IV.—The Marriage Festivities (part 2)

“Already, after the fashion of Arabian warfare, single combats had been fought at various points, when the two brothers Shaiba and Otba, and Walîd the son of Otba, still smarting from the words of Abu Jahl, advanced into the space between the armies, and defied three champions from the army of Mahomet to meet them singly. Three citizens of Medîna stepped forward; but Mahomet, unwilling either that the glory or the burden of the opening conflict should rest with his allies, called them back; and, turning to his kinsmen said: ‘Ye sons of Hâshim! arise and fight, according to your right.’ Then Obeida (ʿUbaidah), Hamza, and Ali, the uncle and cousins of the Prophet, went forth. Hamza wore an ostrich feather in his breast, and a white plume distinguished the helmet of Ali. But their features were hid by their armour. Otba, therefore, not knowing who his opponents might be, cried aloud, ‘Speak, that we may recognise you! If ye be equals, we shall fight with you.’ Hamza answered, ‘I am the son of Abd al Muttalib—Hamza, the Lion of God, and the Lion of His Prophet.’ ‘A worthy foe,’ exclaimed Otba; ‘but who are these others with thee?’ Hamza repeated their names. Otba replied, ‘Meet foes, every one!’

“Then Otba called to his son Walîd, ‘Arise and fight.’ So Walîd stepped forth and Ali came out against him. They were the youngest of the six. The combat was short; Walîd fell mortally wounded by the sword of Ali. Eager to avenge his son’s death, Otba hastened forward, and Hamza advanced to meet him. The swords gleamed quick, and again the Coreishite warrior was slain by the Moslim lion. Shaiba alone remained of the three champions of Mecca; and Obeida, the veteran of the Moslems, threescore years and five, now drew near to fight with him. Both being well advanced in years, the conflict was less decisive than before. At last, Shaiba dealt a sword-cut on the leg of Obeida with such force as to sever the tendon, and bring him to the ground. Seeing this, Hamza and Ali both rushed on Shaiba and despatched him. Obeida survived but for a few days, and was buried on the march back at Safra.

“The fate of their champions was ominous for the Coreish, and their spirits sank. The ranks began to close, with the battle-cry on the Moslem side of, ‘Ye conquerors, strike!’ and the fighting became general. But there were still many of those scenes of individual bravery which characterise the irregular warfare of Asiatic armies, and often impart to them a Homeric interest. Prodigies of valour were exhibited on both sides; but the army of the Faithful was borne forward by an enthusiasm which the half-hearted Coreish were unable to withstand.

“What part Mahomet himself took in the battle is not clear. Some traditions represent him moving along the ranks with a drawn sword. It is more likely (according to others) that he contented himself with inciting his followers by the promise of divine assistance, and by holding out the prospect of Paradise to those who fell. The spirit of Omeir, a lad of but sixteen years, was kindled within him as he listened to the Prophet’s words. Tradition delights to tell of the ardour with which the stripling threw away a handful of dates which he was eating. ‘Is it these,’ he exclaimed, ‘that hold me back from Paradise? Verily I will taste no more of them until I meet my Lord!’ With such words, he drew his sword, and, casting himself upon the enemy, soon obtained the fate he coveted.

“It was a stormy wintry day. A piercing blast swept across the valley. ‘That,’ said Mahomet, ‘is Gabriel with a thousand angels flying as a whirlwind at our foe.’ Another, and yet another blast:—it was Michael, and after him, Seraphîl, each with a like angelic troop. The battle raged. The Prophet stooped, and lifting a handful of gravel, cast it towards the Coreish, and cried, ‘Confusion seize their faces!’ The action was well timed. The line of the Coreish began to waver. Their movements were impeded by the heavy sands on which they stood; and, when the ranks gave way, their numbers added but confusion. The Moslems followed eagerly on their retreating steps, slaying or taking captive all that fell within their reach. Retreat soon turned into ignominious flight. The Coreish, in their haste to escape, cast away their armour and abandoned their beasts of burden with the camp and equipage. Forty-nine were killed, and about the same number taken prisoners. Mahomet lost only fourteen, of whom eight were citizens of Medîna, and six Refugees.

“Many of the principal men of the Coreish, and some of Mahomet’s bitterest opponents, were slain. Chief amongst these was Abu Jahl. Muâdz brought him to the ground by a blow which cut his leg in two. Muâdz, in his turn, was attacked by Ikrima (ʿIkrimah), the son of Abu Jahl, and his arm nearly severed from his shoulder. As the mutilated limb hanging by the skin impeded his action, Muâdz put his foot upon it, pulled it off, and went on his way fighting. Such were the heroes of Bedr. Abu Jahl was yet breathing when Abdallah, Mahomet’s servant, ran up, and cutting off his head, carried it to his master. ‘The head of the enemy of God!’ exclaimed Mahomet. ‘God! There is none other God but He!’ ‘There is no other!’ responded Abdallah, as he cast the bloody head at the Prophet’s feet. ‘It is more acceptable to me,’ cried Mahomet, ‘than the choicest camel in all Arabia.’

“But there were others whose death caused no gratification to Mahomet. Abdul Bokhtari had shown him special kindness at the time when he was shut up in the quarter of Abu Tâlib; Mahomet, mindful of this favour, had commanded that he should not be harmed. Abdul Bokhtari had a companion seated on his camel behind him. A warrior, riding up, told him of the quarter given by Mahomet; but added, ‘I cannot spare the man behind thee.’ ‘The women of Mecca,’ Abdul Bokhtari exclaimed, ‘shall never say that I abandoned my comrade through love of life. Do thy work upon us.’ So they were killed, both he and his companion.

“After the battle was over, some of the prisoners were cruelly put to death. The following incident illustrates the savage spirit already characteristic of the faith. Omeya ibn Khalf and his son were unable to escape with the fugitive Coreish, and, seeing Abdal Rahmân pass, implored that he would make them his prisoners. Abdal Rahmân, mindful of an ancient friendship, cast away the plunder he was carrying, and, making both his prisoners, was proceeding with them to the Moslim camp. As the party passed, Bilâl espied his old enemy—for Omeya had used to persecute him—and he screamed aloud, ‘Slay him. This man is the head of the unbelievers. I am lost, I am lost, if he lives!’ From all sides the infuriated soldiers, hearing Bilâl’s appeal, poured in upon the wretched captives; and Abdal Rahmân, finding resistance impossible, bade them save their lives as best they could. Defence was vain; and the two prisoners were immediately cut in pieces.

“When the enemy had disappeared, the army of Medîna was for some time engaged in gathering the spoil. Every man was allowed to retain the plunder of anyone whom he himself had slain. The rest was thrown into a common stock. The booty consisted of one hundred and fifteen camels, fourteen horses, carpets and other articles of fine leather, vestments, and much equipage and armour. A diversity of opinion arose about the distribution. Those who had hotly pursued the enemy and exposed their lives in securing the spoil, claimed the whole, or at the least a superior portion; while such as had remained behind upon the field of battle for the safety of the Prophet and of the camp, urged that they had equally with the others fulfilled the part assigned to them, and that, having been restrained by duty from the pursuit, they were entitled to a full share of the prey. The contention was so sharp, that Mahomet interposed with a message from heaven, and assumed possession of the whole booty. It was God who had given the victory, and to God the spoil belonged: ‘They will ask thee concerning the prey. Say, the prey is God’s and his Prophet’s. Wherefore fear God, and dispose of the matter rightly among yourselves; and be obedient unto God and His Prophet, if ye be true Believers’—and so on in the same strain. Shortly afterwards, the following ordinance, which the Mussulman law of prize recognises to the present day, was given forth: ‘And know that whatsoever thing ye plunder, verily one fifth thereof is for God and for the Prophet, and for him that is of kin (unto the Prophet), and for the orphans, and the poor, and the wayfarer—if ye be they that believe in God, and in that which We sent down to our Servant on the Day of Discrimination, the day on which the two armies met; and God is over all things powerful.’ (See Qurʾān, Sūrah viii.)

“In accordance with the divine command, the booty was gathered together on the field, and placed under a special officer, a citizen of Medîna. The next day it was divided, near Safra, in equal allotments, among the whole army, after the Prophet’s fifth had been set apart. All shared alike, excepting that the horsemen received each two extra portions for their horses. To the lot of every man fell a camel, with its gear; or two camels unaccoutred; or a leathern couch, or some such equivalent. Mahomet obtained the famous camel of Abu Jahl, and a sword known by the name of Dzul Ficâr (Ẕū ʾl-Fiqār). The sword was selected by him beyond his share, according to a custom which allowed him, in virtue of the prophetic dignity, to choose from the booty, before division, whatever thing might please him most.

“The sun was now declining, so they hastily dug a pit on the battle-field, and cast the enemy’s dead into it. Mahomet looked on, as the bodies were brought up and cast in. Abu Bakr, too, stood by, and, examining their features, called aloud their names. ‘Otba! Shaiba! Omeyya! Abu Jahl!’ exclaimed Mahomet, as one by one the corpses were, without ceremony, thrown into the common grave. ‘Have ye now found that which your Lord promised you true? What my Lord promised me, that verily have I found to be true. Woe unto this people! Ye have rejected me, your Prophet! Ye cast me forth, and others gave me refuge; ye fought against me, and others came to my help!’ ‘O Prophet!’ said the bystanders, ‘dost thou speak unto the dead?’ ‘Yea, verily,’ replied Mahomet, ‘for they well know that the promise of their Lord unto them hath fully come to pass.’

“At the moment when the corpse of Otba was tossed into a pit, a look of distress overcast the countenance of his son, Abu Hodzeifa (Abū Ḥuẕaifah). Mahomet turned kindly to him, and said, ‘Perhaps thou art distressed for thy father’s fate?’ ‘Not so, O Prophet of the Lord! I do not doubt the justice of my father’s fate; but I knew well his wise and generous heart, and I had trusted that the Lord would have led him to the faith. But now that I see him slain, and my hope destroyed, it is for that I grieve.’ So the Prophet comforted Abu Hodzeifa, and blessed him, and said, ‘It is well.’

