The Life of Mohammad Part 30

[Ill.u.s.tration: (Ornamental page) CHAPTER THE TENTH]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A Writing-lesson at a village school devoted to the Teaching of the Qur'an._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: (Calligraphy) _Say: O my people! Act as ye best can: I verily will act my part, and hereafter shall ye know!_]

CHAPTER THE TENTH

[Sidenote: THE MARCH OF ISLAM]

At the very moment when fate had deprived Islam of its genial founder, the organisation of this new religion was definitively and meticulously arranged even in its most humble practices.

The soldiers of Allah had already conquered the whole of Arabia and the attack on the colossal empire of the Caesars in Syria was begun. A short period of unrest, inevitable after the disappearance of the inspired guide, caused a few rebellions; but Islam was so strongly const.i.tuted, overflowing with such enthusiasm that it was about to astonish the world by its impressive forward march, unique perhaps in the annals of history.

For the first time, rushing forth from their country forsaken by Nature, the proud Arabs, stirred by the miracle of Faith, were about to become masters in less than a century of the best part of the old civilised world from India to Andalusia, and that despite their extreme numerical inferiority.

This marvellous epopee engrossed the mind of the most wonderful man of our time, Napoleon, who always manifested the most sympathetic interest in favour of Islam. During the Egyptian campaign, he declared that he was: "Muslimun Muwahhidun," _i.e._ Unitarian Mussulman.

(_Bonaparte el l'Islam_, by Ch. Cherfils.) Towards the end of his life, he returned to the subject: 'He thought that apart from fortuitous circ.u.mstances, giving rise to miracles, there must have been something more than we know in the establishing of Islam; that the Christian world had been so remarkably cut into by the results of some first cause still hidden; that these peoples, perhaps, suddenly emerging from the desert depths, had endured long periods of civil war in their midst, during which great characters and talents had been formed, as well as irresistible impulses, or some other cause of the same kind.' (Las Casas, _Memorial de Sainte-Helene_, iii, p. 183.)

Guessing, therefore, that beneath the slumber of Islam in decadence, there were incomparable reserves of energy, he tried, not once but often, to win it over by an alliance. If he succeeded, he deemed himself capable of awakening it and, by its aid, changing the face of the world.

Napoleon was not mistaken; civil wars had indeed exalted the heroic qualities of the Arabs, but they had made all organisation and progress impossible. Had it not been for the advent of Mohammad, these intrepid soldiers would have remained eternally in their deserts, solely absorbed by the obsession of hereditary feuds.

When Islam, abolishing pride of caste, birth, or race, made all Believers really brothers and endowed them with religious and poetical souls, based on equality, there was no exploit that these fiery-minded men, their hearts untamable, were incapable of performing. These treasures of combative energy, acc.u.mulated during centuries of civil war, were not the only means by which they overthrew so many peoples, all different and superior to them in culture at that epoch. The Arabs, likewise, had stored dream-treasures in their deserts, and these visions of an unpolished, though young people were about to be imposed on those peoples who, although educated, were old and worn-out.

We advise all those who may have doubts about the genius of the Arabs to look through a collection of photographs showing the edifices erected in every part of the countries they held in subjection. There is nothing more striking than the unity of type distinguishing these monuments from all other monuments in the world; and these buildings, with their remarkable family likeness, were set up in India, Turkestan, Persia, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Barbary, Spain, etc., all countries essentially different and so peculiar, by reason of their characteristic genius, that the genius of Greece or Rome was never able to be grafted successfully.

The Arabs borrowed largely from those they conquered, often utilising their talent and even their muscles in order to build palaces and mosques; but Arabic dreams were thus always realised.

The exceptional originality of the Arab style resided in the fact that it was always imperiously guided by an art that was born at the same time as Islam. This art had no predecessors and offers us, as it were, the materialness of the Arabs' ideal. It is the art of calligraphic decoration, applied to the glorification of the word of Allah, otherwise the verses of the Qur'an.

Even reduced to its own resources, this art of Arabic calligraphy is one of the most marvellous forms of decorative skill that has ever sprung from human imagination. It is perhaps the only science of ornament of which it may be said without exaggeration that it possesses a soul, for like the voice, it expresses thought. Owing nothing even to the most cultured parts of the outer world, its independence resembles that of music and seems like the stenography of the innermost beatings of the heart.

Look at the letters which spring swiftly and horizontally from right to left as if acting under the impulse of inward life. Then they whirl on their own axis in discreet or impa.s.sioned curves, and are next erect, coming to a sudden halt, fixed in perpendicular pride.... They soon start off again in their frenzied gallop, unrolling their flourishes, bestriding each other in delicious fantasy and causing the imagination to soar in wild dreams.

