Mahomet Founder of Islam

"And how many cities were mightier in strength than thy city that hath cast thee forth?"-The Kuran.

In Arabia nature cannot be ignored. Pastures and cornland, mountain slopes and quiet rivers may be admired, even reverenced; but they are things external to the gaze, and make no insistent demand upon the spirit for penetration of their mystery. Arabia, and Mecca as typical of Arabia, is a country governed by earth's primal forces. It has not yet emerged from the shadow of that early world, bare and chaotic, where a blinding sun pours down upon dusty mountain ridges, and nothing is temperate or subdued. It fosters a race of men, whose gods are relentless and inscrutable, revealing themselves seldom, and dwelling in a fierce splendour beyond earthly knowledge. To the spirit of a seeker for truth with senses alert to the outer world, this country speaks of boundless force, and impels into activity under the spur of conviction; by its very desolation it sets its ineradicable mark upon the creed built up within it.

Mahomet spent forty years in the city of Mecca, watching its temple services with his grandfather, taking part in its mercantile life, learning something of Christian and Jewish doctrine through the varied multitudes that thronged its public places. In the desert beyond the city boundaries he wandered, searching for inspiration, waiting dumbly in the darkness until the angel Gabriel descended with rush of wings through the brightness of heaven, commanding:

"Cry aloud, in the name of the Lord who created thee. O, thou enwrapped in thy mantle, arise and warn!"

Mecca lies in a stony valley midway between Yemen, "the Blessed," and Syria, in the midst of the western coast-chain of Arabia, which slopes gradually towards the Red Sea. The height of Abu Kobeis overlooks the eastern quarter of the town, whence hills of granite stretch to the holy places, Mina and Arafat, enclosed by the ramparts of the Jebel Kora range. Beyond these mountains to the south lies Taif, with its glory of gardens and fruit-trees. But the luxuriance of Taif finds no counterpart on the western side. Mecca is barren and treeless; its sandy stretches only broken here and there by low hills of quartz or gneiss, scrub-covered and dusty. The sun beats upon the shelterless town until it becomes a great cauldron within its amphitheatre of hills. During the Greater Pilgrimage the cauldron seethes with heat and humanity, and surges over into Mina and Arafat. In the daytime Mecca is limitless heat and noise, but under the stars it has all the magic of a dream-city in a country of wide horizons.

The shadow of its ancient prosperity, when it was the centre of the caravan trade from Yemen to Syria, still hung about it in the years immediately before the birth of Mahomet, and the legends concerning the founding of the city lingered in the native mind. Hagar, in her terrible journey through the desert, reached Mecca and laid her son in the midst of the valley to go on the hopeless quest for water. The child kicked the ground in torment, and God was merciful, so that from his heel marks arose a spring of clear water-the well Zemzem, hallowed ever after by Meccans. In this desolate place part of the Amalekites and tribes from Yemen settled; the child Ishmael grew up amongst them and founded his race by marrying a daughter of the chief. Abraham visited him, and under his guidance the native temple of the Kaaba was built and dedicated to the true God, but afterwards desecrated by the worship of idols within it.

Such are the legends surrounding the foundation of Mecca and of the Kaaba, of which, as of the legends concerning the early days of Rome, it may be said that they are chiefly interesting as throwing light upon the character of the race which produced them. In the case of Mecca they were mainly the result of an unconscious desire to associate the city as far as possible with the most renowned heroes of old time, and also to conciliate the Jewish element within Arabia, now firmly planted at Medina, Kheibar, and some of the adjoining territory, by insisting on a Jewish origin for their holy of holies, and as soon as Abraham and Ishmael were established as fathers of the race, legends concerning them were in perpetual creation.