“The army of Medîna, carrying their dead and wounded, retired in the evening to the valley of Otheil, several miles from Bedr; and there Mahomet passed the night. On the morrow the prisoners were brought up before him. As he scrutinised each, his eye fell fiercely on Nadhr, son of Hârish (al-Naẓr ibn al-Ḥāris̤). ‘There was death in that glance,’ whispered Nadhr, trembling, to a bystander. ‘Not so,’ replied the other, ‘it is but thine own imagination.’ The unfortunate prisoner thought otherwise, and besought Musâb to intercede for him. Musâb reminded him that he had denied the faith and persecuted Believers. ‘Ah!’ said Nadhr, ‘had the Coreish made thee a prisoner, they would never have put thee to death!’ ‘Even were it so,’ Musâb scornfully replied, ‘I am not as thou art; Islâm hath rent all bonds asunder.’ Micdâd, the captor, fearing lest the prisoner, and with him the chance of a rich ransom, was about to slip from his hands, cried out, ‘The prisoner is mine!’ But at this moment the command to ‘Strike off his head!’ was interposed by Mahomet, who had been watching what passed. ‘And, O Lord!’ he added, ‘do thou of thy bounty grant unto Micdâd a better prey than this.’ Nadhr was forthwith beheaded by Ali.

“Two days afterwards, about half-way to Medîna, Ocba, another prisoner, was ordered out for execution. He ventured to expostulate and demand why he should be treated more rigorously than the other captives. ‘Because of thy enmity to God and to His Prophet,’ replied Mahomet. ‘And my little girl!’ cried Ocba, in the bitterness of his soul, ‘who will take care of her?’ ‘Hell-fire!’ exclaimed the heartless conqueror, and on the instant his victim was hewn to the ground. ‘Wretch that thou wast!’ continued Mahomet, ‘and persecutor! unbeliever in God, in His Prophet, and in His Book! I give thanks unto the Lord that hath slain thee, and comforted mine eyes thereby.’ ”

Such was the battle of Badr. Insignificant in numbers, but most memorable in the annals of Islām on account of its important results. It was at Badr that “the Prophet” first drew the sword in the assertion of his claim as a commissioned apostle of the Most High God, and the victory is attributed in the Qurʾān to the direct intervention of the Almighty. See Sūrah iii. 11:—

“Ye have already had a sign in the meeting of the two hosts. The one host fought in the cause of God, and the other was infidel. To their own eye-sight, the infidels saw you twice as many as themselves: And God aided with His succour whom He would: And in this truly was a lesson for men endued with discernment.”

Al-Baiẓāwī, the commentator, says 3,000 angels fought for the Muslims on the battle-field of Badr.

Muḥammad was received in triumph at al-Madīnah, but his joy was interrupted by the death of his daughter Ruqaiyah, the divorced wife of ʿUtbah ibn Lahab, but who had been afterwards married to Us̤mān ibn ʿAffān. On his return to al-Madīnah (A.H. 3), Muḥammad found his position much strengthened, and from this time the Qurʾān assumes a rude dictatorial tone. He who at one time only spoke as a searcher after truth, now demands unhesitating obedience from the whole country of Arabia.

The Jews, however, were still unimpressed and were slow to acknowledge Muḥammad, although he claimed to be but the teacher of the creed of Abraham. Muḥammad sought but a plausible excuse for a rupture with the sons of Israel, and an opportunity soon presented itself. A Muslim girl was insulted by a youth of a Jewish tribe, and, taking advantage of the circumstance, the whole tribe was attacked, proscribed, and banished. Their houses and lands were confiscated and divided amongst the Faithful. In the course of the same year, Kaʿb ibn al-Ashraf, a Jew, was assassinated because he annoyed the Muslims with his verses. About this time, Muḥammad married his fourth wife, Ḥafṣah, the daughter of ʿUmar the celebrated K͟halīfah. In the early part of the year, al-Ḥasan, the son of Fāt̤imah and ʿAlī, was born.

The tidings of the defeat at Badr aroused the bitterest feelings of the Quraish. They advanced upon al-Madīnah 3,000 strong. In ten days the Makkan army reached Ẕū ʾl-ḥalfah, four miles south of al-Madīnah, and then moving northwards, they encamped at Uḥud, an isolated mountain three miles north-east of the city. Muḥammad, clad in armour, led out his army of 1,000 men, and halted for the night; and at early dawn advanced on Uḥud. He was soon abandoned by ʿAbdu ʾllāh, the chief of the Hypocrites [MUNAFIQUN] with 300 of his followers.

K͟hālid ibn al-Walīd, a name afterwards famous in Muslim history, commanding the right wing of the Quraish, attacked the Muslims, and raised the cry, “Muḥammad is slain!” The confusion of the Faithful was great, and defied all the efforts of Muḥammad to rally them. The Prophet himself was wounded in the face by two arrows. The Muslims were completely defeated, but the retreat was ably conducted by Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and ʿUs̤mān, and the victorious Quraish did not attempt a pursuit.

Abū ʾl-Fidāʾ gives the following quaint account of the battle:—

“When the two armies engaged and approached each other, Hind, daughter of ʿUtbāh, the wife of Abū Sufyān, arose with the women that were with her, and they beat upon the tabors as they followed the men to battle. And Hind said, ‘Well done, ye sons of ʿAbdu ʾd-Dār, well done! Strike ye with every weapon ye possess.’ And Ḥamzah, the Prophet’s uncle, fought most valiantly that day; and he slew Artah, the standard-bearer of the unbelievers.”

“And Abū Kamiyah, the Lais̤ite slew Muṣʿab, the standard-bearer of the Muslims, and when Muṣʿab was slain, the Prophet gave the standard of Islām to ʿAlī, the son of Abū T̤ālib. Now, the archers were too eager for the spoil, and they left the position in which Muḥammad had posted them. And K͟hālid, the leader of the unbelievers, came with the cavalry to the rear of the Muslims, and raised a cry that Muḥammad was slain. So the Muslims were overcome by the unbelievers, and the Quraish gained the victory. The number of martyrs in the cause of Islām who fell at Uḥud was seventy. The number of the slain amongst the unbelievers was twenty-two. The enemy even struck Muḥammad. Their stones hit him and he fell. His foreteeth were struck out, and he was wounded in the face. Two nails of the helmet entered the face of Muḥammad. And Abū ʿUbaidah pulled one of the nails out of his face and one tooth dropped out; and he pulled out another nail and another tooth dropped out. And when Abū ʿUbaidah was taking out the teeth, Sunān Abū Saʿīd sucked the blood from Muḥammad’s face and swallowed it. Upon which the Prophet said, ‘Whosoever toucheth my blood, him shall the fire of hell never touch.’

“Then Hind and her companions fell on the Muslims who were slain, and cut off their noses and their ears. And Hind cut a slice from Ḥamzah’s liver and ate it. Then Abū Sufyān, the husband of Hind, stuck his spear into Ḥamzah’s body, and cried with a loud voice, ‘The fortunes of war are uncertain! The day of Uḥud for the day of Badr! Let the idol of Hubal be exalted!’ Then Muḥammad sought for the body of his uncle, and he found it lying on the ground with the belly ripped open and the ears and nose cut off. And the Prophet said, ‘God hath revealed to me concerning the Quraish. Verily, retaliation shall be made on thirty of them for the death of Ḥamzah, and verily Ḥamzah is now in the seventh heaven.’ Then Muḥammad prayed for Ḥamzah, and went to each of the bodies of the slain and prayed for them. Some of the Muslims wanted to carry their dead to al-Madīnah, but the Prophet said, ‘Bury them where they fell.’ ”

There is an allusion to the defeat at Uḥud in the third Sūrah of the Qurʾān: “What befell you when the two armies met by God’s permission. Count not those who are killed in the way of God as dead. They are living with their Lord.”

The fourth year of the Hijrah (A.D. 625) opened with the despatch of 500 Muslims against the tribe of Asd, who were making preparations to invade al-Madīnah. The enemy fled at the appearance of the Muslim troops, and the place was sacked.

During this year there were several expeditions. Amongst others, one against the Jewish tribe Banū Naẓīr, whose homes were spoiled, and the people banished, because they would not accept the mission of the “Apostle of God.” There is an allusion to this event in the second Sūrah of the Qurʾān. A second expedition was also made to Badr, but there was no fighting, although the event is known as the second battle of Badr; for after waiting eight days for an engagement with the Quraish, the Muslims returned in triumph to al-Madīnah.

It was about this time that Muḥammad made two additions to his ḥaram, by marrying Zainab, the widow of ʿUbaidah, who fell at Badr, as his fifth wife, and Ummu Salimah, the widow of Abū Salimah, who fell at the battle of Uḥud, for his sixth; thus exceeding the legal number of four wives, to which he restricted his followers.

Muḥammad being threatened by combined contingents of the Quraish, the Banū G͟hat̤fān and the Jewish tribes of Naẓīr and Quraiz̤ah, who advanced upon al-Madīnah with an army of 12,000 men, he, at the advice of a Persian named Salmān, caused a trench to be dug round the city, and then issued forth to defend it at the head of 3,000 Muslims. Both sides remained inactive for nearly a month, when, at last, the Quraish and their allies broke up the siege. This engagement is known in Muslim history as G͟hazwatu ʾl-K͟handaq, or the “Battle of the Ditch.” Special reference is made to this event in the Qurʾān, Sūrah xxxiii. 9, where the success of the Muslims is attributed to the intervention of God, “who sent a blast and a host that were not seen.”

The next expedition was against the Jewish tribe, the Banū Quraiz̤ah, when Muḥammad led an army of three thousand men with thirty-six horse. The Jews sustained a siege of some twenty-five days, but were at last compelled to capitulate. Their fate was left to the decision of the Prophet’s companion, Saʿd, whose sentence was that the male captives should be slain, the female captives and children sold into slavery, and the spoils divided amongst the army. The Prophet commended the cruel judgment of Saʿd, as a decision according to the judgment of God, given on high from the seven heavens; and about 700 captives were deliberately beheaded, in parties in the presence of Muḥammad. One of the female captives, Rīḥānah, whose husband and male relatives had perished in the massacre, the Prophet reserved for himself. This cruel massacre of the Banū Quraiz̤ah is commended in the XXXIIIrd Sūrah of the Qurʾān, verse 25.

