VOLUME XVII SLICE IV Magnetite to Malt (continued 3)

It would seem that Mahomet’s enterprise originally comprised the conversion of Mecca only, and that he thought of himself as sent to his fellow-citizens only, as had been the case with earlier prophets, whose message was for Conquest of Arabia. their “brethren.” His views took a somewhat different direction after his brief exile to Ṭāif, and the conquest of Arabia was in a way forced upon him in the course of his struggle with the Meccans. It is not indeed perfectly clear by what process he arrived at the resolution to exclude paganism from Arabia; at first he appears to have tolerated it at Medina, and in some of his earlier contracts with neighbouring tribes he is represented as allowing it, though some of our texts make him reserve to himself the right of enforcing Islam if he chose; only the Meccans were at first, according to the most authentic documents, excluded from all truce or treaty. At the battle of Badr he appears to have formulated the rule that no one might fight on his side who had not embraced Islam; and when once he had won fame as a successful campaigner, those who wished to share his adventures had to pass the Islamic test. After the battle of Uhud (Ohod) we hear of a tribe demanding missionaries to instruct them in Islamic principles; and though in the case recorded the demand was treacherous, the idea of sending missionaries appears not to have been unfamiliar even then, albeit the number sent (70), if rightly recorded, implies that the Prophet suspected the good faith of the applicants. After the taking of Mecca, whereby the chief sanctuary at any rate of north Arabia had been cleared of all idolatrous associations, and consecrated to monotheism, paganism in general was conscious of being attacked; and the city had scarcely been brought under the new régime before the Prophet had to face a confederation of tribes called Hawāzin and Thaqīf. The battle which ensued, known as the Day of Honain, was near ending disastrously for Islam; some of Mahomet’s sturdiest followers fled; but the terrible danger of a defeat in the neighbourhood of recently conquered Mecca roused the Prophet and Ali to heroism, and they saved the day. Emissaries were now sent far and wide demanding the destruction of idols, and only Ṭāif appears to have made any considerable resistance; against this place for the first time the Prophet made use of siege artillery, such as was employed by the Byzantines; though compelled by the bravery of the inhabitants to raise the siege, he was afterwards able to take the city by capitulation. It has been observed that here only do we read of much attachment to the old deities; in most places they were discarded with few regrets when once their impotence had been found out. After the taking of Mecca and the victory of Honain there appears to have been a general desire, extending even to the extreme south of Arabia, to make the best terms with the conqueror so soon as possible; iconoclasm became general. Flatterers of various kinds, including poets, came to seek the favour of the sovereign; and a mock war of words appears to have been substituted by some tribes for more serious fighting, to terminate in surrender. For warfare of his sort Mahomet had a powerful helper in the poet Ḥāssan b. Thābit, for whose effusions a pulpit was erected in the Medina mosque, and whose verses were said to be inspired by the Holy Spirit; though, as has been seen, Mahomet was not himself able to judge of their artistic merit. It was not, however, found easy to enforce the payment of the alms on these new converts; and this taxation caused an almost general revolt so soon as Mahomet’s death had been ascertained.

Although the central portions of the peninsula in Mahomet’s time were practically independent, large portions of the north-west and south-east were provinces of the Byzantine and Persian empires respectively, whence any scheme Plan of World-conquest. for the conquest of Arabia would necessarily involve the conqueror in war with these great powers. The conquest of Persia is said to have been contemplated by the Prophet as early as A.H. 5, when the famous Trench was being dug; but it was not till the year A.H. 7, on the eve of the taking of Mecca, that the Prophet conceived the idea of sending missives to all known sovereigns and potentates, promising them safety if, but only if, they embraced Islam. The text of these letters, which only varied in the name of the person addressed, is preserved (doubtless faithfully) by the Moslem Oral Tradition; in the middle of the last century a French explorer professed to discover in Egypt the original of one of them—addressed to the mysterious personage called the Muqauqis (Muḳauḳis) of Egypt—and this, it appears, is still preserved amid other supposed relics of the Prophet in Constantinople, though there is little reason for believing it to be genuine. The anecdotes dealing with the reception of these letters by their addressees are all fabulous in character. Two appear to have sent favourable replies: the king of Axum, who now could send the exiles whom he had so long harboured to their successful master; and the Egyptian governor, who sent Mahomet a valuable present, including two Coptic women for his harem. The emperor Heraclius is claimed as a secret convert to Islam, on whom pressure had to be put by his advisers to conceal his convictions. The Persian king is said to have sent orders to have Mahomet arrested; his messengers arrived in Medina, but were unable to carry out the commands of their master, who died while they were there. Two of the letters are said to have had important results. One was addressed to the Himyarite chiefs (called by the south Arabian appellation qail) in Yemen, and effected their conversion; another to the governor of Bostra in Roman Arabia, who put the bearer of this insolent message to death; a force was despatched by Mahomet immediately afterwards (beginning of A.H. 8) to avenge this outrage; and though the Moslems were defeated in their first encounter with the Byzantine forces at Mutah, they appear to have given a good account of themselves; it was here that Ja‘far, cousin of the Prophet, met his death. In A.H. 9 a successful expedition was led by the Prophet himself northward, in which, though no Byzantine force was encountered, a considerable region was withdrawn from the Byzantine sphere of influence, and made either Islamic or tributary to Islam. At the time of his death (of fever, after a short illness) he was organizing an expedition for the conquest of Syria.

The Prophet claimed throughout that his revelation confirmed the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and this claim is on the whole reasonable, though his acquaintance with both was in the highest degree vague and inaccurate. Jewish and Christian Communities. Still he reproduced the Old Testament as faithfully as he could, and though he patriotically endeavours to shed some lustre on his supposed ancestor Ishmael, he does not appear to have questioned the Biblical theory according to which the founder of the north Arabian nations was the son of a slave girl. On neither the truth of the Biblical history and miracles nor the validity of the Mosaic legislation does he appear to have cast any doubt. He even allows that Israel was the chosen people. The Gospel was known to him chiefly through apocryphal and heretical sources, which cannot certainly be identified; but he accepted the doctrine of the Virgin-birth, the miracles of healing the sick and raising the dead, and the ascension; the crucifixion and resurrection were clearly denied by the sect from whom he had received his information, and rejected by him, though certainly not because of any miracle which the latter involved. His quarrel with the Jews at Medina appears to have been by no means of his own seeking, but to have arisen unavoidably, owing to his particular view of his office being such as they could not accept; and his attempt to discredit, not the Mosaic Law, but the form in which they presented it, was an expedient to which he resorted in self-defence. An attempt was made shortly after his arrival at Medina to settle the relations between the two communities by a treaty, according to which, while their equality was guaranteed there should be little interference between the two; this, however, was found unworkable, and each victory of Mahomet over the Meccans was followed by violent measures against the Medinese Israelites. When experience had shown him their military incompetence he appears to have been unable to resist the temptation to appropriate their goods for the benefit of his followers; and his attack on the flourishing Jewish settlement of Khaibar, after the affair of Ḥodaibiyah, appears to have been practically unprovoked, and designed to satisfy his discontented adherents by an accession of plunder. Yet the consciousness that this process was economically wasteful suggested to him an idea which Islamic states are only now abandoning, viz. that of a tolerated caste, who should till the soil and provide sustenance for the Believers who were to be the fighting caste. Whereas then his former plan in dealing with Israelites had been to banish or massacre, he now left the former owners of Khaibar (who had survived the capture of the place) in possession of the soil, of whose produce they were to pay a fixed proportion to the Islamic state. The same principle was adopted in the case of later conquests of Jewish settlements.

Disputes with Christians occur somewhat later in the Prophet’s career than those with Jews, for neither at Mecca nor Medina were the former to be found in any numbers; individuals are likely to have been found in both cities, and we hear of one Medinese “Abu’Amir the Monk,” who after Mahomet’s arrival at Medina branded him as an impostor, and, going himself into exile, made many an abortive attempt to discredit and injure Mahomet’s cause. The notices of him are meagre and obscure. Mahomet’s manifesto to the world, about the time of the taking of Khaibar, appears to represent his definite breach with Christianity; and when in the “year of the embassies” the Christians of Najran sent a deputation to him, they found that the breach between the two systems was not to be healed. Of the three alternatives open to them—conversion, internecine war, and tribute, they chose the last. The Christian tribes of north Arabia showed greater inclination towards the first. The Prophet’s policy was to give Christians lighter terms than Jews, and though the Koran reflects the gradual adoption by the Prophet of an attitude of extreme hostility to both systems, its tone is on the whole far more friendly to the former than to the latter. Some other communities are mentioned in the Koran, but merely in casual allusions: thus we know that Mahomet’s sympathy was with the Byzantines in their struggle with Persia, but in his most tolerant utterance the Magians or Mazdians as well as the Sabians (with whom his followers were identified by the Meccans) are mentioned with respect.

