ISLAM AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE MUSULMAN« MUSULMAN » is a previously used french word for « muslim » |
ISLAM AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE
MUSULMAN ANDRE SERVIER TRANSLATED BY WITH A PREFACE BY LOUIS BERTRAND LONDON 1924 |
I have not the honour of M. Andre
Servier's personal acquaintance: I only know" La Psychologie du Musulman," of
which he has been kind enough to send me the manuscript. The work impresses me
as excellent, destined to, render the greatest service to the French cause
throughout Northern Africa, and at the same time to enlighten the natives
themselves as to their own past history.
What I admire most of all is
his vigorous assault upon the great mass of French ignorance. One of the
prejudices most likely to lead us to disaster lies in the belief that our
African rule is nothing more than an incident in the history of the country, in
the same way as we look upon the Roman dominion. There is a number of writers
who persistently main-tain that Rome made hut a short stay in Africa, that she
remained there but a century or two. That is a monstrous error. The effective
empire of Rome in Africa began with the destruction of Carthage, 146 B.C., and
it only came to an end with the Vandal invasion about the year 450 of the
Christian era- , say six hundred years of effective rule. But the Vandals were
Christians who carried on the Roman civilization in its integrity, and who spoke
and wrote Latin. In the same way, the Byzantines who succeeded them, even if
they did not speak Latin officially, were able to regard themselves as the
legitimate heirs of Rome. That went on until the end of the seventh
century.
So that Africa had eight hundred and fifty years of effective
Latin domination. And if we consider that under the hegemony of Carthage the
whole region, from the Syrtes to the Pillars of Hercules, was more or less
Hellenized or Latinized, we arrive at the conclusion that Northern Africa had
thirteen hundred years of Latinity, whereas it can only reckon twelve hundred
years of Islam.
The numerous and very important ruins that even up to the present time cover the country bear witness to the deep penetration of Greco-Latin civilization into the soil of Africa. Of all these dead cities the only one the uninstructed Frenchman or even the Algerian knows is Timgad. But the urban network created by the Romans embraced the whole of North Africa up to the edge of the Sahara; and it is in these very regions bordering on the desert that Roman remains are most abundant. If we were willing to go to the trouble and expense of excavating them, were it only to bring to light the claims of Latinity in Africa, we should be astonished by the great number of these towns, and as often as not by their beauty.
M. Andre Servier is well
aware of all this; but he goes a good deal further. With a patience and
minuteness equally wonderful, he proves scientifically that the Arabs have never
invented anything except Islam-that" secretion of the Arab brain," that they
have made absolutely no addition to the ancient heritage of Greco-Latin
civilization.
It is only a superficial knowledge that has been able to
accept without critical examination the belief current among Christians during
the Middle Ages, which attributed to Islam the Greek science and philosophy of
which Christianity had no longer any knowledge. In the centuries that have
followed, the Sectarian spirit has found it to be to its interest to confirm and
propagate this error. In its hatred of Christianity it has had to give Islam the
honour of what was the invention, and, if we may so express it, the personal
property of our intellectual ancestors. Taking Islam from its first beginnings
down to our own day, M. Andre Servier proves, giving chapter and verse, that all
that we believe to be " Arab" or " Musulman," or, to use an even vaguer word, "
Oriental," in the manners, the traditions and the customs of North Africa, in
art as well as in the more material things of life-all that is Latin,
uncon-sciously, or unknown to the outside world-it belongs to the Middle Ages we
have left behind, our own Mediaevalism that we no longer recognize and that we
naively credit as an invention of Islam.
The one and only creation of the Arabs is their religion. And it is this religion that is the chief obstacle between them and ourselves. In the interests of a good understanding with our Musulman subjects, we should scrupulously avoid everything that could have the effect of strengthening their religious fanaticism, and on the contrary we should encourage the knowledge of everything that could hring us closer together-especially of any traditions we may have in common.
It is certainly our duty to respect the religious opinions of the natives; but it is mistaken policy for us to appear more Musulman than they themselves, and to bow down in a mystical spirit before a form of civilization that is very much lower than our own and manifestly backward and retrograde. The times are too serious for us to indulge any longer in the antics of dilettantism or of played-out impressionism.
M. Andre Servier has said all
this with equal truth, authority and opportuneness. The only reserves I would
make reduce themselves to this: I have not the same robust faith as he has in
the unlimited and continuous progress of humanity; and I am afraid that he is
under some illusion in regard to the Turks, who are still the leaders of Islam,
and are regarded by other Moslems as their future liberators. But all that is a
question of proportion.
I am willing to believe in progress in a certain
sense and up to a certain point; and I have no hesitation in agreeing that the
Turks are the most congenial of Orientals, until the day when we, by our want of
foresight and our stupidity, provide them with the means of becoming once more
the enemy with whom we shall have to reckon.
LOUIS
BERTRAND.
PARIS,
23rd September, 1922.
CHAPTER
I
France needs a Musulman policy inspired by realities and not by
received opinions and legends - We can only understand any given portion of the
Musulman people by studying Arab history, because of the solidarity of all
Musulmans and because Islam is nothing but a secretion of the Arab brain - There
is no such thing as Arab civilization - The origins of the legend - How modern
historians and the scholars of the Middle Ages were deceived - The Arab is a
realist and has no imagination - He has copied the ideas of other peoples,
distorting them in the process - Islam, by its immutable dogmas, has paralysed
the brain and killed all initiative
CHAPTER
II
For any comprehensive knowledge of Islam and the Musulman, it is
necessary to study the Desert - The Arabian Desert - The Bedouin - The influence of
the Desert - Nomadism - The dangerous life - Warrior und bandit - Fatalism - Endurance -
Insensibility - The spirit of independence - Semitic anarchy. Egoism - Social
organization - The tribe - Semitic Pride - Sensuality - The ideal - Religion - Lack of
Imagination - Essential characteristics of the Bedouin.
CHAPTER
III
Arabia in the time of Mahomet - No Arab nation - A dust or tribe without
ethnic or religious bonds - A prodigious diversity of cults and beliefs – Two
mutually hostile groups: Yemenites and Moaddites - Sedentaries and
nomads - Rivalry of the two centres: Yathreb and Mecca - Jewish and Christian
propaganda at Yathreb - Life of the Meccans - Their evolution - Federation of the
Fodhoul - The precursors of Islam.
CHAPTER
IV
Mahomet was a degenerate Bedouin of Mecca - Circum - stances made him a
man of opposition - His lonely and unhappy boyhood - Camel - driver and shepherd - His
marriage to Khadija - His good fortune. How he conceived Islam - Islam was a
reaction against the life of Mecca - His failures at Mecca - He betrays his
tribe - His alliance with the men of Yathreb - His flight - First difficulties at
Medina - How he had to resort to force - The principal cause of his success: the
lure of booty - The taking of Mecca - Triumph of the Prophet - His death.
CHAPTER
V
Mahomet's doctrine - Islam is Christianity adapted to Arab mentality. The
practical essentials of Islam - The Koran is the work not of a sectarian but of a
politician - Mahomet seeks to recruit his followers by every possible means - He
deals tactfully with forces he cannot beat down, and with customs that he cannot
abolish - Musulman morality - Fatalism - The essential principles of the reform
brought about by the Prophet - Extension to all Musulmans of family
solidarity - Prohibition of martyrdom - The Musul - man bows to force, but keeps his
own ideas - The Koran is animated by the spirit of tolerance, Islam is not; the
fault rests with the commentators of the second century, who by stereotyping the
doctrine and forbidding all subsequent modification, have rendered all progress
impossible.
CHAPTER
VI
Islam under the sucessors of Mahomet - Even in Arabia the new faith was
only able to impose itself by force - The first Musulman conquerors were actuated
by the desire for plunder not by any anxiety to proselytize - The expansion of
Islam in Persia, Syria and Egypt was favoured by the hostility of the natives
of those countrIes to the PersIan and Byzantine Governments - The struggle for
influence between Mecca and Medina, which had contributed to Mahomet's success,
was continued under his successors, sometimes favourable to Medina, under the
Caliphates of Abu-Bekr Omar and Ali, sometimes to Mecca, under the Caliphate of
Othman - The Mecca party finally triumph with the coming of Maowiah - Conflicts
between the tribes, between individuals, chronic anarchy: characteristics of
Musulman society and the causes of its future ruin.
CHAPTER
VII
Islam under the Ommeyads - The Theocratic Republic becomes a Military
Monarchy - The Caliphate established at Damascus, where it comes under Syrian
influence, that is to say, Greco-Latin - The rivalries which divided Mecca and
Medina break out between these towns and Damascus - The conquest of the Moghreb,
then of Spain, realized through the complicity of the inhabitants, anxious to
get rid of the Greeks and Visigoths - The attempted conquest of Gaul fails owing
to the stubborn resistance of the Franks, and marks the limit of Musulman
expansion - The Ommeyad dynasty, extinguished in orgies of Byzantine decadence,
gives place to the dynasty of the Abbassides.
CHAPTER
VIII
Islam under the Abbassides - The Caliphate is transferred - Irom
Damascus to Bagdad, where it comes under Greco-Persian influence - Through the
administration - the Barmecides, ministers of Persian origin, the Caliphs
surround themselves with foreign savants and men of letters, who give to their
reign an incomparable splendour; but, in their desire to organize Musulman
legislation, the Caliphs, under the inspiration of the Old Musulmans, fix the
Islamic doctrine. Immutably and render all progress impossible - This was the
cause and the beginning of the decadence of Mahometan nations - Spain breaks off
from the Empire, setting an example of insubordination which is to find
imitators later on.
CHAPTER
IX
Islam under the last Abbassides - The Musulman Empire on the road to
ruin - The Arab conquerors, drowned in the midst of subject peoples and incapable
of governing them, lose their war - like qualities by con - tact with
them - Good - for - nothing Caliphs, reduced to the role of rois faineants, are
obliged in self - defence to have recourse to foreign mercenaries, who soon become
their masters - Provinces in obedience to nationalist sentiment break away from
the Empire - The last Abbasside Caliphs retain possession of Bagdad only - Their
dynasty dies out in ignominy.
CHAPTER
X
Causes of the dismemberment of the Musulman Empire - The chief is the
inability of the Arabs to govern - The history of the Caliphs in Spain is
identical with that of the Caliphs at Damascus and at Bagdad: the same causes of
ephemeral grandeur, the same causes of decay - There was no Arab civilization in
Spain, but merely a revival of Latin civilization - This was developed behind a
Musulman facade, and in spite of the Musulmans - The monuments attributed to the
Arabs are the work of Spanish architects.
CHAPTER
XI
Arab decadence in Persia, Mesopotamia, and Egypt - The provinces,
relapsed into barbarism temporarily under Arab dominion, are re-born into
civilization as soon as they are able to free themselves - General causes of the
decay of the Arab Empire: Political nullity - Absence of creative genius - Absence
of discipline - Bad administration - No national unity - The Arab could only
govern with the collaboration of foreigners - Secondary causes: Religion, the
vehicle of Arab thought - Too great a diversity among the conquered
peoples - Despotic power of the prince - Servile position of women - The Islamization
of the subject peoples raised them to the level of the conqueror and allowed
them to submerge him - Mixed marriages - Negro influence - Diminution of the
Imperial revenues - The mercenaries
[CHAPITRE XII of the french edition] |
CHAPTER
XII [= chapter XIII of the french edition]
The Musulman community is theocratic - Religious law, inflexible and
immutable, regulates its institutions as well as individual
conduct - Legislation - Education - Government - The position of women - Commerce
- Property - No originality in Musulman institutions - The Arab has imitated and
distorted - In his manifestations of intellectual activity he appears to be
paralytic, and since he has impregnated Islam with his inertia, the nations who
have adopted this religion are stricken with the same sterility - All Musulmans,
whatever their ethnic origin, think and act like a Bedouin barbarian of the time
of Mahomet.
