Part 23 (1/2)

”'Tis time, O ye Sellers, for one who hath sold himself To G.o.d, that he should arise and saddle amain.

Fools! in the land of miscreants will ye abide, To be hunted down, every man of you, and to be slain?

O would that I were among you, armed in mail, On the back of my stout-ribbed galloping war-horse again!

And would that I were among you, fighting your foes, That me, first of all, they might give death's beaker to drain!

It grieves me sore that ye are startled and chased Like beasts, while I cannot draw on the wretches profane My sword, nor see them scattered by n.o.ble knights Who never yield an inch of the ground they gain, But where the struggle is hottest, with keen blades hew Their strenuous way and deem 'twere base to refrain.

Ay, it grieves me sore that ye are oppressed and wronged, While I must drag in anguish a captive's chain.”

[Sidenote: Qa?ari b. al-Fuja'a.]

Qa?ari b. al-Fuja'a, the intrepid Kharijite leader who routed army after army sent against him by ?ajjaj, sang almost as well as he fought. The verses rendered below are included in the _?amasa_[395]

and cited by Ibn Khallikan, who declares that they would make a brave man of the greatest coward in the world. ”I know of nothing on the subject to be compared with them; they could only have proceeded from a spirit that scorned disgrace and from a truly Arabian sentiment of valour.”[396]

”I say to my soul dismayed-- 'Courage! Thou canst not achieve, With praying, an hour of life Beyond the appointed term.

Then courage on death's dark field, Courage! Impossible 'tis To live for ever and aye.

Life is no hero's robe Of honour: the dastard vile Also doffs it at last.'”

[Sidenote: The s.h.i.+'ites.]

[Sidenote: The theory of Divine Right.]

The murder of 'Uthman broke the Moslem community, which had hitherto been undivided, into two _s.h.i.+'as_, or parties--one for 'Ali and the other for Mu'awiya. When the latter became Caliph he was no longer a party leader, but head of the State, and his _s.h.i.+'a_ ceased to exist.

Henceforth 'the s.h.i.+'a' _par excellence_ was the party of 'Ali, which regarded the House of the Prophet as the legitimate heirs to the succession. Not content, however, with upholding 'Ali, as the worthiest of the Prophet's Companions and the duly elected Caliph, against his rival, Mu'awiya, the bolder spirits took up an idea, which emerged about this time, that the Caliphate belonged to 'Ali and his descendants by Divine right. Such is the distinctive doctrine of the s.h.i.+'ites to the present day. It is generally thought to have originated in Persia, where the Sasanian kings used to a.s.sume the t.i.tle of 'G.o.d' (Pahlavi _bagh_) and were looked upon as successive incarnations of the Divine majesty.

[Sidenote: Dozy's account of its origin.]

”Although the s.h.i.+'ites,” says Dozy, ”often found themselves under the direction of Arab leaders, who utilised them in order to gain some personal end, they were nevertheless a Persian sect at bottom; and it is precisely here that the difference most clearly showed itself between the Arab race, which loves liberty, and the Persian race, accustomed to slavish submission. For the Persians, the principle of electing the Prophet's successor was something unheard of and incomprehensible. The only principle which they recognised was that of inheritance, and since Mu?ammad left no sons, they thought that his son-in-law 'Ali should have succeeded him, and that the sovereignty was hereditary in his family. Consequently, all the Caliphs except 'Ali--_i.e._, Abu Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthman, as well as the Umayyads--were in their eyes usurpers to whom no obedience was due. The hatred which they felt for the Government and for Arab rule confirmed them in this opinion; at the same time they cast covetous looks on the wealth of their masters. Habituated, moreover, to see in their kings the descendants of the inferior divinities, they transferred this idolatrous veneration to 'Ali and his posterity. Absolute obedience to the Imam of 'Ali's House was in their eyes the most important duty; if that were fulfilled all the rest might be interpreted allegorically and violated without scruple. For them the Imam was everything; he was G.o.d made man. A servile submission accompanied by immorality was the basis of their system.”[397]

[Sidenote: The Saba'ites.]

[Sidenote: Doctrine of Ibn Saba.]

