/ ■ 2^ ^-Z'- . I •■-! 4:^ '4>' %. PRINCETON. N.J. ^ti ir. Division ..m.-'oh Section-!' .f2:oi3 ?y .s>/"^^/--^- <-^x.^-^ ITt^^^* ,% ^/i^/U *' \ ISLAM UNDER THE AEAES I,OSCON : PRISTKD BY 8P0TTISW00DE AND CO., NEW-STREET SOUAIIB A>'D PARLIAMENT STREET V \V .>»/ JUL 24 1914 tiiosim sivk^ ISLAM UNDER THE AEABS BY V^ ROBEET DURIE OSBORN UrAJOR TN THE BENOAT, STAFF CORPS LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 1876 A/l righls rexerred PEEFACE I THINK the purpose of this book will be explained most easily by stating how it came to be written. Any officer who has served in India with native troops must have perceived how genial and cordial are the relations among all ranks, from the commanding officer dow^n to the private, so long as a regiment is on active service. The dangers and hardships which have to be endured by all, keep alive and strengthen the feel- ing of comradeship. But when the regiment returns into quarters this feeling dies away. It is not that the Enghsh officer is, at heart, less interested in the well- being of his men, but that there is no longer any object of interest common to both, outside of the mere routine of their profession. They have nothing to talk about. The native soldier knows nothing of Enghsh history or of anything that interests Englishmen ; and very few English officers know more of the men they command than that they are called Sikhs, Afghans, Ghoorkhas, or Mahrattas. What these names signify — what was the history of those who bear them, in the past : what are the memories vi PIJEFACE. which still thrill them witli pleasure or pride— these are matters of which the officers in our native army have small knowledge. And what a potent magnet for winning the hearts of our native soldiers is, from this ignorance, permitted to rust unused, is known only to those who do possess this knowledge, and have watched its effects. Eight or nine years ago, being in England upon medical certificate, it occurred to me that I might use- fully employ my leisure in drawing up brief historical sketches of the races from which our native army is chiefly recruited. A work of this kind, it seemed to me, was just what young officers needed to put them in the way of understanding the men they had to command in the field and in quarters. I had collected a large quantity of matter concerning the Mahrattas, the Sikhs, and the Afghans ; but when I commenced to deal with Muhammadanism in India, I found myself at fault. The (so called) Mogul empire was a mystery for which I could find no satisfactory explanation. Under the stress. of what impulse had these invaders abandoned the up- lands of Central Asia to erect an empire at Delhi and Agra? They styled themselves Muhammadans, but it was clear that the religion they professed, and which they affirmed to be identical with that in the Koran, had passed through a number of transforming influences before it assumed the form it exhibited in India. What w^as the history of these transformations ? Elphinstone PREFACE. VI 1 told me notliing of them. I found no light in the Persian historians of the Muhammadan empire. I resolved to follow Baber and his hardy adventurers over the summits of the Hindoo Khosh. In his paternal kingdom of Fergliana, I should surely discover the clue to guide me through the labyrinth. But there was only confusion worse confounded. Over the whole extent of Central Asia there was nothing to be heard or seen but a confused noise of battle and garments rolled in blood. The dim outhnes of fleeting dynasties rose and disap- peared in the confusion ; conquerors emerging apparently from the Inane ' hasted stormfully across the astonished earth, then plunged again into the Inane.' And what was strangest of all, the Muhammadan historians who recorded this anarchy seemed to find nothing strange or anomalous in it. The Faithful had always managed their affairs in this way, and no one appeared to entertain a thought that the work of existence coidd be carried on in a less bloody and riotous fashion. All that was done was being done strictly according to the Book and the Traditions, and the interpretations of orthodox doctors — and what more would you have ? God was great and Muhammad was His Prophet ; of what use was it to strive against destiny P I perceived, then, that to understand the events of Muhammadan history I must trace them upwards from their source, in the teaching of Muhammad at Mekka and Medina. I was encouraged to undertake this enquiry viii PREFACE. by the fact that there does not exist any Enghsli book which treats of the growth of the Muhammadan rehgion. The present vohnne is the first fruits of this enquiry, which has occupied me during the past seven years. It constitutes a whole in itself, and is the first of a series of works which will trace the progress of Islam from Mekka to Delhi. The second work will be entitled ' The Khalifs of Baghdad,' and the third, ' Islam in India.' The period of Muhammadan history which extends from the first preaching of Muliammad to the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols, foils naturally into three divisions : The rule of the Arabs ; The rule of the Persians ; The rule of the Turks. Tlie present volume deals with the first of these. This period terminated in a.h. 132 with the overthrow of the House of 0mm aya and the accession to power of the khalifs of the House of Abbas. As the arrangement of my subject is somewhat novel and peculiar, a few words in explanation of it are necessary. First, then, I would ask my readers to keep in mind that I am not writing a history of Muhammad or of the khalifs of the House of Ommaya, but of the Muhammadan religion. In dealing, therefore, with the life of Muhammad, I have touched upon those incidents only which had an influence in the building up of the religion he taugiit. And so also with the events in the after-liistory. I 1iave passed over in PREFACE. ix silence, or willi onl)- passing mention, the conquests of the Arabs and tlieir interminable wars with the Byzan- tine empire, because, important as these are historically, they had no influence on Muhammadan theology. Mu- hammadan theology was the product of internal discords ; it was the result of jarring political ambitions investing themselves with a religious sanction, in order to harden the hearts and inflame the fanaticism of the partisans on either side. These civil wars, consequently, I have treated in detail. The first part, entitled ' Islam,' follows the history of the Muhammadan religion from its origin at Mekka, until the body of the Faithful was rent into two irrecon- cileable factions, the Sannis and the Shias. The second part, entitled ' The Fatimides,' traces the growth of the Shia heresy. It endeavours to show that the central tenets of this sect grew directly out of the circumstances in which it was placed. It gives an ac- count, first, of its unsuccessful contest with orthodoxy, under the designation of ' the Karmathians ; ' then of the empire it founded in Northern Africa ; and lastly, it re- lates how, using this empire as a base for further opera- tions, it obtained possession of the rich province of Egypt, whence it planted, like a wasting cancer, in the very centre of the dominions of the Bagdad khalifate, that terrible organisation known in history as ' The As- sassins.' The third part, entitled ' The Khalifs of the House X rUEFACE. of Ominaya,' resumes the history of the orthodox party at the point where the close of the first part left it. The object of this section is to exhibit the events whicli enabled the vanquished Persians to rise against tlieir Aral) conquerors, and place a khalif of their choice at the liead of Islam. These events were due to the want of fusing and uniting power in the religion of Muhammad. Accordingly in the first chapter I have given a sketch of what the Arabs were previous to their conversion ; and in those which follow I show how, when they became masters of Asia, the old feuds and the old passions con- tinued to occupy them, to the complete exclusion of other and higher interests, until the weakness engendered by these discords enabled the subject populations to unite and drive them from power. In the ' Khalifs of Baghdad ' (whicli I hope to have ready for publication in about a year from this time), I carry on the history to the destruction of Baghdad. This volume is chiefly takoi up with an account of the ex- pansion of Islam into a theological and pohtical system, and the unsuccessful attempt of the khalif Mamun to subject the Koran itself to critical tests sanctioned by the reason and the conscience. The third volume will, as I have already said, bear the title of ' Islam in India.' The political fortunes of Muhammadanism in India have been followed, down almost to the present day, in the writings of Elphinstone, Erskine, Grant Duff, Briggs, and other less known rilEFACK, XI authors, but no eudeuvour lias as yet l)cen made to depict ' Islam iu India ' as a spiritual force acting upon and being influenced by the indigenous religions. This is what I purpose to attempt in this part of my work, obtaining my materials from the abundant Persian lite- rature of the past Muhammadan period, and from the Oordoo which has sprung up so luxuriantly since the advent of British rule, and the introduction of the print- ing press. In the present volume I have given no references at the foot of the page, but at the end of the volume the reader will find a list of the authorities which have been used in the composition of each chapter. Among these, however, there do not occur the names of two writers to whose works I am, nevertheless, greatly indebted, though not exactly in such a way as admits of particular specifi- cation. They are Weil, the author of the ' Geschichte der Chahfen,' and R. Dozy, the author of ' Histoire des Musulmans d'Espagne.' It was my misfortune — one in- separable from writing history in a remote coimtry like India — not to read this last work imtil the greater part of this volume had been written, and when time was lacking to me to make all the use of it I should liked to have done. It is in my judgment the ablest and most brilliant work on Muhannnadan history with which I am acquainted, and those who desire to find a truthful and vivid picture of Arab character and Arab rule cannot do better than read this learned and delightful book. xii PREFACE. Muliaiiiniadan names are, I know from experience, a constant puzzle and difficulty to English readers. I think a few words of explanation will, to a great extent, render them at once intelligible. A Muhammadan may be de- signated by any one of three titles. Thus, for example, the Prophet may be called ' Muhammad,' which is his own name ; or ' Abou Kasim,' which signifies ' the fiither of Kasim,' a son of his who died when young ; or he may be called after his father, ' Ibn Abdallah,' which means ' the son of Abdallah.' The word ' Abd,' which appears continually in Muhammadan names, signifies ' servant ' or ' slave ; ' thus Abdallah ' means ' the servant of God;' 'Abd al Eahman,' 'the servant of the Com- passionate.' 11 Maelbouo' Road, St. John's Wood : March 1876. CONTENTS. PART I. ISLAM. CHAPTKK PAGE I. Muhammad at Mekka II. Muhammad at Medina .39 III. The Pilgrimage oi' Farewell 71 IV. Ali and His Sons . . . 96 V. The Struggle for Empire 129 PART 11. THE F ATI M WES. I. The Shia 151 II. The Arab and the Berber ' . 185 III. The Rise op the Fatimides 215 IV. The Conquest of Egypt 2.36 PART III. THE KHALIFS OF THE HOUSE OF OM.VAYA. I. Tin; Arabs before Islam 271 II. The Revolt of Yezid Ibn Mouhalleb 304 III. The Decline of the Ommayas 335 IV. The Abbasides 3G2 V. The Fall of the Ommavas 391 PAET I. ISLAM. B CHAPTER I. MLIIAMMAD AT MEKKA. A.D. C12-G22. There is one remarkable assumption that runs through all the warnings, denunciations, and appeals of the Koran. The God of whom the Prophet speaks is not an unknown God. The guilt of his fellow-tribesmen, the justification of thek impending doom, are deduced from the fact that they did know this God, while they honoured dumb idols, ' Whose is the earth and all that is therein, if ye know? ' asks Muhammad ; and he anticipates their reply : ' They will answer, " God's." ' ' Who is the Lord of the Seven Heavens and the Lord of the Glorious Throne?' ' They will say, " They are God's." ' ' Li whose hand is the empire of all things, who protecteth, but is not protected? ' ' They will answer, " In God's." ' ' How, then,' he asks, ' can ye be so spellbound? ' Sprung from the seed of Abraham, the memory of their august parentage was fondly cherished by the tribes dwelHng in and around Mekka, to whom specially these words were addressed. A per- sistent, though confused, apprehension of a Divine unity imderlying the multiplicity of idol gods had remained of that spiritual heritage which the Father of the Jewish nation had bequeathed to them. And, since the ruin of b2 %'t 4 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. cHAr. i. Jerusalem and the spread of Christianity, that apprehen- sion had been quickened into a comparative clearness liy intercourse with Jews and Christians. Jewish tribes were intermingled with Arab at Medina. In Syria more than one tril^e of kindred origin with themselves professed Christianity. In Yemen a Christian dynasty had existed for nearly a century. Tlie Aral3s who dwelt in Mekka w^cre the great traders among their countrymen. Tlieir karavans were continually passing to and fro between Yemen and Syria ; and it was due, doubtless, to the play of these various religious influences that we find towards the end of the sixth century of our era, scattered throuo-h Arabic poetry, numerous traces of a deep sense of the nnity of God, His unapjDroachable supremacy, and a lively consciousness of the moral responsibility of man. ' All things,' says one poet, ' without God are vanity.' ' God,' says another, ' is alone the True and the Eighteous, and sin is the attribute of man alone.' The people who professed this Theism were termed Hanyfs. The Arabic writers give tlie names of several men contemporary witli the Propliet who were thus designated. Muhammad considered himself in his early days to be one among them. The chief of their tenets appears to have been that the pure worship of God had been revealed to Abraham in a book sent down from Heaven ; this book had either been lost or subjected to so many interpolations, that its primary significance Avas forgotten ; and the spiritual well-being of mankind de- pended upon its re-discovery. In the pre-Islamite times of Arabia the chief man among these wistful and anxious spirits is undoubtedly A.D. G12. THE FORERUNNERS OF MUHAMMAD. 5 Zaid, the Inquirer. lie rejected the worship of idols, pro- tested vehemently against the murder of female infants, and refused to eat meat offered in sacrifice to idols. ' I seek,' he said, ' for the God of Abraham alone.' Day after day he would repair to the Kaaba and pray for enlightenment. He used to be seen leaning his back against the wall of the temple, absorbed in meditation, his silence broken at intervals by passionate appeals to Heaven. ' Lord,' he would cry, ' if I knew in what man- ner Thou oughtest to be worshipped, I would obey Thy will, but I am in darkness.' Tiien he would throw liim- self down with his face to the earth. His soul could find no rest so long as he dwelt at Mekka amid a people wholly given up to superstition. He determined to travel throu<2;]i the Avorld, searchino; after the knowledge of God ; but for many years his wishes were successfully opposed by his family. At last he effected his escape. He tra- versed Mesopotamia and Syria ; he conversed with Christian monks and Jewish Eabbis ; but the satisfaction his soul craved after lie could nowhere find, and he returned to die in his native land. Anotlicr of the lieralds of tlie Prophet, and tlie one who stands in closest connection with him, is Waraka, tlie cousin of Muliammad's first wife, Kadija. He Avas the most learned Arab of his time ; had all his life main- tained intimate relations with Jews and Christians ; had studied Hebrew, and read tlie books of the Old Testa- ment in the original. Like Zaid, he was utterlv dis- satisfied with the gross and incredible idolatry of liis compatriots. * Our countrymen,' he said, ' walk in a wrong way; they have departed from the religion of 6 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. r. Abraham. What is this pretended divinity to which they sacrifice victims and round which they make solemn pro- cessions? A block of stone, dumb and insensible, power- less either for good or evil. All this is wholly wrong. We ought to seek the pm'e religion of Abraham.' When the Prophet commenced his preaching, Waraka was at first inclined to concede his claims ; but when Muhammad strove to strengthen his position by means of wild legends, which he affirmed to exist in the Books of Moses and elsewhere, Waraka's knowledge of the Hebrew Scrip- tures convinced him of the hollowness of Muhammad's pretensions. Waraka denounced him as an impostor, and Avithdrew to Abyssinia, where he became a Christian. It is even said that he translated a part of the Four Gospels into Arabic. The influence of this Theism necessarily extended beyond the immediate circle of the few who explicitly professed it. It awakened a spirit of inquiry, and broke through the callous crust of conventionalism in many minds. Muhammad entered upon a field the soil of which had been broken up to receive the seed he cast upon it. Wherein he differed from his predecessors was the voice of authority with which he spoke. He transformed the Hanyfite Theism from a tenet of specula- tive minds into a Divine revelation. There w^as no god but God, and Muhammad was His prophet. It was this second dosfma, ' forced as a Divine revelation into the belief of so large a part of mankind, wdiich was the power, the influence, the all-subduing energy of Islam; the prin- ciple of its unity, of its irresistible fixnaticism, its propa- gation, its victories, its enipires, its duration.'-^ * IMilman's Latin Christianity.^ vol. i. p. 455. A.D. G12. THE CALL OF THE PROPHET. f Muhammad was approacliiug liis fortieth year before that inward cliange became apparent Avliicli converted liini into the Prophet of Arabia. WJiat had first inspired him with his contempt and hatred of idolatry is a matter of speculation. Doubtless his kara van journeys to Syria, by bringing him into intercourse with Jews and Christians, did much to reveal to him that there were worthier objects for man's adoration than the trees and shapeless stones worshipped by his countrymen. But, judging from the Koran, I shoidd be inclined to think that the beauty, the order, the all-pervading life in Nature, first carried him above idolatry to the apprehension of a one God. Like all men of poetic temperament, he was deeply moved by this spectacle. And the noblest passages in the Koran are those where he makes appeal to this testimony to establish the wisdom and beneficence of the Creator : ^The dead earth is a sign to men ; we quicken it and bring fortli grain from it, and they eat thereof: And we make in it gardens of the date and vine ; and we cause springs to gush forth in it ; A sign to them also is the night. We withdraw the day from it, and lo ! they are phmged in darlcness ; And the sun hasteneth to her place of rest. This is the ordinance of the Mighty, the Knowing ! And as ibr the moon, wc have decreed stations for it, till it change like an old and crooked palm branch. To the sun it is not given to overtake the moon ; nor doth the night outstrip the day ; but each in its own sphere doth journey on. Sura xxxvi. v. o 1— iO. That the Being who created all these marvels could reside in idols of wood and stone was to him altogether incredible ; but not less so was the notion that these idols symbolised a plurality of gods in the regions beyond the 8 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. I. sky. A number of gods involved a number of wills, a variety of characters and conflicting purposes. Such a belief introduced into the invisible world all the strife and disorder which prevailed in this, and which could not co-exist with that calm and majestic harmony whereby the earth renewed her life with each returning Spring, and day and night followed in ever recurring succession. The hatred of idolatry naturally increased, as a life of meditative solitude nourished this belief in a Divine unity, to o-reater streno-th and clearness. Men seemed to be wantonly rushing down into abysses of falsehood with the light of truth shining all around them. There are a few fragments of verse preserved in the Koran which are supposed to belong to this period. They are full of a profound emotion — broken, almost inarticulate utterances — the heart bowed down beneath the weidit of its own thoughts and unable to give tliem fitting expression. Tlie scene of these musings was in keeping Avitli their tenor. The spot whither Muhammad repaired during these trances of thought was a cave at the foot of Mount Hira, about two or three miles north of Mekka. The country round is bleak and rugged — bare, desolate hills and sandy valleys destitute of vegetation, and near at hand the last resting place of the ' Inquirer ' Zaid — a silent warning to the future prophet of the vanity of his thoughts and the futility of his hopes. For he, too, had expended his life in the search after God, and died here broken in heart from hope too long deferred. One day, amid the silent rocks, Muhannnad had a dream. An angel appeared before him and said, ' Eead ! ' 'I cannot read ' was the response. The angel repeated the com- A.i). Gi2. THE CALL OF THE PKOPHET. 9 maiid and received the same reply. Then the heavenly- messenger spoke as follows : Kecite thou in the name of the Lord wlio created — Created man from clots of blood — Recite thou ! for thy Lord is the most beneficent Who hath taught thee the use o£ the jjen ; Ilath taught man that which he knoweth not. Sura xcvi. A flash of joy shot through Muhammad's heart. But the darkness of doubt orathered more heavilv after this momentary break. There was no return of the celestial visitant. He wandered among the bleak rocks as before, but no angel forms rose against the sky, no angel voices broke the terrible silence. The Prop-hct thought himself the sport of evil spirits ; he is said even " to have meditated suicide, when again the angel appeared, though he heard no voice. Later he enjoyed a tliud visitation, which he has described in the fifty-third Sura. He saw the angel, and heard him speak, and received the joyful assurance that he (Muhammad) was the chosen of God. The angel then vanished. Muhanunad fell sense- less to the earth. On recovering his senses he liurried back to his flimily. ' Enshroud me, enshroud me ! ' were the fii'st words he uttered. They wrapped a cloak round him and sprinkled water on his face ; and again the voice of the angel came to him, saying : O ! thou enwrapped in thy mantle ! Arise and warn ! Thy Lord — magnify him ! Thy raiment — purify it ! The Abomination — flee it ! And bestow not favours that thou maycst receive again with increase, And for thy Lord wait thou patiently ! 10 ISLAM TTNDErt THE AEABS. CHAr. i. It was, then, no dream of his imagination that beyond the bkie vault above, there was a Being who had regard to tlie children of men, and that He had chosen Muhammad as His messenger to an unbelieving generation. The heart of the Prophet was now at rest, and his joy and gratitude flowed forth in what appears to me as the most touching passage in the Koran : By tlie noonday brightness And by the night ^vllen it darkeneth ! Thy Lord hath not forsaken thee, neither hath He been displeased, And surely the Future shall be bettor for thee than the Past, And in the end shall thy Lord be bounteous to thee, and thou be satisfied. Did He not find thee an orphan, and gave thee a home? And found thee erring and guided thee ? And found thee needy and enriched thee ? As to the orphan, therefore, wrong him not ; And as for iiim that asketh of thee chide him not away ; And as for the favours of thy Lord tell them abroad. Sura xciii. The assumption of the prophetic character raised at first no ill-will against Muhammad. The people thought liim mad ; and in the East, as everyone knows, madness is generally supposed to be accompanied by a measure more or less of Divine inspiration. There was, too, nothing in his earliest utterances which threatened a root-and-branch destruction of the old tribal modes of Avorship. They consisted of brief, vehement exhortations to lead right lives, together with allusions to ' the Last Day,' the terrors of which weighed upon the Prophet's soul v.dth all the awfulness of a close-impending reality. The tenacious memory of the Arab seized readily upon these rhymed utterances, instinct as they were wdth the life and fervour of deep conviction. They circulated rapidly from tribe to tribe till they became known in localities remote from A.D. 01 L\ THE CALL OF THE PROPHET. 11 Mekka. Tlie common people commenced to regard Mulianimad as a man inspired. It was for the Prophet a spring time full of hope and on-lookiiig thoughts ; and he gives expression to ]iis tliankfulness in the ninety- fourth Sura : Have we not opened thine heart for thee ? And taken oiF from thee thy burden Which galled thy back ? And have we not raised thy name for thee? Then verily along with trouble cometh case, Verily along with troiible cometh case — But when thou art set at liberty, then prosecute thy toil, And seek thy Lord with fervour. Eut the opposition only slumbered. As soon as Muham- mad abandoned generalities to denounce idolatry, it awoke to life. Mekka, planted in the midst of an arid desert, owed its existence to the possession of water and to its situation as a convenient resting-place for the karavans passing between Yemen and Syria. The worship of the black stone had elevated this lialting-place into a spot of peculiar sanctity. From time immemorial the tribes had gone up thitlier to worsliip. The tradition was that the Kaaba had been built and the ceremonies of the pil- grimage instituted by the patriarch Abraham and his son Ishmael. Mekka itself and the holy places Avere occu- pied by the Kuraish, the tribe to Avliich Muluunm;id belonged. This position invested them with a peculiar dignity and sacredness above the other tribes of Arabia ; nevertheless, the Temple and the sacred places were in no way their property, with which they could do as they pleased. They held them, one might say, in trust for the tribes of Arabia generally ; and it is necessary to note this fact as explaining the motive of their opposition to Muhammad. 12 ISLAM UNDEE THE AEABS. chap. i. Mekka was the centre of a system of idolatry, the branches of whicli extended throuo-li other tribes. West- ward from Mekka, as far as the sea, wandered the wild tribe of Kinana, closely allied with the Kuraish, both poli- tically and by blood. They served the goddess Ozza. She was represented by a tree at a place called Nakhla, a day and a halfs journey from Mekka. South-east from Mekka dwelt the tribe of Hawazun. Their central point was the pleasantly-situated Tayif, and their favourite idol was the goddess Lat. A third divinity of remarkable sacredness was the goddess Manah. She was represented by a rock on the karavan road between Mekka and Syria. In addition to these, more than two hundred images were arranged roimd the Kaaba, wliicli repre- sented the tutelary deities of the more distant tribes who came up yearly to the pilgrimage. The heathen Arabs believed in all tliese gods indifferentl}^ A reformer like Muhammad appearing at Mekka be- came in consequence a very serious danger to the Kuraish. If at his calling they repudiated the established religion — nay, if they w^ere even suspected of thinking or speaking with irreverence of the various tribal deities committed to their safe keeping — they would become an object for the vengeance of all the tribes of Arabia. Such a war could have but one of two issues. Either the Kuraish would be completely exterminated, or they would be expelled from the sacred territory and their ancestral homes as apostates who had betrayed their trust. Any half measures were equally impossible. To have repudiated Lat and Manah and Ozza would have been tantamount to a declaration of war against the tribes who honoured those divinities, A.D. G12. THE POLITICAL SITUATION. 1:1 and would have closed against them the traffic routes leading out of Mekka, so destroying the karavan trade by ^Yhicll they lived. To have thrown down the idols in Mekka would have convicted them of being unfit guard- ians of the sacred territory, and would indubitably have created an Arabian confederation for their destruction. It was, in fact, the instinct of self-preservation which united the leaders of the Kiu'aish against Muhammad. This is apparent from the language attributed to them in the Koran : ' If we follow the way in which thou art guided, we shall be driven from our homes.' The battle against the new faith was carried on in two ways — by persecution and by argument. It is with the last only that I am concerned in this book. In the beginning of his career Muhammad strove to terrify his tribe into belief by terrific pictures of the Last Day. He piles up epithet upon epithet in the endeavour to paint it. It is called ' the terrible fire ; ' it is ' the day when men shall be like scattered moths, and the moun- tains shall be like flocks of carded wool ; ' it is the hour when ' earth shall cast forth her burdens,' ' when the sun shall be folded up, and when the stars shall fall ; ' ' when the female child that hath been buried alive shall be asked for what crime she Avas put to death ' : And when the leaves of the Book shall be unrolled, And when the Heaven shall be stripped away, And when Hell shall be made to blaze, And when Paradise shall be brought near, Every soul shall know what it hath produced. • «••••••• And whosoever shall have Avrought an atom's weight of good shall behold it; whosoevc behold it. And whosoever shall have wrought an atom's weight of evil shall 14 ISLAM UNDEli THE ARABS. chap. r. But these warnings fell upon deaf ears. The Kuraish were utter materialists. A resurrection after death was a subject of scorn and incredulity ; and Muhammad strove in vain to shake their scepticism. ' What,' said they, ' after we shall have become bones and dust, shall we in sooth be raised a new creation ? ' ' Yes,' thundered the Prophet, ' though ye were stones or iron, or any other creature to you seeming yet harder to be raised.' * Who shall bring us back ? ' ' He who created you at first.' And tlien he points out again and again that there is a continual bringing of life out of death going on in the world about them. God banks up great masses of rain- cloud, and drives them over a land barren, parched and dead, and it breaks into life and freshness, and ' brings forth corn of which your cattle and yourselves do eat.' He reminds them of the mystery of man's birth, his secret growth in the womb ; and demands if a new birth after death be a whit more marvellous than this primary birth into the v/orld. But his arguments were unavailing. The Kuraish sneered at his threats as ' fables of the ancients ; ' they taunted his disciples as ' the followers of a man that is enchanted.' Defeated here, Muhammad took up a new line of attack. For the terrors of the Last Day he substituted a temporal calamity shortly to foil on Mekka. His theory was this : To every land that had been visited by some Divine calamity, a prophet had first been sent as ' a warner.' Only when the laud had rejected his summons to repent, had the measure of their iniquity been filled, and God's wrath fallen upon them. Muhammad carried on the succession of these messengers ; he was charged A.D. G12. THE RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY. 15 with a commission precisely the same as theirs. The earhest prophet was Noah ; then Lot ; tlien Moses and Aaron ; then Houd, who was sent to the tribe of Ad ; then Saleh, who was sent to tlie tribe of Themoiid. They liad, one and all, been met with derision and unbelief ; l3ut where now were those who had disregarded their words ? The Deluge had swept away the enemies of JSToah ; a fiery rain from Heaven had destroyed the cities of the plain ; Pharoah and his army had perislied in the sea ; a miraculous visitation had extirpated the tribes of Ad and Themoud. Let the Mekkans, therefore, be wise in time. There can be no doubt that Muhammad believed with a complete assurance in the soundness of this induction. His isolated position, his confident tone, gave force and terror to these predictions. The people of Mekka were for a while startled from their indiflerence. Upon his few followers the impression was so profound that even after his death they awaited fearfully the accomplishment of these threats. But when day after day, month after month, and even years passed away and nothing came of them, the sentiment of terror softened by degrees into the milder one of curiosity, and from thence passed into that of derisive incredulity. Muhammad strove vehemently to preserve the earlier state of mind. He repeated his typical instances again and again. The Suras of this period contain little else than a wearisome reiteration of them. But after the first feeling of alarm had worn away, it was wasted labour to attempt to renovate it. The very plurality of the threats had the efiect, curiously enough, of depriving them in part of their significance. These astute infidels appear to haAC 10 ISLAM UXDEE THE ARABS. cn.vr. r. argued thus: If we are to be drowned in a deluge, the shower of stones must be a superfluity ; if we are swallowed up by an earthquake, we cannot then be transformed into dogs and swine. Gradually they took up a bolder attitude. They said they were wearied of hearing these threats and awaiting their fulfilment. They did not intend to believe in the mission of Muhammad or to change their religion, and demanded that the punish- ment, whatever it was, should descend upon them without delay. This was an unforeseen difficulty for Muhammad. He replied that the purposes of God were not to be has- tened in order to gratify the impatience of the Mekkans. But when pressed for a date, he shifted his ground, and said that the presence of the Faithful in Mekka alone averted the doom from the unbelieving city. The retort was ready. There was nothing the Kuraish desired more earnestly than to be rid of the Faithful altogether. They were the cause of trouble and dissension. Let them depart without further delay, and Mekka would gladly run the risk of incurring the threatened doom. Muham- mad, in this way, was, one might say, driven into a corner, and compelled to surrender at discretion. He had to confess that he had overstepped his commission ; he was only ' a warner ; ' the times and seasons of God's purposes were known to God alone. But this confession was only the beginning of sorrows, Muhammad's appeal to the earlier prophets raised around him a swarm of difficulties which stung hke hornets. He had appealed to the testimony of these prophets as evi- dence of his own mission. His message, he had said, was essentially the same as theii's — a transcript of the eternal x.D. C12. THE TvELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY. 17 decrees of God written on the Everlasting Table. Granted. But if Muhammad was in truth a prophet hke to those who had preceded him, he must be armed with similar credentials. Their message was attested and enforced by acts of supernatural power apparent to anyone who had eyes to see. Angels visited them ; they could work mira- cles ; a staff in their hands could be transformed into a ser- pent, and living camels at their bidding sprang forth from the heart of a rock. The sinfulness of those who rejected these messengers consisted in this — that they discredited a warning accompanied by such manifest tokens that it came from God. Muhammad should not find the Mek- kans so obdurate. Let him work a miracle and they would believe forthwith. He might in this way do his countrymen signal service materially not less than spiritu- ally. Let him turn the barren soil round Mekka into ' a garden of palm trees and grapes, and cause forth gushing rivers to gush forth in the midst ; ' or ' create a house of gold ;' or 'mount up into heaven,' and from thence ' send down to them a book that they might read.' Muhammad was obliged to confess that he possessed no such power; but this impotence, he asserted, was occasioned by their unbelief. God withheld this gift, because, had it been conceded, their scepticism would have remained unshaken : ' We will not send down the angels without due cause ; the infidels would not in that case have been respited. Even were we to open above them a gate in Heaven, yet all the Avhilc they were mounting up to it They would surely say : ' It is only our eyes are drunken — nay, we arc a people enchanted.' C 18 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap i. The Mekkans were acute enough to see that this assumption of their scepticism was merely an evasion of the difficuUy. At the worst they could not be more unbeheving than the nations before them, who had been destroyed for their persistent increduhty. These had not been punished until they had closed their hearts against the testimony of the miracidous ; why then should the Mekkans be treated otherwise ? They pressed this point hard ; and there can be little doubt that the perplexity of the situation drove Muhammad to the first of those devia- tions from truth which multiphed as he grew older, and which had such a woeful influence on the subsequent destinies of Islam. He was brought face to face with the question which every spiritual reformer has to meet and consider, against which so many noble spirits have gone to ruin. Will not the end justify the means ? ' Here am I, a faithful ser- vant of God, eager only to enthrone Him in the hearts of men, and at the very goal and termination of my labours I am thwarted by this incapacity to work a miracle. It is true, as these infidels allege, that the older prophets did possess this power ; and I, unless the very reason and purpose of my existence is to be made a blank, must also do something; wonderful. But what kind of miracle ? ' In his despair Muhammad declared that the Koran itself was that constantly-recurring miracle they were seeking after. Had they ever heard these stories of Noah, Lot, Abraham, Joseph, Zacharias, Jesus, and others ? JSTo ; neither had he. They were transcripts made from the ' preserved Table,' that stood before the throne of God. The arch- angel Gabriel had revealed them to Muhammad, written A.D. 012. THE RELIGIOUS CONTROVErvSY. 19 ill pure Arabic for the spiritual edification of the Kuraisli. Thus, ill the 12th Sura, where he details at great length an exceedingly ridiculous history of Joseph, he commences the narrative with these words as spoken by God: These are the signs of the clear book. An Arabic Koran have we sent it down that ye might understand it. In revealing to thee this Koran (i.e., tliis sura or chctpter) one of the most beautiful of narratives will we narrate to thee, of which thou hast hitherto been regardless. And at the close we are told : Tliis is one of the secret histories which we reveal unto thee. Thou Avast not present with Joseph's brethren Avhen thoy conceived their design and laid their plot ; but the greater part of men, though thou long for it, will not believe. Thou shalt not ask of them any recompense for this message. It is simply an instruction for all man- kind. And again", in the 69th Sura, he declares respectino- the Koran : It is a missive from the Lord of the worlds ; But if Muhammad had fabricated Concerning us any sayings, We had surely seized him by the right hand, And had cut through the vein of his neck. It would be easy to multiply extracts of similar pur- port, but the above will suffice by way of illustration. There are modern biographers of the Prophet who would have us believe that he was not conscious of false- hood when making these assertions. He was under a halluchiation, of course, but he believed what he said. This, to me, is incredible. The legends in the Koran are derived cliiefly from Talmudic sources. jMuliammad must have learned them from some Jew resident in or c3 20 ISLAM UNDER THE AEABS. chap. i. near Mekka. To work them up into the form of rhymed suras, to put his own pecuhar doctrines in the mouth of Jewish patriarchs, the Virgin Mary, and the infant Jesus (who talks hke a good Moslem the moment after his birth), must have required time, thought, and labour. It is not possible that tlie man who had done this could have forgotten all about it, and believed that these legends had been brought to him ready prepared by an angelic visitor. Muhammad was guilty of falsehood under circumstances where he deemed the end justified the means. The falsehood failed, however, to produce conviction in the minds of those for whose benefit it had been de- vised. 