The financial requirements of Mahomet’s state were of the simplest kind, for there is no trace of any form of governmental department having been instituted by him, even when he was master of the peninsula; nor can we Mahomet’s Administration. name any permanent officials in his employ except his muaddhin Bilal, and perhaps his court-poet Hassān. A staff of scribes was finally required both to take down his revelations and to conduct correspondence; but although he encouraged the acquisition of penmanship (indeed some of the prisoners at Badr are said to have been allowed to ransom themselves by teaching it to the Medinese), we know of no regular secretaries in his employ. As despot of Medina he combined the functions of legislator, administrator, general and judge; his duties in the last three capacities were occasionally delegated to others, as when he appointed a governor of Medina during his absence, or leaders for expeditions, with provision for successors in case of their falling, but we hear of no permanent or regular delegation of them. Till near the end of his career at Medina he maintained the principle that migration to that city was a condition of conversion; but when, owing to the extension of his power, this was no longer practicable, his plan was in the main to leave the newly converted communities to manage their internal affairs as before, only sending occasional envoys to discharge special duties, especially instruction in the Koran and the principles of Islam, and to collect the Alms; quite towards the end of his life he appears to have sent persons to the provinces to act as judges, with instructions to judge according to the Koran, and where that failed, the practice (sunna), i.e. the practice of the community, for which a later generation substituted the practice of the Prophet. There were, therefore, no regular payments to permanent officials; and the taxation called Alms, which developed into an income-tax, but was at first a demand for voluntary contributions, was wholly for the support of the poor Moslems; it might not be used for the maintenance of the state, i.e. Mahomet and his family. For them, and for public business, e.g. the purchase of war material and gratuities to visitors, provision was made out of the booty, of which Mahomet claimed one-fifth (the chieftain’s share had previously, we are told, been one-fourth), while the remainder—or at least the bulk of it—was distributed among the fighting men; the Prophet appears to have prided himself on the justice of his distribution on these occasions, and doubtless won popularity thereby, though we hear occasionally of grumbling; for difficulties occurred when a defeated tribe embraced Islam, and so could claim equality with their conquerors, or when portions of the spoil were irregularly employed by Mahomet to allay resentment: the persons whose allegiance was thus purchased were euphemistically termed “those whose hearts were united.” What afterwards proved the main source of revenue in Islamic states dates from the taking of Khaibar; for the rent paid to the state by tolerated communities for the right to work their land developed long after Mahomet’s time into a poll-tax for Unbelievers (see Caliphate, e.g. B. § 8 and Mahommedan Institutions), and a land-tax for all owners of land. Immediately after the taking of Khaibar certain communities, of which the most notable was Fadak, sent tribute before they had been attacked and reduced; their land was regarded by Mahomet as his private domain, but after his death it was withdrawn from his heirs by his successor Abū Bekr, in virtue of a maxim that Prophets left no inheritance, which in the opinion of Fāṭima was contrary to Koranic doctrine, and invented by Ayesha’s father expressly for the purpose of excluding her and her husband from their rights; and this is likely to have been the case.

As a military organizer Mahomet, as has been seen, was anxious to adopt the most advanced of contemporary methods, and more than once is said to have scandalized the Arabs by foreign innovations, as at a later time the Moslem chiefs who first used gunpowder scandalized their co-religionists. The unit in his armies seems to have been, as of old, the tribe, under its natural leader; that he introduced no more scientific division, and nothing like a hierarchy of officers was perhaps due to the difficulty of reconciling such a system with the equality of all Moslems.

As has been seen, the Koran only assumed the character of a civil code as the need for one arose; and for some time after Mahomet’s arrival at Medina old-fashioned methods of settling disputes continued in use, and doubtless in accordance with precedent where such was known. For difficult cases, even in Arab opinion, divine inspiration was required; and since Mahomet naturally claimed to be in sole enjoyment of this, his utterances soon became the unique source of law, though he did not at first think of organizing a code. Such a plan is said to have occurred to him, and he even wished to dictate a code upon his deathbed; but his friends supposed or professed to suppose him to be delirious. A table regulating the “Alms” was left by him, it is said, in the possession of Abū Bekr; but other traditions assign another origin to this document.

Just as there were no regular officials for the arrangement of business, so there were none for its execution; when punishment was to be administered, any follower of Mahomet might be called upon to administer it. In the case of the massacre of the Banū Quraiẓah care was taken to see that some of the heads were struck off by their former allies, in order that the latter might be unable at any time to bring a demand for vengeance. The Prophet hoped by the mere terror of his name to make complete security reign throughout Arabia, and there is no evidence that any system of policing either it or even Medina occurred to him.

Until the death of Khadija the Prophet’s private life seems to have been normal and happy, for though the loss of his sons in infancy is said to have earned him a contemptuous epithet, he was fortunate in his adoption of Zaid b. Ḥarithah, apparently Domestic Life. a prisoner ransomed by Khadija or one of her relatives, who appears as dutiful almost to excess and competent in affairs. The marriages of his daughters seem all to have been happy, with, curiously, the exception of that between Fatima and Ali. His domestic troubles, to which an unreasonable amount of space seems to be devoted, even in the Koran, began after the Migration, when, probably in the main for political reasons, he instituted a royal harem. One of these political motives was the principle which long survived, that the conquest of a state was consummated by possession of the former monarch’s wife, or daughter; another, as has been seen, the desire to obtain the securest possible hold on his ministers. In his marriage with the daughter of his arch-enemy Abū Sofiān, before the latter’s conversion, we can see a combination of the two. Few, therefore, of these marriages occasioned scandal; yet public morality seemed to be violated when the Prophet took to himself the wife of his adopted son Zaid, whose name has in consequence the honour of mention in the Koran in the revelation which was delivered in defence of this act. Its purpose was, according to this, to establish the difference between adoptive and real filiation. Serious trouble was occasioned by a charge of adultery brought against the youthful favourite Ayesha, and this had to be refuted by a special revelation; the charge, which was backed up apparently by Ali, seems to have been connected with some deeper scheme for causing dissension between the Prophet and his friends. Yet another revelation is concerned with a mutiny in the harem organized by Omar’s daughter Hafsa, owing to undue favour shown to a Coptic concubine (Mary, mother of a son called Ibrahim, who died in infancy; his death was marked by an eclipse, January 27, 632); and various details of factions within the harem are told us by Mahomet’s biographers.

Of the members of this harem the only prominent one is Ayesha, married to the Prophet shortly after the Flight, when she had scarcely passed the period of infancy, but who appears to have been gifted with astuteness and ambition that were quite beyond her years, and who maintained her ascendancy over the Prophet in spite of the fact that many carping criticisms of his revelations are attributed to her. Some of this may have been due to the obligations (including pecuniary obligations) under which her father had laid Mahomet; but her reputation seems to have been greatly enhanced by the sending down of a revelation to exonerate her (A.H. 6), for which she thanked God and not the Prophet. Each accession to the harem rendered the building of a house or room necessary for the newcomer’s accommodation; a fact in which Robertson Smith perhaps rightly saw a relic of the older system whereby the tent was the property of women. The trouble noticed above seems to have arisen from the want of a similar arrangement in the case of slave girls, with whom Mahomet’s system permits cohabitation. When Mahomet, whether in consequence of the fatigue incurred by the “Farewell Pilgrimage,” or, as others thought, by the working of some poison put into his food some years before by a Jewess of Khaibar, was attacked by the illness which proved fatal, it was to the house of Ayesha that he was transferred (from that of another wife) to be nursed; and he apparently died in the arms of the favourite, on whose statements we have to rely for what we know of his last hours.

The traditional description of Mahomet is “of middle height, greyish, with hair that was neither straight nor curly; with a large head, large eyes, heavy eyelashes, reddish tint in the eyes, thick-bearded, broad-shouldered, with thick hands General Characteristics. and feet”; he was in the habit of giving violent expression to the emotions of anger and mirth. The supposition that he at any time suffered from physical weakness seems absolutely refuted by his career as a leader of difficult, dangerous and wearisome expeditions, from his migration to Medina until his death; indeed, during his last years he exhibited a capacity for both physical and intellectual activity which implies a high degree of both health and strength; and without these the previous struggle at Mecca could scarcely have been carried on. The supposition that he was liable to fits (epileptic or cataleptic) was intended to account for certain of the phenomena supposed to accompany the delivery of revelations; some of these however rest on very questionable authority: and the greater number of the revelations give evidence of careful preparation rather than spontaneity.

The literary matter ascribed to the Prophet consists of (1) the Koran (q.v.); (2) certain contracts, letters and rescripts preserved by his biographers; (3) a number of sayings on a vast variety of topics, collected by traditionalists. The references in the Koran to a form of literature called “Wisdom” (ḥikmah) suggest that even in the Prophet’s time some attempts had been made to collect or at least preserve some of the last; the general uncertainty of oral tradition and the length of time which elapsed before any critical treatment of it was attempted, and the variety of causes, creditable and discreditable, which led to the wilful fabrication of prophetic utterances, render the use to which No. 3 can be put very limited. Thus the lengthy description of the journey to heaven which Sprenger was inclined to accept as genuine is regarded by most critics as a later fabrication. It is very much to be regretted that the number of pièces justificatives (No. 2) quoted by the biographers is so small, and that for these oral tradition was preferred to a search for the actual documents, some of which may well have been in existence when the earliest biographies were written. Their style appears to have been plain and straightforward, though the allusions which they contain are not always intelligible.

In his personal relations with men Mahomet appears to have been able to charm and impress in an extraordinary degree, whence we find him able to control persons like Omar and Khalid, who appear to have been self-willed and masterful, and a single interview seems to have been sufficient to turn many an enemy into a devoted adherent. Cases (perhaps legendary) are quoted of his being able by a look or a word to disarm intending assassins.

Although the titles which he took were religious in character, and his office might not be described as sovereignty, his interests appear to have lain far more in the building up and maintenance of empire than in ecclesiastical matters. Thus only can we account for the violent and sudden changes which he introduced into his system, for his temporary lapse into paganism, and for his ultimate adoption of the cult of the Black Stone, which, it is said, gave offence to some of his sincere adherents (e.g. Omar), and seems hard to reconcile with his tirades against fetish-worship. The same is indicated by his remarkable doctrine that the utterance of the creed constituted a Moslem and not its cordial acceptance, and his practice of at times buying adhesion. Even an historian so favourable to the Prophet as Prince Caetani recognizes that ultimately what he regarded as most important was that his subjects should pay their taxes. And in general his system was not favourable to fanaticism (al-ghulū fi‘l-dīn); he repeatedly gave permission for concealment of faith when the profession of it was dangerous; he took care to avoid institutions which, like the Jewish Sabbath, interfered seriously with military expeditions and the conduct of business, and permitted considerable irregularity in the matters of prayer and fasting when circumstances rendered it desirable. In his theory that Koranic texts could be abrogated he made wise provision against the danger of hasty legislation, though some of its usefulness was frustrated by his failure to provide for such abrogation after his death.

