Part 14

If tradition may be trusted, Mohammed was not always over-successful in his dealings with prospective converts. The Christian tribe of Nejran, in central Arabia, came to him after an ostentatious exhibition of prayer in the Mosque, and loudly declared that they were Moslems; but the Prophet, observing that they wore silk-lined clothes--which he particularly detested, though it is true that he ordered such hapless Moslems as became afflicted with the itch or “louse-disease” to wear silken shirts--rightly doubted their sincerity and merely turned up his nose at them; they therefore departed and shortly returned in monastic garb. Their leader, doubtless inspired with the hope that a display of knowledge on his part would gain them better terms, offered to debate with Mohammed concerning the mystical nature of Christ, but he wisely declined to comply and stated that he would prefer to engage in a cursing contest; and in fact, while one of his most uncritical admirers affirmed that the worst oath he ever used was “May his forehead be darkened with mud!” the Koran, among other authentic documents, furnishes considerable evidence to the contrary. Realizing that they would be no match for him in such an ordeal, the Nejranites capitulated to the extent of agreeing to pay tribute, though they refused to acknowledge his divine mission; the Prophet acceded to this compromise, but soothed his ruffled dignity by declaring that they were one of the two worst tribes in all Arabia, and by announcing that Christians, as well as Jews, were to act as substitutes for Moslems in Hell-fire. Moreover, believing that Christianity and Judaism were both on their last legs, he devised the humane stipulation that, provided Christians and Hebrews submitted to the earthly rule of Islam and paid “tribute with their hands,” they would be permitted to profess whatever faith they chose. Yet he would presumably have been better pleased had all Arabians manifested the delicate concern shown by a fellow named Al-Jarud. “O Prophet,” said he, “I have hitherto followed the Christian faith, and I am now called on to change it. Wilt thou be _Surety_ for me in the matter of my religion?” “Yea, I am thy surety that God hath guided thee to a better faith than it,” Mohammed gladly answered.

Two dispatches were probably sent to Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium, who had just completed a victorious struggle with Persia. The first one, which requested him to cease the idolatrous worship of Jesus and His Mother, to reverence the one true God, and to recognize the mission of Mohammed, was apparently disregarded; a second message, couched in like terms, prompted a vassal of Heraclius to request permission to punish the insolent pretender who sent it, but Heraclius forbade any needless expedition against the contemptible person who had audaciously signed himself “Mohammed the Apostle of God.” The King of Persia, on receiving a similar note, merely tore it up; and the Prophet, on hearing of this outrage, prayed aloud: “Even thus, O Lord! rend thou his kingdom from him!” It may be presumed that neither Heraclius nor the Persian King even suspected that, within a decade or two, their mighty empires would be paying tribute to Islam. A letter that Mohammed sent to Ruayyah, of Suhaim, was treated more respectfully than the one that had been dispatched to the Persian monarch; for Ruayyah used it to mend a hole in his water-skin. Another powerful chief, having listened to Mohammed’s delegate, instructed him to carry back this message: “How excellent is that Revelation to which thou invitest me, and how beautiful! Know that I am the Poet of my tribe, and an Orator. The Arabs revere my dignity. Grant unto me, therefore, a share in the rule, and I will follow thee.” The Prophet, on being informed of this, snarled: “Had this man asked of me but an unripe date, as his share in the land, I would not have given it. Let him perish, and his vainglory with him!”--and it is confidently stated that the presumptuous snob did, in fact, die within a year. The Roman Governor of Egypt, too, refused to endorse Mohammed’s claims--“I am aware,” he said, “that a prophet is yet to arise; but I am of opinion that he will appear in Syria”--yet he atoned for his stubbornness of heart by sending Mohammed a double present in the form of a white mule and a black concubine.

Mohammed, meanwhile, was showing his interest in his recent converts by altering their Pagan names to titles that better suited his almost feminine fondness for daintily euphemistic words. For example, “Zeid of the Stud” right gladly abandoned his plebeian appellation when he was rechristened “Zeid of the Good”; “the Wolf, son of the Cub,” was similarly glorified by becoming “Allah’s Servant”; and an “Oppressor” suffered a welcome sea-change into a “Well-doer.” But when a tribe called the “Sons of Bastardy” were politely accosted as the “Sons of Chastity,” they announced their steadfast desire to remain true to their ancient heritage.