'They turned their backs on him,' so the Koran tells us, ' and said : "Taught by others, possessed." ' They even seem to have indicated the man who instructed him ; for Muhammad repeatedly refers to some such assertion, affirming that he whom they pointed at did not know Arabic, and could not therefore have composed an Arabic Koran. He says in one place (Sura xxvi. v. 103, et seq.) : Aiid when we change one verse for another, and God knoweth best what He revealeth, they say, ' Thou art only a fabricator.' Nay ! but most of them have no knowledge. Say ; the Holy Spirit hath brought it down with truth from thy Lord, that He may stablish those who have believed, and as guidance and glad tidings to the Moslems, We also know that they say, ' Surely a certain person teacheth him.' But the tongue of him at whom they hint is foreign, while this Koran is in the plain Arabic, To this the Mekkans retorted that he had suppHed the materials, and Muhammad had worked them up into their present shape. There ^vas no reply from the A.D. G22. TIIE PxELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY. Si Prophet, and there can be little doubt that the Mekkans were right both as to the man and his participation in the composition of the Koran. Whoever he was, he must have been in constant and intimate communion with Muhammad, to have incurred suspicion. In truth, Mu- hammad confesses so much by his eagerness to clear himself of tlie charge. Had, then, tliese suspicions been groundless, nothimz would have been easier than to de- monstrate the fact by the man's own confession. Such a confession, moreover, would liave greatly strengthened Muhammad's position ; but the Prophet attempts nothing of the kind. He evidently felt that his enemies had struck him hard in this matter. He returns to the accu- sation again and again, but only to repeat the same state- ment, that a man unlearned in the Arabic language could not Amte a pure Arabic Koran. As the Mekkans had never said he could, the irrelevancy of the argument only confirmed them in their suspicions. In argument, therefore, Muhammad may be said to have been beaten along his whole hue. The sceptics attacked all his positions and carried them. He could furnish no proof that he was a prophet. The power to work miracles was denied to him ; his predictions were falsified by the event ; his (so-called) revelations were rightly beheved to have been obtained through human agency. In abandoning Mekka he acknowledged his defeat. Still, the germs of future success had been planted in the midst of seeming discomfiture. He de- parted, carrying away with him the flower of the Kuraisli. Abou Bakr, Omar, Ali, Talha, Zobair, and the other 'com- panions of Muhammad,' left none equal to themselves 22 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. i. when they shook the dust of their ancestral city from off the soles of their feet. The sceptical arguments of the Mekkans are directed, it must be observed, not against the creed of Muhammad, but against his authority as a prophet. All the conserva- tive interests natural to man had been ransjed ao-ainst him. The political dangers consequent on a change of religion were very great. The great majority of men, too, are always the obedient ' children of the established fact.' Just because they do not believe in any religion with much fervour, they are loth to change that in which they have been brouglit up. They are conscious of no urgent spiritual needs which crave if they be not satis- fied. The religion which is everybody's religion furnishes what they want much better than a new one could. It stamps them with the image and superscription of re- spectability, and gives them an honourable position in society. Such easy-going spirits there were among the Kuraish as everywhere else. Our fathers, they said, worshipped Hobal and Manah, Lat, and Ozza, and ' shall we abandon them for a crazed poet ? ' When, therefore, the polemical discussion made it clear that Muhammad had nothino- but his own inner conviction to urge in favour of his creed, they ceased to pay heed to him. These worthy souls — at least the most of them — had no desire to persecute the votaries of the new faitli. All they wanted was a quiet life ; and, as tliat seemed unattainable so long as Muhammad remained at Mekka, they heartily Avished he would take liimself off and trouble them no more. 13ut there is in every community not doomed to stag- A.D. 022. THE RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY. S3 nation an inner circle Avlnch, like salt, preserves the mass from corruption. This is formed of the speculative and critical spirits discontented with the establislied facts which confront them — the minds that have caught glimpses of unknown worlds beyond the circuit of the conventional horizon. Individually their labours may seem to have but small results, but collectively theirs is tlie power which makes ' the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.' Such were the men whom Muhammad drew away after him from Mekka. The forerunners of the Prophet had sai)ped in their minds the belief in idolatry. The Theism taught, though in crude form, by Zaid, Waraka, and others, had stirred the reason and the conscience of these nobler intellects. Muhammad gave expression to their inarticulate convic- tions. He was, one might say, the Martin Luther of the Arabs — not so much the creator of a new religion as the interpreter of thoughts ' in the air.' The negative argu- ments of the Mekkans had no effect on them; they needed no miracles to attract them to the person of Muhammad. Tliey believed the creed he tauglit because it seemed to supply what they had been seeking after ; and they be- lieved in him because he had promulgated the creed. That there is no god but God was a tenet which their moral and intellectual being emphatically affirmed ; that Muhammad is Ilis prophet was a fact demonstrated by the light he had poured into the dark cliambers of their minds. The one proposition was inseparably linked to the other. At the moment, then, of seeming defeat we can sec now that the success of Islam was assured. The seventy men who followed the Prophet to Medina not 24 ISLAM UNDER TIlE ARABS. chap. I. merely drew away the heart's blood from the Knraish — they planted in the city which gave them shelter an imperium in imperio, bound together by the strongest of all ties, the sense of a Divine calling. Muhammad was the wielder of this mighty force. It remained with him to make it an instrument of evil or of 2;ood. How he used it will be related in the next chapter. The Suras delivered at Mekka contain all tlie theology (properly so called) of Islam. Those delivered at Medina are devoted almost entirely to the organisation of the new Faith as a polity ; the regulation of marriage, divorce, concubinage, slavery, &c. ; the definition of the relations that are to exist between it and other faiths ; and the settlement of a number of small matters connected with the private concerns of the Prophet and his waives. This chapter, then, may be fitly concluded by setting forth the distinctive doctrines of this theology. Muhammad was neitlier philosopher nor metapliy- sician. No specidative difficulties troubled him as to the sources of creative power, or the relations between man and God. An omnipotent self-conscious Being was the first cause. He had said ' Be ! ' and the universe had started into existence. That was the whole account of the matter. Muhammad deemed it a monstrous absurdity to suppose that the attributes of man gave him any pecu- liar claims on the consideration of God. But it was worse than an absurdity ; it was blasphemy to suppose that man could claim any spiritual kinship with his Creator — that any particle of the Divine essence had been breathed into him. ' Almost,' he cries in horror, ' might the very heavens be rent thereat, and the earth cleave A.D. 622. THE GOD OF MUHAMMAD. 25 asunder and the mountains fall doAvn in fragments. Verily, tliere is none in the heavens and the earth but shall approach the God of Mercy as a slave' God sits in awful and unapproachable majesty. He has fashioned man as an artificer fashions an image out of clay. There is no livino- bond between them. God is called the Merciful and Compassionate ; not because love is of the essence of His nature, but because, though all powerful, He forbears to use His might for man's destruction. He might smite man with plagues ; He might cause him to perish of fannne or the lingering agonies of thirst ; He might en- velope the earth in perpetual darkness ; but out of His mercy and compassion He does none of these things ; He gives men rain and fruitful seasons, and genial sunshine. But He is not less the inscrutable despot, acting upon no principle but the caprices of His will. He creates the sou\ and ' breathes into it its wickedness and piety.' He ' misleadeth whom He will, and guideth whom He will.' ' Whomsoever God shall please to direct He will open his breast to receive the fiiith of Islam ; but whomsoever He shall please to lead into error, He will render His breast straight and narrow as though he were climbing up into Heaven. Thus doth God inflict a terrible punishment on those who believe not.' Hope perishes under the weight of this iron bondage. There are in the Koran no forward glances to a coming golden age when the earth shall be filled with the knowledue of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, such as irradiate the hymns and prophecies of the Old Testa* ment. There is no connnunion of man's spirit with the Spirit of God ; none of that loving trust which castcth 2G ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. cnAr. r. out fear. There are not even any aspirations after spiritual perfection as bringing a man nearer to God. ' God,' to quote the words of Dean Mihnan, ' stands alone in His nature, remote, unapproachable ; in His power dominant throughout all space, and in all time, but di- vided by a deep and impassable gulf from created things. The absorption into or even the approximation towards the Deity by contemplation in this life or perfection in the life to come, are equally foreign to the Koran.' Mu- hammad took the world as it was ; war, concubinage, slavery, were all divinely-constituted elements of society. What we understand by a social reformer would have appeared to Muhammad an impious man who pre- sumed to interfere with the arrangements laid down by the Creator. The business of a wise man is not to question but submit, and by confession of tlie Unity escape the torments of Hell. Fatalism is thus the central tenet of Islam. It suffices to explain the degraded condition of Muhammadan coun- tries. So long as Muhammad lived and God did stoop to hold communication with men, the effects flowino; from it were in a measure obscured. But when he died, the Deity seemed to withdraw altogetlier from the world lie had created. The sufferings, sorrows, crimes, hopes, and struggles of men became a wild and ghastly orgy without meaning or ulterior purpose. The one rational object which a sober-minded, practical man could set before him was, in this hfe, to keep aloof from all this senseless tur- moil, and, by a diligent performance of the proper rites and ceremonies, to cheat the Devil in the next. And so it has been always. History repeats itself in Muham- A.D. G22. FATALISM. 27 maclan countries Avitli a truly doleful exactness. The great bulk of the people are passive ; wars and revolutions rage around them ; they accept them as the decrees of a fate it is useless to strive against. All power passes accordingly into the hands of a few ambitious and tur- bulent spirits unencumbered with scruples of any kind ; animated by no desires except those of being rich and strong. There is never a sufficient space of rest to allow institutions to grow up. Each adventurer as he rises to the summit of his ambition can keep his unsteady footing only by smiting down those who are climbing after him. Sooner or later, of course, he sinks to give way to another; and so the scene shifts and changes, until utter exhaustion and swift corruption (the state of the Muhammadan world at the present day) supervene on this insane and con- vulsive activity. The purer and nobler natures which exist in all communities are compelled to have recourse to mysticism to find the food they need. By abstraction from all worldly concerns, and lonely meditation, they strive to conform their lives to that idea of goodness of which their conscience testifies; and thus the salt of society — the moral purifiers — are gradually with- drawn from it. The Koran pulverises humanity into an infinite number of separate atoms. The one common duty laid upon the Faithful is to be the agents of God's vensieance on those who believe not. These are to be slanghtercd until they pay tribute, when they are to l^e allowed to go to Hell in their own way without further molestation. But the subject of religious war or jeliad cannot be properly treated until the Medina suras are taken into consideration » 28 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. I. The earth, according to Miiliammad, is fiat — stretched out as a carpet, with the liills planted on it in order to keep it steady. ' He {i.e. God) hath thrown firm moun- tains on the earth lest it move with you.' Tlie world is not tenanted by men and animals only. It is the dwelling-place of innumerable djinns. They are ' created of subtle fire.' Hell will be filled hereafter with djinns and men. Not all, however, of the djinns are evil. In the 72nd Sura (entitled djinns) Muhammad relates how one night as he journeyed between Mekka and Tayif, he recited passages from the Koran which were overheard by a company of djinns, who, exclaiming, ' Verily, we have heard a marvellous discourse,' proclaimed themselves of the number of the Faithful. The evil djinns are the tempters who lead men into sin and unbelief. They steal up to the gates of Heaven to overhear the secrets of God. The stars are a vast magazine of fiery darts to hurl at these inquisitive demons. The shooting stars seen on a clear night are these celestial arrows flung by angelic hands : We have adorned the lower heaven with the adornment of the stars. They serve also as a guard against every rebellious satan. That they overhear not what passeth in the assembly on high, for they are darted at from every side, Driven oif and consigned to a lasting torment ; While if one steal a word by stealth, a glistening flame pursueth him. Nevertheless, by these perilous excursions the djinns do gather fragments of the truth, and thereby decoy men to destruction. They descend on every lying, wicked person, and impart to him what they have heard. They cause men to be puffed up by these partial glimpses of the truth, and so lead them blindfold into Hell. A.D. 622. DJINNS AND ANGELS. 20 Eblis, the principle of Evil, is the lord of the djinns. He was originally among the chief of God's angels. The story of his expulsion from Heaven is given several times in the Koran. It is as follows : When God created Adam he said to the angels, ' Prostrate yourselves unto Adam,' and all prostrated themselves in worship save Eblis. ' What,' demanded God, ' has hindered thee from pros- trating thyself in worship at my bidding ? ' ' Nobler,' retorted Eblis, ' am I than he ; me hast Thou created of fire ; of clay hast Thou created him.' God said, ' Get thee down hence ; Paradise is no place for thy pride ; get thee gone hence ; one of the despised shalt thou be.' He replied, ' Eespite me till the day when mankind shall be raised from the dead.' Tliis God concedes to him, and ever since Eblis has been at large, directing and superin- tending the machinations of the evil djinns. He beguiled Adam and Eve, and brought about tlieir expulsion from Eden ; and he is ' the tutelar ' of every unbelieving sinful person. Another order of spiritual beings who mingle among men are the angels of God. The hosts of these are in- numerable. Their functions are many. They succour the faithful in the day of battle. Five thousand of these invisible auxiliaries fought on the side of the Mos- lems at the victory of Bedr. At Ohod, a similar number were present, but the Faithful having been worsted on that day, it is conjectured that they did not take an active part in tlie fray. The angels are likewise spies over the lives of men. Every man is accompanied through life by ' a succession of angels before him and behind him, wlio watch over him by God's behest.' They relieve each other 30 I8LAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. i. at their post, and thus it is that the most secret tlioiights of a man's heart are communicated to God, and ' noted in a distinct writing.' This becomes, what we may call, his character roll at the Day of Judgment. It is abominable to suppose, as the heathen Arabs did, that the angels are women. ' What ! ' demands the Prophet, ' hath your Lord prepared sons for you, and taken for himself daugh- ters from among the angels? Indeed, ye say a dreadful saying.' Nineteen angels guard the gates of Hell. On the Day of Judgment, eight angels will bear up the throne of God, and a vast multitude of them will encircle the Deity, hymning his praises, and interceding for the be- lievers, saying, — O, our Lord ! thou embracest all things in mercy and knowledge ; forgive, therefore, those who turn to Thee and follow Tliy path ; keep them from the pains of Hell ! The terrors of the Last Day are depicted with great minute- ness. It will be heralded in by a shattering to pieces of the whole visible world. The sun will be folded up. The stars will fall. The mountains will be set in motion. The she-camels will be abandoned ; and the heavens will be stripped away like the skin of an animal when flayed. Then the earth will cast forth what was in her and be- come empty. Then those whose character roll is placed in their right hands will enter Heaven with joy ; but those who receive it in their left hands ^ in the fire shall they burn. But perhaps the most vivid passage is this : There shall be a blast on the trumpet, and all who are in the heavens and all who are in the earth shall expire, save those whom God shall vouchsafe to live. Then shall there be another blast on it, and lo ! arising they shall gaze around them. ' The actual words are, ' He whose book shall be given him be- A..D. G22. HEAVEN AND HELL. 81 And the earth shall shine Avith the light of her Lord, and the booka ahall be set, and the prophets shall be brought up and the witnesses ; and the judgment shall be given between them with equity ; and none shall be wronged. And every soul shall receive as it shall have wrought, for well knoweth He men's actions. And by troops shall the unbelievers be driven towards Hell, until, when they reach it, its gates shall be opened, and its keepers shall say to them, * Came not apostles from among yourselves to you, reciting to you the signs of your Lord, and warning you of the meeting with Him on this your day?' They shall say, ' Yes.' But just is the sentence of punishment on the unbelievers. It shall be said to them, 'Enter ye the gates of Hell, thereinto dwell for ever ! ' and Avretched the abode of the arrogant ! But those who feared their Lord shall be driven on by troops to Paradise, imtil, when they reach it, its gates shall be opened, and its keepers shall say to them, 'All hail! virtuous have ye been: enter then in to abide herein for ever.' And they shall say, ' Praise be to God who hath made good to us His promise, and hath given to us the earth as our heritage, that we may dwell in Paradise wherever we please ! ' And goodly is the reward of those who travailed virtuously. And thou shalt see the angels circling around the throne with praises of their Lord ! and judgment shall be pronounced between them with equity : and it shall be said, ' Glory be to God, the Lord of the worlds.' Sura xxxix. The Troops. Hell and Heaven are painted with an abnndance of detail. The denizens of Hell will dwell ' amid pestilential winds and in scalding water, and in the shadow of a black smoke, not cool, and horrid to behold.' Dranghts of boiling. water will be forced down their throats. They will be dragged by the scalp and Hung into the fire. Garments of fire will be fitted on to them. They will also be beaten with iron maces. So often as they hind his back.' The Muhammadans believe that the right hand of the damned will be chained to the neck ; the left chained behind the back, 32 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. I. endeavour to escape out of Hell because of the anguish of their torments, they will be dragged back, their tor- mentors exclaiming, 'Taste ye the pain of burning.' So often as their skins are well burned, other skins will be given them in exchange, in order that tliey may taste the sharper torment, for ' God,' says the Prophet, with great gusto, ' is mighty and wise ' — a curious illustration this of the Divine sagacity. The Faithful, on the other hand, will be led into ' gardens of delight ' and repose on ' inwrought couches.' Youths endowed with immortal beauty will go round about to them ' with goblets and ewers and a cup of flowing wine.' Their brows will not ache from it, nor their senses fail. The wives, too, of the Faitliftd, ' on soft green cushions and beautiful carpets shall recline.' The fruits of the gardens will hang within easy reach — the pome- granate, the date, and all that is pleasant to the sight and the taste. And there will be the houris, with ' large dark eyes ' and ' swelling bosoms,' endowed with im- mortal loveliness, and ' kept close in their pavilions, whom man hath never touched nor any djimi,' but who are now freely lavished upon the fortunate believer. How for Muhammad intended this last description to be taken literally is a vexed question, but one which cannot be passed over as of little importance. There is no doubt that in the palmy days of Baghdad, the contact with Greek philosophy, and the infiltration of Christian thought, operated as very potent solvents on the coarse materialism of the early Arab faith. Philosophic minds — the ' wise ' as they were called — dealt with the legends and the language of the Koran just as the Neo-Platonists A.D. 622. ALLEGOKICAL OR NOT. 33 treated tlie mytliology of Greece. Muhammad's Para- dise as well as much else were refined away into allegory. The streams that flow through Heaven and Hell became the pleasures and pains endured during the processes of the soul's progress and regress. The rivers of milk were held to signify rivers of knowledge for noble persons. The celestial wine served out to the Faithful was the removal of terror, fear, and sadness. And the dark-eyed houris ' concealed in the pavilions ' were scientific secrets hidden from the eyes of the pro- fane by a veil. It seems to me only necessary to state these allegorical interpretations to feel assured that nothing so feeble and colourless as this was in Muham- mad's mind when he set forth the delights in store for the true believer. Certainly, the Faithful in Islam re- jected such notions with scorn and indignation. They held to the literal interpretation, and the orthodox doc- tors have drawn out the joys of Paradise in great detail, down even to the most curious particulars, — such, for example, as that seven thousand virgins will be allotted to each believer, 'the marrow of whose ankles will shine through their seventy dresses.' The sensualising effect of this conception of the heavenly 'crown of righteousness' has worked dire evil in all Muhammadan countries — poi- soning the springs of domestic happiness, and irre- trievably checking the spiritual growth of lumianity ; and for these evils Muhammad must under any circum- stances be held responsible. A religious teacher is at best profoundly culpable who sets forth tlie spiritual blessin8. Tin: DOOTiaxE OF 'jehad; 5] armies came against yon, and we sent against tliem a blast and hosts tliat ye saw not ; for the eye of God was upon your doings. Wlien they assailed you from above you and from below you, and when your eyes became distracted, and your hearts came up into your throats, and ye thought divers thoughts of God, tlien were the Faithful tried, and with strong quaking did they quake.' From this time, if we except the battle of Mouta, when the Faithful were defeated by the troops of the Byzantine emperor, tlie career of Muhammad was one of almost unbroken triumph. The condition of Arabia chanced to be at that time exceedingly propitious to the building up of a new power. The tribes of Bedouin Arabs, despite their Avandering habits and love of lawless inde- pendence, had been accustomed to yield a kind of feudal allegiance either to the Himaryite Tobbas of Yemen, or the monarchs of Persia. And when tormented beyond endurance by their own blood feuds, they had been used to solicit from one or other of these sovereigns the nomi- nation of some chief of distinction to be king over them until their bitter feelings had been coerced into quiescence. But at this time the dynasty of the Himaryite Tobbas had been subverted, and Persia, torn by internal dissensions, was not in a position to take cognisance of the disorders in Arabia. All eyes, therefore, turned eagerly towards the new power that was being founded in Medina. Depu- tations from the different tribes w^re continually arriving in Medina soliciting the protection and friendship of the Prophet, and the despatch of missionaries to instruct them in the principles of the new faith. Many were eager, by a nominal adherence to Islam, to purchase inmumity from E 2 52 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ir. the predatory raids of the Faithful, which year after year were carried on in every direction on a scale of increasing magnitude. The Prophet was no longer a homeless fugi- tive, dependent for liis life upon the hospitality of strangers. He was a powerful prince, who with a word could collect twenty thousand soldiers. He was rich in arms and horses and all the munitions of war. His glory reached its height in the montli of June a.d. 630, a little less than eiGfht years after his fiisfht from Mekka, when he re-entered tliat city in trimnph at the head of ten thousand men. It was then that the vision of a world far beyond the confines of his native land, subject to Allah and His Prophet, rose before the imagination of Muhammad. The sword which had achieved so much already, had yet a grander task to accomplish. It was to become the instru- ment whereby he should ascend to universal dominion. The ninth sura is that which contains the Prophet's pro- clamation of war against the votaries of all creeds other than that of Islam. Those, he says, who strive with tlieir substance and their persons on the path of God shall be of the highest grade with God. Tidings from Himself shall God send them, and of gardens in which lasting pleasure shall be theirs. But those who treasure up gold and silver, and expend it not in the w^ay of God, shall suffer a grievous torment. Their treasures shall be heated in hell fire, and their foreheads and their sides and their backs shall be branded witli them. Some there are wlio delight to stay behind God's Apostle, and allege the heat of summer as a pretext for not contending with their persons and their riches in the cause of God. A fiercer heat will such backsliders experience in the fire of Hell. A.D. 630. THE DOCTRINE OF ' JEIIAD.' 63 Neither thirst nor labour nor liiinger can come upon those who are fighting in tlie patli of God ; for all thai they do or suffer is written down in the Book of Life as a irood work. A lunidred of the Faithful, if they fight with con- stancy, shall overcome two hundred of the Infidel ; a thousand shall cause two thousand to fiy. There are twelve months in the year, four of which are sacred ; but those Avho join gods with God are to be attacked in all indifferently. The Faithful are to seize them, besiege them, and lay in wait for them with every kind of ambush. The Jews and the Christians are specified as objects of the special vengeance of the Faithful. The Jews say that Ezra is the son of God ; and the Christians take their teachers and their monks and the Messiah for lords beside God, though bidden to worship God only. There- fore they must be fought with until they pay tribute out of hand. Do the Faithful imaoine that the oivinsf of drink to the pilgrims and the visiting of the holy places are actions as meritorious as those performed by him who fighteth for the cause of God ? They shall not be held equal with God. Verilj^ if God had pleased, He might have taken vengeance on the Polytheists without the assistance of the Faithful ; but He hath commanded the Moslems to fight His battles in order to ])rove them. Therefore, wherever they encounter the unbelievers let them strike off their heads, until they have made a great slaughter of them. But if they shall convert, and observe prayer, and pay the obligatory alms, then let them go their way, for God is gracious and merciful. A fifth })art of the spoils taken in war is to be set aside for God and His Prophet and the poor ; the rest is to be divided equally among the host. 54 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ii. Such was the character of the Sacred War enjohied upon the FaithfiiL It is Muhammad's greatest acliieve- ment and his worst. When subjected himself to the pains of persecution he had learned to perceive how powerless were torments applied to the body to work a change of conviction in the mind. ' Let there be no violence in religion,' had then been one of the maxims he had laid down. ' Unto every one of you,' he had said in former days, speaking of Jews and Christians, ' have we given a law and an open path ; and if God had pleased He had surely made you one people ; but He hath thought fit to give you different laws, that He might try you in that which He hath given you respectively. Therefore, strive to excel each other in good works ; unto God shall ye all return, and then will He declare unto you that concerning ■which ye have disagreed.' But the intoxication of success had lono; aso stilled the voice of his better self. The ao'ed Prophet standing on the bi-ink of the grave, and leaving as his last legacy a mandate of universal war, irresistibly recals, by force of contrast, the parting words to his disciples of another religious teacher, that they should go forth and preach a gospel of peace to all nations. Nor less striking in their contrast is the response to either mandate ; — the Arab, with the Koran in one hand and the sword in the other, spreading his creed amid the glare of burning cities, and the shrieks of violated homes, and the Apostles of Christ working in the moral darkness of the Eoman world with the gentle but irresistible power of light, laying anew the foundations of society, and cleansing at their source the polluted springs of domestic and national life. A.I). 022, THE CONTEST WITH THE JEWS. 55 For tlie sake of clearness I liave brought together in a consecutive form all that I wished to say on the sulDJect of jehad. But coiucidently with the development of tins teaching there was the long struggle with the "Jews of Medina, which gave to Islam its ritual, and a knowledge of wliicli is indespensable to a proper estimate of the Propliet's character. The story of this I have still to tell. Tliere were from the outset two parties in Medina strongly opposed to the Prophet. The one consisted of Arabs lieaded by that Abdallah, son of Obay, who but for the appearance of Muhammad would have been elected King of Medina. Abdallah naturally enough bitterly resented tlie advent of the Prophet, which deprived him of the leadership of his native city ; and thougli awed into an outward conformity to Islam, both he and his friends were at heart tlie enemies of the Prophet. This party is spoken of in the Koran as ' the Hypocrites.' The other ])arty was made up of the three Jewish tribes. Had these parties been able to act with the unanimity of the Moslems, the probability is that Islam would never have inundated the world. But the Jews were divided among themselves ; ' the Hypocrites,' though cordially detesting the Prophet, could not induce themselves to combine with the Jews against men of their own race ; and so it happened that both parties were destroyed in detail — tlie Jews by ex- pulsion and extermination ; the Arabs by gradual absorp- tion into tlic body of the Faitliful, partly from conviction, but more so from a sense of expediency. At Mekka the new faith had had neither sacred build- ing nor ritual. Almost the first act of tlie Prophet, on arriving at Medina, was to supply these Avants. A plot 56 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. cnAr. ii. of ground was selected, and tlie first rude Muhanniiadan Mosque erected. It was a very simple building, supported on the trunks of palm trees, and the roof covered in with palm brandies ; but in its shape and general arrange- ments, the pattern after which all the mosques throughout Islam have been built ever since. At first the kibla, or pomt towards which tlie Faithful turned their faces when praying, was Jerusalem. Muhammad intended thereby to signify that his creed was one and the same as that which had been taught by Moses and Jesus. There can be no doubt that at Mekka he had built upon this assumption of identity with the most perfect assurance. And on his arrival at Medina he entered into a league of amity with the Jews, in which the latter were stated to be on a footing of religious equality witli the Faithful. But these amicable relations were of very brief duration. Muham- mad demanded that the Jews should recognise him, not merely as a prophet sent to the Arabs, but also as the prophet like unto himself whom Moses had promised to the Jews. He grounded this pretension on the fact (as he supposed it) that the revelations contained in the Koran were the same as those in the Pentateucli. The Jews rejected the demand for allegiance, and denied the truth of the proposition on which it was grounded ; they produced their sacred books, and by demonstrating the utter absence of resemblance between them and the Koran, turned the argument of tlie Prophet against him- self. It became then a matter of necessity eitlier to give up Islam altogether, or to sever its connection with Judaism. Muhammad was not long in making his choice. On January 16, a.d. 624, after sundown, a man entered A.D. 024. THE STRUGGLE WITH THE JEWS. 57 the Mosque and cried to the Faithful assembled there: ' I come from the Prophet, and bring you the intelligence that God has changed the Libia ; turn your laces towards the kaaba of Mekka, for this is now your libla' ^ This sudden change from Jerusalem to Mekka is represented in the Koran as a trial of fiiith. Mekka, in the counsels of God, had always been the true kibla ; Jerusalem had been named for a time only, that God ' mig;ht know him Avho followetli the Apostle froiu him who turneth on his heels ; the change is a difficulty, but not to those whom God hath guided.' The morality of this act is, doubtless, as bad as it can be ; it is impossible to suppose that in giving a Divine sanction to this change Muhammad was not guilty of conscious mendacity ; but its worldly wisdom cannot be questioned. Those who ' turned the heels ' Avere, of course, the Jews. They had been tried by this test and failed. They clung to Jerusalem as the true seat of holiness in opposition to a Divine command which had transferred that privilege to Mekka. They were hence- forth inlidels ; the Faithful must cease from all commerce with them, and especially must they be careful not to read their (so called) sacred books ; for these, under the gui- dance of the Evil One, had been tampered v;ith in order to cast discredit on the veracity of the Propliet. By the change, too, of the kibla to the kaaba of Mekka, Muham- mad not merely removed a great danger to the constancy of his followers, but at one stroke he brouo;ht his teaching: into harmony with the old traditional belief and venera- tion of the Arabs. There was no longer any violent rupture with the past involved in the reception of Islam ; it became merely a purification of the national creed ; 58 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. cirAr. ir. and thus it was enabled to strike its root in the Arab mind with a binding force which it coukl not have possessed liad it retained its cosmopohtan character. Hitherto when the time of prayer came round, a crier liad cone throudi the streets of Medina to summon the Faithfuh But witli the change of the labia it was thought expedient to adopt some less rude method of summons. No revelation on the subject having been made to the Prophet, various plans were proposed by members of the congregation. The Prophet suggested that a gong should be beaten. But this did not please the Faithful, because the gong was already used l)y the Christians. At last one of the Medina converts had a dream ; he saw a man, clotlied in green, stand on the roof of the Mosque, and heard him shout : ' God is great ! God is great ! Tliere is no God but Allah ! ' By Omar's advice this was adopted as the signal to summon believers to prayer, and it has remained so to this day. Tlie next regulation prescribed to the Faithful was the fixst during the month Eamadhan. The idea has evidently been borrowed from the Christian's Lent in memory of Christ's death and passion, and tlie Jewish Passover in commemoration of the deliverance from Egypt. In like manner Muhammad decreed that this month Eamadhan should be held peculiarly sacred, as that ' in which the Koran was sent down to be man's guidance, and an explanation of that guidance.' 