The Kaaba thus reputed to be the work of Abraham bears evidence of an antiquity so remote that its beginnings will be forever lost to us. From very early times it was a goal of pilgrimage for all Arabia, because of the position of Mecca upon the chief trade route, and united in its ceremonies the native worship of the sun and stars, idols and misshapen stones. The Black Stone, the kissing of which formed the chief ceremonial, is a relic of the rites practised by the stone-worshippers of old; while the seven circuits of the Kaaba, obligatory on all pilgrims, are probably a symbol of the courses of the planets. Arab divinities, such as Alilat and Uzza, were associated with the Kaaba before any records are available, and at the time of Mahomet, idolatry mingled with various rites still held sway among the Meccans, though the leaven of Jewish tradition was of great help to him in the establishment of the monotheistic idea. At Mahomet's birth the Kaaba consisted of a small roofless house, with the Black Stone imbedded in its wall. Near it lay the well Zemzem, and the reputed grave of Ishmael. The Holy Place of Arabia held thus within itself traces of a purer faith, that were to be discovered and filled in by Mahomet, until the Kaaba became the goal of thousands, the recipient of the devotion and longings of that mighty host of Muslim who went forth to subdue the world. Mahomet's ancestors had for some time held a high position in the city. He came of the race of Hashim, whose privilege it was to give service to the pilgrims coming to worship at the Kaaba. The Hashim were renowned for generosity, and Mahomet's grandfather, Abd al Muttalib, was revered by the Kureisch, inhabitants of Mecca, as a just and honourable man, who had greatly increased their prosperity by his rediscovery of the holy well.

Its healing waters had been choked by the accumulations of years, so that even the knowledge of its site was lost, when an angel appeared to Abd al Muttalib, as he slept at the gate of the temple, saying:

"Dig up that which is pure!"

Three times the command fell on uncomprehending ears, until the angel revealed to the sleeper where the precious water might be found. And as he dug, the well burst forth once more, and behold within its deeps lay two golden gazelles, with weapons, the treasure of former kings. And there was strife among the Kureisch for the possession of these riches, until they were forced to draw lots. So the treasure fell to Abd al Muttalib, who melted the weapons to make a door for the Kaaba, and set up the golden gazelles within it.

Abd al Muttalib figures very prominently in the early legends concerning Mahomet, because he was sole guardian of the Prophet during very early childhood. These legends are mainly later accretions, but the kernel of truth within them is not difficult to discover. Like all forerunners of the great teachers, he stands in communion with heavenly messengers, the symbol of his purity of heart. He is humble, compassionate, and devout, living continually in the presence of his god-a fitting guardian for the renewer of the faith of his nation. Most significant of the legends is the story of his vow to sacrifice a son if ten were born to him, and of the choice of Abdullah, Mahomet's father, and the repeated staying of the father's hand, so that the sacrifice could not be accomplished until is son's life was bought with the blood of a hundred camels. This and all allied legends are fruit of a desire to magnify the divine authority of Mahomet's mission by dwelling on the intervention of a higher power in the disposal of his fate.

Of Abd al Muttalib's ten sons, Abdallah was the most handsome in form and stature, so that the fame of his beauty spread into the harems of the city, and many women coveted him in their hearts. But he, after his father had sacrificed the camels in his stead, went straightway to the house of Amina, a maiden well-born and lovely, and remained there to complete his nuptials with her. Then, after some weeks, he departed to Gaza for the exchange of merchandise, but, returning, was overtaken by sickness and died at Medina.

Amina, left thus desolate, sought the house of Abd al Muttalib, where she stayed until her child was born. Visions of his future greatness were vouchsafed to her before his birth by an angel, who told her the name he was to bear, and his destiny as Prophet of his people. Long before the child's eyes opened to the light, a brightness surrounded his mother, so that by it might be seen the far-off towers of the castles in Syrian Bostra. A tenderness hangs over the story of Mahomet's birth, akin to that immortal beauty surrounding the coming of Christ. We have faint glimpses of Amina, in the dignity of her sorrow, waiting for the birth of her son, and in the house of Mecca's leading citizen, hearing around her not alone the celestial voices of her spirit-comforters, but also rumours of earthly strife and the threatenings of strange armies from the south.