Nor did Mohammed’s reforms stop here. The Koran had already prohibited the use of wine; for, years earlier, the Prophet, while attempting to chide his uncle, Hamza, who was riotously drunk, had received the tipsy response, “Are you not my father’s slave?” Liquor, therefore, had been proscribed as a foe to Islam and the dignity of the prophetic office; this rule was so rigorously enforced, in truth, that even a hero of Bedr had been beaten again and again for perennial intoxication, and on one occasion Mohammed himself hurled clods of dirt at another offender. Gambling, too--the casting of lots and the “arrow-game,” in which camels were the prizes--had been divinely banned as abominations “from amongst the works of Satan.” Mohammed’s acutely sensitive nature now led him to proscribe anything that savored of torture inflicted on animals: living birds might not be used as targets in shooting contests; camels were not to be tied up and left to die on their owners’ graves; cattle were not to be blinded to avert the evil eye; droughts were not to be broken by the common process of affixing flaming torches to the tails of cattle; horses were not to lose their manes and tails, and asses were no longer to be branded or hit in the face. So scrupulously fastidious was the Prophet that he once ordered some Moslems to stop burning an ant-hill, and he also strongly disapproved the ubiquitous practice of cursing camels and cocks.

His humanity and foresight were also manifested in more important matters. Blood-feuds--the time-honored and almost ineradicable system of tribal revenge for homicide--he endeavored, with partial success, to wipe out by emphasizing the brotherhood of Islam, and by advocating the acceptance of money as a partial compensation: ethical and legislative essays that gradually led to a saner and more peaceful system of government. Whatever may be thought of his general attitude toward women, he certainly benefited them incalculably by setting up laws that enabled them to inherit and hold property; and the luridly overemphasized harem system, Pagan though it may be, has some virtues that are perhaps absent from the Occidental system of prostitution. His advocacy of the custom by which the wives of captives automatically became the concubines of Moslem conquerors has especially irritated certain modern moralists, who apparently have not reflected very deeply on certain canons of contemporary conduct, in which wealth and social distinction play the rôle of the victorious Islamites. He accepted slavery as a matter of course--and, indeed, Islam has never indulged in any foolish civil strife over the question of bondage--but he insisted that slaves must be treated with the utmost kindness. Men who beat their slaves were placed by him among the lowest of the low; he stated that manumission was a pious act, and he sometimes let offenders off from any punishment when they agreed to free their serfs--in short, the present industrial system has little to boast of in comparison with Mohammed’s attitude toward serfdom. One other inhuman custom--the ancient practice of female infanticide--was summarily abolished by him; and a tale survives that well illustrates the horror he felt concerning such deeds. Two men, about to yield themselves to the claims of Islam, chanced to question the Prophet about his views on child-murder. “Our mother Muleika was full of good deeds and charity; but she buried a little daughter alive. What is her condition now?” they inquired. “The burier and the buried both in hell,” replied Mohammed, upon which his guests became very angry and started to leave. “Come back,” he requested, “mine own mother, too, is there with yours.” But even this inducement failed to convince them, and so they returned into the outer darkness.

III

Old age, meanwhile, crept gently though inexorably upon the Prophet; but its stealthy approach seemed only to quicken the strength of his arm and the matchless fertility of his intellect. His groveling acolytes, completely bewitched by the magical power of his colossal personality, had exalted him to such a dazzling deification that, had Allah Himself chosen to appear in the streets of Medina, He might easily have passed unnoticed amid the encomiums that were daily showered upon His Apostle--or, rather, Allah might carelessly have been classified with the famous Three Pretenders who, by their conjuring tricks and fake miracles, excited the wrathful amusement of the Prophet in the last year of his earthly life. In fact, it has been pointed out as a matter for deep regret that, while the Koran allows Allah only ninety-nine separate and distinct appellations, His Prophet, at the zenith of his career, was addressed by no fewer than two hundred and one individual titles, including a round score of those that had been applied to Allah Himself.

In the autumn of the year 630, Mohammed conducted his final military expedition. Setting out at the head of a Moslem army that seems to have totaled nearly thirty thousand men, he planned to chastise a Byzantine force that was reputed to have gathered on the Syrian border near Tebuk; but when that place was reached, it was found that there was no Byzantine or any other force to be conquered. Mohammed, thus finding himself in much the same position as the French King in the doggerel ballad, proceeded to march home again after exacting pledges of conversion and immense booty from contingent tribes. His followers, who stated their belief that the “wars for religion now are ended,” foolishly began to sell their weapons; but the far-sighted Prophet sternly stopped them and uttered the fateful remark: “There shall not cease from the midst of my people a party engaged in fighting for the truth, until Antichrist appear.” Scarcely had he returned to Medina when his heart was gladdened by two events: the death of his only important rival, Abdallah ibn Obei--to whom the Prophet deemed it safe and expedient to pay tribute by following his bier and praying at his grave--and the surrender of At-Taif, the single stronghold that had ever successfully defied his might. He was so exhilarated by the downfall of this fort, indeed, that he let its defenders off from the necessity of breaking their own idols, and, in their stead, elected two Moslems to perform the peculiarly pleasant task.