CHAPTER
XIII [= chapter XIV of the french edition]
The Sterility of the Arab mind is apparent in every manifestation of
intellectual activity - Arab civilization is the result of the intellectual
efforts of non - Arab peoples converted to Islam - Arab science, astronomy,
mathematics, chemistry, medicine, is only a copy of Greek science - In history
and geography the Arabs have left a few original works - In philosophy they are
the pupils of the School of Alexandria - In literature, with the exception of a
few lyric poems of no great value, they are under the inspiration of Greek and
Persian models - The literature of the Moors in Spain is of Latin inspiration - In
the fine arts, sculpture, painting and music, the nullity of the Arabs is
absolute
CHAPTER
XIV [= chapter XV of the french edition]
The psychology of the Musulman - Steadfast faith in his intellectual
superiority - Contempt ana horror of what is not Musulman - The world divided into
two parts : believers and infidels - Everything that proceeds from infidels is
detestable - The Musulman escapes all propaganda - By mental reservation he even
escapes violence - Check to the attempts to Introduce Western civilization into
the Musulman world - Averrhoes [French edition : - Khéréddine. Le Cheikh Gamal ed Dine. Sawas Pacha. - Tentatives infructueuses de l'Angleterre en Égypte, de la France en Algérie et en Tunisie. - L'idéal musulman : le Mahdisme et le Califat.]
CHAPTER
XV [= chapter XVI of the french edition]
Islam in conflict with European nations - The Nationalist movement in
Egypt - Its origin - The National Party - Moustafa Kamel Pasha - Mohammed Farid Bey -
The popular party - Loufti Bey es Sayed - The party of constitutional reform - Sheikh
Aly Yousef - The attitude of England - Egyptian Nationlist's intrigues in North
Africa [French edition : - Le mouvement nationaliste en Tunisie. -L'évolution de la mentalité tunisienne. - Erreurs commises par le Gouvernement du Protectorat.]
[CHAPITRE XVII of the french edition] |
[CHAPITRE XVIII of the french edition] |
[CHAPITRE XIX of the french edition] |
CHAPTER
XVI [= chapter XX of the french edition]
France's foreign Musulman policy - We should help Turkey - The lessons
of the Wahabite movement - In the Musulman world the Arab is an element of
disorder, the Turk is an element of stability - The Arab is doomed to disappear;
he will be replaced by the Turk - A policy of neutrality towards the Arabs: of
friendly support towards Turkey - Conclusion.
* * *
France needs a Musulman policy inspired by realities and not by
received opinions and legends - We can only understand any given portion of the
Musulman people by studying Arab history, because of the solidarity of all
Musulmans and because Islam is nothing but a secretion of the Arab brain - There
is no such thing as Arab civilization - The origins of the legend - How modern
historians and the scholars of the Middle Ages were deceived - The Arab is a
realist and has no imagination - He has copied the ideas of other peoples,
distorting them in the process - Islam, by its immutable dogmas, has paralysed
the brain and killed all initiative
That France is a great Mahomedan Power may be a commonplace,
but it is a truth that ceases to be a platitude, however often repeated, when we
remember that our country holds in tutelage more than twenty million Mahomedans;
and that these millions are firmly united by the solidarity of their religion to
the formidable block of three hundred million adherents of the
Prophet.
This block is divided superficially by racial rivalries, and
even at times by conflicting interests. But such is the influence exerted by
religion upon individuality, so great is its power of domination, that the mass
forms a true nation in the midst of other peoples, a nation whose various
portions, melted in the same crucible, obedient to the same ideal, sharing the
same philosophic conceptions, are animated by the samc bigoted belief in the
excellence of their sacred dogma, and by the same hostile mistrust of the
foreigner-the infidel. Such is the M usulman nation.
Islam is not only a
religious doctrine that includes neither sceptics nor renegades, (1) it is a
country; and if the religious nationalism, with which all Musulman brains are
impregnated, has not as yet succeeded in threatening humanity with serious
danger, it is because the various peoples, made one by virtue of this bond, have
fallen into such a state of decrepitude and decadence that it is impossible for
them to struggle against the material forces placed by science and progress at
the disposal of Western civilization. (2) It is to the very rigidity of its
dogma, the merciless constraint it exercises over their minds, and the
intellectual paralysis with which it strikes them, that this low mentality is to
be attributed.
But even such as it is, Islam is by no means a negligible
element in the destiny of humanity. The mass of three hundred million believers
is growing daily, because in most Musulman countries the birth-rate exceeds the
death-rate, and also because the religious propaganda is constantly gaining new
adherents among tribes still in a state of barbarism.
The number of
converts during the last twenty years in British India is estimated at six
millions; and a similar progress has been observed in China, Turkestan, Siberia,
Malaya and Africa. N everthe-less the active propaganda of the White Fathers is
successfully combating Moslem proselytism in the Dark Continent. It behoves us
then, as Le Chatelier says, to make an intelligent study of Islam, and to found
thereon
1 De Oastries, "L'IsIam."
2 Andre Semer, "Le
Nationalisme MusuIman " ; P. Antomarohi,
3 Le
Nationatisme Egyptien"; Henry Marchand, "L'Egypte et Ie Natme
Egyptien."
A Musulman policy whose
beneficent action may extend not only over our African colonies but over the whole Musulman world. We have got to realize the
necessity of treating over twenty million natives in some better way than
tacitly ignoring them. For they will always be the only active population of our
Central and West African colonies, whilst their present numerical superiority in
Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco cannot fail to increase as time goes on.
(1)
Only by a thorough understanding of the mentality and psychology of
the Musulman, and by discarding prejudice and legend, can we achieve any really
useful and permanent work.
It would be puerile to imagine that we can
safely confine this study to our own Musulman subjects, with the object of
governing them wisely. As we have already remarked, the Musulman is not an
isolated individual; the Tunisian, the Algerian, the Moroccan, the Soudanese are
not individuals whose horizon stops at the artificial boundaries created by
diplomatists and geographers. To whatever political formation they may belong,
they are first and foremost citizens of Islam. They belong morally, religiously,
intellectually to the great Moslem Father-land, of which the capital is Mecca,
and whose ruler - theoretically undisputed-is the Commander of the Faithful.
Their mentality has in the course of centuries been slowly kneaded, moulded and
impreg-nated by the religious doctrine of the Prophet, and as this doctrine is
nothing but a secretion of the Arab brain, it follows that we must study Arab
history if we want to know and understand any portion of the Musulman
world.
1 Alfred Le ChateIier, "La Politique MUsulmane."
Such a
study is difficult, not from any dearth of documents-on the contrary, they
abound, for Islam was born and grew up in the full light of history-but because
the Moslem religion and the Arabs are veiled from our sight by so vast a cloud
of accepted opinions, legends, errors, and prejudices that it seems almost
impossible to sweep it away. And yet the task must be undertaken if we wish to
get out of the depths of ignorance in which we are now sunk in regard to
Musulman psychology.
Jules Lemaitre was once called upon to introduce to
the public the work of a young Egyptian writer on Arab poetry. The author, a
novice, declared with fine assurance that Arab literature was the richest and
the most brilliant of all known literatures, and that Arab civilization was the
highest and the most splendid. Jules Lemaitre, who in his judg-ments resembled
Sainte-Beuve in his preference for moderate opinions, felt some reluctance to
counter-sign such a statement. On the other hand the obligations of courtesy
prevented him from laying too much stress upon the poverty and bareness of Arab
literature. He got out of the difficulty very cleverly by the following somewhat
reserved state-ment:
" It is difficult to understand how a civilization
so noble, so brilliant, whose manifestations have never lost their charm, and
which in times past had so remarkable a power of expansion, seems to have lost
its virtue in these latter days. It is one of the sorrows and mysteries of
history."
As the observation of a subtle mind, accustomed never to accept
blindly current opinions as such, this is perfectly justified. For if we admit
all the qualities that are habitually attributed to Arab cIvilization, if we are
ready to bow in pious awe before the fascinating splendour with which poets and
historians have adorned it, then it is indeed difficult to explain how the
Empire of the Caliphs can have fallen into the state of decrepitude in which we
see it to-day, dragging downward in its fall nations who, under other
governance, had shown unquestionable aptitudes for civilization.
How is
it that the Syrians, the Egyptians, the Berbers, as soon as they became
Islamized, lost the energy, the intelligence and the spirit of initiative they
exhibited under the domination of Greece and Rome? How has it come about that
the Arabs themselves, who, according to the historians, were the professors of
science and philosophy in the West, can have forgotten all their brilliant
accomplish-ments and have sunk into a state of ignorance that to-day relegates
them to the barbarous nations?
If we persist in asking these questions,
it is for the sole reason that we have never really got to the bottom of the
causes of the rapid expansion of Arab conquest, that we have never placed this
conquest in its proper historical frame, in a circle of excep-tionally
favourable circumstances. We have never penetrated the psychology of the
Musulman, and are consequently not in a position to understand how and why the
immense Empire of the Caliphs went to pieces; how and why it was fated to
collapse; how, stricken by paralysis and death by a rigid religious doctrine
that dominated and controlled every act of daily life, every manifestation of
activity, having no conception of material progress as an ideal worthy to be
pursued, how this baneful influence has kept its adherents apart from and
outside of the great currents of civilization.
In all that concerns Islam
and the Musulman nations, we, in Europe, live under the shadow of an ancient
error that from the remotest epochs has falsified the judgment of historians and
has often led statesmen to assume an attitude and come to decisions by no means
in accordance with actual facts. This error lies in crediting the Arabs with a
civilizing influence they have never possessed.
The mediaeval writers,
for want of exact docu-mentation, used to include under the designation of Arabs
any people professing the Moslem religion; they saw the East through a fabulous
mirage of those legends with which ignorance then surrounded all far distant
countries; they thus laboured unconsciously to spread this error.
In this
they were helped by the Crusaders, rough and coarse men for the most part,
soldiers rather than scholars, who had been dazzled by the superficial luxury of
Oriental courts, and who brought back from their sojourn in Palestine, Syria or
Egypt, judg-ments devoid of all critical value. Other circum-stances contributed
equally to create this legend of Arab civilization.
The establishment of
the government of the Caliphs in the North of Africa, in Sicily, and then in
Spain, brought about relations between the West and the countries of the Orient.
In consequence of these relations, certain scientific and philosophical works
written in Arabic or translated from Arabic into Latin, reached Europe, and the
learned clerks of the Middle Ages, whose scientific baggage was of the lightest,
frankly admired these writings, which revealed to them knowledge and methods of
reason-ing that to them were new.
They became enthusiastic over this
literature, and, in perfect good faith, drew from it the conclusion that the
Arabs had reached a high degree of scientific culture.
Now, these
writings were not the original pro-ductions of Arab genius, but translations of
Greek works from the Schools of Alexandria and Damascus, first drawn up in
Syriac, then in Arabic at the request of the Abbasside Caliphs, by Syrian
scribes who had gone over to Islam.
These translations were not even
faithful repro-ductions of the original works, but were rather compilations of
extracts and glosses, taken from the commentators upon Aristotle, Galen, and
Hippo-crates, belonging to the Schools of Alexandria and Damascus; notably of
Ammonius Saccas, Plotinus, Porphyrius, Iamblichus, Longinus, Proclus, etc.1 And
these extracts already distorted by two succes-sive translations, from Greek
into Syriac, and from Syriac into Arabic, were still further disfigured and
curtailed by the spirit of
intolerance of the Moslem scribes. The thought of the Greek authors was drowned
in the religious formulae imposed by Islamic dogma; the name of the author
translated was not mentioned, so that European scholars could have no suspicion
that the work before them was a trans-lation, an imitation, or an adaptation;
and so they attributed to the Arabs what really belonged to the
Greeks.2
The majority of the mediaeval scholars did not even know these
works, but only adaptations of them made by Abulcasis, A vicenna, Maimonides and
Averrhoes. The latter drew especially from the "Pandects of Medicine" of Aaron,
a Christian priest of Alexandria, who had himself compiled certain fragments of
Galen and translated them into Syriac. The works of Averrhoes, Avicenna and
Maimonides were translated into Latin, and it was from this latest version that
the mediaeval scholars made acquaintance with Arab science.