At Sana, capital of Yemen, ruled Abraha, king of the southern province. He built a vast temple within its walls, and purposed to make Sana the pilgrim-city for all Arabia. But the old custom still clove to Mecca, and finding he could in nowise coerce the people into forsaking the Kaaba, he determined to invade Mecca itself and to destroy the rival place of worship. So he gathered together a great army, which numbered amongst it an elephant, a fearful sight to the Meccans, who had never seen so great an animal. With this force he marched upon Mecca, and was about to enter the city after fruitless attempts by Abd al Muttalib to obtain quarter, when God sent down a scourge of sickness upon his army and he was forced to retreat, returning miserably to Sana with a remnant of his men. But so much had the presence of the elephant alarmed the Meccans that the year (A.D. 570) was called ever after "The Year of the Elephant," and in August thereof Mahomet was born.

Then Amina sent for Abd al Muttalib and told him the marvels she had seen and heard, and his grandfather took the child and presented him in the Kaaba, after the manner of the Jews, and gave him the name Mahomet (the Praised One), according as the angel had commanded Amina.

The countless legends surrounding Mahomet's birth, even to the physical marvel that accompanied it, cannot be set aside as utterly worthless. They serve to show the temper of the nation producing them, deeply imaginative and incoherently poetical, and they indicate the weight of the personality to which they cling. All the devotion of the East informs them; but since the spirit that caused them to be is in its essence one of relentless activity, neither contemplative nor mystic, they lack that subtle sweetness that belongs to the Buddhist and Christian histories, and dwell rather within the region of the marvellous than of the spiritually symbolic. Neither Mahomet's father nor mother are known to us in any detail; they are merely the passive instruments of Mahomet's prophetic mission. His real parents are his grandfather and his uncle Abu Talib; but more than these, the desert that nurtured him, physically and mentally, that bounded his horizon throughout his life and impressed its mighty mysteries upon his unconscious childhood and his eager, imaginative youth.

"Paradise lies at the feet of mothers."-MAHOMET.

No more beautiful and tender legends cluster round Mahomet than those which grace his life in the desert under the loving care of his foster-mother Hailima. She was a woman of the tribe of Beni Sa'ad, who for generations had roamed the desert, tent-dwellers, who visited cities but rarely, and kept about them the remoteness and freedom of their adventurous life beneath the sun and stars.

About the time of Mahomet's birth a famine fell upon the Beni Sa'ad, which left nothing of all their stores, and the women of the tribe journeyed,[28] weary and stricken with hunger, into the city of Mecca that they might obtain foster-children whose parents would give them money and blessings if they could but get their little ones taken away from that unhealthy place. Among these was Hailima, who, according to tradition, has left behind her the narrative of that dreadful journey across the desert with her husband and her child, and with only an ass and a she-camel for transport. Famine oppressed them sorely, together with the heat of desert suns, until there was no sustenance for any living creature; then, faint and travel-weary, they reached the city and began their quest.

Mahomet was offered to every woman of the tribe, but they rejected him as he had no father, and there was little hope of much payment from the mothers of these children. Those of rich parents were eagerly spoken for, but no one would care for the little fatherless child. And it happened that Hailima also was unsuccessful in her search, and was like to have returned to her people disconsolate, but when she saw Mahomet she bethought herself and said to her husband:

"By the God of my fathers, I will not go back to my companions without foster-child. I will take this orphan."

And her husband replied: "It cannot harm thee to do this, and if thou takest him it may be that through him God will bless us."

So Hailima took him, and she relates how good fortune attended her from that day. Her camels gave abundant milk during the homeward journey, and in the unfruitful land of the Beni Sa'ad her cattle were always fattest and yielded most milk, until her neighbours besought her to allow them to pasture their cattle with hers. But, adds the chronicler naively, in spite of this their cattle returned to them thin and yielding little, while Hailima's waxed fat and fruitful. These legends are the translation into poetic fact of the peace and love surrounding Mahomet during the five years he spent with Hailima; for in all primitive communities every experience must pass through transmutation into the definite and tangible and be given a local habitation and a name.

