having embraced the faith of Islam, had relapsed into idolatry.Abdallah, once the secretary of Mohammed, and who had been employed by him to note down the fragmentary revelations imparted by Gabriel, had a narrow escape. The clear-sighted man had seen through the shallow imposture palmed upon the people by the pretended apostle; and he had imprudently boasted, that he also might claim the name and rank of a prophet, considering that he had it in his power to change, or to suppress, the holy revelations dictated to him by Mohammed. To escape the vengeance of his offended master, he had fled to Mecca, where he had, however, still continued to provoke his resentment by exposing and ridiculing his ignorance. When Mecca was taken, Abdallah fell prostrate at the feet of Mohammed, and implored his pardon. Othman, Abdallah’s foster-brother, entreated the prophet to spare the life of the humble penitent, a request which was at last most reluctantlygranted, Mohammeddeclaring that he had so long hesitated, to allow time for some zealous disciple to strike the kneeling apostate dead at his feet.[35]The poet,Huires, paid thepenalty of his satires on the Apostle of God: butSoheirmore wisely purchased, not only forgiveness, but a rich reward in the bargain, by one of the grossest and most extravagant pieces of adulation that ever proceeded even from an Oriental pen.

The Koreish and the other inhabitants of Mecca, professed the religion of Islam, and acknowledged the temporal and spiritual supremacy of the prophet. The 360 idols of the Kaaba were ignominiously broken; Mohammed assisting with his own hands, in the work of destruction, nay, even lending his august shoulders for Ali to mount upon, to accomplish the overthrow of some idols placed a little above ordinary reach. This meritorious feat was performed on a Friday; which day was, therefore, henceforward appointed by the prophet as the holy day of Islam.

But it was by no means the intention of Mohammed to despoil the city of his birth, of the lucrative trade in religion to which it had hitherto been mainly indebted for its pre-eminence among the cities of Arabia. The people of Mecca were agreeably disappointed, when they beheld the Prophet of God solemnly consecrating again the purified Kaaba, and performing the customary circumambulations and sacrifices as of old. They were readily reconciled to the belief in a sole Deity, since their astute townsman assigned a local habitation on earth to the idea of the God whom he commanded them and the nations of the world to worship, and placed this habitation within the walls of their own city. Even the black stone was not forgotten by the crafty politician: his reverential touch cleansed it from the pollution of ages of idolatry, and restored it to the pristine purity and holiness of Gabriel’s celestial gift to Abraham; and to crown all, he still heightened the sanctity of the holy city, by enacting a perpetual law that no unbeliever should ever dare to set his foot within its sacred precincts.

The conquest of Mecca secured Mohammed the allegiance of many of the Bedoween tribes, who, troubling themselves but little about religious opinions and controversies, readily gave their adhesion to the cause which the gods seemed to prosper. But some of the most important tribes of Hejaz, and more especially the people of Tayef, persisted in theiridolatry, and a great confederacy was formed among them to break the power of Mohammed. The prophet resolved to meet the threatening danger; he collected a host of 12,000 men, well-armed and well-appointed; the confederates had not one-half the number to oppose him. But the skilful tactics of the pagans, and the overweening confidence of the Mussulmans, brought the apostle and his new faith to the verge of ruin. Having incautiously descended into the valley ofHonain, the Moslems were suddenly attacked on all sides by the archers and slingers of the enemy, who occupied the heights; the ranks of the faithful were thrown into confusion by the unexpected and fierce onset of the foe; and the stoutest hearts among them quailed, when they saw themselves caught as in a net. The Koreish secretly rejoiced at the impending destruction of their conquerors, and even prepared to go over to the enemy. All seemed lost;—despairing of victory, the prophet, seeking a glorious death, urged his white mule against the wall of spears that encompassed him: his faithful followers dragged him back, and covered him with their persons from the thrusts and darts aimed at his breast. Three of these devoted followers fell dead at his feet;—but the moment of weak despair was past, and soon the thunder of his voice was heard again, reanimating the sinking courage of the Moslems, and striking terror into the hearts of the idolators. The Koreish forgot their treacherous intentions; the flying Mussulmans returned from all sides to the holy standard; and the attacks of the enemy were now everywhere vigorously repulsed. Defeat was changed into victory, and a merciless slaughter of the conquered and flying pagans, avenged the temporary disgrace of the followers of Islam. From the field of Honain, Mohammed marched without delay to Tayef, the centre and stronghold of the confederacy. He laid siege to that fortress; but the desperate valor of the inhabitants defeated all his efforts to effect its reduction; and after twenty days spent before it, he deemed it the wisest course to rest satisfied for the time with the victory of Honain, and not to court the chances of an inglorious defeat. He, therefore, raised the siege, and marched back to Mecca. In his operations against Tayef, he gave an instance of how cheap he held hisown laws and precepts, where they happened to clash with his interests: he ordered the extirpation of all the fruit trees in the fertile lands round the city.

In the division of the rich spoils of the expedition of Honain, he acted with consummate skill. Instead of excluding the Koreish from their share, to punish them for their ambiguous conduct during the campaign, he bestowed double measure upon them; the most disaffected of them all, Abu Sophian, being presented with no less than three hundred camels and twenty ounces of silver: no wonder, then, that that rapacious chief and his followers should have, henceforth, become sincere adherents to so profitable a creed. The old companions in arms of the prophet were reconciled to this manifest injustice in the distribution of the spoil, by artful flatteries and promises of heavenly rewards: his own share of the plunder (one-fifth) he assigned to the soldiers.[36]

Although he had failed to reduce Tayef, yet by the extirpation of the fruit trees he had struck a severe blow against the people of that city; the fortifications had been considerably injured by the battering rams and the mining operations, so that there was ample reason to dread the event of a renewal of the siege. The people of Tayef resolved, therefore, to sue for peace; their deputies endeavoured to obtain favorable conditions, and, at least, the toleration of their ancient worship, though even only for a short period. Mohammed would not concede them even one day; at last they simply entreated to be excused from the obligation of prayer to the God of Islam; in vain: Mohammed was inexorable, and Tayef at length submitted to the harsh conditions imposed by the prophet. The idols were broken, their temples demolished, and all the tribes of Hejaz acknowledged the supreme rule of the son of Abdallah. The ruler ofBahrein, the King ofOman, and the King of theBeni Gassan, in Syria, confessed the God of Mohammed, and submitted to the sway of the prophet. Yemen also, and the rest of the peninsula, was reduced to obedience by hisvictorious lieutenants, and the ambassadors who knelt before the throne of Medina, (631, hence called the year of the embassies), were, in the words of the Arabian proverb, “as numerous as the dates that fall from the palm-tree in the season of ripeness.”