To follow the impulses of the reed-pen having traced these letters; and in order to enjoy the pure eminence of their form or the intense emotion of their curve, one need not be a past master of Arabic, or a subtile graphologist; any artistic mind can penetrate without any effort the secrets of their soul.

After having expressed the ideal of his nation with such perfection, the Arab calligrapher bent beneath his yoke--almost religious--everything that was destined to support or enframe it: architecture and other systems of embellishment, forcing them to yield to the sway of his shaping skill. Under this yoke, the heavy, hemispherical dome of Byzantium was improved by adopting the pure outline of the Saracen helmet. The curves of the commonplace arcade became those of the graceful ogive, or of the proud, far-extending arch. The vulgar towers were metamorphosed into elegant minarets, leaping towards the peaks of ecstasy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Theological Students, in the Courtyard of Al-Azhar, the great Cairo Moslem University._]

In short, the only system of decoration which, with the exception of Calligraphy, borrows nothing from Nature: geometrical ornament--from which the Greek and Latin races merely derived poor and frigid effects--became endowed with real life. Henceforward this decoration was significantly labelled as Arabesque and, following the example of its model, it tried skilfully to astonish the mind by straying in the midst of the most inextricable entanglements and unexpected transformations....

How precious are the creations of Moslem art! European amateurs nowadays outbid each other in golden offers for its vestiges, hoping through them to introduce into their homes a few gleams of the mirages that inspired their authors. Radiant stained-gla.s.s, variegated gla.s.sware, stuffs worked with gold or silver wire, sparkling silks, damaskeened, inlaid bronzes, exquisite miniatures in the dwellings of the West, do they not all sing the glory of Islam? Among all these treasures, connoisseurs already begin to prefer those of Calligraphy which animates the transcription of the divine verses by the delicate colouring of copies of the Qur'an, or of the thick enamel of earthware. By so doing, the buyers of Europe follow the example of Mussulman princes of the best epoch who, to possess a page of calligraphy by a celebrated artist, lavished madly as much money as is given in our time for masterpieces of painters. May not these sacred inscriptions, causing their new possessors to be thrilled with admiration by reason of the refined elegance of their form, reveal one day to their purchasers the sublime beauty of the Islamic soul lurking in these writings?

[Sidenote: INFLUENCE OF MOSLEM CIVILISATION IN EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE]

Even at a period when Europe was not inimically inclined towards Islam, it was dazzled by all its marvels and borrowed largely from the decorative and architectural genius of the Arabs. Deep research would soon prove that it owes much more to it than to Greek or Latin antiquity. Such a study would take us too far from our subject. We may, however, point out as a curious fact that, according to the historian Dulaure, Arab architects were employed in the work of building the Parisian cathedral of Notre Dame.

In the domain of science, the influence of the Moslems was just as fertile. To give an idea thereof, we cannot do better than summarise the opinion vouchsafed by Doctor Gustave Le Bon, in his remarkable work: _La Civilisation des Arabes_. (_The Civilisation of the Arabs._)

"First of all, it must be acknowledged that it is to the Arabs that we owe entirely the idea of experiment and observation, the basis of modern scientific methods, overriding the authority of a master. This subst.i.tution is therefore not the work of Bacon, to whom it is generally attributed.

"After having established that the highest degree of science consists in giving rise to phenomena oneself and at will, the celebrated scientist Humboldt adds: "The Arabs reached to this height, which was almost unknown to the ancients."

"The study of mathematics enjoyed overspread favour among the Arabs, and the progress accomplished in algebra metamorphosed that science to such an extent that its invention has been attributed to them. To them also are due the first application of algebra to geometry, and the introduction of tangents into trigonometry.

"Astronomy was pa.s.sionately studied in their schools of Bagdad, Damascus, Samarcand, Cairo, Fez, Toledo, Cordova, etc., and their discoveries may be summed up in the following enumeration: introduction of tangents into astronomical calculation; construction of tables of planetary movement; strict determination of the obliquity of the ecliptic and of its gradual diminution; exact estimation of the procession of the equinoxes; and the first precise determination of the year's duration. To them also we owe the ascertainment of the irregularities of the greatest lat.i.tude of the moon, and the discovery of the third lunar inequality, now called variation.

"In geography, the contribution of these bold travellers is most remarkable from a scientific viewpoint. They made those exact astronomical determinations which form the first foundation of cartography, and rectified the enormous errors of position committed by the Greeks.

