Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/576

Rh 548 MOHAMMEDANISM [MOHAMMED. The fatra. &quot; Read ! in the name of thy Lord, who created, created man from a drop. Read ! for thy Lord is the Most High who hath taught by the pen, hath taught to man what he knew not. Nay truly man walketh in delusion, when he deems that he suffices for him self ; to thy Lord they must all return.&quot; What is here recorded is the commencement, not of Mohammed s knowledge, but of his prophesying. That the latter was due to a vision experienced by him on a night of the month Ramadan (sur. xcvii. 1, ii. 181) is certain, and it is at least very possible that the form of the vision was governed by the traditional conception of revelation and prophecy which Mohammed had learned to accept. 1 It is, of course, uncertain whether the words in which the angel called the Prophet are really contained in sur. xcvi. Certainly this sura is very early, and its con tents are, indeed, the best expression of the original ideas of Islam. Man lives on content with himself, but he must one day return to his Creator and Lord, and give account to him. This is in a sense the material principle of the oldest faith of Islam ; the formal principle is the very pro minent doctrine of revelation in writing copied from the heavenly book. When the angel left him so the tradition runs on Mohammed came to Khadija and recounted the occurrence to her in much distress ; he thought that he was possessed. She however comforted him, and confirmed him in the belief that he had received a revelation and was called as a mes senger of God. Yet his doubts returned, when there ensued a break in the revelation, and they reached a distressing height. He was often on the point of seeking death by casting himself down from Mount Hira. It is usually assumed that this state of anguish lasted from two to three years. Then the angel is said to have suddenly appeared a second time ; he came to Khadija in great excitement and said : &quot; Wrap me up ! wrap me up ! &quot; This, it must be explained, was done when he fell into one of his swoons ; and on this occasion, as often thereafter, the revelation came during an attack. Then was sent down sura Ixxiv. beginning with the address &quot;O thou enveloped one!&quot; Henceforth there was no interruption and no doubt ; the revelations followed without break, and the Prophet was assured of his vocation. That Mohammed did pass through many doubts and much distress before he reached this assurance, may well be believed (sur. xciii. 3); but the systematic development of the doctrine of the fatra, or interval of from two to three years between the first and second revelation, belongs to a later stage of tradition. It appears that it was de vised to dispose of the controversy whether Mohammed lived as a prophet in Mecca for ten or for twelve years ; perhaps, too, it was desired to solve another difficulty viz., whether sur. xcvi. or sur. Ixxiv. was the beginning of the revelation in a sense that should do some justice to the rival claims of each. 2 The tradition may also have been influenced by the circumstance that Mohammed, in the first three years of his mission, did not appear as a public preacher, 3 but only sought recruits for his own cause and the cause of Allah in private circles. First, he gained the inmates of his own house, his wife Khadfja, his freed- 1 H. Dodwell, &quot;De Tabulis cceli,&quot; in Fabricius, Cod. pseud. V. T., 2d ed, ii. 551 sq. Compare, in the Koran, especially sur. Ixxxvii. 6, &quot; We will cause thee so to read that thou mayest forget nothing save what God will.&quot; The following progress is noteworthy : Isaiah s lips are touched to purge them of sin (Isa. vi. 7) ; Jeremiah s are touched by the Lord to put His word in his mouth (Jer. i. 9) ; Ezekiel receives the revelation as a roll of a book which he has to swallow (Ezek. iii. 2). 2 See Sprenger in Z.D.M.O., 1859, p. 173 sq.; Noldeke, op. cit., 67 sq. Ewald thinks that the vocatives at the beginning of sur. Ixxiv. and Ixxiii. mean simply long sleeper ! This view is worthy of consideration. The Moslem exegetes thoroughly understand the art of giving to general expressions of the Koran specific reference to historical events which they have themselves invented to facilitate exegesis. 3 Ibu Hisham, p. 166. man Zaid b. Haritha, his cousin All (of whose nurture he First had relieved Abu Talib, a poor man with many children), converts, and finally his dearest friend Abiibekr b. Abi Kohafa. The last named won for him several other adherents : Othinan b. Affan, Zobair b. al- Awwam, Abd al-Rahman b. Auf, Sa d b. Abi Wakkas, Talha b. Obaid Allah, all names of note in the subsequent history of Islam. Soon there was a little community formed, whose members united in common exercises of prayer. To the Hanifs, especially to the family of Zaid b. Amr, their relation was friendly ; they had the name of Moslem in common, and there was hardly any difference of prin ciple to separate them. The personality of the prophet had given an altogether new impulse to a movement already in existence ; that was all. To found a new religion was in no sense Mohammed s intention ; what he sought was to secure among his people the recognition of the old and the true. He preached it to the Arabs as Moses had before him preached to the Jews, and Jesus to Christians ; it was all one and the same religion as written in the heavenly book. The differences between the several religions of the book were not perceived by him till a much later period. It is not difficult to understand why Mohammed should in the first instance have turned to those who were most readily accessible to him ; but the nature of his mission did not suffer him to rest content with this ; it compelled him to make public proclamation of the truth. One of his dependents, Arkam b. Abi Arkam, offered for this purpose his house, which stood close by the sanctuary, and thus the Moslems obtained a convenient meeting-place within the town, instead of, as hitherto, being compelled to resort to ravines and solitary places. 4 Here Mohammed preached, and here too it was that he received some converts to Islam. But he did not obtain any great results among the Meccans. What he had to say was already in substance familiar to them ; all that was new was the enthusiasm with which he proclaimed old truth. But this enthusiasm failed to make any impression on them ; they set him aside as a visionary, or as a poet, or simply as one possessed. In their eyes it was a fatal flaw that his supporters were drawn from the slave-class and the lower orders, and the ranks of the young ; it would have been quite another matter if one of the rulers or elders had believed in him. This circumstance was a source of annoyance to the pro phet himself ; in sur. Ixxx. we find him rebuked by God for having repulsed in an unkind way a blind beggar who had interrupted him as he was endeavouring to win over a man of influence an endeavour which proved of no avail. This indifference of the Meccans embittered the mes senger of God, and led him to give to his preaching a polemical character which it had not hitherto possessed. In the oldest suras we have monotheism in its positive and practical form. 5 God is the all-powerful Lord and all-know ing Judge of man ; he demands loyal self-surrender and unconditional obedience ; the service he requires is a serious life, characterized in particular by prayer, almsgiving, and temperance. That the worship of other gods beside Allah is excluded by these views, goes without saying ; still it is 4 It does not appear that Arkam s house was of the nature of an asylum to which Slohammed betook himself for refuge from the ill- treatment to which he was subjected in his own home, nor is there any evidence that he ever lived in it. It was simply the meeting house of the oldest Islam. Prayer continued to be offered within it until the conversion of Omar, who was bold enough to choose the Ka ba itself, the centre of heathenism, as the Moslem place of prayer. Comp. Muir, ii. p. 117 ; Sprenger, i. p. 434. 5 What is meant by practical monotheism is most easily understood by reference to Matt. vi. 24 sqq., x. 28 sqq., and to Luther s exposi tion of the first commandment in the catechisms ; it is the essence of religion. We do not, of course, mean that this practical monotheism is expressed in the Koran with as much purity and depth as in the Gospel.