Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/573

Rh UNDER this head is given the history of Mohammed and his successors to the fall of the Eastern Caliphate, with a sketch of the institutions and civilization of the Moslem empire and an account of the Koran. The later history must be sought under the names of individual countries and dynasties. What falls to be said of the social and religious aspects of Islam in modern times will be given under the two great divisions of SUNNITES and SHI ITES. PART I. MOHAMMED AND THE FIRST FOUR CALIPHS. Plate VII I. OHAMMED 1 or MAHOMET, the founder of Islam, first appears in the full light of history with his Flight to Medina (The Hijra), A.D. 622 ; and this date, not that of his birth, has been fittingly chosen as the epoch of the Moslem Era. The best-attested tradition 2 places his first appearance as a prophet in Mecca some twelve years earlier (circa 610). He was then forty years old : the forty must be taken as a round number, but as such is doubtless trustworthy. Thus the birth of Moham med falls about 570 A.D. : it is said to have fallen in the year when Abraha, the Abyssinian viceroy of Yemen, made the expedition against Mecca, mentioned in the Koran, when the Arabs first saw the elephant and first suffered from smallpox. 3 Arabia at At the time of Mohammed s birth and youth nothing the birth see med less likely than that the Arabs should presently hammed ma ^ e their triumphal entrance into the history of the world as victors over the Greeks and Persians. Nowhere in the Peninsula was there an independent state of any considerable power and importance. At the beginning of the 6th century indeed the princes of Kinda had attempted to form a national kingdom, uniting in particular the tribes of central Arabia ; but this kingdom was nothing more than an epic prelude to the true history of the Arabs, which begins with Islam. After the fall of the Kindite dynasty, the old anarchy reigned again among the nomads of the Nejd and the Hijaz ; in all other quarters Greek or Persian influence predominated, extending from the frontier deep into the interior by the aid of two vassal states the kingdom of the Ghassanids in the Hauran under Greek suzerainty, and that of the Lakhmids in Hira and Anbar under the Persian empire. The antagonism between By zantium and Ctesiphon was reflected in the feuds of these Arab lordships; but indeed the rivalry of Greek and Persian exercised its influence even on the distant South of the Peninsula. Urged on by the Greeks, the Abyssinians had overthrown the Christian-hating realm of the Himyarites, the sunken remnant of the ancient might of the Sabaeans (A.D. 526), the Persians had helped a native prince again to expel the Christians (circa 570), and since then the Persians had retained a footing in the land. Toward the close of the 6th century, their direct and indirect influence 1 The name Mohammad means in Arabic &quot; the praised,&quot; and it has been supposed that this epithet was conferred on the Prophet after his mission to mark him out as the promised Paraclete. This, however, is incorrect (Ndldeke, Gesch. d. Qorans [Gott. 1860], p. 6, note 2 ; Sprenger, Leben und Lehre des M., i. 155 sq. ) The name is found, although it was not common, among the heathen Arabs. Kenan has shown it to occur on a Greek inscription of the early part of the 2d century of the Christian era (Boeckh, C. I. G., 4500), and Mohammed ibn Maslama of Medina, a contemporary of the Prophet, bore it as his original name, as appears from the fact that his brother was called Mahnuid, it being a favourite practice to give to brothers variations of the same name, as Anas and Munis, Sahl and Sohail, Monabbih and Nobaih (Spreuger, i. 158, note 2). That Mohammed calls himself Ahmad, in sur. Ixi. 6, in order to adapt his name to a supposed pro phecy, proves nothing ; on the other hand, the men of Mecca, on occa sion of a treaty with the Moslems, demanded that the Prophet should not call himself messenger of God, but Mohammed ibn Abdallah, using his old familiar name ; see J. Wellhausen, Vakidi s Kittib al- Alaghazi in verkiirzter deutscher Wiedergabe (Berl. 1882), p. 257. 2 Niildeke, ut supra, p. 54 sq. 3 Xoldeke, Gesch. d. Perser und Amber zur Zeit der Sasaniden Hits. . . Tabari iibersetzt (Leyden, 1879), pp. 205, 218. in Arabia greatly surpassed that of the Greeks ; and since the Kindites had fallen before the kings of Hira, it extended right through the Nejd into Yemen. 4 In the Hijaz and western Nejd, the district from which Islam and the Arab empire took their beginning, Greeks and Persians, Ghassanids and Lakhmids, had not much influence ; the nomad tribes, and the few urban common wealths that existed there, lived free from foreign interfer ence, after the manner of their fathers. Mohammed s city was Mecca, where the Banu Kinana had formed a settle- Mecca, ment round the Ka ba, the sanctuary of a number of con federate tribes (Ahabish) belonging to that district. The feast annually observed in the days before the full moon of the month Dhu 1-Hijja at Mecca and at Arafa and Kozah in the vicinity, presented strong attractions for all inhabitants of the Hijaz, and grew into a great fair, at which the Meccans sold to the Bedouins the goods they imported from Syria. Feast and fair gave the city the prosperity which it shared with other cities which, like Mecca, had the advantage of lying near the meeting-place of the two great natural roads to Yemen that from the north-west along the Red Sea coast, and that from the north-east fol lowing the line of the mountains that traverse the Nejd. 5 By their trading journeys the Koraish had acquired a knowledge of the world, especially of the Graico-Syrian world : the relative superiority of their culture raised them not only above the Bedouins, but above the agricultural population of such a city as Medina ; the art of reading and writing was pretty widely diffused among them. The Koraish within the city were the Banu Ka b ibn Loay, those in the surrounding country Banii Amir ibn Loay ; the townsmen proper were again subdivided into Motayya- bun and Ahlaf the latter were the new citizens, who were distinguished from the old settlers by the same name in other Arabian towns, as in Taif and Hira. The community was a mere confederation of neighbouring septs, each occupying its own quarter ; there was no magistracy, tho town as such had no authority. All political action centred in the several septs and their heads ; if they held together against outsiders, this was due to interest and a sense of honour, a voluntary union strengthened by the presence of public opinion. In the time of Mohammed, the most numerous and wealthy sept was that of the Banu Makhziim ; but that of the Banu Abdshams was the most distinguished. The Banu Omayya were the most powerful house of Abd shams ; their head, Abu Sofyan ibn Harb, exercised a de cisive influence in the concerns of the whole community. Mohammed himself was of the Banii Hashim; it is affirmed that these had formerly enjoyed and claimed of right tli3 position actually enjoyed by the Banu Omayya, but thi.i assertion seems to have had its origin in the claims to the Caliphate which the Hashimites (the house of All and the Abbasids) subsequently set up against the Omayyads. 7 4 On the state of Arabia before Islam see Caussin de Perceval, ssai sur Vhistoire des Arabes, vol. ii. ; Muir, Life of Mali., vol. i. 5 Marr al-Zahrdn, near Mecca, is accordingly said to have been thu point at which the great emigration of tribes from Yemen parted into two streams, moving north-west and north-east respectively. 6 The Koraish were the branch of Kinana settled in and about Mecca. They are called also Ghalib and Fihr, but the last name is particularly applied to those of the Koraish who did not live withiu the town. &quot; 7 Sprenger, vol. iii. p. cxx. sq. YVT _ _ n