THE HEGIRA (622 A.D.)

[1Sidenote: [622 A.D.]]

2But Mohammed, with his most faithful adherents Abu Bekr and Ali, remained in Mecca three months longer. Only when he was informed by a secret worshipper that the Koreish had determined to murder him, did he depart on his flight with Abu Bekr, both mounted on swift camels. Whilst the enemy was surrounding his house, the craft and fidelity of Ali, who occupied the prophet’s bed and assumed his garments, enabled him and his friend to flee secretly in the darkness of the night and conceal themselves in a cave. Next morning, when the Koreish discovered the deception, they set a price of a hundred camels on the head of the fugitive and sent in pursuit of him. But Mohammed’s destiny was not yet fulfilled.

3After having spent three days and nights in the cave of Mount Thaur, he succeeded in escaping with his companion by by-paths to Medina. With this flight, which was afterwards assigned to the 16th of July of the year 622 according to our reckoning, begins the Hegira, the era of the Mohammedans or Moslems (Mussulmans), _i.e._, the “submissive.” [Ali remained three days after his master had left. Considerable property had been entrusted to Mohammed for safe keeping; and it was Ali’s duty to restore this to its owners.]

4The people of Medina received Mohammed with joyous enthusiasm; his entrance into the town resembled that of a triumphant prince rather than a poor fugitive. Soon the rest of his friends and followers gathered round him, amongst them Ali whom the Koreish had allowed to go unharmed, Omar, with his beautiful daughter Hafsa, whom some time afterward the prophet included in the number of his wives, and Othman with his wife Rokayyah. When the last-named died in the following year, Mohammed gave his second daughter Um Kolthum in marriage to his faithful comrade. The case containing the inspired sayings of the _Koran_ was entrusted to the care of Hafsa.

5[Sidenote: [622-624 A.D.]]

6The prophet’s presence had the most beneficial results for Medina. The two tribes of the Khazraj and the Aus, who in former years had often engaged in bloody conflicts, were united in the new faith as the faithful “helpers” of God’s messenger, and in conjunction with the emigrants from Mecca (Mohajira) formed the kernel of the Moslems. At first Mohammed attempted to win over the numerous Jews of Medina to his cause, and for this reason paid attention in many respects to the Mosaic law; he continued the observance of the Sabbath, and made Jerusalem the Kibla, _i.e._, the holy place, towards which the faithful had to turn their faces when they prayed. But when the Jews refused to recognise him as the expected Messiah as they had formerly refused to recognise Jesus, but rather made the new prophet an object of their scorn, he once more turned to the old Arab faith. He removed the Kibla to Mecca, appointed Friday as the day of devotion and religious observance, and eventually wielded the scourge of religious persecution over Jews and heathens without distinction.

7Many of the emigrant Meccans were overtaken by illness and homesickness in this foreign land, and in order to make up to them for the loss of their relatives and belongings, Mohammed founded a system of brotherhood among fifty-four believers from Mecca and a like number from Medina, so that two men united in this “brotherhood of faith” should stand closer to each other, even in the matter of inheritance, than blood relations,--an institution which lasted, however, only until the foreigners had settled into the new life.

8A second period in the history of the development of Islam begins in Medina. But however brilliantly and successfully Mohammed’s prophetic labours might continue from this time forward, his character during the period of his fortune was less spotless, his conviction less sincere, his motives less pure than in the dark and suffering time of persecution and oppression. His revelations, which he received from the angel Gabriel as occasion arose, were circulated as inspired sayings amongst the people, partly through oral tradition, partly in fly-leaves until they were put together in one whole as the holy writing (_Koran_).

