Part 10

Many of the Jews would doubtless have liked to follow his example, but their day of grace was past; no longer could they qualify as “Witnesses” for Mohammed. For indeed his heart was set upon their extermination, or--what was even better--the robbery of their goods; and to that end, like a good general, he proceeded first against those who dwelt in Medina. About a month after Bedr, he went to the wealthy tribe of Beni Kainuka, who practised the goldsmiths’ trade in Medina, and peremptorily announced his errand thus: “By the Lord! ye know full well that I am the Apostle of God. Believe, therefore, before that happen to you which has befallen Koreish!” But they hurled defiance at him, so he decided to wait until he could find a convenient excuse to attack them. He soon found it. As a Moslem girl was trading in a goldsmith’s shop one day, a frivolous-minded Jew sought entertainment by creeping up behind her and pinning the bottom of her skirt to her shoulder; howls of merriment followed and the poor maiden almost died of shame. A Moslem who soon avenged the insult by slaying the sprightly Jew was killed in turn by other Jews; and thus the Prophet was conscientiously able to proceed against the Beni Kainuka--for had they not broken the solemn treaty hitherto contracted between the Moslems and the Hebrews? A fortnight’s siege ended in their abject surrender; their hands were then tied and they were led out to be executed. At this moment Abdallah ibn Obei, who still retained some remnants of power in Medina, approached the Prophet with a plea for mercy. But the only reply was an averted face, so Abdallah seized Mohammed’s arm and repeated his request. “Let me go!” the Prophet angrily screamed; then, since Abdallah still clung to him, he again shouted, “Wretch, let me go!” But Abdallah continued to hang on, begging that pity be shown; and Mohammed, who still feared Abdallah’s might, grudgingly commanded, “Let them go!” though he could not refrain from adding, “The Lord curse them, and him too!” So their lives were spared, but their rich possessions were confiscated and they were at once sent into banishment; and Mohammed solaced himself for his Pyrrhic victory by selecting the choicest of their weapons for himself. When Abdallah bitterly reproved one of the Prophet’s leading confederates, he was met by the curt response: “Hearts have changed. Islam hath blotted all treaties out.”

Such, indeed, was the fact. Within a year the murderer of Ka’b was dispatched to the Jewish tribe of Beni an-Nadir--which was suspected of being in secret league with the Koreish--with this commission: “Thus saith the Prophet of the Lord. Ye shall go forth from out of my land within the space of ten days; whosoever after that remaineth behind shall be put to death.” When they protested on the ground that such treatment would be rather severe on a people who had never injured Islam, Mohammed’s envoy merely remarked, “Hearts are changed now,” and abruptly left them. After prolonged and anxious consultation, they decided to hold fast to their fortress--a proceeding so unusual for their race that, when the Prophet heard of it, he shouted in delight: “Allah Akbar! The Jews are going to fight! Great is the Lord!” His enthusiasm was somewhat dampened, however, when he discovered that a lengthy siege failed to dislodge them; accordingly, he determined to hasten matters by destroying the pick of their palm-trees with fire and axe. They protested that this act was both barbarous and contrary to Mosaic law; and, while Mohammed was no longer much interested in Moses, he well knew that his deed was opposed to the unwritten laws of Arabian warfare. The Koran, therefore, was soon adorned with this exculpatory passage: “That which thou didst cut down of the Date-trees, or left of them standing upon their roots, it was by the command of God, that He might abase the evil-doers.” The Beni an-Nadir, in fact, were so completely abased by the relentless siege that they were glad to surrender their lands and go into exile on the generous condition that their lives should be spared.

These episodes relating to the Beni Kainuka and the Beni an-Nadir are only two of many like illustrations, that might be discussed at wearisome length, which demonstrated two significant facts: Mohammed had succeeded in ridding Medina of its indwelling foes, and he had decided to destroy the Jewish settlements throughout all Arabia. The massacre of the Beni Koreiza followed as a matter of course; and in 628 the last Hebraic stronghold of much account was also dismantled. In the summer of that year Mohammed, heading sixteen hundred men, pounced upon the opulent city of Kheibar, which lay about one hundred miles to the north of Medina--a distance that shows how wide the sweep of the Prophet’s victorious arm had reached. The motive which inspired him to assault this people appears to have sprung from the consideration that they had failed to avenge the murder of one of their own tribesmen by a Moslem; for the Prophet may well have believed that such an aggressively peace-loving clan merited the severest punishment. In any case, they were not true believers; and, at this stage of Islam, that fact in itself constituted a more than ample pretext for the opening of hostilities. Kheibar’s forts fell in rapid succession before the impetuous rush of the now veteran Moslem army. As Mohammed gaily charged from one conquered stronghold to another, he continually raised the rapturous shout: “Allah Akbar! Great is the Lord! Truly when I light upon the coasts of any People, woe unto them in that day!” After the conquest was complete, Kinana, chieftain of Kheibar, was tortured in the hope that he would reveal his hidden treasure. Fires were burnt upon his breast until he was so nearly dead that he could not have confessed even had he so desired; and Mohammed, who realized that he had carried the thing too far, ordered his head to be chopped off.