Absolute master of the whole of Arabia, the son of Abdallah resolved to subject Syria also to his sway; he solemnly declared war against the Empire of the East, and summoned the faithful to the holy standard. But the prospect of the difficulties and hardships of a march through the desert, during the intolerable heat of the summer, and, perhaps also, the recollection of Muta, discouraged the Moslems; and the most urgent solicitations of the apostle were disregarded, or met by more or less cogent excuses. Still the great champions of the faith, Ali, Omar, Othman, Kaled, Amru, Abu Bekr, Abu Obeidah, Abbas,[37]and many others, attended by trains of devoted followers, gathered round the prophet, and enabled him thus to take the field, at the head of ten thousand horse and twenty thousand foot.[38]After one of the most distressing marches through the desert, the Moslem host was compelled to halt midway nearTabuc, ten days’ journey from Medina and Damascus. The hardships endured had considerably cooled the ardor of the faithful, and wisely declining to engage the disciplined forces of the Eastern empire with his wearied and dispirited followers, Mohammed contented himself with inviting the Greek Emperor once more to embrace his religion, and retired to Arabia; leaving a body of picked men, under the command of the intrepid Kaled, to prosecute the war. The valor and activity of that leader secured the submission of the tribes and cities from the Euphrates to Ailah, at the head of the Red Sea. Mohammed returned to Medina, where he pronounced a sentence of excommunication for fifty days against those who had been the most disobedientto his call. He then prepared for a great pilgrimage to Mecca, which he accomplished in the early part of 632, attended by 60,000 Moslems.[39]In this, his last visit to the city of his birth, he gave a great number of laws and precepts; and, among others, the interdiction of the private revenge of murder and other injuries.

It has already been stated, that Mohammed’s health had been declining ever since the campaign of Chaibar, (seepage 34, note); yet such was the strength and vigor of his constitution, that up to the time of his last and fatal illness, he remained equal to the physical and mental fatigues of his mission. However, soon after his return from the last pilgrimage to Mecca, he fell ill of an inflammatory fever, with occasional fits of delirium, which he endeavoured to combat by frequent affusions with cold water. When he became conscious of the fatal nature of his illness, he laid himself out to die, as an accomplished actor, like Octavianus Augustus. Leaning on his cousin and son-in-law, Ali,[40]and on his uncle, Abbas, or the son of the latter, Fadl, he dragged himself to the mosque to perform the functions of public prayer: from the pulpit he called upon his subjects freely and boldly to state any grievance that any one of them might have suffered at his hands, and to prefer any just claims against his estate. A safe challenge indeed: the victims of his lust of power and revenge were laid in their graves, and could not appear against himthere; nor couldtheyprefer any claim against his estate, who had been despoiled by him or his lieutenants, in their predatory expeditions. No wonder then that the immaculate justice and piety of the Apostle of God, were fully attested by the silence of the congregation in presence of this challenge,—excepting a paltry claim of three drachms of silver, which was, of course, at once duly settled by Mohammed, with a profusion of thanks into the bargain, that the “creditor” hadrather demanded payment in this world, than waited to accuse him at the judgment-seat of God!

Up to the third day before his death, he continued to perform the function of public prayer; on that day his strength failed him, and he deputed Abu Bekr in his place, which was afterwards skilfully laid hold of by the latter and Ayesha, to found a claim to the successorship in the sacerdotal and regal office, in favor of Abu Bekr, to the prejudice of Ali.

He then made his last dispositions, enfranchised his slaves, (seventeen men and eleven women), had alms distributed to the poor of Medina, and minutely directed the order of his funeral. He expressed a desire to dictate to his secretary a new divine book, the sum and accomplishment of all his revelations, and which, according to Mohammed’s convenient maxim, would have superseded the authority of the Koran, in all points in which its teachings might happen to clash with the rules and precepts laid down in the latter. As Mohammed had preached an eternal and immutable God, and had declared the substance of the Koran to be uncreated and eternal, the gross absurdity of attempting a new, revised, and amended edition of it, could not fail to strike the more rational among his disciples. They, with Omar at their head, firmly refused, therefore, to consent to the prophet’s anxiously expressed wish—a curious comment on the sincerity of their professed conviction of his divine mission, and his communings with the messenger of heaven, and for which, theirassumedbelief that his mental faculties were, at the time, impaired by the effects of illness, afforded but an indifferent apology. Be this however as it may, the point was vehemently discussed between them and the more devout followers of the prophet; and the dispute, which was carried on in the chamber of the dying man, rose at last to such a pitch, that Mohammed reluctantly desisting from his desire, was forced to reprove the indecent vehemence of the disputants on either side.

Even to the last moment of his life, Mohammed consistently carried out his system of deception. He told his friends about him, that he had received a last visit ofGabriel, who had now bidden an everlasting farewell to the earth. In a familiar discourse, he had once boasted of the peculiar and exclusive prerogative granted to him, that the angel of death should respectfully solicit his permission before he was to be allowed to take his soul. When he felt the near approach of his dissolution, he calmly informed the Moslem chiefs assembled round him, that the Great Destroyer had just preferred his request, and that he, Mohammed, had granted the permission asked! Stretched on a carpet spread upon the floor, and with his head reclining on the lap of Ayesha, the best beloved of his wives, he expired on the 7th day of June, 632.[41]His last words were: “O God!... pardon my sins.... Yes, ... I come, ... among my fellow-citizens on high.”