As has been seen, Mahomet claimed to introduce a wholly new dispensation, and a maxim of his law is that Islam cancels all that preceded it, except, indeed, pecuniary debts; it is not certain that even this exception always held good. Mahomet’s Reforms. Hence his system swept away a number of practices (chiefly connected with the camel) that were associated with pagan superstitions. The most celebrated of these is the arrow-game, a form of gambling for shares in slaughtered camels, to which poetic allusions are very frequent. More important than this was his attitude towards the blood-feud, or system of tribal responsibility for homicide (whether intentional or accidental), whereby one death regularly led to protracted wars, it being considered dishonourable to take blood-money (usually in the form of camels) or to be satisfied with one death in exchange. This system he endeavoured to break down, chiefly by sinking all earlier tribal distinctions in the new brotherhood of Islam; but also by limiting the vengeance to be demanded to such as was no more than the equivalent of the offence committed, and by urging the acceptance of money-compensation instead, or complete forgiveness of the offence. The remembrance of pre-Islamic quarrels was visited by him with condign punishment on those who had embraced Islam; and though it was long before the tribal system quite broke down, even in the great cities which rose in the new provinces, and the old state of things seems to have quickly been resumed in the desert, his legislation on this subject rendered orderly government among Arabs possible.

Next in importance to this is the abolition of infanticide, which is condemned even in early Suras of the Koran. The scanty notices which we have of the practice are not altogether consistent; at times we are told that it was confined to certain tribes, and consisted in the burying alive of infant daughters; at other times it is extended to a wider area, and said to have been carried out on males as well as females. After the taking of Mecca this prohibition was included among the conditions of Islam.

In the laws relating to women it seems likely that he regulated current practice rather than introduced much that was actually new, though, as has been seen, he is credited with giving them the right to inherit property; the most precise legislation in the Koran deals with this subject, of which the main principle is that the share of the male equals that of two females. Our ignorance of the precise nature of the marriage customs prevalent in Arabia at the rise of Islam renders it difficult to estimate the extent to which his laws on this subject were an improvement on what had been before. The pre-Islamic family, unless our records are wholly misleading, did not differ materially from the Islamic; in both polygamy and concubinage were recognized and normal; and it is uncertain that the text which is supposed to limit the number of wives to four was intended to have that meaning. The “condition of Islam” whereby adultery was forbidden is said to have been ridiculed at the time, on the ground that this practice had never been approved. Yet it would seem that certain forms of promiscuity had been tolerated, though the subject is obscure. Against these services we must set the abrogation of some valuable practices. His unfortunate essay in astronomy, whereby a calendar of twelve lunar months, bearing no relation to the seasons, was introduced, was in any case a retrograde step; but it appears to have been connected with the abrogation of the sanctity of the four months during which raiding had been forbidden in Arabia, which, as has been seen, he was the first to violate. He also, as has been noticed, permitted himself a slight amount of bloodshed in Mecca itself, and that city perhaps never quite recovered its sacrosanct character. Of more serious consequences for the development of the community was his encouragement of the shedding of kindred blood in the cause of Islam; the consequences of the abrogation of this taboo seem to have been felt for a great length of time. His assassinations of enemies were afterwards quoted as precedents in books of Tradition. No less unfortunate was the recognition of the principle whereby atonement could be made for oaths. On the question how far the seclusion of women was enjoined or countenanced by him different views have been held.

Besides the contemporary documents enumerated above (Koranic texts, rescripts and authentic traditions) many of the events were celebrated by poets, whose verses were ostensibly incorporated in the standard biography of Ibn Isḥāq; in Sources. the abridgment of that biography which we possess many of these are obelized as spurious, and, indeed, what we know of the procedure of those who professed to collect early poetry gives us little confidence in the genuineness of such odes. A few, however, seem to stand criticism, and the diwan (or collection of poems) attributed to Ḥassan b. Thābit is ordinarily regarded as his. Though they rarely give detailed descriptions of events, their attestation is at times of value, e.g. for the story that the bodies of the slain at Badr were cast by the Prophet into a pit. Besides this, the narratives of eyewitnesses of important events, or of those who had actually taken part in them, were eagerly sought by the second generation, and some of these were committed to writing well before the end of the 1st century. The practice instituted by the second Caliph, of assigning pensions proportioned to the length of time in which the recipient had been a member of the Islamic community, led to the compilation of certain rolls, and to the accurate preservation of the main sequence of events from the commencement of the mission, and for the detailed sequence after the Flight, which presently became an era (beginning with the first month of the year in which the Flight took place). The procedure whereby the original dates of the events (so far as they were remembered) were translated into the Moslem calendar—for something of this sort must have been done—is unknown, and is unlikely to have been scientific.

Mahomet’s conduct being made the standard of right and wrong, there was little temptation to “whitewash” him, although the original biography by Ibn Isḥāq appears to have contained details which the author of the abridgment omitted as scandalous. The preservation of so much that was historical left little room for the introduction of miraculous narrations; these therefore either belong to the obscure period of his life or can be easily eliminated; thus the narratives of the Meccan council at which the assassination of Mahomet was decided, of the battles of Badr, Uḥud and Ḥonain, and the death of Sad‘b. Mu ‘adh, would lose nothing by the omission of the angels and the devil, though a certain part is assigned the one or the other on all these occasions. We should have expected biographies which were published when the ‘Abbasids were reigning to have falsified history for the purpose of glorifying ‘Abbās, their progenitor; the very small extent to which this expectation is justified is a remarkable testimony to their general trustworthiness.

Relatives of the Prohet1

1. Family of ‘Abd al-Moṭṭalib, Mahomet’s maternal grandfather:—*‘Abbās (d. A.H. 32 or 34), *Ḥamza (d. A.H. 3), ‘Abdallah, father of the Prophet, *Abū Ṭālib (said to be named ‘Abd Manāf), ? *Zubair, Ḥārith, Ḥajal, Moqawwam, Ḍirār, *Abū Lahab (said to be named ‘Abd al-‘Uzzā, d. A.H. 2), *Ṣafiyyah (d. A.H. 20), Umm Ḥakīm, al-Baiḍā, ‘Ātikah, Umaimah, Arwā, Barrah.

2. Family of Abū Tālib:—*‘Aqīl (d. after A.H. 40), *Ja‘far (d. A.H. 8), Ṭālib, Ṭulaiq, ‘Alī, the caliph, Umm Hāni’, Jumānah, Raiṭah.

3. Family of Mahomet. Wives:—*Khadīja (Children:—Qāsim; ? ‘Abd Manāf (Ṭāhir, Tayyib); *Zainab m. Abu’l-‘Ās b. Rabī’, d. A.H. 7; *Ruqayyah, m. ‘Othmān b. ‘Affān, d. A.H. 2; *Umm Kulthūm m. ‘Othmān b. ‘Affān, d. A.H. 9; *Fāṭimah, m. ‘Alī, d. A.H. 11): *Saudah bint Zam‘ah,? d. A.H. 54, *‘A’ishah (Ayesha) bint Abī Bekr (d. A.H. 56), *Hafṣa bint ‘Omar (d. A.H. 45 or 47), *Zainab bint Khuzaimah, d. before A.H. 11, *Zainab bint Jaḥsh, d. A.H. 20, *Umm Salimah, d. A.H. 59, *Maimūnah, d. A.H. 38, *Juwairiyah, d. A.H. 56, *Umm Ḥabībah Ramlah bint Abī Sofiān, d. A.H. 44.

Concubines:—*Ṣafiyyah bint Ḥuyyay, d. A.H. 36, *Raiḥānah bint Zaid, *Māriyah the Copt, d. A.H. 15 or 16, mother of Ibrāhim. (Other names given by Ibn Sa‘d, vol. viii.)

Chronological Table of Chief Events in the Life of Mahomet.2

? 570 Birth.

? 595 Marriage with Khadīja.

? 610 Commencement of call.

? 613 Public appearance. 616 Persian conquest of the nearer East.

? 617 Flight of his followers to Abyssinia.

? 618-619 Siege in Mecca. Retractation and subsequent repudiation. Death of Abū Talīb and Khadija.

? 620 Flight to Ṭāif.

622 July 16. Beginning of the Moslem era. Sept. 20. Arrival at Kuba after the Flight.

632 Jan. 27. Death of his son Ibrāhīm.

632 June 7. Death of Mahomet.

The following dates are given by the Arabic historians according to their own calendar. For the reasons which have been seen it is impossible to obtain certain synchronisms.

A.H.

2. Rajab 1. Raid of ‘Abdallah b. Jaḥsh to Nakhlah. Ramaḍān 19. Battle of Badr. Shawwāl 15. Attack on the Banū Qainuqā.

3. Rabīa I. 14. Assassination of Ka‘b b. al-Ashraf. Shawwāl 7. Battle of Uḥud.

4. Ṣaphar. Massacre of Mahomet’s 70 missionaries at Bi’r Ma‘ūnah. Rabīa I. Attack on the Banu Naḍīr. Dhu’l-Qa‘da. Abortive raid called “the lesser Badr.”

5. Shaabān 2. Attack on the Banu’l-Muṣṭaliq (according to Wāqidī). Dhu’l-Qa‘da. Battle of the Trench. Massacre of the Banū Quraiẓah.

6. Jomādā i. Capture of a caravan by Zaid b. Ḥārithah. Futile attempt to assassinate Abū Sofiān. Dhu’l-Qa‘da. Affair of Ḥodaibiyah.

7. Jomādā i. Taking of Khaibar. Mission extended to the world. Dhu’l-Qa‘da. Pilgrimage to Mecca (called ‘umrat al-qaḍiyyah)

8. Jomādā i. Expedition to Mūtah. Ramaḍān 20. Taking of Mecca. Shawwāl. Battle of Ḥonain. Attack on Ṭā‘if.

9. Muḥarram. Tax-gatherers sent over Arabia. Rajab. Expedition to Tabūk. Rival Mosque built at Kubā, destroyed on Mahomet’s return to Medina. Dhu’l-Ḥijja. Pilgrimage conducted by Abu Bekr. Abolition of idolatry in Arabia.

10. Ramaḍān. Expedition of ‘Alī to Yemen. Dhu’l-Qa‘da. “Farewell Pilgrimage.”

11. Ṣaphar. Expedition ordered against the Byzantines.

Companions of the Prophet.

The saḥābah, as they are called, are the subject of a vast literature, and the biographical dictionaries devoted to them, of which the best known are the Usd ul-ghāba of the historian Ibn Athīr and the Iṣābah of Ibn Ḥajar al-‘Asqalāni, enumerate many thousands. The following two lists are of special groups.

