Mohammedanism

Lectures on Its Origin, Its Religious and Political Growth, and Its Present
State

by C. Snouck Hurgronje

Professor of the Arabic Language in the University of Leiden, Holland
1916


CONTENTS


SOME POINTS CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF ISLÂM.

THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF ISLÂM.

THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ISLÂM.

ISLÂM AND MODERN THOUGHT.




I

SOME POINTS CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF ISLÂM


There are more than two hundred million people who call themselves after
the name of Mohammed, would not relinquish that name at any price, and
cannot imagine a greater blessing for the remainder of humanity than to be
incorporated into their communion. Their ideal is no less than that the
whole earth should join in the faith that there is no god but Allah and
that Mohammed is Allah's last and most perfect messenger, who brought the
latest and final revelation of Allah to humanity in Allah's own words. This
alone is enough to claim our special interest for the Prophet, who in the
seventh century stirred all Arabia into agitation and whose followers soon
after his death founded an empire extending from Morocco to China.

Even those who--to my mind, not without gross exaggeration--would seek the
explanation of the mighty stream of humanity poured out by the Arabian
peninsula since 630 over Western and Middle Asia, Northern Africa, and
Southern Europe principally in geographic and economic causes, do not
ignore the fact that it was Mohammed who opened the sluice gates. It would
indeed be difficult to maintain that without his preaching the Arabs of the
seventh century would have been induced by circumstances to swallow up
the empire of the Sasanids and to rob the Byzantine Empire of some of its
richest provinces. However great a weight one may give to political and
economic factors, it was religion, Islâm, which in a certain sense united
the hitherto hopelessly divided Arabs, Islâm which enabled them to found
an enormous international community; it was Islâm which bound the speedily
converted nations together even after the shattering of its political
power, and which still binds them today when only a miserable remnant of
that power remains.

The aggressive manner in which young Islâm immediately put itself in
opposition to the rest of the world had the natural consequence of
awakening an interest which was far from being of a friendly nature.
Moreover men were still very far from such a striving towards universal
peace as would have induced a patient study of the means of bringing the
different peoples into close spiritual relationship, and therefore from an
endeavour to understand the spiritual life of races different to their own.
The Christianity of that time was itself by no means averse to the
forcible extension of its faith, and in the community of Mohammedans which
systematically attempted to reduce the world to its authority by force of
arms, it saw only an enemy whose annihilation was, to its regret, beyond
its power. Such an enemy it could no more observe impartially than one
modern nation can another upon which it considers it necessary to make war.
Everything maintained or invented to the disadvantage of Islâm was greedily
absorbed by Europe; the picture which our forefathers in the Middle Ages
formed of Mohammed's religion appears to us a malignant caricature. The
rare theologians[1] who, before attacking the false faith, tried to form a
clear notion of it, were not listened to, and their merits have only become
appreciated in our own time. A vigorous combating of the prevalent fictions
concerning Islâm would have exposed a scholar to a similar treatment to
that which, fifteen years ago, fell to the lot of any Englishman who
maintained the cause of the Boers; he would have been as much of an outcast
as a modern inhabitant of Mecca who tried to convince his compatriots of
the virtues of European policy and social order.

[Footnote 1: See for instance the reference to the exposition of the
Paderborn bishop Olivers (1227) in the Paderborn review _Theologie und
Glaube_, Jahrg. iv., p. 535, etc. (_Islâm_, iv., p. 186); also some of the
accounts mentioned in Güterbock, _Der Islâm im Lichte der byzantinischen
Polemik_, etc.]

Two and a half centuries ago, a prominent Orientalist,[2] who wrote
an exposition of Mohammed's teaching, felt himself obliged to give an
elaborate justification of his undertaking in his "Dedicatio." He appeals
to one or two celebrated predecessors and to learned colleagues, who have
expressly instigated him to this work. Amongst other things he quotes
a letter from the Leiden professor, L'Empereur, in which he conjures
Breitinger by the bowels of Jesus Christ ("per viscera Jesu Christi") to
give the young man every opportunity to complete his study of the religion
of Mohammed, "which so far has only been treated in a senseless way." As a
fruit of this study L'Empereur thinks it necessary to mention in the first
place the better understanding of the (Christian) Holy Scriptures by the
extension of our knowledge of Oriental manners and customs. Besides such
promotion of Christian exegesis and apologetics and the improvement of the
works on general history, Hottinger himself contemplated a double
purpose in his _Historia Orientalis_. The Roman Catholics often vilified
Protestantism by comparing the Reformed doctrine to that of Mohammedanism;
this reproach of Crypto-mohammedanism Hottinger wished "talionis lege" to
fling back at the Catholics; and he devotes a whole chapter (Cap. 6) of his
book to the demonstration that Bellarminius' proofs of the truth of the
Church doctrine might have been copied from the Moslim dogma. In the second
place, conforming to the spirit of the times, he wished, just as Bibliander
had done in his refutation of the Qorân, to combine the combat against
Mohammedan unbelief with that against the Turkish Empire ("in oppugnationem
Mahometanae perfidiae et Turcici regni").

[Footnote 2: J.H. Hottinger, _Historia Orientalis_, Zürich, 1651 (2d.
edition 1660).]

The Turks were feared by the Europe of that time, and the significance of
their religion for their worldly power was well known; thus the
political side of the question gave Hottinger's work a special claim to
consideration. Yet, in spite of all this, Hottinger feared that his labour
would be regarded as useless, or even wicked. Especially when he is obliged
to say anything favourable of Mohammed and his followers, he thinks it
necessary to protect himself against misconstruction by the addition of
some selected terms of abuse. When mentioning Mohammed's name, he says:
"at the mention of whom the mind shudders" ("ad cujus profecto mentionem
inhorrescere nobis debet animus"). The learned Abbé Maracci, who in 1698
produced a Latin translation of the Qorân accompanied by an elaborate
refutation, was no less than Hottinger imbued with the necessity of
shuddering at every mention of the "false" Prophet, and Dr. Prideaux,
whose _Vie de Mahomet_ appeared in the same year in Amsterdam, abused and
shuddered with them, and held up his biography of Mohammed as a mirror to
"unbelievers, atheists, deists, and libertines."