Before the close of this year, Muḥammad married his cousin Zainab. The Prophet had previously given her in marriage to Zaid ibn Ḥāris̤ah, his freed man and adopted son. But upon visiting the house of Zaid, and not finding him at home, the Prophet accidentally cast his eyes on Zainab, and was so smitten with her beauty, that he exclaimed, “Praise belongeth unto God, who turneth the hearts of men even as He will.” Zainab saw that she had made an impression on the Prophet’s heart, and when her husband returned, recounted the circumstances to him. Zaid determined to part with her in favour of his friend and benefactor, and offered to divorce her. But the relations of the Arabs to their adopted children were so strict, that nothing but a revelation from heaven could settle the difficulty. It was to meet this domestic emergency that the Prophet produced the following verses of the Qurʾān, Sūrah xxxiii. 36–38, to sanction his own heart’s desire:—

“And it is not for a believer, man or woman, to have any choice in their affairs, when God and His Apostle have decreed a matter: and whoever disobeyeth God and His Apostle, erreth with palpable error. And, remember, when thou saidst to him unto whom God had shown favour, and to whom thou also hadst shown favour, ‘Keep thy wife to thyself, and fear God;’ and thou didst hide in thy mind what God would bring to light, and thou didst fear man; but more right had it been to fear God. And when Zaid had settled concerning her to divorce her, we married her to thee, that it might not be a crime in the faithful to marry the wives of their adopted sons, when they have settled the affair concerning them. And the behest of God is to be performed. No blame attacheth to the Prophet where God hath given him a permission. Such was the way of God with those prophets who flourished before thee.”

The scandal of the marriage was removed by the pretended revelation, and according to the Traditions, Zainab used to vaunt herself as the one wife of the Prophet’s ḥarīm who had been given in marriage by God Himself. At all events, she exchanged a husband who had a pug nose and was short and ill-favoured for one who was the leading chief of Arabia!

Muḥammad’s numerous marriages (four being the legal number—Sūrah iv. 3) were likely to excite the jealousy and opposition of less favoured Muslims, but an additional chapter of the Qurʾān avoided complications, and allowed the “Prophet of God” greater liberty in this respect! See Sūrah xxxiii. 49: “O Prophet, we have allowed thee thy wives whom thou hast dowered, and the slaves whom thy right hand possesseth … and any believing woman who has given herself up to the Prophet, if the Prophet desireth to wed her; a privilege for thee above the rest of the Faithful.”

About this time certain injunctions were issued for the seclusion of women, and for the regulation of social and domestic intercourse (Sūrah xxv.). These rules were made more stringent in the case of the Prophet’s own wives, who, in the case of incontinence, are threatened with double punishment (Sūrah xxxiii.). The jealousy of the Prophet, who was now getting old, was allayed by the Divine command, that his wives should, in the event of his death, never marry again. The obligation devolving on believers, to consort equally with their several wives, was also relaxed specially in the Prophet’s favour (Sūrah xlviii.).

In the sixth year of the Hijrah several military expeditions were made. Amongst others, to the Banū Quraiz̤ah and the Banū Laḥyān. On his return from the last expedition Muḥammad stopped for a few moments to visit the grave of his mother, and desired to pray for her soul. But a verse from the Qurʾān, alleged to have been revealed on this occasion, forbade his praying for the forgiveness of one who died an infidel. Sūrah ix. 114, 115:—

“It is not for the Prophet or the Faithful to pray for the forgiveness of those, even though they be of kin, who associate other beings with God, after it hath been made clear to them that they are to be the inmates of Hell. For neither did Abraham ask forgiveness for his father, but in pursuance of a promise which he had promised to him: but when it was shown him that he was an enemy to God, he declared himself clear of him. Yet Abraham was pitiful, kind.”

Muḥammad marched in person against the Banū ʾl-Muṣt̤aliq, and completely surprised and routed them. One thousand camels, five thousand sheep, and a great many women and children, became the spoil of the Muslims. One of the female captives, named Juwairīyah, fell to the lot of S̤ābit ibn Qais, who, as a meritorious act, offered to release her and give her her liberty, for a certain sum. On applying to Muḥammad to help her with the money to pay the ransom, he readily agreed to do so, and when she was freed he married her. Thereupon, the Muslims recognised the Banū ʾl-Muṣt̤aliq as allies. Juwairīyah survived Muḥammad forty-five years.

At the last stage, returning from the campaign against the Banū ʾl-Muṣt̤aliq, ʿĀyishah’s tent and litter were by inadvertence carried away, while she was for a moment absent, and on her return she found herself in the dark alone. Expecting the mistake to be discovered, she sat down to await the issue, when, after some delay, one of the followers came up, and finding her in this plight, bade her mount his camel, and so conducted her to al-Madīnah. The citizens drew sinister conclusions from the circumstance, and Muḥammad himself became estranged from ʿĀyishah, and she retired to her father’s home. Several weeks elapsed, when, at length, the Prophet was supernaturally informed of her innocence (Sūrah xxiv.). The law was then promulgated which requires four eye-witnesses to establish the charge of adultery, in default of which the imputation is to be punished as a slander, with eighty lashes. [QAZF.] ʿĀyishah was taken back to her home, and her accusers were beaten.

It was during the year A.H. 6, that Muḥammad conceived the idea of addressing foreign sovereigns and princes, and of inviting them to embrace Islām. His letter to the Emperor Heraclius has been handed down by Ibn ʿAbbās (Mishkāt, book xvii. ch. civ.), and is as follows:—

“In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful, Muḥammad, who is the servant of God, and His Apostle, to Hiraql, the Qaiṣar of Rūm. Peace be on whoever has gone on the straight road. After this I say, Verily, I call you to Islām. Embrace Islām, and God will reward you twofold. If you turn away from the offer of Islām, then on you be the sins of your people. O people of the Book (i.e. Christians), come towards a creed which is fit both for us and for you. It is this, to worship none but God, and not to associate anything with God, and not to call others God. Therefore, O ye people of the Book, if ye refuse, beware! We are Muslims, and our religion is Islām.

(Seal.)

“Muhammad, the Apostle of God.”

The letter was sent to the Governor of Buṣrā that he might convey it to Cæsar, but we have no record of a reply having been received.

He also wrote to Kasra-Parwiz, King of Persia, but Kasra tore the letter in pieces. On hearing the fate of his letter, Muḥammad said, “Even so shall his kingdom be shattered to pieces.” His third embassy was to Najāshī, the King of Abyssinia, who received the message with honour. The fourth was to Jarīḥ ibn Matta, the Muqauqis, or Governor, of Egypt. Jarīḥ sent a polite reply, and begged the Prophet’s acceptance of two beautiful Coptic slave girls. One of these, Shirīn, the Prophet gave to Ḥassān the poet, but he reserved the other, Māriyah, for himself. In due time, Māriyah presented the Prophet with a son, who was named Ibrāhīm, the birth of which made the mother a free woman, and placed her in the honourable position of the wife. But the Prophet’s extreme fondness for the recent addition to his already extensive ḥarīm was resented by his numerous wives. ʿĀyishah and Ḥafṣah were especially enraged, for the Prophet was in the habit of visiting Māriyah on the day due to one of these ladies. Ḥafṣah, who, being the daughter of ʿUmar, was a person of great political importance, took up the matter, and in order to pacify her the Prophet swore solemnly that he would never visit Māriyah again, and enjoined Ḥafṣah to keep the secret from the rest of his wives. She, however, revealed it in confidence to ʿĀyishah! Muḥammad was annoyed at finding his confidence betrayed, and separated himself for a whole month from his wives, and spent his time in Māriyah’s apartment. The situation was a difficult one, not merely on account of the complications caused in his own domestic circle, but because ʿUmar, the father of Ḥafṣah, was a most important political personage in those days. The only way out of the difficulty was to produce a third direct revelation from heaven, which appeared in the Sūratu ʾt-Taḥrīm, or the “Chapter of Prohibition” (lxvi.), of the Qurʾān, and reads as follows:—

“Why, O Prophet! dost thou hold that to be forbidden which God hath made lawful to thee, from a desire to please thy wives, since God is Lenient, Merciful? God hath allowed you release from your oaths; and God is your master; and He is the Knowing, Wise. When the Prophet told a recent occurrence as a secret to one of his wives (i.e. Ḥafṣah), and when she divulged it and God informed him of this, he acquainted her with part and withheld part. And when he had told her of it, she said, ‘Who told thee this?’ He said, ‘The Knowing, the Sage hath told it me. If ye both be turned to God in penitence, for now have your hearts gone astray … but if ye conspire against the Prophet, then know that God is his Protector, and Gabriel, and every just man among the faithful; and the angels are his helpers besides. Haply if he put you both (i.e. Ḥafṣah and ʿĀyishah) away, his Lord will give him in exchange other wives better than you, Muslims, believers, devout, penitent, obedient, observant of fasting, both known of men and virgins.’ ”

In the Muḥarram of A.H. 7, Muḥammad assembled a force of 1,600 men, and marched against K͟haibar, a fertile district inhabited by the Jews, and situated about six days’ march to the north-east of al-Madīnah. The attack on K͟haibar taxed both the energy and skill of the Warrior Prophet, for it was defended by several fortresses. The fort Qamuṣ was defended by Kinānah, a powerful Jewish chief, who claimed for himself the title of “King of the Jews.” Several assaults were made and vigorously repulsed by the besieged. Both Abū Bakr and ʿUmar were equally unsuccessful in their attempts to take the position, when the Prophet selected ʿAlī to lead a detachment of picked men. A famous Jewish warrior named Marhab, now presented himself, and challenged ʿAlī to single combat. The challenge was accepted, and ʿAlī, armed with his famous sword “Ẕū ʾl-Fiqār,” given to him by the Prophet, cleft the head of his adversary in twain, and secured a victory. In a few days all the fortresses of the district were taken, and K͟haibar was subjugated to Islām.

Amongst the female captives was Ṣafīyah, the widow of the chief Kinānah, who had fallen at Qamuṣ. One of Muḥammad’s followers begged her for himself, but the Prophet, struck with her beauty, threw his mantle over her, and took her to his ḥarīm.

The booty taken at K͟haibar was very considerable, and in order to secure the district to Muslim rule, the Jews of the district were exiled to the banks of the Jordan.

