The Project Gutenberg EBook of Moslem and Frank, by Gustave Louis Strauss This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license Title: Moslem and Frank; or, Charles Martel and the rescue of Europe Author: Gustave Louis Strauss Release Date: October 6, 2020 [EBook #63390] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOSLEM AND FRANK *** Produced by Turgut Dincer, John Campbell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.) TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been placed at the end of each chapter. The original text on page 111 uses a Maltese Cross, displayed as ‘✠’ on this device, to indicate the year of that person’s death. Some minor changes to the text are noted at the end of the book. Original cover CHARLES MARTEL—BATTLE OF TOURS. From a Picture by Steuben in the Imperial Gallery at Versailles, James Carter, Sc. M O S L E M A ND FRANK; OR, CHARLES MARTEL AND THE RESCUE OF EUROPE FROM THE THREATENED YOKE OF THE SARACENS. BEING VOLUME I. OF THE HISTORIC SKETCHES. DESIGNED FOR THE INSTRUCTION AND AMUSEMENT OF OLD AND YOUNG. BY G. L. STRAUSS, PH.D. In magnis voluisse sat est. LONDON: JOHN WEALE, 59, HIGH HOLBORN. 1854. LONDON: BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. PREFACE. “Story! bless you—I have none to tell.”—Canning’s Knifegrinder. It is an old and trite saying: “Good wine needs no bush,” and even the finest and most flourishing bush will fail to put either body or flavor into the growth of a bad vintage. It is left to the reader of this little volume to decide whether or not the author has succeeded in producing an acceptable and readable book. July 1, 1854. CONTENTS. PART I. THE MOSLEMIN. Page CHAPTER I.— Arabia and its inhabitants.—Life and doctrine of Mohammed 1 ” II.— The Khalifs from Abu Bekr to Hesham 53 PART II. THE FRANKS. CHAPTER I.— The Frank Confederacy.—Clovis, the Founder of the Frank Monarchy 89 ” II.— Decline of the Merovingian Princes.—The Mayors of the Palace.—Pepin of Landen.—Pepin of Heristal. —Charles Martel.—The Battle of Tours 108 PART I. THE MOSLEMIN. CHAPTER I. ARABIA AND ITS INHABITANTS.—LIFE AND DOCTRINE OF MOHAMMED. The Arabian peninsula, called by the natives Jesira-al-Arab, by the Persians and Turks Arabistan, forms the south- westernmost part of Asia. It is bounded on the north by Syria and the river Euphrates, on the east by the Persian Gulf, on the south by the Indian Ocean, on the west by the Red Sea, or Arabian Gulf. Including the north-eastern desert, it occupies an area ten times the extent of that of Great Britain and Ireland. The connecting link between Asia and Africa, to which latter continent it is joined by the Isthmus of Suez, it presents in its natural features, a faithful copy of its colossal tropical neighbour, modified, however, by the imprint of a strongly marked individual character, the result of its peculiar isolated position. The attempted derivation of the name of the country from Eber[1], the common progenitor of the Joctanites and Ismaelites—the two races which are assumed to constitute the great bulk of the native population of Arabia—is, at the best, but very problematical; that from the word Araba, the name of a district of the province of Tehama, and which signifies a level desert, would seem to rest on a safer and more rational foundation, the far greater part of the country being indeed a dreary waste, a boundless level of sand, destitute of rivers, intersected by naked mountains, and barely relieved here and there by a shady grove or a green sward of aromatic herbs. The date-palm is often the solitary representative of vegetable life in these sterile tracts, which are scorched by a tropical sun, and hardly ever refreshed by a grateful shower. There are, however, some more favored districts, where the fertile soil produces dates and other palms, tamarinds, vines, rice, sugar, figs, tobacco, indigo, cotton, durra,[2] coffee, gum, benzoin, frankincense, manna, balsam, aloe, myrrh, spices, &c. The high lands in the south-west, that border on the Indian Ocean, are distinguished in this respect, above all other parts of Arabia, by a more temperate air, superior fertility, and comparative abundance of wood and water. No wonder, then, that the appellation happy, bestowed upon this blessed region by Ptolemy, should have been generally adopted, although originating in a mistranslation of the word Yemen, the Arabian name of this part of the peninsula, and which does not signify happy, but is simply meant to designate the land lying, with respect to the East, to the right of Mecca, just as Al-Sham (Syria) means the land to the left of that city. Ptolemy’s division of the country into the sandy, the petraie, and the happy (Arabia Deserta, Petræa, and Felix), is, however, unknown to the Arabians themselves, who speak only of high land and low land. The epithet stony, so generally applied by geographers to the petraic division, is founded in error: Ptolemy derived the word from Petra, the name of the then flourishing capital of the Nabathæans, and not from the Greek word petra, a rock or stone. Ptolemy’s Arabia Petræa forms now part of the province of Hejaz, along the coast of the Red Sea. Yemen, as we have seen, occupies the south-western coast. On the south-eastern coast lies the maritime district of Oman; on the Persian Gulf, the district of Lahsa: the inland space bears the name of Neged, or Naged. Arabia is the true native country of the horse, and remains even at the present time the seat of the purest and noblest races of that generous animal. Asses, oxen, sheep, goats, and the swift gazelle, are also indigenous; and so is the camel, the “ship of the desert,” nature’s most precious gift in the sands of Africa and Arabia. Monkies, pheasants, and pigeons inhabit the fertile districts. The lion, the panther, the hyena, the jackal, lurk in the desert. Ostriches, and pelicans are among the birds of Arabia; locusts, that “plague of the fields,” are among its insects. The coasts abound in fishes and tortoises; and the pearl-fishery flourishes more especially in the Persian Gulf. Among the mineral products may be mentioned iron, copper, lead, coals, asphaltum; and precious stones, as