But perhaps Mohammed most enjoyed the multitudinous activities inherent in his position as a kind and fatherly counselor of his people. The matters which he was besought to adjudicate were extraordinary in their range. One day his prayers would be requested by some prospective bridegroom, who hoped, by the aid of such divine sorcery, to win a wife of unusual goodness and humility; next day he would be begged to specify the precise hour when the world was destined to end; another day would find him busily laying down oracles governing the proper boiling of meat. Only two types of interrogation were taboo: matters that were wholly rational or wholly metaphysical; and Mohammed probably barred these topics on the sensible grounds that preceding prophets who had tampered with either of them had almost uniformly come to grief. Thus it came about that countless apothegms, whose absolute authenticity can never be nicely determined, were confidently claimed to be the children of his brain. Yet, despite the fact that most of these sayings betray a hard-headed and close-fisted sagacity, he was in debt when he died; and perhaps, therefore, the stories concerning his senile delight in the children of his body deserve more credence. Sonless though he was, he could partially console himself by playing with his grandsons, Al-Hasan and Al-Hosein, the progeny of Ali and Fatima, and by reflecting on the transcendent heritage that awaited them as male descendants of himself. In fact, legends sprang up that made a Moslem holy family out of Mohammed, the two boys, and their mother, Fatima, who was further honored by being entitled “The Lady of Paradise”; but, unfortunately for his beatific visions concerning Al-Hasan and Al-Hosein--who frequently entertained themselves by clambering upon their grandfather’s broad back while he was bowed in prayer--they turned out to be scurvy fellows who excelled only in incompetence and cowardice.

It may be that Mohammed had a premonition of his imminent death. He decided, at all events, to make a “Farewell Pilgrimage” to Mecca in March, 632, so that he might for the last time feast his eyes on that sacred citadel and undergo the solemn rites of the Greater Pilgrimage--a thing he had not done since the Hegira. He first took a careful bath, then mounted Al-Kaswa, and, accompanied by his entire harem and one hundred votive camels, set forth on the long journey. Having meticulously and painfully performed the prescribed gyrations and genuflections, he cast some small stones at the “Devil’s corner”--a spot near Mecca where Abraham was reputed to have met and conquered Satan--and concluded his toilsome duties by delivering a notable speech. After making many additions to, and revisions upon, the already numberless regulations which he had been formulating for more than twenty years, he concluded with these words: “Verily, I have fulfilled my mission. I have left that amongst you--a plain command, the Book of God, and manifest Ordinances--which, if ye hold fast, ye shall never go astray.” Then, turning his eyes heavenward, he exclaimed: “O Lord! I have delivered my message and discharged my Ministry.” “Yea,” came the deep-throated voice of the throng that hemmed him in, “yea, verily thou hast.” “O Lord!” he continued, unmindful of the pious interruption, “I beseech Thee bear Thou witness unto it.” Returning straightway to Mecca, he encircled the Kaba seven times; thence he went to Zemzem and, having drunk part of the contents of a pitcher filled with its holy water, he rinsed his mouth and asked that the water still remaining in the vessel should be poured back into the well. After abiding three more days at Mecca, he departed from it forever and ambled by easy stages back to Medina.

IV

By this time the sinister tokens of physical decay, unavoidably betrayed by the Prophet, filled everyone with deepest concern. Abu Bekr observed him one day, stroking his beard and looking intently at it; then Abu, his eyes filling with sudden tears, broke out: “Ah, thou, for whom I would sacrifice father and mother, white hairs are hastening upon thee!” “Yes,” came the slow response, “it is the travail of inspiration that hath done this. The Suras Hud, and the Inevitable, and the Striking, with their fellows, these have made white my hair.” Yet when he actually became ill with pleurisy, or some sort of fever, he named a definite source for the malady: the poisoned mutton which Zeinab, the Jewess, had fed him. “This, verily, is the effect of that which I ate at Kheibar,” he declared. “The artery in my back feeleth as though it would just now burst asunder.” If his theory was correct, he doubtless died--as his worshipers fervently claimed--the honorable death of a martyr; but it seems probable that his illness had some more tangible origin. Believing that water could not be contaminated, he sometimes carelessly drank from a cistern that was used for slops; as a medicine man who had often attempted to cure his people by charms, cauterization and cupping, he had submitted himself to these practices so frequently that his system must have been gradually weakened; furthermore, Ayesha stated that his health had been poor for years, and that she had constantly dosed him with a profusion of odd concoctions which she herself compounded from innumerable prescriptions recommended by sympathizing friends.

