The Days of Mohammed Part 11

Immediately before, and to the eastward, the sun had risen out of a ma.s.s of lilac and rose-colored cloud. The tufted trees on the distant hills stood black and distinct against the splendor of the sky. To the right the date-groves of Kuba, famed throughout Arabia, struggled through a sea of mist that piled and surged in waves of amber and purple, leaving the tree tops like islands on a vapory sea. To the left the seared and scoriae-covered crest of Mount Ohod rose, dark and scowling, like a grim sentinel on the borders of an Elysian valley. In the rear lay the plain of El Munakhah, and the rush of the torrent El Sayh was borne on the breeze, bearing the willing mind beyond to the cool groves of Kuba, whence this raging flood dispersed itself in gentle rills, or was carried in silent channels to turn the water-wheels, or to fall, with musical plash, into wooden troughs that lay deep in the shade.

The ripple of water,--ah, what it means to Arabian ears! Little wonder that the inhabitant of the desert land never omits it from his idea of paradise, save in his conception of the highest heaven,--a conception not lacking in sublimity--that of a silent looking upon the face of G.o.d.

In the immediate foreground lay El Medina itself, with its narrow streets, its busy bazars, its fair-skinned people, and its low, yellow, flat-roofed houses, each with its well and court-yard, nestling cozily among the feathery-fronded date-trees.

From the Eastern Road, a caravan from the Nejd was descending slowly into the town, and so clear was the atmosphere that Amzi could distinguish the huge, white dromedaries, and catch an occasional glint of a green shugduf, or the gorgeous litter of a grandee, trapped in scarlet and gold.

It was indeed a fair scene, and Amzi enjoyed it to the full with the keen enjoyment of one who possesses an esthetic temperament, an intense love of the beautiful. Yet he began to feel lonely in this town of his adoption. It was long since he had seen Yusuf, and he commenced to think seriously of returning for a time to Mecca.

Besides, he was tired of waiting for Mohammed's long-deferred visit, and he was anxious again to see the man whose strange fascination over him he scarcely dared to acknowledge even to himself. The emptiness and idleness of his own life was beginning to pall upon him, and he compared unfavorably his sluggish existence with the busy, quietly energetic way in which Yusuf was spending his days.

One source of unfailing pleasure to him had been the companionship of Dumah, who had followed him to Medina, but was wandering about as usual, returning to Amzi when tired or hungry, as a birdling returns to its mother's wing.

And Amzi had almost a mother's love for the boy, for poor Dumah seemed a child still; he had grown but little, his face was paler than of old, his eyes were as large and blue, and his bright hair fell in the same soft curls above his regular and clear-cut features. Like Yusuf, Amzi felt that the orphan's very helplessness was an appeal to his heart, and he did not lock its doors.

Dumah now came in wearily. He lay down at Amzi's feet and put his head on his knee. The Meccan stroked his soft hair gently.

"Where has my Dumah been?" he asked tenderly.

"Watching the people going out foolishly. Dumah would not go with them."

"Going where, lad?"

"Out to the gardens where the lotus blows, and the date-palms wave, and the citron and orange grow."

"And why go they, then, foolishly?" smiled Amzi.

"Because they go to meet him, and they are carrying white robes, and they will bring him in as a prince,--the wicked one, who would place himself above our blessed Master!"

Amzi started up quickly, and threw his pipe down.

"Is Mohammed here?" he cried.

"He is here. But you will not go too, Amzi? Alas that I told you! The angels I see in my dreams do not smile, they look away and vanish when I think of Mohammed. Yusuf does not love him! Let not Amzi!" pleaded the orphan.

But the Meccan was gone. Hastening on towards the outskirts of the city, he met a great crowd of people, pressing about Mohammed and Abu Beker, each of whom was dressed in a white garment, and riding triumphantly upon a white camel, the prophet being mounted on his own beast El Kaswa.

The little peddler, a.s.signing himself a lower place, rode behind on a pack-mule.

Mohammed had come, and was, from the very beginning, a monarch, surrounded by an army of blind devotees, believers in his holy mission, and slavishly obedient to his will.

Amzi took the prophet to his house, and there entertained him as a respected Meccan friend, until Mohammed's home was erected. It was at Amzi's house, too, that the nuptials of Mohammed and the beautiful Ayesha, also those of Ali and the prophet's daughter Fatimah, took place.

One of Mohammed's first acts was to have a mosque built, and, from it, morning and night the call to prayers was given:

"G.o.d is great! There is no G.o.d but G.o.d! Mohammed is the prophet of G.o.d!

Come to prayers. Come to prayers! G.o.d is great!"

And from this mosque Mohammed exhorted with wondrous eloquence, the music of his voice falling like a spell on the mult.i.tudes, as they listened to teachings new and more living than the old, dead, superst.i.tious idolatry to which they were in bondage; yet, had they known it, teachings whose choicest gems were but crumbs borrowed from the words of One who had preached in all meekness and love on the sh.o.r.es of Galilee and the hills of Palestine more than six hundred years before.

They listened in wonder to condemnation of their belief in polytheism.