(a) Naqībs, i.e. leaders selected by Mahomet from the Medinese tribes: i. Khazrajites:—As‘ad b. Zurārah, Sa‘d b. al-Rabī‘, ‘Abdallah b. Rawāḥah, al-Barā’ b. Ma‘rūr, ‘Abdallah b. ‘Amr b. Ḥarām, ‘Ubādah b. al-Ṣāmit, Sa‘d b. ‘Ubādah, al-Mondhir b. ‘Amr; ii. Ausites: Usaid b. Ḥuḍair, Sa‘d b. Khaithamah, Rifā‘ah b. ‘Abd al-Mondhir.

(b) Commanders of Expeditions: names occurring in (a) are not repeated: ‘Abdallāh b. Jaḥsh, ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān b. ‘Auf, Abū Bekr, Abū Qatādah, Abū ‘Ubaidah b. al-Jarrāḥ, ‘Ali, ‘Alqamah b. Mujazziz, ‘Amr b. al-‘Āṣ (ibn el-Ass), Bashīr b. Sa‘d, Ḍaḥḥāk b. Sofiān, Ghālib b. ‘Abdallāh, Ibn Abi’l-Aujā, Ka‘b b. ‘Umair, Khālid b. al-Walīd, Kurz b. Jābir, Marthad b. Abī Marthad, Muḥammad b. Maslamah, Quṭbah b. ‘Āmir, Sa‘d b. Abī Waqqāṣ, Sa‘d d. Zaid, Salama b. ‘Abd al-Asad, Shujā‘ b. Wahb, ‘Ubaidah b. al-Ḥārith, ‘Ukkāshah b. Miḥṣan, ‘Umar b. al-Khaṭṭāb, Usamah b. Zaid, ‘Uyainah b. Ḥiṣn, Zaid b. Ḥārithah.

Authorities.—The biography of Ibn Isḥāq was before the world long before the two chief causes for the falsification of tradition had begun to have serious effects; these were the need for legal precedents, and the concept of saintliness, combining those of asceticism and thaumaturgy. These gave rise to the classical works on the Evidences of Mohammed’s Mission by Abū Nu‘aim (d. A.D. 1012-1013) and Baihaqī (d. A.D. 1066).

Lives of the Prophet († indicates that the work is lost); †‘Urwah b. Zubair (d. 712-713); †Musa b. ‘Ukbah (d. 758-759); †Mohammed b. Isḥāq (d. 768); Mohammed b. Hishām (d. 828-829), ed. Wüstenfeld (Göttingen, 1860); reprinted in Egypt by Zubair Pasha, a series of excerpts from the last; Mohammed b. Omar al-Wāqidī (d. 823), portion published by Kremer (Calcutta, 1855), abridged trans. of a fuller copy by Wellhausen, Muhammad in Medina (Berlin, 1882); Mohammed b. Sa‘d (d. 844-845), an encyclopaedic work on the history of Mahomet and his followers, called Ṭabaqat, ed. Sachau and others (Berlin, foll.); Mohammed b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (see Tabari). Many more writers on this subject are enumerated in the Fihrist, cf. Sprenger’s Leben Muhammads, iii. 54-76.

Among the most popular compilers of later times are: Ibn al-Athir (q.v.) al Jazarī, the historian (d. 1233); Aḥmad b. Ali al Kasṭalānī (d. A.D. 1517), whose al-Mawāhib al-Laduniyyah was published with commentary (Cairo, 1278); Ḥosain b. Mohammed al Diyarbakrī (d. 1574) whose work Ta’rikh al-Khamīs was published in Cairo, A.H. 1382; ‘Ali b. Burhān al-dīn al-Ḥalabī (d. A.D. 1634), whose biography called Insān al-‘uyūn was published in Cairo, A.H. 1292. To these must be added all the collections of Tradition.

Modern Authorities.—The critical study of the Life of Mahomet begins in Europe with the publication by Th. Gagnier in 1723 of the Life by Abulfeda (q.v.). Presently there appeared an apologetic biography by Henri Cmte. de Boulainvilliers (2nd ed., Amsterdam, 1731), to which Gagnier replied in 1732 (La Vie de Mahomet, traduite, &c. ibid.). The next considerable advance in the treatment of the subject is marked by the biography of G. Weil (Muhammed der Prophet, Stuttgart, 1843), which is wholly without religious bias; the popular life by Washington Irving (London, 1849) is based on this. That by J. L. Merrick (the Life and Religion of Mohammed, Boston, U.S.A., 1850) rests on Shi‘ite sources. The search for MSS. in India conducted by A. Sprenger led to the discovery of fresh material, which was utilized by Sprenger himself in his unfinished Life of Mohammad (Pt. 1, Allahabad, 1851), and his more elaborate Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammad (Berlin, 1861-1865), and by Sir William Muir in his Life of Mahomet, (London, 1858-1861) 4 vols.: afterwards abridged in one volume and reprinted. These are still the standard treatises on the subject; the pro-Christian bias of Muir is very marked, while Sprenger has hazarded numerous conjectures on subjects with which he had little familiarity. The biography by S. W. Koelle, Mohammed and Mohammedanism (London, 1889), is pro-Christian, the popular work of Syed Ameer Ali The Spirit of Islam, (London, 1896) an apology for Mahommedanism. Later treatises, resting on original authorities, are those by H. Grimme Mohamed, (Münster, 1892, and Munich, 1904), F. Buhl, Mohameds Liv (Copenhagen, 1903—Danish: since translated into German), D. S. Margoliouth Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (N.Y., 1905, &c.), and Prince Caetani Annali del Islam, i. ii. (Milan, 1905-1907). For the direction of public opinion in Mahomet’s favour the Lecture on The Hero as Prophet in Carlyle’s Heroes and Hero-worship (London, 1846) was singularly effective; his views were enforced by R. Bosworth Smith Mohammed and Mohammedanism, (London, 1873, &c.). A somewhat similar line was taken in France by J. Barthélémy Saint-Hilaire, Mahomet et le Coran, (Paris, 1865), while the Vie de Mahomet d’après la Tradition of E. Lamairesse and G. Dujarric (Paris, 1897) is written entirely from the Moslem standpoint.

See further Caliphate, ad init.; Mahommedan Institutions; Mahommedan Law; Mahommedan Religion.

(D. S. M.*)

1 * is prefixed to names which figure on occasions which seem to be historical. Female names are in italics.

2 Dates are given A.D.

MAHOMMED AHMED IBN SEYYID ABDULLAH (1848-1885), Sudanese tyrant, known as “the Mahdi,” was born in Dongola. His family, known as excellent boat-builders, claimed to be Ashraf (or Sherifs), i.e. descendants of Mahomet. His father was a fiki or religious teacher, and Mahommed Ahmed devoted himself early to religious studies. When about twenty years old he went to live on Abba Island on the White Nile about 150 m. above Khartum. He first acquired fame by a quarrel with the head of the brotherhood which he had joined, Mahommed asserting that his master condoned transgression of the divine law. After this incident many dervishes (religious mendicants) gathered round the young sheikh, whose reputation for sanctity speedily grew. He travelled secretly through Kordofan, where (with ample justification) he denounced to the villagers the extortion of the tax-gatherer and told of the coming of the mahdi who should deliver them from the oppressor. He also wrote a pamphlet summoning true believers to purify their religion from the defilements of the “Turks” i.e. the Egyptian officials and all non-native inhabitants of the Sudan. The influence he gained at length aroused the anxiety of the authorities, and in May 1881 a certain Abu Saud, a notorious scoundrel, was sent to Abba Island to bring the sheikh to Khartum. Abu Saud’s mission failed, and Mahommed Ahmed no longer hesitated to call himself al-Mahdi al Montasir, “The Expected Guide.” In August he defeated another force sent to Abba Island to arrest him, but thereafter deemed it prudent to retire to Jebel Gedir, in the Nuba country south of Kordofan, where he was soon at the head of a powerful force; and 6000 Egyptian troops under Yusef Pasha, advancing from Fashoda, were nearly annihilated in June 1882. By the end of 1882 the whole of the Sudan south of Khartum was in rebellion, with the exception of the Bahr-el-Ghazal and the Equatorial Provinces. In January 1883 El Obeid, the capital of Kordofan, was captured. In the November following Hicks Pasha’s force of 10,000 men was destroyed at Kashgil, and in the same year the mahdi’s lieutenant, Osman Digna, raised the tribes in the eastern Sudan, and besieged Sinkat and Tokar, near Suakin, routing General Valentine Baker’s force of 2500 men at El Teb in February 1884. The operations undertaken by Great Britain in face of this state of affairs are narrated under Egypt: Military Operations. It need only be added that General Gordon (q.v.) was besieged at Khartum by the mahdi and was killed there when the town was captured by the mahdists on the 25th-26th of January 1885. The mahdi himself died at Omdurman a few months later (June 22, 1885), and was succeeded in power by his khalifa Abdullah.

When he announced his divine mission Mahommed Ahmed adopted the Shi‘ite traditions concerning the mahdi, and thus put himself in opposition to the sultan of Turkey as the only true commander of the faithful. To emphasize his position the mahdi struck coins in his own name and set himself to suppress all customs introduced by the “Turks.” His social and religious reforms are contained in various proclamations, one of which is drawn up in the form of ten commandments. They concern, chiefly, such matters as ritual, prayers, soberness in food and raiment, the cost of marriage and the behaviour of women. How far the mahdi was the controller of the movement which he started cannot be known, but from the outset of his public career his right-hand man was a Baggara tribesman named Abdullah (the khalifa), who became his successor, and after his flight to Jebel Gedir the mahdi was largely dependent for his support on Baggara sheikhs, who gratified one of his leading tastes by giving him numbers of their young women. In the few months between the fall of Khartum and his death the mahdi, relieved from the incessant strain of toil, copied in his private life all the vices of Oriental despots while maintaining in public the austerity he demanded of his followers. His death is variously attributed to disease and to poisoning by a woman of his harem. On the occupation of Omdurman by the British (Sept. 1898) the mahdi’s tomb was destroyed, his body burnt and the ashes thrown into the Nile (see Sudan: Anglo-Egyptian).