1 BartheIemy
Saint-HiIaire, " Hist. de l'EcoIe d' AIexllndrie,"
2 Snouck Hurgronje, "Le
Droit MusuIman,"
It is well to remember that at that epoch the greater
part of the works of antiquity were unknown in Europe. The Arabs thus passed for
inventors and initiators when in reality they were nothing but copyists. It was
not until later, at the time of the Renaissance, when the manuscripts of the
original authors were discovered, that the error was detected. But the legend of
Arab civilization had already been implanted in the minds of men, where it has
remained, and the most serious historians still speak of it in this year of
grace as an indisputable fact.
Montesquieu has remarked: "There are some
things that everybody says, because somebody once said them."
Moreover,
the historians have been deceived by appearances. The rapid expansion of Islam,
which, in less than half a century after the death of Mahomet, brought into
subjection to the Caliphs an immense empire stretching from Spain to India, has
led them to suppose that the Arabs had attained a high degree of civilization.
After the historians, the contemporary men of letters, in their fondness for
exoticism, contributed still more to falsify judgment by showing us a
conventional Arab world, in the same way as they have shown us an imaginary
Japan, China, or Russia. (1)
It is in this way that the legend of Arab
civiliza-tion has been created. Whoever attempted to combat it was at once
assailed with Caliph Haroun-al-Raschid's presents to Charlemagne-that wonderful
clock that struck with astonishment the contem-poraries of the old Emperor with
the flowing beard. Then so many illustrious names are quoted: Averr-
1
Dr. Gustave Le Bon, "La Civilization des Arabes.'
hoes, Avicenna,
Avenzoar, Maimonides, Alkendi, only to mention those best known. We shall show
later on that these names cannot be invoked in favour of Arab civilization, and
that moreover that civiliza-tion never existed. There is a Greek civilization,
and a Latin civiliza-tion; there is no Arab civilization, if by that word is
meant the effort personal and original of a people towards progress. There may,
perhaps, be a Musul-man civilization, but it owes nothing to the Arabs, nor even
to Islam. Nations converted to Mahomet-anism only made progress because they
belonged to other races than the Arab, and because they had not yet received too
deeply the impress of Islam. Their effort was accomplished in spite of the
Arabs, and in spite of Islamic dogma.
The prodigious success of the Arab
conquest proves nothing. Attila, Genseric and Gengis Khan brought many peoples
into subjection, and yet civilization owes them nothing.
A conquering
people only exercises a civilizing influence when it is itself more civilized
than the people conquered. Now, all the nations vanquished by the armies of the
Caliph had attained, long before the Arabs, a high degree of culture, so that
they were able to impart a little of what they knew, but received nothing in
exchange. We shall come back to this later. Let us confine ourselves for the
moment to the case of the Syrians and the Egyptians, whose Schools of Damascus
and Alexandria collected the traditions of Hellenism; to North Africa, Sicily,
and Spain, where Latin culture still surVived; to lPersia, India, and China, all
three inheritors of illustrious civilizations.
The Arabs might have
learnt much by contact with these diff'erent peoples, It Was thus that the
Berbers of North Africa and the Spaniards very quickly assimilated Latin
civilization, and in the same way the Syrians and the Egyptians assimilated
Greek civilization so thoroughly that many of them, having become citizens of
the Roman or of the Byzantine Empire, did honour in the career of art or letters
to the country of their adoption.
In striking contrast to these examples,
the con-quering Arab remained a barbarian; but worse still, he stifled
civilization in the conquered countries.
What have the Syrians, the
Egyptians, the Spaniards, the Berbers, the Byzantines become under the Musulman
yoke? And the people of India and Persia, what became of them after their
submission to the law of the Prophet?
What has produced this illusion,
and misled the historians, is the fact that Greco-Latin civilization did not
immediately die out in the conquered countries. It was so full of life that it
continued for two or three generations to send forth vigorous shoots behind a
frontage of Mahometanism. The fact explains itself. In the conquered countries
the inhabitants had to choose between the M usulman religion and a miserable
fate. "Believe or perish. Believe or become a slave," such were the conqueror's
conditions. Since it is only the rare souls that are capable of suffering for an
idea-and such chosen souls are never very numerous-and since the religions with
which Islam came into collision -a moribund paganism, or Christianity hardly as
yet established-did not exert any considerable influence upon men's minds, the
greater part of the conquered peoples preferred conversion to death or slavery.
" Paris is well worth a Mass: " we know the formula.
The first
generation, made Mahomedans by the simple will of the conqueror, received the
Islamic impress but lightly, keeping its own mentality and traditions intact; it
continued to think and act, in consideration of some few outward concessions to
Islam, as it had always been used to do. Arabic being the official language, it
expressed itself in Arabic; but it continued to think in Greek, in Latin, in
Aramaic, in Italian or in Spanish. Hence those translations of the Greek
authors, made by Syrians, translations that led our mediaeval scholars to
believe that the Arabs had founded philosophy, astronomy and
mathematics.
The second generation, brought up on Musulman dogma, but
subject to the influence of its parents, still showed some originality; but the
succeeding generations, now completely Islamized, soon fell into
barbarism.
We observe this rapid decadence of successive generations
under the Musulman yoke in all countries under Arab rule, in Syria, in Egypt and
in Spain. After a century of Arab domination there is a complete annihilation of
all intellectual culture.
How is it that these people who, under Greek or
Latin influence, have shown such a remarkable aptitude for civilization, have
been stricken with intellectual paralysis under the Musulman yoke to such a
degree that they have been unable to uplift themselves again, notwithstanding
the efforts of Western nations in their behalf? The answer is that their
mentality has been deformed by Islam, which in itself is only a product, a
secretion of the Arab mind.
Contrary to current opinion, the Arab is
devoid of all imagination. He is a realist, who notes what he sees, and records
it in his memory, but is incapable of imagining or conceiving anything beyond
what he can directly perceive.
Purely Arab literature is devoid of all
invention. The imaginative element apparent in cerlain works, such as the"
Arabian Nights," is of foreign origin.1 We shall prove that in the course of
this study. It is, moreover, this absence of the inventive faculties, a Semitic
failing, that accounts for the utter sterility of the Arab in the arts of
painting and sculpture. In literature, as in science and philosophy, the Arab
has been a compiler. His intellectual beggary shows itself in his religious
conceptions. In pagan times, before Mahomet, the Arab gods had no history, no
legend lends poetry to their existence, no symbolism beautifies their cult. They
are mere names, borrowed in all probability from other peoples, but behind these
names there is-nothing.
Islam itself is not an original doctrine; it is a
compilation of Greco-Latin traditions, biblical and Christian; but in
assimilating materials so diverse, the Arab mind has stripped them of all
poetical adornment, of the symbolism and philosophy he did not understand, and
from all this he has evolved a religious doctrine cold and rigid as a
geometrical theorem :-God, The Prophet, Mankind.
This doctrine is
sometimes adorned by the nations who have adopted it and who have not the barren
brain of the Arab, with quite an efflorescence of poetry and legend. But these
foreign ornaments have been attacked with savage violence by the authorized
representatives of Islamic dogma, and since the second century of the Hegira the
Caliphs have decided, so as to avoid any variation of the religious dogma, to
lay down exactly the spirit and the letter in the works of four orthodox
doctors. It is forbidden to make any interpretation of the sacred texts not
sanctioned by these works, which have fixed
1 Dozy, CTI Essai sur
I'Histoire de l'lslamisme."
the dogma beyond all possibility of change,
and by the same stroke have killed the spirit of initiative and of intelligent
criticism among all Musulman peoples, who have thus become, as it were, mumified
to such an extent that they have stayed fixed like rocks in the rushing torrent
that is bearing the rest of humanity onward towards progress.
From this
time forward, the doctrine of Islam, reduced to the simplicity of Arab
conception, has carried on its work of death with perfect efficiency inasmuch as
it governs every act of the believer's life; it takes charge of him in his
cradle, and leads him to the grave, through all the vicissitudes of life, never
allowing him in any sphere of thought or activity the least vestige of liberty
or initiative. It is a pillory that only allows a certain number of movements
previously fixed upon.
To sum up: the Arab has borrowed everything from other nations, literature, art, science, and even his religious ideas. He has passed it all through the sieve of his own narrow mind, and being incapable of rising to high philosophic conceptions, he has dis-torted, mutilated and desiccated everything. This destructive influence explains the decadence of Musulman nations and their powerlessness to break away from barbarism; it equally explains the difficulties that confront the French in Northern Africa.
* * *
For any comprehensive knowledge of Islam and the Musulman, it is
necessary to study the Desert - The Arabian Desert - The Bedouin - The influence of
the Desert - Nomadism - The dangerous life - Warrior und bandit - Fatalism - Endurance -
Insensibility - The spirit of independence - Semitic anarchy. Egoism - Social
organization - The tribe - Semitic Pride - Sensuality - The ideal - Religion - Lack of
Imagination - Essential characteristics of the Bedouin.
To know and understand he Musulman, We
must study Islam. To know and under-stand Islam, we must study the Bedouin of
Arabia; and to know and understand the Bedouin, we must study the Desert. For
the desert environment explains the special mentality of the .Bedouin, his
conception of existence, his qualities and his defects. Consequently it explains
Islam, a secretion of the Arab brain; and finally it explains the Musulman that
Islam has run into its rigid mould.
An immense plateau, rocky and sandy,
1,250 miles long with an average breadth of 500 miles, surrounded by a girdle of
mountains with peaks rising 6,500 and occasionally 10,000 feet; between this
lofty barrier and the sea a fertile strip of country 50 to 60 miles wide. That,
in a few strokes, is the general aspect of Arabia. 1
1 PaIgrave, "A
Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia "; Larroque, "Voyage dans l'
Arabie heureuse"; Strabo, Lib. xvi.
The plateau is indeed what the
Bedouins call it, "the land of terror and of thirst." Situated for the most part
in the tropics, and shut off from the softening influences of the sea by a
mountain wall that arrests the moist winds and causes the rain to fall on the
coastal strip, it presents every variety of desert nature: the lava desert, or
Harra; the stony desert, or Hammada; the desert of sand, or Nefoud, moving
dunes, alkaline plains, and "sebkas," whose salt crust breaks under one's
footsteps.
The whole scene is wild and mournful. Those gentle undulations
that rest the eye in countries with a normal climate, where centuries of
cultivation have formed the soil, are unknown in the desert. There everything is
disjointed, rough, bristling with hostility. In the basaltic and millstone
regions the rocks are hewn into sharp edges. The undulations of the surface are
abrupt and steep, without any gradual transition.
If one could imagine
the chain of the Alps submerged in alluvium up to within 800 to 500 feet of the
summit, one would see nothing but a series of domes, peaks, needles, fallen
rocks and denuded columns rising abruptly from the ground. That is what the
Harra looks like, with its tortured skyline recalling vast cosmic
upheavals.
Then there is the Hammada, a barren plain of stones, a vast
glittering extent of naked rocks, with all the weariness of one colour, where
the wind has swept away every particle of vegetable earth, where extremes of
heat and cold have split up the soil into slabs and splinters-a monstrous chaos
of broken stone, where no living thing can flourish. (1) 1 De Laborde and
Linnant, " Voyage dans l' Arabie Petree."
Further on is the Nefoud, a sea
of sand passing out of sight, from whence emerge high dunes like huge waves
petrified, with parallel gullies formed by the wind that keeps them incessantly
in motion. Of one uniform tawny tint, this barren plain is of an appalling
monotony. It is the domain of death, and either burns or freezes. The porosity
of the sand multiplies the surfaces of absorption and of radi-ation, and the sun
by day heats it up to such a degree that one dare not venture across it; at
nightfall it loses this heat almost instantaneously, and becomes covered with
frost.
Under the effect of the wind which is bottled up in these gullies,
possibly also from expansion, the dunes give out strange sounds, which add to
the wild horror of the solitude. They literally hum, like a metallic top, and
some travellers have compared the noise to that made by a thrashing-machine. 1
Gautier, "Le SaHara Algerien."
Then there are vast stretches of gypsum,
of a whiteness that is unbearable under the burning glare of the sun. And again
there are the" sebkas," once salt lakes, now dried up, on the surface of which
the salt mixed with sand forms a crust full of holes over a
quagmire.