"From the standpoint of exploration, they published accounts of travel which caused different parts of the world, scarcely suspected before them, to be known, and where no European had ever set foot. The sources of the Nile, running through the great equatorial lakes, are exactly set out on a map by Al-Idrisi, dating from the year 1160, and which were only discovered by Europeans during the second half of the nineteenth century.

"In physical sciences, the sum total of their discoveries is still more considerable. The following enumeration proves their importance: high attainment of knowledge in theoretical physics, especially in optics and in the creation of the most ingenious mechanical apparatus; discovery of the most fundamental bodies of chemistry, such as alcohol, nitric acid, sulphuric acid; and the most essential operation, such as distillation; application of chemistry to pharmacy and commerce, especially as regards the extraction of metals, the manufacturing of paper from rags, which they caused to take the place of parchment, papyrus, or Chinese silk-paper.

"They were probably the first to use the compa.s.s in navigation; at any rate, they certainly introduced this fundamental invention to Europe.

"To conclude: the discovery of firearms. In 1205, the Emir Yaqub resorted already to artillery at the siege of Mahdiyya; in 1273, the Sultan Abu Yusuf used cannons at the siege of Sijilmasa. In 1342, two Englishmen, Lord Derby and Lord Salisbury, were present at the siege of Algeciras, defended by the Arabs in the same way. These travellers, having witnessed the effect of gunpowder, took this discovery back to their country. It was through them that the English made use of it, four years later, at Cressy.

"In medical science, the Moslems followed Greek writers, and afterwards made most important progress. Nearly all the medical knowledge of Europe, at the epoch of the Renaissance, was borrowed from them. The remarkable progress they made in medicine, was in surgery; the description of maladies; _materia medica_; and pharmacy.

They found out a quant.i.ty of methods, of which many--the use of cold water in typhoid fever, for instance--crop up again in modern times, after having been forgotten for centuries.

"_Materia medica_ owes them numerous medicines, such as: ca.s.sia, senna, rhubarb, tamarinds, camphor, alcohol, ammonia, etc. They were the true creators of pharmacy. Most of the preparations still in use nowadays are due to them: syrups, emulsions, pomades, ointments, distilled water, etc.

"Surgery also owes fundamental progress to the Arabs. Their work served as a basis for the teaching of Faculties of Medecine until quite recently. In the eleventh century of our era, they knew the treatment of cataract by the lowering or the extraction of the crystalline; lithotrity; the treatment of hemorrhage by irrigations of cold water; the use of caustics; setons; and cauterization by fire.

Anesthesia, of which the princ.i.p.al discovery is supposed to be modern, seems to have been known to them. As a matter of fact, they speak favourably of the use of tare before undertaking painful operations, so that the patient may be put to sleep until "loss of consciousness and feeling" supervenes.

"They had, likewise, implicit confidence in hygiene in medical treatment, and placed great reliance on the resources of Nature.

Expectant medecine, which, at the present time, seems the last word of modern science, reasons exactly in the same way." (Dr. G. Le Bon, _La Civilisation des Arabes._)

In the domain of ideas, the influence of the Moslems had perhaps still more valuable consequences. Jesus preached equality and fraternity, but Mohammad was lucky enough to realise both among the Believers during his lifetime.

It would be absurd to maintain that his direct example served to guide the French Revolution which was not inspired by much of his levelling works. Nevertheless, the first attempts of this enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of ideas and the organisation of modern society on a new basis--and of this there is ample proof--resulted logically from his doctrines.

Honour is due to a Mussulman philosopher, Ibn Rushd, or Averroes, who lived in Spain from 1120 to 1198, for being the first to introduce freethought--not to be confused with atheism--into Europe.

Averroes opposed the pure deism of Islam to mythological pantheism and Christian anthromorphism, and his 'Commentaries of Aristotle,'

although vividly coloured with Mussulman tints, impa.s.sioned all independent minds in medieval Europe. Averroism, born of this enthusiasm, may be justly considered not only the precursor of Reform, but also the father of modern Rationalism.

The influence exercised by Mussulman customs over those of Europe was equally healthful. The Arabs joined most chivalrous manners to extreme religious tolerance.

"It was among the Arabs of Spain that the knightly spirit arose, and which was afterwards appropriated by the warriors of the North, as if it was a quality inherent in Christian nations," declares the celebrated Spanish writer Blasco Ibanez, in his novel: _Dans L'Ombre de la Cathedrale_. (_In the Shadow Of the Cathedral._)

In this connection, we can again quote Dr. Le Bon: