Mahomet and the Koran. 189 ART. VI.-Life of Mahomet. By WASHINGTON IRVING. IN the year 613, the inhabitants of Mecca, a considerable walled town, situated in a barren stony valley, about fifty miles from the eastern shore of the Red Sea, were thrown into a state of no small excitement, by learning that they had a prophet among them, a man professing to have a commission from God to teach them, and all the other Arabs, a new way of life. There was no doubt about the fact. Already, for three years or more, there had been whisperings in the town that something strange had befallen Mahomet Ibn Abdallah, and his wife Kadijah; and now the secret was out. Mahomet himself had revealed it. At a meeting of his kinsmen, after having feasted them with lamb's flesh and milk, he had openly asserted what he had till then told only to a few, and announced himself as a messenger of God, sent to reform the faith of the Arabs. "Children of Abd-alMotalleb," he had said to them, "I do not believe that there is any man in Arabia that can make you a better present than that I now bring to you; for I offer you the good both of this life and of the life that is to come. Know that the great God has commanded me to call you unto him." For some time the kinsmen had kept silence, not knowing what to say; but at last Mahomet's young cousin, Ali, a boy of thirteen or fourteen years of age, had sprung up and said, "Come, my cousin, I will be with you; I will be your vizier in Mecca." And Mahomet had embraced the boy before all the kinsmen, and had said, " Verily, this is my brother, and my vizier over you; see, then, that ye pay him reverence." And at this the kinsmen had laughed heartily, turning to Abu Thaleb, the father of Ali, who was present, and saying, "Hearest thou this, Abu Thaleb, that henceforth thou must render obedience to thine own son?" And all these things, and many more, had been spread abroad in Mecca and its neighbourhood, so that, both in and around the town, nothing was spoken of but the divine mission of Mahomet Ibn Abdallah. The Arabic writers that tell us these facts, give us an account also of the pedigree and previous history of Mahomet. The prophet, they say, was not an Arab of the genuine or pure race, the posterity of Kahtan or Joktan, the son of Heber, by whom, after the annihilation of the wicked aboriginal tribes of Ad, Thamud, &c., the Arabian Peninsula had been re-colonized; he was an Arab of the mixed or Ishmaelitish stock, that had been introduced into the peninsula, and particularly into that western portion of it called Hejaz, by the marriage of Ishmael, the out cast son of Abraham, with a daughter of the house of Joktan. The distinction, however, between these two kinds of Arabs was one rather of tradition than reality, the Ishmaelitish and the native Arabs living in a state of interfusion, and pursuing exactly the same occupations-some settled in towns scattered at intervals over the Peninsula, but the greater proportion roaming over the desert spaces of the interior with their flocks and camels. In the course of the general distribution of the Arabian Peninsula among the multitudinous tribes, whether pure or Ishmaelitish, that divided the possession of it, that part of the province of Hejaz in which the town of Mecca was included, had fallen to the tribe of the Koreishites, who traced their existence to Koreish, one of the descendants of Ishmael. By the acquisition of this territory, the men of Koreish found themselves raised to a position of pre-eminence among the other Arab tribes; for Mecca was a spot holy in the imagination of all the Arabians, on account of its legendary associations. In this waterless and dreary valley, said the native tradition, had Adam and Eve first met again after their expulsion from Paradise, and long wanderings over the earth, in search of each other; here had these parents of our race first worshipped God in their new wretchedness; here had their son Seth built the famous Kaaba, or square stone shrine, for which heaven itself had furnished the model; here also it was that the outcast Hagar and her son had sat down to die, when the angel appeared, and showed them the waters of the well Zem-zem bubbling up to refresh them; and here, finally, had the mighty Ishmael, assisted by his aged father, after their reconciliation, restored the work of Seth, which the flood had swept away, building into one of its walls, by the direction of the angel Gabriel, the sacred black stone that had been seen to fall from the open sky. Centuries, therefore, before the Christian Era, Mecca was the Kebla of Arabia-the fixed point towards which, as towards the holiest spot known, all devout Arabs, from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, from