'As soon as any one of 3^ou observeth the moon let him set about the fast ; but he who is sick or upon a journey shalt fast a like number of other days.' To demonstrate, however, that the Muhammadan practice was not a servile imitation from A.D. 024. THE STRUGGLE WITH THE JEWS. 69 the Jewish or Christian ceremonial, the period for fasting was reduced from forty days to a kmar montli. All night the Faithful were permitted to ' eat and drink initil ye can discern a white thread from a black thread by the day- l^reak ' ; after that they were to ' fast strictly till night.' Finally, scattered through the Medina suras, are a luunber of directions on the subject of prayer. The true l)clievers, before they pray, are to w\ash their faces and heads, their hands up to the ell)ows, and their feet and ankles ; or should they be in a state of impurity, they are to wash all over. Should there be no water at hand they are permitted to take fine clean sand and rub their liands and faces therewitli. There were five stated periods during the day wherein a believer was to offer prayer : ( 1 ) At daybreak, ' for the prayer of daybreak is borne witness luito by the angels ' ; (2) wdien noon is past and the sun begins to decline from the meridian ; (3) in the afternoon before sunset ; (4) in the evening after sunset and before the day be shut in ; (5) the Faithful Avere to ' watch some part of the night in the same exercise, as a woi'k of supererogation for them ; peradventure their Lord would raise them to an honourable station.' Prayer according to the Pro])het was ' the pillar of religion ' and ' the key of Paradise.' ' There could,' he once said, ' be no good in that religion where there was no prayer.' Alms- giving is also a practice to which the Faithful are repeat- edly exhorted in the Koran. It is classified under two heads, legal and voluntary. The legal alms are those which are obligatory on all Moslems ; and Muhammad, so long as he lived, collected them himself for distribu- tion among the poor and need5\ Voluntary almsgivings 00 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ii. are amona' the most meritorious actions which a behever can perform ; and Muhammad is said to have declared that those who do not pay their legal contributions duly, will at the resurrection be tormented by serpents twisted roiuid their necks. These regulations had the effect of placing Islam on a basis of its own. But this was not sufficient. So long as the Jewish tribes resided in Medina tlie Prophet could never feel secure of the allegiance of his followers. The Jews were a perpetual testimony of the falseness of liis pretensions. Until tliey were destroyed or expelled, he stood upon a mine which might at any moment be fired, to the utter destruction of himself and his plans. But only after the victory of Bedr did he consider liimself strono" enoucli to take active measures ao-ainst them. These at first took the form of assassination. Tlie first victim was a woman, Asma, daughter of Marwan ; she had composed some satirical verses on the Prophet and his followers ; and Muhammad, moved to anger, said publicly : ' Wh(^ will rid me of this woman ? ' Omeir, a blind man, but an ardent Moslem, heard tlie speech, and at dead of night crept into the apartment whei-e Asma lay asleep surrounded by her little ones ; lie felt about in the darkness till his hand rested on the sleeping woman, and then, the next instant, his sword was plunged into her breast. The next morning, at the Mosque, Muhanniiad asked him : ' Hast thou slain the daugliter of Marwan ? ' ' Yes,' answered Omeir ; ' is there any cause of fear for what I have done ? ' ' None whatever,' replied the Pro- phet ; ' two goats will not knock their lieads together for it.' Then turning to the people assembled in the Mosque, A.D. 624. THE STKUGGLE WITH THE JEWS. 61 lie added : ' If you desire to see a man who liath assisted tlie Lord and His Prophet, look you here ! ' A few weeks later another Jew, also an old man — the aged Abou Afak — shared the same fate. He w^as hateful to Muhammad by reason of his abilities and liberal spirit ; and, like Asma, he had been guilty of writing poetical satires on the followers of the new creed. By the order of the Prophet a Moslem entered the old man's house at night, and slew him while he slept. These dastardly crimes spread terror through Medina. The Jews and those Arabs in Medina who had not em- braced Islam understood for the first time the kind of guests they had received into tlieir city. Islam, they discovered, was not merely a bond of union to those who accepted it, which obliterated the influence of all other ties, but also a spirit of hostility towards all who stood without the pale, which shrank from no treachery to gratify its hatred. Muhammad perceived the impression he had made, and determined to strike more heavily. The Jewish tribe of Khaynoka numbered seven hun- dred men capable of bearing arms. They were jewellers and workers in gold. This tribe the Prophet resolved to attack and exterminate. There was a shght difficulty iu the way. Muhanunad had entered into a solemn league of amity with the Jews of Medina, and the Khaynoka had in no particular infringed the conditions of the treaty. A revelation was the convenient method employed for smoothiuix over this obstacle. The Archangel Gabriel informed the Prophet that ' the worst beasts truly in tlie sio-ht of God ' were those with whom he had ' leagued ' himself, and that if he feared treachery from them he 02 [SLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ii. might ' fairly ' throw back their treaty to them, for ' God loveth not the treacherous.' Encouraged by tliis com- munication, Muhammad demanded of tlie tribe that they should embrace Islam, and receiving a response in the negative proceeded to besiege their quarter. Abdallah ibn Obay, after having pledged himself to march to their assistance, did nothing. The two other Jewish tribes remained trembling in their quarters, short-sightedly supposing their best hope of safety lay in holding them- selves aloof from their bretln^en in danger; and thus the Khaynoka were allowed to perish unassisted. All communication with them was cut off; their provisions were soon exhausted ; and at the close of fifteen days they surrendered at discretion. Muhammad gave orders to massacre the whole tribe. But Abdallah, aroused from his inaction by this savage vindictiveness, made such threatening remonstrances that the Prophet, sorely against his will, was compelled to adopt a more merciful policy. The Khaynoka were expelled from Medina ; their pro- perty passed into the possession of the victors. The expulsion of the Khaynoka was followed at a brief interval by a third murder. Kab, the son of Ashraf, was one of the chief men of the Jewish tribe of Nadhir. Connected on his father's side with one of the branches of the Kuraish, several of his relatives had been slain in the battle of Bedr. He was guilty of composing elegies on their deaths, and, like the two victims who had preceded him, satires on tlie Prophet. This was sufficient to de- termine his death. The Prophet, turning to his com- panions one day as they conversed about Kab ibn Ashraf, said : ' Who will give his life to God, and slay this man ? ' .v.D. 024. THE MUEDEK OF KAP. IBN ASIIRAF. 63 One of the Ansars, Muliamniad, sou of Maslama, replied : ' I — I will go and kill this man.' Among the Ansai^s was a man named Silkan, son of Salama, who was foster- brother of Kab ; and Kab, who was a man of much wealth, had always treated his foster-brother witli the greatest kindness and liberality. Muhammad ibn Maslama went to this Silkan, communicated to him the wishes of the Prophet, and added : ' If you assist me in this matter I shall succeed, and the work will be pleasing to the Prophet.' Silkan consented ; seven others of the Aiisafs proffered their assistance ; and at the time of evening prayer they took their leave of the Prophet, and set out upon their expedition. Kab dwelt in a fortified house at some little dis- tance from Medina. The conspirators arrived at the door late at night. Kab, who had recently married, was sleeping with his bride on the roof of the house. Silkan, leaving his companions in the road, approached, all armed, close under the walls of the fort, and called Kab by name. ' What do you want at this hour of the night?' asked the young Jewish chief. ' I have come to consult }0u on some business. If you can descend, come at once ; if not, I will return.' Kab rose up to go and meet his foster-brother. His bride, with some secret presenti- ment of calamity, seized the end of his garment, and entreated him not to leave her. ' It is niirht,' she said, ' and you know not what may happen.' ' It is my foster- brotlier,' replied the young Jew. ' I am as sure of him as of myself.' Then, disengaging his dress, he said: ' The noble man responds to an appeal, even should the appeal summon him to death.' With these words he left the 64 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ii. castle. His foster-brother, under pretence of speaking to him regarding some money he urgently needed, and which he wished Kab to lend to him, decoyed the young Jew away into an orchard. He was no sooner there than the conspirators sprang upon liim ; three held him, to prevent the possibility either of liis attempting to escape or to defend liimself, while the remainder deliberately hacked him in pieces with their swords. They then hastened away to Medina, and entering the presence of the Prophet as he was about to perform the morning prayer, recounted the success of their expedition. Muhammad was exceedingly pleased, and, the chroniclers are careful to inform us, ' returned thanks to God.' He then gave a general permission to his followers to slay any Jews they might chance to meet ; and this permission was immediately followed by the murder of a Jewisli merchant, apparently for his wealth, by a Moslem, who united a zeal for religion with a proper appreciation of the 2'ood things of this world. After another brief interval tlie vengeance of the Prophet fell upon the entire tribe of Nadhir. They were accused of having intended to murder the Prophet — a charge grounded upon no evidence except one of Muliam- mad's ' revelations,' but probable in itself and abundantly justified by the example set by the Prophet. They were blockaded in tlieir quarter. Like tlie Khaynoka, they were first deluded by a promise of assistance from Ab- diiUah and his party, and then abandoned to their fate. They surrendered ; and the same doom fell upon them which had been inflicted upon tlie Khaynoka, A single Jewish tribe — the Bani Kuraizha — now remained in Medina. A more terrible fate awaited them. A.D. G27. THE DOOM OF THE KURAIZHA. 05 The army of tlie Confederates Iiad broken up and retired from Medina. The sun of that day which shone upon tlie deUverance of tlie Faithful was still high in the heavens, when the heralds proclaimed : ' The Believers are to perform tlie afternoon prayer in no other place than in the quarter of the Bani Kuraizha, for the Prophet has determined to fmht against the Jews.' Tlie Moslems seized the weapons they had laid aside and hastened to obey the summons. It was Muhammad's hope to have taken the Jews by surprise, and slaughtered them at his ease. In this he was disappointed. The Jews were pre- pared. Their quarter was strongly barricaded ; and he was compelled to liave recourse to the slower method of reduction by blockade. The Jews made proposals of sur- render. They offered to emigrate under the same condi- tions as their brethren who had been previously expelled. They pleaded piteously that their lives only might be granted to them. The Prophet was inexorable. He was now supreme in Medina. Tliere was no one strong enough to step l)etween liim and his victims, and he Avas resolved to quench the long-protracted thirst of his hate in the blood of his enemies. The Jews must surrender at discretion. They knew what this foreboded. The quarter was filled with the wailing of women and children. One of their chief men said to them : ' Either acknowledge the Prophet, or let us kill our Avivcs and children, and then sally forth and die like men ; those are the only alterna- tives possible.' But the Jews, though they could pas- sively endure martyrdom for their faith, could not find in their hearts the heroic despair needed to folloAv out this last counsel. Abou Lahaba, an ally and kinsman of F GG ISLAM UNDEll THE ARABS. chap. ii. theirs, was in the camp of the Moslems. They entreated him to come and advise them. The stern heart of the Moslem was touched by the misery he witnessed. But he could give them no hope. He drew his hand across his throat, to signify the doom that awaited them. They at last surrendered. The men Avere condemned to death ; the women and children to slavery. In vain their old allies, the Bani Aus, pleaded passionately for some mitiga- tion of this pitiless sentence. The savage Prophet asserted the judgment to be that of God, pronounced on high from beyond the seven heavens. Under the personal direction of Muhammad, deep trenches were dug in the market place. Party after party of the wretched Jews, their hands tied behind their backs, were led up to these trenches, forced to kneel down, and beheaded. Their bodies were then flung in and covered ovei'. All that day, and for some time after the sun had set, by the glare of torches, the bloody work continued. Some six hun- dred men are said to have been slaughtered. The women and children numbered a thousand. Tavo hundred of these fell to the share of the Prophet. He sold them in Najd and Syria in exchange for weapons and horses. One Jewess, on account of her beauty, he retained as his concubine. The expedition against the Jews at Khaibar, which took place a few months after, and their reduction to the state of tributaries, completed the suppression of the Jewish power throughout the Hejaz. These events acted with immense force on the minds of the Faithful. The swift punishment which had fallen "jDon the Jews seemed to them a marvellous and awful A.D. 027. ITS EFFECT UPOX THE FAITHFUL. 07 confirmation of all that the Prophet had affirmed regard- mg their apostasy from the God of Abraham and Moses. The change of the Kibla from Jerusalem to Mekka, inter- preted by the light of after events, indicated a miraculous foreknowledge, not merely of the obstinate incredulity of the Jews, but of the triumph of the new faith, the purging of the holy places from the abominations of idolatry, and the restoration in Mekka of the true relimon of Abraham. For continuously widi these events, the sway of Muham- mad had extended upon every side. Mekka, it is true, had not yet received back the Prophet she had expelled from her soil. But the Faithful knew that this was merely a question of time and opportunity. She was powerless to resist the warriors that crowded under the banner of Islam. The Prophet had only to demand an entrance, and it would be conceded to him. Nor was this consunnnation long delayed. At the commencement of the year (330, Muhammad, at the head of 10,000 men, marched upon Mekka. The inhabitants of Mekka bowed before the storm. The Prophet treated them with politic clemency. Six men and four women were all who were excluded from the amnesty proclaimed to the people ; and tlie only resist- ance to the entry of the Moslem army Avas made by a party of horse, commanded by a Kuraishite chief, who was one of those sentenced to death. Muhammad made his entry into tlie sacred city mounted on a camel, and covered with a black turban. lie was preceded by Ali, carrying his standard, and sur- rounded by his ' companions.' He advanced as far as the Kaaba, where he was met by the leading men of the F 2 68 ISLAiM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ii. Kuraish. It was on the 20tli of the month of Eamadhan that the Prophet made tliis solemn entry. He dismoimted from his camel at the door of the sacred building, and made the customary seven circuits. The inhabitants, meanwhile, having learned that there was to be no mns- sacre, came crowding to the temple. The Prophet, having completed his circuits, ordered the gate of the temple to be flung open. Then all the idols which were placed in or around the Kaaba were taken down and broken to pieces. As soon as the temple had been purged from these abominations, Muhammad entered. Standing erect on the threshold, he uttered these words : ' There is no God, but God alone. He has no companion. He has kept His promise, given victory to His servant, and has smitten the heathen into flio-ht.' Then turnino- to the crowd of eao'er lookers on, he said : ' Inhabitants of Mekka, how think you that I shall deal with you P ' 'I think,' said a voice from the (^rowd, ' that thou, who art a noble Kuraishite, returning in triumph to his native land, will treat with pity the old men, pardon the young, and be merciful to the women and their little ones.' At these words the Prophet, we are told, lifted up his voice and wept, and all the people wept with him. Then he spoke : ' I will say to you that which my brother Joseph said to his brothers. I will not reproach you this day ; God will pardon you, for He is the most merciful of those who show mercy' (Sura xii. v. 92.) Then he shut the door of the temple, remounted his camel, and rode to the spot where his tent was j^itched. The people of Mekka poured thither in crowds to pronounce the confession of A.]). (i.;0. THE ENTIJY INTO .^lEKKA. GO faith, fulfilling thus, the words of the Koran, where it is written : When the help of Gud and the victory arrive, And thou seest men entering ihe religion of God by troops, Then utter the praise of thy Lord, and implore His pardon ; ll)r lie loveth to turn in mercy. When the inliabitants of Mekka — men and women — liad all enU'i'ed the new faith, detaehments were sent out, and the shrines and idols of Lat Manah and Ozza weie destroyed. The boundaries of the Holy Territory were laid down anew ; and not a graven image was })er- mitted to remain in Mekka. The triumph of the Prophet was now eomplete. He did not, however, abandon the city which had given him shelter when a homeless fugi- tive. Medina continued to be his abiding place as before, and he remained in Mekka for only ten days or a fortnii>lit. 70 ISLAM UNDER THE AKABS. CHAr. in. CHAPTEE III. THE PILGRIMAGE OF FAREWELL. A.D. 632. The religion of Islam is sustained on 'five pillars.' These are (1) belief in Allah and the mission of Muhannnad ; (2) prayer; (o) almsgiving; (4) the fast in the month Eamadhan ; and (5) the pilgrimage to Mekka. Two years after his conquest of Mekka the Prophet made the pilgrimage to the Holy Places. This act is known as ' the Pi]orimag;e of Farewell,' because Muhammad died a few months after ; and it has ever since been the type after which succeeding pilgrimages have been conducted. This last public act, then, of Muhammad's life ought to be related in detail. The tradition regarding the origin of Mekka is tliis : Abraham had become exceedingly rich and powerful, but he was sore troubled in heart because he had no child. When he married Sara he had solemnly pledged Ihmself to give her no rival in his love. But Sara, despairing of becoming a mother herself, presented to Abraham her Eoyptian slave, and Hagar became the mother of Ishmael. The extreme joy of Abraham at the birth of this cliild, and the proud airs assumed by Hagar, had the effect of awakening a bitter feeling of jealousy in the heart of Sara. Abraham perceived that it was necessary to remove out of her sight the objects of her hatred. God, by a special A.D. 632. THE ORIGIN OF MEKICA. 71 communication, directed him to render this satisfection to Sara. He brought Hagar and her son to Arabia, and, guided by Divine instructions, conducted them to the spot on which Meklva was afterwards built. It was a desert, without water or vegetation. Abraham was afTrighted at the awful solitude. But placing his trust ill God, lie said to Hagar: ' I leave you here, and remit you to tlu3 care of God.' ' What ! ' cried Hagar, clinging to him ; ' will you abandon a woman and a child to perish in the desert ? ' 'I obey the command of God, replied Abraham, and he left them, returning to Syria. Hagar's scanty stock of provisions was soon consumed. She searched in vain for water to quench her thirst and that of her child. In her despair she traversed with hasty paces the space which extends between the two eminences known at present as Safa and Marwa. The young Ishmael, supposing that his mother was about to abandon him, flung himself on the ground in an agony of grief, and beat the earth with his feet. Instantly a spring bul)bled up to the surface. Hagar perceived it, and was filled with joy. But, fearing lest the water should be wasted and sucked up by the sand, she banked up the earth round it, making a small basin. Muhammadans declare that this is the same spring that feeds the well of Zem Zem to this day. Ishmael gre\\^ up amid a tribe of Arabs who dwelt near to the miraculous well. When he was seven years old, Abraham, under Divine direction, led him to the valley of Mina to offer him as a sacrifice to God. Three times Satan interposed in a human form, and attempted to divert the ])atriarch from his purpose. His endeavours 72 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. iit. were unavailing. Abraham drove him off witli stones. But, as he was on the point of pkmging a knife into the bosom of his son, an angel appeared, and ordered him, in the name of God, to sacrifice a ram in the place of Ishmael. The model of the Kaaba, according to Muhammadan theologians, was constructed in Heaven before the creation of Adam. It was an object of veneration to the angels, and by God's command they made the seven circuits round it precisely in the same manner as the pilgrims do round the Kaaba at Mekka. Adam was the first Moslem. He erected the Kaaba on earth, a perfect facsimile of that which existed in Heaven. When the Deluge overwhelmed the earth, this building, all but the foundations, was car- ried up into Heaven. These remained hidden in the soil. When Ishmael became a man, he and his father, as usual under Divine guidance, dug and re-discovered these pri- mitive foundations. The Kaaba was re-built upon the foundations laid down by Adam. The angel Gabriel appeared to Ishmael and presented him with the cele- brated black stone, directing him at the same time how to fix it in the walls of tjie temple. When the temple was finished, Abraham and Ishmael consecrated it to God, and the angel Gabriel taught them the prayers and cere- monies of the pilgrimage. Finally, by the order of God, Abraham ascended the hill of Abou Kubais, in the vicinity of Mekka, and in a voice of thunder addressed this invitation to the human race : ' 0 people ! hasten to the house of God ! ' The voice of the patriarch was heard through all the dwellings of men, and millions of souls, fated to accomplish the pilgrimage, returned an- x.B. 032. THE DJORHOMITES. 73 swer : ' We are here, 0 Lord ! ' All being now complete, Abraham prepared to return to Syria. His last words to his son were : ' My task is finished. I depart, leaving to Aou this comitry, and this temple, of which God lias constituted you the guardian.' Between this legendary building of the Ivaaba and the first foint dawn of authentic history there is a long in- terval extending over many centuries. According to the Arabic traditions, during all this extended period the guardianship of the temple remained in the possession of the Djorhomites, a tribe of Yemenite extraction. The Djorhomite chiefs wei-e dignified w^ith the title of Mdlek, or king, and exercised a sort of general supremacy over the Hejaz. Eventually, however, the Djorhomites forgot the respect due to the house of God and profaned it with impious acts. Five men of the tribe formed a plan to rob the treasures in the Kaaba, which were deposited in a cellar within the building, having no lock or fastening of any kind. But the boldest of these robbers, and the only one who dared to enter the temple on this sacrilegious business, was struck dead. The remainder fled affrighted. Subsequently a man and a woman of the tribe committed adultery within the sacred precincts. God instantly turned them into stones. Notwithstanding these warnings the Djorhomites desisted not from their evil ways. They applied to their own profit the gifts brought to the sanc- tuary, and evilly entreated the strangers who came to Mekka to perform the pilgrimage or visit the holy places. In the meanwhile the reputed descendants of Ishmael had multiplied in the valley. These were sprung from the four sons of Nizar, the son of Maad, the son of Aduan. 74 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. iti. Their names were Eabia, lyad, Modliar, and Aiimar. It is from Modliar that the Prophet descends. Another Yemenite tribe, besides tlie Djorhomites, was also settled in the neighbom'hood of Mekka. When the Azdite tribe had abandoned Yemen, in consequence of the rupture of the dike of Mareb, two families, as I mentioned in the preceding chapter, wandered to Yathrib, the Aus and Khazraj. Others emigrated to Irak, where they founded the kingdom of Hira ; others to Syria, where they became known subsequently as tlie Ghassanides.; a single family separated itself from the rest of the community, and established itself at Batn Marr, near Mekka. It acquired the name o^ Khozaa (separation). United by a common feeling of indignation, the Khozaites, the Modharites, and the descendants of lyad, declared war against the Djorhomites. The latter were defeated and expelled from the Tihama (about a.d. 206). The guardianship of the Kaaba thus became vacant. To this religious function was attached, by prescriptive right, the sovereign authority over the territory of Mekka. As a matter of course, the descendants of Modhar and lyad fell out, as soon as the Djorhomites were expelled, on the question of succession. The Khozaites held aloof from this struggle, making, apparently, no claim at all to the guardianship of the Kaaba. The contest terminated in the defeat of the descendants of lyad, and they emigrated in a body to the plains in the west of Irak (about a.d. 206). Their last act was to force out the black stone from its setting in the wall of the Kaaba, and bury it in a secret place. This act of ingenious malignity had the effect desired, and robbed the victors of all joy in their triumph. The dis- A.D. 207. THE KHOZAA. 75 appearance of the Ijlack stone spread a gloom over the land. It so chanced that a Khozaite woman had witnessed (liorsclf unseen) the interment of the stone. She made Ivnown the circumstance to the chiefs of her tribe. These made proposals to the descendants of Modhar to the effect that they would undertake to re-discover the black stone if the guardianship of tlie temple was entrusted to them. The offer was agreed to, the stone disinterred, and restored lo its accustomed place; and the guardianship of the Kaaba, with the government of the countr}^ passed into the possession of the Khozaa. Their supremacy lasted about two centuries (from a.d. 207 to A.D. 440). According to the Arabs, it was during this period that their countrymen turned aside from the pure reli- '>ion of Abraham and dofded the Kaaba with the abomi- XT' nations of idolatry. Amr, the Malel\ or king of the Khozaa, made a journey to Balka, a town of the province of Damascus in Syria, and beheld there people worship- ping idols. Asking the meaning of this practice, they replied : ' These are our gods. When we ask of them victory, they give it us ; rain, they send it ; in short, all tlie prayers \\q. address to them are heard and granted.' Anu', much rejoiced by this intelligence, asked for one of these idols. They gave him Hobal, and he carried it away to Mekka and placed it in the Kaaba. Yrom that time idolatry made rai)i(l })rogress among the Arabs ; the Kaaba was crowded with images, and the religion of Abraham passed cnit of tliu memory of men. The last prince of the race of Khozaa was Holayl, son of Hoba- chiya. 70 ISLxVM UNDER THE AKA15S. chat. nr. The daughter of Holayl, iiametl Hobba, was married to Kossay, the most eminent man among the tribes of Modhar in and around Mekka. For some time previous to his deatli Holayl, from extreme old age, had been unable to proceed every morning and unlock the gates of the temple. He had therefore entrusted the keys to his daugiiter Hobba, and she, in her turn, had delegated this function to her husl)and Kossay. Kossay was an able and ambitious man, and the office thus accidentally im- posed upon him kindled in his mind a determination to assert the rights of his tribe to the guardianship of the Kaaba. As the direct descendants of Ishmael, they were, in the estimation of the Arabs, the legitimate protectors of the sacred soil ; but the Khozaa Avere strong and in possession, and the ]\Iodharites had voluntarily conceded their privileges. He hoped at first to have persuaded liis father-in-law to allow him to retain in perpetuity the keys of the Kaaba ; but Holayl, suspecting most probably the designs of Kossay, made them over, on his death, to a member of his own tribe. Kossay then resolved to have recourse to force. He communicated his designs secretly to the various tribes descended from the four sons of Nizar, and engaged them to draw together to Mekka during the season of the ])il- grimage, when their assemblage would excite no suspicion. Thus reinforced, he declared dining the ceremonies of the pilgrimage his intention of re-asserting the rights of his family. The Khozaa were not willing to make a tame surrender of their j^rivileges. Some fierce, but indecisive, battles were fought, wdien, to stay the further effusion of blood, both parties agreed to submit their claims to arbi- .v.u. 140. KOSSAY. 77 tration. Tlie nibitrator ]:)roiiounced judgment in favour of the descendants of Modhar ; and the Khozaa, loyally accepthig his decision, retired from Mekka, leaving Kossay undisputed master of tlie temple and all the sacred places. Hitherto, the veneration of the Arabs for the Kaaba and even tlie soil that surrounded it was so great that they neither constructed houses there nor even pitched their tents in the vicinity for any length of tune. They were in the habit of resorting- thither during' the dav, returnino" at nightfall to their camps in the hills. Kossay persuaded the Kuraish to erect houses round the temple, as then no hostile tribe would dare to attack them in the sacred territory itself. He divided the ground on which Mekka Avas afterwards built into quarters which he assigned to each family. Around the Kaaba, an empty space was left, to allow of the seven circuits being made. This space was paved with polished stones, and the Kuraish built their houses beyond the limit of the paving. The same families to whom Kossay assigned residences were dwelling there when the preaching of Islam commenced. Farther to increase the authoritv of his tribe amono; the Arabs, he declared that it was their duty as guardians of the sacred territory to entertain free of cost the pilgrims who resorted thither, and he created an office — Rifada — the holder of which had the exclusive ri^ht of dis- pensing this lavish hospitality. This office, Kossay re- tained in his own ])ossession, as among the ancient Arabs no acts won so much applause and admiration as the ])ractice of a lavish hospitality. lie also decreed that the ceremony of making seven circuits round the Kaaba, being a sacred one, demanding in him who performs it a 78 ISLAM UNDEl^ TPIl-: ARABS. chap. in. state of purity, could not be made in tlie garments, soiled with all kinds of impurities, which the pilgrims had worn on their journey to Mekka. Garments possessing the requisite purity must be obtained by purchase or other- wise from the Kuraish. The Arabs were not, however, inclined to fill the purses of the Kuraish by acting in the spirit of this ingenious order. They admitted the im- purity of their own garments, but they were not prepared to purchase others. They preferred to make the circuits without clothes at all. Consequently, at the season of the pilgrimage, the men encircled the Kaaba in a state of midity ; the women attired in a single chemise, which they had to fling away immediately after. This indecent practice Avas put an end to by the Prophet. All the tribes were allowed to make tlie circuits in the clothes they brought with them to Mekka. But that which augmented the sanctity of the Kaaba, and established the pre-eminence of the Kuraish among the Arab tribes more than all the innovations of Kossay, was the expedition against Mekka by the Abyssinian ruler of Yemen, and its signal failure. Kossay had long since been gathered to his fathers, and the grandfathoi^ of the Prophet Abd-al-Mottalib was the chief man in Mekka when this event took place. Yemen was at this time a dependency of the C'hris- tian kingdom of Abyssinia, and ruled by a viceroy. This official had erected at the capital, Sana, a church esteemed to be the most beautiful in the world. According to the tradition of the Arabs, the fame of this edifice spread through all the world, and from all parts of Asia, even from Constantinople, Christians thronged thither in crowds. A.I.. oTI. TTIE TEAK OF 'THE I'LEPIIANT.' 79 bringing with them rich gifts. The Abyssinian governor conceived the project of supplanting the Kaaba at Mekka by means of this new buikhng ; and thus malting Sana tlie great gathenng point of all the Arab tribes. An Arab of the tribe of Kuraish became acquainted with this design. He journeyed to Sana, gained access to the Christian temple under a pretence of desiring to make his devotions, and polluted the high altar. The Abys- sinian ruler when he heard of this insult swore to march instantly and utterly destroy the Ivaaba. The King of Abyssinia had an elephant named Mahmoud, which had never been present at a battle where the victory had not fallen to the Abyssinian army. He was of immense size, larger than any other elephant in Abyssinia. The Viceroy of Abyssinia wrote to his master, informing him of the pollution practised upon the church of Sana, and his purpose of retaliation, and at the same time solicited that the elephant Mahmoud should accompany the expedition. The king sent him ; and the viceroy, at the head of a numerous army, invaded the Hejaz. The Arabs could not draw together forces sufficient to cope with this vast host. Twice, indeed, the tribes on the line of march ventured an attack on the invading army. But they w^ere cut to pieces, and the Abyssinian viceroy drew nigh to Mekka. The Kuraish ^vere in consternation. They assembled round Abd-al-Mottalib demanding what they should do. ' We arc not,' said the chief, ' in force suffi- cient to resist the enemy ; when, therefore, the Abys- sinians approach we ^vill retire to the mountains and abandon the city. The Lord of the temple is more powerful than ^\■c ; He will either protect it from its 80 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. irr. enemies or abandon it to them.' This suggestion was adopted, and the city of Mekka was left without inhabitants. The Kuraisli concealed themselves, their wives, their chil- dren and their cattle in the neio-hbourino- mountains. On the morrow of their fiiglit the Viceroy of Yemen approached the gate of Mekka. lie was informed that not a soul remained within the town. He then ordered tlie elephants to be brought forward, that the Kaaba might be destroyed, and the march homewards com- menced at once. The great elephant Mahmoud was led into the sacred enclosure. Arrived there, he refused to stir a single step. They beat him with sticks and rods of iron. It was all in vain. All the other elephants were in like manner rooted to the spot on which they stood. While matters were in this position, on a sudden large ilocks of birds, like swallows, came flying from the sea- coast, every one of which carried three stones, one in each foot, and one in its bill. These stones they threw down upon the Abyssinian army, and all wliom they struck fell dead upon the spot. Tlien God sent a flood, whicli swept the dead bodies into the sea, with many of those who had not been struck with the stones. The rest fled towards Yemen, but perished in multitudes all along the road. Their bodies broke out into a kind of spotted eruption, detaching the skin from the flesh. The viceroy alone succeeded in reaching Sana, and lie did so only to die from the same spotted eruption which had destroyed his army. One soldier of the Abyssinian army succeeded in escaping across the Red Sea into Abyssinia, and going directly to the king told him the tragical story ; and upon that prince asking him what sort of birds they were, that MUII. V:\DIAU AND THE KAABA. 81 had occasioned this destruction, tlie man pointed to one of them which had followed him all the way, and was at that time hovering directly over his head. Immediately, the bird let fall a stone and struck him dead at the king's feet. These memorable events occurred in the very year during Avhicli Muhammad was born. The probability seems to be that the Abyssinian army was destroyed by a sudden epidemic of small-pox which raged that year with great violence in Arabia. To the Kuraish, however, and to all the Arab tribes, the de- liverance of the Holy City was plainly miraculous. The Kuraish were deemed to be the specially chosen inhabi- tants of the Holy City and the guardians of the sanctuary. Thenceforth whenever, so we are told, a karavan went forth from Mekka, they tied to the neck of each camel the branch of a tree with a woollen cord. Whenever a karavan passed with these insignia in the desert, in Syria or in Yemen, it was considered sacred from the attacks of robbers and marauders. During the first fervour of his religious enthusiasm, it had evidently been Muhammad's intention to alienate his countrymen altogether from their reverence for the Kaaba. The degrading worship paid to the black stone liad been the main cause why his great predecessors, Zaid and Waraka, had severed themselves from the religion of their compatriots ; and Muhammad, in the earlier years of his mission, trod sedulously in their steps. He built up his faith on the foundation of Jewish prophets, Jesus Christ (though not exactly in a Christian sense) being Himself the chief corner-stone, and made Jerusalem the centre of hohness, the kibla of prayer. Only after his G 82 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. cnAr. in. arrival at Medina, and his disputes with the Jews, does he lay any special stress upon the sanctity of Mekka. But with the chang;e of the Mbla from Jerusalem to Mekka, the references to tlie Kaaba become frequent, and the obligation to perform the pilgrimage is repeatedly insisted upon. The first temple, we are then told, founded for mankind is that in Mekka ; it is blessed, and a guidance to liuman beings. To accomplish the pilgrimage is a duty which the Moslem is bound to perform once in his life ; or should he be ' hemmed in witli foes,' he must send ' what- ever offering will be easiest.' Those only are to be per- mitted to visit the temple of God who believe in God and the last day, and observe prayer and pay the legal alms, and dread none but God. It is not a thing to be permitted for an instant by the true believer that those who join gods with God, and thus become witnesses against themselves, should be permitted to enter tlie sacred precincts. Vain are their works, and in the fire of Hell shall they abide for ever. The pilgrimage is to be made in the months already appointed for that purpose — viz., Shawal, Dhulkada, and Dhulhajja. Whoever under- takes the pilgrimage must keep himself pure from all sin or impurity during the performance of the ceremonies. The pilgrims may, however, take advantage of the pil- grimage for trading purposes, and ' it shall be no crime in them.' The ceremonies were in nearly all particulars retained by Muhammad as they had been in the days of darkness. There have been few incidents more disastrous in their consequences to the human race than this decree of Mu- hammad changing the kibla from Jerusalem to Mekka. THE CHANGE OF THE KIEL A. 83 Had lie remained true to his earlier and better faith, the Arabs would have entered the religious comity of the nations as peace-makers, not as enemies and destroyers. To all alike — Jews, Christians, and Muhammadans — there would have been a single centre of holiness and devotion ; but the Arab would have brought with him just that element of conviction which was needed to enlarge and vivify the preceding religions. To the Jew he would have been a living witness that the God who spake in times past to his fathers by the prophets, still sent mes- sengers to men, though not taken from the chosen seed — the very testimony which they needed to rise out of the conception of a national deity to that of a God of all men. To the Christians his deep and ardent conviction of God as a present living and working Power, would have been a voice recalling them from their petty sectarian squabbles and virtual idolatry, to the presence of the living Christ. By the change of the kibla Islam was placed in direct antagonism to Judaism and Christianity. It became a rival faith, possessing an independent centre of existence. It ceased to draw its authenticity from the same wells of inspiration. Jew and Christian could learn nothing from a creed which they knew only as an exterminator ; and the Muhammadan was condemned to a moral and intellectual isolation. And so long as he remains true to his creed, he cannot participate in the onward march of men. The keystone of that creed is a black pebble in a heathen temple. All the ordinances of his faith, all the history of it, are so grouped round and connected with this stone, that were the odour of sanctity dispelled which surrounds it, the whole religion would inevitably perish. G 2 84 ISLAM UNDER THE AEABS. cn.vr. iii. The farther and the faster men progress elsewhere, the more hopeless becomes the position of the Moslem. He can only hate the knowledge wliich would gently lead him to the Ivjht. Chained to a black stone in a barren wilderness, the heart and reason of the Muhammadan world would seem to have taken the similitude of the objects they reverence ; and the refreshing dews and genial sunshine which fertilise all else, seek in vain for anything to quicken there. On Saturday, February 22, a.d. 632, at midday, the Prophet set out from Medina, attended by all his wives and an immense multitude of the Faithful. He had bathed and perfumed himself, and rode at the head of the host mounted on a camel. Wherever the karavan halted, a place of prayer was erected, and the Prophet, dismounting, made his devotions. On March 2, the host halted at the distance of one day's march from Mekka. The next morning (being the sixth day of Dhulhajja, or month of the pilgrimage) the Prophet entered Mekka. He circled the Kaaba seven times mounted on his camel — for he was too weak to undergo the fatigue on foot — three times rapidly, and four times slowly. Then he kissed the black stone. Then, standing on what is called ' the stone of Abraham,' he offered up a brief prayer to Allah. After which he caused some water to be brought from the well Zem Zem, and drank thereof. Then he performed the seven customary perambulations between Safa and Marwa, repeating the passage in the Koran in which they are mentioned : — Verily Safa and Marwa are among the monuments of God ; whoever then niaketh a pilgrhnage to the temple or visiteth it, shall not be to A.B. Gb2. THE LAST PILGRIMAGE. 