It was during the K͟haibar expedition that Muḥammad instituted Mutʿah, an abominable temporary marriage, to meet the demands of his army. This is an institution still observed by the Shīʿahs, but said by the Sunnīs to have been abolished by Muḥammad. [MUTʿAH.] It was at K͟haibar that an attempt was made, by a Jewess named Zainab, to poison Muḥammad. She dressed a kid, and having steeped it in deadly poison, placed it before the Prophet, who ate but a mouthful of the poisoned kid when the deed was discovered. Zainab was immediately put to death.

The subjugation of the Jewish districts of Fadak, Wādī ʾl-Qurā and Tannah, on the confines of Syria, followed that of K͟haibar. This year, in the sacred month of Ẕū ʾl-Qaʿdah, Muḥammad decided to perform the ʿUmrah, or religious visitation of Makkah [ʿUMRAH], and for this purpose he left al-Madīnah with a following of some 4,400 men. When they were within two days’ march of Makkah, their advance was checked by the hostile Quraish, and Muḥammad, turning to the west from ʿUsfān, encamped at al-Ḥudaibiyah, within seven miles of the sacred city. At this spot a truce was made, which is known as the treaty of al-Ḥudaibiyah, in which it was stipulated that all hostilities should cease for ten years, and that for the future the Muslims should have the privilege, unmolested, of paying a yearly visit of three days to the Kaʿbah.

After sacrificing the victims at al-Ḥudaibiyah, Muḥammad and his followers returned to al-Madīnah.

The advent of the holy month Ẕū ʾl-Qaʿdah, of the next year (A.H. 8), was eagerly expected by Muḥammad and his followers, for then, according to the terms of the truce of al-Ḥudaibiyah, they might, without molestation, visit the holy city, and spend three days in the performance of the accustomed rites. The number of the faithful swelled on the approach to nearly 2,000 men, and the Quraish thought it best to retire with their forces to the heights overlooking the valley. Seated on his camel al-Qaṣwā, which eight years before had borne him in his flight from the cave of S̤aur a hunted fugitive, the Prophet, now surrounded by joyous crowds of disciples, the companions of his exile, approached and saluted the holy shrine. Eagerly did he press forward to the Kaʿbah, touched with his staff the Black Stone, seven times made the circuit of the holy house, seven times journeyed between aṣ-Ṣafā and al-Marwah, sacrificed the victims, and fulfilled all the ceremonies of the lesser pilgrimage.

While at Makkah he negotiated an alliance with Maimūnah, his eleventh and last wife. His marriage gained him two most important converts—K͟hālid, the “Sword of God,” who before this had turned the tide of battle at Uḥud; and ʿAmr, destined afterwards to carry to foreign lands the victorious standards of Islām.

The services of these two important converts were quickly utilised. An envoy from Muḥammad to the Christian Prince of Bostra, in Syria, having been slain by the chief of Mūtah—a village to the south-east of the Dead Sea—a force of 3,000 men, under his adopted son Zaid, was sent to exact retribution, and to call the offending tribe to the faith. On the northward march, though they learnt that an overwhelming force of Arabs and Romans—the latter of whom met the Muslims for the first time—was assembling to oppose them, they resolved resolutely to push forward. The result was their disastrous defeat and repulse. Zaid and Jaʿfar, a brother of ʿAlī, fell defending the white banner of the Prophet. K͟hālid, by a series of manœuvres, succeeded in drawing off the army, and conducting it without further loss to al-Madīnah. A month later, however, ʿAmr marched unopposed through the lands of the hostile tribes, received their submission, and restored the prestige of Islām on the Syrian frontier. Muḥammad deeply felt the loss of Zaid and Jaʿfar, and exhibited the tenderest sympathy for their widows and orphans.

The defeat at Mūtah was followed, in the south, by events of the greatest moment to Muḥammad. Certain smouldering hostilities between tribes inhabiting the neighbourhood of Makkah broke forth about the end of the year. These were judged to be infractions of the treaty (some of these tribes being in league with the Quraish), and were eagerly seized upon by Muḥammad, as justifying those designs upon Makkah which the success of his arms, and the dominion he possessed over numberless tribes in the north, in the Ḥijāz, and Najd, now made it easy for him to carry out.

Having, therefore, determined to attack his native city, he announced his intention to his followers, and directed his allies among the Bedouin tribe, to join him on the march to Makkah. Although he took every precaution to prevent his preparations becoming known, the news reached the ears of the Quraish, who sent Abū Sufyān to deprecate his anger and to ask him to abandon his purpose. Humiliation and failure were the only result of this mission.

On the 1st January, A.D. 630, Muḥammad’s march commenced, and after eight days, through unfrequented roads and defiles, the army, swelled to the number of 10,000 men, halted and lighted their camp fires on the heights of Marru ʾz̤-Z̤ahrān, a day’s march from the sacred city. The Prophet had been joined on his march by his uncle al-ʿAbbās, and on the night of his arrival Abū Sufyān again presented himself, and besought an interview. On the morrow it was granted. “Has the time not yet come, O Abū Sufyān,” cried Muḥammad, “for thee to acknowledge that there is but one God, and that I am his Apostle.” He answered that his heart still felt some hesitancy; but seeing the threatening sword of al-ʿAbbās, and knowing that Makkah was at the mercy of the Prophet, he repeated the prescribed formula of belief, and was sent to prepare the city for his approach.

The Prophet made his public entry into Makkah on his favourite camel, having Abū Bakr on his right hand, Usaid on his left, and Usāmah walking behind him. On his way he recited the XLVIIIth Sūrah of the Qurʾān, known as the “Chapter of Victory.” He then entered the Sacred Mosque and circuited the Kaʿbah seven times, touching the Black Stone as he passed with his stick. Observing several pictures of angels inside the Kaʿbah, he ordered them to be removed, at the same time crying out with a loud voice, “God is great! God is great!” He then fixed the Qiblah [QIBLAH] at Makkah, and ordered the destruction of the 360 idols which the Makkan temple contained, himself destroying a wooden pigeon suspended from the roof, and regarded as one of the deities of the Quraish.

On the 11th day of the month of Ramaẓān, he repaired to Mount aṣ-Ṣafā, where all the people of Makkah had been assembled in order to take the oath of allegiance to him. ʿUmar, acting as his deputy, administered the oath, whereby the people bound themselves to obey Muḥammad, to abstain from theft, adultery, infanticide, lying, and backbiting.

During his stay at Makkah, Muḥammad sent small detachments of troops into the district, who destroyed the temples of al-ʿUzza, Suwaʿ, and Manāt, the three famous idol-temples of the neighbouring tribes. The Prophet had given strict orders that these expeditions should be carried out in a peaceable manner, and that only in cases of necessity should force of arms be used. K͟hālid ibn al-Walīd, however, who commanded 350 men, found himself opposed by the Jazimah tribe, for instead of saying as they were commanded, “We are Muslims,” they said, “We are Sabians”; and the impetuous general, whose name afterwards became so celebrated in history, ordered the whole tribe to be slain. Muḥammad, when he heard of this barbarity, exclaimed, “Oh! my God, I am innocent of this”; and he despatched a large sum of money for the widows and orphans of the slain, and severely rebuked K͟hālid.

The Prophet left Makkah after a fortnight’s residence, and at the head of 12,000 men attacked the Banī S̤aqīf and the Banī Hawāzin. Mālik ibn Ans, the chief of the S̤aqīf, made a bold stand, and the Prophet rallied his forces with the utmost difficulty, but having thrown a handful of dust in the direction of the enemy as a signal of victory, the Muslims renewed the charge, and 700 of the tribe were left dead on the field. This victory was followed immediately by one over the Banī Hawāzin, in the valley of Aut̤ās. (See Sūrah ix. 25, 26.)

The ninth year of the Hijrah is known as the year of deputations, as being the year in which the various tribes of Arabia submitted to the claim of the Prophet, and sent embassies of peace to him. It is also remarkable for numerous minor expeditions.

Hearing that the Romans were assembling in large force on their frontier, Muḥammad determined to attack them at Tabūk (a city between al-Madīnah and Damascus). The army sent to Tabūk was the largest employed in the time of the Prophet, for it is said to have numbered 20,000, and 10,000 cavalry. By the time the army had arrived at Tabūk, the rumoured invasion had been proved unfounded. Muḥammad, however, utilised a portion of the force by sending it, under the command of K͟hālid, to Dūmah, where he received the submission of the Jewish and Christian tribes. A treaty with John, the Christian Prince of Ailah, was made, and Ukaidar, the Christian chief of Dūmah was converted to Islām.

The gradual submission of Arabia, and the acknowledgment of the spiritual and temporal supremacy of the Prophet throughout the entire peninsula, followed. Indeed, in the complex system which he had established, the spiritual and secular functions were intimately blended, and involved in each other, and whilst in his humble home at al-Madīnah he retained still the simple manners of his earlier years, which, at his time of life, he had probably no inclination to alter, he exercised all those regal and sacerdotal powers which the victorious arms of his lieutenants, or the voluntary submission of the most distant provinces of Arabia, had caused to be universally acknowledged. Tax-collectors were appointed to receive the prescribed offerings or tithes, which generally amounted to “a tenth part of the increase.”

The city of at̤-T̤āʾif, trusting to its natural strength, constituted itself a centre of disaffection; but at last, driven to extremities, and seeing that all the neighbouring tribes had one by one submitted, its chief, after a vain attempt to obtain some relaxation in the rules of Islām, consented to the destruction of the adored idol al-Lāt, and adopted the new faith.

It was during the time of the next yearly pilgrimage (March, A.D. 631), that Muḥammad issued an important command, the crowning stone of the system he had raised, which shows at once the power he wielded, and the strong hold his doctrines had already taken throughout Arabia. Refusing to be present himself during the ceremonies of the pilgrimage, he commissioned ʿAlī to announce to the assembled multitudes in the valley of Minā, that, at the expiration of the four sacred months, the Prophet would hold himself absolved from every obligation or league with idolaters; that after that year no unbeliever would be allowed to perform the pilgrimage, or to visit the holy places; and further, he gave directions that either within or without the sacred territory, war was to be waged with them, that they were to be killed, besieged, and laid in wait for “wheresoever found.” He ordains, however, that if they repent and pay the legal alms, they are to be dismissed freely; but as regards “those unto whom the Scriptures have been delivered” (Jews and Christians, &c.), “they are to be fought against until they pay tribute by right of subjection, and are reduced low.”