His death dismayed his followers; the more fanatical among them could not bring themselves to believe in the actual departure of his spirit from this world. The idea of a trance, or of a resurrection after a few days’ apparent death, found ready credence with them. Omar, unsheathing his scymitar, threatened to strike off the heads of the infidels who should dare to affirm that the prophet was no more!—a curious comment upon his refusal to allow the dying prophet to re-write the Koran. At last, Abu Bekr succeeded in making them listen to reason: “Is it Mohammed,” he said, “or Mohammed’s God whom you worship? Has not the apostle himself predicted that he should experience the common fate of mortality?” This calm and rational address had the desired effect; the death of the prophet was admitted by all, and his body was piously interred by the hands of Ali, on the same spot on which he expired, and which is now surrounded by the great mosque of Medina. The story of the hanging coffin at Mecca is a vulgar and puerile invention, not worth the trouble of refutation.

I have been led by the superior importance and interest which attach to the subject, to extend this chapter, perhaps, considerably beyond the limits compatible with the natureand size of the present work; still I cannot abstain from adding a short sketch of Mohammed’s habits of life, and a few brief remarks on the Koran.

In his domestic life and intercourse, Mohammed was most simple and unassuming. The ruler of Arabia fed usually upon barley bread and dates; water was his ordinary drink, though he delighted, and occasionally indulged, in the taste of milk and honey; he never drank wine. The powerful chieftain who could command the services of thousands, did not disdain performing the menial offices of the household: he kindled the fire, swept the floor, milked the ewes, and mended with his own hands, his shoes and his woollen garment (the use of silk he rejected as too effeminate); nor was it an uncommon circumstance to see the Apostle of God barefoot. He slept on the bare ground, or on a carpet or straw mat spread upon the floor. He always performed, with the most rigorous strictness, the prayers and ablutions enjoined by the Koran. With the regal and sacerdotal office, he had assumed the reserve and austerity that befitted his high position; yet he would occasionally unbend in the circle of his friends, when he enchanted all around him by the graceful, though dignified, affability of his manners, and the charms of his conversation. He was passionately fond of fairy tales. He delighted in perfumes and cats, which latter partiality he shared with one of his cotemporaries, the learned Abu Horaira, who gained for himself the surname of “the father of a cat.” His hair, beard, and eyebrows, were the objects of his most anxious care and solicitude; he dyed them with considerable skill, a glossy light-chesnut color.

He was most passionately addicted to the fair sex: in the indulgence of his amorous desires, he set his own laws at nought. The Arabians had enjoyed, from time immemorial, an unbounded licence of polygamy; the Koran limited the number of legitimate wives or concubines tofour, the prophet hadseventeenwives; but then, Gabriel had descended with a special revelation, dispensing the favored apostle from the laws which he had imposed on the nation.Zeineb, the beautiful wife ofZeid, his freedman and adopted son, excited his desire. The grateful husband consented toa divorce, and the prophet added her to the number of his wives; but as the filial relation in which the young woman stood to Mohammed, even though only by adoption, was likely to produce some scandal, and to raise some scruples in the minds of the faithful, the complaisant Gabriel descended with another verse of the Koran, appropriate to the occasion. Again, in the case of Mary, the Egyptian slave, the indefatigable angel was at hand to oblige the Apostle of God. Had Mohammed liked wine, there can be no doubt, but that Gabriel would have been ready with another verse of the Koran, to dispense the prophet from the restriction imposed upon all other mortals. A better proof than the nature of these successive “revelations,” so entirely subservient to the gratification of his passions, could not well be adduced, to show that Mohammed was not, as some good-natured historians would fain believe him to have been, the enthusiastic dupe of his own illusions, but simply a cool and calculating politician, who made the institution of a new religious system the basis and engine of his power and dominion; most probably, sincerely believing also, that he was really conferring an immense boon upon his people. His vengeful and sanguinary disposition, has been already fully exposed in the narration of his life. The impartiality of history relieves those darker touches in the picture of Mohammed’s character, by a trait of unaffected humanity. His decree that, in the sale of captives, mothers should never be separated from their children, may well, as Gibbon says, moderate the censure of the historian. How the thousands of hapless negro mothers that have had their children ruthlessly torn from their arms inChristianAmerica, would bless the memory of the Arabian legislator, could that humane decree of his find force and application in the Western Hemisphere!

TheKoranis the sacred book of Islam; the successive “revelations” imparted to Mohammed, were diligently recorded by his disciples on palm-leaves, skins, and the shoulder-bones of mutton; and the fragments, or “pages,” were thrown into a domestic chest, in the custody of one of Mohammed’s wives. In 634, these fragments were collected and published by Abu Bekr; the sacred volume was revisedby the Khalif Othman, in 651. It consists of 114 chapters (Surats,i.e.stages or degrees), of very unequal lengths, and jumbled together without chronological order, or systematic arrangement. The chapters are made up of plagiarisms from the Bible, rabbinical and apocryphal legends, religious and moral precepts, descriptions of the joys of paradise and the torments of hell, declamations and rhapsodies. The style is, for the most part, inflated, rarely poetical, never sublime; yet Mohammed had the cool audacity to rest the truth of his mission on the incomparable merit of the Koran, as an intellectual, linguistic, and poetical performance. He blasphemously asserted, that God alone could have penned, or dictated, its divine contents; as no human, nor even an angelic intelligence, could possibly have conceived anything like them!!!