the Red to the Persian Sea, were taught to turn when they prayed. Whatever diversities of creed or worship distinguished the different tribes of the great Peninsula, in this one feeling, at least, of reverence for the Kaaba, and for the city Mecca as the seat of it, all were agreed. It was to this, its religious reputation, that Mecca owed its prosperity. Pilgrims travelling thither periodically from all parts of Arabia, in order that they might walk in procession round the Kaaba, and kiss the black stone in its eastern wall, were accustomed to bring their merchandise with them; and the Meccans, who but for this concourse of people to their little territory, would have been among the poorest of all the Arabians, became rich by the consequent traffic. Little wonder, then, that the Kor Shemitic Characteristics. 191 eishites, as the masters of Mecca, and the hereditary keepers of the Kaaba, were accounted illustrious among the Arab tribes; or that their particular dialect of the general Arabic spoken by all, was considered the finest, the richest, and the most classic. Not only did the Prophet belong to the tribe of Koreish, he belonged also to the most important branch of that tribe-the family of the Haschemites. His grandfather, Abd-al-Motalleb, the head of this family, was by that fact the first man in Meccathe chief in civil authority, the most active in business, and the recognised guardian of the Kaaba. Dying in extreme old age, this man left a large family of descendants-children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Out of all these his favourite is said to have been his grandson Mahomet, the only and orphan child of his deceased son Abdallah. Born in 571, Mahomet was but seven years old at the time of his grandfather's death; after which he fell to the charge of his numerous uncles, and particularly to that of Abu Thaleb, the eldest son of Abd-al-Motalleb, and his successor in the government of Mecca. The youth and the early manhood of the Prophet were accordingly spent either at Mecca, in the household of Abu Thaleb, or in such casual expeditions for war, plunder, or trade, as were undertaken by any of the uncles. His sole patrimony, independently of what he earned in the service of Abu Thaleb, consisted of five camels, a few sheep, and a black female slave. As an Arab of undoubted pedigree, Mahomet must have inherited, in high measure, the peculiar intellectual and moral qualities that distinguish at this hour, as they have always distinguished, the men of the Shemitic race. "The Shemite," says Mr. Layard, "possesses in the highest degree what we call imagination. The poor and ignorant Arab, whether of the desert or town, moulds with clay the jars for his daily wants, in a form which may be traced in the most elegant vases of Greece or Rome; and, what is no less remarkable, identical with that represented on monuments raised by his ancestors 3000 years before. If he speaks, he shows a ready eloquence; his words are glowing and apposite; his descriptions true, yet brilliant; his similes just, yet most fanciful. These high qualities seem to be innate in him; he takes no pains to cultivate or improve them; he knows nothing of reducing them to any rule, or measuring them by any standard." More particularly, the characteristics of the Shemitic mind, whether as seen in the Arab, the Hebrew, or the Syrian type, seem to be these-extreme facility and spontaneity in operation, and comparative independence, as regards the symmetry of the result, on training or culture; a prevailing seriousness, or even ferocity, of mood, and, connected with this, a deficiency in at least the Teutonic form of humour; and, above all, a deep and fervid faith in the supernatural, and a strong aptitude for religious emotion. All these qualities of his race must have existed in Mahomet in a high degree; and, if there were any minor peculiarities of temperament likely to arise from the grafting of a Hebrew shoot on an Arabic stock, these, also, we may suppose, were illustrated in him. The influences that must have acted on the soul of this young Arab in his progress to maturity, were many and various. Of education, in the scholastic sense, he received little or none, as he never was able either to read or to write,-accomplishments, however, which were by no means unknown among his contemporary Meccans. Expertness in horsemanship and in the use of arms; skill in the management of cattle; shrewdness in buying and selling and in judging of wares, together with such general ingenuity and manual dexterity as were necessary to supply one's personal wants in so primitive a state of society— these were, doubtless, the most conspicuous of the early acquisitions of the future prophet. But even