“Such, then,” says Sir William Muir, “is the declared mission of Islam, arrived at by slow, though inevitable steps, and now imprinted unchangeably upon its banners. The Jews and Christians, and perhaps the Magians,—‘people of the book’—are to be tolerated, but held in subjection, and under tribute; but for the rest, the sword is not to be sheathed till they are exterminated, or submit to the faith which is to become ‘superior to every other religion.’ ”

About the middle of the year, a heavy grief fell upon Muḥammad, in the death of his little son Ibrāhīm.

On the return of the sacred month (March, A.D. 632), Muḥammad, accompanied by all his wives, selected his victims, assumed the pilgrim garb, and set out on what is called Ḥajjatu ʾl-Wadāʿ, or “The Valedictory Pilgrimage,” to the holy places, from which every trace of the old superstition had been removed, and which, in accordance with his orders of the previous year, no idolater was to visit. Approaching the Kaʿbah by the gate of the Banū Shaibah, he carefully performed all the ceremonies of the ʿUmrah, or “lesser Pilgrimage,” and then proceeded to consummate those of the greater. On the 8th of the holy month Ẕū ʾl-Ḥijjah, he rode to the Wādī Minā, some three miles east of Makkah, and rested there for the night. Next day, passing Muzdalifah, the midway station, he reached in the evening the valley in which stands the granite hill of ʿArafah. From the “summit he spoke to the pilgrims regarding its sacred precincts, announced to them the perfecting of their religion,” offered up the prescribed prayers, and hurried back to Muzdalifah for the night. On the 10th, proceeding to Minā, he cast the accustomed stones, slew the victims brought for sacrifice, had his head shaved and his nails pared, ordering the hair, &c., to be burnt; and, the ceremonies ended, laid aside the pilgrim garb. At Minā, during his three days’ stay, he preached to the pilgrims, called them to witness that he had faithfully fulfilled his mission, and urged them not to depart from the exact observances of the religion which he had appointed. Returning to Makkah, he again went through the ceremonies of the ʿUmrah, made the circuit of the temple, drank of the well Zamzam, prayed in the Kaʿbah, and thus, having rigorously performed all the ceremonies, that his example might serve as a model for all succeeding time, he turned to al-Madīnah.

The excitement and fatigue of his journey to the holy places told sensibly on his health, which for some time had shown indications of increasing infirmity. In the death of Ibrāhīm he had received a blow which weighed down his spirit; the poison of K͟haibar still rankled in his veins, afflicted him at times with excruciating pain, and bowed him to the grave. His life had been a hard and a stirring one, and now the important affairs of his spiritual and temporal kingdom, and the cares of his large domestic circle, denied him that quiet and seclusion for which he longed.

The news of the Prophet’s failing health was soon noised abroad, and tended to encourage his rivals to increased energy of action. Three different revolts, each headed by a dangerous competitor, were now on the point of breaking out. The first of these was led by Musailimah, a rival prophet, who now stated that Muḥammad had distinctly nominated him as his successor [MUSAILIMAH]; the second, by Aswad, a wealthy and eloquent rival, with a considerable following [ASWAD]; and the third, by T̤ulaiḥah, a famous warrior of Najd, who claimed the prophetic office.

In the Traditions it is related that Musailimah addressed a letter to Muḥammad, which ran:—

“Musailimah, the Prophet of God, to Muḥammad, the Prophet of God. Peace be to you. I am your associate. Let the exercise of authority be divided between us. Half the earth is mine, and half belongs to the Quraish. But the Quraish are a greedy people, and will not be satisfied with a fair division.”

To this presumptuous epistle Muḥammad replied:—

“Muḥammad, the Prophet of God, to Musailimah, the Liar. Peace be on those who follow the straight road. The earth is God’s, and He giveth it to whom He will. Those only prosper who fear the Lord.”

The opposition of Musailimah was, however, a formidable one, and after Muḥammad’s death he was slain by K͟hālid during the reign of Abū Bakr.

The health of Muḥammad grew worse, and he now requested that he might be permitted to remain in the home of ʿĀyishah, his beloved wife, an arrangement to which his other wives assented.

The account we now give of the closing scenes of Muḥammad’s life, is from the graphic pen of Sir William Muir (Life of Mahomet, new ed., p. 501 et seq.), and founded on the traditional histories of al-Wāqidī’s secretary, and Ibn Hishām.

“On the night of Saturday (11 Rabīʿu ʾl-Awwal, 6th June, A.D. 632), the sickness assumed a very serious aspect. The fever rose to such a pitch that the hand could hardly be kept upon his skin from its burning heat. His body was racked with pain; restless and moaning, he tossed about upon his bed. Alarmed at a severe paroxysm of the disease, Omm Salma, one of his wives, screamed aloud. Mahomet rebuked her:—‘Quiet!’ he said. ‘No one crieth out thus but an unbeliever.’ During the night, Ayesha sought to comfort him, and suggested that he should seek for consolation in the same lessons he had so often taught to others when in sickness: ‘O Prophet!’ she said, ‘if one of us had moaned thus, thou would’st surely have found fault with it.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘but I burn with the fever-heat of any two of you together.’ ‘Then,’ exclaimed one, ‘thou shalt surely have a double reward.’ ‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘I swear by Him in whose hands is my life, that there is not upon the earth a believer afflicted with any calamity or disease, but the Lord thereby causeth his sins to fall from him, even as leaves are shed in autumn from a tree.’ At another time he said, ‘Suffering is an expiation for sin. Verily, if the believer suffer but the scratch of a thorn, the Lord raiseth his rank thereby, and wipeth away from him a sin.’ ‘Believers,’ he would affirm, ‘are tried according to their faith. If a man’s faith be strong, so are his sufferings; if he be weak, they are proportioned thereunto. Yet in any case, the suffering shall not be remitted until he walk upon the earth without the guilt of a single transgression cleaving unto him.’

“Omar, approaching the bed, placed his hand on Mahomet’s forehead, and suddenly withdrew it, from the greatness of the heat: ‘O Prophet!’ he said, ‘how violent is the fever on thee!’ ‘Yea, verily,’ replied Mahomet, ‘but I have been during the night season repeating in praise of the Lord seventy Suras, and among them the seven long ones.’ Omar answered: ‘But the Lord hath forgiven thee all thy sins, the former and the latter; now, then, why not rest and take thine ease?’ ‘Nay,’ replied Mahomet, ‘for wherefore should I not be a faithful servant unto Him?’

“An attendant, while Mahomet lay covered up, put his hand below the sheet, and feeling the excessive heat, made a remark similar to that of Omar. Mahomet replied: ‘Even as this affliction prevaileth now against me, so shall my reward hereafter be enhanced.’ ‘And who are they,’ asked another, ‘that suffer the severest trials?’ ‘The prophets and the righteous,’ said Mahomet; and then he made mention of one prophet having been destroyed by lice, and of another who was tried with poverty, so that he had but a rag to cover his nakedness withal; ‘yet each of them rejoiced exceedingly in his affliction, even as one of you in great spoil would rejoice.’

“On the Sunday, Mahomet lay in a very weak and helpless state. Osâma, who had delayed his departure to see what the issue of the sickness might be, came in from Jorf to visit him. Removing the clothes from the Prophet’s face, he stooped down and kissed him, but there was no audible response. Mahomet only raised his hands to heaven in the attitude of blessing, and then placed them upon Osâma. So he returned to the camp.

“During some part of this day Mahomet complained of pain in his side, and the suffering became so great, that he fell into a state of unconsciousness. Omm Salma advised that physic should be given him. Asma, the sister of Meimûna, prepared a draught after an Abyssinian recipe, and they forced it into his mouth. Reviving from its effects, he felt the unpleasant taste in his mouth, and cried, ‘What is this that ye have done to me? Ye have even given me physic!’ They confessed that they had done so, and enumerated the ingredients of which Asma had compounded it. ‘Out upon you!’ he angrily exclaimed: ‘this is a remedy for the pleurisy, which she hath learned in the land of Abyssinia; but that is not a disease which the Lord will suffer to attack me. Now shall ye all partake of the same dose. Let not one remain in the house without being physicked, even as ye have physicked me, excepting only my uncle Abbâs.’ So all the women arose, and they poured the physic, in presence of the dying Prophet, into each other’s mouths.

“After this, the conversation turning upon Abyssinia, Omm Salma and Omm Habiba, who had both been exiles there, spoke of the beauty of a cathedral in that country, called the Church of Maria, and of the wonderful pictures on its walls. Mahomet listened quietly to them, and then said, ‘These, verily, are the people who, when a good man hath lived amongst them, build over his tomb a place of worship, and they adorn it with their pictures. These, in the eyes of the Lord, are the worst part of all the creation.’ He stopped, and covered himself with the bed-clothes; then casting them off in the restlessness and perhaps delirium of the fever, he said: ‘The Lord destroy the Jews and Christians! Let His anger be kindled against those that turn the tombs of their prophets into places of worship. O Lord, let not my tomb be an object of worship. Let there not remain any faith but that of Islam throughout the whole land of Arabia!’

“About this time, recognising Omar and some other chief men in the room, he called out, ‘Bring hither to me ink and paper, that I may record for you a writing which shall prevent your going astray for ever.’ Omar said, ‘He wandereth in his mind. Is not the Corân sufficient for us?’ But the women wished that the writing materials should be brought; and a discussion ensued. Thereupon one said, ‘What is his condition at this present moment? Come, let us see whether he speaketh deliriously or not.’ So they went and asked him what his wishes were regarding the writing he had spoken of; but he no longer desired to indite it. ‘Leave me thus alone,’ he said, ‘for my present state is better than that ye call me to.’

“In the course of this day, Mahomet called Ayesha to him, and said, ‘Where is that gold which I gave unto thee to keep?’ On her replying that it was by her, he desired that she should spend it at once in charity. Then he dozed off in a half-conscious state; and some time after asked if she had done as he desired her. On her saying that she had not yet done so, he called for the money (which was apparently a portion of the tithe income); she placed it in his hand, and counted six golden dinars. He directed that it should be divided among certain indigent families; and then lying down, he said, ‘Now I am at peace. Verily it would not have become me to meet my Lord, and this gold in my possession.’