When Mahomet was two years old and the time had come to restore him to his mother, Hailima took him back to Mecca; but his mother gave him to her again because he had thriven so well under desert skies, and she feared the stifling air of Mecca for her only son. So Hailima returned with him and brought him up as one of her children until he was five, when the first signs of his nervous, highly-strung nature showed themselves in a kind of epileptic fit. The Arabians, unskilled as they were in any medical science, attributed manifestations of this kind to evil spirits, and it is not surprising that we find Hailima bringing him back to his grandfather in great alarm. So ended his fostering by the desert and by Hailima.

Of these five years spent among the Beni Sa'ad chroniclers have spoken in much detail, but their confused accounts are so interwoven with legend that it is impossible to re-create events, and we can only obtain a general idea of his life as a tiny child among the children of the tribe, sharing their fortunes, playing and quarrelling with them, and at moments, when the spirit seemed to advance beyond its dwelling-place, gazing wide-eyed upon the limitless desert under the blaze of sun or below the velvet dark, with swift, half-conscious questionings uttering the universal why and how [31] of childhood. Legend regards even this early time as one of preparation for his mission, and there are stories of the coming of two men clothed in white and shining garments, who ripped open his body, took out his heart, and having purged it of all unrighteousness, returned it, symbolically cleansing him of sin that he might forward the work of God. It was an imaginative rightness that decreed that Mahomet's most impressionable years should be spent in the great desert, whose twin influences of fierceness and fatalism he felt throughout his life, and which finally became the key-notes of his worship of Allah.

Hailima, convinced that her foster-son was possessed by evil spirits, resolved to return him to Abd al Muttalib, but as she journeyed through Upper Mecca, the child wandered away and was lost for a time. Hailima hurried, much agitated, to his grandfather, who immediately sent his sons to search, and after a short time they returned with the boy, unharmed and unfrightened by his adventure. The legend-it is quite a late accretion-is interesting, as showing an acquaintance with, and a parallelism to, the story of the losing of Jesus among the Passover crowds, and the search for Him by His kindred. Mahomet was at last lodged with his mother, who indignantly explained to Hailima the real meaning of his malady, and spoke of his future glory as manifested to her by the light that enfolded her before his birth. Not long after, Amina decided to visit her [32] husband's tomb at Medina, and thither Mahomet accompanied her, travelling through the rocky, desolate valleys and hills that separate the two, with just his mother and a slave girl.

Mahomet was too young to remember much about the journey to Medina, except that it was hot and that he was often tired, and since his father was but a name to him, the visit to his tomb faded altogether from his mind. But on the homeward journey a calamity overtook him which he remembered all his life. Amina, weakened by journeying and much sorrow, and perhaps feeling her desire for life forsake her after the fulfillment of her pilgrimage, sickened and died at Abwa, and Mahomet and the slave girl continued their mournful way alone.

Amina is drawn by tradition in very vague outline, and Mahomet's memory of her as given in the Kuran does not throw so much light upon the woman herself as upon her child's devotion and affectionate memory of the mother he lost almost before he knew her. His grief for her was very real; she remained continually in his thoughts, and in after years he paid tribute at her tomb to her tenderness and love for him.

"This is the grave of my mother ... the Lord hath permitted me to visit it.... I called my mother to remembrance, and the tender memory of her overcame me and I wept."

The sensitive, over-nervous child, left thus solitary, away from all his kindred, must have brought back with him to Mecca confused but vivid impressions of the long journey and of the catastrophe which lay at the end of it. The uncertainty of his future, and the joys of gaining at last a foster-father in Abd al Muttalib, finds reflection in the Kuran in one little burst of praise to God: "Did He not find thee an orphan, and furnish thee with a refuge?"

Life for two years as the foster-child of Abd al Muttalib, the venerable, much honoured chief of the house of Hashim, passed very pleasantly for Mahomet. He was the darling of his grandfather's last years of life; for, perhaps having pity on his defencelessness, perhaps divining with that prescience which often marks old age, something of the revelation this child was to be to his countrymen, he protected him from the harshness of his uncles. A rug used to be placed in the shadow of the Kaaba, and there the aged ruler rested during the heat of the day, and his sons sat around him at respectful distance, listening to his words. But the child Mahomet, who loved his grandfather, ran fearlessly up, and would have seated himself by Abd al Muttalib's side. Then the sons sought to punish him for his lack of reverence, but their father prevented them:

"Leave the child in peace. By the God of my fathers, I swear he will one day be a mighty prophet."