in such a rude way of life, literary sensations and impulses were not wholly wanting. To that passion for song and legend, in which no race of any promise has ever been found deficient, and which the peculiar conditions of Arabian life were so well calculated to foster, the wild Arabs of Mahomet's days joined a degree of literary taste and fastidiousness almost amounting to dilettantism. To hear a fine story well told; to sit at sunset at the door of a tent, listening to the tinkling syllables or rythmic cadences of a practised speaker, as he wove forth some gorgeous prose-fancy of the wonderful, or declaimed some earnest ode of war-was a recreation of all most suitable to the constitution of the Arab, with his craving for mental stimulus, and his oriental love of repose. Hence, among the ancient Arabs, an æsthetic susceptibility to the pleasure of sound for its own sake, and a conceit in the structure and wealth of their own language, such as we hardly find among any other people at the same stage of its history. To be able to express himself fluently and with elegance on any given occasion, was an accomplishment which, as it was easy by nature to the Arab, so it was his study to acquire and improve. And when this power flashed out at all conspicuously, when a poet was born in any tribe or family, the event was celebrated with all honour; neighbouring tribes sent their recognition in gifts, or assembled to hear the new star of Arabian song. great fair, too, that was annually held at Ocadh, in Yemen, poets from all parts of Arabia met to recite their compositions, and to compete for prizes; and such poems as then pleased most were afterwards written in letters of gold on flags of Egyptian silk, and sent to be hung up on the walls of the Kaaba, at Mecca. At a Legends of the Arabians. 193 Seven of these ancient Arabian prize-poems have been preserved to us, in a collected form, under the name of "The Moallakat," that is, "The Suspended." To such poems Mahomet must have often listened in his youth; nor, considering the pre-eminence of the tribe of Koreish, and the reputation it enjoyed on account of the richness and beauty of its dialect, is it wonderful that among the prophet's own kinsmen were men whose verses were familiar over all Arabia. Lebid and Hareth, two of the seven poets of "The Moallakat," were Koreishites, and contemporaries of Mahomet; and at the time when the prophet was ready to announce his mission to the people of Mecca, there were poets enough in the place to criticise and lampoon him. From the recitations of the poets, as well as from the daily conversations that he must have listened to in the streets and houses of Mecca, Mahomet, doubtless, acquired such knowledge as he afterwards exhibited of the legendary lore of his countrymen. Of the matter thus accumulated in his mind, much would necessarily consist of traditions relating to the history of his own tribe, especially in its connexion with Mecca. Much, however, would be of wider import-traditions relating to such great events of primeval times as the Creation, the Flood, the dispersion of races, the peopling of Arabia, and its early relations with the adjoining countries of Persia, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt; traditions also of specially Arabic significance, respecting such notable men of those old times, as Adam, Seth, Enoch, Noah, Nimrod, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon, and the other Biblical heroes. What proportion of this mass of legendary matter had come down to the Arabs by an independent stream of tradition from the great Shemitic foreworld, and what proportion, on the other hand, consisted of real Biblical history, originally dif fused among the Arabs by the Hebrews, and subsequently corrupted to Arabic use, it is altogether impossible to determine. Among the purely Arabic legends, without doubt, are to be reckoned those that related to the extinct tribes of Ad, Thamud, Tasm, Jadis, the first Jorham, and Amalek, to which tribes, it was alleged, the Arabian peninsula had belonged before it was occupied by the posterity of Joktan. The age of these primitive Arabians lay behind the historic period of their successors like a dark and gloomy background; and one of the most favourite exercises of the Arab muse was to open up this background, by fictitious descriptions, revealing, as it were, in lurid glimpses, the splendours of its buried cities, the banners of its vanished tents, and the once defiant energy of its now dead populations. One legend of this ideal Arabic foreworld appears to have been in special repute the legend, namely, of Hud, the prophet sent by God to reclaim the idolatrous Addites. Long and wearily, said VOL. XIII. NO. XXV. N |