The dogmatic part of the Koran (theIman), comprises the two articles of faith, viz., the belief in one God, and in his prophet Mohammed; and the four practical duties of Islam, viz., prayer, ablutions, fasting, and alms-giving: these duties are reduced to the level of mere mechanical performances, without one atom of spontaneity about them, and are looked upon by most Mohammedans as irksome tasks, which must be accomplished, however, to secure the reward of paradise; the formal permission granted to supply with sand the scarcity of water, so that the prescribed lustration of the hands, the face, and the body may be practised even in the arid desert, shows how little capable the legislator must have been to conceive and comprehend the true spirit and intention of his own ordinances. The Koran pronounces—of course: is there a religion that does not?—sentence of eternal damnation against all unbelievers; it imagines a gradation of seven inconveniently hot places, of which the highest and least uncomfortable is, of course, appropriated for the exclusive use of Mohammedans who have been lacking in piety during their mortal career; according to the less or greater gravity of their respective offences, they are condemned to remain denizens of this the mildest of the seven hells, for periods varying from 900 to 9000 years, after which they are admitted to the joys of paradise. The place immediately beneath this purgatorial hell is assigned to the Christians;the hell next to this is allotted to the Jews, whom the prophet of Islam would indeed gladly have sent down lower, had he dared to treat monotheists worse than idolators; the Sabians inhabit the fourth, the Magians the fifth, the gross idolators the sixth hell; the deepest and hottest hell is destined to receive hypocrites in religion, and may therefore safely be assumed to be of larger dimensions and infinitely greater capacity than the other six together. The paradise of the Koran abounds in groves, fountains, and rivers; the blessed Moslems who are permitted to enter its gates will dwell in palaces of marble, eat artificial dainties and luscious fruits presented in dishes of gold, drink rich wines,[42]dress in robes of silk, adorned with pearls and diamonds, and have a numerous retinue of attendants; and above all, each Moslem will enjoy the society and possession of seventy-two Houris, or black-eyed girls, of resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite sensibility—rather a pleasant picture for a sensual people like the Arabians. To the female sex also the gates of paradise are open; but the privileges and enjoyments which may await the ladies of the Mohammedan faith, are not specified in the Koran. Still, we must not be unjust: above the vulgar joys and sensual pleasures borrowed from this world, Mohammed places the delights of familiar conversation with the sages, and he expressly declares that all meaner happiness will be forgotten and despised by the saints and martyrs who shall be permitted to behold the face of God.

Mohammed’s assertion that the Koran was the production of the highest intelligence, and comprised within it the knowledge of all times, has, ever since the establishment of his creed, proved a bar to the intellectual culture and progress of his people and of the other nations who were induced or compelled to adopt his faith; his interdiction to reproduce the human face and form on canvas or in marble, or any other material, and which with singular poverty of invention he had devised as the only possible check to idolatry, has had the natural effect to suppress and extinguish inthe Moslem nations the love of the fine arts. True, when conquest had placed the wealth of empires at the disposal of the sons of the Desert, many of Mohammed’s followers could not resist the natural longing after the treasures and enjoyments of science, art, and literature; and indeed the republic of letters is vastly indebted to many of them for their labors and researches in various fields of human lore, more especially in geography, history, philosophy, medicine, natural philosophy, chemistry, mathematics, and above all, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and astronomy. But then, asA. W. von Schlegel, says, “All this was done, as it were, behind the back of the prophet, and the votaries of art, science, and literature, among the Arabians must, from a Koranic point of view, be regarded in the light of free-thinkers.”

The ritual of the faith of Islam, and the interdictions decreed by the prophet, have been already incidentally touched upon in various parts of this chapter; we have therefore simply to add here that the Koran commands every faithful Moslem to visit, at feast once in his life, the holy city of Mecca, and the Kaaba.

One great redeeming feature of the religion of Islam was that it was originally destitute of a priesthood, and repudiated monachism; theUlemaswere simply intended to be the expounders and interpreters of the law.

On Friday, the appointed day of public worship, when the faithful are assembled in the mosque, any respectable elder may ascend the pulpit to begin the prayer and pronounce the sermon: there is no need of a duly appointed priest. But, unfortunately, the Ulemas and Imams of the present day act very much in the capacity of an actual clergy: and there is indeed no great difference between fakirs and dervishes and Roman Catholic monks.

The Koran contains also the civil and criminal code of the Mussulmans; the punishments decreed in it for injuries, offences, and crimes are mostly based upon the principle of retaliation.

Briefly to sum up: though it must be admitted that the religion of Islam, calmly and dispassionately examined by the light of reason, contains, by the side of the grossestabsurdities, the most palpable falsehoods, and the veriest rubbish, much also that is true and of sterling worth; and that it has exercised a certain civilising influence over the barbarous nations to whom it was first preached, yet few only will venture to deny that it lacks altogether the higher and most essential qualities of a universal faith. Even the basis whereon it rests, the great eternal truth of a sole Deity, is tarnished and clouded in it by the companionship which it is forced to bear to a miserable fiction placed by the side of it, and with equal attributes. There are some few, strange though it may appear, who almost regret that the victorious career of the Moslems should have been checked byLeo the Isaurianand byCharles Martel. What would have become of Europe—what of civilisation, had the Moslems conquered? Let the admirers of Islam look at the state of the Mussulman nations of the present day: the fruit shows the quality of the tree. It is also a favorite argument with historians and others, to point to thenumbersof believers in Islam, and to the twelve centuries that the Mohammedan faith has endured, as convincing proofs of thetruthof that creed, or, at all events, of a preponderating amount of truth in it. If arguments of this kind are to apply, the Mormon faith also may claim admission among the “received” creeds; and the names of Joe Smith and Brigham Young may be expected, in the course of fifty years or so, to figure among the “prophets and apostles of religion.”