So Mahomet remained in close attendance upon the old man, until he died in the eighth year after the Year of the Elephant, and there was mourning for him in the houses of his sons.

When Abd al Muttalib knew his end was near he sent for his daughters, and bade them make lamentation over him. We possess traditional accounts of these funeral songs; they are representative of the wild rhetorical eloquence of the poetry of the day. They lose immensely in translation, and even in reading with the eye instead of hearing, for they were never meant to find immortality in the written words, but in the speech of men.

"When in the night season a voice of loud lament proclaimed the sorrowful tidings I wept, so that the tears ran down my face like pearls. I wept for a noble man, greater than all others, for Sheibar, the generous, endowed with virtues; for my beloved father, the inheritor of all good things, for the man faithful in his own house, who never shrank from combat, who stood fast and needed not a prop, mighty, well-favoured, rich in gifts. If a man could live for ever by reason of his noble nature-but to none is this lot vouchsafed-he would remain untouched of death because of his fair fame and his good deeds."

The songs furnish ample evidence as to the high position which Abd al Muttalib held among the Kureisch. His death was a great loss to his nation, but it was a greater calamity to his little foster-child, for it brought him from ease and riches to comparative poverty and obscurity with his uncle, Abu Talib. None of Abd al Muttalib's sons inherited the nature of their father, and with his death the greatness of the house of Hashim diminished, until it gave place to the Omeyya branch, with Harb at its head. The offices at Mecca were seized by the Omeyya, and to the descendants of Abd al Muttalib there remained but the privilege of caring for the well Zemzem, and of giving its water for the refreshment of pilgrims. Only two of his sons, except Abu Talib, who earns renown chiefly as the guardian of Mahomet, attain anything like prominence. Hamza was converted at the beginning of Mahomet's mission, and continued his helper and warrior until he died in battle for Islam; Abu Lahab (the flame) opposed Mahomet's teaching with a vehemence that earned him one of the fiercest denunciations in the early, passionate Suras of the Kuran:

"Blasted be the hands of Abu Lahab; let himself perish;

His wealth and his gains shall avail him not;

Burned shall he be with the fiery flame,

His wife shall be laden with firewood-

On her neck a rope of palm fibre."

Mahomet, bereft a second time of one he loved and on whom he depended, passed into the care of his uncle, Abu Talib. This was a man of no great force of character, well-disposed and kindly, but of straitened means, and lacking in the qualities that secure success. Later, he seems to have attained a more important position, mainly, one would imagine, through the lion courage and unfaltering faith in the Prophet of his son, the mighty warrior Ali, of whom it is written, "Mahomet is the City of Knowledge, and Ali is the Gate thereof." But although Abu Talib was sufficiently strong to withstand the popular fury of the Kureisch against Mahomet, and to protect him for a time on the grounds of kinship, he never finally decided upon which side he would take his stand. Had he been a far-seeing, imaginative man, able to calculate even a little the force that had entered into Arabian polity, the history of the foundation of Islam would have been continued, with Mecca as its base, and have probably resolved itself into the war of two factions within the city, wherein the new faith, being bound to the more powerful political party, would have had a speedier conquest.

With Abu Talib Mahomet spent the rest of his childhood and youth-quiet years, except for a journey to Syria, and his insignificant part in the war against the Hawazin, a desert tribe that engaged the Kureisch for some time. In Abu Talib's house there was none of the ease that had surrounded him with Abd al Muttalib. But Mahomet was naturally an affectionate child, and was equally attached to his uncle as he had been to his grandfather.