It was a Dutch scholar, H. Reland, the Utrecht professor of theology, who
in the beginning of the eighteenth century frankly and warmly recommended
the application of historical justice even towards the Mohammedan religion;
in his short Latin sketch of Islâm[1] he allowed the Mohammedan authorities
to speak for themselves. In his "Dedicatio" to his brother and in his
extensive preface he explains his then new method. Is it to be supposed,
he asks, that a religion as ridiculous as the Islâm described by Christian
authors should have found millions of devotees? Let the Moslims themselves
describe their own religion for us; just as the Jewish and Christian
religions are falsely represented by the heathen and Protestantism by
Catholics, so every religion is misrepresented by its antagonists. "We
are mortals, subject to error; especially where religious matters are
concerned, we often allow ourselves to be grossly misled by passion."
Although it may cause evil-minded readers to doubt the writer's orthodoxy
he continues to maintain that truth can only be served by combating her
opponents in an honourable way.

[Footnote 1: _H. Relandi de religione Mohammedica libri duo_, Utrecht, 1704
(2d ed. 1717).]

"No religion," says Reland, "has been more calumniated than Islâm,"
although the Abbé Maracci himself could give no better explanation of the
turning of many Jews and Christians to this religion than the fact that
it contains many elements of natural truth, evidently borrowed from the
Christian religion, "which seem to be in accordance with the law and the
light of nature" ("quae naturae legi ac lumini consentanea videntur").
"More will be gained for Christianity by friendly intercourse with
Mohammedans than by slander; above all Christians who live in the East must
not, as is too often the case, give cause to one Turk to say to another
who suspects him of lying or deceit: 'Do you take me for a Christian?'
("putasne me Christianum esse"). In truth, the Mohammedans often put us to
shame by their virtues; and a better knowledge of Islâm can only help to
make our irrational pride give place to gratitude to God for the undeserved
mercy which He bestowed upon us in Christianity." Reland has no illusions
that his scientific justice will find acceptance in a wide circle "as he
becomes daily more and more convinced that the world wishes to be deceived
and is governed by prejudice" ("qui quotidie magis magisque experior mundum
decipi velle et praeconceptis opinionibus regi").

It was not long before the scale was turned in the opposite direction,
and Islâm was made by some people the object of panegyrics as devoid of
scientific foundation as the former calumnies. In 1730 appeared in London
the incomplete posthumous work of Count de Boulainvilliers, _Vie de
Mahomet,_ in which, amongst other things, he says of the Arabian Prophet
that "all that he has said concerning the essential religious dogmas is
true, but he has not said all that is true, and it is only therein that his
religion differs from ours." De Boulainvilliers tells us with particular
satisfaction that Mohammed, who respected the devotion of hermits and
monks, proceeded with the utmost severity against the official clergy,
condemning its members either to death or to the abjuration of their faith.
This _Vie de Mahomet_ was as a matter of fact an anti-clerical romance, the
material of which was supplied by a superficial knowledge of Islâm drawn
from secondary sources. That a work with such a tendency was sure to arouse
interest at that time, is shown by a letter from the publisher, Coderc, to
Professor Gagnier at Oxford, in which he writes: "He [de Boulainvilliers]
mixes up his history with many political reflections, which by their
newness and boldness are sure to be well received" ("Il mêle son Histoire
de plusieurs réflexions politiques, et qui par leur hardiesse ne manqueront
pas d'être très bien reçues").

Jean Gagnier however considered these bold novelties very dangerous and
endeavoured to combat them in another _Vie de Mahomet_, which appeared from
his hand in 1748 at Amsterdam. He strives after a "juste milieu" between
the too violent partisanship of Maracci and Prideaux and the ridiculous
acclamations of de Boulainvilliers. Yet this does not prevent him in his
preface from calling Mohammed the greatest villain of mankind and the most
mortal enemy of God ("le plus scélérat de tous les hommes et le plus mortel
ennemi de Dieu"). His desire to make his contemporaries proof against the
poison of de Boulainvilliers' dangerous book gains the mastery over the
pure love of truth for which Reland had so bravely striven.

Although Sale in his "Preliminary Discourse" to his translation of the
Qorân endeavours to contribute to a fair estimation of Mohammed and his
work, of which his motto borrowed from Augustine, "There is no false
doctrine that does not contain some truth" ("nulla falsa doctrina est
quae non aliquid veri permisceat"), is proof, still the prejudicial view
remained for a considerable time the prevalent one. Mohammed was branded
as _imposteur_ even in circles where Christian fanaticism was out of the
question. Voltaire did not write his tragedy _Mahomet ou le fanatisme_ as
a historical study; he was aware that his fiction was in many respects at
variance with history. In writing his work he was, as he himself expresses
it, inspired by "l'amour du genre humain et l'horreur du fanatisme." He
wanted to put before the public an armed Tartufe and thought he might
lay the part upon Mohammed, for, says he, "is not the man, who makes war
against his own country and dares to do it in the name of God, capable of
any ill?" The dislike that Voltaire had conceived for the Qorân from a
superficial acquaintance with it, "ce livre inintelligible qui fait frémir
le sens commun à chaque page," probably increased his unfavourable opinion,
but the principal motive of his choice of a representative must have been
that the general public still regarded Mohammed as the incarnation of
fanaticism and priestcraft.