See Mahdiism and the Egyptian Sudan by F. R. Wingate (1891); Ten Years’ Captivity in the Mahdi’s Camp (1882-1892) from the MS. of Father Joseph Ohrwalder by F. R. Wingate (1892) and Fire and Sword in the Sudan (1879-1895) by Slatin Pasha (trans. F. R. Wingate, 1896). Both Ohrwalder and Slatin were personally acquainted with the mahdi, and their narratives contain much first-hand information. Wingate prints many translations of the proclamations and correspondence of the mahdi.

MAHOMMEDAN INSTITUTIONS. Of all the institutions of Islam the caliphate is the oldest, the most fundamental, and in essence the most enduring. For its history see Caliphate; the present subject is its origin and nature. Mahomet enjoyed absolute rule over his people as a divinely inspired and guided prophet. He led the public prayers; he acted as judge; he ruled. If he consulted with others or paid attention to public feeling or local usage, it was as a matter of policy; the ultimate decision lay with himself. He was the state. On his death a leader was put in his place of similar authority, though without the divine prophetic guidance. He was called the “successor” (khalīfa, caliph) of the Prophet, later also the amīr-al-mu’minīn, The Caliphate. commander of the faithful, and was elected by the Moslems, just as the Arab tribes had always elected their chiefs. He was thus an absolute ruler, but was democratically elected; and such is the essence of the caliphate among Sunnite Moslems to this day. For them it has been a matter of agreement (see Mahommedan Law) from the earliest times that the Moslem community must appoint such a leader (see Imām). The Shi‘ites, on the other hand, hold that the appointment lies with God, and that God always has appointed, though his appointment may not always have been known and accepted. Their position may be called a legitimist one. Some few heretical sects have held that the necessity of a leader was based on reason, not on the agreement of the community. But, for all, the rule of the leader thus appointed is absolute, and all authority is delegated from him and, in theory, can be resumed by him at any time. Just as God can require unreasoning obedience from his creatures (his “slaves” in Arabic), so can the caliph, his representative on earth.

But Abu Bekr, the first caliph, nominated his successor, Omar, and that nomination was accepted and confirmed by the people. So a second precedent was fixed, which was again carried a step farther, when Moawiya I., the first Omayyad caliph, nominated his son, Yazīd I., as his successor, and caused an oath of allegiance to be taken to him. The hereditary principle was thus introduced, though some relics of the form of election persisted and still persist. The true election possible in the early days of the small community at Medina became first a formal acceptance by the populace of the capital; then an assertion, by the palace guard, of their power; and now, in the investiture of the sultans of the Ottoman Turks, who claim the caliphate, a formal ceremony by the ‘ulemā (q.v.) of Constantinople. The Ottoman claim is based on an asserted nomination by the last Abbasid, who died in exile in Egypt in 1538, of the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Great, as his successor. Such a nomination in itself was a perfectly legal act, but in this case had a fatal flaw. It is an absolute condition, laid down in tradition, that the caliph must be of the tribe of Koreish (Quraish), that of the Prophet.

The duties of this democratically elected autocrat are, in theory, generally stated as follows. He shall enforce legal decisions and maintain the divinely revealed restrictive ordinances; guard the frontiers and equip armies; receive the alms; put down robberies, thieving, highwaymen; maintain the Friday services and the festivals; decide disputes and receive evidence bearing on legal claims; marry minors, male and female, who have no guardians; divide booty. He must be a free, male, adult Moslem; must have administrative ability; must be an effective governor and do justice to the wronged. So long as he fulfils these conditions he is to be absolutely obeyed; private immorality or even tyranny are not grounds for deposing him. This is a position reached by Islam practically. But a caliph who openly denied the faith would be as impossible as an unbelieving pope. The caliph, therefore, is the highest executive officer of a system assumed to be definite and fixed. He, in a word, administers Islam; and the content of Islam is determined by the agreement of the Moslem people, expressed immediately through the ‘ulemā, and ultimately, if indirectly and half-consciously, by the people. To depose him a fatwā (see Mufti) would be required—in Turkey from the Sheikh-ul-Islām—that he had violated some essential of the Moslem faith, and no longer fulfilled the conditions of a caliph.

But it was impossible for the caliph personally to administer the affairs of the empire, and by degrees the supreme office was gradually put into commission, until the caliph himself became a mere figure-head, and vanished into the sacred The Dīwāns. seclusion of his palace. The history of the creation of government bureaus (dīwāns; see Divan) must therefore now be sketched. The first need which appeared was that of a means of regulating and administering the system of taxation and the revenues of the state. Immense sums flowed into Medina from the Arab conquests; the surplus, after the requirements of the state were met, was distributed among the believers. All Moslems had a right to a certain share of this, which was regarded as booty. Omar, the second caliph, regulated this distribution and also the system of taxation, and the result was the first divan and the constitution of Omar, looked back to now by all Sunnite Moslems as an ideal. The sources of revenue were (i) the poor-rate (zakāt), a tithe paid by every Moslem; (ii) the fifth of all booty; (iii) the poll-tax (jizya) on non-Moslems; and (iv) the land-tax (kharāj) also on non-Moslems. Thus the constitution determined the position of all non-Moslems in a Moslem state. The ideal was that the Moslems should be kept apart as a superior, fighting caste, and that the non-Moslems should support them (cf. Caliphate, B. § 8, on the reign of Omar II.). The Moslems, therefore, were forbidden to acquire land in conquered countries. The non-Moslems must retain their lands, cultivate them and pay the land-tax (the Arabic word is also used of revenue from the work of a slave) and the poll-tax (the Arabic word means also “ransom”), and give contributions in kind to support the local Moslem garrisons which were massed in great camp-cities at strategic points. If a non-Moslem embraced Islam he entered the ruling caste; his land was distributed among his non-Moslem fellows, and he no longer paid the land-tax but rather received support from the public funds. The amount of these pensions varied with the standing of the pensioner from 10,000 dirhems (a dirhem equalled about a franc) to the widows and relations of the Prophet down to 300. This bureau had, therefore, not only to keep the books of the state, but also to maintain a list of all Moslems, classified genealogically and socially. Its registers were kept by Greeks, Copts and Persians; the Arabs, it may be said in general, adopted the method of administration which they found in the captured countries and drew upon the trained services of their inhabitants.

Such a system led naturally to wholesale conversions to Islam; and the consequent decline in revenue, combined with large donations of lands by Othman, the third caliph, to his own family, gradually broke it down. The first patriarchal period of conquest, unearned wealth and the simple life—called by Moslems the period of the “four rightly guided caliphs,” and very happily by Sachau, ein mönchisches Imperium—passed rapidly into the genuinely Arab empire of the Omayyads, with whom came an immediate development of organization in the state. The constructive genius in this was Moawiya, the first Omayyad caliph. Under him the old simplicity vanished. A splendid and ceremonious court was maintained at Damascus. A chamberlain kept the door; a bodyguard surrounded the caliph, and even in the mosque the caliph, warned by the murder of Othman and of Ali, prayed in a railed-off enclosure. The beginning of the seclusion of the caliph had come, and he no longer walked familiarly among his fellow Moslems. This seclusion increased still further when the administration of the state passed by delegation into other hands, and the caliph himself became a sacrosanct figure-head, as in the case of the later Abbasids; when theories of semi-divine nature and of theocratic rule appeared, as in the case of the Fatimites; and finally when all the elaborate court ritual of Byzantium was inherited by the Ottoman sultans.

But Moawiya I. was still a very direct and personal ruler. He developed a post-system for the carrying of government despatches by relays, and thus received secret information from and kept control of the most distant provinces. He established a sealing-bureau by which state papers were secured against change. He dealt arbitrarily with the revenues of the state and the pensions of the Moslems. Governors of provinces were given a much freer hand, and were required to turn over to the central treasury their surplus revenue only. As they were either conquerors or direct successors of conquerors they had an essentially military government, and were really semi-independent rulers, unhampered except by direct action of the caliph, acting on information sent by the postmaster, who was his local spy. Being thus the heads of armies of occupation, they were not necessarily charged with the control of religious ritual and of justice. These, like every other function, inhered in the office of the caliph and he generally appointed in each province independent cadis over the courts and imāms to be in charge of religious services. Yet the governor was sometimes permitted to hold these two other offices (see Cadi; Imām).

Further administrative developments came with the Abbasids. They created a new city, Bagdad, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, where the three races, Syrian, Arab and Persian, met and sought with Bagdad as a capital to consolidate the empire. The Arab empire, it is true, had passed away with the Omayyads; yet there might be a chance to create a world-empire of all the Moslem peoples. But not even the genius and administrative skill of the early Abbasids could hold together that unwieldy mass. The semi-independent provinces soon became fully independent, or at most acknowledged the caliph as a spiritual head and paid a nominal tribute. His name might stand on the coinage and prayers be offered for him in the Friday service, the two signs of sovereignty to this day in Islam. With this crumbling of the empire went a more elaborate organization; bureaus took the place of principles and of the energy of individual rulers. As the system of Moslem law was built on that of the Roman codes, so was the machinery of administration on that of Persia. And with the Abbasids the chance of the Persians had come. Abū ‘l-Abbās, the first Abbasid caliph, was the first The Vizierate. to appoint a vizier (wazīr, “helper,” so Aaron is wazīr to Moses in the Koran), a confidential minister to advise him and come between him and the people. Advisers the caliphs had had before; but not a definite adviser with this name. He must, we are told, have a strain of the ruler in him and a strain of the people to be able to work with both. He must know how to be acceptable; fidelity and truthfulness are his capital; sagacity, firmness, generosity, clemency, dignity, effectiveness of speech are essential. It is plain that the vizier became as important as the caliph. But Abū ’l-Abbās was fortunate in early securing as his vizier the grandfather of the house of the Barmecides (q.v.). On this Persian family the fortunes of the Abbasids hung, and it secured for them and for Islam a short golden age, like that of the Antonines, until the jealous madness of Hārūn al-Rashīd cast them down. Thereafter the vizierate had many vicissitudes. Technically a vizier could be either limited or unlimited. The limited vizier had no initiative; he carried out the commands of the caliph. The unlimited vizier, often afterwards called the grand vizier, exercised full authority and was the alter ego of the caliph, to whom he was required only to report. Naturally the formal distinction is a later theorizing of history; for a weak ruler his vizier became absolute, for a strong ruler his vizier remained subordinate. Here, as with regard to all Moslem institutions, a marked distinction must be made between the historic facts and the speculative edifices raised by constitutional theorizers. Compare especially Mahommedan Law. Until the time of Rāḍī (934-940) the vizierate thus fluctuated in importance. In that caliphate the vizier lost all authority, and in his place came the amīr al-omarā—equivalent to the major domus of the Franks—the head of the Turkish bodyguard, in terror of whom the caliph now stood. When in 945 the Būyids captured Bagdad and the caliph became a purely spiritual sovereign, they took the title “vizier” for their own chief minister, and the caliphs retained only a secretary (see Caliphate, C. § 22). Under the Seljuks, however, they regained their viziers and some real authority. Elsewhere, also the vizierate had its vicissitudes. Under the Mamelukes the vizier fell to be merely the court purveyor. Under the Omayyads of Spain the title was given to several responsible officers of the state, but their chief was called ḥājib, chamberlain. Under the Almohades the chamberlain was called vizier. In the modern Turkish empire the grand vizier (called generally ṣadr A‘ẓam) is the sultan’s representative in secular matters, and nominally stands between the sovereign and all the other officials. He is the president of the council of ministers, but Abd-ul Hamid II. deprived the office of almost all its importance.