86 lilame if he go roxind about them both. And as for him -who of his own accord doeth -what is good — God is grateful and knowing. The seven perambulations completed, he retired to his quarters. On the cightli of Dliiilhajja (March 5) Muhammad repaired to the valley of Mna, three miles distant from Mekka. Here there were no ceremonies, and here many of the pilgrims assumed the ihram, or religious garment. On the ninth, after morning prayer, the multitude, headed by the Prophet, marched to Arafat, a broad plain at the foot of a hill, on the road to Tayif, and known as ' the Halting Place.' Arafiit lies beyond the sacred terri- tory. The tradition attaching to this place is that when Adam and Eve were cast out of Paradise, Adam fell on the island of Ceylon, and Eve near Jeddo, the port of Mekka. After a separation of two hundred years, Adam, having repented, was conducted by the angel Gabriel to a mountain near Mekka, where he found and knew his wife, the place being thence called ' Arafat ' (recognition). Among the devices of Kossay to increase the liouour paid to the guardians of the sacred territory, was tlie division of the pilgrims into two classes — the Homsites, or ' the Strong,' whicii included tlie Kuraish, tlieir nearest relatives, and the tribes in alliance witli them, and the Hilla, or ' the Unholv.' The first class did not visit Arafat, but only led the march as far as the limits of the sacred territory. The Homsites, moreover, unlike the Hilla, were not permitted during the ceremonies to reside under tents ; they called themselves the ' house dwellers,' to signify that they were the purmanent guardians of the sacred territory in contradistinction to those who had 86 ISLAM UNDER THE AIIABS. cn.vr. in. merely the privilege of visiting it. Muhammad put an end to these distinctions. He visited Arafat, althouu'li a citizen of Mekka; a tent stood ready for his reception, and he declared this part of the pilgrimage to be obliga- tory on all. He caused the ground to be marked out, and a fixed encamping ground to be allotted to each tribe. At midday he delivered a discourse, in which he ex- pounded the rites and duties required of a pilgrim, and impressed upon his hearers the absolute obligation laid upon the Faithful to accomplish the pilgrimage. Then he proceeded to warn them of the guilt of shedding Muliam- madan blood, of dishonest trading, and more especially of the sin of usury. He quoted those verses from the Koran Avherein this practice is denounced and forbidden. From usiny he passed on to the duties which a man owes to his wife ; to the laws laid down in the Koran respecting divorce, dowry, inlieritance, iufidelity to the marriage vows, and the prohibited degrees of relationship ; and so, passing from one subject to another, he dwelt upon, expounded, and enforced all the laws of Islam, moral and ceremonial. Then the midday prayer was repeated, and the tribes dismissed to their encampments. After sundown, Muhammad mounted his camel and rode to Mozdalifa, a halting place on the way back to Mina. He arrived there at the time of evening prayer. The traditions 'note down with loving accuracy the pace at wliich the Prophet rode — quickly, but not at a gallop. The next morning, at the same pace, he rode to Mina. The tentli is the great day of the pilgrimage, and Muhammad gave out that whoever was in time for the A.D. G-i-2. THE LAST riLGRIMAGE. 87 morning prayer of that day must ba regarded as having performed the entire pilgrimage. This day in tlie valley of Mina is the ' day of sacrifice,' in perpetual remembrance of the ofTering up of Ishmael as a sacrifice to God by his fatlier Abraham. Three columns mark the spot where this occurred. Every pilgrim as he passes them liings seven small stones in that direction, in recollection of the stones hurled Ijy the patriarch at Satan. On this day the victims are sacrificed. The Prophet immolated sixt}^- three camels — the number of the years of his life; his son-in-law Ali sacrificed tliirty-seven. A portion of one camel was dressed for the Prophet and his household ; the rest was distributed among the poorer pilgrims. Then such of the other pilgrims as had brought animals for sacrifice ofiered them up likewise, and the ceremonies of the pilgrimage were at an end. The Prophet laid aside his ihram, shaved his head, put on his festive robes, and ]3ermitted Ayesha to incense him and anoint him with perfumes. He then rode to Mekka, made the seven circuits round tlie Kaaba, tra- versed seven times the distance between Safa and ]\Tarwa, and, without dismounting from his camel, returned to Mina. There he abode three days. They were days of feasting, and buying and selling. The only rehgious ceremony was the daily casting of the seven small stones. On the third day Muhammad rode back to Mekka, and on the next departed for Medina. ' 'J'he Pilgrimage of Farewell ' was over. Of the three months whicli elapsed between this pil- <:rrima2;e and the breakino- out of the fever wliich cnnicd oiT the Prophet, the Muhammadan chroniclers tell us 88 ISLAM UNDER THE AEABS. cHAr. in. little. Oil Monday, May 25, 632, Miiliammad delivered a discourse in the mosque at Medina, and warned the Faithful to prepare for an expedition against the Greeks. On the next day he sent for Osama, the son of his freed- man Zaid, who had fallen in the disastrous battle of Mouta, and said to him : ' I appoint you leader of the army that is collecting ; go to that quarter where your father fell in battle, but with such swiftness that you may take the dwellers by surprise. Burn their houses, their fields, and their palm-groves.' On the same day, at mid- night, he Yv^ent to the graveyard of the Faithful, and prayed for the blessing of Heaven on the members of this expedition. When his prayers were finished, he turned to a friend who had accompanied him — ' To-night,' he said, ' the choice has been given to me of the treasures of this world or of the joys of Paradise ; I have chosen the latter.' He returned to the hut of Ayesha and com- plained of a severe headache. From this time liis sick- ness steadily increased upon him. In a few days he was unable (as had been his wont) to divide his time equally amone^ his wives, but resided altoaether in the house of Ayesha. The fever became so intense that the lieat was perceptible through his clothes. He was extremely dis- tressed in mind and body. His wives even reproached him with his want of fortitude and resignation. ' Do you not know,' he rephed, ' that none hav^e suffered so much as the i^rophets. Some have been devoured by insects ; otliers have perished in such wretchedness that they liad not a rag to cover their nakedness ; but tlieir reward has been so much the greater in the world to come.' To quench the burning of the fever his friends poured cold A.D. ool>. the last illness. so water upon liis head from seven vessels at once. The im- mediate effect was refreshing, and he was able to go to the mosque and mount the pul]iit. His first words were a prayer for those who had fallen at Bedr, at Oliod, at Mouta, and the other battle-fields. He tlien exhorted the soldiers of the Syrian expedition to be faithful and obedient to their commander, ' Whoever grieves him,' he said, ' grieves his father ; and a braver soldier than he there was not amoriix the Faithful.' But these exertions so exhausted him that on his return to Ayesha's hut he fell into a swoon. On June 4 his illness reached its heio-ht. He asked for writinii; materials to execute a testament, but for some unknown reason his request was not complied with. He gave orders that after his death his corpse should be washed by his relatives, folded up in an Egyptian or Yemen shroud, and laid again upon the bed in which he had died, Tlien they were to leave it for a short space, when the angels would pray for him. On June 6 he fell into a long swoon. His wives dropped into his mouth a preparation of olive-oi], Indian aloes, and saffron, to recover liim. On coming to himself, he was very angry, as this preparation was sup- posed to possess magical properties, and to be in use amono' those who sold themselves to the Devil. His wives, to reassure liim, took each a few drops of tlie liquid to show that there was nothing noxious in it. When the time for evening prayer came, he was too weak to go to the mosque, and he directed Abou Bekr to officiate in his stead, thereby, it is supposed, intending to indicate that he was to be his successor as the leader of 90 IST..AM UNDER THE AKABS. cnAr. in. tlie Faithful. On the next day, or the day after that (the exact date is uncertain), the Prophet ceased to breathe. He expired in the arms of Ayesha. His last words were — ' To the worthiest companions in Paradise ! ' There are two points of view from which we may esti- mate the cliaracter of Muhammad — we may regard him both as a successful Bedouhi chief, and as the founder of a new religion. As the former the qualities must be with- out cavil conceded to him which have belonged to Sivajee, to Hyder Ali, and to every successful adventurer. He had a quick eye to perceive the elements of weakness in the conditions of life around hhn, and was prompt and dexterous in turning them to account. He had the power of attaching his followers to himself, and in the carrying out of his designs he knew when to be clement, and was rarely more ruthless or less scrupulous than his countrymen. But as a successful Bedouin chief, Muham- mad is a character of small significance. His difficulties were smaller and his achievements less than many another Oriental adventurer Avho has figured in history. It is as the founder of a creed that Muhammad becomes a figure of world-wide significance, demanding and needing careful examination. As such he has been fiercely attacked, and of late years has been eulogised with almost equal ex- travagance. Of the sincerity of his belief in liis own mission there can be no doubt. The great merit is his that among a people given up to idolatry he rose to a vivid perception of the Unity of God, and preached this great doctrine with firmness and constancy, amid ridicule and persecution. But there it seems to me that the eulogy of the Prophet ought to cease. When tried by the test of A.I). 032. THE CIIAlIACTEll OF MUHAMMAD. 91 prosperity, his character lost its moral grandeur, his creed its spiritual elevation. At Medina, the religious teacher is superseded by the ambitious pohticiau, and the idols of the Kaaba Ml before the mandate of the suc- cessful chieftain, not under the transforming influences of a spiritual regenerator. To achieve worldly dominion, he has recourse to assassination ; he perpetrates massacre ; he makes a heathen superstition the keystone of his faith ; and delivers to his followers, as a revelation from God, a mandate of universal Avar. Witli every advance in worldly power he disencumbers himself of that spiritual humility which was a part of his earlier faith. He associates himself with God on a footing approaching to equality. The angels, he declares, pray for blessings on the head of the Prophet. Disobedience to the Pro- phet is punished by hell-fire precisely as is disobedience to God. The names of God and his Apostle are linked together as those of beings who have equal claims upon the love and submission of men. The Apostle becomes a creature so exalted that even tlie easy drapery of Mu- hammadan morality becomes a garment too tiglit-fitting for him. 'A peculiar jmvilege is granted to him above the rest of believers.' He may multiply his wives with- out stint ; he may and he does marry within the prolii- bited de^'rees. It is often asserted that the legislation of the Koran by restricting, polygamy did mucli to improve the condi- tion of women. The supposition is erroneous. Muham- mad limited the number of wives whom a Moslem might have at one time to four, but he applied no restric- tions to the power of divorce belonging to the husband. 02 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. hi. That was absolute. It never seems to have entered the mind of tlie Prophet that it could or ought to be sub- jected to rules. And the best commentary on the mar- riage laws of the Koran is the fact that his grandson Hasan contrived, by means of this power of divorce, to have seventy wives, or, according to some authors, ninety. In one particular only did Muhammad rise above the ethical level of his countrymen — he stamped out the crime of female infanticide. But in all else he was the Bedouin Arab, and in tliis fact lies the secret of his suc- cess. The predominant characteristics of the ancient Arab were an almost inconceivable vain-glory and self- conceit. He was never weary of contemplating and boasting of his own perfections. Muhammad was pre- cisely the Prophet to win such a race. The Arab gloried m his language ; Muhammad declared that it was a Divine language — the decrees of God had been written in it from all eternity. The Arab gloried in the traditional practices and customs of the desert— murder, predatory war, slavery, polygamy, concubinage. Muhammad impressed upon all these usages tlie seal of a Divine sanction. The Arab gloried in the hohness of Mekka. Muhammad affirmed it to be the single portal whereby men could enter into Paradise. In a word, he took the Arab people just as he found them, and declared all that they did to be very good and sacred from chaiige. The fancied revelation gratified the vanity of the Arabs, but it pronounced on them a sentence of perpetual barbarism. Such as they were when the Prophet hved such are the Arabs now. Their condition is a proof that Islam is incapable of elevating a people to a higher level. A.D. G32, THE EFFECTS OF IIIS TEACHING. 93 When Islam penetrates to countries lower in the scale of luimanity than were the Arabs of Muhammad's day, it suffices to elevate them to that level. But it does so at a tremendous cost. It reproduces in its new converts the characterii^tics of its first — their impenetrable self-esteem, their unintelligent scorn, and blind hatred of all other creeds. And thus the capacity for all further advance is destroyed ; the mind is obdurately shut to the entrance of any purer hght. But it is a grievous error to con- found that transient gleam of culture which illuminated Baghdad under the first Abbaside khalifs with the legi- timate fruits of Islam. When the Arabs conquered Syria and Persia they brought with them no new know- ledge to take the place of that which had preceded them. Mere Bedouins of the desert, they found themselves all at once the masters of vast countries with everything to learn. They were compelled to put themselves to school under the very people they had vanquished. Thus the Persians and Syrians, conquered though they were and tributary, from the ignorance of their masters, retained in their hands the control of the administrative machinery. The Abbaside khalifs were borne into power l3y means of a Persian revolution, headed by a Persian slave. Then began the endeavour to root the old Greek philo- sophy and the deep and beautiful thoughts of Zoroaster on the hard and barren soil of Muhammadanism. It was an impossible attempt to make a frail exotic flourish on uncongenial soil. It has imparted, indeed, a deceptive lustre to this period of Muhammadan history ; but the orthodox Muhammadans knew that their faith and the wisdom of the Greeks could not amalgamate, and they 04 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. cuw. iii. fouglit fiercely against tlie innovators. Successive storms of barbarians sweeping down from tlie nortli of Asia tore lip tlie fragile plant by the roots and scattered its blos- soms to tlie winds. The new comers embraced the creed of the Koran in its primitive simplicity ; they hated and repudiated the refinements which the Persians would fain have engrafted on it. And they won the day. The present condition of Central Asia is the legitimate fruit of Islam ; — not the glories of Baghdad, which were but the afterglow of the thought and culture which sank with the fall of the Sassanides, and the expulsion of the Byzantine emperors. So also in Moorish Spain. The blossom and the fruitage which Muhammadanism seemed to put forth there, were in fact due to influences alien to Islam — to the intimate contact, namely, with Jewish and Christian thought ; for when the Moors were driven back into Northern Africa, all that blossom and fruitage withered away, and Northern Africa sank into the intel- lectual darkness and political anarchy in which it lies at the present time. There are to be found in Muham- madan history all the elements of greatness — fixith, courage, endurance, self-sacrifice. But enclosed within the narrow walls of a rude theology, and a barbarous polity, from which the capacity to grow and the liberty to modify have been sternly cut off, they work no deli- verance upon the earth. They are strong only for de- struction. When that work is over, they either prey upon each other, or beat themselves to death against the bars of their prison house. No permanent dwelling- place can be erected on a foundation of sand ; and no durable or humanising polity upon a foundation of A.D. 032. THE EFFECTS OF HIS TEACHING. fl5 fatalism, despotism, polygamy and slavery. Wlien Mii- liammadan States cease to be racked by revolutions, they succumb to the poison diffused by a corrupt moral atmosphere. A Durwesh, ejaculating 'Allah!' and revolving in a series of rapid gyrations until he drops senseless, is an exact imacfe of .the course of their history. 90 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap, iv, CHAPTEK IV. ALI AND HIS SONS. A.D. 632—080. Arabia, previously to the preaching of Islam, was not the home of a nation, but of a number of tribes, some station- ary, some nomadic, and engaged in endless feuds among themselves. Tlie political ability of the Prophet imposed upon these restless atoms the uniting influence of a com- mon allegiance. But the period of a single man's life was too brief to allow the creed of Muhanmiad to root itself firmly in the mind of the Arab. The Arab, Mr. Giflbrd Palgrave tells us, is a believing animal rather than a religious one. He was not less so in tlie days of the Prophet. Gifted with an eager and vivid imagina- tion, the universe of eye and ear which stretched around filled him with all ' the blank misgivings of a creature mo vim? about in worlds not realised.' He heard voices otlier than human breaking the deep silence of the desert ; forms beautiful to behold flashed across his eyes as he urged his camel over trackless wastes of sand ; the super- natural was continually breaking into and comming- ling with the natural. Hence he gave an easy credence to any message which purported to come from the unseen world. There was nothing, to his mind, hard to believe A.D. 032. THE STATE OF ARABIA. 97 in the fact of a Prophet having been sent by God into the world. But the very facility with which he conceded the demands of Muliammad had the effect of rendering him equally credulous of the pretensions of other prophets. No less than five prophets, two of whom were women, appeared in Arabia either before or im- mediately after the death of Muhammad. His death be- came the signal for a general revolt of the tribes whom his personal influence had hitherto held together. The new prophets relaxed some of the more stringent rules of Islam — the morning and evening prayer, the fast during the month Eamadhan, and the legal alms. These con- cessions were sufficient to win over the Bedouins, or Arabs of the desert — ' most stout in unbelief and dissimu- lation ' — as the Prophet had called them in the bitterness of his heart. They flocked roimd the new teachers. One tribe after another repudiated the creed of Muhammad. Islam, says the Tareek-i-Tabari, ceased to exist beyond the confines of Medina. Even to that holy city the spirit of schism had pene- trated. The people of Medina, on the ground that their city had given an asylum to the Prophet when his own had cast him out, asserted their right to elect a leader for themselves, Muhammad having died without nominating a successor. The men of Mekka might exercise a similar privilege if they pleased. ' Let each of the two great cities of Islam,' they said, ' have its own spiritual head.' It is needless to say that had the chiefs of Mekka accepted this suggestion, Islam would never have emerged from the deserts of Arabia to conquer the world. Mekka and Medina would have wrestled in endless conflict, to the 11 98 ISLAj\I under THE ARABS. chap. iv. extinction of the new ftiitli altogether. The promptitude and resolution of Omar warded off the impending calamity. The Faithful of both Mekka and Medina were partly per- suaded, partly compelled by him to acknowledge Abou Bekr as the khalif, or lieutenant, of the Prophet. One of the false prophets was murdered ; the others fell before the fierce valour of Khaled ; and then commenced that astonishing career of conquest which quenched for a time all remembrance of domestic feuds. The warriors of the Arabian deserts, bred in the midst of danger and hardship till their hearts were like steel and their muscles as iron, poured across the northern sandy waste to the conquest of Syria and Palestine. A few sieges, a few fierce battles, and these provinces w^ere torn li'om the grasp of the }3yzantine emperor. The ancient dynasty of the Sassa- nides was crushed on the field of Kadesia. In less than three years the Arabs were masters of Egypt. And still the tide of conquest flowed on with unabated speed. Eastward, the deserts of Sind, and northward the rocky defiles of Armenia, and the deep umbrageous forests of Azerbaizan, echoed with the victorious battle-cry of the Faithful. Nor were signs wanting of supernatural aid in these astonishing successes ; angels fought on their side in the field of battle ; messages from Heaven came to them in seasons of peril and extreme difficulty. The Faithful looked back with wonder-smitten hearts over the few years which had passed since their Prophet abandoned Mekka — a homeless fugitive. It was all a marvellous period of predictions fulfilled. And that last and greatest prophecy, that the Faithful should possess the kingdoms of the earth and all the glory of them — that a A.D. 644. THE CONQUESTS OF THE MOSLEMS. 99 thousand should cause two thousand to fly — what a speedy, w^hat a marvellous confirmation had this, too, received ! TJie new faith had been tried in a furnace seven times heated, and proved to be a weapon of sur- passing sharpness and temper. It had not only shown itself stronger than every other Arab creed ; but — north, south, east, and west — it had gone forth, and every foe the Faithful had encountered had gone down before their battle cry of 'God and His prophet.' This was just the demonstration calculated to convince the consciences of a peo])le who confessed no principle of arbitration but that of force — whose god was an arbitrary Force issuing decrees to men. The Arab pretenders who had dared to set themselves up in opposition to the Prophet were swept utterly out of the remembrance of men. Jews, Christians, and Fire-worshippers, it was evident, had been created by the Merciful and the Compassionate to be the bondmen and the tributaries of the Faithful. The grain of mustard seed had become a majestic tree ; the hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs were hke the goodly cedar trees. Henceforth, in consequence, there was no question of the verity of Islam, nor of the crush- ing power that dwelt in the confession of the Unity. But stronger to divide and rend asunder than the new creed was to unite, were the old deep-rooted and long-enduring family jealousies of the Arabs, the old tribal feuds which had been stilled for the time only l)y the brilliant prospect of plundering a world. The moment the tide of conquest Avas stayed they reasserted themselves in all their pristine vigour. The posterity of the great Kossay had divided into h2 100 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. iv. two branches, known from their progenitors as the Ha- shimites and the Ommayas. Many years before the birth of the Prophet, a quarrel had broken out between Hashim and Ommaya, which had resulted in the expulsion of the latter from Mekka. The feeling of unity which binds an Arab family together is hard for our Western minds to realise. Time is powerless to lessen its intensity. The loves and hatreds, the passions and emulations which coloured the lives of its first progenitors, are wrought, as it were, into the texture of the lives of all succeeding generations. Their hearts thrill with pleasure or pain over the old themes ; their swords are ever ready to shed blood in the old long-past quarrels ; and thus the recol- lection of the feud between Hashim and Ommaya had never ceased to rankle in the minds of their descendants. They had always remained bitter enemies. The Prophet was a lineal descendant of Hashim ; and his ablest and most active enemy in Mekka had been Abou Sofyan, the grandson of Ommaya. Abou Sofyan had commanded the Kuraish at the battle of Ohod ; it was owing to his personal exertions that the great army of the Confederates had been formed which besieged Medina for a fortnight ; and he had even attempted to procure the murder of the Prophet. Muhammad, on his side, deemed him an enemy so formidable that he sent an emissary to Mekka to poison him ; but the attempt was unsuccessful. Not less exe- crable to the devout Moslem was Hind, the wife of Abou Sofyan. Her father, her uncle, and her brother had fallen at the battle of Bedr, beneath the swords of Ali, the nephew, and Hamza, the uncle of the Prophet, Hind swore to be revenged. There was at Mekka an Abys- A.D. G4o. TTTE HOUSE OF OMALWA. 101 sinian slave, named Wahshi, a very brave and able war- rior, and skilled in the use of the javelin, after the manner of the Abyssinians. On the march to Ohod, Hind, who accompanied the Kuraishite army, promised Wahshi that if he slew Hamza she would give him all the jewels on her person. Wahshi bided his time, and in the thick of the battle transfixed Hamza with his javelin, flung from l^ehind a rock. Hind, in savage glee, tore off her ear- rings and her bracelets, and flung them to tlie Abyssinian slave. But her thirst for revenge was not satiated by the simple death of her enemy ; and when the field was won she caused the bodies of the fiillen Moslems to be savagely mutilated ; she made a necklace of their ears and noses ; and the corpse of Hamza she caused to be cut open, and, tearing out the heart, rent it Avith her teeth. Such acts it was hard to foreiive ; and when the Prophet made his triumphant march to Mekka he ex- cluded both Abou Sofyan and his wife from the amnesty granted to the Kuraish. They were doomed to deatli. But on the day before the entry of the Prophet into the Holy City, Abou Sofyan entered the Moslem camp under the safe conduct of Abbas, the uncle of the Prophet, and ])rofessed his faith in the mission of Muhammad. This the Prophet accepted, and ])ardoned him and his wife. He knew lie could count upon the submission of the Kuraish when their leading man had taken the oath of allegiance, while he understood his countrymen too Avell not to be aware that the blood of Abou Sofyan would create a spirit of division and a thirst for revenge which the new creed Av^as impotent to remove or satisfy. On their side the conversion of Abou Sofyan, his 102 Ti^LA:\[ UN'DER THE ARABS. chap. iv. relatives and friends, had been simply an act of necessity, Tlaey had resisted the new creed as long as they could ; they accepted it when the alternative of submission or death was no longer to be evaded. How utterly their hearts were estranged from the words which they con- strained their lips to utter was exhibited a few weeks after the capture of Mekka. A contingent of the Kuraish, under command of Abou Sofyan, accompanied the Mu- Iiammadan army, and was present at the battle of llonain. In this engagement the Faithful were at first driven back in utter confusion, and the men of Mekka could not refrain from loud expressions of delight at the spectacle of their overthrow. The Prophet, however, closed his eyes to what he did not wish to see. If liis doctiines were incapable of penetrating their stubborn Iiearts, he trusted that the hopes of plunder to be gained under his banner would mollify the rocky soil, and so prepare it for the reception of Islam. Hence he allotted a portion of the booty acquired, not merely as though the men of Mekka had fought witli the same single-minded devotion as the converts of an earlier day, but in sucli excess that his mijust profusion well-nigh caused a mutiny among the Ansars of Medina. They were with difficulty restrained from deserting the standard of the Prophet, and returning in a body to their homes. This open rup- ture was, it is true, averted, but the seeds of party divi- sions were then sown, to spring up a plentiful harvest hereafter. On the one side were ranged the ' companions of the Prophet ' and the people of Medina ; on the other the descendants of Ommaya and the Kuraisli. During the reigns of Abou Bekr and Omar, the commanding A.D. G46. THE KHALIF OTHMAN. 103 character of the latter — who so long as he lived was the supreme spirit in Islam — held tlie spirit of internal feud in stern check. But witli the accession of the third khalif, Othman ibn AfTan, commenced a ]:)eriod of decline. He had been one of the first converts to Islam, and the only member of the family of Oinmaya who had volun- tarily l)ecome a follower of Muhammad. He was a man of gentle and amiable character, affectionate and liberal to excess, but weak in will, and under the dominion of favourites. Under his rule the com])anions of the Prophet and the great soldiers who had won distinction on the path of God under his two predecessors, were one by one removed from the places of trust and command which were then bestowed upon members of his own family. The khalif Omar had greatly feared lest the contact Avith Persian luxury should soften the iron hearts of the soldiers of God, and had attem]:)ted to enforce upon all governors of provinces and officials in higli position the same austere simplicity of life wliich he practised himself. Despite his endeavours, howe\er, even during his reign, the rulers of tlie more distant provinces had degenerated considerably from the rude life of the desert. They had become infected more or less with ' Khosroism,' as the Arabs termed it, after the official designation of the Persian monarchs. Under the feebler sway of Othman, these tendencies developed unrestrained. The khalif himself led the way. He built for himself a magnificent palace of vast extent at Medina, and many of the com])anions of the Prophet imitated his example. They had not only large suras of money stored up in these palaces, and hundreds of slaves, but were rich in flocks and herds, and 104 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. iv. troops of camels, and farms and springs. All this wealtli had been acquired in actual war — the plunder of rich temples, the spoils of the palaces of emperors, kings, and nobles. It was, as we should say, stored-up capital lying idle, and its appropriation by the invading Arabs had inflicted httle, if any, distress on the great mass of the population of those countries where it had been seized. Such hoards were no longer in existence when the House of Ommaya entered into the possession of power ; but they brought with them an equally earnest desire to become rich at the cost of those they had been appointed to rule. One of them, indeed, to the profound disgust of the Faithful, had been heard to say in his insolent fashion that the hard- won conquests of Islam were a garden for the exclusive use and profit of this one family. Othman, as if bent upon self-destruction, chose for his most lavish favours the men whose antecedents were the most distasteful to the Faithful. Muawia, the son of Abou Sofyan, ruled Syria and Palestine as an independent sovereign in all but name. Merwan ibn Hakem, who had been banished by the Propliet himself from Mekka and Medina, was recalled by Othman and installed as his chief favourite and confidential adviser. Abd Allah ibn Abou Serh — a man wiio having once been the se- cretary of the Prophet and employed in writing his revelations while at Medina, had apostatised, and, re- turning to Mekka, relapsed into idolatry — was selected by Othman to be governor of Egypt. Walid ibn Okbah, whose ultimate damnation had been authoritatively pro- nounced by the Prophet, was entrusted with the govern- ment of Koufa, where he conducted himself in a manner \ A.D. C46. THE HOUSE OF OM^LiYA. lOo that scandalised the Faithful. He appeared in the mosque at the time of morning prayer, helpless, from intoxication, falling prostrate on the ground as he attempted to per- form the duties of an Imam, or leader of the prayer ; and when the bystanders hurried up to assist him to his feet, shocked them by demanding more wine, in a husky and stammering? voice. He was also accused of havins; brought into the great mosque, at a time when the Faithful were assembled there, a Jewish magician, who performed a number of profane miracles, such as cutting off the head of a bystander and putting it on again without apparent injury to the person operated upon ; producing the phan- tom of a gigantic donkey, down the throat of which he disappeared, to emerge again at the tail before the aston- ished eyes of the spectators. A Moslem who stood by, transported with indignation at this manifestation of Satanic power, drew his sword and slew the sorcerer on the spot ; Avhereupon Walid caused this eminently devout and zealous follower of the Prophet to be put to death as a murderer. Such were the men whom Othman ibn Affan selected as his advisers and lieutenants. They fastened upon their ]:)rovinces like famished leeches, heaping up Avealth by means of pitiless extortion. Complaints came flowing in to Medina from all parts of Islam. But Othman was in the hands of certain favourites, who led him as they pleased, and the complainants were dismissed with no reply but hard words. The orthodoxy of Othman him- self was deeply suspected. He iiad, it is true, done one thing which procured for him the unqualified applause of the Faithful. This was the destruction of the Ghotimddn, 100 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. iv. a. superb palace in Yemen, which was supposed to be mthout equal in the world. Some of tlie Faithful who had visited it pronounced it to be superior in magnificence to the temple at Mekka. Otliman accordingly destroyed it, to the great satisfaction of all true believers ; and there is no Arabic chronicle in which stress is not laid upon tlie exceedingly meritorious character of this proceeding. But the khalif had also ventured upon an imiovation in the ceremonies of the pilgrimage which awakened a pro- found fear and suspicion in the minds of the Faithfid. In the recitation of a certain prayer, the Prophet, the khalifs Abou Bekr and Omar, had made only two prostrations. To the utter consternation of tlie orthodox world, the khalif Othman made four. This alarming piece of heresy filled the cup of discontent till it overflowed. The com- [)anions of the Prophet and the doctors of the law waited in a body upon the khalif. They bade him remember that they had taken the oath of allegiance to him on the understanding that he Avould walk rigorously in the foot- steps of the Pro])het and the two fii'st khalifs. Four ])rostrations in place of two might in itself be a small matter, but it was the introduction of the thin end of the wedge ; if the smallest departure were permitted from the practices of the primitive church, it was impossible to foresee whither the spirit of innovation would lead the generations who came after them. Any perseverance, therefore, in these practices would result in the deposition of Othman as one who had fallen away from the right path. While Othman thus alienated from him the com- panions of the Prophet, the exactions of his lieutenants A.D. 056. THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST OTHMAN. 107 engendered a spirit of bitter MTatli in the provinces. A "wide-spread conspiracy was formed, including ^vitllin its meshes the province of Egjrpt and tlie cities of Koiifa and Basra. From these three quarters some twelve thousand men converged simultaneously upon Medina to lay their griefs before the klialif, and, in the event of a repulse, to slay him. Their numbers were greatly swelled by the disaffected of that city. Muhammad, a son of the khalif Abou Bekr, placed himself at their head. At this crisis Othman had recourse to the intervention of Ali, whose advice he had hitherto consistently set at nought. Ali induced the conspirators to I'eturn to their homes by giving them a pledge that their grievances shoidd be redressed, but on their way back the Egyptians inter- cepted a slave bearing a missive to the governor of Egypt, Avritten in the handwriting of Merwan ibn Hakem, and stamped with the seal of the khalif, which ordered that officer either to put them all to death, or, by cutting oft their hands and feet, to deprive them of the power again to come to Medina and pester the khalif with their grievances. In high wrath the cons])irators returned upon their footsteps. Expresses were sent off to overtake the parties who were retm^ning to Koufa and Basra, to inform them of the treachery of the khalif, and summon them back to Medina. The whole of the twelve thousand were speedily re-encamped in the ^^cinity of the city. Othman, when he heard of the discovery which had caused their return denied all knowledge of the letter, and refused to give up Merwan ibn Hakem, as the cons])irators demanded. Ali declined to be a<]^ain the intercessor between the khalif 108 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. cn.vr. iv. and his angry subjects. He considered that the inter- cepted letter showed that Othman did not scruple to fasten upon Ali the reproach of being false to his word, in order to maintain in their posts his favourites of the House of Ommaya, and rid himself from the clamours of those whom they oppressed. The other companions of the Prophet held aloof in sullen indifference. Othman, in despair, sent off expresses to Syria, to Egypt, to Irak, summoning the lieutenants of tliose provinces to march with all speed to his assistance. The conspirators felt that they must act promptly if they did not desire to l^e destroyed. They stormed the palace of the khalif Mu- hammad, the son of Abou Bekr, was the first to enter the apartment where the aged klialif sat, reading the Koran. He had a dagger in one hand, and, seizing the old man by the beard, he cried : ' Son of Affan ! what help to you now are Abdallah, the apostate ; Merwan, the banished ; and Muawia the accursed ? ' He was about to strike, when the khalif, fixing on him a calm, reproachful eye, replied : ' My son, if thy father Abou Bekr were alive, he would not be pleased to see my white beard in thy hand.' The young man, struck with sudden remorse, released the khalif and went out. The other conspirators were checked by no such tender recollections. The khalif fell beneath their knives and swords ; his life-blood poured over the Koran he read, and dyed this verse — ' Verily, God is suffi- cient for you ; He understands and knows all.' One of his wives, who was near him when he fell, had her hand cut off by a chance blow in the confusion. The conspira- tors refused to permit the murdered man to be buried in the graveyard of the Faithful, and a toml3 was dug for him in the ancient cemetery of the Jews. A. I). G50. THE ACCESSION OF ALL 109 Troops from Syria, Egyi^t, and Irak were only tliree days' niarcli from Medina when they received the intelli- gence of the murder of Otlmian. They turned back at once, and Ali, tlie cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, received the homage of the people of Medina as the spiritual head of Islam. Ali is the Bayard of Islam — a soldier v/ithout fear and without reproach. But he lacked the qualities of a states- man, and these were the qualities he needed most sorely at the moment of his accession. The provinces were in the possession of liis hereditary enemies, the House of Om- maya. These governors hated him as the head of the Hashimites, as well as the chief of a party which desired to expel them from office. Some of the friends of Ali earnestly counselled him to piu'sue a tem])orising policy with these provincial governors. They were, it was urged, worldly-minded men, and jH'ovided they continued to receive the emoluments of office, would not hesitate to transfer their allegiance from Othman to Ali. When Ali was secure in his seat, when his authority was established and confirmed, he might tlien remove them without danger to himself or the public peace. But there was too much of the wisdom of the serpent in this advice to commend it to the simple rectitude of Ali. The iniquities of these governors had, he said, been the cause of the death of his ])redecessor ; how could he then, as a just ruler, retain tliem in their posts? So the decree went forth from Medina deposing them one and all. But the family of Ommaya was headed by a man too powerful, able, and unscrupulous to submit tamely to a decree of deposition. This was Muawia, tlie son of Abou Sofyan, and the governor of Syria. 