Kinana’s notoriously beautiful wife, the seventeen-year-old Safiya, and her companion were then fetched up to the Prophet; the companion, seeing the headless trunk, beat her face and howled aloud. “Take that she-devil hence!” snapped Mohammed; but he tenderly folded his mantle around Safiya’s head to screen her from the sight, for he had determined to marry her. His approaching nuptials, however, were nearly ruined by Zeinab, a Jewess who had lost all her male relatives and her husband on that fateful day. She poisoned a kid, tastily garnished it, and then placed it before him, smiling and coaxing him to eat. Having distributed the least desirable parts among his fellows, he bit off a choice mouthful from the shoulder; but barely had his teeth closed on it when he cried, “Hold! surely this shoulder hath been poisoned,” and indecorously spat it out. One man who had partaken of the meat died, and Mohammed himself is reputed to have been afflicted with such violent pains that he was repeatedly cupped between the shoulders; yet within a short time he was observed to disappear with the fickle-hearted and coyly reluctant Safiya behind the bridal tent.

Thus the former Meccan merchant and exile passed from conquest to conquest. He was now not only a prophet--plenty of contemporary men professed a similarly exclusive claim to that commonplace title--but the recognized dictator over Medina and an extensive range of contingent territory; furthermore, the terror inspired by the mere mention of his name had penetrated to the most distant stretches of Arabia, and was beginning to arouse sinister forebodings in adjacent nations. Had his relatively unbroken succession of victories made him an inexorably ruthless tyrant whose actions were wholly prompted by an insatiable ambition, or had they but reaffirmed his ceaselessly reiterated claim that he was only plastic clay in Allah’s hand? Did he delight to glut himself in wanton bloodshed, or, in the inmost regions of his spirit, did he believe that the punishments meted out upon his enemies had actually been self-inflicted inasmuch as they had refused to accept the one true God? “And He hath caused to descend from their strongholds the Jews.... And He struck terror into their hearts. A part ye slaughtered, and a part ye took into captivity. And He hath made you to inherit their land, and their habitations, and their wealth, and a land which ye had not trodden upon; and God is over all things powerful.... I am the strongest, therefore Allah is with me.” Did those exultant words emanate from a profligate, coldly calculating and atrociously barbarous hypocrite, or from a humble and grateful penitent whose sole wish was to be a channel through which Allah’s divine purposes might be made manifest? The answer forever bides.

AVOCATIONS

I

Incessant wars and rumors of wars by no means occupied all of Mohammed’s attention. He might be prophet, statesman, general and practically king, but he was also something more: he was a family man on a large scale. Aloof and reserved on public occasions, he was excessively affectionate toward his friends, and indeed some of his wives. Since he no longer had any small children, he was particularly fond of little tots; while standing at prayer he sometimes held a child in his arms, and at Medina he often allowed a little girl to lead him around by the hand. From the plumbless depths of his character a vast and intricate collection of odd mannerisms, which occasionally corresponded with the surpassing dignity of his office, came to the surface; and all the manifold resources of psychology, philosophy and related branches of erudition have been exhausted in the attempt to analyze or synthesize his personality from these _disjecta membra_. But the dry bones still remain scattered and unfleshed; all the prodigal resources of modern scholarship have excavated fewer vital facts about the Prophet than one of his most favored wives or friends might have related in less than a day. When, therefore, they speak with voices whose authenticity is generally granted, they should be allowed to hold the stage.

Ayesha, certainly, was one of them. Questioned once about her illustrious consort, she tartly replied: “He was a man just such as yourselves; he laughed often and smiled much.” “But how would he occupy himself at home?” the insistent voice continued. “Even as any of you occupy yourselves,” came the abrupt response. “He would mend his clothes, and cobble his shoes. He used to help me in my household duties; but what he did oftenest was to sew. If he had the choice between two matters, he would always choose the easier, so as that no sin accrued therefrom.” Ayesha obviously had few illusions about Mohammed; but that is one of the peculiar privileges of great men’s wives, and besides he was her senior by more than forty years--a fact that probably accounts very largely for her continual underestimation of his several abilities. Her highly partial record, accordingly, should be corrected and supplemented with equally pertinent particulars.