Under the early Abbasids the four most important ministers were the chief cadi, the chief of police or head of the life guards, the minister of finance and the postmaster, who was the head of the system of information and espionage which Other Ministers. covered the empire. But at different times the different bureaus varied greatly. Under Motawakkil we find the bureau of taxes and finance; bureau of the crown estates; bureau of state book-keeping; bureau of war, i.e. of hired troops; bureau which kept reckoning and control of the pensions of the clients and slaves of the ruling family; bureau of the post system; bureau of expenditures. But in spite of this elaborate system, no Moslem government has, except sporadically, been highly centralized. Provided the taxes are paid, a large measure of local autonomy has always been enjoyed by the country districts. Under the Abbasids almost the only exception was the necessarily centralized control of the irrigation system of the Tigris and Euphrates. And similarly elsewhere.

In the case of all these offices, we have delegation by the caliph, under necessity, of his too heavy burdens. But one duty of an Oriental ruler he could not so easily lay aside. It had always to be possible for the oppressed to come into his presence and claim justice; he must sit in the gate and judge. Therefore, when the caliph found it necessary to delegate the ordinary administration of justice, he found it also necessary to set up a special court of oppressions, which developed, to a certain extent, into a court of appeals. The first to establish such a separate court was Abdalmalik the Omayyad (685-705), and his example was followed by the more vigorous of the caliphs up to the time of Mohtadī the Abbasid (869-870). If any other than the caliph presided over this court it had to be a man whose dignity, independence and authority commanded respect. He was not bound by strict rules of evidence, method and literal application of law as was the cadi. Rather, he applied a system of equity suited to the absolute source of authority which he represented.

As the chief of police, mentioned above, was rather the head of the caliph’s bodyguard, there was also a police system after our ideas, but more thoroughgoing. The muhtasib had charge in the broadest sense of public order and morals in the streets, and had oversight as to weights, measures and adulterations; but had no right to interfere privately or enter houses save in the clearest and most necessary cases. He had a summary jurisdiction in all minor cases where no trial was necessary; but where witnesses and oaths entered the case must go to the cadi. Slaves and beasts of burden were under his guardianship; he prevented public scandals, such as the sale of wine; he regulated the public conduct of Jews and Christians. In the interest of public morals he had to find suitable husbands for widows and see that they did not marry before the legal time; questions of paternity also he had to investigate. The outdoor costume of the people he could regulate. It should, of course, be remembered that the canon law of Islam covers minutely all sides of life (see Mahommedan Law).

It is impossible in Islam to separate logically from the mass of institutions those which we should call religious, as Islam on all sides is for the Moslem equally religious. But perhaps the following may practically be separated under that rubric. Islam, runs a tradition, is built on five things: testimony that there is no god save Allah, and that Mahomet is the apostle of Allah; prayer; the poor-rate; pilgrimage; fasting. For these see Mahommedan Religion.

The law and usage of religious foundations in perpetuity (waqf, mortmain) became as important in Islam as monastic endowments in medieval Europe, and such foundations tended similarly to absorb the greater part of the national wealth. It was the only safe way of providing for posterity. A pious foundation could be erected in such a way that either so much from its funds would be paid yearly in perpetuity to the descendants of the erector, or those descendants would be employed as officials of the foundation.

When it became impossible for the caliph to lead the people personally in prayer in the mosque, he delegated that part of his duties to another, hence called imām (q.v.). Naturally, then, the appointment of the imām would lie with the The Imām. supreme ruler. This holds of the daily prayers in the principal mosque (al-masjid al-jāmi‘) supported by the ruler where the Friday service is held, but in the separate smaller mosques built by each community the community chooses its own imām. With regard to the Friday service, the schools of law disagree as to the necessity of the presence of an imām appointed by the chief ruler. But the imām should certainly make mention of the ruler in his sermon and pray for him. At the occasional prayers, such as those for rain, &c., the presence of an imām appointed by the ruler is not necessary. The imām appoints the muaddhin, the announcer of the hour of prayer from the minaret, and both have a claim on the state treasury.

Another office exercised when possible by the caliph, but very frequently delegated to some high dignitary, such as the heir to the caliphate or a prince, was the leadership of the pilgrimage caravan to Mecca and back. Sometimes this official, called amīr-al-ḥajj, was appointed imām as well. He then led all the pilgrimage ceremonies at Mecca. When outside of towns where there was a cadi he exercised also over the caravan the rights of a judge.

Mahommedan law (q.v.) is treated separately. Here, again, as judging is a duty of the caliph, a cadi is the delegate, or, when appointed by a vizier or governor, a delegate of his delegate. He examines into disputes brought before him and The Cadi. enforces his judgments, he names administrators of the estates of minors, the insane, &c.; he supervises the waqf property of mosques and schools in his district and inspects highways and public buildings; he watches over the execution of wills; he inflicts the due legal penalties for apostasy, neglect of religious duties, refusal to pay taxes, theft, adultery, outrages, murder; he can inflict the penalties of imprisonment, fine, corporal punishment, death; if there is no imām, he can perform his duty, as in fact can anyone who has the requisite knowledge. But it should be noticed that all this holds only of the un-europeanized Moslem state.

For the existence of an army in Islam, there are two grounds, the holy war (jihād, q.v.) against unbelievers without the state and the suppression of rebellion within. Under the ordinance of Omar the entire community was preserved The Army. and used as a weapon for the subduing of the world to Islam, and every able-bodied male Moslem was theoretically a fighting man, part of the national militia. This army was divided into corps situated in the conquered lands, as armies of occupation, where they eventually came to form military colonies in great camp-cities. The occupied countries had to support them, and they were bound to render military service at any time. But as the ideal of Omar broke down before facts the use of mercenary and slave troops finally increased; although there has always continued in Moslem armies acting against unbelievers a proportion of volunteers not paid a fixed wage but subsidized by the state from the poor-rate and alms funds. The generals were appointed by the caliph, and had either unlimited authority to act as his representatives, concluding peace, acting as cadi and imām, distributing booty; or were restricted within limits, e.g. to simple leading of the troops and carrying on military operations. They, in turn, appointed their subordinates; this principle of giving a head full powers and full responsibility was very generally applied in Islam. It was controlled of course by the espionage of the postal system. As war by a Moslem power is essentially sacred war, the regulations of jihad must be considered here. Unbelievers must first be invited to embrace Islam and, if they follow a sacred book and are not idol-worshippers, are given a choice between (a) becoming Moslems; or (b) submitting to the Moslems and entering on a treaty with them of protection and tribute; or (c) fighting. If they accept Islam, their lives, families and property are secure, and they form henceforth part of the Moslem community. The ability of Islam to create a common feeling between highly different races is one of its most striking features. If they submit and enter on treaty relations, they pay a poll-tax, for which their personal safety is assured, and assume a definitely inferior status, having no technical citizenship in the state, only the condition of protected clients (dhimmīs). If they elect to fight, the door of repentance is open, even when the armies are face to face. But after defeat their lives are forfeit, their families are liable to slavery, and all their goods to seizure. It is open to the sovereign either to put them to death; or to enslave them; or to give them their liberty; or to exchange them for ransom or against Moslem prisoners. The sovereign will choose that which is best for Islam. As for their families and wealth, the sovereign can release them only with consent of the army that has captured them. Apostates must be put to death. Four-fifths of the booty after a battle goes to the conquering army.

The technical art of war seems to have been little studied among Moslems; they have treatises on archery but very little upon tactics. Their writers recognize, however, the essential difference between the European and Persian methods of charging in solid lines and holding the ground stubbornly, and the Arab and Berber method of flying attacks and retreats by clouds of cavalry. Therefore, one explained, the custom grew of using a mass of European mercenaries as a fixed nucleus and rallying-point. The early Moslem armies, too, had used the solid, unyielding charge, which may have been the secret of their success. For one of the greatest puzzles of history is the cause which changed the erratic, untrustworthy swarms of Arab horsemen with their childish strategy into the ever-victorious legions of the first caliphs. They certainly learned rapidly. Byzantium and Persia taught them the use of military engines and the entrenched camp. Before that they had been, at the best, single knights with mail-shirt, helmet, sword and lance. Bowmen, too, they used, but the principal use of the bow seems to have come with the Turks.