It is not strange, therefore, that, shortly after he had presented a banner to a Moslem army which he commanded to march toward Syria on May 27, 632, for the purpose of avenging the defeat at Muta, he found himself curiously listless and weak. Late one subsequent night, accompanied only by a servant, he stole out to the cemetery on the edge of Medina. After a long and melancholy period of meditation, he thus apostrophized the souls of the dead: “Verily, both ye and I have received fulfilment of that which our Lord did promise us. Blessed are ye! for your lot is better than the lot of those that are left behind. Temptation and trial approach like portions of a dark night that follow one upon another, each darker than that preceding it. O Lord! have mercy upon them that lie buried here!” Next morning, as he passed Ayesha’s chamber, he heard her calling out, “My head!--O, my head!” Entering, he gently reproved her thus: “Nay, Ayesha, it is rather I that have need to cry _My head, my head!_ But wouldst thou not,” he continued, in a feeble attempt to be humorous, “desire to be taken whilst I am yet alive; so that I might pray over thee, and wrapping thee, Ayesha, in thy winding-sheet, myself commit thee to the grave?” Then, in spite of her pain, she railed at him. “Ah, that, I see, is what thou wishest for! Truly, I can behold thee, when all was over, returning straightway hither, and sporting with a new beauty in my chamber here!” But, perceiving that he was really ailing, she forgot her own headache and tenderly cared for him.

Multitudes of conflicting stories have been handed down concerning the happenings of the week that preceded his dissolution; but, inasmuch as they emanated from three distinct political groups, each of whom wished to be recognized as the sole source of truth, the precise occurrences of that fateful period will never be accurately known. At the beginning of his illness it appears certain that, on account of his predilection for baths, he commanded his wives to drench him in cold water on the intriguing theory that, since fever was caused by sparks of Hell-fire, it could be summarily squelched by water; but in this case the douche seems to have had the unfortunate result of sending him into convulsions. It is claimed that, during an interval of temporary relief, he went forth and addressed his devotees in the Mosque--a proceeding which, if it was true, was presumably the reason for his consequent relapse. By Saturday, June 6, his temperature is said to have been so high that Omar, having placed his hand on the tormented man’s forehead, quickly withdrew it with the consoling exclamation, “O Prophet, how fierce is the fever upon thee!” “Yea, verily,” Mohammed gasped, “but I have been during the night season repeating in praise of the Lord seventy Suras, and among them the seven long ones”; and a moment later he added, “Just as this affliction prevaileth now against me, even so shall my reward hereafter be.” On Sunday he was delirious much of the time and suffered such excruciating pain that, following a consultation among his wives, it was decided to administer physic; so they forced the drug down his throat, but, notwithstanding his agony, he readily recognized the too familiar noxious taste and bitterly reproached them. When they admitted their guilt, he cried: “Out upon you! this is a remedy for pleurisy ... an evil disease is it which the Lord will not let attack me. Now shall ye all of you within this chamber partake of the same. Let not one remain without being physiked, even as ye have physiked me, excepting only my uncle, Al-Abbas.” The repentant women immediately arose, and each obediently gave the drug to the other until all had swallowed some of it; and this strange scene around the Prophet’s deathbed is one of the small number that are best authenticated.

Certain other tales may be accepted without too much over-scrupulous demur. As he lay alternately drawing the bed-clothes over his face and then tossing them off, he would shriek out unconnected sentences: “The Lord destroy the Jews and Christians!... O Lord, let not my tomb be ever an object of worship!... Verily the chiefest among you all for love and devotion to me is Abu Bekr. If I were to choose a bosom friend it would be he; but Islam hath made a closer brotherhood amongst us.... O my soul! Why seekest thou refuge elsewhere than in God alone?... Fetch me hither pen and ink, that I may make for you a writing which shall hinder you from going astray for ever.” On Monday he seemed a little better, but it was only the final flicker of the dying candle. Toward midday, as Ayesha sat holding his head tenderly on her bosom “between her lungs and her neck,” she noticed that his wandering eye had fixed upon a green toothpick; and, after chewing it so that it might be more pliable, she offered it to the dying man who used it for a moment with all his old vigor. But he soon began to sink rapidly, and, as though realizing the imminence of death, he called aloud: “O Lord, I beseech thee assist me in the agonies of death!” Then, while he spasmodically blew breath over his burning body, he thrice repeated, “Gabriel, come close unto me!” It is a regrettable fact that the interesting question of his final utterance must forever remain undecided. One authority declares that he expressed a wish to have concubines treated with consideration; but it is perhaps more appropriate to accept the story that, as consciousness slowly departed, he gently breathed: “Lord, grant me pardon; and join me to the blessed companionship on high. Eternity in Paradise!... Pardon!... The blessed companionship on high!...”--his head fell lower, a cold drop of moisture trickled down upon Ayesha’s breast, and all was over.