Part 19 (1/2)

[Sidenote: Parties in Medina.]

There were in Medina four princ.i.p.al parties, consisting of those who either warmly supported or actively opposed the Prophet, or who adopted a relatively neutral att.i.tude, viz., the Emigrants (_Muhajirun_), the Helpers (_An?ar_), the Hypocrites (_Munafiqun_), and the Jews (_Yahud_).

[Sidenote: The Emigrants.]

The Emigrants were those Moslems who left their homes at Mecca and accompanied the Prophet in his Migration (_Hijra_)--whence their name, _Muhajirun_--to Medina in the year 622. Inasmuch as they had lost everything except the hope of victory and vengeance, he could count upon their fanatical devotion to himself.

[Sidenote: The Helpers.]

The Helpers were those inhabitants of Medina who had accepted Islam and pledged themselves to protect Mu?ammad in case of attack. Together with the Emigrants they const.i.tuted a formidable and ever-increasing body of true believers, the first champions of the Church militant.

[Sidenote: The Hypocrites.]

”Many citizens of Medina, however, were not so well disposed towards Mu?ammad, and neither acknowledged him as a Prophet nor would submit to him as their Ruler; but since they durst not come forward against him openly on account of the mult.i.tude of his enthusiastic adherents, they met him with a pa.s.sive resistance which more than once thwarted his plans, their influence was so great that he, on his part, did not venture to take decisive measures against them, and sometimes even found it necessary to give way.”[334]

These are the Hypocrites whom Mu?ammad describes in the following verses of the Koran:--

THE SuRA OF THE HEIFER (II).

(7) And there are those among men who say, 'We believe in G.o.d and in the Last Day'; but they do not believe.

(8) They would deceive G.o.d and those who do believe; but they deceive only themselves and they do not perceive.

(9) In their hearts is a sickness, and G.o.d has made them still more sick, and for them is grievous woe because they lied.[335]

Their leader, 'Abdullah b. Ubayy, an able man but of weak character, was no match for Mu?ammad, whom he and his partisans only irritated, without ever becoming really dangerous.

[Sidenote: The Jews.]

The Jews, on the other hand, gave the Prophet serious trouble. At first he cherished high hopes that they would accept the new Revelation which he brought to them, and which he maintained to be the original Word of G.o.d as it was formerly revealed to Abraham and Moses; but when the Jews, perceiving the absurdity of this idea, plied him with all sorts of questions and made merry over his ignorance, Mu?ammad, keenly alive to the damaging effect of the criticism to which he had exposed himself, turned upon his tormentors, and roundly accused them of having falsified and corrupted their Holy Books. Henceforth he pursued them with a deadly hatred against which their political disunion rendered them helpless. A few sought refuge in Islam; the rest were either slaughtered or driven into exile.

It is impossible to detail here the successive steps by which Mu?ammad in the course of a few years overcame all opposition and established the supremacy of Islam from one end of Arabia to the other. I shall notice the outstanding events very briefly in order to make room for matters which are more nearly connected with the subject of this History.

[Sidenote: Beginnings of the Moslem State.]

Mu?ammad's first care was to reconcile the desperate factions within the city and to introduce law and order among the heterogeneous elements which have been described. ”He drew up in writing a charter between the Emigrants and the Helpers, in which charter he embodied a covenant with the Jews, confirming them in the exercise of their religion and in the possession of their properties, imposing upon them certain obligations, and granting to them certain rights.”[336] This remarkable doc.u.ment is extant in Ibn Hisham's _Biography of Mu?ammad_, pp. 341-344. Its contents have been a.n.a.lysed in masterly fas.h.i.+on by Wellhausen,[337] who observes with justice that it was no solemn covenant, accepted and duly ratified by representatives of the parties concerned, but merely a decree of Mu?ammad based upon conditions already existing which had developed since his arrival in Medina. At the same time no one can study it without being impressed by the political genius of its author.

Ostensibly a cautious and tactful reform, it was in reality a revolution. Mu?ammad durst not strike openly at the independence of the tribes, but he destroyed it, in effect, by s.h.i.+fting the centre of power from the tribe to the community; and although the community included Jews and pagans as well as Moslems, he fully recognised, what his opponents failed to foresee, that the Moslems were the active, and must soon be the predominant, partners in the newly founded State.

[Sidenote: Battle of Badr, January, 624 A.D.]

[Sidenote: Battle of U?ud, 625 A.D.]

[Sidenote: Submission of Mecca, 630 A.D.]

All was now ripe for the inevitable struggle with the Quraysh, and G.o.d revealed to His Apostle several verses of the Koran in which the Faithful are commanded to wage a Holy War against them: ”_Permission is given to those who fight because they have been wronged,--and verily G.o.d to help them has the might,--who have been driven forth from their homes undeservedly, only for that they said, 'Our Lord is G.o.d'_” (xxii, 40-41). ”_Kill them wherever ye find them, and drive them out from whence they drive you out_” (ii, 187). ”_Fight them that there be no sedition and that the religion may be G.o.d's_” (ii, 189). In January, 624 A.D., the Moslems, some three hundred strong, won a glorious victory at Badr over a greatly superior force which had marched out from Mecca to relieve a rich caravan that Mu?ammad threatened to cut off. The Quraysh fought bravely, but were borne down by the irresistible onset of men who had learned discipline in the mosque and looked upon death as a sure pa.s.sport to Paradise. Of the Moslems only fourteen fell; the Quraysh lost forty-nine killed and about the same number of prisoners. But the importance of Mu?ammad's success cannot be measured by the material damage which he inflicted. Considering the momentous issues involved, we must allow that Badr, like Marathon, is one of the greatest and most memorable battles in all history. Here, at last, was the miracle which the Prophet's enemies demanded of him: ”_Ye have had a sign in the two parties who met; one party fighting in the way of G.o.d, the other misbelieving; these saw twice the same number as themselves to the eyesight, for G.o.d aids with His help those whom He pleases. Verily in that is a lesson for those who have perception_” (Kor. iii, 11). And again, ”_Ye slew them not, but G.o.d slew them_” (Kor. viii, 17). The victory of Badr turned all eyes upon Mu?ammad. However little the Arabs cared for his religion, they could not but respect the man who had humbled the lords of Mecca. He was now a power in the land--”Mu?ammad, King of the ?ijaz.”[338] In Medina his cause flourished mightily. The zealots were confirmed in their faith, the waverers convinced, the disaffected overawed. He sustained a serious, though temporary, check in the following year at U?ud, where a Moslem army was routed by the Quraysh under Abu Sufyan, but the victors were satisfied with having taken vengeance for Badr and made no attempt to follow up their advantage; while Mu?ammad, never resting on his laurels, never losing sight of the goal, proceeded with remorseless calculation to crush his adversaries one after the other, until in January, 630 A.D., the Meccans themselves, seeing the futility of further resistance, opened their gates to the Prophet and acknowledged the omnipotence of Allah. The submission of the Holy City left Mu?ammad without a rival in Arabia. His work was almost done. Deputations from the Bedouin tribes poured into Medina, offering allegiance to the conqueror of the Quraysh, and reluctantly subscribing to a religion in which they saw nothing so agreeable as the prospect of plundering its enemies.

[Sidenote: Death of Mu?ammad, 632 A.D.]

Mu?ammad died, after a brief illness, on the 8th of June, 632 A.D. He was succeeded as head of the Moslem community by his old friend and ever-loyal supporter, Abu Bakr, who thus became the first _Khalifa_, or Caliph. It only remains to take up our survey of the Koran, which we have carried down to the close of the Meccan period, and to indicate the character and contents of the Revelation during the subsequent decade.