Almost a century lies between Gagnier's biography of Mohammed and that of
the Heidelberg professor Weil (_Mohammed der Prophet, sein Leben and seine
Lehre_, Stuttgart, 1843); and yet Weil did well to call Gagnier his last
independent predecessor. Weil's great merit is, that he is the first in his
field who instituted an extensive historico-critical investigation without
any preconceived opinion. His final opinion of Mohammed is, with the
necessary reservations: "In so far as he brought the most beautiful
teachings of the Old and the New Testament to a people which was not
illuminated by one ray of faith, he may be regarded, even by those who
are not Mohammedans, as a messenger of God." Four years later Caussin
de Perceval in his _Essai sur l'histoire des Arabes_, written quite
independently of Weil, expresses the same idea in these words: "It would be
an injustice to Mohammed to consider him as no more than a clever impostor,
an ambitious man of genius; he was in the first place a man convinced of
his vocation to deliver his nation from error and to regenerate it."

About twenty years later the biography of Mohammed made an enormous advance
through the works of Muir, Sprenger, and Nôldeke. On the ground of much
wider and at the same time deeper study of the sources than had been
possible for Weil and Caussin de Perceval, each of these three scholars
gave in his own way an account of the origin of Islâm. Nôldeke was
much sharper and more cautious in his historical criticism than Muir or
Sprenger. While the biographies written by these two men have now
only historical value, Nôldeke's _History of the Qorân_ is still an
indispensable instrument of study more than half a century after its first
appearance.

Numbers of more or less successful efforts to make Mohammed's life
understood by the nineteenth century intellect have followed these without
much permanent gain. Mohammed, who was represented to the public in turn as
deceiver, as a genius mislead by the Devil, as epileptic, as hysteric, and
as prophet, was obliged later on even to submit to playing on the one
hand the part of socialist and, on the other hand, that of a defender of
capitalism. These points of view were principally characteristic of the
temperament of the scholars who held them; they did not really advance our
understanding of the events that took place at Mecca and Medina between 610
and 632 A.D., that prologue to a perplexing historical drama.

The principal source from which all biographers started and to which they
always returned, was the Qorân, the collection of words of Allah spoken by
Mohammed in those twenty-two years. Hardly anyone, amongst the "faithful"
and the "unfaithful," doubts the generally authentic character of its
contents except the Parisian professor Casanova.[1] He tried to prove a
little while ago that Mohammed's revelations originally contained the
announcement that the HOUR, the final catastrophe, the Last judgment would
come during his life. When his death had therefore falsified this prophecy,
according to Casanova, the leaders of the young community found themselves
obliged to submit the revelations preserved in writing or memory to a
thorough revision, to add some which announced the mortality even of the
last prophet, and, finally to console the disappointed faithful with the
hope of Mohammed's return before the end of the world. This doctrine of the
return, mentioned neither in the Qorân nor in the eschatological tradition
of later times, according to Casanova was afterwards changed again into the
expectation of the Mahdî, the last of Mohammed's deputies, "a Guided of
God," who shall be descended from Mohammed, bear his name, resemble him
in appearance, and who shall fill the world once more before its end with
justice, as it is now filled with injustice and tyranny.

[Footnote 1: Paul Casanova, _Mohammed et la fin du monde,_ Paris, 1911.
His hypotheses are founded upon Weil's doubts of the authenticity of a few
verses of the _Qorân_ (iii., 138; xxxix., 31, etc.), which doubts were
sufficiently refuted half a century ago by Nôldeke in his _Geschichte des
Qorâns_, 1st edition, p. 197, etc.]

In our sceptical times there is very little that is above criticism, and
one day or other we may expect to hear that Mohammed never existed. The
arguments for this can hardly be weaker than those of Casanova against the
authenticity of the Qorân. Here we may acknowledge the great power of what
has been believed in all times, in all places, by all the members of the
community ("quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est"). For,
after the death of Mohammed there immediately arose a division which none
of the leading personalities were able to escape, and the opponents spared
each other no possible kind of insult, scorn, or calumny. The enemies of
the first leaders of the community could have wished for no more powerful
weapon for their attack than a well-founded accusation of falsifying the
word of God. Yet this accusation was never brought against the first
collectors of the scattered revelations; the only reproach that was made
against them in connexion with this labour being that verses in which
the Holy Family (Ali and Fatimah) were mentioned with honour, and which,
therefore, would have served to support the claims of the Alids to the
succession of Mohammed, were suppressed by them. This was maintained by the
Shi'ites, who are unsurpassed in Islâm as falsifiers of history; and the
passages which, according to them, are omitted from the official Qorân
would involve precisely on account of their reference to the succession,
the mortality of Mohammed.

All sects and parties have the same text of the Qorân. This may have its
errors and defects, but intentional alterations or mutilations of real
importance are not to blame for this.

Now this rich authentic source--this collection of wild, poetic
representations of the Day of judgment; of striving against idolatry; of
stories from Sacred History; of exhortation to the practice of the cardinal
virtues of the Old and New Testament; of precepts to reform the individual,
domestic, and tribal life in the spirit of these virtues; of incantations
and forms of prayer and a hundred things besides--is not always
comprehensible to us. Even for the parts which we do understand, we are not
able to make out the chronological arrangement which is necessary to gain
an insight into Mohammed's personality and work. This is not only due to
the form of the oracles, which purposely differs from the usual tone
of mortals by its unctuousness and rhymed prose, but even more to the
circumstance that all that the hearers could know, is assumed to be known.
So the Qorân is full of references that are enigmatical to us. We therefore
need additional explanation, and this can only be derived from tradition
concerning the circumstances under which each revelation was delivered.