Throughout the country vegetable soil is very scarce. Reduced
to an impalpable powder by the general dryness, it is carried away by the wind,
and is precipitated by the action of rain in less dry countries. Being subject
within the same period of twenty-four hours to torrid heat and extreme cold
(140° to 18° Fahr.), swept by winds either burning or freezing but always dry,
the soil, whatever its nature, is stricken with barrenness.
Vegetation is
rare in the desert; in the absence of rain, it can only obtain nourishment from
water in the subsoil, and so can only thrive in deep basins, where the
water-bearing stratum is near the surface. There are a few stunted plants in the
ravines and the wadies-Iong depressions at the bottom of which one may find a
little moisture by digging-some Artemisias, Brooms and Halophytic plants. Here
and there, in sheltered places, a few puny shrubs of acacia and tamarisk carry
on a forlorn struggle against the ever-encroaching sand.
There are no
rivers, no springs, a few wells, far apart, constantly being covered by the
shifting sand, and having to be cleaned out every time by the thirsty
traveller.
Any considerable collection of human beings is impossible amid
such hostile natural surroundings; they would be decimated by hunger and thirst.
So there are no towns, nor even villages; only starveling families, for ever
preoccupied by the anxieties of their existence, wandering in these wastes
strewn with ambushes.
But if, leaving these dreary solitudes, one crosses
the mountain barrier enclosing them, one descends suddenly into a wonderful
country. The coastal region, watered by sea breezes, fertilized by the wadies,
which in rainy weather roll in torrents from the heights, is, in comparison with
the desert plateau, a land of plenty and delight. Between Medina and Mecca this
strip is widened by the granitic plateau of N edjed, an important mountain mass
that catches the rains and feeds numerous springs. 1 Maurice Tamisier, "Voyage
en Arabie."
Here are wells that never dry up, and oases where beneath the
palms there is a two-storied vegetation of fruit trees, cereals, and perfume
plants. Here too are pastures where horses, camels and sheep can
thrive.
These are the favoured countries of the Hedjaz, of Assir, Nedjed
and the Yemen, of Hadramout and Oman, with populous towns such as Medina with
Yambo as its port, Mecca with its port of Djeddah, Taif, Sana, Terim, Mirbat and
Muscat. And yet the attraction of these fertile regions has not depopulated the
desert.
The Bedouin has remained faithful to his desert, and as, by the
side of the sedentary, less active tribes of a gentler mode of living, he
represents the man of action restless and brutal, it is he who in the end has
imposed his manners and mentality upon the whole of Arabia. It is him,
therefore, that we have to study. No historical research is needed; immobility
being the leading characteristic of the Arab tribes,1 the Bedouin has not
changed. Such as he was when Mahomet drew him from his idol-worship, so we see
him exactly described in the book of Genesis, in the passages relating to
Ishmael or Joseph, or well represented in the bas-relief of the palace of
Nineveh recording scenes from the wars of Assurbanipal, even so is he at the
present day.2
The desert condemns the individual to a special sort of
life which develops certain faculties, certain qualities and certain defects. It
is an existence full of difficulties, with danger everywhere; from the marauder
prowling round the tent or round the flock, meditating a sudden dash: from the
wind-enemy that dries up the water-hole and smothers the meagre vegetation in
sand: from the rival who occupies a coveted pasture: from the soil that cracks
into chasms.
The desert imposes as a first condition of existence
-nomadism. It is not for pleasure that the Bedouin
is always travelling, but
from stern necessity. Cultivation being impossible on a barren soil deprived of
vegetable humus and moisture, man is doomed to the shepherd's trade. But the
pasturage, composed of sickly herbs growing in depressions sheltered from the
wind, are of short duration and small extent. The flocks eat them down in a few
days, when the shepherd must set about finding others; hence the necessity of
being always on the move. When a pasture is found, he must make sure of its
possession against other rivals, and, on occasion, use violence. It is a life of
fever and of fighting, a rough and dangerous life.
1 Dozy, "Rist. des Musulmans
d'Espagne," t. i., p. 3; Delaporte,
" La vie de Mahomet," p. 47; Larroque,
op. cit. p. 109.
." Lenormant, " Hist. des peuples Orientaux,'" VI., p. 422; Strabo,
LIb. v. 1; Noel
DeSvergers, " Rist. de l' Arable."
But seldom can the Bedouin
satisfy his hunger; he has everything to fear from nature and from man. Like a
wild beast, he lives in a state of perpetual watchfulness. He relies chiefly
upon robbery. Too poor to satisfy his desires, devoid of resources in an
ill-favoured country, he is always ready to seize any chance that offers-a camel
strayed from the herd provides him with a' feast of meat: a sudden dash upon a
caravan or the douar (camp) of a sedentary tribe furnishes him with dates,
spices and women.
The practice of arms and the hard training he has
always to live in have developed his warlike faculties; and, as it is these that
enable him to triumph over the dangers of his wandering life and to procure the
only satisfactions possible in the desert, he has come to consider them as his
ideal.
The coward and the cripple are doomed to contempt and death. The
respect of his neighbour is in proportion to the fear with which he inspires
him. To win the praise of poets and the love of women,he must be a brilliant
horseman, skilled in the use of sword and spear.
The women themselves
have caught something of the martial spirit of their husbands and brothers;
marching in the rearguard they tend the wounded and encourage their fighting men
by reciting verses of a wild energy: "Courage," they chant, "defenders of women.
Strike with the edge of your swords. Wear the daughters of the morning star; our
feet tread upon soft cushions; our necks are decked with pearls; our hair is
perfumed with musk. The brave who face the enemy, we press them in our arms; the
base who flee, we cast them off and we deny them our love." 2
The
necessity of providing for his own needs makes the Bedouin an active man; he is
patient because of the sufferings he has to endure; he accepts the inevitable
without vain recriminations. 3 It is not Islam that has created fatalism, but
the desert; Islam has done no more than accept and sanction a state of mind
characteristic of the nomad. His adventurous life gives the Bedouin courage,
boldness, and if not contempt for death, at any rate a certain familiarity with
it. Necessity compels him to be selfish. The available pasturage is too scanty
to be shared, he keeps it for himself and his own people; it is the same with
the watering place. He kills his infant daughters, who are the source of
difficulties; and sometimes even his little boys, when the family is becoming
too numerous. Hard on himself, he is hard upon others too; holding his life so
cheap, he thinks nothing of his neighbour's. "Never has lord of our race died in
his bed," says a poet. "On the' blades of swords flows our blood, and our blood
flows only over sword-blades. "4
1 Dozy, "Hist. des Musulmans d'Espagne,
t. i., pp. 16, 17; Perron, "Les femmes Arabes avant l'Islamisme."
2 Caussin
de Perceval, "Essai sur l'Rist. des Arabes avant l'Islamisme," t. ii., p.
281.
3 Herder, "Idees sur la philosophie de l'Histoire," p. M3.
4 " El
Samaoual.
"We have risen," says another poet, "and our arrows have flown;
the blood which stains our garments scents us more sweetly than the odour of
musk."l
"I was made of iron," Antal' exclaims, " and of a heart more
stubborn still; I have drunk the blood of mine enemies in the hollow of their
skulls and am not surfeited."
In illustration of this insensibility may
be quoted , two incidents in the life of Mahomet: Seven hundred Coraidite Jews
who had been taken prisoner, were having their throats cut by the side of long
graves, under the eyes of the Prophet; as night was falling, he had torches
brought, so as not to put off the mournful business till the morrow.2 A number
of Arab captives, taken at Beder, were being put to death, to one of them who
begged for mercy the Prophet said: "I thank the Lord that he has delighted my
eyes by thy death"; and when the dying man asked who would take care of his
little child, Mahomet replied: " The fire of hell. "3
The solitary life
of the Bedouin has developed his spirit of independence; in the desert the
individual is free; he obeys no government; he escapes all laws. There is but
one rule-the rule of the strongest. 4
Sometimes, when their independence
was threatened by neighbouring nations, Romans, Persians or Abyssinians, the
tribes assembled together to defend their liberty, but as soon as the danger was
past they dispersed.
1 Safy Il Dine II Holli.
2 A Savary, Koran, p.
47.
3 Haines, "Islam a Missionary Religion," p. 36.
4 G. Sale. "
Observations historiques et critiques sur Ie Mahometisme. "
When
Abraha-el-Achram invaded the Hedjaz with forty thousand Abyssinians, and after
having reduced Tebala and Taief set himself to penetrate the fortress of Mecca,
the neighbouring tribes leagued together under the command of Abd-el-Mottaleb;
but when once the enemy had been driven back, the tribes resumed their liberty.
1 This spirit of independence, this exaggerated development of individuality
appears at every turn in the course of Arab history. The Caliphs had to struggle
without ceasing against the turbulence of the tribes, who were hostile to all
regular government and incapable of submitting to discipline. It was these
tribal rivalries that in the end broke up the unity of the Empire by adding an
element of disturbance to the disruptive forces of the conquered
nations.
The spirit of anarchy is characteristic of the Semite;2 wherever
he rules, there follows disorder and revolution. Jewish history, and that of
Carthage, provide us with numerous examples; and, nearer our own time, the
crisis of authority that has overturned Russia, has recruited its most powerful
leaders and theorists from the Jewish element.
Any concentration of
population is impossible in the desert owing to the lack of resources; at the
same time, an isolated individual would be too feeble to contend with the
dangers of a wandering life. Hence the Bedouins have been obliged to group
themselves in families, and this is the basis of their social organization. The
family enlarged has grown into the tribe, but the members of the same tribe do
not all live together; they form small family groups united by the solidarity of
birth and community of interests.
1 Sedillot, " Histoire des Arabes," t.
i., p. 43.
2 Renan, "Etudes d'histoire religieuse."
All the
individuals of a tribe recognize the same common ancestor; they call this
acabia, congenital solidarity, a rudimentary form of patriotism. In this way the
Koreich, to whom Mahomet belonged, trace their descent back to Fihr-Koreich, of
tradition-ally free origin, for he was regarded as the descendant of Ishmael by
Adnan, Modher, etc.1 The members of the same tribe are, literally, brothers;
moreover this is the name by which men of the same age address each other. When
an old man speaks to a young one, he calls him" Son of my brother."
The
Bedouin is ready to make any sacrifice for his tribe; for its glory or its
prosperity this egoist will risk his life and property. "Love your tribe," says
a poet, "for you are bound to it by ties stronger than any existing between
husband and wife. "2
Throughout the whole course of Musulman history,
wherever the Arabs are found, in Syria, in Spain, or in Africa, one notes the
devotion of the individual to his tribe, at the same time as the rivalry between
the different tribes. The notable upon whom the Caliph has been pleased to
confer a high appointment loses no time in devoting himself to the interests of
his own tribe, and at once arouses the anger of the others, who intrigue against
him until they procure his disgrace, when the game begins over again with
somebody else.
The Bedouin lives for himself and his tribe, beyond it he
has no friends; his neighbour is the man of his tribe, his relation.
Faithfulness to his pledged word, honesty and frankness only concern members of
the tribe, the contribules. 3
1 Seignette, "Traduction de Sidi Khelil,"
p. 700.
2 Abu' Labbas M Qhamed surnamed Mobarred, quoted by Ebn
Khallikan
in "La vie des ommes illustres."
3 Dozy, op. cit. p. 40.
Each tribe
selects as its chief the most intelligent habits of sobriety and plunged into
the worst debauchery. Mahomet declared that he loved three things better than
all else: perfumes, women and flowers. This might be the Bedouin's device; it is
at any rate his ideal, and the Prophet did not forget it. His paradise is a
place of carnal pleasures and material enjoyments, such as a nomad of the desert
pictures to himself.
Ceaselessly absorbed by the cares of his adventurous
life, the Bedouin concerns himself only with immediate realities. He fights to
live and cares but little for philosophy. He is a realist, and not a theorist;
he acts and has no time to think.
