Page:William Muir, Thomas Hunter Weir - The Caliphate; Its Rise, Decline, and Fall (1915).djvu/33

6 issue of the Prophet thus survived in the male line. But two grandsons, Al-Ḥasan and Al-Ḥosein, were left by his daughter Fāṭima. They were now but six or seven years of age.

With Moḥammad ceased the theocratic power; but his kingly functions, as ruler over all Islām, descended. According to Arabian notions, the leader of a nation, like the Chieftain of a tribe, is the head and representative of his people, and the nomination remains invalid till confirmed by their homage. ʿOmar, in after days, held that the irregular election of Abu Bekr (referring apparently to the scene enacted in the Hall) should not be a precedent. It was, he said, an event the happiest in its consequences for Islām, but justified only by the urgency of the moment. What might have been the issue if any son of Moḥammad had survived it is useless now to speculate. But certainly the hereditary descent of kingly power was foreign to the sentiment of Arabia. As matters stood, Moḥammad seems to have shrunk from anticipating the contingency of his own death, and had made no preparation for what might follow. But in so far as we may suppose him to have felt his illness mortal and death impending, the nomination of Abu Bekr to conduct the public Prayers (acknowledged mark of chief or delegated authority) may be held the natural indication of a wish that he should succeed. Apart from the pretensions of the men of Medīna, which immediately died away, there was in the election neither doubt nor hesitancy. The notion of divine right, or even of preferential claim, resting in the Prophet's family, was the growth of an altogether later age.

It may be necessary here to recall to the reader not fresh from the study of the Prophet's life, the state of parties at the present juncture. The Men of Medīna were the old inhabitants of the City who had received Moḥammad on his escape from Mecca, and supported his cause; they now embraced practically the whole native population of Medīna, since the party that opposed him on his first arrival had gradually succumbed before his growing power. They were divided into two tribes, the Aus and the