And, truly, the sacred tradition of Islâm is not deficient in data of
this sort. In the canonical and half-canonical collections of tradition
concerning what the Prophet has said, done, and omitted to do, in
biographical works, an answer is given to every question which may arise in
the mind of the reader of the Qorân; and there are many Qorân-commentaries,
in which these answers are appended to the verses which they are supposed
to elucidate. Sometimes the explanations appear to us, even at first sight,
improbable and unacceptable; sometimes they contradict each other; a good
many seem quite reasonable.

The critical biographers of Mohammed have therefore begun their work of
sifting by eliminating the improbable and by choosing between contradictory
data by means of critical comparison. Here the gradually increasing
knowledge of the spirit of the different parties in Islâm was an important
aid, as of course each group represented the facts in the way which best
served their own purposes.

However cautiously and acutely Weil and his successors have proceeded, the
continual progress of the analysis of the legislative as well as of the
historical tradition of Islam since 1870 has necessitated a renewed
investigation. In the first place it has become ever more evident that the
thousands of traditions about Mohammed, which, together with the Qorân,
form the foundation upon which the doctrine and life of the community
are based, are for the most part the conventional expression of all the
opinions which prevailed amongst his followers during the first three
centuries after the Hijrah. The fiction originated a long time after
Mohammed's death; during the turbulent period of the great conquests there
was no leisure for such work. Our own conventional insincerities differ so
much--externally at least--from those of that date, that it is difficult
for us to realize a spiritual atmosphere where "pious fraud" was practised
on such a scale. Yet this is literally true: in the first centuries of
Islâm no one could have dreamt of any other way of gaining acceptance for a
doctrine or a precept than by circulating a tradition, according to which
Mohammed had preached the doctrine or dictated it or had lived according to
the precept. The whole individual, domestic, social, and political life
as it developed in the three centuries during which the simple Arabian
religion was adjusted to the complicated civilization of the great nations
of that time, that all life was theoretically justified by representing
it as the application of minute laws supposed to have been elaborated by
Mohammed by precept and example.

Thus tradition gives invaluable material for the knowledge of the conflict
of opinions in the first centuries, a strife the sharpness of which has
been blunted in later times by a most resourceful harmonistic method. But,
it is vain to endeavour to construct the life and teaching of Mohammed from
such spurious accounts; they cannot even afford us a reliable illustration
of his life in the form of "table talk," as an English scholar rather
naïvely tried to derive from them. In a collection of this sort, supported
by good external evidence, there would be attributed to the Prophet of
Mecca sayings from the Old and New Testament, wise saws from classical and
Arabian antiquity, prescriptions of Roman law and many other things, each
text of which was as authentic as its fellows.

Anyone who, warned by Goldziher and others, has realized how matters stand
in this respect, will be careful not to take the legislative tradition as
a direct instrument for the explanation of the Qorân. When, after a most
careful investigation of thousands of traditions which all appear equally
old, we have selected the oldest, then we shall see that we have before us
only witnesses of the first century of the Hijrah. The connecting threads
with the time of Mohammed must be supplied for a great part by imagination.

The historical or biographical tradition in the proper sense of the word
has only lately been submitted to a keener examination. It was known for a
long time that here too, besides theological and legendary elements,
there were traditions originating from party motive, intended to give an
appearance of historical foundation to the particular interests of certain
persons or families; but it was thought that after some sifting there yet
remained enough to enable us to form a much clearer sketch of Mohammed's
life than that of any other of the founders of a universal religion.

It is especially Prince Caetani and Father Lammens who have disturbed this
illusion. According to them, even the data which had been pretty generally
regarded as objective, rest chiefly upon tendentious fiction. The
generations that worked at the biography of the Prophet were too far
removed from his time to have true data or notions; and, moreover, it was
not their aim to know the past as it was, but to construct a picture of it
as it ought to have been according to their opinion. Upon the bare canvass
of verses of the Qorân that need explanation, the traditionists have
embroidered with great boldness scenes suitable to the desires or ideals of
their particular group; or, to use a favourite metaphor of Lammens, they
fill the empty spaces by a process of stereotyping which permits the
critical observer to recognize the origin of each picture. In the Sîrah
(biography), the distance of the first describers from their object is the
same as in the Hadîth (legislative tradition); in both we get images of
very distant things, perceived by means of fancy rather than by sight and
taking different shapes according to the inclinations of each circle of
describers.

Now, it may be true that the latest judges have here and there examined the
Mohammedan traditions too sceptically and too suspiciously; nevertheless,
it remains certain that in the light of their research, the method of
examination cannot remain unchanged. We must endeavour to make our
explanations of the Qorân independent of tradition, and in respect to
portions where this is impossible, we must be suspicious of explanations,
however apparently plausible.

During the last few years the accessible sources of information have
considerably increased, the study of them has become much deeper and more
methodical, and the result is that we can tell much less about the teaching
and the life of Mohammed than could our predecessors half a century ago.
This apparent loss is of course in reality nothing but gain.

Those who do not take part in new discoveries, nevertheless, wish to know
now and then the results of the observations made with constantly improved
instruments. Let me endeavour, very briefly, to satisfy this curiosity.
That the report of the bookkeeping might make a somewhat different
impression if another accountant had examined it, goes without saying, and
sometimes I shall draw particular attention to my personal responsibility
in this respect.

Of Mohammed's life before his appearance as the messenger of God, we know
extremely little; compared to the legendary biography as treasured by the
Faithful, practically nothing. Not to mention his pre-existence as a Light,
which was with God, and for the sake of which God created the world, the
Light, which as the principle of revelation, lived in all prophets from
Adam onwards, and the final revelation of which in Mohammed was prophesied
in the Scriptures of the Jews and the Christians; not to mention the
wonderful and mysterious signs which announced the birth of the Seal of the
Prophets, and many other features which the later Sîrahs (biographies) and
Maulids (pious histories of his birth, most in rhymed prose or in poetic
metre) produce in imitation of the Gospels; even the elaborate discourses
of the older biographies on occurrences, which in themselves might quite
well come within the limits of sub-lunary possibility, do not belong to
history. Fiction plays such a great part in these stories, that we are
never sure of being on historical ground unless the Qorân gives us a firm
footing.