“All Sunday night the illness of Mahomet continued unabated. He was overheard praying: one of the ejaculations was to this effect: ‘O my soul! Why seekest thou for refuge elsewhere than in God alone?’ The morning brought some measure of relief. The fever and the pain abated; and there was an apparent return of strength.

“The dangerous crisis of the Prophet’s sickness on the preceding night having become known throughout the city, the mosque was crowded in the morning, at the hour of prayer, by men and women, who came seeking anxiously for tidings. Abu Bakr, as usual, led the devotions; as Imâm he stood in the place of Mahomet before the congregation, his back turned towards them. He had ended the first Rakáat, or series of prostrations, and the people had stood up again for a second, when the curtain of Ayesha’s door (to the left of the audience, and a little way behind Abu Bakr) slowly moved aside, and Mahomet himself appeared. As he entered the assembly, he whispered in the ear of Fadhl (Faẓl), son of Abbas, who with a servant supported him: ‘The Lord verily hath granted unto me refreshment in prayer’; and he looked around with a gladsome smile, marked by all who at the moment caught a glimpse of his countenance. That smile no doubt was the index of deep emotion in his heart. What doubts or fears may have crossed the mind of Mahomet, as he lay on the bed of death, and felt that the time was drawing nigh when he must render an account to that God whose messenger he professed to be, tradition affords us no grounds even to conjecture. The rival claims of Aswad and Museilama had, perhaps, suggested misgivings, such as those which had long ago distracted his soul. What if he, too, were an impostor, deceiving himself and deceiving others also! If any doubts and questionings of this nature had arisen in his mind, the sight of the great congregation, in attitude devout and earnest, may have caused him comfort and reassurance. That which brings forth good fruit must itself be good. The mission which had transferred gross and debased idolaters into spiritual worshippers such as these, resigning every faculty to the service of the one great God; and which, wherever accepted and believed in, was daily producing the same wonderful change, that mission must be divine, and the voice from within which prompted him to undertake it must have been the voice of the Almighty, revealed through His ministering spirit. Perhaps it was a thought like this which passed at the moment through the mind of the Prophet, and lighted up his countenance with that smile of joy, diffusing gladness over the crowded courts of the mosque.

“Having paused thus for a moment at the door, Mahomet, supported as before, walked softly to the front, where Abu Bakr stood. The people made way for him, opening their ranks as he advanced. Abu Bakr heard the rustle (for he never when at prayer turned himself or looked to the right hand or the left), and, apprehending the cause which alone at that time could create so great sensation, stepped backwards to join the congregation and vacate the place of leader for the Prophet. But Mahomet motioned him to resume the post, and taking his hand, moved forward to the pulpit. There he sat on the ground by the side of Abu Bakr, who resumed the service, and finished it in customary form.

“When the prayers were ended, Abu Bakr entered into conversation with Mahomet. He rejoiced to find him to all appearance convalescent. ‘O Prophet,’ he said, ‘I perceive that, by the grace of God, thou art better to-day, even as we desire to see thee. Now this day is the turn of my wife, the daughter of Khârija; shall I go and visit her?’ Mahomet gave him permission. So he departed to her house at Al Sunh, a suburb of the upper city.

“Mahomet then sat himself down for a little while in the court-yard of the mosque, near the door of Ayesha’s apartment, and addressed the people, who, overjoyed to find him again in their midst, crowded round. He spoke with emotion, and with a voice still so powerful as to reach beyond the outer doors of the mosque. ‘By the Lord,’ he said, ‘as for myself, verily, no man can lay hold of me in any matter; I have not made lawful anything excepting what God hath made lawful; nor have I prohibited aught but that which God in His book hath prohibited.’ Osâma was there; when he came to bid farewell (before starting on an expedition against the Roman border), Mahomet said to him, ‘Go forward with the army; and the blessing of the Lord be with thee!’ Then turning to the women who sat close by, ‘O Fâtima!’ he exclaimed, ‘my daughter, and Safiâ, my aunt! Work ye both that which shall procure you acceptance with the Lord; for verily I have no power with him to save you in anywise.’ Having said this, he arose and re-entered the room of Ayesha.

“Mahomet, exhausted by the exertion he had undergone, lay down upon his bed; and Ayesha, seeing him to be very weak, raised his head from the pillow, and laid it tenderly upon her bosom. At that moment one of her relatives entered with a green tooth-pick in his hand. Ayesha observed that the eye of Mahomet rested on it, and, knowing it to be such as he liked, asked whether he wished to have it. He signified assent. Chewing it a little to make it soft and pliable, she placed it in his hand. This pleased him; for he took up the tooth-pick and used it, rubbing his teeth with his ordinary vigour; then he put it down.

“His strength now rapidly sank. He seemed to be aware that death was drawing near. He called for a pitcher of water, and, wetting his face, prayed thus: ‘O Lord, I beseech thee to assist me in the agonies of death!’ Then three times he ejaculated earnestly, ‘Gabriel, come close unto me!’

“At this time he began to blow upon himself, perhaps in the half-consciousness of delirium, repeating the while an ejaculatory form which he had been in the habit of praying over persons who were very sick. When he ceased, from weakness, Ayesha took up the task, and continued to blow upon him and recite the same prayer. Then, seeing that he was very low, she seized his right hand and rubbed it (another practice of the Prophet when visiting the sick), repeating all the while the earnest invocation. But Mahomet was too far gone to bear even this. He now wished to be in perfect quiet: ‘Take off thy hand from me,’ he said, ‘that cannot benefit me now.’ After a little he prayed in a whisper, ‘Lord grant me pardon; and join me to the companionship on high!’ Then at intervals: ‘Eternity in Paradise!’ ‘Pardon!’ ‘Yes; the blessed companionship on high!’ He stretched himself gently. Then all was still. His head grew heavy on the breast of Ayesha. The Prophet of Arabia was dead.

“Softly removing his head from her bosom, Ayesha placed it on the pillow, and rising up joined the other women, who were beating their faces in bitter lamentation.

“The sun had but shortly passed the meridian. It was only an hour or two since Mahomet had entered the mosque cheerful, and seemingly convalescent. He now lay cold in death.”

As soon as the intelligence of the Prophet’s death was published a crowd of people assembled at the door of the house of ʿĀyishah, exclaiming, “How can our Apostle be dead; he who was to be our witness in the Day of Judgment?” “No,” said ʿUmar, “he is not dead; he has gone to visit his Lord as the Prophet Moses did, when, after an absence of forty days, he reappeared to his people. Our Prophet will be restored to us, and those are traitors to the cause of Islām who say he is dead. If they say so, let them be cut in pieces.” But Abū Bakr entered the house at this juncture, and after viewing the body of the Prophet with touching demonstrations of affection, he appeared at the door and addressed the crowd thus: “O Muslims, if ye adore Muḥammad, know that Muḥammad is dead. If ye adore God, God is alive, and cannot die. Do ye forget the verse in the Qurʾān: ‘Muḥammad is no more than an apostle. Other apostles have already passed before him’? (see Sūrah iii. 138), and also the other verse, ‘Thou shalt surely die, O Muḥammad, and they also shall die?’ ” (see Sūrah xxxix. 31). ʿUmar acknowledged his error, and the crowd was satisfied and dispersed.

Al-ʿAbbās presided at the preparations for the burial, and the body was duly washed and perfumed. There was some dispute between the Quraish and the Anṣār as to the place of burial; but Abū Bakr silenced them, affirming that he had heard Muḥammad say that a prophet should be buried on the spot where he died. A grave was accordingly dug in the ground within the house of ʿĀyishah, and under the bed on which the Prophet died. This spot is now known as the Ḥujrah, or chamber, at al-Madīnah. The last rites were performed by ʿAlī and the two sons of al-ʿAbbās. [HUJRAH.]

The foregoing account of Muḥammad’s death is that of Sunnī traditionists. The Shīʿahs deny almost every word of it, and give the following as an authentic narrative of the Prophet’s death. The manifest object being to establish the claim of ʿAlī to be Muḥammad’s successor. It is translated from the Shīʿah book entitled the Ḥayātu ʾl-Qulūb (see Merrick’s translation, p. 368):—

“The Prophet returned to his house, and in the space of three days his sickness became severe. He then tied a bandage on his head, and leaning on the Commander of the Faithful (i.e. ʿAlī) and Fazl-ibn-Abbâs, went to the mesjed and ascended the mimber (or pulpit), and, sitting down, addressed the people thus: ‘The time is near when I shall be concealed from you. Whoever has any claim on me, let him now declare it. Verily, none can claim favour at the hand of God but by obeying Him, and none can expect to be safe without good works, or to enjoy the favour of God without obedience. Nothing but good works will deliver from divine wrath, and verily, if I should sin, I should go to hell. O Lord, I have delivered thy message.’ He then came down from the mimber and performed short prayers with the people, and returned to the house of Ummsalmah, where he remained one or two days. That cursed woman Auyeshah, having satisfied his other wives on the subject, came to the Prophet, and induced him by entreaties to go to her house, where his sickness became very oppressive. At the hour for morning prayers Bilâl shouted the aẕân, but the Prophet, near his departure to the holy world, heard it not. Auyeshah then sent to her father, Abubekr, to go to the mesjed, and lead the devotions of the people, and Hafsah sent the same message to Omar. As these two women were conversing about the matter before the Prophet, not seeming to suppose that he understood them, he interrupted them, saying, ‘Quit such talk; you are like the women that tried to lead Yusuf astray.’ Finding that, contrary to his orders, Abubekr and Omar were in the city with seditious designs, he was very sorrowful; and oppressed as he was with a severe disease, he rose, and leaning on Aly and Fazl-bin-Abbâs, with extreme difficulty went to the mesjed, lest Abubekr or Omar should perform prayers, and the people doubt who should be his successor. On arriving at the mesjed, he found that the cursed Abubekr had occupied the place of the leader of prayers, and already begun the devotions with the people. The Prophet, with his blessed hand, signed to Abubekr to remove, and he took his place, and from weakness sat down to perform prayers, which he began anew, regardless of Abubekr’s commencement.