For indeed, despite his felicity in cobbling, sewing, milking his goats and tarring his camels, there were many things that he did not like at all. He detested lying on the part of others, and separated himself from those of his adherents who cultivated a natural taste for mendacity, until they repented; he held the custom of usury in special abhorrence: “One dirhem of usury which a man eats, knowing it to be so, is more grievous than thirty-six fornications,” he declared. He also loathed dogs and pictures--“Angels will not enter a house containing a dog or pictures,” and “Every painter will be in hell,” he oracularly announced, but the reason for this outburst is obscure. Perhaps it was because Arabian art was notoriously bad--and then again, perhaps he was jealous of anything that, no matter how rude and primitive, was entirely beyond his comprehension. Once, during public prayers, he chanced to notice that his mantle was richly figured, and when he had ended he said: “Take away that mantle, for verily it hath distracted me in my prayers, and bring me a common one”; and on another similar occasion he threw off a silken robe in disgust, saying, “Such stuff it doth not become the pious to wear.” He wore a golden ring until he noticed that all the people were beginning to follow his example, whereupon he went into the pulpit, pulled the ring off with the words, “By the Lord I will not wear this ring ever again,” and then prohibited the use of such adornments. A friend who had sent him a present in the form of a steaming dinner was much chagrined when it was returned uneaten and even untouched by his fingers--for he “used to eat with his thumb and his two forefingers,” and, “after he had finished eating, he licked his blessed fingers: first the middle one, then the prayer-finger, and last the thumb”--but he was pacified when the Prophet explained that he had not tasted it because onions had been cooked with the food; for Gabriel, he went on to say, strenuously objected to the odor of both onions and garlic. Furthermore, he abstained from tasting lizards, for he feared that they were descended, by some inexplicable metempsychosis, from a certain tribe of Israel. He commonly reclined during his meals, though sometimes “he would sit on his left leg, posting up the right; and if he was very hungry, he would sit down altogether and post up both legs.”

Yet the catalogue of his likes was far more extensive than the list of his aversions. He was so devoted to everlasting prayers that his legs often became swollen from long standing; and when anyone remonstrated with him, he would reply: “What! Shall I not behave as a thankful servant should?” He was very careful not to yawn during his devotions, and if perforce he sneezed, “he made a moderate noise, covering his blessed face with his robe-sleeve and putting his blessed hand before his nostrils,” after which he would ejaculate, “Praise be to Allah!” Before commencing his orisons, he always sniffed up several handfuls of water from his right hand and then blew the liquid out with his left hand. Ordinarily, he prayed with his shoes on, though he once took them off while engaged in public supplication--a deed immediately aped by the entire audience; but the Prophet at once informed them that their action was unnecessary, “for he had merely taken off his own because Gabriel had apprised him that there was some dirty substance attaching to them.” His prayers were so earnest and vehement that “it might be known from a distance that he was speaking by the motion of his beard”--which he had let grow until it reached to the middle of his broad chest; but he regularly clipped his moustache. When it was once suggested to him that his appearance would be vastly improved if he reversed the process, the counselor was properly rebuked. “Nay,” said Mohammed, “for my Lord hath commanded me to clip the moustaches and allow the beard to grow.”

In more mundane matters, too, his tastes were equally pronounced. He affected white clothes chiefly, but was also partial toward red, yellow and green garments, and he sometimes wore woolens. Scrupulously neat in his personal habits, and ever ready to condemn untidiness (yellow teeth, in particular) in his companions, he yet wore a turban, wrapped many times around his head, whose lower edge looked “like the soiled clothes of an oil-dealer.” But such carelessness was uncommon, for his clothes, though mostly inexpensive, were habitually clean and neat. When he donned freshly laundered clothes, he was accustomed to remark: “Praise be to the Lord, who hath clothed me with that which shall hide my nakedness and adorn me while I live.” He had a perfect mania for toothpicks: at night he invariably kept one handy to use before performing his ablutions; while traveling he always carried a generous supply; indeed, he used them so frequently between his wide-spaced teeth, “white as hailstones,” that he gradually wore his gums away; and one person chanced to observe him, toothpick in mouth, making a gurgling, “a-ccha” noise as if he were going to disgorge his food.