The question, whether the family to which Mohammed belonged, was regarded
as noble amongst the Qoraishites, the ruling tribe in Mecca, is answered
in the affirmative by many; but by others this answer is questioned not
without good grounds. The matter is not of prime importance, as there is no
doubt that Mohammed grew up as a poor orphan and belonged to the needy and
the neglected. Even a long time after his first appearance the unbelievers
reproached him, according to the Qorân, with his insignificant worldly
position, which fitted ill with a heavenly message; the same scornful
reproach according to the Qorân was hurled at Mohammed's predecessors by
sceptics of earlier generations; and it is well known that the stories
of older times in the Qorân are principally reflections of what Mohammed
himself experienced. The legends of Mohammed's relations to various members
of his family are too closely connected with the pretensions of their
descendants to have any value for biographic purposes. He married late an
elderly woman, who, it is said, was able to lighten his material cares; she
gave him the only daughter by whom he had descendants; descendants, who,
from the Arabian point of view, do not count as such, as according to their
genealogical theories the line of descent cannot pass through a woman.
They have made an exception for the Prophet, as male offspring, the only
blessing of marriage appreciated by Arabs, was withheld from him.

In the materialistic commercial town of Mecca, where lust of gain and usury
reigned supreme, where women, wine, and gambling filled up the leisure
time, where might was right, and widows, orphans, and the feeble were
treated as superfluous ballast, an unfortunate being like Mohammed, if his
constitution were sensitive, must have experienced most painful emotions.
In the intellectual advantages that the place offered he could find
no solace; the highly developed Arabian art of words, poetry with its
fictitious amourettes, its polished descriptions of portions of Arabian
nature, its venal vain praise and satire, might serve as dessert to a
well-filled dish; they were unable to compensate for the lack of material
prosperity. Mohammed felt his misery as a pain too great to be endured; in
some way or other he must be delivered from it. He desired to be more than
the greatest in his surroundings, and he knew that in that which they
counted for happiness he could never even equal them. Rather than envy them
regretfully, he preferred to despise their values of life, but on that very
account he had to oppose these values with better ones.

It was not unknown in Mecca that elsewhere communities existed acquainted
with such high ideals of life, spiritual goods accessible to the poor, even
to them in particular. Apart from commerce, which brought the inhabitants
of Mecca into contact with Abyssinians, Syrians, and others, there were far
to the south and less far to the north and north-east of Mecca, Arabian
tribes who had embraced the Jewish or the Christian religion. Perhaps this
circumstance had helped to make the inhabitants of Mecca familiar with the
idea of a creator, Allah, but this had little significance in their lives,
as in the Maker of the Universe they did not see their Lawgiver and judge,
but held themselves dependent for their good and evil fortune upon all
manner of beings, which they rendered favourable or harmless by animistic
practices. Thoroughly conservative, they did not take great interest in
the conceptions of the "People of the Scripture," as they called the Jews,
Christians, and perhaps some other sects arisen from these communities.

But Mohammed's deeply felt misery awakened his interest in them. Whether
this had been the case with a few others before him in the milieu of Mecca,
we need not consider, as it does not help to explain his actions. If wide
circles had been anxious to know more about the contents of the "Scripture"
Mohammed would not have felt in the dark in the way that he did. We shall
probably never know, by intercourse with whom it really was that Mohammed
at last gained some knowledge of the contents of the sacred books of
Judaism and Christianity; probably through various people, and over a
considerable length of time. It was not lettered men who satisfied his
awakened curiosity; otherwise the quite confused ideas, especially in the
beginning of the revelation, concerning the mutual relations between Jews
and Christians could not be explained. Confusions between Miryam, the
sister of Moses, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, between Saul and Gideon,
mistakes about the relationship of Abraham to Isaac, Ishmael, and Jacob,
might be put down to misconceptions of Mohammed himself, who could not all
at once master the strange material. But his representation of Judaism and
Christianity and a number of other forms of revelation, as almost identical
in their contents, differing only in the place where, the time wherein, and
the messenger of God by whom they came to man; this idea, which runs like
a crimson thread through all the revelations of the first twelve years
of Mohammed's prophecy, could not have existed if he had had an intimate
acquaintance with Jewish or Christian men of letters. Moreover, the many
post-biblical features and stories which the Qorân contains concerning the
past of mankind, indicate a vulgar origin, and especially as regards
the Christian legends, communications from people who lived outside the
communion of the great Christian churches; this is sufficiently proved by
the docetical representation of the death of Jesus and the many stories
about his life, taken from apocryphal sources or from popular oral legends.

Mohammed's unlearned imagination worked all such material together into
a religious history of mankind, in which Adam's descendants had become
divided into innumerable groups of peoples differing in speech and place
of abode, whose aim in life at one period or another came to resemble
wonderfully that of the inhabitants of West- and Central-Arabia in the
seventh century A.D. Hereby they strayed from the true path, in strife with
the commands given by Allah. The whole of history, therefore, was for him
a long series of repetitions of the antithesis between the foolishness of
men, as this was now embodied in the social state of Mecca, and the wisdom
of God, as known to the "People of the Scripture." To bring the erring ones
back to the true path, it was Allah's plan to send them messengers from out
of their midst, who delivered His ritual and His moral directions to them
in His own words, who demanded the acknowledgment of Allah's omnipotence,
and if they refused to follow the true guidance, threatened them with
Allah's temporary or, even more, with His eternal punishment.

The antithesis is always the same, from Adam to Jesus, and the enumeration
of the scenes is therefore rather monotonous; the only variety is in the
detail, borrowed from biblical and apocryphal legends. In all the thousands
of years the messengers of Allah play the same part as Mohammed finally saw
himself called upon to play towards his people.