His faculties of observation have been
developed at the expense of his imagination, and without imagin-ation no
progress is possible. It is this that explains the stagnation of the Bedouin
over whom centuries pass without in any way changing his mode of
life.1
The Arab is in fact totally devoid of imagination; a contrary
opinion is generally held and must be revised. The impetuosity of his nature,
the warmth of his passions, the ardour of his desires have caused him to be
credited with a disordered imagination. His language, poor in abstract words,
and only able to express an idea exactly by the help of similes and comparisons,
has maintained the illusion. N ever-
theless, the Arab is the least
imaginative of beings; his brain is dry; he is no philosopher; and he has never
put forth an original thought, either in religion or in literature.
1
Dozy, "Essai sur l'Histoire de l'Islam."
Before Islam, the Bedouin, just
emerged from Totemism, worshipped divinities personifying the heavenly bodies or
natural phenomena: the stars, thunder, the sun, etc. But he has never had a
mythology. Among the Greeks, the Hindus, the Scandinavians, the gods have a
past, a history; man has moulded them to his own likeness, he has given them his
passions, his virtues, and even his vices. The gods of the Bedouin have no
distinctive character; they are mournful divinities, one fears them, but one
knows them not. The Arab Pantheon is inhabited by lifeless dolls, of whom,
moreover, the greater part were brought in from outside, notably from
Syria.1
Further, the Bedouin had not much respect for his idols; he was
quite ready to cheat them by sacrificing a gazelle when he had promised them a
sheep, and to abuse them when they did not respond to his wishes. When Amrolcais
set out to avenge the murder of his father, on the
Beni-Asad, he stopped at the
temple of the idol Dhou-el-Kholosa to consult fate by means of the three arrows,
called " command," " prohibition" and" wait." Having drawn" prohibition," which
forbade his projected vengeance, he tried again; but" prohibition" came out
three times running; he then broke the arrows and throwing the pieces at the
idol's head, cried: " Wretch! if it had been your father that had been killed,
you would not have forbidden me to avenge him. "2
There is the same
absence of imagination in the conception of Islam; its very simplicity is a
reflection of the Arab brain; whilst its dogmas are borrowed from other
religions. The principle of the unity of God is of Sabean origin; as is also the
Musulman prayer and the fast of Ramadhan.3
1 " Lenormant," p. 469;
Fresnel, II Lettres sur l'hist. des Arabes
avant l'Islamisme."
2 Dozy,
"Hist. des Musulmans d'Espagne," t, i., pp. 21-22.
3 Renan, "Etudes
d'histoire religieuse."
If the mosque is without adornment, that is not
from any pre-meditated design, but simply because the Arab is incapable of
adorning it; it is bare like the desert, bare like the Bedouin brain.
The
Arab conception of the world was borrowed from the Sabeans and the Hebrews. The
religious sects that came into being under the later Caliphs, and whose subtle
doctrines exhibit an overflowing imagination, are of Indian and Egyptian
inspira-tion. They represent exactly a reaction on the part of the subject
peoples against the barrenness and poverty of the Musulman dogma and the Arab
spirit.
In literature there is the same intellectual destitu-tion. The
Arab poets describe what they see and what they feel; but they invent nothing;
if some-times they venture on a flight of imagination, their fellow-countrymen
treat them as liars. Any aspira-tion towards the infinite, towards the ideal, is
unknown to them; and what they have always considered as of most consequence,
even from the remotest times, is not invention but precision and elegance of
expression, the technique of their art. Invention is so rare a quality in Arab
literature that when one does meet with a poem or a story in which fancy forms
any considerable element, it is safe to say at once that the work is not
original, but a translation. Thus in the" Arabian Nights" all the fairy-tales
are of Persian or Indian origin; in this greatcollection the only stories that
are really Arab are those depicting manners and customs, and anecdotes taken
from real life.
The oldest monument of pre-Islamic poetry, the Moallakat,
are poor rhapsodies copied from one model: when you have read one of them you
know the rest. The poet begins by celebrating his forsaken dwelling, the spring
where man and beast come to quench their thirst, then the charms of his
mistress, and finally his horse and his arms.1
"When the Arabs, by virtue
of the sword, had established themselves in immense provinces and turned their
attention to scientific matters, they displayed the same absence of creative
power. They translated and commented upon the works of the ancients; they
enriched certain special subjects by patient, exact and minute observation; but
they invented nothing; we owe to them no great and fruitful idea."2
From
what has gone before, we may sum up the characteristics of the Bedouin in a few
essential traits: he is a nomad and a fighter, incessantly preoccupied by the
anxiety of finding some means of subsistence and of defending his life against
man and nature; he leads a rough life full of danger. His faculties of struggle
and resistance are highly developed, namely physical strength, endurance and
powers of observation. Necessity has made him a robber, a man of prey; he stalks
his game when he espies a caravan or the douar (camp) of some sedentary tribe.
Like a wild beast, he sees a chance when it arises.
An egoist, his social
horizon stops at the tribe, beyond which he knows neither friend nor neigh-bour.
A realist, he has no other ideal than the satisfaction of his material wants-to
eat, to drink, and to sleep. Having no time for thought or contemplation, his
brain has become atrophied; he acts on the spur of the moment, we might almost
say by his reflexes; he is totally devoid of imagina-tion and of the creative
faculty.
1 See translation of the MoaUakat by Caussin de Perceval.
2
Dozy, loc. oit. pp. 13-14; Sedillot, "Rist. des Arabes," II., pp. 12, 19, and
82.
Finally, a simple creature, not far from primitive animality-a barbarian. Such is the man who has conceived Islam and who by the strength of his arm and the sharpness of his sword, has carved out of the world this Musulman Empire.
* * *
Arabia in the time of Mahomet - No Arab nation - A dust or tribe without
ethnic or religious bonds - A prodigious diversity of cults and beliefs – Two
mutually hostile groups: Yemenites and Moaddites - Sedentaries and
nomads - Rivalry of the two centres: Yathreb and Mecca - Jewish and Christian
propaganda at Yathreb - Life of the Meccans - Their evolution - Federation of the
Fodhoul - The precursors of Islam.
Knowing
the desert and the Bedouin, it is not impossible perhaps to form some idea of
what Arabia must have been in the time of Mahomet. There was no such thing as an
Arab nation, if by that name we mean an aggregation of persons subject to a
regular government, knowing themselves to be of common origin and pursuing the
same ideal. Caussin de Perceval, who has collected into three volumes the
chronicles relating to pre-Islamic times, has been unable to draw from these
documents any ensemble of facts linked together logically that would convey the
impression of a nation.1 There is nothing but a dust, as it were, of tribes
without connecting ties, without solidarity, in continuous conflict for trivial
objects: cattle-lifting, abduction of women, disputed watering-places and
pastures. 2 There is no com-munity of origin, none of those traditions handed on
from generation to generation that produce solidarity.
1 Caussin de
Perceval, "Essai sur l'Hist. des Arabes avant l'Islamisme.' ,
2 Prideaux, "
Vic de Mahomet" ; Ockley, " Rist. des Sarrazins."
A barbarous country,
cast like a barrier into the midst of the ancient civilizations of Asia and the
Mediterranean, protected by its deserts from invasion and with barely accessible
coasts, Arabia has served as a place of refuge for all fugitive peoples,
oppressed or dispersed from Persia, India, Syria and Africa;1 too poor or too
savage she has escaped the great conquerors. Part of Syria was indeed under the
rule of the Greek Emperors of Constantinople; the Arab coast of the Persian Gulf
was under the domination of the kings of Persia; and a portion of the Red Sea
littoral was for a time under the Chris-tian kings of Abyssinia; but the
influence of these conquerors was always confined to these restricted regions.2
The ambition of the invaders was broken at the coast, and discouraged by the
poverty of the country. ""What is there to be found in your country? " asked a
certain king of Persia of an Arab prince who had applied for the loan of some
troops and offered in return the possession of a province. "Sheep and camels! I
am not going to risk my armies in your deserts for such a trifle. "3 The only
people who came to stay were fugitives and wanderers, all the wreckage of the
old civilizations.
In the attempt to extract some general idea from the
rubbish-heap of the Arab chronicles we may succeed in arranging these scattered
families in two principal groups: the Yemenites, and the Moaddites.4 The former,
the Aribas of the Musulman writers, that is to say the Arabs properly so called,
came from Irak and India two thousand years before the Christian era; they
reigned in Babylon in 2218 B.C., and in Egypt at the same period under the name
of the Shepherd Kings.
1 Herder, "Idees sur la philosophie de
l'Histoire," p. 420.
2 Lenormant, op. cit. t. V., p. 337.
3 Dozy, op. cit.
p. 47.
4 Sedillot, "Hist. Generale des Arabes," t. i., p. 24.
They
established themselves in the Yemen, but were driven out later and dis-persed
over the whole of Arabia. 1 The latter, the Moustaribas of the Musulman
chroniclers, that is to say" those who had become Arabs," came from Syria and
Chaldea. A section of these immigrants, to which the ancestors of Mahomet
belonged, claimed to be descended from Ishmael, the son of Abraham.2
A
lively antipathy separated these two ethnic groups. The Yemenites had as their
centre Yathreb, which subsequently became Medina: the Moaddites had Mecca. The
Yemenites, estab-lished in fertile regions, became a settled people devoted to
agriculture; the Moaddites were nomads, shepherds and camel-drivers.
This
is merely an outline sketch; in reality, all these tribes, of whatever origin,
lived in a state of the most complete anarchy-the anarchy of the Semite. 3
Without any bond to unite them, with no past, and with none of those great
traditions that float like a flag over succeeding generations, constituting a
common patrimony of pride and glory, these robbers and camel-drivers, shepherds
and husbandmen, living from hand to mouth, have no history; their monotonous
existence-a struggle for daily bread-leaves no more trace than the camel tracks
on the sand of the desert dunes.
There is not even any religious
connection;4 each tribe had its protecting idol, a vague souvenir of the worship
of their forefathers. Here and there a few Jewish tribes from Syria, some
Christian tribes from the Shepherd Kings.
1 Sylvestre de Sacy, "Memoire
sur l'Histoire deB Arabes avant Mahomet. "
2 Kazimirsky, "Introduction a la
traduction du Koran," p. 3.
3 See Diodorus of Sicily, Liv. ii.; Herodotus,
Lib. aiL; Strabo, Lib. xvi.; Dion Cassius, Lib. liii.
4 Burckhardt, op. cit.
p. 160.
There was no government, no social organization beyond the family
and the tribe. Neither art nor literature is to be found among men absorbed by
the anxieties of a dangerous life; there are indeed a few rhapsodical poems
bearing a distant resemblance to the songs of our troubadours. There was no
other ideal than the satisfaction of immediate wants, no aim in life beyond the
pursuit of the daily subsistence-a prey, a lucky dash, a copious meal, such was
their ideal; it might perhaps suffice for an individual shrunk into his own
egoism, it could never be the ideal of a nation.1
These warriors and
robbers were willing epicures, and their poets would seem to draw their
inspiration from the same source as Horace: "Let us enjoy the present, for death
will soon be upon us."2 How-ever, in the midst of this general anarchy of
tribes, wandering or sedentary, one fact has stood out clearly from the remotest
ages-the antagonism of the Yemenites and the Moaddites; it is the old quarrel
between the settled people and the nomads, between the husbandman and the
shepherd. This antagonism was carried on into the conflict between Yathreb and
Mecca.
Yathreb, more favoured than Mecca as regards climate, built
against the moiSt mountain mass of Nejed, was surrounded by fertile lands. Its
inhabitants devoted themselves to agriculture and petty trading, and as these
are stationary occupa-tions, they became sedentary.
1 Burckhardt, op. cit.
p. 41. 2 Moallaka of Amr-Ibn-Kolthoum.
2 Mcallaka of
Amir-Ibn-Kolthoum.