the agate, the onyx, the carnelion, &c. Some of the ancient geographers speak also of the soil of Arabia as being impregnated with gold; and though no mines of that precious metal are at present known in the peninsula, who can say but that the treasures of another California lie hidden there? The inhabitants of Arabia, whose present number may be estimated at about fifteen millions, are supposed to derive their origin partly from Joctan (in the Arabian language Kahtan), one of the sons of Eber; and partly from Ismael, the son of Abraham and Hagar. The Joctanites, as the supposed original inhabitants of the country, have been called also true Arabians; the Ismaelites, as later immigrants, mixed Arabians. The Ismaelites are the Bedoweens, or Bedouins, of our time, who to the present day continue to rove through the interior and the north of Arabia, as they did in the remote times of Job and Sesostris, depending partly on their flocks, partly on the transit trade of the caravans, but chiefly on plunder;[3] which latter is by these wild sons of the desert looked upon in the light of an honorable profession rather than of a disgraceful and criminal pursuit. They are a fine race of men, of middle size, but well proportioned, vigorous, and [Pg 1] [2] [3] [4] active; they have regular features; their complexion is mostly dark, rarely of a lighter tint; their eyes sparkle with a fire and lustre unknown among us. They are brave, temperate, generous, and hospitable; enthusiastically addicted to eloquence and poetry. Rapine and revenge are the only dark spots in the national character of the Bedoween. The Joctanites are the Haddhesies, or settled Arabians, who from the earliest times have been collected into towns and villages, more especially in the maritime districts of the peninsula, employed in the labors of agriculture, trade, and commerce. Though the Arabian house-dwellers cannot be said to possess all the noble qualities of their brethren of the desert, still the description given above of the physical and moral character of the latter applies in a great measure equally to them; they are lively, intelligent, eloquent, and witty; and, with all their habitual haughty demeanour, more particularly to strangers, affable and agreeable in their manners and conversation. The principal nations of Arabia mentioned by the ancients, are, besides the Skenites (tent-dwellers, or wandering tribes), the Nabathæans, in Arabia Petræa (Hejaz); the Thamudites and Minæans in Hejaz; the Sabæans and Homerites, in Yemen; the Hadhramites, in Hadhramaut on the southern coast; the Omanites, Dacharenians, and Gerrhæans, in Oman and Ul-Ahsa, or Lahsa; the Saranians, in Neged; and the Saracens, an obscure tribe on the borders of Egypt, and remarkable only from the circumstance that, perhaps from a fallacious[4] interpretation of the meaning of the word,—viz: as intended to indicate an Oriental situation—the application of the name has been gradually extended, first to the inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula generally, afterwards to all Mohammedans. The early history of the Arabians is shrouded in obscurity. That the Joctanites were not the true original inhabitants of the country, but simply later immigrants into it, would appear to result from the histories of the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian empires (however so little reliance we may feel inclined to place in these mythical and traditional histories); for we are told that Nimrod was attended by Arabian tribes—and in the list of the Babylonian kings we find six Arabian princes; and, again, among the auxiliaries of Ninus we find Arabs, under a prince named Ariæus. The Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, who are said to have invaded Egypt about 2075 b.c., and to have held sway in that country during more than 500 years, are also generally considered to have come from Arabia. The traditional history of Arabia mentions several kingdoms and dynasties. The two most ancient of these, dating their origin as far back as 2000 b.c., were, 1, the Homerite kingdom in Yemen, which, after a time, split into the two states of Saba, or Sheba, and Hadhramaut. About 1572 b.c., these were re-united into one empire, which about 1075 b.c. was governed by Balkis, the daughter of Hodhad, and who by some historians is thought to have been identical with the Queen of Sheba, the cotemporary of Solomon; 2, the State in Hejaz, in which the Nabathæans held superior sway. Protected on all sides by the seas of sand and water which encompass the peninsula, the Arabian people—or, at all events, the great body of the nation—had, at all times, escaped the yoke of a foreign conqueror. King Sesostris, of Egypt, is said to have subjected some tribes of Hejaz to his rule; but it would appear they speedily recovered their independence. All the attempts made at different times, by the rulers of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, and Persia, to subjugate the Arabian peninsula, proved either altogether abortive, or, even where they partially succeeded, the conquest was only transient. Thus Arabia Petræa was subjugated, for a time, to the Assyrian sway in the eighth century b.c. by Pul, or Phul, and Sennacherib; but in the sixth century b.c. we find it in independent alliance with the Persian kings Cyrus and Cambyses. Alexander the Great had formed the plan to conquer and colonise the coasts of Arabia, and to prepare in this way the ultimate subjugation of the entire peninsula. The genius of the Græco-Macedonian conqueror, the immense material means of which he could dispose, and the possession of a powerful fleet (under Nearchus) promised a successful issue to the intended expedition: the death of Alexander (11th June, 323 b.c.) averted the threatening danger.[5] The attempt which Antigonus and Demetrius made upon Arabia in 312 b.c. was a failure; and the trifling conquest achieved in 219 b.c. by Antiochus the Great, of Syria, was speedily wrested again from him by the natives. At a later period, the northern tribes of Arabia were engaged for a time, with varying fortunes, in desultory feuds with the Jews under the Maccabæans, or Makkabi.