110 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. ciiap. iv. He was tlie ablest man of his time, a skilful general and an astute politician. Courteous and accessible to all, thoroughly understanding the persuasive power of libe- rality, and gifted with eloquence and wit, he had attached his Syrian Ai^abs to his person with a truly remarkable enthusiasm. The ignorance of these Syrian Moslems regarding the creed they professed is a kind of standing joke with Muhammadan historians and divines. Some of them thought Muhammad himself to be God ; others that Ali was a brigand who had risen to power in those dis- turbed times. But accuracy on such trifling matters they cared not for. It was sufficient for them to know that their beloved governor demanded their aid against an enemy. Their swords and their lives were at his disposal. Muawia knew he could reckon upon their unquestioning obedience. He accordingly denounced Ali as the mur- derer of Othman, and declared that he would not rest until he had avenged the blood of the slaughtered khalif A slave of Othman had escaped to Damascus, bearing with hiui the bloody shirt of his master, and the hand of his wife, which had been cut off. Every Friday, when the people were assembled for prayer, the shirt and the hand were exhibited to their gaze. The whole assembly sobbed and wept at the harrowing spectacle. Thirty thousand of the bravest warriors in Syria bouud themselves by an oath to drink no fresh water nor wash their bodies until they had avenged the murder of Othman. A messenger was sent to Medina to commiuiicate this resolve to Ali. He obtained a guarantee of security before he dared to deliver his message. 'Thirty thousand men,' he then said, ' are assembled round the shirt of Othman, whose A.i.. 050. THE SITUATION OF ALL 111 cheeks and whose beards have never been dry from tears, and whose eyes have never ceased from wee2)ing blood since the hour of that prmce's atrocious murder. They have drawn their swords witli a solemn pledge never to return them to the scabbard, nor cease fi'om mourning until they have extirpated all concerned in that detested action. This sentiment they have left as a solemn bequest to their descendants ; and the earliest principle that mothers instil into the minds of their infants is to revenge the blood of Othman to the last extremity.' All's peculiar position gave a plausibility to the charge made against him. He had been elected the Iman of Islam on the very spot where his predecessor had been murdered, and his sworn adherents were the men who had either actively participated in that murder, or by their apathy had virtually connived at it. When, there- fore, Muawia and his party demanded that Ali should demonstrate his innocence from the crime of shedding the blood of the lieutenant of God by the prompt punishment of those who were undoubtedly guilty of it, they knew they demanded that which it was impossible for Ali to execute, but which, none the less, would fasten upon him the suspicion at least of the guilt with which they charged him. Nothing could be fairer, on the surface, than the demands of Muawia. ' Punish the mm*- derers of Othman, and we lower the flag of rebellion and acknowledge your authority.' Only in withholding his allegiance until that punishment was inflicted, no one knew better than Muawia that he required an impossibility. This dexterous policy, however, had not merely the effect of throwing a cloud over the fair fame of Ali, but of 112 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. iv. attacliiug to the cause of Muawia a man, without whose cunning and fertihty of resource his machinations would not, in all probability, have terminated in success. This was Amrou ibn Al-As, the conqueror of Egypt. He had been deprived of the governorship of that province by Othman, and had laboured assiduously, but in secret, to embitter the conspirators against the khalif. In so doing he was actuated partly by a desire for revenge, but more so by simple ambition. His was a character which re- joiced in troublous times, as giving freer scope and em- ployment for his abilities ; and he doubted not that the troubles which would certainly follow upon the murder of Othman would give his restless spirit the occupation ]ic pined for in vain, in his compulsory inaction at Medina. He had hesitated for a while which side to espouse, but it did not require much time to convince him that the tortuous paths in which he delighted to tread were alien to the simple and candid mind of Ali. When intelhgence reached him of the effect Muawia was producing in Damascus by his exhibition of the bloody shirt of Othman, Amrou broke out in an exclamation of dehght, as of one who recognised a kindred spirit, and repaired to Syria without loss of time. Between these two arch-conspirators there was no attempt to conceal the real character of their cause, under a veil of specious pretences. Amrou said, candidly enough, that in espousing the cause of Muawia in preference to that of Ali, he had chosen the good of this world rather than the rewards of the next, and that he must be paid accordingly. He demanded the government of Egypt in perpetuity, with the revenues of that rich province entirely at his disposal. Muawia joyfully acceded to these terms. A.D. OoG. ' THE MOTHER OF THE FAITHFUL.' 113 But a nearer and more pressing danger confronted Ali tlian even the storm wliicli had gathered in Syria. Ayeslia, the fovonrite wife of the Prophet, resided in Mekka. She had long cherished a hatred of Ah. Years before, during the hfetime of the Propliet, the gossip of Medina had connected, in a scandalous manner, the name of Ayesha v/itli that of a handsome young Muham- madan called Safwan. The Prophet himself had sus- pected his young wife, until assured of her innocence by the angel Gabriel. In his trouble he had asked Ali what he advised him to do. Ali, who was not in love with Ayesha, thought the matter a very triflino- one. ' Apostle of God ! ' he is reported to have said, ' why distress yourself ; there are many women in the world ; if you suspect this one, divorce her, and choose another.' Ayesha never forgot or forgave these slighting words ; and the present situation of Ali, with but few friends beside him, and girt by multitudes of enemies, seemed to open out the occasion for that revenge for which she had waited so long. She denounced him as the murderer of Othman, and declared it to be a duty on the part of the Faithful to refuse hmi obedience. Ayesha's hostihty was a danger more formidable than the craft of Amrou and Muawia combined. As ' the Mother of the Faithful,' she occupied an imique position in the Muhammadan world. Her long and intimate relations with the Prophet were held to ha\'e given her a special understandhig of the mind of Muhammad ; she was the chief source whence the Doctors of the Law drew those ' sayings ' of the Apostle of God which, under the title of ' Traditions,' are held of equal authority with the Koran itself ; and I 1^4 ISLAM UNDER THE AEABS. cnAr, ir. lier judgment upon all disputed questions was received everywhere witli reverence, because her intellect had heen formed and educated by years of intercourse with the Prophet. Two of the most distinguished of tlie ' companions of the Prophet ' allied themselves with her. These were Talha arid Zobair. They had been amongst the first converts to Islam ; and the Prophet had named them as predestined to enter Paradise. Talha was covered with wounds re- ceived at the battle of Ohod. ' Whosoever,' the Prophet had said, ' wishes to see a living martyr, let him look at Talha.' They had, both of them, fomented the angry feehnf^s which led to the murder of Otimian, in hope of the khalifate devolving upon themselves ; and the bitter- ness of disappointed ambition now drove them into rebel- lion against their old friend and conn\ade. They were men of great wealth, and adventurers in consequence flocked readily to their standards. The triumvirate marched to Basra, and after some desultory fighting ob- tained possession of that city. Their army speedily swelled, according to the chroniclers, to 30,000 or 40,000 men.^ Put Ah, though deficient in political ability, was un- equalled as a soldier. The men who had chosen him khalif were bound to his cause, not less by its justice than by the imperious instinct of self-preservation. They foucfht with their lives in their hands ; and the defeat of 1 I give numbers simply as I find them in the authorities ; but I may as well say, once for all, that in Oriental histories statistics of every kind are simply worthless, especially those which have regard to the strength of armies in the field, and the killed and wounded in an engagement. They are exaggerated beyond the power of the most elastic credence to accept. A.D. 056. THE 'BATTLE OF THE CAMEL.' Ho Ali involved their own immediate destruction. The city of Koufa, at this moment, also pronounced in his favour; and at the head of 30,000 men he marched ropidly against the insurgents, who had mustered their forces near Basra. Before eno'afj-ino;, he made a last attempt to persuade them to lay down their arms without aflbrdino; to the infidels the delio;ht of seeinf:f Moslem shed the blood of Moslem. He chose as his envoy to carry this message of peace his cousin, Abdallah ibn Abbas. ' Do not,' he said, ' have an interview with Talha ; for you will find him headstrong as the bull which twists up its nose ; he will mount an unruly camel, and say it is perfectly broken ; but meet Zubair, for he is of a more tractable disposition.' These negotiations were fruitless, and nothing now was left but to decide their quarrel by the dread arbitrament of the sword. In the terrible ' Battle of the Camel ' (so called because Ayesha, in a litter, strapped on the back of a camel, was present duiing the engagement) 17,000 Arabs are said to have fallen ; Talha and Zobair were both killed ; and Ayesha became a prisoner in the hands of Ali. He treated her with the utmost forbearance and courtesy, and caused her to be escorted to Mekka. This signal victory made Ali the undisputed sovereign of Irak, Egypt, Arabia, Ears, and Khorasan. The possession of Koufa and Basra did not, however, strengthen the cause of Ali so much as would appear at first sidit. It rather weakened it. It swelled the num- bers of his army, it is true, but it introduced into his ranks a number of theological liinatics, ever ready to quarrel on the dividing of a hair in matters of doctrine, and absolutely I 2 110 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. iv. convinced of their own infallibility, and the everlasting damnation of everybody who differed, ever so slightly, in opinion from themselves. The type of character is a famihar one in Christendom, as w^^ll as in Islam. They fought for their creed, not for Ali ; and the instant any divergence became apparent between that creed and the leader they had chosen, their swords turned against Ali, with as keen a desire for his heart's blood as for that of Muawia. And this, in the end, was what actually occurred. Ali and Muawia met at Siffin, a broad plain extend- ing along the banks of the Euphrates. The clironicler states that 80,000 men were ranged on ehher side. For more than a month fierce skirmishes were fought almost daily, until at length Ali forced on a general engagement. The Shia writers love to dwell upon the incidents of this great day, and have depicted with great minuteness the bearing and heroic acts of Ali. ' I saw,' Ibn Abbas is reported to have said, ' Ali before this day's battle ; he was attired in a white turban ; his eyes flashed like two jets of flame ; he rode along the lines of the different tribes, exciting their ardour and their courage. "Moslems," he cried, " let yoin^ shouts strike despair in the hearts of the enemy ; let your sabres dazzle their eyes, as they flash from their scabbards, and your looks freeze them with terror." ' The action rapidly became general. The press was so close that the bows were flung away as use- less, and men fought sabre to sabre. The sun gradually mounted to the zenith, and then gradually disappeared in the west, and still the conflict raged unceasingly. The clear stars of an Oriental sky shone all the night through A.D. G57. THE BATTLE OF STFFIN. 117 upon the same stormy scene. The battle songs of the Arabs mingled with the crash of breaking lances and the noises of the battle. The morning sun rising, pierced the clouds of dust, and revealed the battlefield strewn thickly with the wounded and the dead. The times of prayer passed unheeded. AH was to be seen wherever the battle was hottest. Every time he struck a blow he shouted, ' God is great ; ' and every blow he struck sent an infidel to Hell. Five hundred men are said to have fallen beneath his single sabre. ' Never,' said Muawia, as he watched the havoc he wrought in the ranks of his army, * was there a man who crossed swords with Ali and returned alive from the encounter.' The valour of Ali was brilliantly seconded by that of his favourite lieutenant — Malek al Ash tar — the Marshal JSTey of the Arabian army. A tremendous charge of Malek at last forced a wing of the Syrian troops to give ground. Gradually the whole line was forced back ; the retreat became a rout. Muawia, thinking all was lost, was mounting his horse to fly ; when a device of Ainrou destroyed the hopes of Ali at the very moment of success. He knew the fanatical character of the troops that fol- lowed Ali ; and he ordered a number of SjTian soldiers to advance towards their line, bearing copies of the Koran fixed to the head of their lances. ' Let the blood of the Faithfnl cease to flow,' shouted the Koran bearers as they got within hearing ; ' if the Syrian army be destroyed, who will defend the frontier against the Greeks ? If the army of Irak be destroyed, who will defend the frontier against the Turks and Persians? Let the Book of God decide between us.' The eflect was macjical. The mill' 118 ISLAM UNDER THE APtABS. chap. iv. tary theologians of Ali's army, thoiigli they loved fighting much, liked a theological disputation still better. Their swords dropped to their sides. ' God is great,' they shouted ; ' we must all submit to the arbitrament of His Holy Book.' It was in vain for Ali to entreat and pro- test— to assure them that neither Amrou nor Muawia cared anything for the arbitrament of the Sacred Book, but only to deliver themselves from the jaws of death. His soldiers turned iiei'cely upon him, their drawn swords flashing in his face. ' If he did not,' they cried, ' recall Malek al Ashtar and stop the battle, they would inflict on him the punishment which Jiad fallen upon Othman,' Ali retired to his tent, with rage and despair in his heart, leaving the fanatics he commanded to make what terms they pleased. It v/as then arranged that the claims of Ali and Muawia should be submitted to the decision of two arbitrators — one to be chosen by each army. This arrangement was barely completed before a spirit of con- troversy took such violent possession of Ali's troops, and the lawfulness of this arbitration became the subject of such hot discussion, that he had to march in all haste to Ivoufli, in order to stay tlie controversialists from slaughtering each other in the presence of their Syrian antagonists. At Ivoufa 12,000 of his men declared him to be a heretic, and renounced their allegiance. They were those who had been most eager for arbitration, most clamorous for a suspension of hostilities, in order that the disjDute might be argued out according to the principles laid down in the Koran. They now found that to do this was worthy of hell fire ; that it was the business of the true Moslem to slay without mercy every one who advo- A.D. Go7. THE ' separatists; llO catcd arbitration. But with the magnificent self-rightcous- ness of rehgious bigotry, instead of turning their Avrath upon themselve:-, they poured it upon tlie hapless Ali. They denounced him as one wlio had fallen into mortal sin, and incurred the penalty of hell lire. It was from an enervation of spirit engendered by misfortune that he had consented to submit to liuman arbitrators a cause v/hich should have been submitted to the judgment of God alone upon a battle-held. Never would they march under tlie banner of such a heretic as tliis, or draw a svv^ord in his defence. Not that Muawia, any more than Ah, was an Imam whom a true Moslem could recognise as such. They were both lieretics ; and it was lawful, and indeed obligatory, to slay them, if an occasion offered for doing so. For themselves, they woidd choose an Imam of their own, and declare war to the death against Ali. Ali, hov^- ever, with that tender-hearted repugnance to shed the blood of men of his own creed whicli marked his career through life, forebore to attack them ; and even succeeded in per- suading them to await peacefully the issue of the arbitra- tion. These men were the originators of the sect known as ' Kharegites,' or Separatists, of whose acts I shall have to give some account in a subsequent chapter. The fortunes of Ali were doomed never to recover the blow given them at Siffin. The clouds gathered round him thicker and blacker ; and his Hfe, like a brief and bitter winter's day, went narrowing down and darkening to a close. The bigots who had compelled him to j^hcallie his sword at the moment of victory, forced upon him an arbitrator — a companion of the Prophet it is true— but a man vain, foolish and altogether incapal^lo of coping with 120 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chip. iv. the astute and iiiiscrupuloiis Amroii, wlio acted as tlie re- presentative of MiioAvia. By a device of the latter, the re- presentative of Ali ^vas tricked into announcing solemnly the deposition of Ali, as his dehberate judgment. But the trickery was too manifest to deceive anyone, and Ali refused to accept the decision as valid. The war recom- menced. The name of Muawia was regularly cursed on all occasions of public prayer from all the pulj^its of Irak ; the name of Ali from all the pulpits of Syria. But neither the ability nor the resources of Ali were equal to those of his rival. Invincible in battle, disinterested, merciful and generous, there must have been some radical weakness in the character of Ali which rendered him incapable of attaching his subjects to his person. The greater part of the ' companions of the Prophet,' with a foreboding of what would happen, abandoned him as rats do a sinking vessel, and took the oath of allegiance to his rival ; the Kharegites broke into war against him ; the people of Ii'ak remained inert and apathetic to all his entreaties to march with him into Syria. The death of his brilliant lieutenant — Malek al Ashtar — cruelly poisoned by an emissary of Muawia, gave the mortal blow to his cause. Egypt, Mekka, and Medina were gradually occupied by Syrian troops, and administered in the name of Muawia. Ali, almost broken-hearted, withdrew into seclusion from the sight and commerce of men ; and in the month of Eamadhan, a.ii. 40, his sad and chequered hfe was brought to an end by the knife of a Kharegite assassin. With him perished the truest-hearted and best Moslem of whom Muhammadan history has preserved the remembrance. Almost immediately after the death of his father. A.u. OGl. THE SONS OF ALL IL'l All's eldest son, Hasan, made a formal renunciation of his claims, and took the oath of allegiance to Muawia. Muawia thus became the undisputed head of Islam. But anxious to bequeath the position to his son Yezid, he resolved to make away with Hasan ; and nine years after the murder of his father, that unfortunate prince followed him to the grave. He died a victim to poison, adminis- tered by his wife at the instigation of Muawia, who per- suaded her to the crime, by a promise that she should then become the wife of his son Yezid. On the woman claiming the fulfilment of this promise, he put her to death, as the murderess of the grandson of the Prophet. Two years after the death of his brotlier. All's second son, Hosain, crowned the misfortunes of his fomily by a bloody death on the plain of Kerbela on the 10th day of Mohurrum, a.h. 61. This is the memorable ' Martyrdom of Hosain ' — by reason of its consequences, the most im- portant event in the history of the Muhammadan Avorld, after the mission of the Prophet himself, and as sucli, requiring to be recorded in detail. Ah had fallen in the city of Koufa. Tliis place was the hotbed of Muhammadan bigotry. It was the favourite home of Koran readers, doctors of the law, disputants, and talkers of all kinds. The inter])retation of the Koran, the rig;hts of succession to the Imamate, all the multitudinous and bewilderint!; refinements of Muhammadan theolou'v, are in great measiu'e due to the endless controversies of which Koufa was the theatre. The people breathed an atmosphere charged with religious fimaticism. Fierce gusts of theological controversy drove them this way and that, hke a shifting gale which carries before it the sands 122 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. cnAP. iv. of a desert. Eager, fierce, and impetuous, the people of Koufa were utterly wanting in perseverance and steadi- ness. They knew not their own minds from day to day. One moment ardent as fire for some cause or person, the next they were as cold as ice and indifferent as the dead. The fiercest conflicts that shook the Muhammadan world during these, the earliest, years of its history, raged round Koufa. The annals of that city are a series of narratives of causes taken up without calculation of consequences, and abandoned v\^ith the same thoughtless precipitation ; of aspirants after power lured on by specious promises and then basely abandoned to their doom ; of the people themselves rushing madly into excesses, to be savagely slaughtered back into a state of quiescence. The crafty and able Muawia had died in the year 60, and was succeeded by his son Yezid. Before his succes- sion, Yezid had deeply scandalised the Faithful. He drank wine openly ; he was passionately fond of dogs, falcons, and other unclean animals. It was told of him that on one occasion intelligence was brought to him of the destruction of a Moslem army as he sat feasting with his friends. The young man turned indolently to a favourite slave jzirl, who rechned beside him, and chanted these verses : What care I thougli death may have smitten our troops in the land of Roum, When, softly reclined upon ciishions, beside me is Oinm Kolthoum. Under this genial despot, a number of practices came into vogue which were utterly intolerable to the theolo- gians of Koufa. The people of Damascus drank wine in the streets in humble imitation of their spiritual head. They, A.D. 030. YEZID, THE SON OF MUAWIA. ]23 like him, passed their time with singing girls and musical professors. The sounds of musical instruments were con- stantly heard in the streets, and yet no one ever thought of stopping their ears, notwithstanding a highly authentic tradition which related that the Prophet did so when, on a certain occasion, he chanced to hear the profane sound of a shepherd's pipe. Finally, the votaries of other creeds, and the creeds themselves, were treated and spoken of by Yezid with a degree of indulgence hateful to the spirit whicli dictated the ninth Sura of the Koran, and which animated tlie people of Koufo. For this and otlier cogent reasons Koufa determined to revolt against Yezid.i "" Hosain, the son of Ah, was residing at Mekka. He had refused to take the oath of allegiance to Yezid. A messenger was sent to him from Koufo, entreating him to ^ I^ruliammadan historians represent Yezid as an Atheist ; but llic trutli really is that he was a Sufi, who, believing in the presence o£ God everywhere throughout the universe, held that the rites and cere- monies whereby men acknowledged that presence were of very small importance. One way was as good as another. In Ibn Khallikan's 'Biographical Dictionary' there is preserved a fragment of hisver>cs, couched in that mystical and allegorical strain Avhereby the Sufis were wont to express their yearning for unity with the Deity. It is itnpor- taut, as showing at what an early date the contact with Christian and Persian thought commenced to undermine the doctrines of the Koran. The passage runs as follows : — ' Separated from Lailn, I longed for a glimpse of her figure, thinking that the flame which raged within my bosom would be calmed at her aspect ; but the females of the tribe said : ' You hope to sec the charms of Laila ! die of the lingering malady of hope ! How couldst thou look on Laila, whilst the eyes which you cast on other women are not yet purified by tears ? How can you hope to enjoy her discourse fcinco your ears have hearkened to the voice of strangers ? 0, Laila I thon art too noble to be seen ! he only can see thee Avhose heart is humble and submissive.' 124 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. cnAr. iv. come to that city. Tlie whole population, he was assured, were eagur to espouse his cause, and pronounce the deposition of the Bani Ominaya. At first Hosain was distrustful of these advances, but such a number of invitations kept pouring in, with long lists of the chief men of the city, all of whom had taken a solemn oath to die in his defence, that he ultimately resolved to make the venture. His friends vainly counselled him not to do so. They urged that if the people of Koufa were so bitter against Yezid as they affirmed themselves to be, they could revolt without him being actually in their midst. When Hosain turned a deaf ear to these soli- citations, they entreated him at least to go alone. But here also they failed. Hosain started on his perilous ex- pedition, accompanied by all his wives, his brothers, and his children, and escorted by forty horsemen and 100 foot soldiers. Yezid, in the meanwhile, had received intelligence of what w^as intended, and taken mea- sures accordingly. The governor of Basra — Obaidallah ibn Ziyad — was a man of stern resolution, and troubled with no theological sensitiveness. He was oi'dered to proceed in all haste to Koufa, hold that city in check, and at the same time send out a strong force to intercept Hosain. The alternative was to be given him of sub- mission or death. These measures succeeded perfectly. Hosain had advanced by forced marches as far as the plain of Kerbela, when he found his route bnrred by a force of 3,000 men. The people of Koufa, forgetful of their promises — as cold now as they had been hot and devoted— stirred not hand nor foot to assist him. He was offered the alternative to yield liimself up to A.D. GSO. 'THE MARTYRDOM OF HOSAIX.' 125 Obaiclallah or die in battle. lie chose tlie latter. ' We are,' he said to his followers, ' few in number, and the enemy is in force. I am resolved to die. But yon — I release you from j^our oath of allegiance ; let all those who wish to do so, leave me.' ' 0 ! son of the Apostle of God ! ' was the reply ; ' what excuse should we give to thy grandfather, on the day of Eesurrection, did we abandon his son to the hands of his enemies ? No ; we have devoted our lives to you.' Before, however, the battle could join, Hourr ibn Yezid, an Arab of the tribe of Temim, spurred forth from the ranks of the enemy, and presented himself before Hosain, blessing him and the Prophet. ' Wherefore come you here ? ' asked the son of Ali. ' I come,' replied Hourr, ' to sacrifice my life for thee. I desire to fight to the death against thy enemies.' ' May God,' replied Hosain, ' grant to you a happy martyrdom ; you will enter Paradise as a free man.' Then the battle joined. One by one the little band that defended the grandson of the Prophet fell beneath the swords of the enemy. They had forbidden Hosain to draw sword or defend himself, until the last of them had fallen. There remained at last only Hosain and his five brothers. The five flung themselves in a body upon the enemy, were surrounded and cut down. Then the horse of Hosain fell to the earth, struck by an arrow. Hosain extricated himself. It was tlie hour of afternoon prayer. Tormented by thirst, the grandson of the Pro- phet sat down upon the ground without attempting to defend himself. Several of the enemy approached to kill him, but none dared to strike. They feared to have 120 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. iv. to answer on the day of Eesurrection for the shedding of such sacred blood as his. Ilosain had a child named Abdal- lah, only a year old. He had accompanied his father in this terrible march. Touched by its cries, he took the infant in his arms and wept. At that instant, a shaft from the hos- tile ranks pierced the child's ear, and it expired in his father's arms. Hosain placed the little corpse upon the ground. ' We come from God, and we return to Him ! ' he cried ; ' 0 Lord, give me strength to bear these misfortunes ! ' Then, raising himself, he hastened towards the bank of the Euphrates to drink. Just as he stooped to touch the water, an arrow struck him in his mouth. He returned to liis tent, the blcod pouring from his lips. There his enemies rushed down upon him from all sides. Faint ■witli thirst, and exhausted with wounds, he fought with desperate courage, slaying several of his antagonists. At last he was cut down from behind ; at the same in- stant a lance was thrust through his back and bore him to the o'round ; as the dealer of this last blow withdrew his weapon, the ill-fated son of Ali rolled over a corpse. The head was severed from tlie trunk ; the trunk was trampled under the hoofs of the victors' horses ; and the next morning the women and a surviving infant son were carried a^vay to Koufa. The bodies of Hosain and his followers were left unburied on the spot where they fell. For three days they remained exposed to tlie sun and the night dews, the vultures and the prowling animals of the wmste ; but then the inhabitants of a neighbouring village, struck with horror that the body of a grandson of the Prophet should be thus shamefully abandoned to the unclean beasts of the field, dared the anger of Obai A.D. 680. ' THE MAIITYEDOM OF HOSAIN.' 127 dallali, and interred the body of the martyr and those of his heroic friends. The great schism was now complete. The blood of tlie martyrs became the seed of a new Church. The body of Islam had been torn asnnder, never again to be united ; and 'the murdered Ilosain ' was henceforth a watchword of vengeance which again and again deluged with blood the empire of the khalifs. and ultimately brought it to ruin. The following Fatwa on the (so called) ' Murder of Hosain ' is a curious and favourable specimen of Muhanimadan casviistry : — ' The Imana Abou Hamid al Ghazzali was once consulted on thia subject The questions proposed to him were these : — " Should a person who openly cursed Yezid be considered as a repro- bate, or shovild he be treated with indulgence? Had Yezid the intention of slaying Al Hosain, or was it done in self-defence? Is it permitted to say, God have mercy on him when speaking of Yezid, or is it better to sup- press the prayer ? May the Mufti be rewarded with the Divine favour for dissipating our doubts ! " . . . . His answer was as follows : — " It is absolutely forbidden to curse a Moslem, and he who curses a INIoslem is himself accursed ; the blessed Prophet having said : ' The Moslem is not a curser.^ And how should it be allowable to curse a Moslem Avhen it is not permitted to curse the beasts of the field ? The prohibition from doing so has been transmitted down to us, and, moreover, the dignity of a Moslem is greater than the dignity of the Kaaha, according to the positive declaration of the blessed Prophet. Now, it is certain that Yezid was a Moslem, but it is not certain that he slew Ilosain, or that ho ordered, or consented to his death ; and so long as these circumstances remain undecided it is not allowable to believe that he acted so. Besides, it is forbidden to think ill of a Moslem, since Almighty God has said : ' Be not ready to entertain luifavourable opinions (of another), for sometimes these opinions are a crime;' and the blessed Prophet has declared that the blood, the wealth, .and repu- tation of the Moslem are sacred, and of him no ill should be thought." Moreover, if any person assert that Yezid ordered Hosain's death, or consented to it, he gives thereby an evident proof of his extreme folly ; for were he to endeavour to discover the true circumstances of the death of such great men — viziers and sultans — as perished in his own time; were he to essay to find out who ordered the deed to be committed. 128 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. cnir. iv. Avho consented to it, and who disapproved of it, lie would not suc- ceed ; not even if the murdei* were perpetrated in his neighbourhood and in his presence. How, then, could he pretend to know the particu- lars of a similar occurrence which took place in a distant country and in a bygone age ? And how can he know the truth (of Yezid's con- duct) now that nearly four hundred years have elapsed, and that the crime was committed in a country far remote ? It must be considered, also, that this event Avas taken up by party-spirit, and that (false) state- ments respecting it abounded on all sides. The true circumstances of it cannot therefore be knowai ; and such being the case, it is incumbent on us to thiidc well of every IMoslem who can possibly deserve it. To this we shall add some ol:iservations. Suppose that there be positive proof of one Moslem having murdered another, the doctrine of the orthodox juris consults is that the murderer is not an infidel, because the act itself is not an act of infidelity, but of disobedience (towards God). It may also happen that the murderer repent before he dies. And if an infidel be converted from his infidelity, it is not allowable to curse him ; how much the less is it allowable to curse him who repents of having committed murder ? Besides, how can it be known that the murderer of Hosain died unrepenting? and He {God) accepteth the repent- ance of his creatures (" Koran," Sura ix. v. 105). Wherefore, inasmuch as it is not lawful to curse a Moslem after his death, he who curses him is a reprobate and disobedient to God. Suppose even that it were per- mitted to curse him ; the abstaining therefrom would be no crime, according to the unanimous opinion of the Imams — nay, the man who never once during the course of his existence cursed Satan will not be asked on the Day of Judgment why he cursed him not. And as for him who cursed Satan, he shall be asked his motives for so doing, and hoAv he knew that Satan was rejected and accursed. The accursed are those who are far removed from x\lmighty God ; but who those may be is a mystery, except in the case of such persons as die infidels ; for we know bv the Divine law that they are accursed. As for the invoking of the Divine mercy on Yezid, it is allowable— nay, acceptable (in the sight of God) ; nay, it is included in these words Avhich we utter in every prayer: " O, God! pardon the men and women who believe;" for Yezid was a believer. God knows if my opinion be right. Signed : Al Ghazzali.' — Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, vol. ii. pp. 230-32. Slane's Trans. 129 CHAPTEE Y. THE STRUGGLE FOR EMPIRE. A.D. G80-718. A CRY of rage and horror went up from Mekka and Medina when it was known in tlie Holy Cities that the grandson of the Prophet liad been murdered by a jorofii- gate and a wine-bibber such as Yezid. And tliere hap- pened to be in Mekka a man eager to take advantage of these angry feeUngs and possessed of the power to move the excited populations to open revolt. This was Abdal- lah, the son of that Zobair who had fallen at ' the Battle of the Camel.' Ambitious, crafty, and unscrupulous, he had long aspired to be the head of the Muhammadan world, and it was with ill-concealed delight that he had witnessed Hosain set forth upon the expedition which conducted him to the grave. So long as the son of Ali lived, the son of Zobair was eclipsed. But after his death there was no livino- Muhammadan who combined so many claims to the honour and affection of the Paithful. His fother had been among the select few to whom the Prophet had expressly guaranteed the pleasures of Para- dise. His mother was Asma, the daughter of the khalif Abu Bekr. His maternal aunt was Ayesha, the favourite wife of the Prophet, and the mother of the People of God. E 1;;0 ISLAM UNDER THE AllABS. cnAr. v. His paternal aunt had been Kliadija, tlie first and best- loved spouse of the Prophet, and the earliest of his disciples. He himself was a soldier who in Africa and against the soldiers of Byzantium had fought on the path of God with brilliant courage and success. Born at Medina — the first child born among the Faitliful after their flight— the call to prayers had been re])eated l3y his grandfather in his ear ; his mother had haid him in the lap of the Prophet ; and, after Ali and Aycsha, he was con- sidered the foremost traditionist of the words and acts of Muhammad. He had, moreover, declined to take the oatli of allegiance to Yezid, and, when threatened with violence, he had fled to Mekka and sought shelter in the sanctuary of the Kaaba. He signed himself the ' Pie- fugee,' and, as though entirely witlidrawn from tlie world, passed his days either in prayer or in making the circuits round the Kaaba. When tlie news of tlie death of Hosain reached Mekka the people thronged in a tumultuous crowd to the House of God. Abdallah rose up in the midst of the congrega- tion, and, after the customary praise of God and the Prophet, launched out in an eloquent discourse, bewailing the untimely fate of the son of Ali, and cursing the treachery of the peo]:)le of Koufa. The oration was no sooner ended than his friends thronged around him and saluted him with the title of khalif. The people of Medina were not slow to follow the example of Mekka. A large and turbulent crowd gathered in the great Mosque. There was a confused noise of tongues ; voices blended discordantly, eidogising the fallen martyr, or heaping invectives on the head of his murderers. At length Moundsii\ a brother of Abdallah, A.D. G8;3. THE SACK OF MEDINA. ]3l rose up and demanded silence. Tlien, taking his turban from his head, he flung it on the ground, saying: 'I reject Yezid as I reject this turban.' Another shouted : ' I reject Yezid as I reject this shoo.' The word and the action were like sparks of fire falling in the midst of dry stubble. The multitude were at once in a flame. The floor of the Mosque was covered with the cloaks, turbans, and shoes of those who rejected Yezid. His lieutenant was chased from the city ; the members of the house of Ommaya, their clients, and their friends were threatened with instant massacre if they did not fly. They fled, in number 8,000. The whole of the Hejaz was in open revolt. But Yezid, though a debauchee, was not the less a prompt, fearless, and determined Arab. Twelve thou- sand men, under a skilful and pitiless leader, were sent by forced marches against the rebel city. The rebels si)urned the peaceful overtures which Yezid had directed his general to make before having recourse to arms. A fierce battle was then fought, and Medina, carried by storm, was given up for three days to the license of the Syrian soldiery. Four thousand Arabs fell in the fio-ht and the subsequent massacre. Among these were ninety of the companions of the Prophet. The women were subjected to outrage, and, according to Ibn Khallikan, ' upwards of 1,000 unmarried girls of Medina gave birth to children in consequence of the infamous treatment they had undergone.' This, I think, without undue charity to the Syrian soldiery, may be set down as an ex- aggeration. Probably every lady in that part of the world who was guilty of an indiscretion at any time near to the K 2 V)2 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. v. period of the sack of Medina ascribed her unfortunate condition to the ilhcit violence of the Damascene army. From Medina the Syrian army marched to Mekl^a. MusUm ibn Okba, the general who had commanded it, died on the march there. When he knew liis end was near he called in Hosain ibn Nomair, and said to him : ' Come here, you ass ; you are to know that the Com- mander of the Faithful ordered me, in case I was on the point of death, to give you the command ; and now that I am dying, I am unwilling to disobey him, though I ought to do so.' He then prescribed to him a number of things which he should execute, after which he said : ' If I go to the fire of Hell after my good action of having slain tie people of Medina, I shall be very unfortunate indeed.' Arrived at Mekka, the troops of Abdallah were driven into the city by the Syrian army. The siege was formed and pressed with rigour for the space of two months. The Muhammadan historians relate with horror the fearfid thino-s that were done. War machines rained down a shower of stones, fiery darts and flaming naplitha upon the Kaaba. The covering of the Temple was consumed by the flames ; the Kaaba crushed by the stones and I'educed to a ruin. But the town still held out, when intelligence was received that the sacrilegious Yezid was dead. He had died suddenly in the flower of his youth — cut off", so said the Muhammadan divines, because of the abominable outrages he had perpetrated in the city of Medina. They quoted a saying of Muhammad : ' Whoever injureth Medina shall melt away, even as salt melteth in the water.' In Muhammadan countries the death of the sovereign A.D. 08.3. THE INTErJIEGXUM. 