FOOTNOTES:[1]See Genesis, x. 25.Ebersignifies a nomadic shepherd, one leading a roving pastoral life; it signifies, also, in Hebrew,beyond,yon-side,the other side: hence the nameHebrew, orEbrew, has been supposed also to be intended to designate immigrants into Canaan or Palestine from beyond the Euphrates.[2]A species of millet, which compensates to some extent the scarcity of European grains.[3]“The Arabian tribes are equally addicted to commerce and rapine,” as Pliny has it.[4]True, in the Arabic tongue the meaning of the words, of which the nameSaracensmay be compounded, will bear out the signification of anOriental situation. But thewesternposition of the Saracen tribe mentioned by Ptolemy, negatives the assumption of the Arabic origin of the word as applied in this sense. As Gibbon sagaciously remarks, the appellation being imposed by strangers, its meaning must be sought, not in the Arabic, but in a foreign language.[5]It would even appear that the confusion consequent upon the death of the great Macedonian, and upon the feuds and struggles for empire among his generals, was taken advantage of by the princes in the north of Arabia, to extend their dominion beyond the frontier of the peninsula. From the earliest times the wandering tribes had been in the habit, more particularly during the scarcity of winter, to extort the dangerous license of encamping on the skirts of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, and had often extended their incursions to the very heart of Chaldæa, or Babylonia (Irak). They now took formal possession of a part of the latter country (hence called to the present dayIrak-Arabi), and established in it a new Arabian state, the kingdom ofHira. Tribes from Yemen emigrated to the territory of Syria, and established the state ofGassan, in the country north of Damascus. We must not omit to mention, however, that some historians place the establishment of the states of Hira and Gassan at a much later period.[6]So named from Makkabi, i.e.,the hammer; the appellation bestowed upon Judas, the liberator of the Jews from the Syrian yoke.[7]Dunaan, prince of the Homerites, had been gained over to the Mosaic faith by the Jewish exiles who had found an asylum in Yemen. The new proselyte carried on a most vigorous persecution of the Christians in his dominions, and more particularly in the city of Negra, or Nag’ran, (situated between Saana and Mecca). The Christian king of Abyssinia, who preferred an hereditary claim to the crown of Yemen, as a descendant ofBalkis, Queen of Sheba, came to the rescue of his oppressed fellow-believers, and speedily deprived the Jewish proselyte of crown and life. He allied himself also with the Emperor Justinian for the overthrow of the Persian power; but he failed in his subsequent enterprise, and found himself incapable even of defending his Arabian conquests, which were wrested from him by the revolt and usurpation ofAbrahah, once the slave of a Roman merchant of Adulis. The payment of a slight tribute alone acknowledged the supremacy of the Ethiopian prince. After a long and prosperous reign, the power of Abrahah was overthrown before the gates of Mecca, by Abdul Motalleb, the grandfather of Mohammed; and his children were finally despoiled by Chosroes Nushirvan, of Persia.[8]The Axumites, or Abyssinians, were, most probably, originally a colony of Arabs who had settled in Africa.[9]The same independence from the yoke of a foreign ruler is still preserved to the present day by the Arabians. The Sultan of Turkey exercises but a nominal sovereignty over Hedjaz and Neged; and the rise and exploits of that formidable sect of religious reformers, theWahabys, during the latter half of the last and in the present century, indicate sufficiently that it may only require the appearance of a great man among the Arabs, or the occurrence of some great event, to unite the wild sons of the desert once more into a mighty nation that may make its influence felt in the destinies of the world. Had not Egypt’s great ruler, Mehemet Ali, and his warlike son Ibrahim, stemmed for a time the progress, and crippled the power of the Wahabys, who knows but that the champion of Greek orthodoxy might have found his present ambitious projects opposed by a fiercer and more formidable antagonist than the effete race of Osman?[10]CalledMedjid-el-Haram, i.e., the holy Mosch.[11]A visible point of the horizon.[12]Gibbon.[13]The constant repetition of this act of pious devotion by so many myriads of pilgrims has had the effect of rendering the surface of the stone quite uneven.[14]Gibbon.[15]It was in the time when Abdol Motalleb held the sacerdotal office that Mecca was invested by an army of Africans, under the command of the Christian usurper of Yemen, Abrahah, the nominal vassal of the Abyssinian Negus. The valor of the Koreishites, or perhaps the want of provisions, compelled the investing host to a disgraceful retreat, and broke the power of the Abyssinians so effectually that the kingdom of Yemen became soon after an easy prey to the victorious arms of the great Chosroes of Persia. Had theChristianAbrahah prevailed, the early feeble efforts of Mohammed to propagate his new doctrine would certainly have been crushed in the bud, and the fate of the world would have been changed.[16]Sabianism, though also based upon the adoration of the heavenly bodies, must not be confounded with the primitive and simple faith of the Arabians in the sun, the moon, and the stars; it was of a much more complex and recondite nature.[17]Some historians assign the year 569, others 570 (10th November), as the date of Mahomet’s birth. The date given in the text is, however, supported by the greater weight of historic authorities.[18]This Syrian city has been most strangely confounded by many historians with Bassora, or Basra, on the Shat-el-Arab, in Irak-Arabi. The latter city was only founded in 636,A.D., by the Khalif Omar, which makes the mistake the more glaring and inexplicable.[19]Some historians make Mohammed at the age of fourteen fight in defence of the Kaaba, which a hostile tribe threatened to snatch from the custody of the Koreish. They relate, also, how, at a later period of his life, when the Kaaba, having been tumbled down by a formidable torrent of rain, was rebuilding, the honor of fixing the sacred black stone in the wall devolved upon him; and they endeavour to trace a kind of causal connection between these incidents in the earlier life of Mohammed and the religious bias of his later years. But thefactsrelied upon here partake too much of the nature offiction, to make these speculative notions of much moment. Before his marriage with Cadijah, Mohammed was in a humble and dependent position; and from the time of his marriage up to when he took upon himself the apostolic office, he was simply a wealthy but obscure citizen.