The narrowness of his means at Medina limited his gluttonous desires for a time, but his rapid successes soon enabled him to feast upon delectable dainties. He was very fond of sweetmeats, honey, cucumbers and ripe dates (“When he ate fresh dates he would keep such as were bad in his hand”) and he eyed the pumpkin with particular favor. One of his servants, gazing abstractedly at some pumpkins one day, after Mohammed’s death, was overheard saying “Dear little plant, how the Prophet loved thee!” Like a true Arab, he preferred mutton to all other flesh. “I once slew a kid and dressed it,” narrated a Medinan. “The Prophet asked me for the forequarter and I gave it to him. ‘Give me another,’ he said; and I gave him the second. Then he asked for a third. ‘O Prophet!’ I replied, ‘there are but two forequarters to a kid.’” The meal that he relished with most gusto, however, was “a mess of bread cooked with meat, and a dish of dates dressed with butter and milk.” He had a predilection for several wells around Medina whose waters, he said, were both “cold and sweet,” and, after he drank, he sometimes bathed in them or invoked a blessing on their contents by spitting into them. Close-fisted and frugal most of the time, he readily loosed his purse-strings when he saw something whose appeal was irresistible. He once paid about twenty camels for a single dress, and also gave eight golden pieces for a mantle. At bedtime he regularly put antimony on his eyelids, “saying that it made the sight more piercing, and caused the hair to grow”; he had a crystal goblet with silver trimmings, a copper vase for his baths, and an ivory comb; but perhaps his chief fancy inclined toward perfumes. “We always used to know when Mohammed had issued forth from his chamber by the sweet perfume that filled the air,” one of his servants testified. He indulged without stint in musk and ambergris, and he burned camphor on odiferous wood so that he might enjoy the smell. With her customary acumen, Ayesha put the gist of the matter into one pithy sentence when she said: “The Prophet loved three things--women, scents, and food; he had his heart’s desire of the first two, but not of the last.” In fact, Mohammed himself argued that these two innocuous diversions intensified the ecstasy of his prayers.

II

Mohammed’s adoration of particular women was nevertheless tempered with penetrating discretion toward the sex in general. It is true that he abrogated the usage which permitted, and even encouraged, sons to inherit their fathers’ wives, and that the code of Islam allowed single ladies to be mistresses of their own actions; but it is also true that married women continued to be treated merely as sports and playthings for the convenience of their husbands. “Men stand above women,” says the Koran, “because of the superiority which God hath conferred on one of them over the other.... Wherefore let the good Women be obedient.... But such as ye may fear disobedience or provocation from, rebuke them, and put them away in separate apartments, and chastise them. But, if they be obedient unto you, seek not against them an excuse for severity; verily God is lofty and great.” While Moslem husbands might easily obtain an absolute divorce if they chose, the idea that women might occasionally desire the same privilege seems never to have entered the Prophet’s head. Women might win Paradise, to be sure, yet no provision was made whereby they could anticipate such captivating entertainments as were promised to faithful men. Mohammed, in fact, was sagacious enough to entice males to Islam by implying that there would be no occasion for them to lament the loss of their wives in Paradise: “Whenever a woman vexes her husband in this world, his wife among the Houris of Paradise says: ‘Do not vex him (May God slay thee!) for he is only a guest with thee. He will soon leave thee and come to us’”--and indeed, the most subtly cruel punishment that the Prophet ever inflicted upon erring males was to separate them for a period from their wives. If, however, some wives remained refractory in the face of this warning, Mohammed had still another card up his sleeve: “If a man summon his wife to his bed and she refuse to come, so that he spends the night in anger, the angels curse her till morning.”

That the Prophet, as was only natural, allowed himself a wider latitude of encounters than was granted to his adherents--who might espouse only four women, but might also form liaisons “without antecedent ceremony or any guarantee of continuance” with any number of female slaves--was made clear by Ayesha. “I was jealous of the women who gave themselves to the apostle of God,” she admitted, “and said, ‘Does a woman give herself?’ Then when God revealed: ‘Thou mayst decline for the present whom thou wilt of them, and thou mayst take to thy bed her whom thou wilt, and whomsoever thou shalt long for of those thou shalt have before neglected; and this shall not be a crime in thee.’ I said, ‘I see your Lord does nothing but hasten to fulfil your desire!’” Yet due allowance should be made for Ayesha’s jealousy; for, while Mohammed married approximately twelve women, she was the only virgin among them--the others were widows or divorcees who commonly brought him wealth or desirable political connections. For indeed, though he once playfully chided a Moslem who had married a mature woman instead of a “young damsel, who would have sported with thee, and thou with her,” he was too canny to follow his own counsel. At the same time, he preferred women of spirit; in fact, he definitely rejected one girl because “she never cried or complained”--a criticism that certainly could not be aimed against most of his brides.