13:i is a critical moment at the most peaceful seasons. As all law and authority is supposed to reside in the lieart of the ruler, and to flow from thence as a river from its source ; as every official, high or low, is considered to bo a servant of the kino; in tlie domestic sense of the word, the decease of theinonarcli is literally the commencement of anarchy. The action of the laws is suspended, the arm of the exe- cutive is smitten with paralysis ; the pulse of life having ceased to beat at the seat and centre of authority, the Avhole body politic dies also. It is true tliat Yezid left a son, Muawia, wlio was instantly proclaimed khalif. But the new sovereign, a weak and sickly ]3oy, died after a brief reign of forty days, and nominated no successor. Had Abdahah seized the propitious moment, lie might have united under his rule all the countries of Islam. Everythin!>' Avas in his flxvour. The sie^e of Mekka had been raised the moment it was known that Yezid was dead. The commandant of the Syrian troops had even entreated Abdallah to accompany him to Damascus. The Hejaz, Yemen, Irak, and Egypt had ])roclaimed him khalif; even in Syria, the stronghold of the house of Ommaya, out of the five lieutenants who ruled that pro- vince, four, fearful of the anarchy of an interreguum, were ready to accept Abdallah. But at this supreme crisis he wavered ; he feared to trust himself in Syria. The golden moment slipped by. The Ommayas, recovering from the consternation and perplexity which the death of Yezid, followed so closely by that of his son, had thrown them into, rallied round Merwaii ibn Hakcm, the friend and favourite of the murdered Olhman. He was pro- claimed in Damascus as the new khalif. The "war 13i ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. v. of sects and religious leaders continued, notwithstand- ing, to rage with undiminished fury. There were four parties in the field — the house of Ommaya at Damas- cus ; Abdallah ibn Zobair at Mekka ; the partisans of Ali at Koufa ; and, lastly, the Kharegites, or Separatists. These were the men who had broken away from Ali at the moment of victory on the plain of Siffin. The Puritans of Islam, these sectaries had grown into a tremendous host of warriors. Emerging from their fastnesses in the rocky country of Kcrman,they swept through Fars, Ahwaz, and Irak, slaughtering, burning, and destroying all that came in their way — their hands against every man, and every man's hand against them. Merwan died, and was succeeded by his son, Abdal Malek ; but there was no pause or breathing space in the work of slaughter. Syria and Irak continued to be the theatre of bloody battles and bloodier reprisals. Koufa was tlic centre of this fanatical fury. The memory of their treacherous inaction on the day of Kerbela preyed upon the hckle, but sensitive, people like the worm which dieth not, and three years after Hosain's death (a.ii. G4, a.d. G83) a portion among them determined to atone their crime by revenging his murder on the house of Ommaya. Suleiman, the son of Sorad, a leading disciple of Ali, was placed at the head of the movement. ' The Penitents,' as they called themselves, appointed a place of assembly outside of the city. Thence they des]:)atched two of their number to ride through the streets of Koufa, shouting, ' Vengeance for Hosain.' Six thousand men responded to the summons. Their first step was to march to the plain of Kerbela. A day and a night they passed round A.D. 083. ' THE PENITENTS.' 135 the tomb of the martyr bewailing their sins and praying for forgiveness. One who was present affirmed tliat he ]iad never seen such crowding and pressing even round the black stone of the Kaaba. When at last Suleiman gave the order to march, not a man would move until he had stood over the grave of Hosain and asked for pardon. They plunged boldly into the waste which, scored with deep ravines and traversed by fierce hurricanes of wind, stretches away to the gardens of Damascus. But fatigue, hunger, and thirst are enemies more potent than the sword. The number of ' the Penitents ' rapidly diminished the further they penetrated that parched land. The army of Merwan, 20,000 strong, barred their onward passage. They were given the alter- native of surrender or death. They chose the latter, declaring they should never be so fit to die as they were at that moment. The struggle was long and obstinate ; ' the Penitents ' performed prodigies of valour wliicli extorted the admiration even of their enemies; but in the end victory as usual was found to be on the side of the strongest battalions, and the avengers of llosain were almost entirely cut to pieces. Another cJiamijion was not wantinir. Al Muktar seized the banner which had fallen from the grasp of Suleiman. Himself a- man of dai'ing and ability, he had as his lieutenant Ibrahim, the son of Ali's great lieu- tenant, Malek al Ashtar, and a soldier equal in skill and courage to his brilliant father. Thus seconded, Al Moktar wai2;ed for some time a successful Avar against both Abd al Malek at Damascus, and Abdallah at Mekka. Al Moktar clain;ed to be a prophet, and he propc unded a rather y.iQ ISLAM UNBEU TllE A.RA15S. cmr. T. ingenious theory regarding the Deity to account for the faihu'e of his predictions. On the ground that there were certain verses in the Koran which were abrogated by later verses, lie ascribed to God changes of purpose. What He wished and commanded at one time He pro- hibited at another. Consequently, while a fulfilled predic- tion was a satisfactory proof of prophetic power, an un- fulfilled one did not establish the contrary. It betokened merely that in the interval God had changed His nfind. Among other devices to stimulate the zeal and courao;e of his followers, he procured a chair which he afiirmed to be the judgment-seat of Ali, the Prince of Believers. This he caused to be gorgeously decorated, enclosed in an ark, and always placed in the front hue of the battle. ' This,' he explained to his followers, ' is to you as the Ark of the Covenant was to the Israelites. - In it dwell the majesty and the terror of God, and on tlie day of battle the angels come down to help you.' In this war quarter was neither asked nor given. Yezid, a general of Al Moktar, had defeated the army of the khalif, Abd al Malek. Three hundred prisoners were brought before him. He was in his litter, sinking under a mortal disease. Speechless, with the hand of death upon him, he had just strength sufiicient to signify the order for death by drawing his hand across his throat. Eetribution at last overtook Al Moktar. In a.ii. 67 his troops were defeated in a pitched battle in the neigh- bourhood of Koufa by Mosab, the brother of Abdallah. With 6,000 men he escaped into his jmlace within the city. The palace was invested, and his followers destitute of food. Al Moktar proposed that they should sally forth A.D. G87. THE DEATH OF MOKTAli. 107 and either cut their way tliroiigh the enemy or perisli with tlieir swords in their hands. But his disheartened followers shrank from this dreadful alternative. Only nineteen of his most attached friends declared their readiness to follow him. Al Moktar took leave of his army with the assurance that they need not hope their pusillanimity would obtain for them the clemency of the victors. Then he and his companions, wrapping their winding sheets about them, rushed forth on the l)e- leaguering army and fell fighting to the last. Ilis followers surrendered ; they were marched down to the market- place of Koufa with their hands tied behind their backs, and there slaui^htered to the last man. Al Moktar is said to have executed 50,000 men during liis brief and savage career, independently of the blood he caused to be shed on the field of battle. Tlie victory in the Ions; struh of Islamism, and they speedily 152 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. cn.vr. t. divested tliemselves of even that when at liberty to do so. Hence, whoever liad fought against the rehgion of tlie Prophet was sure of a welcome here. The relics of the following of Moseilama the Liar, the Separatists who had broken away ft-om Ali, the fire-worshippers from Persia, dwelt here in amicable intercourse, Tlie follov/ers of Ali brought with them an additional creed, but, diverse as were these forms of foith, their votaries were knit togetlier by a common hatred of the orthodox Moslem ; the pro- vince became, in fact, a kind of spiritual Alsatia, and in the action and reaction of the strange creeds Avhich jostled one another there, we can trace the origin of those Avild and mystical superstitions which were gradually engrafted upon the narrow and stern monotheism of the Koran. Hither, then, the Shias^ retired to brood upon their defeats and their wrongs. Originally there seems to have been no dispute between the two sections of Islam that the spiritual leader of tlie Moslems ouglit to be elected by a popular vote. But as calamity and misfortune thickened around the cause of Ali,— -as he and his sons descended one after another into an untimely grave, his followers discarded this election by universal suffrage as heretical and profane. The dangers of the battle-field, tlie pains of persecution, clothed with a more than earthly splendour the objects for whom they were endured. It seemed impossible that so mucli zeal, so much courage, such a vast extent of misery, could have no higlier ori- ginating cause tlian a simple question of election. Tradi- tion was not slack to invest Ali and his sons with a 1 'Shin,' as a follower of Ali is called in MuLammadan history, signifies ' partii. i. wlio blaspliemcs my name blaspliemes the name of God ; he "wlio blas]:)liemes the name of AH blasphemes my name." ' As examples of indications, of which the sense is concealed, they report that the Prophet, having received from Heaven the Ninth Sura during the pilgrimage, had charged Abou Bekr to signify the contents to the Arab idolators, when he received another revelation charging him to entrust this duty to one of his own relations. He thereupon made choice of Ali. This, they say, shows that Ali had obtained the preference. Moreover, the Prophet never placed Ali under the orders of anyone, while both Omar and Abou Bekr were so treated, the first having been placed imder the orders of Ann' ibn al- As, the second under those of Osama ibn Zaid. A final demonstration was still needed. It had to be shown not merely that absolute perfection was the neces- sary qualification of an Imam, and that Ali had been chosen for this office, but also that he had been endowed with that G'ift of Divine life which elevated him above the category of ordinary men. This was effected by means of ' a tradition,' ^ reported, it is said, on tlie authority of Ali himself. According to this tradition, while as yet the universe existed only in the thought of God, He took a ray of light from the place of His splendour, the bosom of His royalty Avithout companionship. This ray of light ' In a subsequent volume of tlus-\vork I shall have to -write in detail of the ' Traditions.' Suffice it to say liere that they constitute the ' sayings ' of Muhammad handed down on the authority of his ' Com- panions.' They are very numerous, and relate to an immense variety of subjects. The greater part of them are of exceedingly doubtful authenticity, but are held by IMuhanmiadans to be as sacred and to possess as binding a force as the Koran itself. The traditions of the Aliites differ from those of the orthodox Muhamn.adans. A.L'. USr. THE DIVINE LIFE IN ALI. 167 united itself to the form of the holy Prophet Muhammad. God then pronounced these solemn words : ' Thou art the Elect, the Chosen. I deposit in tliee My light and the treasures of My grace. Out of My love for thee I will make the members of thy fomily the guides to salvation. I will reveal to them the mysteries of knowledge, so that for them there shall remain no more the secret and the unknown.' God then disposed the minds of His creatures to receive, in addition to the dogmas of His onmipotence and unity, that of the election of Muhammad and his fomily. This having been done, God buried the form of His holy Prophet in the invisible world, and i)roceeded with the rest of His creative acts. He balanced tlie world, unrolled Time, raised the floods ; the throne of God floated on the waves. Then he created the angels out of spirit and light, and taught them to believe in the mission of Mu- hammad as well as the unity of God. When God created Adam, He made known the higli dignity reserved for man, and his superiority in knowledge over the angels, by causing Adam to give names to all the objects in creation. Nevertheless, the ray of light that had been taken from the place of his splendour was concealed under the veil of time until the birth of Muhannnad. After him the celestial spark was transmitted to Ali, tlie noblest of his descend- ants, and by Ali to his sons and their sons. The Imams, then, are the Illuminated of Heaven, the ho[)es of salvation, the keys of knowledge, and to them should all men come. They are the first of all creatures, the kings of humanity, the living proofs that there is a Creator. Happy is he who acquiesces in their supremacy and permits them to guide him. 1q8 islam under THE ARABS. chap. i. Such being the Divine decree written upon the everlasting table which stands before the throne of God, it followed as a logical consequence that the disorders and divisions in Islam were the results of castins; aside the government of the leoitimate Imam. Men had re- jected the Heaven-sent Guide, and under leaders of their own choice were gravitating with fearful velocity into deeper and deeper abysses of misery and falsehood. De- votion, therefore, to the lawful Imam, whether visibly at the head of Islam or not, was the first duty of the true Moslem. The Shias clung to this tenet with an almost incredible fanaticism. It was held to constitute the whole of religion, and the moral precepts of tlie Koran were converted into allegorical injunctions of this single duty. The command to pray was declared to be only a mode of sym])olising that entire devotion which was due to the Imam as the head of Islam. Fasting became the symbol of that silence and secrecy which it behoved the Faithful to keep regarding their faith in the presence of strangers and persecutors. The prohibition of fornication was refined away into a warning forbidding men to swerve even in thouQ;ht from a sino;le-minded submission to the lawful Imam. But the Arab, as we have already quoted, is a believing rather than a religious character. He feeds greedily upon chimeras. The old Sabceanism of Hasa and Oman, the ^ witchcraft and magic of Africa, the dualism of the Persian, vague conceptions of the Incarna- tion and the Trinity, had entered into Hasa to mingle with the stern monotheism of the Muhammadan, The Shias accepted them all. Beyond the flaming walls of the universe, outside of the reach of human ken, who A.D. 837. THE DWINITY OF THE IMAM. 159 could tell wliat tliino-s the inscrutable God mio-ht not have prepared for the children of men ? A swarm of wild beliefs assumed gradually some semblances of a system, and from Hasa as a centre ' rayed out ' confusion, dis- order, and perplexity into the regions of orthodox Islam. Some declared that Ali had never died ; he had been simply withdrawn from mortal eyes ; his voice it was that was heard in the thunder, and his scourge that glittered in the lightning. He would return to tlie earth when people least expected him, and fill the world with justice as it had been filled with wrong. Others appropriated the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Their 2;odhead was five persons in one ; these were Muhammad and his daughter Fatima, Ali and his two sons Hasan and Hosain. They were termed the ' Sharers of the Glory ; ' the ray of light from the place of God's splendour dwelt in all equally, and none were before or after another. Secret societies sprang up in all parts of Asia, with a regular organisation of dais, or missionaries, to win adherents to the family of Ali, or to some modification of the tenets held by his followers. The ' Veiled Prophet of Khorassan ' was one of these emissaries of disorder. Babek, wlio taught the indifierence of human actions, and illustrated his teaching by acts of lust and cruelty during the reio-ns of Mamun and Mutasim, was another. These insurrec- tions were productive of immense suffering ; but the power of the khahfs was still too strong and closely knit together to be seriously endangered by them. Xot so with the terrible outbreak of the Karniatliians in the Iburth century after the Hijrah. Tiie dominions of the khalifs had then begun to crumble away and break up IGO ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. i. from within with the rapidity characteristic of Orieutal poHtics ; and the Karmathians shook to the very centre the ah'eady weakened fabric. The foundation-stone of the Mnhammadan pohty was the absokite concentration of the supreme spiritual and temporal power in a single functionary. Everything that proceeded from the mouth of the Prophet had been de- clared by him to be a Divine message transmitted through the archangel Gabriel. This description was true of the least things as well as the greatest. Is his favourite wife Ayesha suspected of adultery ? The angel Gabriel appears with a communication which not only restores her good name, but announces the exact punishment to be inflicted upon those wdio had dared to think otherwise. Is the Prophet smitten with an illicit admiration for the wife of his adopted son ? The complaisant Gabriel again appears upon the scene and absolves the Prophet from the morality which chained smaller folk. Are his wives jealous and angry on account of his relations with a Ivoptic slave girl ? The same messenger is at hand, and threatens them with the doom of Lot's wife unless they promptly repent. There was nothing too small or too trivial not to become a subject of Divine communication. And hence the Koran is not merely a revelation of God, but contains also a code of laws to regulate marriage, divorce, concubinage, inheritance, and all the other mat- ters which the governor of an Arab tribe would be called upon to decide ; and every such law was stamped Avith the seal of a Divine authority which rendered it incapable of change or modification. To these in after days were ndded 'the traditions' — in other words ' the sayings' of TIIK MUHAMMADAN POLITY. 101 tlie Propliet, as handed down by those who had been his friends and companions — wliich in sacredness and autho- rity were raised to a level with the precepts in the Koran. In short, the Muhammadan theory was, that before the death of the Prophet, a complete guide to conduct in all the concerns of Hfe had been laid down for men by God Himself. There w^as only needed a single functionary to see that these laws were carried into effect. The khalif was that functionary. He was the vicar or lieutenant of God, and responsible to Him alone for the exercise of his authority. The Church of Eome has always aspired to such a position ; but there is this broad difference between her l)retensions and the position of the khalifs — the Church of Eome chiims to be in possession of a spirit of know- ledge and light which gives her a co-ordinate power of jurisdiction with the scriptures of the Old and New Tes- taments. This has hitherto been the secret of her power. She has been able to adapt her teaching to the chang- ing necessities of successive ages ; and to incorporate into the Church every new manifestation of spiritual life Avhich she found herself incapable of suppressing. The Muhannnadan belief ^vas quite otherwise.. The khalif was simply the executor of a law which had been fixed finally and for ever. His rule was a highly cen- tralised despotism, which fastened with an iron grasp on the inner life as well as on the actions of men. Proirress either in thought or political freedom became impossible within the sphere of his authority, because change at all was tantamount to rebellion against the written decrees of God. No seeds of a newer or higher life w^ere permitted M 102 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. r. to be sown ; and any which chance might have wafted thither had to be destroyed before they brought fruit to perfection. Intellectual ^ower, deprived of any legitimate sphere of activity, was driven perforce to feed upon the husks of casuistry, and expend itself in endless refine- ments and commentaries upon the law.^ The religious ^ Here are a few chance specimens of the barren frivolities wliich obtained for these Doctors o£ the Law the reputation of subtlety and learning : — ' Al-Ghazzali tells an anecdote of Al-Khaffiil in the ' Wasit,' third chapter of the section on Faith, wherein he treats of the different modes by which perjury may be committed. Speaking of a subtle question on a point of law, he says — Question to which the proceedings give rise : If a person swear that he will not eat eggs, and he goes afterwards to a man and says, " By Allah ! I will eat what thou hast in thy pocket ! and behold it is an egg ! what is to be done so as to avoid perjury ? " This question was proposed to Al-Khaffal as he was seated in the chair, presiding at an assembly of his pupils, but he coidd not find an answer to it. On this his pupil, Al-Masudi, said : " Let him have a biscuit made Avith the egg and eat that ; he will thus have eaten what was in the man's pocket, and not have eaten the egg." This answer received general approbation, and it was certainly a most ingenious solution of the difficulty.' — Ihii Khallikan, vol. ii. p. G18. Slane's Trans. ' Ibrahim al Harbi related the following anecdote : — " Mukatil Ibn Suleiman took his seat in order to teach, and said : ' You may question me concerning whatever is beneath the throne of God.' On which a man said to him : ' When Adam performed the pilgrimage, avIio shaved his head ? ' ' Nay,' replied JNIukatil, ' such a question does not pro- ceed from your own mind ; but God meant to humble me for my pre- .siunption.' " — Ibn KJiallikan, vol. iii. p. 409. ' The Shaikh Abu Ishak as-Shirazi relates the following anecdote, , . . . He gives it in the words of Nafe himself: — " I was walking with Abd Allah Ibn Omar, and he heard the sound of a shepherd's pipe. On this he stopped his ears with his fingers and went off the high road. Every now and then he would say to me: 'Do you hear it still, Nafe ? ' and when I at length answered that I did not, he removed his fingers from his ears and returned to the high road. He then said to me : ' It was thus I saw the Prophet act on a similar occasion.' This tradition presents a difficulty which gave rise to a discussion among the Doctors of the Law ; it is this : * Why did TIIE MUILOIMADAN POLITY, 163 life, either petrified into a lifeless formality or lost in a self-seeking mysticism, ceased to be a flxctor in the ordinary Ibn Omar stop his ears so as not to hear the sound of the pipe, and yet instead of ordering liis client Nafe to do the same, he authorised him to listen, inasmuch as ho asked him every moment if the sound had ceased or not ? ' The solution given of this difficulty was that Nafe, being at that time a mere boy, and not responsible for a breach of the law, it was not necessary to forbid him to listen. This answer gave rise to another question, namely, ' Is it perfectly certain that a declaration made by a boy is not receivable in law ? Why, then, did Ibn Omar put his trust in Ntife's declaration touching the sensation of the sound ? ' This matter formed the subject of a fomous controversy." ' — Ibn KhalUkan, vol. iii, p. 521. Similar examples might be given to almost any extent. I insert one more, because, besides being a ciu'ious example of IMuhammadan casuistry, it appears to me to present a very remarkable 'picture of the social and family life of the ancient Muhammadan world : * Muhammad Ibn Abi Laila was one of those Imams who decided certain points of law by their own private judgment, and he exercised the functions of Icadi at Koufa for thirty-three years ; first in the name of the Ommayides, and afterwards in that of the Abbasides. A slight degree of coolness subsisted between him and Abu Hanifa, It is related that as he was oiie da}'- returning from the Mosque at Koufa, wherein he had been sitting in judgment, he heard a woman say to a man : " Thou son of a prostitute and a fornicator ! " on which he caused her to be arrested, and having returned to his tribunal he ordered her to bo flagellated twice, inflicting on her each time the number of strokes prescribed by the law, and this punishment she underwent standing. When Abu Ilanifa was informed of this proceeding, he said : " In this single aflair the Icadi has committed six faults ; first, in returning to the INIosque after the sitting was ended, which it was not requisite for him to do ; secondly, in inflicting the punishment of flagel • lation in the Mosque, a thing expressly forbidden by the blessed Pj-ophet; thirdly, in flagellating her and she standing, whereas women should be flagellated in a sitting posture and their clothes on ; fourthly, in inflicting the flagellation twice, Avhereas the calumniator incurs only one flagellation, even if he address the insulting words to a number of persons; fifthly, were the double flagellation incurred, he should have waited before inflicting the second till the pain caused by the first had ceased ; sixthly, he caused her to be flagellated although no prosecutor had made a complaint against her." AVhen this came to the ears of Ji 3 104 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. i. jcoinmerce of Inimanity. During the klialifate of Mamun an effort was made to relieve the world of this horrible incubus of a dead revelation, and give some freedom to the intellect and conscience. A party which numbered the khalif amonsf its adherents denied that the Koran was the Word of God, uncreated and eternal. They affirmed it to be the composition of the Prophet only, and as such hable to correction and modification. But their endeavours failed to make any wide or lasting change of thought, and the orthodox Muhammadan's creed remained, as before, ' stiff as a dead man's hand.' This hard inflexible rigidity it is which has rendered tlie Muhammadan world incapable of profiting by the expe- rience of history, and powerless to heal the ravages of storm and decay. The governors of the various provinces were clothed with powers as broad and sweeping as those of the khalif; but they derived all their authority from him, and the smallest deflection from tlie straight path of Muhammad Ibn Abi Laila he sent this message to the Governor of Koufli : " There is here a youth called Abu Hanifa who attacks my judgments and gives opinions in opposition to them, and insults me by saying that I have erred. I wish you would prevent him from so doing." On this the governor sent to Abu Hanifa, ordering him not to give opinions on points of law. They then relate that Abu Haniili was one day in his house, and his wife beside him, and his daughter and his son Hammad, Avhen his daughter said to him : " Papa, I am keeping a fast of abstinence, and some blood has come out from between my teeth, but I spat it out till my saliva became clear, without any trace of blood. Should I break the fast if I swallowed my saliva now ? " To tliis her father replied : "Ask thy brother Hammad, for the governor has for- bidden me to give opinions on points of law." This anecdote is cited as an example of Abu Hanifa's signal merits and of his respectful obedi- ence to the constituted authority, so much so that he obeyed even in private, and abstained from giving an answer to his daughter ; this is the utmost extent to which obedience could be carried.' — Ibn KhalHkan, vol. ii. p. 584. Slane's Trans. THE MUIIAMMADAN POLITY. 166 obedience — so long at least as tlie central authority was stroniT and enemetic — was visited with swift and often fearful retribution. The plan generally adopted was to depose the offending governor, and send his worst enemy to occupy his place, whose first act would be to destroy a possible rival. There was no regular mode of execution. Beheading was most common, but khalifs and governors exhibited a truly devilish ingenuity in de- vising torments for their enemies. Oriental history abounds with stories of almost incredible cruelty ; and these impress the reader with the more horror because they are told without any expressions of wonder and re- proach. They were too common to provoke such feelings. But a despotism of this kind, just because it succeeds so completely in crushing the patriotism of its subjects, can never be other than a fair weather government. It has no reserve fund of affection to the ruler or loyalty to the law, on Avhich it can draw to supplement the mercenary force it wields. It stands upon force pure and simple, and therefore must fall the moment a stronger power takes the field against it. The khalifs suffered from this. A rebellious governor could only be coerced by a loyal one. But the loyal governor of a neighbouring province would hazard his life and his power only by the promise of an extension of wealth and authority. That exten- sion once granted, the governor became virtually inde- pendent. There was no one left strong enough to coerce him, and the khalif had to be content with a nominal submission. Mamun, one of the greatest of the khahfs, was the first who was compelled to make one of these concessions. lie granted Khorasan in perpetuity to his general, Taher. It was like the letting out of waters. 1G6 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. OHAr. I. The Soffarides drove out the family of Taher ; the Sama- nides supplanted the Soffarides ; the Ghaznivides these ; and so the turmoil of Eastern history whirls and spins unrest- ingly on as ' in dry Sahara, when the winds waken, and lift and winnow the immensity of sand. The air itself is (travellers say) a dim sand air; and dim looming through it, the wonderfullest colonnades of sand pillars rush, whirling from this side and from that like so many sj)inning dervishes of a hundred feet stature ; and dance their huge desert waltz there.' What happened to the silent and suffering people while these spinning dervishes of conquerors danced their desert waltz on slain encimibercd battle- fields, and by the light of burning cities, is not hard to guess. Occasional passages in the old chronicles reveal them to us perishing of famine and pestilence, or groan- ing under the iron heel of some tremendous tyrant. And we can easily understand how all faith in any divinely appointed order of the universe must have perished mider the weight of these accumulated sufferings. It is by con- templating them that we penetrate to the inner springs of Oriental thought and action — of Sufism, which strives to seek for consolation by complete abstraction from a world racked by all the powers of evil ; of Eastern poetry, which finds its fount of inspiration, its type of human joys, in the transient beauty of Spring, cr the fleeting splendours of a full-blown rose ; and, lastl}^ of those wild and desperate efforts to utterly destroy the foundations of all order, to set men free from the tyranny of all moral laws, and all religious creeds, of which the Karmatlnan insurrection was one, and the ' Sect of the Assassins ' another and more terrible result. A D. 705. THE ISMAILIENS. 167. A great u umber of sects are mclucled under tlie designation ' Shia,' but the greater part of these sectaries ranged themselves into two divisions, namely, the Imamites, or Believers in the Twelve Imams, and the Ismailiens, or Believers in the Seven Imams. The Imamites trace the succession of Imams to the twelfth in descent from Ali — Muhammad, the well directed. He, while still a boy, becoming the object of the persecution of the Aljbaside khalifs, disappeared down a well in the courtyard of the house in which he was living at Hillah, near Baghdad. At the end of time he will reappear and fill the world with justice. For this reason he is termed ' the Expected.' The Shias base this expectation, as usual, upon a tradition reported by one of ' the Companions ' to the effect that the Prophet had declared that the world would not come to an end until a man of his family, and bearing the same name as himself, reigned over the Arabs ; and Ibn Khaldun states in his Prolegomena that so late even as his time, groups of devout Shias assembled every evening after sunset at the mouth of the sacred well, and passed the night in prayer to the Imam, entreating him to come forth and take possession of the world. When the stars began to pale they retired to their homes, going through the same ceremonies on the next night. The Ismailiens, like the Twelvers, make profession of an exclusive attachment to Ali and his descendants ; they recognise no Imam as legitimate if he be not a member of that family, and in all the externals of religion tliey adopt the customs of the Shias. The schism was occasioned by a dispute on the question of succession to the Imamate. Djafar Ibn Sadik, the sixth Imam, had four sons, the 168 ISLAM UNDER THE AP.ABS. chap. r. eldest of whom was Ismail, whom also he designated as his successor. One day, however, Ismail had the mis- fortune to be discovered in a state of inebriety, and Djafar Ibn Sadik disinherited him, declaring that he could not be his son, but a demon who had assumed his similitude. His second son, Mousa, was then declared to be his successor to the dignity of the Imam. The greater part of the Shias accepted this decision, and on the death of Djafar Ibn Sadik transferred their allegiance to Mousa. But a small number, wdio applied tlie allegorical method of interpre- tation to the ordinances of the Koran, remained attached to Ismail, and on his death to his son Muhanmiad. To their minds the inebriety of Ismail was a virtue rather than otherwise, as a positive proof of his acceptance of an inner and hidden meaning in the precepts of religion. Djafar Ibn Sadik died a.h, 148 ; the origin of the sect therefore cannot date from a much earlier period than that event. The doctrine of the Ismailiens was as follows : The world never has been nor ever will be without an Imam. Whoever is an Imam, his father and his grandfather had been so before him, and similarly his ancestors until the line terminates with Adam. The son of the Imam is also Imam, and his descendants after him to the end of time. It is not possible for an Imam to die until a son has been born to him to carry on the succession. The Imam is not always visible ; at times he manifests him- self; at times he withdraws into seclusion. When the Imam is manifest, the doctrine is concealed ; when the Imam is hidden, the labours of the missionary commence. The Prophets possess the gift of revelation ; the Imams A.D. 800. ABDALLAII IBN MAMOUN. IGO that of interpretation. From the time of Ali until that of Muhammad, the son of Ismail, the seventh Imam, the Imams were visible. Then commenced the succession of concealed Imams. The fom-tli of these concealed Imams (so called because they had to ' conceal ' themselves from the in- quisition of the khalifs of Baghad) was a certain Abdallah, the son of Mamoun, who lived about the middle of tlie tliird century after the Hejira. In utter weariness, it would seem, of tlie wrangling of religious factions round him, he cast aside all theological beliefs, and conceived the project of founding human life and liuman society upon a basis of pure materialism. At the same time he perceived clearly enough that any open or sudden avowal of this audacious resolution would result in his instant death by tlie hands of his own followers. They were too fanatically attached to the chains which were eating into their souls, to welcome as an emancipator the man who would strike them off. He was obliged, therefore, to mask his purpose under the cloak of religion, and he adopted as this coverini'" the affectation of a fervent zeal for the House of Ah. Obedience to the Imam was, however, only the portal, so to speak, of the Temple of Knowledge. The neopliyte who desired to penetrate to the innermost circle of truth must pass through nine stages of initiation. But before describing these, it will be well to try to picture to ourselves the mental condition of that world to wliich Abdallah made appeal. The discoveries of modern science have so wrouglit into our minds the conception of the universe as a vast orderly whole, subject to fixed laws — the torcli of know- 170 ISLAM UNDEB THE ARABS. chap. i. ledge lias so completely dispelled that vast host of secondary agencies — djinns, divs, genii, fairies, and the like wliich perplexed and tormented an earlier world — - that we find it difficult to feel that the Arabian Nights, for example, really represent the convictions which once possessed all men regarding the unseen universe, which still hold sway over the larger portion of the earth. Still, there are moments even in our lives when we are conscious of feelings as if those old beliefs were attempt- ing to re-establish themselves. On lonely mountain tops^ in silent woods, whenever we are alone with Nature, The fair humanities of old religion, The power, the beauty, and the majesty That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, revive, and the world seems, as in days of old, to be endowed with a conscious life. But most of all do we understand such beliefs when we are in any danger from the fury of the elements. Then we can readily apprehend how the untutored intellect of an earlier world should have imagined a conscious purpose to be directing the fury of the sea, or ilie jntiless pelting of the blinding rain. And so it is that, to this da}^, the men who are most prone to this — shall we say — superstition are those who are most ex- posed to moving accidents by flood and field. There has rarely been a great general without his ' lucky day ' or his ' star of destiny,' or some other deus ex machina to lighten the obscure and give hope in seasons of difficulty ; while sailors have constructed quite a Pantheon of lesser deities out of Mother Carey's chickens and materials of a like kind. In the times and countries of which I am writing, A.D. 800. MUIIAMMADAX COSMOGONY. 171 everything combined to give a morbid activity to such exercises of the imagination. Science, as we miderstand it, had not yet been born, and tlie hfe of the Arab was one long struggle with the ruthless forces of Nature — ' plague and famine, blight and earthquake, roaring deeps and fiery sands.' The imagination roamed at will amid the awful forces of Nature, and constructed a truly mar- ^•ellous theory of the origin of tilings. Water was sup- p(.)sed to have been the first thing created by God, and the Eternal Throne was sustained on that element. From this water God caused a vapour to ascend out of which He fashioned the sky. Then He solidified a portion of the liquid mass and transformed it into earth, which He divided into seven parts. God then created a fish, ou which the earth was supported ; the fish and the water were borne up by blocks of stone ; the stones rested on the back of an angel; the angel on a rock, and the rock on the wind. The movements of the fish causino- the earth to be violently agitated, God fixed mountains upon it to give it stability. The heavens also numbered seven ; that nearest to the earth was formed of green emerald ; the next of silver; the third of ruby; the fourth of pearl ; the fifth of ])ure gold ; the sixth of topaz ; and tlie seventh is an illimitable expanse of fire, covered with angels chanting the praises of God. They sing, ' There is no god but God, the Lord of the Glorious Throne.' Around the earth was the ' circumambient ocean,' and around this again were the mountains of Kaf, formed of green chrysolite, and peopled with innumerable djiiins. Previously to the creation of Adam these djimis had dwelt upon the earth. They had been forbidden to shed 172 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. i. the blood of animals or quarrel with each other. They did both continually ; so God in His anger sent down troops of angels, who in part exterminated them and in part shut them up in the mountains of Kaf. The in- habited portions of the earth compared Avith the unknown regions given up to deserts and demons were as a tent pitched in the midst of a wilderness. And even here such favoured spots as the gardens of Damascus were merely patches of verdure springing out of a vast expanse of barren waste. The appalling solitude, and still more appalling dangers of these sandy wastes, were the parents of countless superstitions. Every chamber of the great wilderness (to borrow the language of De Quincey) which with little interruption stretches from the Euphrates to the western shores of Africa, had its own peculiar terrors as to sights and sounds. Far away beyond Segelmessa, in Northern Africa, on the other side of a large river ex- tended the land of gold. The people of this mysterious region had never ])een seen by mortal eyes. The mer- chants who traded in gold deposited their merchandise on the banks of the river and departed. The next morning beside every article thus deposited they found the amount of gold the gnomes were willing to give for it. At the other extremity of the world, on the confines of China, rose a mighty circular temple from a massive block of rock, steeply scarped. It was furnished with seven gates, and crowned with an heptagonal dome marvellous for size and elevation. From the summit of this dome, what seemed to be a gigantic precious stone flashed a bhnding radiance all around the temple. King after king had striven to get possession of this stone. But all who A.D. 8<30. IMUHAMMADAX SUPERSTITIONS. 