[6] The Romans also, that all-grasping nation, cast their covetous eyes upon the flourishing state of Petræa; but neither Scaurus nor Gabinius, neither Pompey nor Antony, nor even Augustus, could prevail against the difficulties of the country, and the stubborn valor of the roving tribes of the desert. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, and disease thinned the ranks of the proud legions more effectually still than the bow, the javelin, and the scymetar of the Bedoween; and after a last vain attempt under Ælius Gallus, Imperial Rome reluctantly relinquished for a time the coveted prize. In 106 a.d., Cornelius Palma, a lieutenant of Trajan, conquered the cities of Bostra and Petra, and subdued the Nabathæans. Trajan made, also, some naval inroads, and carried his incursions as far as Katif. Petra lost from this time its importance and splendor; Bostra becoming in its stead the principal seat of the commerce of the Euphrates and the Tigris. After the death of Trajan, the conquered tribes shook off again the Roman yoke. The Emperor Aurelian broke, indeed, the power of the Nabathæans in his celebrated campaign against Zenobia, the great Queen of Palmyra, (272 and 273 a.d.), and his triumphal car was followed by captive Arabian chiefs; but the Nabathæan nation, disdaining to bend to the Roman yoke, abandoned their homes, and fled to that great asylum of Arabian freedom, the desert. At the commencement of the sixth century, (502 a.d.), the Homerite kingdom of Yemen[7] was conquered by an Ethiopian prince, the Negus, or King, of Abyssinia,[8] and remained subject or tributary to the Christian princes of the latter country to the time of the conquest of Arabia by Chosroes I. (Nushirvan) of Persia (about 574 a.d.). Still, though Arabia was styled a Persian province, the sway of the Sassanides over the peninsula was more nominal than real: the tribes of the desert remained free, and even in Yemen, we find seven Princes of the Homerites successfully asserting and maintaining the independence of their mountains.[9] There is some reason to suppose that the original worship of the Arabs was that of one God; clouded and tarnished, [5] [6] [7] [8] indeed, by many superstitious usages, and perhaps even by human sacrifices, yet free from gross idolatry. But this primitive religion was speedily supplanted by the adoration of the sun, the moon, and the fixed stars; a specious superstition which substitutes for the invisible, all-pervading, universal God, the most glorious of his creations, and may well find its excuse in the clear sky and boundless naked plains of Arabia, where the heavenly luminaries shine with a brighter lustre, displaying to the mind of the untutored son of the desert the visible image of a Deity. Intimately connected with this still primitive faith, was the belief in the wonderful powers and attributes of meteoric stones. The most renowned of these, called Hadjar-el-Aswad, is a square-shaped black stone, kept to the present day in Mecca in the Temple of the Kaaba, and which has from time immemorial been, and remains still, the sacred object of the devout pilgrimages and adoration of the Arabs of all tribes. The Kaaba is a square building, thirty-four feet high, and twenty- seven broad; built, according to the Mohammedan tradition, by Abraham, and repeatedly restored, in after ages, by the Amalekites, by the Jorhamites, by Kassa, of the tribe of Koreish, &c.; and the last time by Sultan Mustapha, in 1630. Of the original building there remains thus at present only a small portion of wall, which is held most sacred. A spacious portico[10] encloses the quadrangle of the Kaaba. The holy stone, which is about four feet high, and set in silver, is fixed in the wall, in the southern corner. The Mohammedan tradition relates that this stone was brought to Abraham by the Angel Gabriel, whose tears over the sinfulness of man had changed its original white color to black! Hence Mahomet was induced to make it the Kebla[11] of prayer, and to enjoin the pilgrimage of the faithful to it and the Kaaba. Verily, the idolatry of the ancient Arabs, who worshipped the divine power in the meteoric stone, that had fallen from the skies in a manner miraculous to their untutored understanding, was more natural, and even far more rational, than the present worship of the same stone, based upon this wretched and most absurd legend! The transmigration of souls, the resurrection of bodies, and the invocation of departed spirits, formed also part of the religious belief of the ancient Arabs; the cruel practice of human sacrifices prevailed among them even up to the time of Mohammed, in the course of time the grossest idolatry became an important, and, in the end, a preponderating ingredient in Arabian worship; and the sacred Kaaba was defiled by the gradual introduction of three hundred and sixty idols of men, eagles, lions, and antelopes; among which stood most conspicuous the most popular of them, the statue of Hobal, fashioned of red agate by a Syrian artist, and holding in his hand seven arrows, without heads or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane divination.[12] But, though each tribe, each family, nay every independent warrior, might freely create new idols and new rites of his fantastic worship, yet the nation, in every age, has bowed to the religion of Mecca, and to the superior sanctity of the Kaaba. An annual truce of two, or, according to some historians, four months, during which the swords of the Arabs were sheathed, both in foreign and domestic warfare, protected the holy pilgrimage to Mecca. The great fair held in connection with this pilgrimage induced those to come whom religious ardor failed to attract. This annual gathering of distant and hostile tribes contributed greatly to harmonise and refine the wild sons of the desert; the exchange of eloquence and poetry usual at these periods, could only heighten the humanizing and elevating influence of the custom. The fanaticism of the first Moslems abolished the fair, inflicting thereby one of the many evils that came in the train of Mohammed’s gigantic imposture. The rites which are, even in the present day, accomplished by the devout Moslems, are still the same they were in the days of the ancient idolators of Arabia. “At a respectful distance from the temple, they threw off their garments; seven times they went round the Kaaba, with quick steps, kissing each time the holy stone with deep reverence;[13] seven times they visited and adored the adjacent mountains; seven times they threw stones into the valley of Mina: and the pilgrimage was completed, as at the present hour, by a sacrifice of sheep and camels, and the burial of their hair and nails in the consecrated ground.”