Their manners grew gentler, so much so that after
centuries of quiet life, they constituted at the time of Mahomet a peaceable
population of cultivators, artisans and small shop-keepers.1 The Jews and
Christians, who had come in considerable numbers from Syria, propagated their
religious doctrines; and the Christian ideas of human brotherhood and
forgiveness of injuries had in a vague way got into men's minds. The Jews,
cradled in the old Messianic tradition, spoke freely of the coming appearance of
a messenger from God. The worship of idols, undermined by both Jews and
Christians, was to a certain extent abandoned. In short, in a period of general
anarchy. Yathreb was a town in which order was maintained, and was the most
peaceable city in Arabia.2
Mecca, 250 miles to the south-west, lying in a
sandy hollow, surrounded by bare and barren hills, was the abode of unruly men
engaged in stock-breeding and the important caravan traffic. In contact with
sea-faring nations through its port of Djeddah, it had become the principal
entrepot of whatever trade there was at that time between the Indies and the
countries of the West-Syria, Egypt and even Italy. 3 To Mecca came the caravans
from India and Persia, laden with a precious freight of ivory, gold-dust, silks
and spices.
The men of Yathreb, wishing to share these tempting profits,
had tried hard to divert a portion of the traffic to their city; in this they
had not succeeded, for. three reasons: firstly, because the caravans preferred
Mecca as a sort of half-way house.
1 Larroque, "Voyage dans la
Palestine," p. 110.
2 G. SaIe, "Observations hiilt. et critiques sur Ie
Mahometisme," p.473.
3 Carlyle, "Heroes," p. BO.
Lying at an equal
distance of thirty days' march from the Yemen and from Syria, it allowed them
whether on the outward or on the return journey, to winter in Yemen and to spend
the summer in Syria. 1 Secondly, because the Meccans, being enterprising people,
did not wait for the great caravans, but organized small private caravans of
their own, bartering the products of Syria, Egypt and Abyssinia against those of
the Euphrates valley, of Persia and of India. The camels of the Koreich were
loaded with costly burdens in the markets of Sana and Merab, and in the ports of
Oman and Aden.2 The people of Mecca became the carriers of the desert, the
brokers between the peoples of Asia and the Mediterranean. The men of Yathreb,
husbandmen and small shopkeepers, were incapable of any such enterprise.
Finally, because Mecca had always been from the remotest ages, a place of
pilgrimage, to which men repaired to bow down in the temple of the Kaaba before
a certain black stone said to have been brought down from heaven in the time of
Abraham by the servants of God Almighty.3 Diodorus of Sicily records that, in
the lifetime of Caesar, the Kaaba was the most frequented temple in Arabia. The
Koreich, the tribe to which Mahomet belonged, were the guardians of this temple,
an office that brought them in appreciable profits.
Thus both religion
and commerce made Mecca an important social centre, bringing her great
pros-perity, and thereby exciting the envy of the men of Yathreb. They detested
the Meccans, who returned the sentiment with interest. Moreover, they dis-liked
them for their licentious mode of living. Rich, broad-minded, troubled by few
scruples, idolaters, recognizing no law beyond the satis-faction of their own
desires, the Meccans were hedonists, holding in contempt the refinements of
morality.
1 Qot'B Eddin Mohammed El
Mekki, " Hist. de la Mekke."
2 Massoudi.
3 Sedillot, op. cit. t. i., p.
12; Dr. Lebon, "La Civilization des Arabes," p. 117.
A poem of the period
gives an exact idea of their moral state: "In the morning, when you come," says
the poet to his friend, "I will offer you a brimming cup of wine, and if you
have already enjoyed this liquor in deep draughts, never mind; you shall begin
again with me. The companions of my pleasures are young men of noble blood,
whose faces shine like the stars. Every evening, a singer, dressed in a striped
robe and a saffron-coloured tunic, comes to brighten our company. Her dress is
open at the throat; she allows amorous hands to stray freely o'er her charms. .
. . I have devoted myself to wine and pleasure; I have sold all I possessed, I
have dissipated what wealth I acquired myself as well as that which I inherited.
You, Censor, who blame my passion for pleasure and fighting, can you make me
immortal? If all your wisdom cannot stave off the fatal moment, leave me in
peace to squander everything on enjoyment before death can reach me. Tomorrow,
severe Censor, when we shall both of us die, we shall see which of us two will
be consumed by a burning thirst. "1
The men of Yathreb were
narrow-minded, of the peasant and shopkeeping spirit, and were moreover
lnfluenced by Jewish and Christian propaganda; they lived parsimoniously on
small profits and quick returns. Compared to the wealthy caravan-owners of
Mecca, who were great business schemers, they were small men, of austere morals,
of regular habits, peaceable temperament and affable. 2 The Mcccans treated them
with sovereign contempt, as misers, cowards and eunuchs. Returning insult for
insult, the men of Yathreb called them bandits and
highwaymen.
I Tarafa.
2 Fis-Sahmoudi,
" Hist. de 1a Medine. Trad. Wustenfeld."
Religion was dragged into the
quarrel. The Jews established in Yathreb had succeeded in converting certain
families of the Aus and the Khazdradj. The Meccans, attached to the old
idolatrous worship, not from religious conviction but by mundane interest, since
the Kaaba attracted many visitors and customers, took advantage of these
conversions to lash their adversaries with the epithet of Jews.
The
rivalry between Yathreb and Mecca was of considerable importance; for, in the
midst of general disorder these two towns represented the only centres of Arab
thought. It was their quarrels that favoured the development of Islam, and at a
later date became the cause of troubles and divisions in the Musulman Empire. If
Mahomet, disowned by the Meccans, hunted and threatened with death, had not
found refuge and support at Medina, it is more than probable that his great
adventure would have miscarried, and that his name would have fallen into
oblivion like those of so many other prophets of the same period.
Owing
to their enterprising spirit, the Meccans soon became very rich. The caravan
trade, doubled by the trade in slaves, returned huge profits. These Bedouins
became all at once merchant princes, and gave themselves corresponding
airs.
Prosperity has its effect upon character; it diminishes the
fighting spirit, and produces a con-servative tendency. One does not risk one's
life without thinking twice about it, except when one has nothing to lose;
bellicose nations are always the poorest, and among fighting men the keenest in
a raid are those who are not yet loaded up with booty.
The well-to-do man
wishes to enjoy his competence, and this he can only do when order and security
pre-vail. Having acquired wealth, the men of Mecca intended to live a pleasant
life; their interests were seriously compromised by the general state of anarchy
that prevailed, under cover of which their caravans were being held up to ransom
by robber bands, and by the conflicts between tribes which also interfered with
their traffic. They were very indignant at these acts of brigandage on the part
of the Bedouins, and preached respect for the property of others. Being men of
action, the Meccans were not content merely to advocate the principles of order,
they took steps to impose them. With this object several important personages of
the tribe of the Koreich founded a sort of league, in A.D. 595, called Hilfel
Fodhoul, or the Fodhoul federation. The Fodhoul intended to com-bat by every
available means the anarchy that was so injurious to trade and consequently to
their interests; they first attempted to suppress, or at least to reduce the
conflicts between tribes by instituting truces, or suspensions of hostilities,
under the most diverse pretexts: such as the Holy Month, a pilgrimage, important
markets, etc.1 They even strove to bring the tribes together in groups, to
federate them, using different methods to secure their object.
They began
with what one might call an appeal to Arab patriotism; that is, to their hatred
of the foreigner. In this connection an event occurred that favoured their
projects. The Abyssinians, led by the Negus Abrahah, had made an attempt to take
Mecca, whose wealth excited their envy. The neigh-bouring tribes, under the
threat of a common danger, had agreed to combine under the leadership of Abd
el-Mottaleb, and had repulsed the enemy.
1 Al Kazouini and Al
Shahrastani.
The Negus having then turned his arms against the Yemen, had
been driven out by the tribes united under the command of a Hemyarite prince. 1
On receiving news of this last success, Abd-el-Mottaleb went in person to Saana
to congratulate the Hemyarite prince in the name of the Koreich. This was a
noteworthy step, as signifying solidarity, when sons of the same Fatherland drew
together in mutual understanding. As soon as the enemy had been driven out, the
tribes at once resumed their liberty; but the Fodhoul, encouraged by the success
of their initiative, set to work to exploit the Bedouin sentiment of xenophobia.
Circumstances favoured their propaganda, since the Abyssinians on the west, the
Greeks on the north, and the Persians on the east were all threatening Arabia.
The Fodhoul were also contemplating a unification of the language, as a means of
bringing the tribes together. People can only agree when they understand each
other, and for this to be possible they must speak the same language. But Arabia
was a perfect Babel of different dialects; the thread running through them all
was certainly Arabic, but debased in each tribe by mispronunciation, or by the
use of local expressions, to such an extent that a Bedouin of Nejed could not
understand a man from the Hedjaz, and the latter could not make himself
understood by his fellow-countryman of the Yemen. 2
The Fodhoul made very
clever use of the poets, a sort of bards or troubadours, who sang the exploits
of warriors and of lovers in every tribe. "These bards were commissioned to
create a more general language.
1 Caussin de Perooval, op. cit.;
Sylvestre de Sacy, "Memoire sur l'hist. des Arabes."
2 Sylvestre de Sacy,
"Rist. dell Arabes avant Mahomet."
Their verses, which were recited
everywhere, were to fix once for all the words intended to represent ideas: when
several families made use of two different words to express the same idea, the
word the bard had chosen was the one to be adopted, and thus the Arab language
was gradually formed. "1
Finally, the Fodhoul tried to create unity of
religion-a difficult task-as each idolatrous tribe had its own protecting
divinity; but there were Jewish tribes at Yathreb and at Khaibar, Christian
tribes in the Hedjaz and the Yemen, whilst the Sabean creed and Manicheeism
counted their adherents on the shores of the Persian Gulf. Each tribe held to
its own beliefs. The Fodhoul could not dream of fighting against idolatry, since
the temple of the Kaaba brought many visitors to Mecca. As astute men, superior
to vulgar superstition, they conceived the ingenious idea of melting all the
different creeds together so as to make one, and thus satisfy everybody. They
drew the outlines of a sort of Arab religion which, whilst respecting the
ancient customs of the Bedouins, would find room for certain Sabean, Jewish, and
Christian beliefs. That is how they came to adopt the Sabean principle of one
God over all; and the Messianic idea of the Jews as to the coming appearance of
a prophet charged to establish the reign of justice. As certain tribes claimed
to be descended from Abraham, they made a great deal of this patriarch, to
please the Jews and Christians.
It is evident that the Meccans, whose
minds had been widened by foreign travel, were very clever men. In working, from
commercial interests, for the rapprochement of the tribes and for a fusion of
beliefs, they were, without suspecting it, clearing the ground for Islam. The
Fodhoul were the precursors of Mahomet, who, moreover, being a member of their
league, without doubt drew from this association many ideas the source of which
could not be accounted for in any other way.
1 Sedillot, op. cit. p. 44.
* * *
Mahomet was a degenerate Bedouin of Mecca - Circum - stances made him a
man of opposition - His lonely and unhappy boyhood - Camel - driver and shepherd - His
marriage to Khadija - His good fortune. How he conceived Islam - Islam was a
reaction against the life of Mecca - His failures at Mecca - He betrays his
tribe - His alliance with the men of Yathreb - His flight - First difficulties at
Medina - How he had to resort to force - The principal cause of his success: the
lure of booty - The taking of Mecca - Triumph of the Prophet - His death.
Knowing the Bedouin Of M.ecca., that is to say the nomad trasformed by city life, by long journeys abroad, and by wealth acquired in the caravan trade, it is possible to understand what Carlyle called "The Man Mahomet." Mahomet was a Bedouin of Mecca, but a degenerate Bedouin; and, in addition, he was through force of circumstances always in opposition to the environment in which he lived: a rebel against the only sentiment the Bedouins held in common- tribal clanship.
1 There is a great wealth of
books dealing with Mahomet: Abulfeda, "Life of Mahomet"; Ibn-Hisnam,
"Sirat-el-Resul"; Tabari, "Chronicle"; Gagnier" Life of Mahomet"; Prideaux,
"Life of Mahomet"; Boulainvilliers, " Life of Mahomet" ; Turpin, " History of
the Life of Mahomet" and" History of Al Koran"; Sprenger, "Life and Education of
Mahomet" and "Mahomet and the Koran"; W eil, " The Prophet Mahomet" and" History
of the Islamic Peoples since Mahomet" ; Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, " Mahomet and
the Koran" ; Garcin de Tassy, " A Statement of the Musulman Faith" and
"Doctrines et devoirs de 1110 religion musulman'" Castries, "L'Islam"; Charles
Scholl, "L'Islam at son fondate'ur"; Maracci, "Introduction a la traduction du
Koran"; Oelsner, "Mahomet."
