Chapter II · STUDY OF THE LIFE OF MUḤAMMAD CONSIDERED AS A PREACHER OF ISLAM.

It is not proposed in this chapter to add another to the already numerous biographies of Muḥammad, but rather to make a study of his life in one of its aspects only, viz. that in which the Prophet is presented to us as a preacher, as the apostle unto men of a new religion. The life of the founder of Islam and the inaugurator of its propaganda may naturally be expected to exhibit to us the true character of the missionary activity of this religion. If the life of the Prophet serves as the standard of conduct for the ordinary believer, it must do the same for the Muslim missionary. From the pattern, therefore, we may hope to learn something of the spirit that would animate those who sought to copy it, and of the methods they might be expected to adopt. For the missionary spirit of Islam is no after-thought in its history; it interpenetrates the religion from its very commencement, and in the following sketch it is desired to show how this is so, how Muḥammad the Prophet is the type of the missionary of Islam. It is therefore beside the purpose to describe his early history, or the influences under which he grew up to manhood, or to consider him in the light either of a statesman or a general: it is as the preacher alone that he will demand our attention.

Among the earliest believers were his adopted children Zayd and ʻAlī, and his bosom friend Abū Bakr, of whom Muḥammad would often say in after years, “I never invited any to the faith who displayed not hesitation, perplexity and vacillation—excepting only Abū Bakr; who when I told him of Islam tarried not, neither was perplexed.” He was a wealthy merchant, much respected by his fellow citizens for the integrity of his character and for his intelligence and ability. After his conversion he expended the greater part of his fortune on the purchase of Muslim slaves who were persecuted by their masters on account of their adherence to the teaching of Muḥammad. Through his influence, to a great extent, five of the earliest converts were added to the number of believers, Saʻd b. Abī Waqqāṣ, the future conqueror of the Persians; al-Zubayr b. al-ʻAwwām, a relative both of the Prophet and his wife; Ṭalḥah, famous as a warrior in after days; a wealthy merchant ʻAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʻAwf, and ʻUt͟hmān, the third K͟halīfah. The last was early exposed to persecution; his uncle seized and bound him, saying, “Dost thou prefer a new religion to that of thy fathers? I swear I will not loose thee until thou givest up this new faith thou art following after.” To which ʻUt͟hmān replied, “By the Lord, I will never abandon it!” Whereupon his uncle, seeing the firmness of his attachment to his faith, released him.

With other additions, particularly from among slaves and poor persons, the Prophet succeeded in collecting round him a little band of followers during the first three years of his mission. Encouraged by the success of these private efforts, Muḥammad determined on more active measures and began to preach in public. He called his kinsmen together and invited them to embrace the new faith. “No Arab,” he urged, “has offered to his nation more precious advantages than those I bring you. I offer you happiness in this world and in the life to come. Who among you will aid me in this task?” All were silent. Only ʻAlī, with boyish enthusiasm, cried out, “Prophet of God, I will aid thee.” At this the company broke up with derisive laughter.

Undeterred by the ill-success of this preaching, he repeatedly appealed to them on other occasions, but his message and his warnings received from them nothing but scoffing and contempt.

More than once the Quraysh tried to induce his uncle Abū Ṭālib, as head of the clan of the Banū Hāshim, to which Muḥammad belonged, to restrain him from making such attacks upon their ancestral faith, or otherwise they threatened to resort to more violent measures. Abū Ṭālib accordingly appealed to his nephew not to bring disaster on himself and his family. The Prophet replied: “Were the sun to come down on my right hand and the moon on my left, and the choice were offered me of abandoning my mission until God himself should reveal it, or perishing in the achievement of it, I would not abandon it.” Abū Ṭālib was moved and exclaimed, “Go and say whatever thou wilt: by God! I will never give thee up unto thy enemies.”

The Quraysh viewed the progress of the new religion with increasing dissatisfaction and hatred. They adopted all possible means, threats and promises, insults and offers of worldly honour and aggrandisement to induce Muḥammad to abandon the part he had taken up. The violent abuse with which he was assailed is said to have been the indirect cause of drawing to his side one important convert in the person of his uncle, Ḥamzah, whose chivalrous soul was so stung to sudden sympathy by a tale of insult inflicted on and patiently borne by his nephew, that he changed at once from a bitter enemy into a staunch adherent. His was not the only instance of sympathy for the sufferings of the Muslims being aroused at the sight of the persecutions they had to endure, and many, no doubt, secretly favoured the new religion who did not declare themselves until the day of its triumph.

The virulence of the opposition of the Quraysh is probably the reason why in the fourth year of his mission Muḥammad took up his residence in the house of al-Arqam, one of the early converts. It was in a central situation, much frequented by pilgrims and strangers, and here peaceably and without interruption he was able to preach the doctrines of Islam to all enquirers that came to him. Muḥammad’s stay in this house marks an important epoch in the propagation of Islam in Mecca, and many Muslims dated their conversion from the days when the Prophet preached in the house of al-Arqam.

As Muḥammad was unable to relieve his persecuted followers, he advised them to take refuge in Abyssinia, and in the fifth year of his mission (A.D. 615), eleven men and four women crossed over to Abyssinia, where they received a kind welcome from the Christian king of the country. Among them was a certain Muṣʻab b. ʻUmayr whose history is interesting as of one who had to endure that most bitter trial of the new convert—the hatred of those he loves and who once loved him. He had been led to embrace Islam through the teaching he had listened to in the house of al-Arqam, but he was afraid to let the fact of his conversion become known, because his tribe and his mother, who bore an especial love to him, were bitterly opposed to the new religion; and indeed, when they discovered the fact, seized and imprisoned him. But he succeeded in effecting his escape to Abyssinia.

The conversion of ʻUmar is a turning-point in the history of Islam: the Muslims were now able to take up a bolder attitude. Muḥammad left the house of al-Arqam and the believers publicly performed their devotions together round the Kaʻbah. The situation might thus be expected to give the aristocracy of Mecca just cause for apprehension. For they had no longer to deal with a band of oppressed and despised outcasts, struggling for a weak and miserable existence. It was rather a powerful faction, adding daily to its strength by the accession of influential citizens and endangering the stability of the existing government by an alliance with a powerful foreign prince.

The Quraysh resolved accordingly to make a determined effort to check the further growth of the new movement in their city. They put the Banū Hāshim, who through ties of kindred protected the Prophet, under a ban, in accordance with which the Quraysh agreed that they would not marry their women, nor give their own in marriage to them; they would sell nothing to them, nor buy aught from them—that dealings with them of every kind should cease. For three years the Banū Hāshim are said to have been confined to one quarter of the city, except during the sacred months, in which all war ceased throughout Arabia and a truce was made in order that pilgrims might visit the sacred Kaʻbah, the centre of the national religion.

Muḥammad used to take advantage of such times of pilgrimage to preach to the various tribes that flocked to Mecca and the adjacent fairs. But with no success, for his uncle Abū Lahab used to dog his footsteps, crying with a loud voice, “He is an impostor who wants to draw you away from the faith of your fathers to the false doctrines that he brings, wherefore separate yourselves from him and hear him not.” They would taunt him with the words: “Thine own people and kindred should know thee best: wherefore do they not believe and follow thee?” But at length the privations endured by Muḥammad and his kinsmen enlisted the sympathy of a numerous section of the Quraysh and the ban was withdrawn.

In the same year the loss of K͟hadījah, the faithful wife who for twenty-five years had been his counsellor and support, plunged Muḥammad into the utmost grief and despondency; and a little later the death of Abū Ṭālib deprived him of his constant and most powerful protector and exposed him afresh to insult and contumely.

Scorned and rejected by his own townsmen, to whom he had delivered his message with so little success for ten years, he resolved to see if there were not others who might be more ready to listen, among whom the seeds of faith might find a more receptive and fruitful soil. With this hope he set out for Ṭāʼif, a city about seventy miles from Mecca. Before an assembly of the chief men of the city, he expounded his doctrine of the unity of God and of the mission he had received as the Prophet of God to proclaim this faith; at the same time he besought their protection against his persecutors in Mecca. The disproportion between his high claims (which moreover were unintelligible to the heathen people of Ṭāʼif) and his helpless condition only excited their ridicule and scorn, and pitilessly stoning him with stones they drove him from their city.

On his return from Ṭāʼif the prospects of the success of Muḥammad seemed more hopeless than ever, and the agony of his soul gave itself utterance in the words that he puts into the mouth of Noah: “O my Lord, verily I have cried to my people night and day; and my cry only makes them flee from me the more. And verily, so oft as I cry to them, that Thou mayest forgive them, they thrust their fingers into their ears and wrap themselves in their garments, and persist (in their error), and are disdainfully disdainful.” (lxxi. 5–6.)

Such is the traditional account of this event which was the turning-point of Muḥammad’s mission. He had now met with a people whose antecedents had in some way prepared their minds for the reception of his teaching and whose present circumstances, as afterwards appeared, were favourable to his cause.

The city of Yat͟hrib had been long occupied by Jews whom some national disaster, possibly the persecution under Hadrian, had driven from their own country, when a party of wandering emigrants, the two Arab clans of K͟hazraj and Aws, arrived at Yat͟hrib and were admitted to a share in the territory. As their numbers increased they encroached more and more on the power of the Jewish rulers, and finally, towards the end of the fifth century, the government of the city passed entirely into their hands.

Some of the Arabs had embraced the Jewish religion, and many of the former masters of the city still dwelt there in the service of their conquerors, so that it contained in Muḥammad’s time a considerable Jewish population. The people of Yat͟hrib were thus familiar with the idea of a Messiah who was to come, and were consequently more capable of understanding the claim of Muḥammad to be accepted as the Prophet of God, than were the idolatrous Meccans to whom such an idea was entirely foreign and especially distasteful to the Quraysh, whose supremacy over the other tribes and whose worldly prosperity arose from the fact that they were the hereditary guardians of the national collection of idols kept in the sacred enclosure of the Kaʻbah.

Further, the city of Yat͟hrib was distracted by incessant civil discord through a long-standing feud between the Banū K͟hazraj and the Banū Aws. The citizens lived in uncertainty and suspense, and anything likely to bind the conflicting parties together by a tie of common interest could not but prove a boon to the city. Just as the mediæval republics of Northern Italy chose a stranger to hold the chief post in their cities in order to maintain some balance of power between the rival factions, and prevent, if possible, the civil strife which was so ruinous to commerce and the general welfare, so the Yat͟hribites would not look upon the arrival of a stranger with suspicion, even though he was likely to usurp or gain permission to assume the vacant authority.

These facts go far to explain how eight years after the Hijrah Muḥammad could, at the head of 10,000 followers, enter the city in which he had laboured for ten years with so meagre a result.

But this is anticipating. Muḥammad had proposed to accompany his new converts, the K͟hazrajites, to Yat͟hrib himself, but they dissuaded him therefrom, until a reconciliation could be effected with the Banū Aws. “Let us, we pray thee, return unto our people, if haply the Lord will create peace amongst us; and we will come back again unto thee. Let the season of pilgrimage in the following year be the appointed time.” So they returned to their homes, and invited their people to the faith; and many believed, so that there remained hardly a family in which mention was not made of the Prophet.

When the time of pilgrimage again came round, a deputation from Yat͟hrib, ten men of the Banū K͟hazraj, and two of the Banū Aws, met him at the appointed spot and pledged him their word to obey his teaching. This, the first pledge of ʻAqabah, so called from the secret spot at which they met, ran as follows:—“We will not worship any but the one God; we will not steal, neither will we commit adultery or kill our children; we will abstain from calumny and slander; we will obey the Prophet in every thing that is right.” These twelve men now returned to Yat͟hrib as missionaries of Islam, and so well prepared was the ground, and with such zeal did they prosecute their mission, that the new faith spread rapidly from house to house and from tribe to tribe.

They were accompanied on their return by Muṣʻab b. ʻUmayr; though, according to another account he was sent by the Prophet upon a written requisition from Yat͟hrib. This young man had been one of the earliest converts, and had lately returned from Abyssinia; thus he had had much experience, and severe training in the school of persecution had not only sobered his zeal but taught him how to meet persecution and deal with those who were ready to condemn Islam without waiting to learn the true contents of its teaching; accordingly Muḥammad could with the greatest confidence entrust him with the difficult task of directing and instructing the new converts, cherishing the seeds of religious zeal and devotion that had already been sown and bringing them to fruition. Muṣʻab took up his abode in the house of Asʻad b. Zurārah, and gathered the converts together for prayer and the reading of the Qurʼān, sometimes here and sometimes in a house belonging to the Banū Ẓafar, which was situated in a quarter of the town occupied jointly by this family and that of ʻAbd al-Ashhal.

The heads of the latter family at that time were Saʻd b. Muʻād͟h and Usayd b. Ḥuḍayr. One day it happened that Muṣʻab was sitting together with Asʻad in this house of the Banū Ẓafar, engaged in instructing some new converts, when Saʻd b. Muʻād͟h, having come to know of their whereabouts, said to Usayd b. Ḥuḍayr: “Drive out these fellows who have come into our houses to make fools of the weaklings among us; I would spare thee the trouble did not the tie of kinship between me and Asʻad prevent my doing him any harm” (for he himself was the cousin of Asʻad). Hereupon Usayd took his spear and, bursting in upon Asʻad and Muṣʻab, “What are you doing?” he cried, “leading weak-minded folk astray? If you value your lives, begone hence.” “Sit down and listen,” Muṣʻab answered quietly, “if thou art pleased with what thou hearest, accept it; if not, then leave it.” Usayd stuck his spear in the ground and sat down to listen, while Muṣʻab expounded to him the fundamental doctrines of Islam and read several passages of the Qurʼān. After a time Usayd, enraptured, cried, “What must I do to enter this religion?” “Purify thyself with water,” answered Muṣʻab, “and confess that there is no god but God and that Muḥammad is the apostle of God.” Usayd at once complied and repeated the profession of faith, adding, “After me you have still another man to convince” (referring to Saʻd b. Muʻād͟h). “If he is persuaded, his example will bring after him all his people. I will send him to you forthwith.”

With such zeal and earnestness was the preaching of the faith pushed forward that within a year there was not a family among the Arabs of Medina that had not given some of its members to swell the number of the faithful, with the exception of one branch of the Banū Aws, which held aloof under the influence of Abū Qays b. al-Aslat, the poet.

The following year, when the time of the annual pilgrimage again came round, a band of converts, amounting to seventy-three in number, accompanied their heathen fellow-countrymen from Yat͟hrib to Mecca. They were commissioned to invite Muḥammad to take refuge in Yat͟hrib from the fury of his enemies, and had come to swear allegiance to him as their prophet and their leader. All the early converts who had before met the Prophet on the two preceding pilgrimages, returned to Mecca on this important occasion, and Muṣʻab their teacher accompanied them. Immediately on his arrival he hurried to the prophet, and told him of the success that had attended his mission. It is said that his mother, hearing of his arrival, sent a message to him, saying: “Ah, disobedient son, wilt thou enter a city in which thy mother dwelleth, and not first visit her!” “Nay, verily,” he replied, “I will never visit the house of any one before the Prophet of God.” So, after he had greeted and conferred with Muḥammad, he went to his mother, who thus accosted him: “Then I ween thou art still a renegade.” He answered, “I follow the prophet of the Lord and the true faith of Islam.” “Art thou then well satisfied with the miserable way thou hast fared in the land of Abyssinia and now again at Yat͟hrib?” Now he perceived that she was meditating his imprisonment, and exclaimed, “What! wilt thou force a man from his religion? If ye seek to confine me, I will assuredly slay the first person that layeth hands upon me.” His mother said, “Then depart from my presence,” and she began to weep. Muṣʻab was moved, and said, “Oh, my mother! I give thee loving counsel. Testify that there is no God but the Lord and that Muḥammad is His servant and messenger.” But she replied, “By the sparkling stars! I will never make a fool of myself by entering into thy religion. I wash my hands of thee and thy concerns, and cleave steadfastly unto mine own faith.”

In order not to excite suspicion and incur the hostility of the Quraysh, a secret meeting was arranged at ʻAqabah, the scene of the former meeting with the converts of the year before. Muḥammad came accompanied only by his uncle ʻAbbās, who, though he was still an idolater, had been admitted into the secret. ʻAbbās opened the solemn conclave, by recommending his nephew as a scion of one of the noblest families of his clan, which had hitherto afforded the Prophet protection, although rejecting his teachings; but now that he wished to take refuge among the people of Yat͟hrib, they should bethink themselves well before undertaking such a charge, and resolve not to go back from their promise, if once they undertook the risk. Then Barā b. Maʻrūr, one of the Banū K͟hazraj, protesting that they were firm in their resolve to protect the Prophet of God, besought him to declare fully what he wished of them.

Muḥammad began by reciting to them some portions of the Qurʼān, and exhorted them to be true to the faith they had professed in the one God and the Prophet, His apostle; he then asked them to defend him and his companions from all assailants just as they would their own wives and children. Then Barā b. Maʻrūr, taking his hand, cried out, “Yea, by Him who sent thee as His Prophet, and through thee revealed unto us His truth, we will protect thee as we would our own bodies, and we swear allegiance to thee as our leader. We are the sons of battle and men of mail, which we have inherited as worthy sons of worthy forefathers.” So they all in turn, taking his hand in theirs, swore allegiance to him.

As soon as the Quraysh gained intelligence of these secret proceedings, the persecution broke out afresh against the Muslims, and Muḥammad advised them to flee out of the city. “Depart unto Yat͟hrib; for the Lord hath verily given you brethren in that city, and a home in which ye may find refuge.” So quietly, by twos and threes they escaped to Yat͟hrib, where they were heartily welcomed, their co-religionists in that city vying with one another for the honour of entertaining them, and supplying them with such things as they had need of. Within two months nearly all the Muslims except those who were seized and imprisoned and those who could not escape from captivity had left Mecca, to the number of about 150. There is a story told of one of these Muslims, by name Ṣuhayb, whom Muḥammad called “the first-fruits of Greece” (he had been a Greek slave, and being set free by his master had amassed considerable wealth by successful trading); when he was about to emigrate the Meccans said to him, “Thou camest hither in need and penury; but thy wealth hath increased with us, until thou hast reached thy present prosperity; and now thou art departing, not thyself only, but with all thy property. By the Lord, that shall not be;” and he said, “If I relinquish my property, will ye leave me free to depart?” And they agreed thereto; so he parted with all his goods. And when that was told unto Muḥammad, he said, “Verily, Ṣuhayb hath made a profitable bargain.”

Muḥammad delayed his own departure (with the intention, no doubt, of withdrawing attention from his faithful followers) until a determined plot against his life warned him that further delay might be fatal, and he made his escape by means of a stratagem.

This change of direction during prayer has a deeper significance than might at first sight appear. It was really the beginning of the National Life of Islam: it established the Kaʻbah at Mecca as a religious centre for all the Muslim people, just as from time immemorial it had been a place of pilgrimage for all the tribes of Arabia. Of similar importance was the incorporation of the ancient Arab custom of pilgrimage to Mecca into the circle of the religious ordinances of Islam, a duty that was to be performed by every Muslim at least once in his lifetime.

There are many passages in the Qurʼān that appeal to this germ of national feeling and urge the people of Arabia to realise the privilege that had been granted them of a divine revelation in their own language and by the lips of one of their own countrymen.

“Verily We have made it an Arabic Qurʼān that ye may haply understand. (xliii. 2–3.)

“And thus We have revealed to thee an Arabic Qurʼān, that thou mayest warn the mother of cities and those around it. (xlii. 5.)

“And if We had made it a Qurʼān in a foreign tongue, they had surely said, ‘Unless its verses be clearly explained (we will not receive it).’ (xli. 44.)

“And verily We have set before men in this Qurʼān every kind of parable that haply they be monished:

“An Arabic Qurʼān, free from tortuous (wording), that haply they may fear (God). (xxxix. 28–29.)

“Verily from the Lord of all creatures hath this (book) come down, … in the clear Arabic tongue. (xxvi. 192, 195.)

“And We have only made it (i.e. the Qurʼān) easy, in thine own tongue, in order that thou mayest announce glad tidings thereby to the God-fearing, and that thou mayest warn the contentious thereby.” (xix. 97.)

“Of a truth it (i.e. the Qurʼān) is no other than an admonition to all created beings, and after a time shall ye surely know its message. (xxxviii. 87–88.)

“This (book) is no other than an admonition and a clear Qurʼān, to warn whoever liveth; and that against the unbelievers sentence may be justly given. (xxxvi. 69–70.)

“We have not sent thee save as a mercy to all created beings. (xxi. 107.)

“Blessed is He who hath sent down al-Furqān upon His servant, that he may be a warner unto all created beings. (xxv. 1.)

“And We have not sent thee otherwise than to mankind at large, to announce and to warn. (xxxiv. 27.)

“He it is who hath sent His apostle with guidance and the religion of truth, that He may make it victorious over every other religion, though the polytheists are averse to it.” (lxi. 9.)

The proof of the universality of Islam, of its claim on the acceptance of all men, lay in the fact that it was the religion divinely appointed for the whole human race and was now revealed to them anew through Muḥammad, “the seal of the prophets” (xxxiii. 40), as it had been to former generations by other prophets.

“Men were of one religion only: then they disagreed one with another and had not a decree (of respite) previously gone forth from thy Lord, judgment would surely have been given between them in the matter wherein they disagree. (x. 20.)

“I am no apostle of new doctrines. (xlvi. 8.)

“Mankind was but one people: then God raised up prophets to announce glad tidings and to warn: and He sent down with them the Book with the Truth, that it might decide the disputes of men: and none disagreed save those to whom the book had been given, after the clear tokens had reached them, through mutual jealousy. And God guided those who believed into the truth concerning which they had disagreed, by His will; and God guideth whom He pleaseth into the straight path. (ii. 209.)

“And We revealed to thee, ‘follow the religion of Abraham, the sound in faith, for he was not of those who join gods with God.’ (xvi. 124.)

“Say: As for me, my Lord hath guided me into a straight path: a true faith, the religion of Abraham, the sound in faith; for he was not of those who join gods with God. (vi. 162.)

“Say: Nay, the religion of Abraham, the sound in faith and not one of those who join gods with God (is our religion). (ii. 129.)

“Say: God speaketh truth. Follow therefore the religion of Abraham, he being a Ḥanīf and not one of those who join other gods with God.

“Verily the first temple that was set up for men was that which is in Bakka, blessed and a guidance for all created beings. (iii. 89, 90.)

“And who hath a better religion than he who resigneth himself to God, who doth what is good and followeth the faith of Abraham, the sound in faith? (iv. 124.)