“On returning to his house Muhammad summoned Abubekr, Omar, and some others, and demanded if he had not ordered them to depart with the army of Asâmah. They replied that he had. Abubekr said that he had gone and returned again; and Omar said that he did not go, for he did not wish to hear of the Prophet’s sickness from another. Muhammad then told them to go with the army of Asâmah, and three times pronounced a curse on any who should disobey. His exertions produced such exhaustion that he swooned, on which the Musalmans present and his wives and children wept and lamented aloud. At length the Prophet opened his blessed eyes, and said, ‘Bring me an inkstand and a sheep’s shoulder-blade, that I may write a direction which will prevent your going astray.’ One of the Companions of the Prophet rose to bring what he had ordered, but Omar said, ‘Come back, he speaks deliriously; disease has overcome him, and the book of God is sufficient for us.’ It is, however, a disputed matter whether Omar said this. However, they said to the Prophet, ‘Shall we bring what you ordered.’ He replied, ‘After what I have heard from you I do not need them, but I give you a dying charge to treat my family well, and not turn from them.’ [The compiler observes that this tradition about the inkstand and shoulder-blade is mentioned in several Sunnī books.]

“During the last sickness of the Prophet, while he was lying with his head in Aly’s lap, and Abbâs was standing before him and brushing away the flies with his cloak, he opened his eyes and asked Abbâs to become his executor, pay his debts, and support his family. Abbâs said he was an old man with a large family, and could not do it. Muhammad then proferred the same to Aly, who was so much affected that he could not command utterance for some time, but as soon as he could speak, promised with the greatest devotion to perform the Prophet’s request. Muhammad, after being raised into a sitting posture, in which he was supported by Aly, ordered Bilâl to bring his helmet, called Zool-jabeen (Ẕū ʾl-jabīn); his coat of mail, Zatûl-Fazool (Ẕātu ʾl-Fuẓūl); his banner, Akab; his sword, Zool-fakâr (Ẕū ʾl-fiqār); his turbans, Sahâb and Tahmeeah; his two party-coloured garments, his little staff, and his walking cane, Mamshook. In relating the story, Abbâs remarked that he had never before seen the party-coloured scarf, which was so lustrous as nearly to blind the eyes. The Prophet now addressed Aly, saying, ‘Jibraeel brought me this article and told me to put it into the rings of my mail, and bind it on me for a girdle.’ He then called for his two pairs of Arab shoes, one pair of which had been patched. Next he ordered the shirt he wore on the night of the Marâj, or ascent to heaven, and the shirt he wore at the battle of Ohod. He then called for his three caps, one of which he wore in journeying, another on festivals, and the third when sitting among his Companions. He then told Bilâl to bring his two mules, Shahba and Duldul, his two she-camels, Ghazbâ and Sahbâ, and his two horses, Jinah and Khyrdam.

“Jinah was kept at the door of the mesjed for the use of a messenger, and Khyrdam was mounted by the Prophet at the battle of Ohod, where Jibraeel cried, ‘Advance, Khyrdam.’ Last, he called for his ass Yafoor. Muḥammad now directed Abbâs to take Aly’s place, and support his back. He then said, ‘Rise, O Aly, and take these my property, while I yet live, that no one may quarrel with you about them after I am gone.’

“‘When I rose,’ said Aly, ‘my feet were so cramped that it was with the utmost difficulty that I could move. Having taken the articles and animals to my house, I returned and stood before the Prophet, who on seeing me took his ring from his right hand, pointing the way of truth, and put it on my right hand, the house being full of the Benu Hâshim and other Musulmans, and while from weakness his head nodded to the right and left, he cried aloud, “O company of Musulmans, Aly is my brother, my successor, and Khaleefah among my people and sect, he will pay my debts and cancel my engagements. O ye sons of Hâshim and Abdul-mutalib, and ye other Musulmans, be not hostile to Aly, and do not oppose him, lest ye be led astray, and do not envy him, nor incline from him to another, lest ye become infidels.” ’ He then ordered Abbâs to give his place to Aly. Abbâs replied, ‘Do you remove an old man to seat a child in his place?’ The Prophet repeated the order; and the third time Abbâs rose in anger, and Aly took his place. Muhammad, finding his uncle angry, said to him, ‘Do nothing to cause me to leave the world offended with you, and my wrath send you to hell.’ On hearing this, Abbâs went back to his place, and Muhammad directed Aly to lay him down.

“The Prophet said to Bilâl, ‘Bring my two sons Hasan and Husain.’ When they were presented he pressed them to his bosom, smelt and kissed those two flowers of the garden of prophecy. Aly, fearing they would trouble the Prophet, was about to take them away; but be said, ‘Let them be, that I may smell them, and they smell me, and we prepare to meet each other; for after I am gone great calamities will befall them, but may God curse those that cause them to fear and do them injustice. O Lord, I commit them to Thee and to the worthy of the Faithful, namely, Aly-bin-Abutalib.’ The Prophet then dismissed the people and they went away, but Abbâs and his son Fazl, and Aly-bin-Abutalib, and those belonging to the household of the Prophet, remained. Abbâs then said to the Prophet, ‘If the Khalâfat (K͟hilāfah) is established among us, the Benu Hâshim, assure us of it, that we may rejoice; but if you foresee that they will treat us unjustly and deprive us of the Khalâfat, commit us to your Companions.’ Muhammad replied, ‘After I am gone they will weaken and overcome you,’ at which declaration all the family wept, and, moreover, despaired of the Prophet’s life.

“Aly continued to attend Muhammad night and day, never leaving him except from the most imperative necessity. On one of these occasions, when Aly was absent, the Prophet said, ‘Call my friend and brother.’ Auyeshah and Hafsah sent for their fathers, Abubekr and Omar, but he turned from them and covered his face, on which they remarked, ‘He does not want us, he wants Aly,’ whom Fatimah called; and Muhammad pressed him to his bosom, and they mingled their perspiration together, and the Prophet communicated to him a thousand chapters of knowledge, each opening to a thousand more. One tradition declares that Muhammad kept Aly in his bed till his pure spirit left his body, his arm meanwhile embracing Aly.”

[In compiling this account of the life of Muḥammad, we must express our deep obligations to Sir William Muir’s Life of Mahomet (1st ed., 4 vols.; 2nd ed., 1 vol.; Smith, Elder and Co., London). In many cases we have given the ipsissima verba of his narrative, with his kind permission. The chief literature on the subject, in addition to Sir William Muir’s work, is: Das Leben und die Lehre des Moḥammad, A. Sprenger, Berlin, 1869; Specimen Historiæ Arabum, E. Pocock, Oxon. 1650; Ismael Abulfeda De Vita et Rebus gestis Mohamedis, J. Gagnier, Oxon. 1723; Life of Mahomet, Washington Irving, London, 1850; Life of Mahomed from Original Sources, A. Sprenger, Allahabad, 1851; Essays on the Life of Muhammad, Syud Ahmad Khan, C.S.I., London; A Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Muhammad, Syud Ameer Ali Moulla, LL.D., London, 1873; Islam and its Founder, S.P.C.K., 1878; Mahomet et le Coran, T. Barthelemy de St. Hilaire, 1865; The True Nature of the Imposture Fully Explained, H. Prideaux, London, 1718; the first three volumes of the modern part of An Universal History, London, 1770 (specially recommended by Dr. Badger); Tareek-i-Tabari, Zotenberg; Das Leben Mohammeds nach Ibn Ishāk, bearbeitet von Ibn Hischam, G. Weil, 2 vols., 1864. The earliest biographers whose works are extant in Arabic, are Ibn Isḥāq (A.H. 151), Ibn Hishām (A.H. 218), al-Wāqidī (A.H. 207), at̤-T̤abarī (A.H. 310).]

Muḥammad is referred to by name in four places in the Qurʾān:—

Sūrah iii. 138: “Muḥammad is but an apostle: apostles have passed away before his time; what if he die, or is killed, will ye retreat upon your heels?”

Sūrah xxxiii. 40: “Muḥammad is not the father of any of your men, but the Apostle of God, and the Seal of the Prophets.”

Sūrah xlvii. 2: “Those who believe and do right and believe in what is revealed to Muḥammad,—and it is the truth from their Lord,—He will cover for them their offences and set right their mind.”

Sūrah xlviii. 29: “Muḥammad is the Apostle of God.”

He is said to have been foretold by Jesus under the name of Aḥmad. Sūrah lxi. 6: “Giving you glad tidings of an Apostle who shall come after me whose name shall be Aḥmad.” [AHMAD.]

According to a tradition of Ibn ʿAbbās, the Prophet said: “My name in the Qurʾān is Muḥammad, and in the Injīl Aḥmad, and in the Taurāt Aḥyad (from the root حيد‎, “to shun”), and I am called Aḥyad because I shun hell-fire more than any of my people.” (An-Nawawī, Wüstenfeld’s edition, p. 28.)

MUḤAMMAD, The Character of. (1) Sir William Muir (Life of Mahomet, new ed. p. 537 et seqq.), has carefully collated from the traditions embodied by the secretary of al-Wāqidī, an account of the person and character of Muḥammad. “This account,” as Sir William Muir remarks, “illustrates generally the style and contents of the Muslim biographies of their Prophet.”

“When Ayesha was questioned about Mahomet she used to say: ‘He was a man just such as yourselves; he laughed often and smiled much.’ ‘But how would he occupy himself at home?’ ‘Even as any of you occupy yourselves. He would mend his clothes, and cobble his shoes. He used to help me in my household duties; but what he did oftenest was to sew. If he had the choice between two matters, he would choose the easiest, so as that no sin accrued therefrom. He never took revenge excepting where the honour of God was concerned. When angry with any person, he would say, “What hath taken such a one that he should soil his forehead in the mud!” ’

“His humility was shown by his riding upon asses, by his accepting the invitation even of slaves, and when mounted, by his taking another behind him. He would say: ‘I sit at meals as a servant doeth, and I eat like a servant: for I really am a servant’; and he would sit as one that was always ready to rise. He discouraged (supererogatory) fasting, and works of mortification. When seated with his followers, he would remain long silent at a time. In the mosque at Medîna they used to repeat pieces of poetry, and tell stories regarding the incidents that occurred in the ‘days of ignorance,’ and laugh; and Mahomet listening to them, would smile at what they said.

“Mahomet hated nothing more than lying; and whenever he knew that any of his followers had erred in this respect, he would hold himself aloof from them until he was assured of their repentance.

“His Speech.