[14] It will be readily understood that the custody of the Kaaba must at all times have proved a most lucrative affair. No wonder, then, that the neighbouring tribes should have hotly contended for it. Originally the Ismaelites held it for a long time, together with the dominion over Mecca, which resulted from it as a natural consequence. The Jorhamites, a branch of the Joctanites, succeeded at last in ousting them from it; these again were expelled by the Khuzaites, who promoted idolatry to a most formidable extent. In the middle of the fifth century, an Ismaelitic tribe, that of Koreish, wrested the custody of the Kaaba, by fraud or force, from the Khuzaites. The sacerdotal office was entrusted by the Koreish to Cosa, of the family of the Hashemites, and devolved through four lineal descents to Abdol Motalleb, the grandfather of Mohammed.[15] The freedom which Arabia enjoyed, promised a safe asylum to the political and religious exiles and proscripts from the adjacent kingdoms. The intolerance of the Magian Persians had overturned the altars of Babylon, and compelled the votaries of Sabianism[16] to seek a refuge in the desert. The same fate befell the Magians in their turn, when the sword of Alexander had overthrown the Persian monarchy. Multitudes of Jews fled into Arabia, to escape the cruel persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, and greater numbers still followed during the wars of Titus and Hadrian. To all these were added, at a later period, numerous sects of Christians, fleeing from that worst of all persecutions, that of their triumphant co-religionists, from whom they might chance to differ in some abstruse point of doctrine, or in some immaterial rite. Among the persecuted sects, we may mention here more particularly the Marcionites and the Manichæans, the Jacobites and Nestorians. The latter two sects had gained many proselytes in Yemen, and succeeded even in converting the princes of Hira and Gassan to their faith. The Jews, also, had made numerous and important converts to the Mosaic belief; and we have already seen how the intolerant zeal of a bigoted Jewish neophyte, Dunaan, prince of the Homerites, suddenly interrupted the enjoyment of that absolute liberty of conscience which the Arabian idolaters had hitherto granted to all creeds and all sects, and brought down upon Yemen an Abyssinian invasion to avenge the wrongs of the persecuted Christians. [9] [10] [11] [12] It was in this country, and among this people, so strangely and peculiarly constituted, that arose the apostle of a new faith, destined to knead the heterogeneous and hostile elements of the nation into one compact mass, and to hurl this with irresistible might against the adjacent empires, and even, far beyond the limits of the latter, against countries and nations formerly scarcely known by name even to the Arabian merchant. Mahomet, or more properly Mohammed or Muhammed, (i.e. the very famous), the only son of Abdallah and Amina, was born at Mecca, on the 20th April, 571.[17] His father, Abdallah, was the best beloved of the thirteen sons of Abdol Motalleb, the son of Hashem, and chief of the family of that name; his mother, Amina, sprang from the noble race of the Zahrites. He had the misfortune to lose in his infancy, his father and mother, and his grandfather. His sole inheritance consisted in a house, an old female slave, and five camels. After the death of his grandfather, he was taken into the house of his uncle, Abu Taleb, who had succeeded Abdol Motalleb in the sacerdotal office. Here he was educated to commercial pursuits; and was, at the age of thirteen, sent with the caravan of his uncle to the fairs of Bosra, or Bostra,[18] and Damascus, in Syria. In his twentieth year[19] he fought in the ranks of the Koreish against some hostile tribes, and, by his valor, gained the appellation El Amin, i.e., the faithful, one of the five hundred and more surnames that have gradually been given to the Prophet of Islam. In his twenty-fifth year, Cadijah, a rich and noble widow of Mecca (according to some historians, of Bosra), engaged him as superintendent and manager to carry on the commercial affairs of her late husband. In this capacity he made a second journey to the fairs of Bosra and Damascus.[20] Nature had bestowed upon Mohammed the gift of personal beauty. His cotemporaries describe him as of commanding figure and majestic aspect; he had regular and most expressive features, piercing black eyes, an aquiline nose, and a well-formed mouth, with pearly teeth; his cheeks were tinged with the ruddy glow of robust health.[21] Art had imparted to his naturally black, flowing hair and beard a lighter chestnut hue. His captivating smile, his rich and sonorous voice, the graceful dignity of his gestures, the apparent frankness and heartiness of his manner, gained him the favorable attention of those whom he addressed. He possessed talents of a superior order—his perception was quick and active, his memory capacious and retentive, his imagination lively and daring, his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive, his courage dauntless;—and, whatever may be our opinion of the sincerity of his convictions, his tenacity of purpose in the pursuit of the great object of his life, and his patient endurance, cannot but extort our admiration. His natural eloquence was enhanced by the use of the purest dialect of Arabia, and adorned by the charm of a graceful elocution. Cadijah was a widow for the second time; she was in the fortieth year of her age—no wonder then, that a man so bountifully endowed by nature should speedily have gained her