173 approaclied to a distance of ten cubits from it were stricken with instant deatli. Within the temple was a well, around the margin of which ran an inscription which said: 'This well leads to the archives of the Books, wherein are to be found the chronology of the world, the history of the past, and the revelation of the future.' But whoever, lured on by this inscription, was tempted to look down this well, was dragged into the abyss by an unseen but irresistible force, and disappeared in its fathomless depths. Between these two extreme points the world was all one wild and inexplicable marvel. The Muhanmiadan became a slave to his imao-ination. The air rustled with the invisible wings of supernatural beings. He was hedged in on every side by occult and malignant powers. His wellbeing — nay, his very existence — depended upon the properties of charms and amulets, the power of magicians, the intercessions of the pious. The historian al-Wakidi recommends the following as a charm for the cure of fevers : Take some olive leaves, and on a Satur- day, being yourself in a state of purity, write on one of these leaves. Hell is hungry; on another, Hell is thirsty; and on the third. Hell is refreshed. Put them into a rag, and bind them on the left arm of the person suffering from fever. ' I made,' says al-Wakidi, ' the experiment myself, and found it successful.' ' When,' Ibn Khallikan informs us, ' Ibn al Khattan, the Poet, was sitting down to dinner with his wife, he told her to uncover her head. When she did so, he repeated these words of the Koran : Say God is one. She asked him what was the matter, and received this answer : ' When a woman uncovers her head the angels do not remain present, and when that verse of 174 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. i. tlie Koran is pronounced, the demons take to flight. Now I do not like being at table with a crowd about me.' Men, as it is not hard to understand, found it difficult to endm^e the burden and the mystery of such an un- intelligible world as this, and eagerly grasped at anything which promised to illuminate the darkness. What was the secret of it all? what the ultimate power which assumed these innumerable forms ? ' A hair,' so writes Omar Khayam — A hair, they say, divides the False and True ; Yes, and a single Alif were the clue. Could you but find it, to the Treasure House, And peradventure to the INIaster too. The search for that ' single Alif ' was the great spur to enquiry in those days. A doctrine which required nine stages of initiation exactly suited the temper of the time. It struck the imagination as a kind of vista which narrowed the further one advanced, by the progressive elimination of all unimportant accidents from the vast and complex phenomenon which had to be investigated, imtil at the for end the enquirer was brought to the philosopher's stone, the single Ahf, the narrow portal wliich gave admission to tlie temple of universal know- ledge. The nine stages were as follows : — The Dai, or mis- sionary, having accosted this or that man, and engaged him in theological discussion, would take occasion to point out that the Koran and human life abounded in riddles which the unassisted intellect of man was powerless to solve. He would ply him with such questions as these : — Why had God created the world in seven days ? Why A.i). 800. THE FIRST STAGE. 173 liad he thoiiglit proper to make seven heavens and seven chmates ? Why did the first chapter of the Koran con- tain only seven verses? Wliy were there twelve montlis in the year? How could it be true that the skins of the damned should be changed for other skins in order to make them suffer sharper torment, seeing that these new skins had done no evil ? Why had Hell seven gates, and Paradise eight? Why was man alone upright among animals ? Why had he ten fingers and ten toes, no more and no less ? What meaning was involved in certain enigmatic expressions to be found in the Koran ? with many others too numerous to mention. In general, such questions shook the soul of the enquiring Moslem with fear and wonder. He knew that in the sound of the word ' Allah ' there were marvellous powers whereby men could annihilate time and space, liberate themselves from the prison house of flesh, and traverse tlie realms of air as disembodied spirits. He knew, or at least he believed, that magicians and enchanters could peer into the secrets of the heart, could make the forms of the absent appear by the power of their art, could compel beings of supernatural power to fetch and carry for them, like household drudges bought in the slave market ; and that these marvels were wrought by the virtue hidden in strange collocations of words, by the repetition of enigmatic incantations or spells. The puz- zling queries of the Dai seemed to place him at the very gate of similar mysteries. But how to enter in? Tlie Dai^ as soon as he saw that the shaft had struck, became as reserved as he had l)een communicative. The myste- ries to which he had alluded were, it is true, known to a few elect and exalted spirits ; but they were of too awful 170 ISLAM UNDER THE AHABS, chap. i. and tremendous a character to be revealed to any casual enquirer whose curiosity had been stimulated for a moment. It was not after this fashion that God pro- ceeded when he selected a prophet to be a mediator between Himself and the world. He exacted a solemn engat^ement of fidelity and devotion. What says the Koran on this subject ? ' We have entered into a cove- nant with the prophets and with thee, and with Noah and Abraham, and Moses, and Jesus, son of Mary : and we have formed with them a strict covenant.' If, then, the enquirer desired to enter into these most holy mysteries, he must conform himself to the example ordained by God. He must place his right hand in that of tlie mis- sionary, and swear solemnly never to divulge the secrets about to be communicated to him ; and never by thought, word, or deed to swerve from an unquestioning obedience to the missionary. The oath being taken, the second degree was entered upon. In this the enquirer was instructed that to the Imams alone had been entrusted the duty of teaching the Faith- ful, and that all the calamities which had fallen upon Islam were due to the abandonment of these true teachers for so-called doctors, wlio had neither knowledge nor authority. The third degree aimed to establish why there were seven Imams and no more, by argument from the ana- logy of the seven planets, the seven climates, and so forth ; but chiefly because to Ismail and to none other of the descendants of Ali had been revealed the science of allegorical interpretation, the knowledge of the things hidden under those puzzling queries which the Dai had originally propounded to the neophyte. A.D. 860. THE FOURTH STAGE. 177 The fourth degree was of great importance. Herein the enquirer was made acquainted with the special tenets regarding the Imamate held by the Ismailiens. These are, that the world since its creation has passed through seven ' periods,' each distinguished by its own peculiar religion. Each religion has had its own special promul- gator or prophet, and each prophet has been accompanied by an Imam, or interpreter, whose function it has been to consolidate and establish the new rehgion which has been revealed, upon the ruins of the old. The number of such Imams, or interpreters, has in every case been Kmited to seven. Thus tliere have been seven religious ' periods,' seven prophets, and seven Imams to each prophet. The first prophet was Adam, and his Imam, Seth ; the second ISoah, and his Imam, Shem ; the third Abraham, and his Imam, Ishmael; the fourth Moses, and his Imam, Joshua; tlie fifth Jesus, and his Imam, Simon Peter ; the sixth Muhammad, and his Imam, Ali ; the seventh Ismail, the son of Djafar as-Sadik, and his Imam, his son Muhammad. In Muhammad, the son of Ismail terminated the cycle of old faiths with their positive precepts and inculcation of the letter ; and with him began the knowledge of that allegorical significance latent in all the preceding religions. The proselyte who passed through this grade ceased by that very act to be a Moslem ; since, contrary to the express declarations of the Koran and the universal belief of the Muhammadan world, he acknowledged a prophet posterior to Muhammad, and a revelation which abro- gated that contained in the Koran. In the fifth degree the mind of the enquirer was imbued with a contempt for the traditions and the letter N X78 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. i. of the writteu word. All moral commands, he was in- structed, and all religious ceremonies Avere to be explained allegorically. Then some faint adumbration of the Pythagorean doctrine of numbers was brought in to strengthen the special doctrines of the sect God, it was urged, never created anything without a design and special purpose. The arrangements of the external world contemplated by the discerning mind became the index to the nature of His spiritual supremacy over men. Thus the seven Imams, the seven prophets, the seven reli- gious ' periods,' were figured and foreshadowed in the seven heavens, the seven planets, the seven chmates, the seven apertures in the human face, and so forth. Each Imam had, moreover, twelve principal ministers to make him known throughout the world; and these were symbo lised in the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the twelve months of the year, the twelve tribes of Israel. Few of the proselytes were, however, permitted to advance as far as this degree ; and only certain hardy and resolute spirits even among the missionaries were deemed able to digest the strong meat provided for them in the sixth degree, Eor at this stage began the work of detaching the enquirer from all religious beliefs whatever. Hitherto the Prophets, the Imams, and tlie religions they taught and interpreted, had been mentioned witli all due reverence. Though one religion was held to supersede another, there had been no question but that all were of Divine origin. But in this sixth degree, tlie opinions of the philosophers were for the first time opposed as superior to those of the prophets, because they were grounded upon the reason of man, whereas in the legal and ceremonial observances of A.I), 860. THE FOURTH AND EIGHTH STAGES. 170 religion it was impossible to discover anything reasonable. The fact being, as the missionary now ventured to suggest, that the laws and prohibitions of all religious creeds were cunningly devised artifices on the part of acute men to fetter the reason of men, and so make them orderly, submissive, and obedient ; and the fiction of a Divine origin had been invented in order to give them authority. But they were suited only for the childhood of the race. The man arrived at the full stature of humanity, bore within himself, in his reason, the supreme criterion of his actions. He rose superior to the creeds of an earlier world, by becoming his own god, and, as such, discerning between good and evil. In the seventh degree, the proselyte was made to observe that each one of the gi-eat prophets had had an as- sistant to preserve and propagate his doctrine : thus Abra- ham had his son Ishmael ; Moses, Joshua ; Jesus, Simon ; Muhammad, Ali ; and finally Ismail, the last of the Imams, had his son Muhammad. He was made to perceive that this dualism is an essential condition of the potential being transmuted into the actual. There must always be two living principles — the higher, that which gives ; the lower, that lohich receives ; the one male and life-giving ; the other, female and life-bearing. The Deity Hhnself must have been subject to this condition. He could not have fashioned the world according to His thoughts unless the raw material (so to speak) had existed previously. The object of this grade was to destroy the doctrine of the Unity by asserting the co-eternity of matter. The eighth degree developed this doctrine further. The two co-eternal principles under the designation of N 2 180 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. CHAr. i. iJiat which precedes and that ivhich follows, were fused together into a vast and shadowy system of Pantheism, which represented good and evil, joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, as manifestations of one changeless essence — a constant becoming or everlasting process of evolution, not unlike the operations of Hegel's famous principle of identity. Before this last revelation the entire fabric of past faiths crumbled into ruins. The miracles by which prophets were said to have supported their teaching were merely an allegorical account of the rising of one religion on the ruins of that which preceded it ; the resurrection, the end of the world, the final judgment, were figurative expressions to signify the recurring cycles of the stars — the death and new birth of all living things from the inherent affinities and organic properties of matter. The veritable prophet is not the worker of miracles, but the founder of a political order in harmony with the natui'e of man ; not the preacher of some doctrines about God, but the setter forth of a philosophical system con- cerning the primitive formation of the heaven and the earth, the substance and the accidents of the universe. Arrived at tlie ninth degree, the proselyte was wel- comed to the spiritual emancipation prepared for him. He passed behind the veil, and found there — blank nega- tion. There was no God ; there was no such thing as a law, moral or ceremonial, binding on the passions of men. Self-restraint, prayers, alms, pilgi'images, were all parts of a gigantic falsehood palmed off by the few upon the many in order to liold them in subjection. A society, like Muhammadanism, erected upon such manifest false- A.D. nOO. THE KAKMATIIIAXS. 181 lioods, must be extirpated root and branch before men could obtain that portion of happiness which was to be snatched from the fleeting hours of life. Coleridge has remarked on the appalling power the most insignificant man could put forth who was completely emancipated from the control of a moral law. Such were the instru- ments which Abdallah sought to frame for his war against Islam ; and with what terrible success, is recorded in the history of the Karmathian insurrection and that of the Assassins. The Karmathians were so called from Karmath — a name given to the Dai, or missionary, whose preaching in the country round Koufa led to the formation of the sect. The disintegration of the Muhammadan empire had ad- vanced with rapid steps, but the khalif was still a poten- tate of considerable power when this sect broke out into revolt. Mutadhid was the Abbaside khahf reigning at Baghdad. The disorders they at first excited were incon- siderable; but they continually increased in strength; and with every accession of strength their blows fell heavier on the tottering fabric of orthodoxy. In the course of six j^ears they had laid waste with fire and sword the pro- vinces of Irak, Syria, and Mesopotamia; they had stormed the cities of Baalbec and Salenico, and massacred the citizens. The armies of the khalifs were defeated again and again. The karavans proceeding to the Holy City were repeatedly plundered and the pilgrims inurdered. All the country which lay between Baghdad and Mekkj became a scene of smoking ruins, weeping, and blood - shedding. The leaders of the Karmathians assumed the a 182 ISLAM UNDER THE AEABS. chap. i. state of powerful princes. In tiie province of Hasa, shut in on every side by the burning sands of the Eed Desert, they ruled secure from invasion. The remains of their magnificent palace is still to be seen on the shores of the Persian Gulf. It was in a.h. 317 that these ruthless sectaries committed their most dreadful outrage — an out- rage which filled Islam with horror, and awakened an intensity of hatred which at length effected the supi)res- sion of the Karmathians. The karavans had arrived safely at Mekka — an unusual occurrence — and the Holy City was filled to overfiowing with the numbers of the devotees. On the 8th Dzul Hajj the great pilgrimage is made to the mountain of Arafat. The city and all the narrow valleys were crowded with the concourse of men, horses, and camels ; each karavan striving to fall into its appointed station. Suddenly, the gleam of swords and spears flashed in a line of fire above the hills overlooking Mekka. The Karmathians, under their fierce chieftain, Abou Taliir, had marched rapidly across the desert, over the u]:>lands of Nejd, and now stood mustered in battle array, with the devoted city at their feet. Tlie vast midtitude, wedged into the narrow streets, could neither fight nor fly. The swords of the Karmathians hewed their bloody way through an unre- sisting mass. The slaugliter did not cease till thirty thousand corpses lay rotting in the sacred valley. The holy well of Zem Zem was choked with the bodies of the slain. The pavement of the House of God was torn up and the slaughtered devotees buried in the holy precincts, in promiscuous heaps, without any of those rites which are held essential at the interment of a true believer. A.D. 929, THE MASSACRE AT MEKKA. 183 Mekka was pillaged; the cloth covering of the Kaaba removed ; aud the black stone, split into pieces by a blow from a sacrilegious Karniathian, was conveyed away to Hasa, and not restored for a space of twenty-two years. ' On the whole,' says Ibn KhalHkan, ' no Moslems, either before or after them, committed such crimes against Islamism as they ; most of Irak and of the land of the East (i.e. Mesopotamia), the province of Hejaz, Syria, and the country up to the gates of Misr (Egypt), fell into their power.' But this last outrage had the elect of uniting the orthodox against the common enemy. It be- came a struggle not merely for the preservation of Islam, but of society against anarchy. The conflict raged with intermittent severity till nearly the close of the century, when the Karmathians yielded up the struggle. They were driven back and cooped up in the narrow strip of cultivation that runs along the Persian Gulf. The Red Desert, they trusted, would remain the insuperable barrier it had always been ; but even in this they were disappointed. In the year 378, an Arab named Asfar passed the desert, destroyed the palace of the Karnia- thian chiefs, and dispersed or exterminated the feeble remnants of their followers ; and from this time there is no further mention of the Karmathians in Muhammadan history. Nevertheless, the people of Hasa and Bahrein have never since returned in heart to Islam. The dis- trict, Mr. Gilford Palgrave tells us, has remained perma- nently estranged, — a heap of moral and religious ruins, of Karmatliian and esoteric doctrines. The Wahabee at present reigns supreme there and compels an external orthodoxy, but ' the Karmathian reaction burns secretly 184 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. t. on, and waits but au occasion to break out afresh into a blaze sufficient to consume, perhaps for the last time, the superstructure of Wahabeeism and Islam.' It was a seed flung from this teeming nursery-ground of heresy and abomination which, lighting on the soil of Northern Africa, developed into the empire of the Fati- mide khalifs of Africa and Egypt. 185 CHAPTEE II. THE ARAB AND THE BERBER. A.D. 647-893. Among the Ai-abs there was no division of the world known under the name of ' Africa/ Egypt was not in- chided in that continent at all, and the name of ' Afrikia ' applied only to the northern parts of Africa which at present include the kingdoms of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoh, known generally as Barbary. This tract of country was divided by Muhammadan geographers into three parts — Further Magreb, extending from the shores of the Atlantic to Telemsan ; Central Magreb, which in- cluded the tract of country lying between Oran and the district of Bagaia ; and Afrikia proper, which extended from the eastern limit of Central Magreb to the Eg^q^tian h-ontier. The Great Desert formed its southern boundary. The Atlas Mountains were its most remarkable natural feature. These extend across the wliole of Northern Africa, or, to speak more correctly, they form a series of parallel chains running north-east and south-west, and separated from each other by level valleys of varying widtli. The highest parts of this range are the snow- capped mountains which separate Morocco from the Desert. Next in heidit to these are the mountains of 186 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. ohap. n. Auress, which extend nearly to the frontier of Tunis ; and between these are several minor ranges, having rich shel- tered plains running up between them, the abundant har- vests of Avhich made Numidia in the old time one of the granaries of Eome. As the mountain land approaches Tripoli, the hills and the valleys between them become parched and sterile, and ultimately reach the frontiers of Egypt as a chain of naked rocks. All the western and more fruitful parts of this strip of Africa were known to the Arabs as ' the land of dates,' from the abundance of that fruit which they produced. The date-trees clus- tered round the feet of the hills, and for miles and miles between the southern slopes of the Atlas and the inhos- pitable waste of the Great Desert, the interminable groves threw a broad and grateful shadow over the land. To early historians and geographers, the people of these countries were known as Libyans ; by the Arabs they were called Berbers — a tall, noble-looking race of men, fair skinned, though embrowned by the scorching rays of an African sun, and with an air of pride and indomitable love of freedom stamped upon their faces, their action, and their speech. While the broad belt of desert which encloses the central regions of Africa has secluded them from any notable part in the world's history, the northern regions have repeatedly been the theatre of great events. Here the great Carthaginian Republic flourished and fell. From the brave and hardy mountaineers of the Atlas she recruited her famous Numidian Horse, whose swords did such fearful execution on the battle-fields of Thrasymene and Cannoe. Mounted on their small Barbary horses, A.D. G47. THE BERBERS IN OLD TIMES. 187 they needed no saddles, and a halter of twisted rushes served them for bridle. The skin of a lion or tiger was their dress by day and their couch at night. When they fought on foot a piece of elephant's hide served them as a shield. Their onset was dreadful by reason of the speed and cunning of their horses. If unsuccessful, they eluded pursuit by scattering hke so much chaff before a gust of wind, till a fresh opportunity arose, when the broken fi-agments would reunite with astonishing rapidity, and in one compact body swoop down upon their prey. These mercenary troops were at once the strength and the weakness of the Carthaginian Eepublic. They were irre- claimable barbarians, with the usual virtues and faults of the savage. Severed into a vast number of tribes, divided from each other by hereditary hatreds, they re- pelled every attempt to make them abandon this savage and bloody independence. They hated all order, and all masters, good, bad, or indifferent. Greedy of plunder and reckless of life, they fought with great courage in the armies of the Republic. But they had no love for the mistress they served. At any offence given, their swords were ready to sheathe themselves in the bosom they were intended to defend. The Carthaginians, on their side, treated these mercenary troops with that callous indif- ference to the rights and feelings of ' barbarians ' which was characteristic of the old world. The mutual hatred, long smouldering, broke out at the close of the first Avar with Rome. The army of Carthage rose against the city and nearly brought her to destruction. The 'war of tlie mercenaries,' though idtimately brought to a successful conclusion, inflicted a wound upon the Republic, from 188 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ii. which she never recovered. It revealed the secret of her weakness. The wandering tribes of the Atlas dis- covered that they held her fate in their hands, and they flocked to the banners of Scipio as soon as he landed in Africa. And so Eome triumphed and Carthage fell. The one power was founded upon the rock of })atriotism ; the other upon the shifting sand of a mercenary army. Nothing less than the matchless genius of Hannibal could have succeeded in maintaining the unequal struggle so long. Carthage fell ; the wars against Jugurtha were fought out to their bloody conclusion ; the Vandals drove out the Eomans ; the Romans drove out the Vandals ; Northern Africa from one end to the other became a theatre of religious persecution, wasted with lire and sword ; but through all these tempests and vicissitudes tlic moun- taineers preserved untainted their bai'barism and inde- ])endence. They continued as of old to wander over the desert, and build their villages in the valleys running up between the parallel ranges of the Atlas. The poorer classes devoted themselves to the cultivation of the soil ; the richer wandered with their flocks and herds from one pasture land to another ; each tribe had its own chiefs, and they were in unison upon one matter only — no government should ever be allowed to restrict the liberty they so dearly loved. Their matchless and innumerable cavalry was at the disposal of any one who woidd aid them in casting off* an existing yoke, whether imposed by Carthaginian, Vandal, Eoman, or Arab. It is necessary to keep these traits in recollection to understand the history of Northern Africa under the A.D. G47. THE ARAB AND THE BERBER. 189 domination of the Arabs. The conquerors of Asia found themselves in tliese regions confronted by an enemy unhke any they had hitherto encountered. In Syria and Persia they had fought against populations physically weakened by luxury, and spiritually enfeebled by despot- ism. The highly centralised form of government existing in those countries had concentrated at a single point all the springs of resistance. That point mastered, the country was defenceless. But in N'orthern Africa every valley was the home of a teeming population who rated hberty higher than life, who were as inured to hardship, as bold, vigorous, and ac'tive as the Arabs themselves. Greek met Greek, and the tug of war was terrible indeed. Money and treasure were poured into these regions without stint by the khalifs. The Arab's brilliant courage was nowhere illustrated by more brilliant deeds, but he never held more of the soil than what his armed foot was planted on. Even from that he was repeatedly cast out. The Arab armies cut like the keel of a ship into the masses of their Berber enemies. Like the waves of the sea, these masses reunited and closed up behind tliem, and army after army was engulfed. ' The Berbers,' said the great Arabian general, Mousa, the conqueror of Spain, — ' the Berbers, Commander of the Faithful, are of all foreign nations the people who most resemble the Arabs in impetuosity, corporal strength, endurance, military science, and generosity ; only that they are. Commander of tlie Faithful, the most treacherous people on earth.' The first expedition of the Arabs was made A.ir. 27 (a.d. G47-8). Othman was at that time khalif, and had entrusted the government of Egypt to his brother 190 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ii. Abdallah. Abdallali sent parties of horsemen into Afrikia to report upou the country, and the accounts they brought back of its wealth and fertihty determined Othman to undertake a regular invasion. The khalif furnished from his private funds a thousand camels for the use of the poorer soldiery, as well as horses and arms, and bestowed a gratuity upon each soldier enrolled in the expedition. The army was composed of detachments from several Arab tribes, and these, on arrival in Egypt, were further strengthened until they reached a total of twenty thousand men. The governor of Egypt took command of the whole. He marched swiftly across the desert of Barka, left the walled cities of Tripoli and Kabes in his rear, and attacked the Byzantine prefect, Gregorius, in a plain, twenty-four hours' journey from Carthage — 'a vast city,' says the Arabian chronicler, ' enclosing lofty edifices, with walls of white marble, and thronged with colonnades and monuments of various colours in immense numbers.' The Greek army was completely defeated, and Gregorius slain. By the payment, however,' of a sum of money, the Greek government prevailed upoii the Arabs to with- draw into Egypt. The interval of peace was a short one. The rapacity of the Greek government drove the Berbers into rebellion ; they invited the Arabs to come to their assistance, — an invitation eagerly accepted. It is un- necessary to follow the incidents of the war. Suffice it to say that by a.ii. 55 (a.d. 675) the Arab rule was estab- lished in Afrikia proper. The governor was the celebrated Okba, and he had built a city — Kairoan — as a point of support from which to push into the interior of the country. The Greeks still occupied Magreb, and had A.D. 675. THE 31ARCH OF 0IO3A. 101 collected an immense number of Berbers as auxiliaries to their regular troops. In the year 55, Okba, at the head of a large army, crossed the boundary line of Afrikia, and entered Magreb. The open towns surrendered as he approached ; the Greeks and Berbers hung about the flanks of liis army and tried to impede his advance ; ]3ut he made his way, by dint of Jiard fighting, through all obstacles, until he reached the furthest coast of Africa, and beheld before him the tumbling billows of the Atlantic. Spurring his horse, chest deep, into the waves, he raised his hand to Heaven, and exclaimed : ' 0 God I but for this sea I would have gone into still remoter countries, like unto Zulkarnein, fighting for Thy religion, and slaying such as believe in other gods than Thee ! ' ^ This triumphant advance of Okba had the effect of stilling the turbulent Berbers into an alarmed quiescence. The land had rest for a brief space. Okba himself was the means of arousing the storm again. He grossly and wantonly insulted Ko?eila, a leading Berber cliieftain. At his summons the clans resumed the weapons they had just laid aside, and a countless host poured forth from all the valleys of the Atlas on the handful of Arabs tliat garrisoned Kairoan. Okba disdained to endure a sie^'c. He broke the scabbard of liis sword in token of his resolution to conquer or die, and, leading out his small force, charged into tlie centre of the Berbers wlio ' Okba here alludes to the following passage in the seventh sin-a of the Koran, entitled ' The Cave ' (Zulkarnein, it must be premised, is supposed by the majority of commentators to be Alexander the Great) : — ' The Jews will ask thee concerning Zulkarnein. Answei-, I will rehearse unto you an account of him, &c. &c.' — Vide Sale's Koran, p. 246-7. 192 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. n. encompassed his capital. He fell fighting ; only a very few of the Arabs effected a retreat into Egypt ; Koseila took possession of Kairoan ; and the domination of the Moslems appeared to be at an end. The khalif Abd al Malek was at this time struggling with a number of formidable enemies. Abdallah ibu Zobair ruled in theHejaz ; the fierce and crafty al-Moktar held Koufa, and dealt out a bloody revenge for the death of Hosain ; the Kliaregites scoured Irak, leaving wherever they passed ruin and desolation. It was impossible, so long as these enemies were unsubdued, to attempt the recovery of Northern Africa, and for the space of four years Koseila ruled in Kairoan as an independent king. At length, in A.n. 69 (a.d. 619), Abd al Malek found him- self sufficiently secure on his throne to undertake the reconquest of Afrikia. In that year Zobair, the lieutenant of Okba, Avho, after the fall of his chief, had with a few troops maintained himself in Barka, entered Afrikia with an army larger and better equipped than the one which had been destroyed with Okba. Koseila abandoned Kairoan at his approach, falling back in order to give the Berbers time to leave their mountain homes and rally round him. The Arabs followed closely, and, according to their own account, made inmiense havoc amid the retreating moun- taineers. But their success was short-lived. Zobair had not advanced far when lie heard that a Greek army, en- couraged by the late expulsion of the Arabs, had appeared upon the coast of Barka. He hastily retraced his steps, rashly attacked these new invaders with very inferior forces, and he and his troops were cut to pieces almost to a man. Afrikia had again cast out tbs Muhammadan invader. A.D. G24. 'THE DIVINERESS.' 193 The klialif, however, was nut to be discouraged. In A.ii. 74 a thii'd army, 40,000 strong, and commanded by Hasan ibn ISToman, made good its footing upon tlie liardly-contested soil. For awhile it carried all before it. Kairoan was recaptured ; the city of Carthage was stormed and pillaged ; and the Greeks and Berbers defeated in a great battle in the open field. The remnant of the Greek army hastily abandoned the country ; the Arab was once more supreme, but only for a very brief while. Koseila had died; but his vast influence had passed undiminished to a woman — El Kahina, or the Divineress — who was supposed to have the power of prediction, and to be gifted with other supernatural attributes. She descended from the hiu:lilands of Mount Auress at the head of an immense multitude, defeated the Arabs with great slaughter, and compelled them for the third time to relinquish their hardly-gotten prize. For five years El Kahina remained the queen of Xorthern Africa. At the expiration of that time Abd al Malek despatched a fourth army to attempt the recovery of the province. On receiving intelligence of the march of this new army the Berber queen formed the desperate resolution of tinning the entire province of Afrikia into a desert. It was the wealth of the country, the grandeur and luxury of the cities which the Greeks had left behind them, which, she supposed, attracted thither these pertinacious invaders. But all this wealth was in the hands of aliens, Muhammadans, Jews, and Christians ; for the Berbers it had no attraction. They needed nothing but their flocks and grazing grounds. So, in a speech to her troops, she informed them that if they o 194 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ir. really desired to stay these repeated invasions, and pre- serve unmolested their old immemorial freedom, tliey must utterly destroy the attractions which lured the enemy tliither. Immediately the hordes of the Berbers spread all over the country, more destructive than an army of locusts. The cities and the villages were laid in ruins ; the groves were cut down ; the precious metals, and all that was valuable and could not be destroyed, were carried away into the recesses of the mountains. From Tripoli to Tangiers there was not a town or a village which did not suffer in a greater ov less degree from the effects of this destroying fury. These stern measures materially aided the re-conquest of the province. As Hasan ibn Noman advanced into the country he was liailed as a deliverer by all the mercantile and agricultural populations. The gates of the cities were flung open to him ; the people thronged into his camp to take the oath of allegiance, and swell the strength of his army. The Sibyl was defeated and slain in a great ])attle ; and the Berbers, exhausted by the indomitable perseverance of the Arabs, sued for peace. They obtained it on the con- dition that they should furnish a contingent of 24,000 men to aid in the invasion of Spain. ' From this time,' says the chronicler, ' Islam spread itself among the Berbers.' But the change of faith worked no change in the national character. They re- mained as deeply enamoured as before of their savage independence ; they hated the Arab more l^itterly now that his foot was planted on their necks than when they confronted him on equal terms in the field of battle. They waited only for an opportunity to assimie their old THE 'SEPARATISTS.' 195 attitude of active liostility. The materials for an ex- plosion were all ready ; it needed only a chance spark to fall and ignite them. The spark soon fell. A new sect appeared in Xorthern Africa — the sect of the Separatists. These were the descendants of the men who had forced Ali at the moment of victory to submit his claims to arbitration ; and then denounced him as a heretic for having done so. Ali defeated them in two battles with such crushing severity that for many years after they made no third appeal to arms. The character of their tenets, for a while, underwent a complete change. Thej^ became the adherents of Islam as it was preached at Mekka. They asserted that mere faith unaccompanied by works — an intellectual confession of the unity without a corresponding observance of the moral law — was power- less to save. They declared that the quarrels which rent the Muhammadan world on the subject of the Imamate or laAvful head of Islam were about a matter of no spiritual importance. The true Imam was neither, of necessity, a member of the tribe of Kuraish, nor of the family of the Prophet, but the devoutest and purest believer among the Faithful. The Faithful, however, could manage perfectly well for themselves whetlier this — the only true and lawful Imam — was visibly at their head or not. Into this sect, during these years of its peaceful propagation, were gradually attracted all those spirits who were disgusted by the debaucheries and cruelties of the khalifs of Damascus, and weary of the endless hair-splitting controversies of Muhammadan doctors. They became the subjects of a cruel persecution, which they endured for a time with rare fortitude and resignation. But at 0 2 19(5 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ti. last, maddened by tlie relentless cruelty witli which they were hunted out and killed wherever they were found, they proclaimed the jehad, or ' sacred war,' against all unbelievers. They passed from one extreme to the other. They alone were the ' children of light ; ' all other (so- called) Muhammadans were unbelieving dogs to be slaughtered without mercy. They carried on their war with an awful ferocity ; women and children fell before their indiscriminating fury ; and it was only after enor- mous cruelty, fighting, and blood-shedding that they were driven out of L-ak, some into Hasa, others through Egypt into Afrikia and Magreb. These were precisely the leaders the Berbers were in search of. Hitherto they had always commenced one of their fierce outbreaks with a general renunciation of the Muhammadan faith, and a return to the national worship of their hills. But their uniform ill-success had e^ene- rated the belief that this Arabian god was stronger far than any they worshipped — that they must have him on their side if they hoped for success. The Separatists seemed to have brought this secret with them. The Berbers hated the government that was over them ; the Berbers deemed that these Arab rulers were an accursed race, fit only to be devoured by the sword ; and now these sectaries came among them with the glad tidings that such feelings and such acts were exactly those most grateful to the deity they wished to have upon their side. These Separatists, like tlieraselves, rejected the authority of all khalifs indifferently. They cursed Othman ; they cursed Ali ; they cursed Ayesha Talha and Zobair ; they cursed the House of Omuiaya ; they consigned to everlast- A.D. 741. THE ' SEPA1JATI8TS/ I'.tr iiig torments the most venerated of the compauious of the Prophets. They alone were the true Muhammadans, and it was their business to exterminate idolaters, hypocrites, and misbelievers from the earth they contaminated. Tliis was the true Holy War ; and whoever refused to take ])art in this pious work became a heretic, who was to be slaughtered without pity, and his wife and children reduced to slavery, The Berbers, to their great joy, found that they had been Muhammadans all along, with- out knowing it. All these tremendous doctrines had been revealed to them, as it were, by the light of nature, and embraced with ardent enthusiasm. They were, in fact, the true believers, and their Arab conquerors the out- casts and heretics. The Separatist leaders, wlio had been hinited like partridges upon the hills, found themselves all at once the leaders of formidable hosts. In two successive battles the Arabs were defeated. In the latter of these tlie Arab general and his chief officers, in the usual heroic fashion of their nation, scorned to fly when their army was broken and routed. It is no exag- geration to say of an Arab general of that day that he died, but never surrendered. The battle was known as ' ' the fight of the nobles,' from the niniiber of distinguished men who perished in it. The khalif Hisham ibn Abd al Malek broke out in fierce wrath when he heard of the disaster. ' By Allali ! ' he cried, ' I will make them feel tlie wratli of an Arab. I will send an army such as has never been seen in their country. The head of the column shall be entering Afrikia while tlie rear is still with us. I will not leave a Berber fort without establish- ing at its side a standing cam]) of warriors of the tribe of 198 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. CHAr. ii. Kais or that of Temim.' The menace proved to be an idle one. A fresh host, it is true, was poured into Afrikia, but only to be cut to pieces hke those which had pre- ceded it. The rule of the Damascus khalif was limited to the walls of Kairoan. And in a.h. 124 the Berbers determined to wrest from him this solitary possession. Two large armies came down from the hills to make a joint attack upcjn Kairoan. The Arab governor, Han- zala, a man wlio combined all the rehgious enthusiasm of the Muhammadan with a gentleness of heart unwonted in that savage age, acted with resolution and promptitude. He sallied forth from the city, and, assailing one of the two armies — that commanded by Okasa, the Safrite — before it could eflect a junction with the otlier, routed it with heavy loss. He then fell back on Kairoan to repel the second army. But the force he sent out to stay its advance, after a great deal of hard fighting, which con- tinued for the space of a month, was driven back upon Kairoan, seriously weakened in numbers. Okasa, in the meanwhile, had recovered from his defeat, and the two hosts beleaguered the devoted city. Tlie chronicler, with the usual exaggeration of the Oriental, numbers them at 300,000 men. Hanzala, however, was not dismaved. He drew out of the magazines all the arms stored up in them, and made an appeal to the inha- l)itants, giving to each person that enlisted a complete suit of armour and fifty dinars. This attracted so many volunteers to Ms ranks that he diminished his gratuity first to forty, then to thirty dinars, rejecting all recruits but the young and vigorous. It was a crisis never to be forgotten by those who, with beating hearts and straining A.D. 742. THEIR DEFEAT. 