Two years later Abu Talib set out on a mercantile journey, and was minded to leave his small foster-child behind him, but Mahomet came to him as he sat on his camel equipped for his journey, and clinging to him passionately implored his uncle not to go without him. Abu Talib could not resist his pleading, and so Mahomet accompanied him on that magical journey through the desert, so glorious yet awesome to an imaginative child, Bostra was the principal city of exchange for merchandise circulating between Yemen, Northern Arabia, and the cities of Upper Palestine, and Mahomet must thus have travelled on the caravan route through the heart of Syria, past Jerash, Ammon, and the site of the fated Cities of the Plain. In Syria, too, he first encountered the Christian faith, and planted those remembrances that were to be revived and strengthened upon his second journey through that wonderful land-in religion, and in a lesser degree in polity, a law unto itself, forging out its own history apart from the main stream of Christian life and thought.

Legends concerning this journey are rife, and all emphasise the influence Christianity had upon his mind, and also the ready recognition of his coming greatness by all those Christians who saw him. On the homeward journey the monk Bahirah is fabled to have met the party and to have bidden them to a feast. When he saw the child was not among them he was wroth, and commanded his guests to bring "every man of the company." He interrogated Mahomet and Abu Talib concerning the parentage of the boy, and we have here the first traditional record of Mahomet's speech.

"Ask what thou wilt," he said to Bahirah, "and I will make answer."

So Bahirah questioned him as to the signs that had been vouchsafed him, and looking between his shoulders found the seal of the prophetic office, a mole covered with hair. Then Bahirah knew this was he who was foretold, and counselled Abu Talib to take him to his native land, and to beware [39] of the Jews, for he would one day attain high honour. At this time Mahomet was little more than a child, but although few thoughts of God or of human destiny can have crossed his mind, he retained a vivid impression of the storied places through which he passed-Jerash, Ammon, the valley of Hejr, and saw in imagination the mighty stream of the Tigris, the ruinous cities, and Palmyra with its golden pillars fronting the sun. The tribes which the caravan encountered were rich in legend and myth, and their influence, together with the more subtle spell of the desert vastness, wrought in him that fervour of spirit, a leaping, troubled flame, which found mortal expression in the poetry of the early part of the Kuran, where the vision of God's majesty compels the gazer into speech that sweeps from his mind in a stream of fire:

"By the Sun and his noonday brightness,

By the Moon when she followeth him,

By Day when it revealeth his glory,

By the night when it enshroudeth him,

By the Heaven and Him who built it,

By the Earth and Him who spread it forth,

By the Soul and Him who balanced it,

Breathed into its good, yea, and its evil-

Verily man's lot is cast amid destruction

Save those who believe and deal justly,

And enjoin upon each other steadfastness and truth."

"God hath treasuries beneath the throne, the keys whereof are the tongues of poets."-MAHOMET.

The Arabian calendar has always been in a distinctive manner subject to the religion of the people. Before Mahomet imposed his faith upon Mecca, there were four sacred months following each other, in which no war might be waged. For four months, therefore, the tumultuous Arab spirit was restrained from that most precious to it; pilgrimages to holy places were undertaken, and there was a little leisure for the cultivation of art and learning.

The Greater Pilgrimage to Mecca, comprising the sevenfold circuit of the Kaaba and the kissing of the sacred Black Stone, and culminating in a procession to the holy places of Mina and Arafat, could only be undertaken in Dzul-Higg, corresponding in the time of Mahomet to our March. The month preceding, Dzul-Cada, was occupied in a kind of preparation and rejoicing, which took the form of a fair at Ocatz, three days' journey east of Mecca, when representatives of all the surrounding nations used to assemble to exchange merchandise, to take part in the games, to listen to the contests in poetry and rhetoric, and sometimes to be roused into sinister excitement at the proximity of so many tribes differing from them in nationality, and often in their religion and moral code.

Into this vast concourse came Mahomet, a lad of fifteen, eager to see, hear, and know. He was present at the poetic contests, and caught from the protagonists a reflection of their vivid, fitful eloquence, with its ceaseless undercurrent of monotony.

