A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihad' Part 7

"Now to whomsoever of the chiefs of Syria and Irac they may repair, let such chiefs allot them lands, and whatever they cultivate therefrom shall be theirs; it is an exchange for their own lands. None shall injure or maltreat them; Moslems shall a.s.sist them against oppressors.

Their tribute is remitted for two years. They will not be troubled except for evil deeds.

"Some of them alighted in Irac, and settled in Najrania near to Cufa.

"That the offence of usury is alleged in justification of this measure appears to me to disprove the common tradition that a command was said to have been given by Mahomet on his deathbed for the Peninsula to be swept clear of all other religions but Islam."--Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. II, pp. 301-2.]

[Footnote 90: Descendants of the great Ghatafan tribe already described.]

[Footnote 91: Bani Himyar from Yemen. The Himyarites are too well-known to be described. The Himyarite princes of Ro-en, Mu-afir, Hamadan and Bazan, all of the Christian faith in Yemen, embraced Islam and announced their conversion by letter sent to Mohammad through their emissaries which reached him after his return from Tabuk.]

[Footnote 92: Either a clan of Lakhm, or a branch of Bani Aamir.]

[Footnote 93: A sub-tribe of the Bani Aamir bin Saasaa already described.]

[Footnote 94: The King of Oman, together with the people of Oman, embraced Islam during A.H. 8 and 9. The people of Oman were of the Azdite stock.]

[Footnote 95: Already described at page 43.]

[Footnote 96: A branch of Saad-al-Ashira from the Kahtanite stock. This tribe inhabited Yemen. They had some peculiar prejudice against eating the heart of an animal. Mohammad had caused their chief to break his superst.i.tion, which he did by making him eat the roasted heart of an animal.

But they returned disgusted when told that his (the chief's) mother who had committed infanticide was in h.e.l.l. However they sent another deputation a second time and finally embraced Islam.]

[Footnote 97: They settled in Dumat-ul-Jundal, now Jal-al-Jowf, north of Arabia. They were a tribe of the Bani Kozaa descended from Himyar.]

[Footnote 98: A tribe of the Kahtanite stock at Yemen. They lived in a hilly country of that name in Yemen.]

[Footnote 99: They were a tribe of the Kahtanite stock on the coast of Yemen.]

[Footnote 100: A clan of the Bani Aamir bin Saasaa of the Hawazin tribe already described.]

[Footnote 101: Descendants of Khazima of the Moaddite stock.]

[Footnote 102: The Bani Kinda princes, Vail bin Hijar and Al-Ash-as bin Kays; the former, the chief of the coast, and the latter, the chief of the Hazaramaut in the south of Arabia. They with their whole clans embraced Islam. Bani Kinda were a powerful tribe of the Kahalanite stock.]

[Footnote 103: A clan of Ozra from Kozaa described at page 46.]

[Footnote 104: Descendants of Ghatafan of the Moaddite stock.]

[Footnote 105: They inhabited the sea-coast of Yemen, and were a tribe of Muzhie of the Kahtanite stock.]

[Footnote 106: A branch of the tribe of Aamir bin Saasaa.]

[Footnote 107: A branch of Zobian.]

[Footnote 108: They were a tribe of the Kahtanite stock, residing in Yemen. Their deputation consisted of two hundred persons. It is said this was the last deputation received by Mohammad. Some time before this Ali was sent to the Bani Nakh-a and other tribes of the Mudhij stock in Yemen.]

[Footnote 109: A tribe of Kozaa of the Himyarite stock at Yemen.]

[Footnote 110: A sub-tribe of Kozaa inhabiting Syria described at page 46.]

[Footnote 111: A tribe of Muzhij of the Kahtanite stock at Yemen.]

[Footnote 112: They were a clan of the Bani Aamir bin Saasaa already described.]

[Footnote 113: A tribe of the Kozaa of the Moaddite stock, and according to some from Yemen.]

[Footnote 114: Descendants of Hazaramaut of the Kahtanite stock at Yemen.]

[Footnote 115: A clan of the Bani Hanifa, descendants of Bakr bin Wail already described.]

[Footnote 116: A clan of the Bani Shaiban, the descendants of Bakr bin Wail already mentioned.]

[Footnote 117: The Bani Sakeef (Thackif) were a branch of the Mazar tribes of the Moaddite stock. They were a sub-tribe of the Hawazin and sister tribe to the Bani Adwan, Ghatafan, and Suleim. They (the Bani Sakeef) lived at Tayif and worshipped the idol _Lat_ or _Taqhia_. Orwa, a chief of Tayif, had gone to Medina to embrace Islam. His first generous impulse was to return to Tayif and invite his fellow-citizens to share in the blessings imparted by the new faith. Upon his making public his conversion, he was wounded by a mob and suffered martyrdom.

But he left a favourable impression of Islam at Tayif. Their deputation consisted of six chiefs with fifteen or twenty followers. The Prophet received them gladly and pitched a tent for their accommodation in the court of his mosque. Every evening after supper he paid them there a visit and instructed them in the faith till it was dark. Sir W. Muir writes:--"The martyrdom of Orwa compromised the inhabitants of Tayif, and forced to continue the hostile course they had previously been pursuing. But they began to suffer severely from the marauding attacks of Bani Hawazin under Malik. That chief, according to his engagement, maintained the increasing predatory warfare against them."--Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV, page 204. At page 155 he says regarding Malik,--"being confirmed in his chiefship he engaged to maintain a constant warfare with the citizens of Tayif." But there was no such engagement with Malik. The authority (Hishamee) referred to by Sir W. Muir does not speak anything of the alleged engagement. _Vide_ Hishamee, page 879.