190 eyes, watched till tlie torches of the uight had burned out, and day stood tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. All round the city the twinkle of the innumerable watch- fires marked out the lines of the beleaguering host. Within, in the great square in front of the mosque, the irlare of the li^'hts showed Hanzala and his chief officers engaged hour after hour in the distribution of arms for the morrow's battle. It was for all a question of hfe and deatli. A Berber victory would instantly convert the city into a human shambles, where men, women, and children woidd be slaughtered indiscriminately. At the break of day the besieged troops broke every man his scabbard — the usual Arab symbol that death or victory was the only choice before them — and marched forth to engage the enemy. There was a terrible struggle ; but the courage of despair proved at the last stronger than tlie force of nund)ers. The vast Berber host broke and fled ; their munbers enciniibered their llight, and rendered im])ossible either order or resistance. The Arabs pressed their rear, and slew them by thousands. One hundred and eighty thousand in all are said to have perished. This, of course, is wildly exaggerated. The statistics of Oriental historians are pure and unalloyed products of the imagination ; but there can be no doubt that the victory wrought a marvel- lous and unhoped-for deliverance. It was accounted one of the ' great days ' of the Arabs. ' After the battle of Bedr,' said a warrior of that time who was not present, ' I should wish to have fought in the battle in front of Kairoan.' But this brilliant victory brought no lasting peace. As soon as the Berber hosts were scattered, the Arabian 200 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ii. emirs commenced to quarrel with each other. A few years after the battle of Kairoan occurred in Asia the great revo- lution which overthrew the House of Ommaya,and replaced it by that of the Abbasides. The rights of one house or the other furnished a convenient pretext for the revolt of any ambitious chieftain who hungered after power. If de- feated, he sought and obtained shelter among the Berbers. These eagerly availed themselves of the divisions among the Arabs to recover their independence. Partial revolts and sanguinary battles kept the province in a state of perpetual turbulence, and exhausted even the long-endu- ring courage of the Arabs ; and in a.h. 154, another universal and terrific outbreak occiuTcd. Abou Djafar al Mansour, the second of the Abbaside khahfs, was at this time reigning at Damascus, and his representative in Afrikia was Omar ibn Hafs, a descendant of the great Muhallab, the conqueror of the Kharegites, and himself a soldier of brilUant courage. He had acquired by his deeds the cognomen of Hazarmerd (equal to 1,000 men). How well he deserved that title we shall soon see. He had commenced to govern Afrikia A.H. 151, and for three years nothing had occurred to disturb the tranquillity of the country. Deluded into a false security, Omar, leaving Kairoan under charge of a relative, Abou Hazem Habib, repaired to Tobna, a distant town on the coast of Magreb, to superintend the re-build- ing of the walls. Immediately, as by a common impulse, the Berbers arose in revolt at a dozen different points. The Arab detachments scattered about the countrj- were buried beneath the human avalanche that rushed down the hills. Abou Hazem was killed in a great battle in A.D. 770. OMAll IBN IIAFS. 201 front of Kairoau, and that town blockaded. Tripoli was seized. A host of 300,000 Kliaregites, made iij) of levies from different Berber tribes, blockaded Omar ibn Hafs in Tobna. He had with him only 5,000 men. Seeing himself invested by this huge multitude, Ilazarmerd assembled his principal officers, and de- manded their advice. They were all of opinion that it would be madness to attempt a sortie ; and he determined to have recourse to bribery to break up this formidable league. He sent into the camp of the enemy a native of Northern Africa, to whom he entrusted a sum of 40,000 dinars and a large number of rich vestments, and instructed him to purchase therewith from Abou Karra — a Kharegite leader at the head of 40,000 men — a promise to abandon his allies. These proposals were scornfully rejected by the Kharegite chief, but his son undertook to do all that was needed on receiving a sum of 4,000 dinars and some rich clothing. Abou Karra was a stranger to these negotiations, and ob- tained his first intimation of them by the breaking up of the force under his command, and the dispersal of the men to their homes. Having in this way got rid of one portion of the enemy, Omar sent a detachment of 1,500 men to surprise a body of 15,000 cavalry under Ibn Koustem, another of the Kharegite chiefs. This enterprise was completely successful, and the huge Berber army despairing of success withdrew from the walls of Tobna. These events had occupied eight months, and during all this time the city of Kairoan had been held closely besieged. There remained not a single dirhem in the treasury, nor any food in the granaries. The inhabitants 202 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap, ir were eating dogs and the baggage animals, such as mules and donkeys, and Avere exhausted by their labours in re- pelling the almost daily assaults of the Berbers. Already a large number of the townspeople, despairing of relief, had abandoned Kairoan, and yielded themselves prisoners to the besiegers. Omar ibn Hafs, learning their extremity, took with him 700 men and hastened to their relief. His departure was the signal for a fresh assault on Tobna by the Kharegites. But the lieutenant he had left behind him made a sortie with such effectual viojoiu- that the enemy were forced back in the utmost confusion. Omar, in the meanwhile, had reached Arbes, a ])lace situate a three days' journey from Kairoan. The Berbers, igno- rant of the force he had with him, raised the siege when they heard of his approach, and marched to attack him. Omar retired upon Tunis, drawing the Berbers after him. This gave the exhausted garrison the time and oppor- tunity to refill their empty granaries. Omar, in the mean- while, by a swift and skilful movement, marched unper- ceived round the flank of the unwieldy Berber army, and joined the defenders of Kairoan. He had barely time to com})lete the provisioning of the place, and strengthen the outworks, when an immense wall of dust, moving across the level plain on which the city of Kairoan stands, showed that the enemy w^ere at hand. They were 1 30,000 strong. Omar attacked them with fury ; but by sheer weight of numbers the Berbers, though suffering tremendous losses, succeeded in cooping up the fiery little band of Arabs within the circle of their defences. Hay after day, from that time Omar harassed the besieging army by fierce attacks, till the strength of his little garrison was A.D. 771. THE DEATH OF HAZARMEKJ). 203 well-nigh exhausted. Soon, too, fiiinine re-appeared, and cats, dogs, mules, and donkeys were the only articles of food left to the wretched townspeo])le. The people lost heart. Omar then proposed to take a Ijand of chosen men, cut his way through the enemy, and, after collecting provisions in the country beyond, force his way back into the town. At first the peo])le consented, but tlie Berber host had now increased to double the strenQth which it possessed when it commenced the siege ; hatred of tlie Muhammadan and tlie hope of plunder had drawn tliitlier thousands of hardy recruits from all the tribes of Xortliern Africa ; and when the peo])le of Kairoan gazed fortli upon the enormous multitnde wliich begirt their city, their hearts sank within them at the thouoht of losin<'- their heroic leader. They entreated him to stay, and depute to another the charge of tlie sortie. Omar con- sented. But here a new difficulty arose. The soldiers refused to make the attempt unless they had Omar at their head. At this moment, angry at the opposition lie encountered, Omar received a letter from his wife, in which she informed liim that tlie khalif, angry at receiv- ing no intelhgence, had recalled him and sent to Afrikia Yezid ibn Hatem at the head of 60,000 men. This, then, was to be the reward of his labours. His wife had added in her letter that to survive such a disgrace would be dishonourable. Omar felt that it would be so. He ordered the troops to make ready for the grand sortie which had been determined on. He would lead them himself, he said. ' Then,' relates one of his friends, ' he demanded to see me. On coming into liis presence, I saw he was deeply moved with aiiger ; the sweat stood on his fore- 204 ISLAM UNDEE THE ARABS. chap. ii. head ; he gave rae his wife's letter ; I wept when I reud it. " What evil is there," I said, " that a member of your own flimily should come to deliver and give you rest? " " Yes," he rephed, " a rest that will continue till the day of .resurrection. Be attentive now to my last wishes." He dictated them to me ; then, rushing out like a furious camel, he flung himself on the besiegers and ceased not to strike with lance and sword till he received a mortal wound,' ^ Dzul Hajj. A.ii. 154 (October, A.D. 771). Kairoan seemed to be lost; but the courage and tenacity of the defenders had impressed even the . ruthless Kharegites with admiration. They offered honourable terms to the city, which were joyfully accepted. Kairoan threw open her gates ; and for tlie fifth time since the first comino; of the Arabs, the Berbers were masters of their native hills and valleys. We do not purpose to follow the eventful, but mono- tonous, narrative further, or to tell how Yezid ibn Hatem — a soldier of the same family, and cast in the same heroic mould as his predecessor — re-established the authority of the khalif in Afrikia by a series of splendid military suc- cesses. He is said to have fought upwards of sixty battles in achieving this arduous task. But his death (a.h. 170) ^ One is reminded of the passage in Scott's ' Kokeby ' — And now my race of terror run, Mine be the eve of tropic sun ! No pale gradations quench his ray, No twilight dews his wrath allay ; With disk-like battle target red He rushes to his burning bed ; Dyea the wide wave with bloody light, Then sinks at once — and all is night. A.T). 800. THE AGIILABITES. 205 was the signal for the old confusion to recommence. The khalifs, in fact, never succeeded in conquering the northern provinces of Africa throughout their entire extent. Their authority never extended beyond the limits of Afrikia Proper. And even this, in the year 183, was virtually ceded by the khalif Haroun al Eashed to the family of the Aghlabites. Hitherto an annual subvention of 100,000 dinars had been sent to Kairoan to defray the cost of governing Afrikia. In the year above mentioned Ibrahim ibn al Aghlab — a soldier who liad won fame in these Afri- can wars — wrote to the khalif, undertaking, if invested witli the government, not only to relinquish the annual subsidy, but to pay into the treasury at Baghdad a yearly revenue of 40,000 dinars. The khalif, not without reluctance, accepted this proposal, and the province of Afrikia became a kind of hereditary fief held by tlie Aghlabite family. The Aghlabites held the province in truly military fashion. Ten thousand watch-towers, or forts, were erected along the frontier line to protect Afrikia from the inroads of the Berbers of Magreb. The dismantled towns were surrounded with walls ; a system of signals, by means of beacon-fires, could in a single night carry intelligence from the Straits of Gibraltar to the frontier of Egypt ; and regular postal routes knit together the most distant parts of the province. Along these routes horses and couriers were always in readiness to carry news to the capital ; and their maintenance in an efficient state was one of the most important duties of the Administration. Finally, to pro- tect them from the turbulence of their own subjects, the Aghlabites imported immense numbers of negro slaves 206 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ii. from Soudan, which, to the number of many thousands, formed their personal body-guard. They were splendid princes of the Oriental type, rejoicing in erecting magnificent mosques, excavating enormous tanks, and building spacious and sumptuous palaces. They carried their arms into Sicily and wrested that rich island from the B3^zantine empire. Themselves of Persian extraction, the Aghlabites spread through the province the sciences, the arts, the public education which the great Persian revolution in Asia caused to flourish with (unhappily) such transient brilliancy at Baghdad. Ibrahim ibn al Aghlab received, at his favourite residence Kasr al Kadim, the ambassadors of Charlemagne ; and the young doctors of his capital travelled to the holy cities to study theology and jurisprudence. Beyond this province, however, the Berbers either retained their old lawless independence, or successful adventurers established principalities which professed some variety of the Muhammadan faith, but acknowledged no allegiance to the khalifate at Baghdad. A brief sketch of the chief of these is necessary to make intelli- gible the rapid progress and easy conquests of the Fatimide missionaries : Tahart. — Tahart, situated in Central Magreb, was the capital of a small kingdom known to the Muhammadans as ' the Irak of Northern Africa.' It was the home and central point of Kharegite fanaticism. Its founding was in this wise. Amid the incessant turmoil and confusion of African history, it chanced that in a.h. 140, a Berber tribe — the Werfadjouma — obtained possession of Kairoan. They gave themselves up to the cruellest excesses. They THE KINGDOM OF TAIIART. 207 stabled their horses hi the great mosque of the city; tliey put to death every Arab tliey could find ; and practised such pitiless extortion upon the townspeople, that the traders almost entirely deserted the city. One day, a Kharegite, belonging to the sect known as the Ibadhites, whose business brought him to Kairoan, saw some of these Berbers outraging a woman in the public streets, Avithout attracting any particular attention, far less con- demnation. Carried away by his indignation, he forgot the business on which he liad come, and hastened away to the camp of Abou '1 Khattab, a great Kharegite chief, to whom he related what he had seen. The chief was trans])orted with fury ; he rushed out of his tent, exclaim- ing : ' Beliold me, O God ! ready to serve Thee ! I respond to Thy appeal.' He collected his forces, and marched to Kairoan. In a great battle, the Werfadjouma were almost altogether destro3^ed,^and Kairoan fell into his hands. He entrusted the charge of the city to Abd al Rahman il)n Eoustem, and settled himself at Tripoli, from which place lie gradually brought under his sway the whole province of Afrikia. AHairs remained in this state until a.ii. 144, when the khalif Abou Djafar nl Mansour sent Muhammad ibn Ashath to recover the pro- vince. In the campaign tliat ensued Abou '1 Khattab perished, with 40,000 of his followers. When the news of this disaster reached Abd al Rahman he abandoned Kairoan. The reUcs of the army of Abou 1 Khattal) joined him during his retreat, and, acknowledging him as their chief, tliey resolved to build a town, hereafter to become the capital of a Kharegite kingdom. They halted on a bare bit of laud in the centre of a dense forest. The 208 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS chap. ii. following Friday Abd al Eahman made the prayer with his companions. They liad but just completed this act of piety when the congregation was startled by the angry roar of a lion close at hand. The beast was captured alive, brought back in triumph, and slain upon the spot where the prayer was made. It was a sign, Abd al Rahman told his followers, that the city they were about to build would be continually exposed to war and the shedding of blood. They then set to work and built tlie mosque, the beams of which were formed of the timber cut in the surrounding forest. Gradually a flourishing town arose round the mosque, with gardens, plantations, baths, and karavanserais. The district was remarkable for the abundance of its flocks, and the excellence of its cattle, horses, mules, and other beasts of burden. ' Honey, l)utter, and all sorts of provisions,' says the geographer, Ibn Haukal, ' are found here in abundance.' The sove- reignty thus founded by Abd al Rahman was retained by liis descendants for the space of 130 years. Segelmessa. — South of the Atlas range, and on the very edge of the Great Desert, was the large and populous city of Segelmessa. Large suburbs surrounded it on every side ; it was encircled by a magnificent wall, having eight iron gates, and within were lofty houses, spacious public buildings, and beautiful gardens. It owed its beauty and fertility to a peculiarly happy situation. At a short distance from Segelmessa was the source of a river fed by a multitude of smaller brooks ; this stream, as it approached the town bisected, one stream flowing to the east of the town, the other to the west. The soil tlnis fertilised produced in abundance dates, grapes, and all THE CITY OF SEGELMESSA, 209 kinds of fruits. Segelmessa was also a great trading depot. Coinnierce was the chief source of its wealth. Rich karavaus passed incessantly to and from Soudan, and brought great wealth to tlie city, in the shape of amber, silk, cloths of very fine wool, iron, lead, quick- silver, and eunuchs drawn from the coimtry of the negroes. The geographer Ibu Haukal is loud in his praise of the people of this place. ' In all their actions,' he says, ' they conform themselves scrupulously to the pre- cepts of the law, and distinguish themselves by their charity and humanity. I have never seen in any part of Magreb so many sheikhs of profound knowledge and re- ligious habits as in Segelmessa. The wealth of the in- habitants is marvellous. I have myself seen a paper by which a native of Segelmessa acknowledged liimself the debtor of a person in the same town for a sum of 40,000 dinars, the like of which I have never seen in the East ; and when I spoke of it afterwards in Khorasan and Irak it w^as regarded as an unique fact.' The women were remarkable for their beauty and plumpness, which they attributed to their practice of feeding upon dogs. The Segelmessa dog which produced so agreeable a result nuist have been a beast altogether different from the dos" eaten in China. Segelmessa, like Tahart, was the seat of a Kharegite kingdom. The family of Medrar ruled there for 160 years. The originator of this dynasty was an owner of Hocks and herds, which he had been in the habit of con- ducting to graze on the lands where Segelmessa was after- wards built. Struck by the natural advantages of the place, he and about forty other Kharegites commenced to P 210 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. ii. build tlie city in A.n. 140; and before the close of the century it had become the richest and most populous place in Northern Africa. Its very situation is now un- known. The Edrisides. — In the month of Dzul Kada, A.ir. 169 (May 786), Hosein, a lineal descendant of Hasan, the son of Ali, revolted a2;'ainst the Abbaside khalif Hadi. He took up arms at Mekka, and there rallied round liiin several members of his family, among wliom was liis uncle Edris. Hosein was slain in battle at Fekh, a place situated about tln^ee miles from Mekka. A great number of his relatives were killed ; his partisans fled, and many of them were made prisoners. Edris contrived to effect his escape, and, througli the fidelity of his frecdman Easlied, succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the khalif, v/ho caused diligent search to be made after him. Eashcd, a man of u'reat intellic!;ence and courage, and remarkable as well for his physical strength, disguised Edris as his servant, and they left Mekka together, witli a karavan of liomc-returning ])ilgrims. During tlie journey Edris scrupulously performed all the offices of a- servant, and his disguise was not suspected by their fellow-travellers. Arrived at old Kairo in Egypt, they passed a well-built house, tlie aspect of which showed tliat the possessor was in easy circumstances. They sat down to rest in a shop close at hand. The master of the house, perceiving from tlieir general appearance that tliey were stnmgers in Kairo, courteously addressed them. This man was a client of the Abbasides ; nevertheless, Easlied, attracted by his look and manners, determined to make an appeal to his piet}^ and generosity. He made known to him the A.D. 78G. THE EDRISIDES. 211 true character of liis seeming servant, and conjured him as a true believer to aid in preserving the Hfe of a de- scendant of the Propliet. ' I am,' he added, ' conduct- ing him to the country of the Berbers ; in that remote country he will perhaps find an asylum from the ven- geance of his enemies.' The appeal was not made in vain. The man took them into his house, and kept them concealed there till a karavan which was shortly to pro- ceed to Kairoan was ready to start. Then he hired a camel for them, furnished them with provisions and clothes ; and when the karavan was about to set out, he said to them : ' The Governor of Egypt has mihtary posts all along the frontier, so that no jierson can pass without being questioned and examined ; but I am ac- quainted with an old deserted road ; I ^vilI guide the young man along that until the frontier is passed ' — and he indicated Edris with his finger. Rashed accordingly set out with the karavan; the good Egyptian and the young Edris following the circuitous route, rejoined the karavan safely at a point beyond the frontier. Here the citizen of Kairo took leave of the two men to whom he had rendered such signal service ; Edris and Rashed, not daring to enter Afrikia, traversed the country occupied by the Berbers, and arrived at last in Further Magreb, where they placed themselves under the protection of Ishak ibn Muhammad, the grand emir of the Aurdba tribe. Shortly after (a.h. 172, a.d. 788-9) Edris announced openly his pretensions to the Imamate in virtue of his descent, and a large number of the Berber tribes in that part of Africa acknowledged him as their chief. His authority grew apace ; either by force or persuasion lie p 2 •212 ISLAM UNDEI't THE AIIABS. chap. ir. broiio-lit nearly tlie whole of Further Maij^reb under his authority, and in the following year established himself in Telemsan as his capital city. The news of the uprising of this new power having reached the khalif Haroun al Eashed, he consulted his vizier, Yahya ibn Khaled, the Barmekide, what he should do. Yahya told him not to be troubled, that he would soon relieve him of anxiety on this score. He summoned to his presence an Arab of the tribe of Rebyali — Suleiman ibn Horeiz — a man soft and engaging in his manners, brave upon occa- sion, learned in theology, and eloquent in the exposition of doctrine, and not at all disinclined to commit murder if properly paid for it. Him, Yahya induced to under- take the hazardous enterprise of murdering Edris in his capital. He gave him a large sum of money, and a phial containing poison so strong and subtle that a person died by merely inhaling it. A companion of tried valour and fidelity was selected to accompany him. The two emissaries reached Magreb in safety. Suleiman presented himself before Edris, as a refugee from the wrath of Haroim on account of his devotion to the family of Ali. He was cordially received, and his engaging maimers and pleasing conversation soon made him a great lavourite with his intended victim. Suleiman spared no pains to conceal the true purport of his mission. He held con- ferences with the Berbers, in which he eloquently ex- pounded the great duty of supporting the descendants of the Prophet. In all he did or spoke he acted as an en- thusiastic adherent of the House of Ah. One day when Eashed was absent, Suleiman, taking with him the poisoned flask, entered the presence of the A.D. 792. THE !)]• ATIl OF EDlilS. 2l;{ young prince, and pri'sented liini witli the pliial, saying it contained a very rare and exquisite perfume, such as was not to be found in Northern Africa. He then left the apartment. For months past he had kept two horses in severe training ; Suleiman and his companion now- mounted these, and rode away at full gallop. Edris in the meanwhile had inhaled the poison, and fallen on llie ground senseless. His servants found him in this state, but were at first unable to chvine the cause. The flight of Suleiman, however, speedily divulged both the crime and the criminal ; and Eashed, with a band of friends, set out in pursuit. One after another, the horses of his com- panions gave up exhausted, but the steed on which Eashed was mounted held bravely on, and at last he had the gratification of seeing the two fugitives ahead of him. He made straight at the traitor Suleiman. With one stroke of his sword he severed the hand of the mur- derer, so that it dangled from his wrist by a strip of flesh ; a second blow inflicted a wound on his head, a third slashed his face ; but here the horse of Eashed, utterly spent, came to a dead stop ; and Suleiman, riding an animal which had been trained, was able to rejoin his companion, who, anxious only for his own safety, had not attempted to aid or protect his chief Edris died at the close of the day on which he inhaled the poison (a.ii. 175, a.d. 701-2). The crime proved to be an useless one. Shortly after his death one of his concubines gave birth to a son, who was recognised by the Berbers of Magreb as succeeding to all the rights of his father. The monarchy now passed from latlier to son with not more of confusion and uncertainty than is 214 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. rr. usual in Muhammadan kingdoms. In a.h. 192 (807-8) the reigning prince laid the foiuidations of his new capital — Fez — which speedily became one of tlie most flourishing cities of Northern Africa. Besides these three kingdoms, other smaller princij^a- lities were dotted over Northern Africa, which need not be specified more particularly. Between these indepen- dent states extended either vast stretches of forest land, rock)^ hills, or bare, desolate plains. The wandering Berbers roamed over this country, levying black mail on the karavans which wound their difhcidt ^vay between Kan-oan, Fez, and Seojelmessa. Other cc^nmunication there was little or none. It was a country, in fact, where a preacher of heresy, persecuted everywhere else, could disseminate liis doctrines in perfect security. The Berbers, as credidous as the Arabs, were alwa^^s ready to receive and listen to a new religious teacher. Sheltered in the encampments or the villages of one of these tribes, tlie missionary could make hundreds and thousands of proselytes, without attracting the attention of any of the potentates around him. Only when he was the leader of an armed force, eager and able to strike a crushing blow, was the effect of his teaching manifested to tlie startled sovereign whose territories he invaded. 216 CHAPTER III. THE RISK OF THE FATIMIDES. A.i). 900-016. Towards the close of the third century after the flie^ht to Medina, tlie re])resentative of the Isniaihen Imams was Said, the son of Ahmed, surnamed Obeidallah. His father had been the seventli in tlie line of the concealed Imams. Among the most zealous and successful mission- aries of the sect was a certain Ibn Hauslieb, orioinally a believer in the twelve Imams, who had been converted in a sudden and m^'sterious manner to a recognition of the rights resident in Ismail and his descendants. His centre of operations was in Yemen, and he and missionaries working under liis orders spread a knowledge of the faith tmd made numei'ous proselytes in Yemen, Yemamah, Jialu'ein, Egypt, and Afrikia. In the last-mentioned province tliey had been signally successful ; and (he Ke- tama, the largest and most powerful of the Berber tribes, who liad their settlements in the province of Constantine, iuid been converted. Amonii' these missionaries was one known in Muliam- niadan history as Abou Abdallah, the Shia, a man deeply versed in all the learning of that age, subtle and wise in the formation of plans, bold and adroit in carrying them 216 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. iii. into effect, and possessed of a remarkable power to attract and fascinate the minds of tliose who were brought imder liis influence. To judge from his career, he had not been allowed to penetrate to that void of blank negation which served as foundation for the Ism allien doctrines. He believed in the manifestation of the Imam descended from Ismail, as a veritable redeemer who would fill the earth with his justice. It so happened that a few years before the termination of the third century the missionaries who resided in Afrikia died almost simultaneously, and Ibu Hansheb made choice of Abou Abdallah as their successor. He accordingly set out from Yemen to travel to Afrikia by way of Mekka and Egypt. It was the season of the pilgrimage, and on his arrival at Mekka he established himself in the quarter of the city occupied by the pilgrims from the Ketama. Without making himself known as an Ismailien missionary, he managed to insinuate himself into their confidence. The pilgrims were charmed by the fascination of his con- versation, and awed by his piety and spiritual detach- ment from the world. He learned from them the con- dition of Northern Afiica — the political situation, the religious parties, the character and strength of the different tribes, and the degree of authority which belonged to the Aghlabite princes. He journeyed with the Ketama pilgrims as far as Kairo, and then made as though he would have gone another way; but they earnestly entreated him not to leave them. He must, they said, accompany them to Africa, where he should be received as an honoured guest ; and Abou Abdallah, secretly rejoicing, yielded to their solicitations. A.D. 900. ABOU ABD ALLAH, THE SHIA. 217 He found tlie tribe of Kctama zealous for Ali and the Imams of the House of Ismail. There he declared his true mission as the messenger sent before to prepare the Avay for the coming of the Mehdi, or the Expected One. The period had passed, he said, in which the true Imams liad to remain hidden ; the Melidi was at hand, and every eye would behold him, and great signs and wonders would be wrought by him. The dead would be raised ; the course of the sun would be reversed, and he would set in the East. The tribe of Ketama were filled with warlike enthusiasm at these wonderful tidings. Abou Abdallah, however, was too wary to rush precipitately into action till he could strike with effect. He assumed the irarb and demeanour of an austere recluse, to lull the suspicions of the Aghlabite prince, to whose ears vague rumours had come of the stir and excitement amid the Berbers beyond his frontier. When at last he took the field it was as the leader in a sacred war. The Ketama were designated the ' true Believers.' A herald went before the troops on the line of march, proclaiming to all the villages and encampments through which they passed : ' To horse ! to horse ! soldiers of God ! ' The banners and the caparisons of the horses were embroidered with the words from tlie Koran : ' Victory belongeth unto God ! ' ' Their hosts shall be put to flight, and turn their backs.' On the signet-ring of Abdallah was engraved : ' Put your trust in God, and you will rely upon a manifest truth ; ' and the seal used for stamping official documents was inscribed with these words : ' The orders of the Lord have been executed with truth and justice.' The plans of Abou Abdallah had been greatly aided 218 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. iii. by the disorder into which the province of Afrikia liad fallen since the arrival of that missionarv amono- the Ketama. When Abou xlbdallah first appeared in Northern Africa, Ibrahim Ibn Ahmed, of the house of Aghlal), was ruling Afrikia, in the name of the khalif at Baghdad. In the beginning of his reign this prince had distinguislied himself by the justice and benevolence of his acts. Every Friday after prayer he was accustomed to hold an open durbar, and it was proclaimed throughout his capital, Eequada, that all who had complaints to make or petitions to present would then have free access to the ear of the sovereign. He used to declare that the people were the chief stay and support of a king ; and that every injury inflicted on tliem, or op})ression endured by them at the hands of a noble, however highly he might be placed, was in fact a wrong done to the king, which the latter was bound to punish in order to preserve his crown from danger. All high-handed acts, accordingly, by which the people suffered unjustly, he punished with extreme severity, even when the wrongdoer was nearly related to himself. But the intoxication of absolute power wrought in him as it has done in so many Eastern sovereigns. Insurrections put down with merciless seve- rity begat a fiendish delight in shedding blood which converted him into one of the most appalling monsters who figure in the annals of Muhannnadanism. The people of the town of Belezma had revolted against him. Ibrahim marched against them in person, but having failed to reduce the place he feigned to make peace with the rebels, and invited the leading citizens to Eequada to agree upon the conditions. They came with A.D. 890. IBRAHIiM, EMIR OF AFRIKIA. 219 their friends and followers to the number of a thousand men. Ibrahim received them with magnificent hospitality ; lodged them in a huge building erected specially for that purpose, and gratified tlieni with ricli banquets and lavish presents. But in the night lie surrounded the building Avith his soldiers, and caused the whole of his unhappy guests to be massacred. Tliis butchery was perpetrated A.ii. 278. The murder of these men ultimately proved the ruin of the Aghlabites. The city of Belezma had subdued the tribe of Ketama, and imposed a heavy tribute on them. But the nuu'der of their leading men so enfeebled the place that they could no longer control the turbulent Berbers, and in delivering the Berbers from tliis yoke Ibrahim enabled them to rise at the bidding of Abou Abdallah. The immediate effect, too, was the revolt of all Afrikia in a lit of indignation at the atrocity. For a time Ibrahim possessed hardly a foot of land in tlie province except where his capital stood. Want of conceit, however, among the rebels, and Ibrahim's army of negro slaves, enabled him to drown the insurrection in a deluge of blood. A few years after (a.m. 283) Ibrahim marclied to invade Egypt. He was opposed on the way by the Nefousah, a Berber tribe. After a bloody battle, the Nefousah were defeated. Ibrahim pursued so closely on their heels, that numbers of the fugitives sought shelter in the sea, and were massacred there. The waves as they broke on the bank were reddened with tlie carnage, and Ibrahim cried as he saw it : ' Oh ! would that so great a victory had been gained fighting in the path of God ! How glorious it would be! ' An officer who was standing 220 ISLAM UNDER THE ARABS. chap. hi. by suggested that he should interrogate some of the pri- soners on their behef. They proved to be Kharegites. Ibrahim was rejoiced. Tlie victory then was a sacred one, and Ibrahim determined to celebrate it as sucli a mercy deserved to be celebrated. Seating himself upon a throne, with a lance in liis hand, the prisoners were led to him one by one. As they approached the royal seat, their left sides were laid bare, and the royal lance was driven into the hearts of the victims. Ibrahim did not cease from this humane pastime until 500 bloody corpses were piled up round him. It was after this siufeit of blood that a kind of liomi- cidal madness seized upon Ibrahim ; he slaughtered his companions, his faithfullest servants, his sons, and liis daughters. He was racked by a truly insatiable thirst for blood. A napkin with which lie used to wipe his mouth after dining, having been mislaid, he put 300 ser- vants to death as a [nniishment for their remissness. On a vague suspicion, he killed his son Abou al Aghlab, and eiglit brotliers who were his servants. All his daughters were killed the moment they were born. His wives he tortured in a- variety of ways. Some were built up in walls, and left to perish of iiunger and tliirst ; some were strangled ; otliers had their throats cut. He had a body-guard of sixty young men, of whom lie seemed to be very fond, and wlio slept every night in the palace. It was told to Ibrahim thnt during the nig] it these young men occasionally paid visits to each other's apartments. He immediately ordered them into his pre- sence, and questioned them whether or not the accusation was true. One of the young men, a special favourite of A.i). 902. THE CRUELTIES OF DiRAHIM. 221 Ibrahim, asserted that the cliarge was false. Ibrahmi, without littering a word, struck liim with an iron mace which he held, and crushed his skull. He then caused a large brazier to be filled with coals and lighted, and every day he ordered five or six of his unhappy body- o-uard to be flunf^ hito it, luitil all were consumed. His mother, hoping to charm away the sanguinary devil which had taken possession of her son, brought one day into his presence two beautiful slave-girls, who read the Koran, and sang and played with remarkable skill. Ibrahim seemed pleased, and thanked his mother. Scarcely had the mother returned to her apartments when a domestic entered, bearing a covered tray — a present, he said, from her son. The mother raised the veil, and beheld, horror- struck, the heads of the two girls she had just presented to her son. On another day, his mother seeing him in a good humour, said : ' I wish you to see, if you will, some young maidens who will please you.' As he expressed a wish to see them, she sent for the girls. They were sixteen of his daughters, wdio, when the mandate w^ent forth to kill all his female children, had been hidden away and secretly brought up. Ibrahim greeted them kindly, but on leaving the apartment he ordered his executioner to brinsr him the heads of the girls. This order was at once executed, and the sixteen heads flung down at his iect as he sat. 'J'he career of this homicide was brought to a close A.H. 289. The account of his atrocities had aroused in- disnation as far even as Baghdad, and the Abbaside l