Mohammed's account of the past contains more elements of Jewish than of
Christian origin, and he ignores the principal dogmas of the Christian
Church. In spite of his supernatural birth, Jesus is only a prophet
like Moses and others; and although his miracles surpass those of other
messengers, Mohammed at a later period of his life is inclined to place
Abraham above Jesus in certain respects. Yet the influence of Christianity
upon Mohammed's vocation was very great; without the Christian idea of the
final scene of human history, of the Resurrection of the dead and the Last
Judgment, Mohammed's mission would have no meaning. It is true, monotheism,
in the Jewish sense, and after the contrast had become clear to Mohammed,
accompanied by an express rejection of the Son of God and of the Trinity,
has become one of the principal dogmas of Islâm. But in Mohammed's first
preaching, the announcement of the Day of judgment is much more prominent
than the Unity of God; and it was against his revelations concerning
Doomsday that his opponents directed their satire during the first twelve
years. It was not love of their half-dead gods but anger at the wretch who
was never tired of telling them, in the name of Allah, that all their
life was idle and despicable, that in the other world they would be the
outcasts, which opened the floodgates of irony and scorn against Mohammed.
And it was Mohammed's anxiety for his own lot and that of those who were
dear to him in that future life, that forced him to seek a solution of the
question: who shall bring my people out of the darkness of antithesis into
the light of obedience to Allah?

We should, _a posteriori_, be inclined to imagine a simpler answer to the
question than that which Mohammed found; he might have become a missionary
of Judaism or of Christianity to the Meccans. However natural such
a conclusion may appear to us, from the premises with which we are
acquainted, it did not occur to Mohammed. He began--the Qorân tells us
expressly--by regarding the Arabs, or at all events _his_ Arabs, as
heretofore destitute of divine message[1]: "to whom We have sent no warner
before you." Moses and Jesus--not to mention any others--had not been sent
for the Arabs; and as Allah would not leave any section of mankind without
a revelation, their prophet must still be to come. Apparently Mohammed
regarded the Jewish and Christian tribes in Arabia as exceptions to the
rule that an ethnical group (_ummah_) was at the same time a religious
unity. He did not imagine that it could be in Allah's plan that the Arabs
were to conform to a revelation given in a foreign language. No; God must
speak to them in Arabic.[2] Through whose mouth?

[Footnote 1: _Qorân_, xxxii., 2; xxxiv., 43; xxxvi., 5, etc.]

[Footnote 2: _Ibid_., xii., 2; xiii., 37; XX., 112; XXVI., 195; xli., 44,
etc.]

A long and severe crisis preceded Mohammed's call. He was convinced that,
if he were the man, mighty signs from Heaven must be revealed to him, for
his conception of revelation was mechanical; Allah Himself, or at least
angels, must speak to him. The time of waiting, the process of objectifying
the subjective, lived through by the help of an overstrained imagination,
all this laid great demands upon the psychical and physical constitution of
Mohammed. At length he saw and heard that which he thought he ought to hear
and see. In feverish dreams he found the form for the revelation, and he
did not in the least realize that the contents of his inspiration from
Heaven were nothing but the result of what he had himself absorbed. He
realized it so little, that the identity of what was revealed to him with
what he held to be the contents of the Scriptures of Jews and Christians
was a miracle to him, the only miracle upon which he relied for the support
of his mission.

In the course of the twenty-three years of Mohammed's work as God's
messenger, the over-excited state, or inspiration, or whatever we may
call the peculiar spiritual condition in which his revelation was born,
gradually gave place to quiet reflection. Especially after the Hijrah, when
the prophet had to provide the state established by him at Medina with
inspired regulations, the words of God became in almost every respect
different from what they had been at first. Only the form was retained. In
connection with this evolution, some of our biographers of Mohammed, even
where they do not deny the obvious honesty of his first visions, represent
him in the second half of his work, as a sort of actor, who played with
that which had been most sacred to him. This accusation is, in my opinion,
unjust.

Mohammed, who twelve years long, in spite of derision and contempt,
continued to inveigh in the name of Allah against the frivolous
conservatism of the heathens in Mecca, to preach Allah's omnipotence to
them, to hold up to them Allah's commands and His promises and threats
regarding the future life, "without asking any reward" for such exhausting
work, is really not another man than the acknowledged "Messenger of
Allah" in Medina, who saw his power gradually increase, who was taught by
experience the value and the use of the material means of extending it,
and who finally, by the force of arms compelled all Arabs to "obedience to
Allah and His messenger."

In our own society, real enthusiasm in the propagation of an idea generally
considered as absurd, if crowned by success may, in the course of time, end
in cold, prosaic calculation without a trace of hypocrisy. Nowhere in
the life of Mohammed can a point of turning be shown; there is a gradual
changing of aims and a readjustment of the means of attaining them. From
the first the outcast felt himself superior to the well-to-do people who
looked down upon him; and with all his power he sought for a position from
which he could force them to acknowledge his superiority. This he found in
the next and better world, of which the Jews and Christians knew. After a
crisis, which some consider as psychopathologic, he knew himself to be sent
by Allah to call the materialistic community, which he hated and despised,
to the alternative, either in following him to find eternal blessedness, or
in denying him to be doomed to eternal fire.

Powerless against the scepticism of his hearers, after twelve years of
preaching followed only by a few dozen, most of them outcasts like himself,
he hoped now and then that Allah would strike the recalcitrant multitude
with an earthly doom, as he knew from revelations had happened before. This
hope was also unfulfilled. As other messengers of God had done in similar
circumstances, he sought for a more fruitful field than that of his
birthplace; he set out on the Hijrah, _i.e._, emigration to Medina. Here
circumstances were more favourable to him: in a short time he became the
head of a considerable community.