Hishamee has only so much that Mohammad made Malik chief of those who were converted from the tribe. These were the clans of Somala, Salma, and Fahm, and that he used to fight with them against the Sakifites. Sir W. Muir further writes that the inhabitants of Tayif said among themselves: "We have not strength to fight against the Arab tribe all around that have plighted their faith to Mahomet, _and bound themselves to fight in his cause_" (Vol. IV, p. 205). The italics are mine and these words are not to be found in the original authorities. Hishamee (page 914) has _Bayaoo va Aslamoo_, _i.e._, they have plighted and submitted (or converted to Islam).]

[Footnote 118: Descendants of the Kozaa inhabited the hills of that name (Salaman).]

[Footnote 119: Descendants and branch of Bakr bin Wail.]

[Footnote 120: A tribe of the Kahtanite stock from Yemen.]

[Footnote 121: The Bani Taghlib bin Wail were a tribe of the Moaddite stock of Meccan origin and a sister tribe to the Bani Bakr bin Wail.

Their wars are famous in the annals of Arabia. The war of Basus has been already alluded to under Bani Bakr. These tribes, the Bani Bakr and Taghlib, were located in Yemama, Bahrein, Najd, and Tihama, but lastly the Bani Taghlib had emigrated to Mesopotamia and professed the Christian faith. The members of their deputation to Mohammad wore golden crosses. When invited to Islam, they did not embrace it, but promised to allow their children to become Moslems. Mohammad allowed them to maintain unchanged their profession of Christianity. Their Christianity was of a notoriously superficial character. "The Taghlib," said Ali, the fourth Khalif, "are not Christians; they have borrowed from Christianity only the custom of drinking wine."--Dozy _Historie_, i, 20.]

[Footnote 122: A clan of Kinda from the sub-tribe of Sakun at Yemen.]

[Footnote 123: The Bani Tamim were descendants of Tabikha bin Elyas of the Moaddite stock. They are famous in the history of Najd, the northeastern desert of which from the confines of Syria to Yemama they inhabited. They were at constant warfare with the Bani Bakr bin Abd Monat, descendants of Kinana of the Moaddite stock, from 615 to 630 A.D.

All the branches of the tribe which had not yet converted to Islam were now converted in A.H. 9.]

[Footnote 124: The Bani Tay was a great tribe of the Kahtanite stock of Yemen, had moved northwards, and settled in the mountains of Aja and Salma to the north of Najd and Hijaz and the town of Tyma. They had adopted Christianity, but some of them were Jews and Pagans. Their intertribal war has been alluded to in para. 26. The whole tribe now embraced Islam. "A deputation from the Bani Tay, headed by their chief, Zeid-al-Khail, came to Medina to ransom the prisoners, soon after Ali's expedition. Mahomet was charmed with Zeid, of whose fame both as a warrior and a poet he had long heard. He changed his name to Zeid _al Kheir_ (_the beneficent_), granted him a large tract of country, and sent him away laden with presents."

Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV, p. 178.]

[Footnote 125: They were a branch of Sad-al-Ashira of the Mazhij tribe of the Kahtanite stock. They inhabited the sea-coast of Yemen.]

[Sidenote: All the conversions, individual and tribal, without any compulsion.]

32. Thus all these tribal conversions and the speedy spread of Islam in the whole of Arabia was accomplished without any resort to arms, compulsion, threat, or "the scymitar in one hand and the Koran in the other." The Pagan Arabs, the Christians and the Jews, those who embraced Islam, adopted it joyfully and voluntarily. Islam had been much persecuted for many years from the third year of its Prophet's mission to the sixth year after the Hegira--a period of about sixteen years, but it flourished alike during persecutions and oppositions as well as during periods of peace and security of the Moslems. It was the result of Mohammad's staunch adherence to the uncompromising severity of his inflexible principles of preaching the divine Truth and his sincere belief in his own mission that he bore steadfastly all the hardships of persecutions at Mecca and the horrors of the aggressive wars of the Koreish and others at Medina, and persuaded the whole of Arabia, Pagan, Jewish and Christian, to adopt Islam voluntarily.[126]

[Footnote 126: The rebellion of almost the whole of Arabia--wrongly called apostasy--after the death of Mohammad was chiefly against the Government of Abu Bakr, the first Khalifa of the Republic of Islam. No such paramount power over the whole of Arabia was ever vested in the chiefs of Mecca, and the Arabs were unaccustomed to this new form of Government. They had neither rebelled against Islam, nor apostatized from their religion, except a very few of them who had attached themselves to Moseilama for a short time.]

[Sidenote: Mohammad was not favoured with circ.u.mstances round him.]

33. It was not an easy task for Mohammad to have converted the Arabs from their national idolatry to a religion of pure and strict monotheism. The aspect of Arabia was strictly conservative, and there were no prospects of hopeful changes. The indigenous idolatry and deep-rooted superst.i.tion, the worship of visible and material objects of devotion,--idols and unshaped stones,--something that the eyes can see and the hands can handle,--and the dread of invisible genii and other evil spirits, held the Arab mind in a rigorous and undisputed thraldom.

Arabia was obstinately fixed in the profession of idolatry which the Peninsula being thickly overspread, widely diffused and thoroughly organized, was supported by national pride and latterly by the sword.