Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/592

Rh 564 MOHAMMEDANISM [THE EASTERN defended by a few faithful subjects. As lie would not yield, they at last took the building by storm and put him to death, an old man of eighty. His death in the act of maintaining his rights was of the greatest service to his house and of corresponding disadvantage to the enemy. Caliph. s ition as to the inheritance. The mass of the mutineers summoned All to the Caliphate, and compelled even Talha and Zobair to do him homage. But soon these two, along with Aisha, the mother of the faithful, who had an old grudge against All, succeeded in making their escape to Irak, where at Basra they raised the standard of rebellion. AH in point of fact had no real right to the succession, and moreover was actuated not by piety but by ambition and the desire of power, so that men of penetration, even although they condemned Othman s method of govern ment, yet refused to recognize his successor. The new Caliph, however, found means of disposing of their opposi tion, and at the battle of the Camel, fought at Basra in November 656, Talha and Zobair were slain, and Aisha was taken prisoner. Mo i- But even so All had not secured peace. With the wi y a - murder of Othman the dynastic principle gained the twofold advantage of a legitimate cry that of vengeance for the blood of the gray-haired Caliph, and of a distin guished champion, the Syrian governor Mo awiya. Mo awiya was not inclined to recognize All, and the latter did not venture to depose him. To have done so would have been useless, for Mo awiya s position in Syria was impregnable. The kernel of his subjects consisted of genuine Arabs, not only recent immigrants along with Islam, but also old settlers who, through contact with the Roman empire and the Christian church, had taken on a measure of civilization. Through the Ghassanids these latter had become habituated to monarchical government and loyal obedience, and for a long time muoh better order had prevailed amongst them than elsewhere in Arabia. Syria was the proper soil for the rise of an Arabian kingdom, and Mo awiya was just the man to make use of the situation. He exhibited Othman s blood-stained garment in the mosque at Damascus, and incited his Syrians to vengeance. All s position in Cufa was much less advantageous. The population of Iralj: was already mixed up with Persian elements ; it fluctuated greatly, and was largely composed of fresh immigrants. Islam had its head quarters here ; Cufa and Basra were the home of the pious and of the adventurer, the centres of religious and political movement. This movement it was that had raised All to the Caliphate, but yet it did not really take any personal interest in him. Religion proved for him a much less trustworthy and more dangerous support than did the conservative and secular feeling of Syria for the Omayyads. Mo awiya could either act or refrain from acting as he chose, secure in either case of the obedience of his subjects. All, on the other hand, was unable to convert enthusiasm for the principle inscribed on his banner into enthusiasm for his person. It was necessary that he should accommodate himself to the wishes of his supporters, and at the same time it was impossible, for these wishes were inconsistent. They compelled him suddenly to break off the battle of Sifffn, which he was on the point of gaining over Mo awiya, because the Syrians fastened copies of the Koran to their lances to denote that not the sword but the word of God should decide the contest (end of July 657). But in yielding to the will of the majority he excited the displeasure of the minority, the genuine zealots, who in Mo awiya were opposing the enemy of Islam, and who regarded All s entering into negotiations with him as a denial of the faith. When the negotiations failed and war was resumed, the Kharijites refused to follow All s army, and he had to turn his arms in the first instance against them. He succeeded in disposing of them without diffi culty, but in his success he lost the soul of his following. For they were the true champions of the theocratic principle ; through their elimination it became clear that the struggle had in no sense anything to do with the cause of God. All s defeat was a foregone conclusion, once religious enthusiasm had failed him ; the secular resources at the disposal of his adversaries were far superior. Fortunately for him he was murdered (end of January 661), thereby posthumously attaining an importance in the eyes of a large part of the Mohammedan world (Shfa) which he had never possessed during his life. His son Hasan made peace with Mo awiya. The Kharijites are the most interesting feature of the The then phase of Islam. In the name of religion they raised Khari- their protest against allowing the whole great spiritual J ltes&amp;lt; movement to issue in a secular and political result, in the establishment within the conquered territories of an Arabian kingdom, a kingdom which diametrically contra dicted the theocratic ideal. Islam was then on the point of making its peace with the world, not without a certain apostasy from its original principles, for which Mohammed himself had paved the way. Life was no more dominated by religion, but came to terms with it and parted com pany. This development was favoured by the govern ment, which desired before all things to have peace. Orthodoxy arose, and thereby religion was tamed and divested of every dangerous element ; strictly speaking, it became a compromise, according to which the letter of the precept was correctly followed, in order that, in everything besides, a man might obey his own inclinations. The con ditions under which any one might make sure of heaven were on the one hand, the performance of &quot;good works,&quot; i.e. of such opera operanda as had a special churchly merit assigned to them ; on the other hand, faith in the absolute sovereignty of God even over the wills of men. About morals God showed little concern the usual view of orthodox shamanism. This was by no means the original standpoint of Islam, although the transition to it was made at an early stage, and by the Prophet himself. Originally Islam i.e. religious resignation was only the complement of pious effort ; a man set himself about even the hardest and apparently purposeless tasks, because he believed the issue to lie entirely in the hand of God. But now all this was reversed ; a man acted according to his humour, because his destiny had nothing to do with his inherent qualities, but was dependent entirely on Allah s caprice. The Kharijites protested not merely against the dynastic principle and the rule of the Omay yads, but also against orthodoxy ; they disputed the doc trine of predestination and the proposition that a great sinner could yet be a good Moslem, because they did not understand how to divorce religion from practice. To some degree they call to mind the Montanists, but their opposition was much more energetic in its expression. 1 Sources. For the history of Mohammed these are (1) the Sources. Koran ; (2) the theologico-historical tradition or Hadi th. The latter is chronologically arranged in the biographies, of which those of Ibn Ishak and of Wakidi are the oldest and most import ant. Ibn Ishak s work in its complete form is now to be found only in Ibn Hisham s revision (ed. Wtistenfeld), but large and numerous fragments of the original are given by Tabari (ed. De Jong). Of Wakidi the Kitdb al-Maghdzi, i.e. the history of Mohammed in Medina, is still extant (abridged German translation by Wellhausen, 1882) ; his collections for the earlier period are known to us through the work of Ibn Sa d his secretary ( Tabakdt, 1 On the further development of Islam compare Houtsma, De Strijd over het Dogma, Ley den, 1875.
 * Ali Controversy now arose among the leaders of the oppo-