affection. She bestowed upon him her hand and her fortune, and restored him thereby to the station of his ancestors. Placed, henceforth, above the petty wants and cares of material subsistence, Mohammed had now full leisure to indulge his love of poetry and eloquence, and his natural predilection for contemplation. His marriage brought him into familiar contact with Waraka (Verka) Ben Naufil, a cousin of Cadijah. This Waraka, it would appear, had first exchanged the adoration of the heavenly bodies for the belief in the two principles of Zoroaster, (Ormuzd and Ahriman). This creed not satisfying his mind, he had embraced with fervor the monotheism of the Jews; but, disgusted with the absurdities of the Talmudists, he had seceded to the profession of the Christian faith, in which he had even assumed the priestly office. That he must have been a man of some talent and learning, is evident from the fact of his having translated the Old and New Testament from the Hebrew into the Arabic tongue. Now this man is usually mentioned by the historians of the time as the pupil of Mohammed, and the second convert to his new doctrine; but there are strong reasons to justify a belief that he was his master and teacher, rather than his pupil and convert. It has been intimated already, that the history of the life of Mohammed, up to the time when he proclaimed himself the apostle of a new faith, is obscure and doubtful. From the scanty data, and the conjectural and contradictory statements before us, we can only gather one fact as pretty certain, viz: that the prophet of Islam had enjoyed some rabbinical and priestly instruction. Now we have seen that Mohammed was an illiterate barbarian, and not likely, therefore, to derive from conversation with priests in foreign lands that knowledge of the maxims, tenets, and traditions of other religious communities, which is evidenced in the Koran and in the Sonna;[22] whereas Waraka had actually had a practical training in the divers beliefs of the Sabians, Magians, Jews, and Christians; and must, to judge by his translation of the New Testament, have been tolerably versed in the letter, at least, of the doctrine of Christ. From his repeated, and apparently conscientious, changes of faith, we have, perhaps, a right to conclude that he was a man sincerely in search of a religion that might satisfy his mind; nor need we wonder that the so-called “Christianity” of the seventh century should have failed to answer his expectations on this head. It would not be too much to say, indeed, that there existed really no “Christian” church at that period; the multitudinous contending sects who professed the name of Christ had almost entirely forgotten his pure doctrine, and, more especially, the divine principle preached by him of universal charity and good-will to all men. The grossest idolatry had usurped the place of the simple worship, instituted by Jesus, of an All-wise, Almighty, and All-beneficent Being, without equal and without similitude; a new Olympus had been imagined, peopled with a crowd of martyrs, saints, and angels, in lieu of the ancient gods of paganism. There were found Christian sects impious enough to invest the wife of Joseph with the honors and attributes of a goddess;[23] relics, and carved and painted images, were objects of the most fervid adoration on the part of those whom the word of Christ commanded to address their prayer to the Living God alone. Surely, then, we may trust that it will not be imputed to us as a violation of the laws of probability, if we venture to assume that Waraka, finding his religious aspirations disappointed even in the Christian faith, conceived the idea of [13] [14] [15] [16] founding and propagating a doctrine of his own,—a species of eclectic extract from all other religions which he had successively professed; that, void perhaps of personal ambition, or conscious, rather, that he did not himself possess the most indispensable attributes and qualities of a religious and political reformer, he cast his eyes upon Mohammed, who, with his mind attuned to contemplation and to mystic thought, promised to prove a docile disciple, and whose personal beauty and grace seemed made to “persuade ere he ope’d his mouth;” and that he chose him as his organ, as the medium through which he might give currency to the coinage of his mind, content if the people would receive the fruits of his religious experience and ponderings as a new gospel, and cheerfully consenting to yield up the honors of the paternity to him who should succeed in rearing the infant religion. Waraka found in Mohammed a most zealous disciple, who considerably bettered the instructions which he received. From what we can gather from the scanty sources of information at our command, we think we may fix upon the year 606 a.d. as the period at which Mohammed first became the pupil of Waraka; but it was only five years after, in 611, that Waraka and himself had fully matured their plan to institute a new religion. Worthily to prepare himself for the assumption of the prophetic and apostolic office, Mohammed withdrew this year (as he had indeed done repeatedly before), several weeks, during the month of Ramadan, to the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca. On the morning of the 24th Ramadan, Mohammed appeared before his wife, apparently greatly disturbed in mind. He called out to her to “wrap him up, to affuse him with cold water, as his soul was greatly troubled.” Having thus prepared her for his purpose, by exciting at once both her conjugal solicitude and her female curiosity, he proceeded to break to the amazed matron the great secret of his divine mission. He told her the angel Gabriel had, that night, appeared to him with a message from the Most High, appointing him, Mohammed, the sixth, greatest, and last of His chosen prophets,[24] to reveal His existence and to preach His law to the nations of the world. The angel had brought down with him a paper copy of the uncreated and eternal Koran, enclosed in a volume of silk and gems, and had proposed to reveal to him successively and at his (Mohammed’s) own discretion, the chapters and verses of that everlasting