Now, the s.h.i.+'ite theory of Divine Right certainly harmonised with Persian ideas, but was it also of Persian origin? On the contrary, it seems first to have arisen among an obscure Arabian sect, the Saba'ites, whose founder, 'Abdullah b. Saba (properly, Saba'), was a native of ?an'a in Yemen, and is said to have been a Jew.[398] In 'Uthman's time he turned Moslem and became, apparently, a travelling missionary. ”He went from place to place,” says the historian, ”seeking to lead the Moslems into error.”[399] We hear of him in the ?ijaz, then in Ba?ra and Kufa, then in Syria. Finally he settled in Egypt, where he preached the doctrine of palingenesis (_raj'a_). ”It is strange indeed,” he exclaimed, ”that any one should believe in the return of Jesus (as Messias), and deny the return of Mu?ammad, which G.o.d has announced (Kor.

xxviii, 85).[400] Furthermore, there are a thousand Prophets, every one of whom has an executor (_wa?i_), and the executor of Mu?ammad is 'Ali.[401] Mu?ammad is the last of the Prophets, and 'Ali is the last of the executors.” Ibn Saba, therefore, regarded Abu Bakr, 'Umar, and 'Uthman as usurpers. He set on foot a widespread conspiracy in favour of 'Ali, and carried on a secret correspondence with the disaffected in various provinces of the Empire.[402] According to Shahrastani, he was banished by 'Ali for saying, ”Thou art thou” (_anta anta_), _i.e._, ”Thou art G.o.d.”[403] This refers to the doctrine taught by Ibn Saba and the extreme s.h.i.+'ites (_Ghulat_) who derive from him, that the Divine Spirit which dwells in every prophet and pa.s.ses successively from one to another was transfused, at Mu?ammad's death, into 'Ali, and from 'Ali into his descendants who succeeded him in the Imamate. The Saba'ites also held that the Imam might suffer a temporary occultation (_ghayba_), but that one day he would return and fill the earth with justice. They believed the millennium to be near at hand, so that the number of Imams was at first limited to four. Thus the poet Kuthayyir ( 723 A.D.) says:--

”Four complete are the Imams 'Ali and his three good sons, One was faithful and devout; One, until with waving flags Dwells on Mount Ra?wa, concealed: of Quraysh, the lords of Right: each of them a s.h.i.+ning light.

Karbala hid one from sight; his hors.e.m.e.n he shall lead to fight, honey he drinks and water bright.”[404]

[Sidenote: The Mahdi or Messiah.]

The Messianic idea is not peculiar to the s.h.i.+'ites, but was brought into Islam at an early period by Jewish and Christian converts, and soon established itself as a part of Mu?ammadan belief. Traditions ascribed to the Prophet began to circulate, declaring that the approach of the Last Judgment would be heralded by a time of tumult and confusion, by the return of Jesus, who would slay the Antichrist (_Dajjal_), and finally by the coming of the Mahdi, _i.e._, 'the G.o.d-guided one,' who would fill the earth with justice even as it was then filled with violence and iniquity. This expectation of a Deliverer descended from the Prophet runs through the whole history of the s.h.i.+'a. As we have seen, their supreme religious chiefs were the Imams of 'Ali's House, each of whom transmitted his authority to his successor. In the course of time disputes arose as to the succession. One sect acknowledged only seven legitimate Imams, while another carried the number to twelve. The last Imam of the 'Seveners' (_al-Sab'iyya_), who are commonly called Isma'ilis, was Mu?ammad b. Isma'il, and of the 'Twelvers'

(_al-Ithna-'ashariyya_) Mu?ammad b. al-?asan.[405] Both those personages vanished mysteriously about 770 and 870 A.D., and their respective followers, refusing to believe that they were dead, a.s.serted that their Imam had withdrawn himself for a season from mortal sight, but that he would surely return at last as the promised Mahdi. It would take a long while to enumerate all the pretenders and fanatics who have claimed this t.i.tle.[406] Two of them founded the Fa?imid and Almohade dynasties, which we shall mention elsewhere, but they generally died on the gibbet or the battle-field. The ideal which they, so to speak, incarnated did not perish with them. Mahdiism, the faith in a divinely appointed revolution which will sweep away the powers of evil and usher in a Golden Age of justice and truth such as the world has never known, is a present and inspiring fact which deserves to be well weighed by those who doubt the possibility of an Islamic Reformation.

[Sidenote: s.h.i.+'ite gatherings at Karbala.]

The s.h.i.+'a began as a political faction, but it could not remain so for any length of time, because in Islam politics always tend to take religious ground, just as the successful religious reformer invariably becomes a ruler. The Saba'ites furnished the s.h.i.+'ite movement with a theological basis; and the ma.s.sacre of ?usayn, followed by Mukhtar's rebellion, supplied the indispensable element of enthusiasm. Within a few years after the death of ?usayn his grave at Karbala was already a place of pilgrimage for the s.h.i.+'ites. When the 'Penitents'