"In the name of the most merciful G.o.d," Mohammed would say, "say G.o.d is one G.o.d, the Eternal G.o.d; he begetteth not, neither is he begotten, and there is not anyone like unto him!" Thus did he aim at the foundation of Christianity, seeking to overthrow belief in the "only begotten Son of G.o.d" as a divine factor of the Trinity. Jesus he recognized as a prophet, not as G.o.d's own Son; and, while he borrowed incessantly from the Scriptures, he refused to accept them, declaring that they had become perverted, and that the original Koran was a volume of Paradise, from which Gabriel rendered him transcripts, and was, therefore, the true word of G.o.d which had been laid from time everlasting on what he called the "preserved table," close to the throne of G.o.d in the highest heaven.

And yet, during the greater part of his career, the utterances of this strange, incomprehensible man were characterized by a seemingly real glow of philanthropy and an earnest solicitude for the salvation of his countrymen from the depths of moral and spiritual degradation into which they had fallen. A missionary spirit seemed to be in him, in strange contrast and incompatibility with the sacrilegious words that often fell from his lips.

In all the records of history there is nothing more wonderful than the marvelous success which attended Mohammed at Medina. Staid and sober merchantmen, men with gray heads, fiery youths, proselytes from the tribes of the desert, even women, flocked to him every day; and he soon realized that he had a vast army of converts ready to live or die for him, ready to fight for him until the last.

Amzi, alone, of all his followers, seemed to stand aloof, half-believing, yet unwilling to proclaim his belief openly; simply waiting, as he had waited all his life, to see the truth, yet too indolent to set out bravely in the quest. He preferred to look on from aside; to weigh and calculate motives, actions and results; to judge men by their fruits, though the doing so called for long waiting.

Yet Amzi grew more and more dissatisfied. He felt, though he knew not its cause, the want of a rich spiritual life, that empty hollowness which pleasures of the world and the mere consciousness of a moral life cannot satisfy.

More than once he was tempted to declare himself a follower of the prophet, but he put it off until a riper season.

Poor Dumah noted Amzi's frequent visits to the mosque with a vague dread. He had an instinctive dislike of Mohammed, whose a.s.sumptions of superiority to Jesus he understood in a hazy way, and resented with all his might.

One day he entered with a tablet of soft stone to which a cord was attached. Putting the cord about Amzi's neck, he said:

"Amzi, promise your Dumah that you will wear this always, will you not?

Because Dumah might die, and could not say the words any more. Promise me!"

"I promise you," smiled Amzi, and Dumah left the room contented.

Amzi turned the tablet over, and read the familiar words traced upon the soft stone,--the words recognized as the corner-stone of Christianity:

"G.o.d so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Amzi smiled, and put the tablet in his bosom.

CHAPTER XI.

MOHAMMED BECOMES INTOLERANT.--WAR.

"Our virtues disappear when put in compet.i.tion with our interests, as rivers lose themselves in the ocean."--_La Rochefoucauld._

Thirteen years had now pa.s.sed since Mohammed first began to meditate in the Cave of Hira. During all that time he had preached peace, love and gentleness. With power, however, came a change in his opinions. He became not only pastor of his flock, and judge of the people, but also commander of an army. Worldly ambition took possession of his breast, and the voice of him who had cried, "Follow the religion of Abraham, who was orthodox and was no idolater. Invite men unto the way of the Lord by wisdom and mild exhortation.... Bear opposition with patience, but thy patience shall not be practicable unless with G.o.d's a.s.sistance. And be not thou grieved on account of the unbelievers. Let there be no violence in religion,"--now began to call, "War is enjoined you against the infidels. Fight therefore against the friends of Satan, for the stratagem of Satan is weak. And when the months wherein ye shall not be allowed to attack them be past, kill the idolaters wherever ye shall find them, and besiege them, and lay wait for them in every convenient place. Verily G.o.d hath purchased of the true believers their souls and their substance, promising them the enjoyment of Paradise on condition that they fight for the cause of G.o.d. Whether they slay or be slain, the promise for the same is a.s.suredly due by the law, and the Gospel, and the Koran."

Clemency, he claimed, had been the instrument of Moses; wisdom, that of Solomon; righteousness, that of Christ; and now the sword was to be the instrument of Mohammed.

"The sword," he exclaimed, with flashing eye, "is the key of heaven and h.e.l.l. All who draw it in the cause of the faith will be rewarded with temporal advantages; every drop shed of their blood, every peril endured by them, will be registered on high as more meritorious than fasting or prayer. If they fall in battle, their sins will at once be blotted out, and they will be transported to paradise!"

This fierce, intolerant spirit took possession of Mohammed almost from his entrance into Medina. Chapter after chapter of the Koran was produced, breathing the same blood-thirsty, implacable hatred of opposition. Mohammed, in fact, seemed like one possessed in his enthusiasm, but his doctrines caught the fancy of the wild, impressionable Arabs, who flocked to him in crowds as his fame spread throughout the length and breadth of El Hejaz, throughout the Nejd, and even to the extremities of Arabia-Felix.

And now the b.l.o.o.d.y cloud of war hovered over the peninsula, and the people trembled.