record of the law of God. Islam (i.e. devout submission to the Divine Will) he had been commanded by the angel to call the new faith which it was to be henceforward his mission to preach; and which, to use the felicitous language of Gibbon, is compounded of an eternal truth—viz., that there is only one God—and of a fiction necessary to further the ambitious designs of the self-appointed missionary of this new gospel—viz., that Mohammed is the apostle and prophet of God. Cadijah believed readily and implicitly—and no marvel either. Mohammed, to his honor be it written, had proved a most kind and attentive husband to the elderly matron who had raised him above the pressure of want. He had abstained—and till her death continued to abstain—from availing himself of the right of polygamy. He had proved his truth to her by unvarying affection. How, then, could she possibly have doubted his word? To her grateful and loving eyes, he must have seemed more than a mere mortal; and she may even have deemed it by no means extraordinary that the Most High should appoint as his organ and missionary one so pure, so good, so perfect, as her husband appeared in her sight. Cadijah’s conversion was speedily followed by the avowed declaration of Waraka in favor of the new doctrine. The ex-priest of Christ professed to see in Mohammed the Paraclete, or Comforter, promised in the Gospel, and even ventured to support this view upon etymological grounds of somewhat extraordinary character. The Arabic word Mohammed is synonymous with the Greek περικλῠτὸς (i.e. very famous), which, by an easy change of letters, may be turned into παράκλητος! The next converts to Mohammed’s new faith were, his servant Zeid, who was positively bribed to it by the promise of freedom; his youthful cousin Ali Ben Abu Taleb, a boy of eleven, and not likely, therefore, to entertain any very deep religious conviction either way; and the wealthy and universally esteemed Abdallah Ben Othman-al-Koreish, called afterwards Abu Bekr (i.e. the father of the maiden); most probably from the circumstance that his daughter Ayesha, born 613, became one of Mohammed’s wives after the death of Cadijah. By the weight and influence of Abu Bekr, ten of the most respectable citizens of Mecca were induced to join the creed of Islam, among whom were Othman, who became afterwards Mohammed’s son-in-law. It had taken three years to accomplish these fourteen private conversions; and, guided probably by the advice of Waraka, the prophet had not yet ventured upon a public profession and propaganda of his creed. In the beginning of 615, however, Waraka died; and the bolder spirit of Mohammed, freed from the restraining influence hitherto exercised by that cautious man, aspired henceforward openly to the dignity of the apostolic office. We have already seen that Mohammed had informed Cadijah, and, of course, also his other disciples, that the chapters of the Koran were to be communicated to him by the angel Gabriel successively, and at his own discretion,—a master-stroke of policy evidently designed by the crafty Waraka to afford full time for the gradual concoction of the new creed, and worked out afterwards with such admirable skill by his illustrious pupil; indeed, the ingenuity of this provision may be said to be surpassed only by that of another saving maxim introduced into the angelic revelation, viz., that any text of the Koran is abrogated or modified by any subsequent passage,—which, of course, at once removed the inconvenience of contradictory texts. Gabriel was accordingly now made to descend again to Mohammed, and to command him in the name of the Most High to throw off the reserve which he had hitherto maintained, and to announce his mission in the open light of day. In obedience to this pretended command, the prophet of Islam invited forty members of the race of Hashem to a banquet. He placed before them, it is said, a lamb and a bowl of milk, and, after the frugal meal, addressed them as follows:—“Friends and kinsmen, I offer you, and I alone can offer, the most precious of gifts—the treasures of this world and of the world to come. God has commanded me to call you to His service. Who among you will support my burthen? Who among you will be my companion and my vizir?” A long silence [17] [18] [19] of doubt and amazement followed this extraordinary allocution; it was broken at last by the impetuous Ali, then in the fourteenth year of his age. “O prophet!” he cried, “I am the man: whosoever rises against thee, I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly. O prophet! I will be thy vizir over them.” This response on the part of one so young, and the fierce threats which it contained, excited the merriment of the assembly, which was increased when Mohammed fervently embraced his young cousin, and declared most seriously that he accepted his offer. Abu Taleb, the father of Ali, was ironically exhorted to respect the superior dignity of his son, and to take care not to provoke his potent wrath. The prince of Mecca took the matter in a more serious light: he advised his nephew to relinquish his design, which he characterised as impious. “Spare your remonstrances,” replied the son of Abdallah; “were you to place the sun on my right hand and the moon on my left, you should not divert me from my course.” Braving the ridicule and the anger of the Hashemites, as well as the more determined and malignant hostility of the family Ommiyah and the other branches of the Koreish, Mohammed preached his doctrine henceforward publicly, with unflinching courage and untiring zeal, but for a long time with rather indifferent success, at least so far as his native city was concerned. Mecca was the sacred city of Arabia,—the seat of the great national temple. The annual pilgrimage of the devout Arabians to the shrines of the Kaaba, brought wealth to the coffers of the inhabitants of the favored city; and it was but natural, therefore, that the tribe of Koreish, who held the lucrative office of custodians of the sacred temple, should behold with indignation and dismay the attempt made by one from among themselves to subvert a religion so profitable to their interests. No