[20]Here, again, historians have sent Mohammed on a great many journeys through Syria, Irak-Arabi, and to the adjoining provinces of Persia and the Eastern Empire. They make him visit the courts, the camps, and the temples of the East, and hold converse with princes, bishops, and priests, more particularly with the Christian monks Bahira, Sergius, and Nestor. An attentive study of the historic sources at our command, and a careful examination of the life and writings of Mohammed, tend to negative altogether the truth of these pretended journeys and visits, which look very much like fictions got up by imaginative historians to supply some plausible explanation of the origin of Mohammed’s pretended mission—an explanation which may be found much nearer home, as I shall endeavour to show in the text. Here I will simply add that Mohammed, with all his talent, genius, and eloquence, was, like the immense majority of his fellow-citizens, an illiterate barbarian, who had not even been taught to read and write, and was totally unacquainted with any but his native tongue, and not likely, therefore, to profit much from converse with other nations.[21]The assertion that Mohammed was subject to epileptic fits is a base invention of the Greeks, who would seem toimputethat morbid affection to the apostle of a novel creed as a stain upon his moral character deserving the reprobation and abhorrence of the Christian world. Surely, these malignant bigots might have reflected that if Mohammed had really been afflicted with that dread disorder, Christian charity ought to have commanded them to pity his misfortune, rather than rejoice over it or pretend to regard it in the light of a sign of Divine wrath.[22]Sonna, custom or rule; theoral lawof the Mohammedans,—or, more correctly speaking, of the four orthodox sects of the Sonnites—a collection of 7275 traditions of the sayings and doings of Mohammed, made about 200 years after the Hegira, by Al Bochari, who selected them from a mass of three hundred thousand reports of a more doubtful or spurious character.[23]The so-calledMarianitesare even stated to have attempted the introduction of a heretical trinity into the church, by substituting the Virgin for the Holy Ghost.[24]The five preceding prophets were, in due gradation, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Christus.[25]The interdiction of wine appeared, however, at a much later period, (628).[26]By the advice of Moses, it is somewhat inconsistently asserted considering that the founder of the Jewish creed, not being permitted, according to the tradition of the nocturnal journey, to proceed beyond the seventh heaven (if even so far, his proper appointed mansion being the sixth heaven) must have been, on the most moderate calculation, at 140,000,000 years’ distance from the throne of God.[27]This flight of the prophet, called theHejira, (i.e.,emigration,) was deemed afterwards of such importance that it was instituted by Omar, the second Khalif, as the starting-point of the Mohammedan era, which was, however, made to commence about two months before, on the first day of that Arabian year, which coincides with July 16th, 622,A.D.[28]The conquered Christians were granted the security of their persons, the freedom of their trade, the property of their goods, and the toleration of their worship. For the treatment which the Jews met with at Mohammed’s hands, seethe text.[29]Whether 1000, 3000, or 9000, the commentators of the Koran cannot agree. Considering that there were only 1000 Koreish in the field, of whom no more than seventy were slain, it would appear that Mohammed must either have entertained a most exalted idea of the valor of his former fellow-citizens, or rather a humble one of angelic prowess.[30]It was at the time of the expedition against Chaibar that Mohammed prohibited the eating of pork, and of the flesh of the ass, and also the cutting down of fruit-trees, more especially of palms. “Revere your aunt, the palm-tree,” says the Koran, “for it is made of the remainder of the clay of which Adam was formed.” Here in Chaibar, a Jewish female, named Zainab, avenged the cruelties inflicted by Mohammed upon her nation, by administering a slow poison to the pretended apostle, whose prophetic knowledge was in this instance lamentably at fault. To the effects of this poison he himself attributed the gradual decline of his health from this time, and his increasing infirmities; and both Abulfeda and Al Jannabi, zealous votaries of Islam though they are, frankly admit the humiliating fact. The hatred which he bore to the Jews, did not, however, prevent his adding to the number of his wives the fair Jewess Shafiya, who, upon the capitulation of Chaibar, was presented to him as worthy his acceptance.[31]The final campaign against Chaibar took place several months after the first attempt upon Mecca; but for the sake of connection it has been given in the text a little out of its chronological order.[32]Known as the treaty of Hodaibeh.[33]Chosroes II., who is mentioned in most histories as the monarch who received the envoys of Mohammed, had been murdered by his son Siroes, on the 28th February, 628, and could not therefore well have received the ambassador of Mohammed, who started at a later period of the year.[34]The sect of theMonophysitesasserted one incarnate nature in Christ; the name of Jacobites, by which they are mostly known, is derived from Jacobus Baradæus, Bishop of Edessa, who revived the expiring faction of the Monophysites (about 530).[35]Some historians dispose of Abdallah on this occasion by the scymitar ofBeschr, and assign to the Abdallah who in 647 invaded North Africa, a different origin (some assert the latter to have been the son of the martyr Jaafar who fell in the battle of Muta).[36]Mohammed’s vices were of a regal cast; avarice, the beggar’s vice, yet which so often sullies crowned heads, was not among his failings.[37]One of the uncles of the prophet, whose vigorous arm and immensely powerful voice had done good service to the cause in the fight of Honain.[38]Even this number reads very much like Oriental exaggeration, and may safely be reduced by the half.[39]Some writers say 90,000, others, 110,000; others, 114,000; some raise the number even to 130, 140, or 150,000; but then due allowance must be made for Oriental exaggeration; I think the number given in the text may be considered to come tolerably near the mark.[40]Ali was married to Fatima, the only one of Mohammed’s children who survived the prophet.[41]Some historians give the 6th, others the 8th, and others the 17th of June, as the last day of Mohammed’s life.[42]Rather a curious comment on the interdiction of wine in this world.