Romance, in so far as it represents the love of the strange, is a product of the West. There is a rigidity in the Eastern mind that does not allow of much change or seeking after new things. Wild and beautiful as this poetry of Arabia is, its themes and their manner of treatment seldom vary; as the desert is changeless in contour, filled with a brilliant sameness, whirling at times into sombre fury and as suddenly subsiding, so is the literature which it fostered. The monotony is expressed in a reiteration of subject, barbarous to the intellect of the West; endurance is born of that monotony, and strength, and the acquiescence in things as they are, but not the discovery and development of ideas. Arabia does not flash forth a new presentment of beauty, following the vivid apprehension of some lovely form, but broods over it in a kind of slumbering enthusiasm that mounts at last into a glory of metaphor, drowning the subject in intensest light. The rival poets assembled to discover who could turn the deftest phrases in satire of the opposing tribe, or extol most eloquently the bravery and skill of his own people, the beauty and modesty of their women, and from these wild outpourings Mahomet learnt to clothe his thoughts in that splendid garment whose jewels illumine the earlier part of the Kuran.

Perhaps more important than the poetical contests was the religious aspect of the fair at Ocatz. Here were gathered Jew, Christian, and Arabian worshipper of many gods, in a vast hostile confusion. Mahomet was familiar with Jewish cosmogony from his knowledge of their faith within his own land, and he had heard dimly of the Christian principles during his Syrian journey. But here, though both Jews and Christians claimed to be worshippers of a single God, and although the Jews took for their protector Abraham, the mighty founder of Mahomet's own city, yet there was nothing between all the sects but fruitless strife. He saw the Jews looking disdainfully upon the Christian dogs, and the Christians firmly convinced that an irrevocable doom would shortly descend upon every Jew. Both united in condemning to eternal wrath the idol-worshippers of the Kaaba. It was a fiercely outspoken, remorseless enmity that he saw around him, and the impotence born of distrust he saw also.

It is not possible that any hint of his future mission enlightened him as to the part he was to play in eliminating this conflict, but may it not be that there was sown in his mind a seed of thought concerning the uselessness of all this strife of religions, and the limitless power that might accrue to his nation if it could but be persuaded to become united in allegiance to the one true God? For even at that early stage Mahomet, with the examples of Judaism and Christianity before him, must have rejected, even if unthinkingly, the polytheistic idea.

The poetic and warlike contests partook of the fiery earnestness characteristic of the combatants, and it was seldom that the fair at Ocatz passed by without some hostile demonstration. The greatest rivals were the Kureisch and the Hawazin, a tribe dwelling between Mecca and Taif.

The Hawazin were tumultuous and unruly, and the Kureisch ever ready to rouse their hostility by numerous small slights and taunts. We read traditionally of an insult by some Kureisch youths towards a girl of the Hawazin; this incident was closed peaceably, but some years later the Kureisch (always the aggressive party because of their stronghold in Mecca) committed an outrage that could not be passed over. As the fair progressed, news came of the murder of a Hawazin, chief of a caravan, and the seizure of his treasure by an ally of the Kureisch. That tribe, knowing themselves at a disadvantage and fearing vengeance, fled back to Mecca. The Hawazin pursued them remorselessly to the borders of the sacred precincts, beyond which it was sacrilegious to wage war. Some traditions say they followed their foe undaunted by fear of divine wrath, and thus incurred a double disgrace of having fought in the sacred month and within the sacred territory. But their pursuit cannot have lasted long, because we find them challenging the Kureisch to battle at the same time the next year. All Mahomet's uncles took part in the Sacrilegious War that followed, and stirring times continued for Mahomet until a truce was made after four years. He attended his uncles in warfare, and we hear of his collecting the enemy's arrows that fell harmlessly into their lines, in order to reinforce the Kureisch ammunition.

A vivid picture by the hand of tradition is this period in Mahomet's life, for he was between eighteen and nineteen, just at the age when fighting would appeal to his wild, yet determined nature. He must have learned resource and some of the stratagem of war from this attendance upon warriors, if he did not become filled with much physical daring, never one of his characteristics, nor, indeed, of any man of his nervous temperament, and his imagination was certainly kindled by the spectacle of the horrors and triumphs of strife. Several battles were fought with varying success, until at the end of about five years' fighting both sides were weary and a truce was called. It was found that twenty more Hawazin had been killed than Kureisch, and according to the simple yet equitable custom of the time, a like number of hostages was given to the Hawazin that there might not be blood feud between them.