“He hath elected you, and hath not laid on you any hardship in religion, the faith of your father Abraham. He hath named you the Muslims.” (xx. 77.)

But to return to Muḥammad in Medina. In order properly to appreciate his position after the Flight, it is important to remember the peculiar character of Arab society at that time, as far at least as this part of the peninsula was concerned. There was an entire absence of any organised administrative or judicial system such as in modern times we connect with the idea of a government. Each tribe or clan formed a separate and absolutely independent body, and this independence extended itself also to the individual members of the tribe, each of whom recognised the authority, or leadership of his chief only as being the exponent of a public opinion which he himself happened to share; but he was quite at liberty to refuse his conformity to the (even) unanimous resolve of his fellow clansmen. Further, there was no regular transmission of the office of chieftain; but he was generally chosen as being the oldest member of the richest and most powerful family of the clan, and as being personally most qualified to command respect. If such a tribe became too numerous, it would split up into several divisions, each of which continued to enjoy a separate and independent existence, uniting only on some extraordinary occasion for common self-defence or some more than usually important warlike expedition. We can thus understand how Muḥammad could establish himself in Medina at the head of a large and increasing body of adherents who looked up to him as their head and leader and acknowledged no other authority,—without exciting any feeling of insecurity, or any fear of encroachment on recognised authority, such as would have arisen in a city of ancient Greece or any similarly organised community. Muḥammad thus exercised temporal authority over his people just as any other independent chief might have done, the only difference being that in the case of the Muslims a religious bond took the place of family and blood ties.

Islam thus became what, in theory at least, it has always remained—a political as well as a religious system.

“It was Muḥammad’s desire to found a new religion, and in this he succeeded; but at the same time he founded a political system of an entirely new and peculiar character. At first his only wish was to convert his fellow-countrymen to the belief in the One God—Allāh; but along with this he brought about the overthrow of the old system of government in his native city, and in place of the tribal aristocracy under which the conduct of public affairs was shared in common by the ruling families, he substituted an absolute theocratic monarchy, with himself at the head as vicar of God upon earth.

Even in the case of death, the claims of relationship were set aside and the bond-brother inherited all the property of his deceased companion. But after the battle of Badr, when such an artificial bond was no longer needed to unite his followers, it was abolished; such an arrangement was only necessary so long as the number of the Muslims was still small and the corporate life of Islam a novelty; moreover Muḥammad had lived in Medina for a very short space of time before the rapid increase in the number of his adherents made so communistic a social system almost impracticable.

It was only to be expected that the growth of an independent political body composed of refugees from Mecca, located in a hostile city, should eventually lead to an outbreak of hostilities; and, as is well known, every biography of Muḥammad is largely taken up with the account of a long series of petty encounters and bloody battles between his followers and the Quraysh of Mecca, ending in his triumphal entry into that city in A.D. 630, and of his hostile relations with numerous other tribes, up to the time of his death, A.D. 633.

It has been frequently asserted by European writers that from the date of Muḥammad’s migration to Medina, and from the altered circumstances of his life there, the Prophet appears in an entirely new character. He is no longer the preacher, the warner, the apostle of God to men, whom he would persuade of the truth of the religion revealed to him, but now he appears rather as the unscrupulous bigot, using all means at his disposal of force and statecraft to assert himself and his opinions.

It not unfrequently happened that one member of a tribe would come to the Prophet in Medina and return home as a missionary of Islam to convert his brethren; we have the following account of such a conversion in the year 5 (A.H.).

When the truce of Ḥudaybiyyah (A.H. 6) made friendly relations with the people of Mecca possible, many persons of that city, who had had the opportunity of listening to the teaching of Muḥammad in the early days of his mission, and among them some men of great influence, came out to Medina, to embrace the faith of Islam.