Allah, who had given him power, soon allowed him to use it for the
protection of the interests of the Faithful against the unbelievers.
Once become militant, Mohammed turned from the purely defensive to the
aggressive attitude, with such success that a great part of the Arab tribes
were compelled to accept Islâm, "obedience to Allah and His Messenger." The
rule formerly insisted upon: "No compulsion in religion," was sacrificed,
since experience taught him, that the truth was more easily forced upon
men by violence than by threats which would be fulfilled only after the
resurrection. Naturally, the religious value of the conversions sank in
proportion as their number increased. The Prophet of world renouncement
in Mecca wished to win souls for his faith; the Prophet-Prince in Medina
needed subjects and fighters for his army. Yet he was still the same
Mohammed.

Parallel with his altered position towards the heathen Arabs went a
readjustment of his point of view towards the followers of Scripture.
Mohammed never pretended to preach a new religion; he demanded in the name
of Allah the same Islâm (submission) that Moses, Jesus, and former prophets
had demanded of their nations. In his earlier revelations he always points
out the identity of his "Qorâns" with the contents of the sacred books of
Jews and Christians, in the sure conviction that these will confirm his
assertion if asked. In Medina he was disillusioned by finding neither Jews
nor Christians prepared to acknowledge an Arabian prophet, not even for the
Arabs only; so he was led to distinguish between the _true_ contents of the
Bible and that which had been made of it by the falsification of later
Jews and Christians. He preferred now to connect his own revelations more
immediately with those of Abraham, no books of whom could be cited against
him, and who was acknowledged by Jews and Christians without being himself
either a Jew or a Christian.

This turn, this particular connection of Islâm with Abraham, made it
possible for him, by means of an adaptation of the biblical legends
concerning Abraham, Hagar, and Ishmael, to include in his religion a set of
religious customs of the Meccans, especially the hajj.[1] Thus Islâm became
more Arabian, and at the same time more independent of the other revealed
religions, whose degeneracy was demonstrated by their refusal to
acknowledge Mohammed.

[Footnote 1: A complete explanation of the gradual development of the
Abraham legend in the Qorân can be found in my book _Het Mekkaansche Feest_
(The Feast of Mecca), Leiden, 1880.]

All this is to be explained without the supposition of conscious trickery
or dishonesty on the part of Mohammed. There was no other way for the
unlettered Prophet, whose belief in his mission was unshaken, to overcome
the difficulties entailed by his closer acquaintance with the tenets of
other religions.

How, then, are we to explain the starting-point of it all--Mohammed's sense
of vocation? Was it a disease of the spirit, a kind of madness? At all
events, the data are insufficient upon which to form a serious diagnosis.
Some have called it epilepsy. Sprenger, with an exaggerated display of
certainty based upon his former medical studies, gave Mohammed's disorder
the name of hysteria. Others try to find a connection between Mohammed's
extraordinary interest in the fair sex and his prophetic consciousness.
But, after all, is it explaining the spiritual life of a man, who was
certainly unique, if we put a label upon him, and thus class him with
others, who at the most shared with him certain abnormalities? A normal man
Mohammed certainly was not. But as soon as we try to give a positive name
to this negative quality, then we do the same as the heathens of Mecca, who
were violently awakened by his thundering prophecies: "He is nothing but
one possessed, a poet, a soothsayer, a sorcerer," they said. Whether we say
with the old European biographers "impostor," or with the modern ones put
"epileptic," or "hysteric" in its place, makes little difference. The
Meccans ended by submitting to him, and conquering a world under the banner
of his faith. We, with the diffidence which true science implies, feel
obliged merely to call him Mohammed, and to seek in the Qorân, and with
great cautiousness in the Tradition, a few principal points of his life and
work, in order to see how in his mind the intense feeling of discontent
during the misery of his youth, together with a great self-reliance, a
feeling of spiritual superiority to his surroundings, developed into
a call, the form of which was largely decided by Jewish and Christian
influence.

While being struck by various weaknesses which disfigured this great
personality and which he himself freely confessed, we must admire the
perseverance with which he retained his faith in his divine mission, not
discouraged by twelve years of humiliation, nor by the repudiation of the
"People of Scripture," upon whom he had relied as his principal witnesses,
nor yet by numbers of temporary rebuffs during his struggle for the
dominion of Allah and His Messenger, which he carried on through the whole
of Arabia.

Was Mohammed conscious of the universality of his mission? In the beginning
he certainly conceived his work as merely the Arabian part of a universal
task, which, for other parts of the world, was laid upon other messengers.
In the Medina period he ever more decidedly chose the direction of "forcing
to comply." He was content only when the heathens perceived that further
resistance to Allah's hosts was useless; their understanding of his "clear
Arabic Qorân" was no longer the principal object of his striving. _Such_
an Islâm could equally well be forced upon _non-Arabian_ heathens. And,
as regards the "People of Scripture," since Mohammed's endeavour to be
recognized by them had failed, he had taken up his position opposed to
them, even above them. With the rise of his power he became hard and cruel
to the Jews in North-Arabia, and from Jews and Christians alike in Arabia
he demanded submission to his authority, since it had proved impossible to
make them recognize his divine mission. This demand could quite logically
be extended to all Christians; in the first place to those of the Byzantine
Empire. But did Mohammed himself come to these conclusions in the last part
of his life? Are the words in which Allah spoke to him: "We have sent thee
to men in general,"[1] and a few expressions of the same sort, to be taken
in that sense, or does "humanity" here, as in many other places in the
Qorân, mean those with whom Mohammed had especially to do? Nôldeke is
strongly of opinion that the principal lines of the program of conquest
carried out after Mohammed's death, had been drawn by the Prophet himself.
Lammens and others deny with equal vigour, that Mohammed ever looked upon
the whole world as the field of his mission. This shows that the solution
is not evident.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Qorân_, xxxiv., 27. The translation of this verse has
always been a subject of great difference of opinion. At the time of its
revelation--as fixed by Mohammedan as well as by western authorities--the
universal conception of Mohammed's mission was quite out of question.]