wonder, then, that when Mohammed, some time after the banquet of the Hashemites, ventured to proclaim his pretended mission before a general assembly of the Koreish, he was received with a perfect storm of disapprobation, and ignominiously pelted with mud and stones. But the prophet of Islam was not the sort of man to be readily diverted from his fixed purpose. The indifferent success of his first public attempt rather increased his zeal than otherwise: in private converse and in public discourse, he incessantly urged the belief and worship of a sole Deity. He addressed impassioned orations to the citizens and pilgrims gathered within the holy precincts of the Kaaba, and the loudest clamor of his most violent antagonists did not always succeed in silencing his potent voice; and, indeed, after a time he had the satisfaction of beholding the gradual but steady increase of his little congregation of Unitarians. But the hostility of the Koreish assumed now a more decided and more dangerous character; and, had it not been for the powerful protection of Abu Taleb, who, though an uncompromising enemy to the attempted innovation of his nephew, continued to bestow on the son of Abdallah the affection of a parent, Mohammed would most probably have fallen a sacrifice to the rage of his enemies. But even the weight and influence of the Prince of Mecca could not always fully secure the safety of the apostle of the new creed, and Mohammed was repeatedly compelled to withdraw himself to various places of strength in the town and country. The more timid of his disciples were forced to seek in Ethiopia an asylum from the violence of religious faction. The conversion of his uncle Hamza, gave the new faith, most opportunely, a powerful support in the family of Hashem; a perhaps still more important acquisition was made in the person of the fierce and inflexible Omar, the Paul of Islam. On the other hand, the branch of Ommiyah, and the rest of the tribe of Koreish, resolved to put the children of Hashem under a species of religious and civil interdict of the most stringent nature, till they should consent to deliver the person of Mohammed to the justice of the insulted gods. A decree was passed to this effect, and was suspended in the Kaaba before the eyes of the nation; the prophet and his most faithful followers were besieged, and subjected to the greatest hardships. A hollow truce had scarcely restored the appearance of concord, when the death of Abu Taleb (621) left the prophet abandoned to the power of his enemies, and compelled him to seek a refuge in Tayef, whither he proceeded, attended by his faithful Zeid. His somewhat incautious attempts to propagate his creed in that land of grapes excited against him the indignation of the inhabitants, who pelted him with stones and drove him back to Mecca, where he was permitted to dwell yet a little while under the protection of an influential citizen. Three days after the death of Abu Taleb, an equally severe loss had befallen Mohammed—that of Cadijah, by which the ties which bound him to his native city were greatly loosened. It is in this period that we may place the miraculous night of Mohammed’s ascension to heaven. Hitherto, Mohammed had been modestly content to place an intermediary between the Deity and himself. Probably reflecting, however, that the Jewish creed asserted direct and personal converse between Jehovah and Adam, Noah, Abraham, and Moses, and that he, the greatest and last of the prophets, and whose doctrine was to supersede all others, could not well afford to stand inferior in this respect to his predecessors, and anxiously desirous, moreover, to gain over the Jews, whom he wished to believe him the promised Messiah—he put forth one of the wildest flights of fancy that ever issued even from an Oriental brain:—A mysterious animal, the Borak (the cherub of Islam), with human face, the ears of an elephant, the neck of a camel, the body of a horse, the tail of a mule, and the hoofs of a bullock, conveyed him at the dead of night from the temple of Mecca to that of Jerusalem, Gabriel and legions of angels attended him. From the temple of Jerusalem he was carried to the rock upon which Abraham intended to sacrifice Isaac, and thence on the wings of Gabriel successively to the seven heavens, where he exchanged civilities with the patriarchs, the prophets, and the angels. He saw the heavenly Lotos tree, with the four springs under it, flowing with water, honey, milk, and wine. Of the three former he tasted; the last he left untouched, in obedience to his own precepts.[25] He saw, also, the heavenly tabernacle, pitched in a straight line above the Kaaba, and hidden by a golden veil. The angels sang, “There is only one God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God.” The same resounded from behind the veil, and the voice of the Lord was heard saying, “My servants speak the words of truth; Mohammed is indeed the most beloved of my prophets and apostles, the most pious of my servants, the most perfect of created beings.” Beyond this part, Mohammed alone was permitted to proceed; he passed through seventy thousand veils of light and darkness, each of them a thousand years [20] [21] [22] thick, and with a space of a thousand years intervening between every two of them. At last he reached the green barrier of green light with emerald lustre; he passed the veil of the Divine unity, and approached within two bow-shots of the throne of the Almighty, where he prostrated himself and adored. The hand of the Lord touched his shoulder, which made a sensation of cold come over him that pierced him to the heart. God commanded him now to impose upon his disciples the daily obligation of fifty prayers; which Mohammed would appear to have looked upon as an intolerable burthen, since he pleaded hard for an alleviation of it.