Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/375

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 353 you, and I alone can ofFei", the most precious of gifts, the treasures of this world and of the world to come. God has commanded me to call you to his service. Who among you will support my burthen ? Who among you will be my companion and my vizir?" ^'^^ No answer was returned, till the silence of astonishment, and doubt, and contempt was at length broken by the impatient courage of Ali, a youth in the fourteenth year of his age, "■ O prophet, I am the man ; whosoever rises against thee, I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly. O prophet, I will be thy vizir over them." Mahomet accepted his offer with trans- port, and Abu Taleb was ironically exhorted to respect the superior dignity of his son. In a more serious tone, the father of Ali advised his nephew to relinquish his impracticable design. " Spare your remonstrances," replied the intrepid fanatic to his uncle and benefactor ; " if they should place the sun on my right hand and the moon on my left, they should not divert me from my course." He persevered ten years in the exercise of his mission ; and the religion which has overspread the East and the West advanced with a slow and painful progress within the walls of Mecca. Yet Mahomet enjoyed the satisfaction of be- holding the increase of his infant congregation of Unitarians, who revered him as a prophet, and to whom he seasonably dispensed the spiritual nourishment of the Koran, The number of proselytes may be esteemed by the absence of eighty-three men and eighteen women, who retired to i5^thiopia in the seventh year of his mission ; and his party was fortified by the timely conversion of his uncle Hamza, and of the fierce and inflexible romar ben ai Omar, who signalised in the cause of Islam the same zeal which he had exerted for its destruction. Nor was the charity of Mahomet confined to the ti'ibe of Koreish or the precincts of Mecca : on solemn festivals, in the days of pilgrimage, he fre- quented the Caaba, accosted the strangers of every tribe, and urged, both in private converse and public discourse, the belief and worship of a sole Deity. Conscious of his reason and of his weakness, he asserted the liberty of conscience, and disclaimed the use of religious violence ; ^'■^'^ but he called the Arabs to re- ^21 Vezirus, portitor, bajulus, onus ferens ; and this plebeian name was trans- ferred by an apt metaphor to the pillars of the state (Gagnier, Not. ad Abulfed. p. 19). I endeavour to preserve the Arabian idiom, as far as I can feel it myself in a Latin or French translation. 122 The passages of the Koran in behalf of toleration are strong and numerous ; c. 2, V. 257, c. 16, 129, c. 17, 54, c. 45, 15, c. 50, 39, c. 88, 21, &c., with the notes VOL. V. 23