[1]See Genesis, x. 25.Ebersignifies a nomadic shepherd, one leading a roving pastoral life; it signifies, also, in Hebrew,beyond,yon-side,the other side: hence the nameHebrew, orEbrew, has been supposed also to be intended to designate immigrants into Canaan or Palestine from beyond the Euphrates.

[2]A species of millet, which compensates to some extent the scarcity of European grains.

[3]“The Arabian tribes are equally addicted to commerce and rapine,” as Pliny has it.

[4]True, in the Arabic tongue the meaning of the words, of which the nameSaracensmay be compounded, will bear out the signification of anOriental situation. But thewesternposition of the Saracen tribe mentioned by Ptolemy, negatives the assumption of the Arabic origin of the word as applied in this sense. As Gibbon sagaciously remarks, the appellation being imposed by strangers, its meaning must be sought, not in the Arabic, but in a foreign language.

[5]It would even appear that the confusion consequent upon the death of the great Macedonian, and upon the feuds and struggles for empire among his generals, was taken advantage of by the princes in the north of Arabia, to extend their dominion beyond the frontier of the peninsula. From the earliest times the wandering tribes had been in the habit, more particularly during the scarcity of winter, to extort the dangerous license of encamping on the skirts of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, and had often extended their incursions to the very heart of Chaldæa, or Babylonia (Irak). They now took formal possession of a part of the latter country (hence called to the present dayIrak-Arabi), and established in it a new Arabian state, the kingdom ofHira. Tribes from Yemen emigrated to the territory of Syria, and established the state ofGassan, in the country north of Damascus. We must not omit to mention, however, that some historians place the establishment of the states of Hira and Gassan at a much later period.

[6]So named from Makkabi, i.e.,the hammer; the appellation bestowed upon Judas, the liberator of the Jews from the Syrian yoke.

[7]Dunaan, prince of the Homerites, had been gained over to the Mosaic faith by the Jewish exiles who had found an asylum in Yemen. The new proselyte carried on a most vigorous persecution of the Christians in his dominions, and more particularly in the city of Negra, or Nag’ran, (situated between Saana and Mecca). The Christian king of Abyssinia, who preferred an hereditary claim to the crown of Yemen, as a descendant ofBalkis, Queen of Sheba, came to the rescue of his oppressed fellow-believers, and speedily deprived the Jewish proselyte of crown and life. He allied himself also with the Emperor Justinian for the overthrow of the Persian power; but he failed in his subsequent enterprise, and found himself incapable even of defending his Arabian conquests, which were wrested from him by the revolt and usurpation ofAbrahah, once the slave of a Roman merchant of Adulis. The payment of a slight tribute alone acknowledged the supremacy of the Ethiopian prince. After a long and prosperous reign, the power of Abrahah was overthrown before the gates of Mecca, by Abdul Motalleb, the grandfather of Mohammed; and his children were finally despoiled by Chosroes Nushirvan, of Persia.

[8]The Axumites, or Abyssinians, were, most probably, originally a colony of Arabs who had settled in Africa.

[9]The same independence from the yoke of a foreign ruler is still preserved to the present day by the Arabians. The Sultan of Turkey exercises but a nominal sovereignty over Hedjaz and Neged; and the rise and exploits of that formidable sect of religious reformers, theWahabys, during the latter half of the last and in the present century, indicate sufficiently that it may only require the appearance of a great man among the Arabs, or the occurrence of some great event, to unite the wild sons of the desert once more into a mighty nation that may make its influence felt in the destinies of the world. Had not Egypt’s great ruler, Mehemet Ali, and his warlike son Ibrahim, stemmed for a time the progress, and crippled the power of the Wahabys, who knows but that the champion of Greek orthodoxy might have found his present ambitious projects opposed by a fiercer and more formidable antagonist than the effete race of Osman?

[10]CalledMedjid-el-Haram, i.e., the holy Mosch.

[11]A visible point of the horizon.

[12]Gibbon.

[13]The constant repetition of this act of pious devotion by so many myriads of pilgrims has had the effect of rendering the surface of the stone quite uneven.

[14]Gibbon.

[15]It was in the time when Abdol Motalleb held the sacerdotal office that Mecca was invested by an army of Africans, under the command of the Christian usurper of Yemen, Abrahah, the nominal vassal of the Abyssinian Negus. The valor of the Koreishites, or perhaps the want of provisions, compelled the investing host to a disgraceful retreat, and broke the power of the Abyssinians so effectually that the kingdom of Yemen became soon after an easy prey to the victorious arms of the great Chosroes of Persia. Had theChristianAbrahah prevailed, the early feeble efforts of Mohammed to propagate his new doctrine would certainly have been crushed in the bud, and the fate of the world would have been changed.

[16]Sabianism, though also based upon the adoration of the heavenly bodies, must not be confounded with the primitive and simple faith of the Arabians in the sun, the moon, and the stars; it was of a much more complex and recondite nature.

[17]Some historians assign the year 569, others 570 (10th November), as the date of Mahomet’s birth. The date given in the text is, however, supported by the greater weight of historic authorities.

[18]This Syrian city has been most strangely confounded by many historians with Bassora, or Basra, on the Shat-el-Arab, in Irak-Arabi. The latter city was only founded in 636,A.D., by the Khalif Omar, which makes the mistake the more glaring and inexplicable.

[19]Some historians make Mohammed at the age of fourteen fight in defence of the Kaaba, which a hostile tribe threatened to snatch from the custody of the Koreish. They relate, also, how, at a later period of his life, when the Kaaba, having been tumbled down by a formidable torrent of rain, was rebuilding, the honor of fixing the sacred black stone in the wall devolved upon him; and they endeavour to trace a kind of causal connection between these incidents in the earlier life of Mohammed and the religious bias of his later years. But thefactsrelied upon here partake too much of the nature offiction, to make these speculative notions of much moment. Before his marriage with Cadijah, Mohammed was in a humble and dependent position; and from the time of his marriage up to when he took upon himself the apostolic office, he was simply a wealthy but obscure citizen.

