Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 2 1913.djvu/360

332 importance quite different from that of buffer States like Ḥīra and Ghassān.

Under these circumstances it would be a mistake to regard the Arab migration merely as a religious movement incited by Mahomet. The question may in fact be put whether the whole movement is not conceivable without the intervention of Islām. There can in any case be no question of any zealous impulse towards proselytism. That strong religious tie which at the present time binds together all Muslims, that exclusive religious spirit of the later world of Islām, is at all events not the primary cause of the Arab migration, but merely a consequence of the political and cultural conditions caused by it. The importance of Islām in this direction lies in its masked political character, which the modern world has even in our own time to take into consideration. In the outset Islām meant the supremacy of Medina, but it soon identified itself with Arabianism, i.e. it preached the superiority of the Arabian people generally. This great idea gives an intellectual purport to the restless striving for expansion, and makes a political focus of the great Arabian State of Medina, founded on religion. Hunger and avarice, not religion, are the impelling forces, but religion supplies the essential unity and central power. The expansion of the Saracens' religion, both in point of time and in itself, can only be regarded as of minor import and rather as a political necessity. The movement itself had been on foot long before Islām gave it a party cry and an organisation. Then it was that the minor streams of Arabian nationality, gradually encroaching on the cultivated territory, united with the related elements already resident there and formed that irresistible migratory current which flooded the older kingdoms, and seemed to flood them suddenly.

If the expansion of the Saracens is thus allowed to take its proper place in the entire development of the Middle Ages, a glance at the state of affairs at the time of the prophet's death leads directly to the history of the Arab migration itself.

The death of the prophet is represented by tradition as an event which surprised the whole world and to the faithful seemed impossible, notwithstanding the fact that Mahomet had always confessed himself to be a mortal man. He had, it is true, never taken his eventual decease into consideration, nor had he left a definite code of laws or any instructions regarding his succession. But can we suppose a similar self-deception also among his nearest companions, who must certainly have seen how he was ageing, and must have had him before them in all his human weakness? Can we suppose any delusion in so circumspect a nature as Abū Bakr, or in such a genius for government as Omar? The energetic and wise conduct of both these men and their companion Abū 'Ubaida, immediately after the catastrophe, seems to prove the contrary and their action seems based on well-prepared arrangements. Energetic action was moreover very necessary, for it was