The glory of Moslem education was its university system, which fed the higher learning and did not serve everyday needs. Its primary system was very poor, almost non-existent; and technical education has never been recognized in Education. Islam. Primary teachers were despised as ignorant and foolish. Apparently, if we may trust the many stories of how ignorant men set up for themselves, there was no control of them by the state. Their pupils were young only; they taught the rudiments of reading, Koran, catechism, prayer, writing and arithmetic, but very little of the latter. Technical education was given by the gilds through their apprentice system, teaching mechanical arts and crafts. This was genuine instruction, but was not so regarded; it was looked upon rather as are the mysteries and secrets of operative masonry. It produced artisans of independent character, but not artists. Thus there was no distinction between architect and builder; there was no sculpture; and painting, so far as it went, was like carving, a craft. All Moslem university education, like all Moslem science, revolved round theology. There were, apparently, only two outstanding exceptions to this rule, the academy of Mamun (813-833) at Bagdad, and the hall of wisdom of the Fatimites at Cairo (1004-1171); both of these are explained by their environment. From the earliest times, independent scholars instructed classes in mosques—the common places of meeting for the community—and gave their pupils personal certificates. Their subjects were the reading and interpretation of the Koran; the body of traditions from the Prophet; the thence deduced system of theology; the canon law. But the interpretation of the Koran involved grammatical and lexicographical studies of early Arabic, and hence of the early Arabic literature. Theology came to involve metaphysical and logical studies. Canon law required arithmetic and mensuration, practical astronomy, &c. But these last were strictly ancillary; the object of the instruction was primarily to give knowledge of value for the life of the next world, and, secondarily, to turn out theologians and lawyers. Medicine was in Jewish and Christian hands; engineering, architecture, &c., with their mathematical bases, were crafts. Then this instruction was gradually subsidized and organized by the state, or endowed by individuals. How early this took place is uncertain. But the individual teacher, with his certificate, remained the object of the student; there was nothing corresponding to our general degrees. Thirdly, educational institutions came to be equipped with scholarships of money or in kind for the students. The first instance of this is generally ascribed to Nishapur (Naisābūr) in 1066; but it soon became general in the system and afforded a means of control and centralization. A final, and most important, characteristic was the wide journeying of the students “in search of knowledge.” Aided by Arabic as the universal language of learning, students journeyed from teacher to teacher, and from Samarkand to the Atlantic, gathering on their way hundreds of personal certificates. Scholars were thus kept in touch all over the Moslem world, and intellectual unity was maintained.

To the democratic equality of Islam, in which the slave of to-day may be the prime minister of to-morrow, there is one outstanding exception. The descendants of the Prophet and of his relatives (the family of Hāshim) The Sayyids. formed and form a special class, held in social reverence, and guarded from contamination and injury. These are the sayyids (lords), and genealogical registers of them are carefully preserved. They are of all degrees of wealth and poverty, but are guarded legally from mésalliances with persons of ignoble origin or equivocal occupation. Their influence is very great, and in some parts of the Moslem world they have the standing and reverence of saints.

See Von Kremer, Culturgeschichte des Orients, based largely on Māwardī’s Aḥkām, trans. in part by Ostrorog; McG. de Slane’s trans. of Ibn Khaldūn, Prolégomènes; Lane, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians; R. F. Burton, Pilgrimage to Mekka; Snouck Hurgronje, Mekka; Hughes, Dictionary of Islam; Juynboll, De Mohammedaansche Wet; Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, &c. For women in Islam, see Harem.

(D. B. Ma.)

MAHOMMEDAN LAW. The legal situation in the Moslem world is of the highest complexity, and can be made intelligible only by tracing its historical development. First came the system (fiqh, sharī‘a) which takes the place in Islam of canon law in Roman Christendom. It begins with Mahomet sitting as judge over the primitive Moslem community at Medina. He was the Prophet of God, and judged, as he ruled, absolutely; any decision of his was valid. But he found it, in general, advisable and fitting to follow the local law or usage of Medina when the new faith did not require a change. It thus came about that his decisions followed, at one time, the usage of the Arab tribes of Medina; at another, the law respected by the Jewish tribes there—a rabbinic development of the law of Moses, deeply affected by Roman law; at another, the more developed commercial law of Mecca, known to his followers who had fled thence with him; or, finally, his own personal judgment, stated it might be as his own sense of right or as the decision of Allah and even incorporated in the Koran. In his use of these he was an eclectic opportunist, and evidently, except as regards such frequently recurring subjects as inheritance, marriage, &c., had no thought of building up a system or code. At his death he left behind only a few specific prescriptions in the Koran and a mass of recorded decisions of cases that had come before him. He had used himself, in our terms, common law, equity, legislation; to guide his followers he left his legislative enactments and the record of his use of common law. Since his death there has been no new legislation in orthodox Islam.

With the death of Mahomet began the development and codification of Moslem law. It was at first entirely practical. Cases had to be decided, and to decide them there was, first, the Koran; secondly, if nothing ad rem was found in the Koran, there were the decisions of the Prophet; thirdly, if these failed, there was the common law of Medina; and, fourthly, if it, in turn, failed, the common sense of the judge, or equity. A knowledge of the decisions of Mahomet came thus to be of great importance, and records of such decisions were eagerly sought and preserved. But this was simply a part of a much wider movement and tendency. As among primitive peoples in general, custom and usage have always been potent among the Arabs. The ways of the fathers, the old paths, they love to tread. Very early there arose a special reverence for the path and usage (sunna) of Mahomet. Whatever he did or said, or left unsaid or undone, and how he did it, has become of the first importance to the pious Moslem, who would act in every way as did the Prophet. There is evidence that for this purpose the immediate companions of Mahomet took notes, either in memory or in writing, of his table talk and wise sayings, just as they took down or learned by heart for their private use the separate fragments of the Koran. His sayings and doings, manners and customs, his answers to questions on religious life and faith, above all his decisions in legal disputes, came to be recorded on odd sheets in private notebooks. This was the beginning of the enormous literature of traditions (ḥadīth) in Islam. The collecting and preserving of these, which was at first private, for personal guidance and edification, finally became one of the most powerful weapons of political and theological propaganda, and coloured the whole method and fabric of Moslem thought. All knowledge tended to be expressed in that form, and each element of it to be traced back to, and given in the words of, some master or other through a chain of transmitters. Above all there grew up an enormous mass of evidently forged sayings put into the mouth of Mahomet. At every important political or theological crisis each party would invent and put into circulation a tradition from him, supporting its view. By a study of these flatly opposed “sayings” it is possible to reconstruct the different controversies of Islam in the past, and to discover what each party regarded as the essence of its position.

The first collecting of traditions was for private purposes, and the first publication dealing with them was legal. This was the Muwaṭṭa’ of Malik ibn Anas (d. 795), a corpus juris based partly on traditions, and a protest in its methods against the too speculative character of the books of canon law which preceded it. Thereafter came collections of two different types. The earlier kind was arranged according to the companions of Mahomet, on whose authority the traditions were transmitted; after each companion came the traditions going back to him. The best known example of this kind is the Musnad of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal. The other kind, called Muşannaf (classified), contains traditions arranged in chapters according to their subject matter. That of Bukhārī is the most famous, and is arranged to give a traditional basis for a complete system of canon law; its rubrics are those of such a system. Another is that of Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj, who paid less attention to legal aspects and more to minute accuracy. There are many others of more or less acceptance and canonicity. Bukhārī’s book enjoys a reverence only second to that of the Koran. But in all these publications the primary object was to purify the mass of traditions of forged accretions and to give to the believer a sound basis for his knowledge of the usages of the Prophet, whether for his personal or for public use. These two kinds were a natural development. In the Moslem community there were from the first students of tradition proper whose interest lay in collecting, testing and transmitting, not in combining, systematizing and elucidating; whose preference was to take a single statement from the Prophet and apply it to a case, without reasonings or questionings. And there were students of canon law who were interested rather in the system and results, and who, while they used traditions, used them only to an end and insisted on the free application of speculative principles. The conflict of the future was to be between these traditionalists, on the one hand, and rationalists, on the other; and the result was to be a compromise.

With the wide sweep of Moslem conquest another element came into the development. This was Roman law, which the Moslem jurist found at work in the conquered Roman provinces and in the law courts of which they went to school. It is to be remembered that the Arab armies were not devastating hordes; they recognized the need of law and order wherever they went, and it was the policy of their leaders to take over the administrative systems of the countries which they seized. Even the Arabic legal nomenclature shows evident signs of literal translation from Latin, and many Moslem principles can be traced to the Roman codes. One important development was plainly influenced by the liberty involved in the Responsa prudentium of Roman lawyers, and by the broad conception of the law of nature in the Edict of the Praetor. In its earliest stages Moslem law recognized in the judge a liberty of opinion (ra’y) which went beyond even that of the Responsa and became plain equity, in the English sense, and one school (the Hanifite) established as a basis the right of preference (istiḥsān) even when the analogy of the code dictated otherwise; while another (the Malikite) used the term istiṣlāḥ, “a seeking of (general) benefit” to the community, in a similar situation. But these developments were bitterly contested, and the liberty of opinion was in the end narrowed down to a principle of analogy (qiyās), the nearest approach to which in Western law is legal fiction.

It is necessary now to return to the first successors of Mahomet. “For thirty years after my death,” he is said to have declared, “my people will tread in my path (sunna); thereafter will come kings and princes.” This tradition crystallizes the later feeling of Islam. The first thirty years were a golden age; the centre of the state was the Prophet’s own city of Medina; the conditions of the state continued in close conformity to those of his own time. The study of tradition, i.e. of his usage, went hand in hand with the study of law. They were vital functions of the state, and it encouraged both.

Then came the great débâcle. The ancien régime, a semi-monkish, theocratic empire, went down, and the Omayyad dynasty, kings and princes of the old Arab type, took its place (see Caliphate, B). The public life of the state was no longer deeply religious; the pious said that it was godless. Under these conditions law was indeed still needed; but it had to be opportunist. Its development went on, but became speculative. The study of tradition was now private, and its students were more and more the personally pious. There were, thus, two results. On the one hand, the framers of systems of canon law—as it now was—no longer lived in contact with reality; hypothetical and ideal structures were reared which could never stand the touch of the practical law-court. And on another, traditions and law, even this hypothetical law, came to take separate roads. The interest of the students of tradition became the gathering of traditions for their own sake, going no farther than a striving to regulate each detail of life by some specific, concrete, prophetic dictum. They had no use for systems that went beyond the mere registering of these dicta. The feeling also became widespread that any system of government which did not simply reproduce the patriarchal form of Medina was of the world and the devil—a thing with which no religious man could have aught to do. At every turn he would have to peril his soul.