[20]Here, again, historians have sent Mohammed on a great many journeys through Syria, Irak-Arabi, and to the adjoining provinces of Persia and the Eastern Empire. They make him visit the courts, the camps, and the temples of the East, and hold converse with princes, bishops, and priests, more particularly with the Christian monks Bahira, Sergius, and Nestor. An attentive study of the historic sources at our command, and a careful examination of the life and writings of Mohammed, tend to negative altogether the truth of these pretended journeys and visits, which look very much like fictions got up by imaginative historians to supply some plausible explanation of the origin of Mohammed’s pretended mission—an explanation which may be found much nearer home, as I shall endeavour to show in the text. Here I will simply add that Mohammed, with all his talent, genius, and eloquence, was, like the immense majority of his fellow-citizens, an illiterate barbarian, who had not even been taught to read and write, and was totally unacquainted with any but his native tongue, and not likely, therefore, to profit much from converse with other nations.

[21]The assertion that Mohammed was subject to epileptic fits is a base invention of the Greeks, who would seem toimputethat morbid affection to the apostle of a novel creed as a stain upon his moral character deserving the reprobation and abhorrence of the Christian world. Surely, these malignant bigots might have reflected that if Mohammed had really been afflicted with that dread disorder, Christian charity ought to have commanded them to pity his misfortune, rather than rejoice over it or pretend to regard it in the light of a sign of Divine wrath.

[22]Sonna, custom or rule; theoral lawof the Mohammedans,—or, more correctly speaking, of the four orthodox sects of the Sonnites—a collection of 7275 traditions of the sayings and doings of Mohammed, made about 200 years after the Hegira, by Al Bochari, who selected them from a mass of three hundred thousand reports of a more doubtful or spurious character.

[23]The so-calledMarianitesare even stated to have attempted the introduction of a heretical trinity into the church, by substituting the Virgin for the Holy Ghost.

[24]The five preceding prophets were, in due gradation, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Christus.

[25]The interdiction of wine appeared, however, at a much later period, (628).

[26]By the advice of Moses, it is somewhat inconsistently asserted considering that the founder of the Jewish creed, not being permitted, according to the tradition of the nocturnal journey, to proceed beyond the seventh heaven (if even so far, his proper appointed mansion being the sixth heaven) must have been, on the most moderate calculation, at 140,000,000 years’ distance from the throne of God.

[27]This flight of the prophet, called theHejira, (i.e.,emigration,) was deemed afterwards of such importance that it was instituted by Omar, the second Khalif, as the starting-point of the Mohammedan era, which was, however, made to commence about two months before, on the first day of that Arabian year, which coincides with July 16th, 622,A.D.

[28]The conquered Christians were granted the security of their persons, the freedom of their trade, the property of their goods, and the toleration of their worship. For the treatment which the Jews met with at Mohammed’s hands, seethe text.

[29]Whether 1000, 3000, or 9000, the commentators of the Koran cannot agree. Considering that there were only 1000 Koreish in the field, of whom no more than seventy were slain, it would appear that Mohammed must either have entertained a most exalted idea of the valor of his former fellow-citizens, or rather a humble one of angelic prowess.

[30]It was at the time of the expedition against Chaibar that Mohammed prohibited the eating of pork, and of the flesh of the ass, and also the cutting down of fruit-trees, more especially of palms. “Revere your aunt, the palm-tree,” says the Koran, “for it is made of the remainder of the clay of which Adam was formed.” Here in Chaibar, a Jewish female, named Zainab, avenged the cruelties inflicted by Mohammed upon her nation, by administering a slow poison to the pretended apostle, whose prophetic knowledge was in this instance lamentably at fault. To the effects of this poison he himself attributed the gradual decline of his health from this time, and his increasing infirmities; and both Abulfeda and Al Jannabi, zealous votaries of Islam though they are, frankly admit the humiliating fact. The hatred which he bore to the Jews, did not, however, prevent his adding to the number of his wives the fair Jewess Shafiya, who, upon the capitulation of Chaibar, was presented to him as worthy his acceptance.

[31]The final campaign against Chaibar took place several months after the first attempt upon Mecca; but for the sake of connection it has been given in the text a little out of its chronological order.

[32]Known as the treaty of Hodaibeh.

[33]Chosroes II., who is mentioned in most histories as the monarch who received the envoys of Mohammed, had been murdered by his son Siroes, on the 28th February, 628, and could not therefore well have received the ambassador of Mohammed, who started at a later period of the year.

[34]The sect of theMonophysitesasserted one incarnate nature in Christ; the name of Jacobites, by which they are mostly known, is derived from Jacobus Baradæus, Bishop of Edessa, who revived the expiring faction of the Monophysites (about 530).

[35]Some historians dispose of Abdallah on this occasion by the scymitar ofBeschr, and assign to the Abdallah who in 647 invaded North Africa, a different origin (some assert the latter to have been the son of the martyr Jaafar who fell in the battle of Muta).

[36]Mohammed’s vices were of a regal cast; avarice, the beggar’s vice, yet which so often sullies crowned heads, was not among his failings.

[37]One of the uncles of the prophet, whose vigorous arm and immensely powerful voice had done good service to the cause in the fight of Honain.

[38]Even this number reads very much like Oriental exaggeration, and may safely be reduced by the half.

[39]Some writers say 90,000, others, 110,000; others, 114,000; some raise the number even to 130, 140, or 150,000; but then due allowance must be made for Oriental exaggeration; I think the number given in the text may be considered to come tolerably near the mark.

[40]Ali was married to Fatima, the only one of Mohammed’s children who survived the prophet.

[41]Some historians give the 6th, others the 8th, and others the 17th of June, as the last day of Mohammed’s life.

[42]Rather a curious comment on the interdiction of wine in this world.

Back to Index Next