[Footnote 2: Professor T.W. Arnold in the 2d edition (London, 1913) of
his valuable work _The Preaching of Islâm_ (especially pp. 28-31), warmly
endeavours to prove that Mohammed from the beginning considered his mission
as universal. He weakens his argument more than is necessary by placing the
Tradition upon an almost equal footing with the Qorân as a source, and by
ignoring the historical development which is obvious in the Qorân itself.
In this way he does not perceive the great importance of the history of the
Abraham legend in Mohammed's conception. Moreover, the translation of
the verses of the Qorân on p. 29 sometimes says more than the original.
_Lil-nâs_ is not "_to mankind_" but "_to men_," in the sense of "_to
everybody_." _Qorân_, xvi., 86, does not say: "One day we will raise up
a witness out of every nation," but: "On the day (_i.e._, the day of
resurrection) when we will raise up, etc.," which would seem to refer to
the theme so constantly repeated in the Qorân, that each nation will be
confronted on the Day of Judgment with the prophet sent to it. When the
Qorân is called an "admonition to the world (_'âlamîn_)" and Mohammed's
mission a "mercy to the world (_'âlamîn_)," then we must remember that
'âlamîn is one of the most misused rhymewords in the Qorân (e.g., _Qorân_,
xv., 70); and we should not therefore translate it emphatically as "all
created beings," unless the universality of Mohammed's mission is firmly
established by other proofs. And this is far from being the case.]

In our valuation of Mohammed's sayings we cannot lay too much stress upon
his incapability of looking far ahead. The final aims which Mohammed set
himself were considered by sane persons as unattainable. His firm belief in
the realization of the vague picture of the future which he had conceived,
nay, which Allah held before him, drove him to the uttermost exertion of
his mental power in order to surmount the innumerable unexpected obstacles
which he encountered. Hence the variability of the practical directions
contained in the Qorân; they are constantly altered according to
circumstances. Allah's words during the last part of Mohammed's life:
"This day have I perfected your religion for you, and have I filled up
the measure of my favours towards you, and chosen Islâm for you as your
religion," have in no way the meaning of the exclamation: "It is finished,"
of the dying Christ. They are only a cry of jubilation over the degradation
of the heathen Arabs by the triumph of Allah's weapons. At Mohammed's death
everything was still unstable; and the vital questions for Islâm were
subjects of contention between the leaders even before the Prophet had been
buried.

The expedient of new revelations completing, altering, or abrogating former
ones had played an important part in the legislative work of Mohammed. Now,
he had never considered that by his death the spring would be stopped,
although completion was wanted in every respect. For, without doubt,
Mohammed felt his weakness in systematizing and his absence of clearness
of vision into the future, and therefore he postponed the promulgation of
divine decrees as long as possible, and he solved only such questions
of law as frequently recurred, when further hesitation would have been
dangerous to his authority and to the peace of the community.

At Mohammed's death, all Arabs were not yet subdued to his authority.
The expeditions which he had undertaken or arranged beyond the northern
boundaries of Arabia, were directed against Arabs, although they were
likely to rouse conflict with the Byzantine and Persian empires. It would
have been contrary to Mohammed's usual methods if this had led him to form
a general definition of his attitude towards the world outside Arabia.

As little as Mohammed, when he invoked the Meccans in wild poetic
inspirations to array themselves behind him to seek the blessedness of
future life, had dreamt of the possibility that twenty years later the
whole of Arabia would acknowledge his authority in this world, as little,
nay, much less, could he at the close of his life have had the faintest
premonition of the fabulous development which his state would reach half
a century later. The subjugation of the mighty Persia and of some of the
richest provinces of the Byzantine Empire, only to mention these, was never
a part of his program, although legend has it that he sent out written
challenges to the six princes of the world best known to him. Yet we
may say that Mohammed's successors in the guidance of his community, by
continuing their expansion towards the north, after the suppression of the
apostasy that followed his death, remained in Mohammed's line of action.
There is even more evident continuity in the development of the empire of
the Omayyads out of the state of Mohammed, than in the series of events
by which we see the dreaded Prince-Prophet of Medina grew out of the
"possessed one" of Mecca. But if Mohammed had been able to foresee how the
unity of Arabia, which he nearly accomplished, was to bring into being a
formidable international empire, we should expect some indubitable traces
of this in the Qorân; not a few verses of dubious interpretation, but
some certain sign that the Revelation, which had repeatedly, and with the
greatest emphasis, called itself a "plain Arabic Qorân" intended for those
"to whom no warner had yet been sent," should in future be valid for the
'Ajam, the Barbarians, as well as for the Arabs.

Even if we ascribe to Mohammed something of the universal program, which
the later tradition makes him to have drawn up, he certainly could not
foresee the success of it. For this, in the first place, the economic and
political factors to which some scholars of our day would attribute the
entire explanation of the Islâm movement, must be taken into consideration.
Mohammed did to some extent prepare the universality of his religion and
make it possible. But that Islâm, which came into the world as the Arabian
form of the one, true religion, has actually become a universal religion,
is due to circumstances which had little to do with its origin.[1] This
extension of the domain to be subdued to its spiritual rule entailed
upon Islâm about three centuries of development and accommodation, of a
different sort, to be sure, but not less drastic in character than that of
the Christian Church.

[Footnote 1: Sir William Muir was not wrong when he said: "From first to
last the summons was to Arabs and to none other... The seed of a universal
creed had indeed been sown; but that it ever germinated was due to
circumstances rather than design."]