The continual warfare carried on with the people of Mecca had hitherto kept the tribes to the south of that city almost entirely outside the influence of the new religion. But this truce now made communications with southern Arabia possible, and a small band from the tribe of the Banū Daws came from the mountains that form the northern boundary of Yaman, and joined themselves to the Prophet in Medina. Even before the appearance of Muḥammad, there were some members of this tribe who had had glimmerings of a higher religion than the idolatry prevailing around them, and argued that the world must have had a creator, though they knew not who he was; and when Muḥammad came forward as the apostle of this creator, one of these men, by name Ṭufayl b. ʻAmr, came to Mecca to learn who the creator was.

How superficial was the adherence of numbers of the Arab tribes to the faith of Islam may be judged from the widespread apostasy that followed immediately on the death of the Prophet. Their acceptance of Islam would seem to have been often dictated more by considerations of political expediency, and was more frequently a bargain struck under pressure of violence than the outcome of any enthusiasm or spiritual awakening. They allowed themselves to be swept into the stream of what had now become a great national movement, and we miss the fervent zeal of the early converts in the cool, calculating attitude of those who came in after the fall of Mecca. But even from among these must have come many to swell the ranks of the true believers animated with a genuine zeal for the faith, and ready, as we have seen, to give their lives in the effort to preach it to their brethren.

Herein we have the most conclusive proof of the essentially missionary character of the teaching of Muḥammad, who thus comes forward as the exponent of a new scheme of faith and practice. Whatever may have been the conditions favourable to the formation of a new political organisation, Muḥammad certainly did not find the society of his day prepared to receive his religious teaching and waiting only for the voice that would express in speech the inarticulate yearnings of their hearts. But it is just this spirit of expectancy that is wanting among the Arabs—those at least of the Central Arabia towards whom Muḥammad’s efforts were at first directed. They were by no means ready to receive the preaching of a new teacher, least of all one who came with the (to them unintelligible) title of apostle of God.

Again, the equality in Islam of all believers and the common brotherhood of all Muslims, which suffered no distinctions between Arab and non-Arab, between free and slave, to exist among the faithful, was an idea that ran directly counter to the proud clan-feeling of the Arab, who grounded his claims to personal consideration on the fame of his ancestors, and in the strength of the same carried on the endless blood-feuds in which his soul delighted. Indeed, the fundamental principles in the teaching of Muḥammad were a protest against much that the Arabs had hitherto most highly valued, and the newly-converted Muslim was taught to consider as virtues, qualities which hitherto he had looked down upon with contempt.

To the heathen Arab, friendship and hostility were as a loan which he sought to repay with interest, and he prided himself on returning evil for evil, and looked down on any who acted otherwise as a weak nidering.

He is the perfect man who late and early plotteth still

To do a kindness to his friends and work his foes some ill.

To such men the Prophet said, “Recompense evil with that which is better” (xxiii. 98); as they desired the forgiveness of God, they were to pass over and pardon offences (xxiv. 22), and a Paradise, vast as the heavens and the earth, was prepared for those who mastered their anger and forgave others. (iii. 128.)

The very institution of prayer was jeered at by the Arabs to whom Muḥammad first delivered his message, and one of the hardest parts of his task was to induce in them that pious attitude of mind towards the Creator, which Islam inculcates equally with Judaism and Christianity, but which was practically unknown to the heathen Arabs. This self-sufficiency and this lack of the religious spirit, joined with their intense pride of race, little fitted them to receive the teachings of one who maintained that “The most worthy of honour in the sight of God is he that feareth Him most” (xlix. 13). No more could they brook the restrictions that Islam sought to lay upon the licence of their lives; wine, women, and song, were among the things most dear to the Arab’s heart in the days of the ignorance, and the Prophet was stern and severe in his injunctions respecting each of them.

Thus, from the very beginning, Islam bears the stamp of a missionary religion that seeks to win the hearts of men, to convert them and persuade them to enter the brotherhood of the faithful; and as it was in the beginning, so has it continued to be up to the present day, as will be the object of the following pages to show.