The Kureisch passed as suddenly into peace as they had plunged into strife. After the Sacrilegious War, a period of prosperity began for the city of Mecca. It was wealthy enough to support its population, and trade flourished with the marts of Bostra, Damascus, and Northern Syria. Its political condition had never been very stable, and it seems to have preserved during the Omeyyad ascendancy the same loose but roughly effective organisation that it possessed under the Hashim branch. The intellect that could see the potentialities of such a polity, once it could be knit together by some common bond, had not arisen; but the scene was prepared for his coming, and we have to think of the Mecca of that time as offering untold suggestions for its religious, and later for its political, salvation to a mind anxious to produce, but uncertain as yet of its medium.

Mahomet returned with Abu Talib, and passed with him into obscurity of a poverty not too burdensome, and to a quiet, somewhat reflective household. He lived under the spell of that tranquillity until he was twenty-five, and of this time there is not much notice in the traditions, but its contemplation is revealed to us in the earlier chapters of the Kuran. At one time Mahomet acted as shepherd upon the Meccan hills-low, rocky ranges covered with a dull scrub, and open to the limitless vaults of sky. Here, whether under sun or stars, he learned that love and awe of Nature that throbs through the early chapters of the Kuran like a deep organ note of praise, dominated almost always with fear.

"Consider the Heaven-with His Hand has He built it up, and given it its vastness-and the Earth has He stretched out like a carpet, smoothly has He spread it forth! Verily, God is the sole sustainer, possessed of might, the unshaken! Fly then to God."

Indeed, a haunting terror broods over all those souls who know the desert, and this fear translated into action becomes fierce and terrible deeds, and into the world of the spirit, angry dogmatic commands. It is the result of the knowledge that to those who stray from the well-known desert track comes death; equally certain is the destruction of the soul for those who transgress against the law of the Ruler of the earth. The God of the early Kuran is the spiritual representative of the forces surrounding Mahomet, whether of Nature or government. The country around Mecca conveys one central thought to one who meditates-the sense of power, not the might of one kindly and familiar, but the unapproachable sovereignty of one alien and remote, a dweller in far-off places, who nevertheless fills the earth with his dominion. Mahomet passing by, as he did, the gaieties and temptations of youth, had his mind alert for the influences of this Nature, full of awful power, and for the contemplation of life and the Universe around him.

In common with many enthusiasts and men of action, certain sides of his nature, especially the sexual and the practical, awoke late, and were preceded by a reflective period wherein the poet held full sway. He never desired the companionship of those of his own age and their rather debased pleasures. There are legends of his being miraculously preserved from the corruption of the youthful vices of Mecca, but the more probable reason for his shunning them is that they made no appeal to his desires. Some minds and tastes unfold by imperceptible degrees-flowers that attain fruition by the shedding of their earlier petals. Mahomet was of this nature. At this time the poet was paramount in his mental activities He loved silence and solitude, so that he might use those imaginative and contemplative gifts of which he felt himself to possess so large a share.

It is not possible at this distance of time to attempt to estimate the importance of this period in Mahomet's mental development. There are not sufficient data to enable history to fill in any detailed sketch, but the outlines may be safely indicated by the help of his later life and the testimony of that commentary upon his feelings and actions, the Kuran. His nature now seems to be in a pause of expectation, whose vain urgency lasted until he became convinced of his prophetic mission. He must have been at this time the seeker, whose youth, if not his very eagerness, prevented his attaining what he sought. He was earnest and sincere, grave beyond his years, and so gained from his fellows the respect always meted out, in an essentially religion-loving community, to any who give promise of future "inspiration," before its actuality has rendered him too uncomfortable a citizen. He received from his comrades the title of Al-Amin (the Faithful), and continued his life apart from his kind, performing his duties well, but still remaining aloof from others as one not of their world. From his sojourn in the mountains came the inspiration that created the poetry of the Kuran and the reflective interest in what he knew of his world and its religion; both embryos, but especially the latter, germinated in his mind until they emerged into full consciousness and became his fire of religious conviction, and his zeal for the foundation and glory of Islam.