Here we must place the transition of this law with which we have hitherto dealt from being the law of the land to being in essence a variety of canon law. It was always broader than any western secular law. It regulated all the aspects of life—duty to God, to one’s neighbour, to one’s self. It was really a system of duties, ethical, legal, religious. It did not limit itself to defining the forbidden (ḥarām); but designated actions also as required (farḍ, wājib), recommended (mandūb, mustaḥabb), indifferent (jā‘iz, mubāḥ), disliked (makrūh). It played the part of, or rendered necessary, a religious director quite as much as a lawyer. And for a time at Medina it was really the law of the land. But from the Omayyad period on it has held the position of the canon law of the Roman Church in countries that will not recognize it and yet dare not utterly reject it. It governs, in one or other of its four schools, the private lives of all pious Moslems; it regulates some semi-public relationships—e.g. marriage, divorce, inheritance; it compels respect, if not acceptance, from the state; and by its ideal standard the world, filled with righteousness by the Mahdi, will be ruled in the Moslem millennium.

The rise of the Abbasids brought a change, but not a great one. They had promised a return to the old religious attitudes, and the promise was formally kept. But in substance they were as much as the Omayyads, and though the state was outwardly on a pious footing, and the religious sentiment of the people was respected, the old, absolute canon law was not restored. It was made possible for more theologians and lawyers to work with the state, but an irreconcilable party still remained, and the situation was fixed as it is to this day. It is true that the struggle to adapt such a single and detailed system to all the varying conditions, climates and times of the great empire was impossible; but the failure marked the great rent in the supposed unity of Islam between the church and the world, religion and law.

Yet the Abbasids did, in their way, encourage legal studies, and under them processes and results, long pursued in private, became public. Almost within the first century of their dynasty the four legal schools, or rites, were formed and the principles established which survive to this day.

The first school to take definite form was the Hanifite, founded by Abū Ḥanīfa (d. 767), who left behind him a definite system and many enthusiastic pupils. He was a man of means, in touch with commercial, but not with practical legal life, a speculative or philosophical jurist. Being of non-Arab origin, the usage of Medina had small interest for him. He therefore used few traditions, and preferred to go back to the Koran, and extract from it by reasoning the rulings which fitted his ideas. This he called the use of analogy (qiyās); but, in his hands, it became practically legal fiction, the application of a law in some sense undreamed by its first imposer. But he had another, and still freer instrument. The effect of differences in local conditions had been early observed and admitted in general terms. Abū Ḥanīfa reduced it to a subjective formula. Under such conditions he claimed the right of preference (istiḥsān) of a ruling suited to the local needs, even when the strict analogy indicated otherwise. This met and meets with vehement protest when formally stated, but the usage of Islam has practically accepted it. His system, finally, was not developed through the exigencies of actual cases, but was worked out as a system of casuistry, though in a good sense. He tried, that is, to construct a system of rules to answer any conceivable question. After his death his pupils elaborated it still further, and accepted public office. The ‘Abbāsids adopted his school, and threw their influence on its side; its philosophic breadth and casuistic possibilities evidently commended it to them. Later, the Ottoman Turks also adopted it, and it may be said to hold now a leadership among the four legal rites. Its influence has undoubtedly tended to broaden and humanize Moslem law.

Twenty-eight years after Abū Ḥanīfa, Malik ibn Anas, the founder of the Malikite school, died at Medina. In many points his situation was precisely opposite to that of Abū Ḥanīfa, and yet his results were very similar. He was a working jurist, in practical touch with actual life; he was in the centre of the tradition of the usage of the Prophet, in the line, one might say, of the apostolic succession. He, therefore, used traditions much more generally than did Abū Ḥanīfa, and when he, under pressure, took refuge in opinion, he certainly felt that he, under his conditions, had a better right to do so than any outsider. But two of his principles marked a distinct advance and showed that he was no mere traditionalist. For one, he laid down the conception of public advantage (istiṣlāḥ); when a rule founded on even a valid analogy would work a general injury it was to be set aside; justice must not be overcome by logic. And, for the other, he laid stress on the conception of the agreement (ijmā‘), an idea which was to have indefinite importance in the future. When the surviving companions of the Prophet, after his death, agreed upon any point as belonging to their store of tradition and experience, their agreement was accepted as final. In the first instance they agreed that such had been the statement of the Prophet. That easily passed over into an agreement that such was the true Moslem view, and finally into an acceptance of the principle that the Moslem Church, when unanimous, could formulate truth—practically as in the canon of Vincent of Lérins, Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus. But such a broadly catholic position was still in the future, and for Malik, juristic agreement meant the agreement of Medina, though there are signs that he permitted the same latitude to other places also. It was a way of allowing for local conditions rather than of reaching the voice of the Church. His law book, the Muwaṭṭa’, the earliest in our possession written by the founder of a school, has already been mentioned. It is a collection of about seventeen hundred traditions of juristic importance, arranged according to subject, with appended remarks on the usage of Medina and on his own view of each matter.

So far opinion and local usage had fully held their own, and the philosophical jurist had been free to work out his system. The difference between the istiḥsān of Abū Ḥanīfa and the istiṣlāḥ of Malik was not great; students attended the lectures of both and combined their systems. But a reaction now began, and the traditionalist party finally made itself felt. We have the inevitable rivalry between the historical-empirical and the speculative-philosophical schools of jurisprudence, rendered all the more bitter in that the historical lawyers believed, in this case, that they were defending a divine institution. There resulted, first, one of the most important schools, the Shāfi‘īte; secondly, an extremely literal school for which ash-Shāfi‘ī did not go far enough, and which has now vanished; and thirdly, the Ḥanbalite school, still surviving in small numbers, more moderately traditional than the last.

The school founded by ash-Shāfi‘ī (d. 820), a pupil of Malik, came first in order of time. The others were really revolts against the mildness of his compromise. His characteristics were a broad-minded, steady grasp of means and ends, a perception of what could and what could not be done, a willingness to admit all the tried principles in due balance, and, at one point especially, the insight of genius as to the possibilities of these principles. He laid great stress on tradition; a clear, authentic tradition he regarded as no less valid than the Koran itself. If the tradition was chronologically later than a Koranic passage and corrected that passage, he followed the tradition. But in this he was only regulating a fixed tendency. The Koran may be regarded theoretically as the first of all the sources of law and theology; practically its clear statements have been over-ridden in many cases. Most important of all, the principle of agreement (ijmā‘) came finally with him to its full rights. The agreement of the Moslem peoples was to be the voice of God. “My people,” said a tradition from Mahomet, “will never agree in an error.” And so, over traditions and over the Koran itself, the agreement tacitly or explicitly ruled and rules. It stamps as authoritative that which the other principles lay down. At the head of each section of a Shāfi‘īte law book we read, “The basis of this, before the agreement, is such and such.” But with the aid of a principle of this breadth it was easy to reject the opinion which was so objectionable to the traditionalist party. In its place he took analogy (qiyās), which, discreetly used, could serve almost the same purpose. The Koranic passage or the tradition with which an analogy was suggested should, he taught, be examined to see if there was a reason clearly stated for the command. If so, that reason would give a basis for the analogy. Analogy based on the mechanical or external could not hold.

The four bases thus laid down by ash-Shāfi‘ī—Koran; prophetic usage as expressed in traditions; analogy; agreement—have come to be accepted by all existing schools. This applies to all spheres of life, ethical, social, theological, legal, and it should never be forgotten that the Koran is only one of the sources for Moslem faith and conduct.

Few words are needed for the other, reactionary schools. One, now long extinct, was founded by a certain Dā‘ūd uẓ-Ẓāhirī, “David the Literalist,” born three or four years before the death of ash-Shāfi‘ī, and so called because he insisted upon an absolutely literal interpretation of his texts—Koran or tradition—without account of context or metaphor. In consequence he had to reject analogy, and limited agreement to that of the companions of Mahomet; the Church of Islam was to have no constructive authority. In one point he showed great sanity of judgment, namely in his rejection of the principle jurare in verba magistri, otherwise regnant in Islam. His school had long and interesting consequences, mostly theological, but is now extinct, and never took rank with the others. The Moslem world found his positions too impossible, and now no one swears to his words. The other, the Ḥanbalite school, was founded by the scholars of Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal after his death in 885. He himself would never have revolted against his master, ash-Shāfi‘ī, but it was soon felt that his system, so far as he had any, was in essential opposition. He had been no lawyer, but a theologian and a collector and student of traditions. All his life had been a protest against speculation in divine things. Where the Koran and traditions were silent, he, too, had been silent. For this agnostic principle he had witnessed and suffered, and his standing with the people was that of a saint. Naturally, then, the last still existent school of traditionalist protest was launched in his name. It minimizes agreement and analogy, is literal in its interpretations, and is now by far the smallest of the four surviving schools. Its external history is that of a testifying and violent minority.

Other men, such as Ṭabarī, the historian and commentator, have had dreams that they, too, might join the Four Imāms (see Imām) as founders of legal rites, but none has succeeded. The Four remain the ultimate exponents of this canon law, and under the banner of one or other of them every Moslem must range himself. As there is a principle of unity in Islam, expressed in the alleged prophetic saying, “My people will never agree in an error,” so there is a principle of variety, also expressed in an alleged prophetic saying, “The disagreement of my people is a mercy from God.” The four rites may differ upon many points, yet the adherents of one never dream of regarding the adherents of the others as outside the Church of Islam; they are not “dissenters” in the English sense. God is merciful to his creatures, and gives them so much liberty of choice. Yet in practice this liberty is not great. The principle of swearing to the words of the master is a dead hand laid upon Islam. A man’s legal rite is generally settled by the place and other conditions of his birth, and after he has once accepted a rite, he must, if good and pious, follow it in all its details. Only the avowed sceptic or the recognized eccentric can be an eclectic.