He misunderstood and tried to injure the
interests of his tribe and of his native city. His propaganda was carried on
against the Koreich and the Meccans, in spite of all they could do, with the
support of their enemies. The reasons for his attitude may be easily
explained.
In comparison with the wealthy magnates of Mecca, Mahomet was
a pauper. His family, the Hachems, formerly well-to-do, had fallen upon evil
days, until they had become the poorest family in the Koreich. They were living
upon the guardian- ship of the temple of the Kaaba, that is to say, upon the
gifts of the pilgrims.1 Mahomet's childhood was passed in poverty and sadness;
to a feeble father and mother, weakened by privation and sedentary life, he owed
a sickly constitution and excessive nervousness. Silent and impressionable,
subject to epileptic attacks, his character became more gloomy still from the
fact of his wretched condition. Loving solitude, " always tormented by a vague
uneasiness, weeping and sobbing like a woman when he was not well, wanting in
courage, his character formed a strange contrast with that of the Arabs-hardy,
energetic, and warlike, who knew nothing of day-dreams and considered it a
shameful weakness that a man should shed tears, even for the loss of the objects
of his most tender affection."2
He was a degenerate Bedouin, stunted by a
sedentary life. His youth was one long struggle against poverty.
1 Weil, "Le
Prophete Mohammed."
2 Dozy, op. cit.
He lost his father two months
after he was born (.570), and six years later his mother, Amina, a gentle,
sickly creature subject to hallucinations.1 From his earliest years he knew the
harsh lot of an orphan without means, in a community where power and wealth
alone received consideration. He suffered in silence from his feebleness, his
poverty and the contempt with which he was treated by the rich caravan-owners
about him. He withdrew into himself; his character hardened, and from that time
he must have felt some animosity towards the people of Mecca. On the death of
his mother (576), he was taken in by his grandfather, Abd-el-Mottaleb, a kind
old man, who had no time to surround him with the family affection he needed, as
he died three years later (579). Young Mahomet then passed into the family of
his uncle, Abu- Taleb, who as a busy man of affairs had no time to waste in
maudlin sentimen-tality. Being a man of action, he made what use he could of the
child; he made him a camel-driver, and it was in this capacity that Mahomet,
between the age of ten and fourteen, made several journeys into Syria and the
neighbouring countries.
It is claimed, though without much probability,
that in the course of these journeys he made the acquaintance of 8 N ertorian
monk, who taught him the elements of Christianity. 2 Mahomet was then very young
to get any good out of such lessons, and it is probable that later on he had
better opportunities of getting to know the Christian principles in Arabia
itself, where the followers of the Galilean were numerous. On his return from
these journeys, Abu-Taleb having collected together the tribes around Mecca to
repulse the Negus Abrahah's Abyssinians,
1..Kasimirsky, Introduction to
the translation of the Koran, p. Vll.
2 Prideaux, "Vie de
Mahomet."
Mahomet had for the first time to face the dangers of war.
Nervous, impressionable and sickly, he could not bear the sight of the
battle-field; he ran away, and as this behaviour exposed him to the ridicule of
his associates, he left his uncle's service and did not go back to Mecca.1 To
gain his daily bread he had to become a shepherd: the poorest of trades and the
humblest social position. He was then twenty-five years of age (595). He felt
his position so humiliating that he accepted a job as assistant to a travelling
cloth merchant named Saib. The chances of business led Saib and his new man to
Hayacha, an important market to the south of Mecca; there Mahomet made the
acquaintance of a rich widow, Khadija, who was engaged in the caravan trade. He
entered her service, first as camel-driver, then as manager, and finally as
partner. 2 He served her with devotion and gratitude, for he was grateful to her
for having rescued him from misery. Khadija was forty, and in a country where
feminine beauty fades so early she might have been considered an old woman;
still, passion was not yet extinct in her heart.
Like all neurotic
subjects, Mahomet submitted to the influence of his surroundings and of
circum-stances; poverty had made him timid and taciturn; prosperity gave him
back his assurance, and an active life his vigour. Khadija fell in love with
him; it may have been the last passion of a woman before the inevitable
renunciations of old age, or the necessity of taking a second husband to look
after her interests. Mahomet, who had known the hard school of poverty, did not
reject the opportunity that chance had thrown in his way; he married Khadija. He
married her more from gratitude than from love; possibly interest may have had
some share in his decision.
1 Sprenger, "Vie et
enseignement de Mahomet"
2 Abulfeda, "Vie de Mahomet," trad. Noel
Devergers.
Henceforth his future was assured. He devoted his energy and
his intelligence to the development of his business. For ten years he led the
rough and spacious life of a caravan leader. At thirty-five he was a rich man.
He was at that time a fine strong fellow, hardened by misfortune, softened by
experience, educated by travel and association with his fellow men, believing in
his star, sure of his own abilityandparts. His cousin Ali, son of Abu-Taleb, has
drawn a living portrait of him: "He was of medium height, with a powerful head,
a thick beard, his hands and feet rough; his bony frame denoted vigour; his
countenance was ruddy. He had black hair, smooth cheeks and a neck like that of
a silver urn."1
From thirty-five to forty Mahomet enjoyed the comforts of
his affluence, but in a simple way, without ostentation. In his young days he
had been offended by the ostentatious way in which the Meccans lived; he was
careful not to fall into the same snare.2 He lived, moreover, apart from his
fellow-citizens and even from the people of his own tribe, whom he did not like,
as the mere sight of them brought back recollections of his unhappy childhood.
They on their part held him in but light esteem; they had known him when he was
poor, and they grudged him his rapid rise to fortune, accomplished without any
assistance from them, by 8 marriage with an elderly widow, a ridiculous bargain
in a country where masculine pride demands young virgins hardly yet veiled; they
reproached him for his breakdown on the field of battle; some of them had seen
him crying like a woman; in short, they looked upon him as an inferior
being.
1 Abulfeda, op. cit. p. 94.
2 De Castries, "L'Islam," p.
49.
Mahomet lived alone with Khadija, giving free rein to his dreamy and
contemplative temperament. Every year, during the sacred month of Rhamadan, he
withdrew to a mountain near Mecca, Mount Hira, whose caves provided a natural
shelter. There in the solemn calm of silence and solitude, he remained whole
days in meditation. It is not impossible to imagine the basis of his thoughts:
he was certainly not dreaming the grandiose dreams that some historians have
alleged. Islam did not spring all at once from his brain, like Minerva from the
brain of Jove; he was not aiming so high nor so far ahead, and if the dim light
that glimmered in one corner of his skull has since become a dazzling
brilliancy, it has been due to circumstances that the future prophet neither
foresaw nor could have foreseen. Devoid of imagination, like most of the
Bedouins, it was not of the future that Mahomet was dreaming in his cave on
Mount Hira, but of the past and of the present. He saw once more his youth of
wretchedness, of privations and humiliations among the wealthy Meccans, at a
time when, alone and poor, he had been obliged to accept the most humble
employments in order to keep body and soul together.
He thought of the
insolent pride of these caravan men, enriched by their boldness and by the
renown amongst the idolatrous tribes of the temple of the Kaaba, that Pantheon
of pagan divinities. He thought of the injustice of this barbarous society,
where the weak were the victims of the strong. He thought of the abomination of
the inter-tribal conflicts, and above all of that unhappy battle where he had
gone through all the apprehension of fright and where he had incurred the
disgrace of flight under the eyes of his fellow-citizens. Possibly he may have
recalled to memory some of the ideas dear to the Fodhoul : the reconciliation of
the tribes by the unity of beliefs and the pursuit of a common object; possibly
also he may have thought of the propaganda of the Jews of Yathreb, in favour of
one God.l One God! that would mean the suppression of the idols of the Kaaba, it
would be a blow dealt to the authority of Mecca. This idea pleased him as it
gratified his spite; and from the spirit of opposition, he was prepared to
cherish any projects whose realization would injure the purse-proud Meccans: the
equality of men, the condemnation of licentious life, the pulling down of the
rich, the return to the pure morals of the earlier days of the world, of which
the Jews and Christians sang the praises from their Bible: the generous
aspirations that have at all epochs constituted the ideal of those whom life has
bruised.
These reflections probably alternated with hallucinations,
crises of his nervous temperament, crises that are frequent in a debilitating
climate, that in the sultry hours of the day afflict the mind with a torpid
gloom, a state of half-sleep conducive to dreams and the seeing of
visions.
Another idea would be haunting his mind; the Jews, propagating
their Messianic traditions, were announcing the coming appearance of a prophet
who would re-establish the reign of justice. These traditions had found some
credit among the Bedouins, especially at Yathreb, and Mahomet, desirous of
playing a rOle, above all desirous of avenging the humiliations he had suffered
in times past, was perhaps led in a period of hallucination to believe himself
to be this predestined man, this messenger from God.2
1 Weil, "Hist. des
Peuples de l'Islam depuis Malomet."
2 Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, "Mahometet le
Korau."
One day, on coming out of one of his trances, he told the story
of it to Khadija: "I was in a deep sleep when an angel appeared to me; he held
in his hand a piece of silken stuff, covered with written characters; he gave it
to me saying: 'Read.' I asked him, 'What shall I read?' He wrapped me in the
silk and repeated: 'Read. ' I repeated my question: 'What shall I read.' He
replied: ' In the name of God who has created all things, who has created man of
clotted blood, read, by the name of thy Lord who is generous; it is He who has
directed the scripture; He has taught man that which he knew not.' I pronounced
these words after the angel and he departed. I awoke and went out to walk upon
the mountain side; there I heard above my head a voice which said: ' Oh,
Mohammed, thou art the man sent by God and I am Gabriel.' I lifted up mine eyes
and I saw the angel: I stood motionless, my gaze fixed upon him until he
disappeared."
Khadija accepted the new faith; it would have been
astonishing if she had not done so; for, accord-ing to the manners of the
period, a wife could not think differently from her husband: besides, Khadija
was fifty-five, and she loved Mahomet.
The second disciple of the new
prophet was Zaid, his slave; but a slave is certainly obliged to obey his
master. The third disciple was Ali, the son of Abu-Taleb, a youth of sixteen, of
an enthusiastic temperament who later on was to show a pronounced taste for
adventure. Ali was the Don Quixote of Islam.
After all, these three
conversions were hardly likely to draw the crowd by their example;
neverthe-less, Mahomet tried to convert his fellow-citizens. His efforts were
received with laughter and low jokes, but he was not discouraged. After three
years of determined efforts he had succeeded in gathering round him thirteen
followers, of whom all except Ali were persons of no consequence or influential
connections. In his desire to play a bold stroke, he gave a banquet to forty
notables of the Koreich tribe, and there, with great eloquence, he expounded his
doctrine: The worship of idols is only a lie; the coarse images of wood and
stone at the Kaaba are nothing but vain simulacra, without consciousness and
without power. There is but one God who has created the world and man. He,
Mahomet, was the Prophet, the Messenger of this one God. That is the true faith;
outside this all is error. Were the men of the Koreich ready to support this
doctrine? If they were, their salvation was assured; if not, they would come to
make acquaintance with the torments of burning Gehenna.
Ali, alone of all
those present, in obedience to his generous temperament, declared himself ready
to defend the new belief. The others went into fits of laughter and made
sarcastic replies to the summons of which they were the object.
When the
affair became known, the Meccans made great fun of these pretensions of the son
of Abd' Allah, of this once ragged lad who owed his fortune to his marriage with
a decrepit widow, and who wept like a woman at the least provocation. A prophet!
this former shepherd! a messenger from God? this coward who had fled from the
battle-field! Nonsense! he was overwhelmed with ribbald jeers.1 They were
specially indignant that he should have dared to belittle the idols and to
proclaim the existence of another divinity; any such belief would bring ruin on
the temple of the Kaaba and com-promise the prosperity of the town; to propagate
it was, therefore, an injury to the community; it was to ignore his sacred
obligations to the tribe; to set himself in opposition to established usage; to
act the part of an enemy.