9They were not drawn up without occasional adjustment to the circumstances of the moment and to his own appetites, a transformation which reveals itself even in the form and the language. For whilst in the parts drawn up in Mecca poetic enthusiasm prevails to an undue extent, in Medina the oratorical element is more in the foreground; for Mohammed, all too closely bound to material things, was no longer able to disengage himself from them. In the lack of personal conviction which now supervened, if he wished to rise above the commonplace he had to supply the inner impulse by affected vividness, and the truth firmly believed by empty sophistry; and from his manner of writing it is easy to see that his thoughts no longer spring from a warm heart, but are the products of a cold intellect.

10No longer following the suggestions of his mind can he allow his discourse to pursue its natural course; all must now be thought out beforehand, for it is no longer guided by the spirit of God but by his own _ego_. The first mosque, a simple, artless building made of the wood of date trees, which was erected soon after his arrival in Medina, became a sacred centre of his teaching. From its roof, five times each day, the steadfast devotee Bilal summoned the faithful to prayer.

11[Illustration: ARAB CHIEF IN THE TIME OF MOHAMMED]

12Hitherto Islam had been a religion of peace and love, and Mohammed had inculcated no precept as he had that of gentleness in word and deed. But now that he found himself at the head of a submissive host of followers and in a position to oppose his enemies by force of arms, he declared the struggle against the infidel, the spread of his doctrines by fire and sword, to be the sacred duty binding on all Moslems, a precept which gave Islam an aggressive direction and had in its results a world-shaking significance.

13Not to bring peace, but a sword, had he, the last and greatest of the prophets, appeared on earth; the struggle against the enemies of Islam was a sacred struggle; he who fell in the contest would pass, free from all sin and punishment, safely into paradise, that abode of the blessed which he had painted to his converts with all the ardour of his imagination as a place of earthly pleasures and all the joys of sense; and still further to inflame their courage he planted in their souls the contempt of death by teaching them that the duration of life as well as the destiny and end of mankind had been fixed beforehand by a divine decree, by an unchangeable fate; if the hour of death had come, none could escape his destiny, if the end of life had not yet approached, he might unhesitatingly venture the utmost.

14Relying on the warlike impulse which such doctrines must have engendered in the fiery soul of the Arab, Mohammed, at the head of his fellow tribesmen, allies, and believing followers, now undertook warlike expeditions against the Koreish who had driven him from his native city. He knew that he could not more effectively punish the haughty merchant princes of Mecca than by lying in wait for their caravans and robbing them of the valuable wares which they were accustomed to take to Syria. At the same time he could absolutely rely on the assistance of his new fellow-citizens in these struggles, for the merchants of Mecca looked down with contempt on the agricultural people of Medina. He himself generally marched into the field more to fire the courage of the combatants by his prayers and promises of heavenly support than for the purpose of himself bearing the white standard, which he generally entrusted to the valiant Omar, or the heroic Ali, the “father of the dust.”

15Ali, to whom Mohammed gave his favourite daughter Fatima in marriage at Medina, is the purest and noblest figure among the followers of Mohammed, the “Siegfried of Islam,” as a modern writer has designated him. All his life he adhered to the prophet and the faith of his youth with complete submission and eager admiration. If his fiery, pure, and magnanimous character made him the boast and ornament of the Moslems, he was also by his heroism and bravery the bold vindicator of Islam, the trumpet of the strife in struggle and danger.

16If at first warfare was suspended during the sacred months, according to the practice of former generations, Mohammed soon tore down this barrier. For instance, Abdallah ben Jash fell on the Koreish in the valley of Nakhla during the sacred month of Rajab, robbed their wagons, and slew some of the escort and took others prisoners; and when the prophet, who had himself recommended this act to the leader in a dubiously worded document, perceived that it had excited general indignation, he issued a proclamation by which war against the infidel was declared to be lawful at any period--a proof “that he was no longer acting according to the will of God but according to his own will”; and that the utterances of the _Koran_ were so many “pictures reflecting” his own position. In the second year of the Hegira the fight of Bedr took place; and here was manifested for the first time how the hope of a blessed hereafter had filled the believing Moslems with an enthusiasm which defied death and despised pain.