[26] By his supplications he succeeded to reduce it, step by step, at last to the number of five, viz., one prayer at daybreak, one at noon, one in the afternoon, one in the evening, and one at the first watch of the night; but from these five obligatory prayers there was to be no dispensation of business or pleasure, of time or place. In this most important conversation, the Lord enjoined or sanctioned, also, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the bestowal of a certain percentage of the property or revenue of a believer for the relief of the indigent and unfortunate, and the thirty days fast during the month of Ramadan. Then was given to Mohammed, with one drop from the throne, all wisdom, science, and knowledge of the ages past and the time to come; and the angelic choirs recited the two articles of belief, “There is only one God, and Mohammed is the apostle of God.” Mohammed was then finally dismissed; he again descended to Jerusalem, remounted the Borak, and returned to Mecca, having thus performed in the tenth part of a night the journey of many thousand years. Verily, in this precious tale we do not know which to admire most,—whether the audacity of the impostor who could concoct, or the gross credulity of the people who could believe it! Indeed, many endeavours have been made by some of the more rational of the Mohammedan doctors to deny that the prophet of Islam ever ventured to palm off this extravagant story upon his followers; and it has been attempted to make it appear that the narration of it relates to a mere dream or vision. These apologists overlook, however, the important fact that this pretended vision was put forward with all the authority of a divine revelation. Mohammed himself encouraged as much as in him lay the belief in the actual occurrence of the fact; which, with the Sonnites, indeed, is an article of faith, the pious Al Jannabi, among others, declaring that to deny this nocturnal journey of the prophet is to disbelieve the Koran. Abu Sophian, the chief of the branch of Ommiyah, and the mortal foe of the line of Hashem, had succeeded to the principality of the republic of Mecca. This man resolved to bring the long-pending contest between the Koreish and the self-appointed apostle of the new creed to a speedy and decisive issue. He convened an assembly of the Koreishites and their allies, in which the death of Mohammed was resolved. To baffle the vengeance of the Hashemites, it was agreed that the guilt of his blood should be divided among the several tribes. A spy (duly converted afterwards into an angel by the crafty prophet) revealed the odious plot to Mohammed, who resolved on flight as the only means of escape from the malice of his enemies. In the night of the 13th September, 622,[27] Mohammed, accompanied by his friend Abu Bekr, escaped silently from his house, whilst the assassins, who were watching at the door, were deceived by the figure of Ali, who, covered with the green vestment of the apostle, reposed on the bed, securing thus, at the risk of his own life, the safe retreat of his illustrious and beloved cousin. When the deception practised upon them was at length revealed, the Koreishites dismissed the heroic youth unharmed. Mohammed and the companion of his flight took refuge first in the cave of Thor, about three miles from Mecca. Three days they remained concealed there, receiving every evening from the son and daughter of Abu Bekr a supply of food, and intelligence of the movements of their enemies. The Koreish explored every hiding-place in the neighbourhood of the city, with the exception of the cave in which the fugitives were hidden, and which the pious Moslem doctors would have us believe was protected from their scrutiny by the providential deceit of a spider’s web and a pigeon’s nest. When the first rigor of the pursuit had somewhat abated, the fugitives left the protection of their cave, and mounted their camels to pursue their flight to Yathreb, called afterwards Medina, or Medina al Nabi (i.e. city of the prophet). On the road, they were overtaken by the emissaries of the Koreish, who were, however, diverted from their murderous purpose by the eloquent appeals of the prophet: indeed it is stated by the Arabian historians that one of his pursuers passed over to him with seventy followers, and attended him to Medina. The city of Yathreb was inhabited chiefly by the tribes of the Charegites and the Awsites, and by two colonies of Jews, of a sacerdotal race, and who had introduced among their Arab fellow-citizens a taste for science and religion, which had gained Medina the name of the City of the Book. Now whether it might be that, owing to this circumstance, the preaching of Mohammed had made a deeper impression upon the pilgrims and merchants from Medina than upon his own fellow-citizens in Mecca; or that the Yathrebites, who were envious of the flourishing commerce of the latter city, would gladly avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by the bigoted zeal of the Koreish to attract to their own city the exiled disciples of Mohammed, and in fine perhaps that illustrious man himself—certain it is that at an early period of Mohammed’s mission, some of the noblest citizens of Medina, in a pilgrimage to the Kaaba, had been converted by his preaching, and had upon their return home diffused among their fellow-citizens the belief of God and his prophet. The Charegites and Awsites had hitherto lived in perpetual feud, interrupted only by temporary truces, which were broken on the slightest provocation. By the exhortations of these missionaries, the two tribes were henceforth united in faith and love. Ten Charegites and two Awsites were despatched to Mecca, where they held a secret and nocturnal interview with Mohammed on a hill in the suburbs; they protested for themselves and in the name of their wives, their children, and their absent brethren, an inviolable attachment to the person and doctrine of the prophet. At a later period, shortly before Mohammed’s forced departure from Mecca, seventy-three men and two women of Medina came to Mecca, and held a solemn conference with Mohammed, his kinsmen, and his disciples, on the same spot where the interview with the first embassy had taken place. They promised the prophet in the name of their city that should he be compelled to leave Mecca, they would receive him as their prince, and would place their lives and fortunes at his service for the defence and propagation of the new faith preached by him. Mo...