1 Qot'B Eddin Mohammed EI-Mekki, "Hist. de la
Mecque."
Their laughter turned to indignation; from laughing at this
dreamer they came to look upon him as a traitor. Abu- Taleb, faithful to family
clanship, could not forget that this erring soul was of his own blood, and tried
by wise counsels to divert him from his ridiculous project; he advised him if he
would not give up his ideas, at least to keep them to himself. Mahomet wept, but
refused to renounce what he regarded as the true faith. Realiz-ing that he was
not making any progress with the Koreich, he addressed himself to the strangers
who frequented Mecca. He found complaisant listeners among the men of Yathreb,
of whom some even promised him their support, and that for two reasons; first,
because the Jewish propaganda had accustomed them to the idea of one God and to
the idea of a prophet sent by that God; then and especially, because the new
faith vexed the people of Mecca, and struck a blow at the renown of the temple
of the Kaaba. Mahomet, hated as he was at Mecca, became a valuable asset for
Yathreb.
These negotiations did not escape the notice of the Koreich, but
added fuel to their hatred. Mahomet became in their eyes an enemy, a traitor to
the most sacred obligations of family solidarity, a renegade who was deserting
his tribe to come to terms with their bitterest enemies. The mob rose in riot
against this wretch who attempted to interfere with his fellow men in the free
enjoyment of their life; their hatred increasing, he was denounced as an enemy
of religion, an abominable blasphemer; he was made an outlaw, together with
those who shared his views; and, but for the influence of Abu-Taleb, he would
have been killed. He realized the danger and fled. For months he lived out of
Mecca, in the caves of Mount Hira, carrying on his propaganda among the
caravans. who passed within reach.
During this time, Abu-Taleb, who
believed his nephew to be out of his mind, made use of his authority to try and
appease the anger against him. It was a difficult task; however, in 619, he
obtained the removal of the interdict that had been passed upon Mahomet, who was
thus at liberty to re-enter Mecca. By the advice of his uncle he was more
prudent, but Abu-Taleb died in the same year and Khadija soon afterwards (620).
Left thus alone, Mahomet carried on his propaganda; but convinced that he had
nothing to expect from the Meccans, he had an interview with the men of Yathreb,
who had made overtures to him (621). Lengthy negotiations followed; the Prophet
hesitated: to come to an understanding with Yathreb would be in the eyes of
Mecca the worst of treasons; the desire of success carried him away, and he
finally came to a decision in the course of a meeting that took place on Mount
Acaba (622). 1
The men of Yathreb offered him their support and an asylum
in their city, but they added a condition that disclosed their motives: "If he
were to be recalled by his fellow-citizens, would Mahomet desert his allies? "
"Never! " replied Mahomet, "I will live and die with you. Your blood is my
blood; your ruin shall be mine. I am from this moment your friend and the enemy
of your foes." This Was the form of oath used when a man changed his tribe.
Mahomet had just committed the worst of crimes; by uniting himself to the men of
Yathreb he had broken the tic of blood with the Korcich, a sacred bond that the
Bedouins scrupulously respect.
1 Delaporte, "La Vie de Mahomet," p.
225.
When the Meccans learnt of this agrcement their fury knew no bounds.
This time there was no one to protect Mahomet; Abu- Taleb was dead. They
resolved to rid themselves of the traitor. Each of the tribes of Mecca and its
allies named a judge:
there were forty of them.
Mahomet was not the
man to face this danger; he fled with his followers, Zaid, Ali, Abu-Bekr, his
new father-in-law, Othman, his son-in-law, and Omar. This was the Hegira, of
date September, 622. From that day, Yathreb became the city of the Prophet,
Medinet-el-N ebi, which has been corrupted into Medina. It is with this flight
to Medina that Islam commences. If the men of Medina had refused to receive him
it would have been all up with the new religion; it would have remained the
project of an idle dream. Left to the Meccans who would certainly have put him
to death, the Prophet would not have been able to realize his work. Islam,
therefore, owes its birth to the hostility between Mecca and Medina. Its first
manifestations were acts of hostility against Mecca, and the adhesion of Yathreb
to the new
faith was inspired by policy rather than religion.
Mahomet
was received at Medina with sympathy because he was the enemy of Mecca; but,
when the first moment of enthusiasm had passed, this popula-tion of shopkeepers
and husbandmen called upon him to fulfil his promises. In fact, they had done
what they thought was a good stroke of business; they were bent on ruining the
rival city so that they might come into its prosperity. Mahomet was to carry it
out. First of all he built a Mosque; in opposition to the Meccan temple of the
Kaaba he built a temple at Medina. Then he had to commence hostilities, although
he was by no means a believer in fighting. In plunging into warlike ad ventures
he obeyed two motives: first, to satisfy the Medinans, and, secondly, to get
himself out of a difficult situation.
He was very much discussed. The
Meccans not having been able to get rid of him by murder, tried to blacken his
character; they had emissaries in Medina itself, charged to undermine his rising
influence, to hold him up to ridicule, to show that he was just a man like any
other, subject to the same weaknesses, the same passions, and above all,
incapable of working miracles. 1 Mahomet was equally opposed by the Jews, who,
regarding him as an impostor, refused to accept him as the prophet announced by
their scriptures. His enemies pressed him with insidious questions; they called
upon him to prove the truth of his mission: if God Almighty was with him, why
did He not intervene in his favour?2 His disciples were equally troublesome; at
every moment they asked him for guidance, and he had to have incessantly on his
lips verses from his holy book to indicate the rules of conduct according to the
new religion. His slightest actions were examined; his public life, commented
upon by everyone, must not show any inconsistency. He had also to look after the
direction of his most zealous disciples, Ali, Zaid, Abu-Bekr, Omar and Othman.
To escape from these worries, he decided upon action. War satisfied at the same
time the lust for booty of those who saw in the affair merely an opportunity for
pillage and the generous passion of the true believers, burning to impose their
faith on the infidel. Warlike successes were, moreover, the only miraculous
proof the Prophet could offer of the divine protection.
1 Abulfeda, "La
Vie de Mahomet."
2 Sedillot, "Hist. des Arabes."
Such were the
conditions under which, after many hesitations, he attacked the Meccans. It was
a success: at Beder (624) his followers defeated six hundred Meccans. This
victory confirmed his prestige, but it had the drawback of exciting the ardour
and ambition of the Medinans. A second affair enabled the Koreich to take their
revenge at Mount Ohod.
Mahomet, to please his followers and to satisfy
his own resentment, would willingly have continued the struggle against Mecca;
he had his own vengeance to wreak upon the insolent Koreich who had mocked him
and driven him out, but the reverse at Ohod revealed the danger of any such
enterprise. The Meccans were fighting men; the Medinans on the contrary were
only shopkeepers and agriculturalists. To carryon hostilities against these
powerful enemies was to risk an irreparable check. It was important then in
order not to abandon all action, to seek some less redoubtable antagonists, for
instance, the Jewish tribes. This explains the successive attacks on the
Cainoca, the Lalyan and the Mostelik. There were fine opportunities for looting;
the beaten Jews were driven out and their goods were divided among the Bedouins.
It might be said that the attraction of loot was the most powerful propaganda
for the new religion, and that it brought in more disciples than all the
Prophet's harangues.
It was in the exaltation produced by these easy
triumphs that Mahomet, playing the bold game, sent threatening messages to
Chosroes II., King of Persia, to Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium, to the Negus
of Abyssinia and to the Governor of Egypt. In doing this he did not run any
great risk, seeing that these sovereigns were not particularly anxious to
interfere with a country bare of all resources.
The successes already
gained had not only given the Medinans some warlike training, but had had the
further effect of grouping around them all the fighting tribes avid for plunder.
Mahomet could now contemplate attacking Mecca. His expedition,
organized in
secret, was perfectly successful. On the 12th of January, 630, Mecca fell into
the hands of the Musulmans.1 On that day the men of Medina had promised
themselves to make these haughty merchants pay for their unbearable contempt.
"This is the day of slaughter, the day when nothing shall be respected," had
said the chief of the Khazradj; but Mahomet removed him from his command, and
ordered his generals to observe the greatest moderation. The Meccans witnessed
in silence the destruction of the idols in their temple, the true Pantheon of
Arabia, which then contained three hundred and sixty divinities worshipped by as
many tribes; and, with rage in their hearts, they recognized in Mahomet the
messenger from God, whilst inwardly promising themselves to be avenged some day
on these rustics, these Jews of Medina who had had the audacity to beat
them.2
However, as clever men, they knew how to hide their wrath; they
essayed to gain the Prophet's confidence, to make him forget. the past and to
work themselves into all the important posts. It was thus that Abu-Sofian, the
indomitable Koreichite, who had led the engagement at Ohod against Mahomet, now
made his submission, and gave his son Maowiah to the Prophet as secretary. This
example of adroit diplomacy was followed by the majority of the Meccan
notables.'
1 Gagnier, "Vie de Mahomet."
2 Dozy, op. cit. p.
28.
Knowing by experience that an open conflict is not always the surest
way to win, they accommodated themselves to circumstances. But the rivalry
between Medina and Mecca was not extinguished. It will be met with again, for it
dominates the whole of Musulman history. For his part, Mahomet, wishing to
increase the number of his adherents, did not take any unfair advantage of his
victory. Contrary to the wishes of the Medinans, he did nothing to impair the
religious prestige of his native city. The Kaaba, by a process not unknown
else-where, became the temple of the one true God.
The taking of Mecca
established the success of the Prophet. Those scattered tribes who had remained
hostile or indifferent made their sub-mission in the course of the following
years. About A.D. 682, almost the whole of Arabia was Musulman, if not at heart,
at any rate in outward seeming. To commemorate his triumph by a cere-mony that
would strike the imagination, Mahomet made a solemn pilgrimage to Mecca, in 682.
More than forty thousand M usulmans accompanied him. After the customary
devotions-pagan devotions that he took over on account of Islam-he ascended
Mount Arafat and harangued the crowd. Summing up the main outlines of the new
doctrine, he cried: " 0, my God, have I fulfilled my mission? " and every voice
answered: " Yes, thou hast fulfilled it." On his return to Medina, he fell into
a mortal sickness; at the mosque he announced his approaching death, and died
soon after in the arms of his favourite wife, Aisha.
It would convey a
false idea of Mahomet if he were to be represented as a sort of divine
personage, surrounded by an atmosphere of fervour and respect-ful adoration. To
his contemporaries, Mahomet was the leader of a party rather than a religious
personage. He imposed himself by force rather than by persuasion. It is possible
that his preaching may have had some effect on the unsophisticated Bedouins, and
that it may have seemed to them like an expres-sion of the divine will; but it
is quite evident that his immediate entourage did not take his Messianic role
seriously. There were among his company certain Meccan, sceptics who knew
Mahomet's life, his gene-alogy, his humble and difficult beginnings, his
failures, and who saw in him nothing but an upstart favoured by a concatenation
of circumstances. Many of these followers, especially those most recently
converted, seem to have been actuated by the desire to exploit his influence;
but very few of them looked upon him as a prophet. Their scepticism is shown by
the attitude of some of them towards him. His secretary, Abd-Allah, who took
down the divine revelations from his dictation, did not hesitate to alter their
meaning so as to be able to make fun of them amongst his friends. He carried his
facetiousness so far that Mahomet was obliged to dismiss him.
It is
notorious that one of his favourite wives, Aisha, deceived him; causing a
scandal that the Prophet could only silence by a declaration which he claimed to
be inspired by God, but which deceived nobody . We know that in the course of a
discussion a certain Okba spat in his face and nearly strangled him. We know
also that a Jew of Khaibar, whom Mahomet was endeavouring to conciliate, tried
to poison him. These are sufficient indications to lead us to suppose that the
Prophet did not inspire among his contemporaries those sentiments of admiration
and respect of which we find the expression in writings subsequent to his
decease.
Mysticism only came into Islam later, when the Arabs, leaving their country, mixed with other nations. The Bedouin had not imagination enough to weave a legend round Mahomet. It was the Islamized foreigners, Syrians, Persians and Egyptians who create