“He did not speak rapidly, running his words into one another, but enunciated each syllable distinctly, so that what he said was imprinted in the memory of every one who heard him. When at public prayers, it might be known from a distance that he was reading by the motion of his beard. He never read in a singing or chanting style; but he would draw out his voice, resting at certain places. Thus, in the prefatory words of a Sura, he would pause after bismillâhi, after al Rahmân, and again after al Rahîm.

“Gait.

“He used to walk so rapidly that the people half ran behind him, and could hardly keep up with him.

“Habits in Eating.

“He never ate reclining, for Gabriel had told him that such was the manner of kings; nor had he ever two men to walk behind him. He used to eat with his thumb and his two forefingers; and when he had done, he would lick them, beginning with the middle one. When offered by Gabriel the valley of Mecca full of gold, he preferred to forego it; saying that when he was hungry he would come before the Lord lowly, and when full, with praise.

“Moderation.

“A servant-maid being once long in returning from an errand, Mahomet was annoyed, and said: ‘If it were not for the law of retaliation, I should have punished you with this tooth-pick’ (i.e. with an inappreciably light punishment).

“Customs at Prayer.

“He used to stand for such a length of time at prayer that his legs would swell. When remonstrated with, he said: ‘What! shall I not behave as a thankful servant should?’ He never yawned at prayer. When he sneezed, he did so with a subdued voice, covering his face. At funerals he never rode: he would remain silent on such occasions, as if conversing with himself, so that the people used to think he was holding communication with the dead.

“Refusal to make Personal Use of Tithes.

“While he accepted presents he refused to use anything that had been offered as alms; neither would he allow anyone in his family to use what had been brought as alms; ‘For,’ said he, ‘alms are the impurity of mankind’ (i.e. that which cleanses their impurity). His scruples on this point were so strong that he would not eat even a date picked up on the road, lest perchance it might have dropped from a tithe load.

“Food Relished.

“Mahomet had a special liking for sweetmeats and honey. He was also fond of cucumbers and of undried dates. When a lamb or a kid was being cooked, Mahomet would go to the pot, take out the shoulder, and eat it. He used to eat moist dates and cooked food together. What he most relished was a mess of bread cooked with meat, and a dish of dates dressed with butter and milk.

“Mahomet used to have sweet (rain) water kept for his use.

“Women and Scents.

“A great array of traditions are produced to prove that the Prophet was fond of women and scents, and liked these of all things in the world the best. Ayesha used to say: ‘The Prophet loved three things—women, scents, and food; he had his heart’s desire of the two first, but not of the last.’

“Straitened means at Medîna.

“Ayesha tells us that for months together Mahomet did not get a full meal. ‘Months used to pass,’ she says again, ‘and no fire would be lighted in Mahomet’s house, either for baking bread or cooking meat.’ ‘How, then, did ye live?’ ‘By the “two black things” (dates and water), and by what the citizens used to send unto us; the Lord requite them! Such of them as had milch cattle would send us a little milk. The Prophet never enjoyed the luxury of two kinds of food the same day; if he had flesh there was nothing else; and so if he had dates; so likewise if he had bread.’

“ ‘We possessed no sieves, but used to bruise the grain and blow off the husks.’

“Appearance, Habits, &c.

“He used to wear two garments. His izâr (under-garment) hung down three or four inches below his knees. His mantle was not wrapped round him so as to cover his body, but he would draw the end of it under his shoulder.

“He used to divide his time into three parts: one was given to God, the second allotted to his family, the third to himself. When public business began to press upon him, he gave up one half of the latter portion to the service of others.

“When he pointed he did so with his whole hand; and when he was astonished he turned his hand over (with the palm upwards). In speaking with another, he brought his hand near to the person addressed; and he would strike the palm of the left in the thumb of the right hand. Angry, he would avert his face; joyful, he would look downwards. He often smiled, and, when he laughed, his teeth used to appear white as hailstones.

“In the interval allotted to others, he received all that came to him, listened to their representations, and occupied himself in disposing of their business and in hearing what they had to tell him. He would say on such occasions: ‘Let those that are here give information regarding that which passeth to them that are absent; and they that cannot themselves appear to make known their necessities, let others report them to me in their stead; the Lord will establish the feet of such in the Day of Judgment.’

“Seal of Prophecy.

“This, says one, was a protuberance on the Prophet’s back of the size and appearance of a pigeon’s egg. It is said to have been the divine seal which, according to the predictions of the Scriptures, marked Mahomet as the last of the Prophets. How far Mahomet himself encouraged this idea it is impossible to say. From the traditions it would seem to have been nothing more than a mole of unusual size; and the saying of Mahomet, that ‘God had placed it there,’ was probably the germ of supernatural associations which grew up concerning it.

“Hair.

“His hair used to be combed; it was neither curling nor smooth. He had, says one, four curled locks. His hair was ordinarily parted, but he did not care if it was not so. According to another tradition, ‘The Jews and Christians used to let their hair fall down, while the heathen parted it. Now Mahomet loved to follow the people of the Book in matters concerning which he had no express command. So he used to let down his hair without parting it. Subsequently, however, he fell into the habit of parting it.’

“Moustache.

“Mahomet used to clip his moustache. A Magian once came to him and said: ‘You ought to clip your beard and allow your moustaches to grow.’ ‘Nay,’ said the Prophet, ‘for my Lord hath commanded me to clip the moustaches and allow the beard to grow.’

“Dress.

“Various traditions are quoted on the different colours he used to wear—white chiefly, but also red, yellow, and green. He sometimes put on woollen clothes. Ayesha, it is said, exhibited a piece of woollen stuff in which she swore that Mahomet died. She adds that he once had a black woollen dress; and she still remembered, as she spoke, the contrast between the Prophet’s fair skin and the black cloth. ‘The odour of it, however, becoming unpleasant, he cast it off, for he loved sweet odours.’

“He entered Mecca on the taking of the city (some say) with a black turban. He had also a black standard. The end of his turban used to hang down between his shoulders. He once received the present of a scarf for a turban, which had a figured or spotted fringe; and this he cut off before wearing it. He was very fond of striped Yemen stuffs. He used to wrap his turban many times round his head, and ‘the lower edge of it used to appear like the soiled clothes of an oil-dealer.’

“He once prayed in a silken dress, and then cast it aside with abhorrence, saying: ‘Such stuff it doth not become the pious to wear.’ On another occasion, as he prayed in a figured or spotted mantle, the spots attracted his notice; when he had ended, he said: ‘Take away that mantle, for verily it hath distracted me in my prayers, and bring me a common one.’ His sleeve ended at the wrist. The robes in which he was in the habit of receiving embassies, and his fine Hadhramaut mantle, remained with the Caliphs; when worn or rent, these garments were mended with fresh cloth; and in after times, the Caliphs used to wear them at the festivals. When he put on new clothes (either an under-garment, a girdle, or a turban), the Prophet would offer up a prayer such as this: ‘Praise be to the Lord who hath clothed me with that which shall hide my nakedness and adorn me while I live. I pray Thee for the good that is in this, and the good that hath been made for it; and I seek refuge from the evil that is in the same, and from the evil that hath been made for it.’

“Shoes.

“His servant, Anas, had charge of his shoes and of his water-pot. After his master’s death, Anas used to show his shoes. They were after the Hadhramaut pattern, with two thongs. In the year 100 or 110 A.H., one went to buy shoes at Mecca, and tells us that the shoemaker offered to make them exactly after the model of Mahomet’s, which he said he had seen in the possession of Fâtima, granddaughter of Abbâs. His shoes used to be cobbled. He was in the habit of praying with his shoes on. On one occasion, having taken them off at prayers, all the people did likewise, but Mahomet told them there was no necessity, for he had merely taken off his own because Gabriel had apprised him that there was some dirty substance attaching to them (cleanliness being required in all the surroundings at prayer). The thongs of his shoes once broke, and they mended them for him by adding a new piece; after the service, Mahomet desired his shoes to be taken away and the thongs restored as they were; ‘For,’ said he, ‘I was distracted at prayer thereby.’

“Tooth-picks.

“Ayesha tells us that Mahomet never lay down, by night or by day, but on waking he applied the tooth-pick to his teeth before he performed ablution. He used it so much as to wear away his gums. The tooth-pick was always placed conveniently for him at night, so that, when he got up in the night to pray, he might use it before his lustrations. One says that he saw him with the tooth-pick in his mouth, and that he kept saying áâ, áâ, as if about to vomit. His tooth-picks were made of the green wood of the palm-tree. He never travelled without one.

“Articles of Toilet.

“He very frequently oiled his hair, poured water on his beard, and applied antimony to his eyes.

“Armour.

“Four sections are devoted to the description of Mahomet’s armour,—his swords, coats of mail, shields, lances, and bows.

“Miscellaneous.

“The Prophet used to snuff simsim (sesamum), and wash his hands in a decoction of the wild plum-tree. When he was afraid of forgetting anything, he would tie a thread on his finger or his ring.

“Horses.

“The first horse which Mahomet ever possessed was one he purchased of the Bani Fazâra, for ten owckeas (ounces of silver); and he called its name sakb (running water), from the easiness of its paces. Mahomet was mounted on it at the battle of Ohod, when there was but one other horse from Medîna on the field. He had also a horse called Sabáha (Shamjah?); he raced it and it won, and he was greatly rejoiced thereat. He had a third horse, named Murtajis (neigher).

“Riding Camels.

“Besides Al Caswa (al-Qaṣwā), Mahomet had a camel called Adhba (al-ʿAẓbā), which in speed outstripped all others. Yet one day an Arab passed it when at its fleetest pace. The Moslems were chagrined at this; but Mahomet reproved them, saying, ‘It is the property of the Lord, that whensoever men exalt anything, or seek to exalt it, then the Lord putteth down the same.’

“Milch Camels.

“Mahomet had twenty milch camels, the same that were plundered at Al Ghâba. Their milk was for the support of his family: every evening they gave two large skinsful. Omm Salmah relates: ‘Our chief food when we lived with Mahomet was milk. The camels used to be brought from Al Ghâba every evening. I had one called Arîs, and Ayesha one called Al Samra. The herdman fed them at Al Jûania, and brought them to our homes in the evening. There was also one for Mahomet.’

“Milch Flocks.

“Mahomet had seven goats which Omm Ayman used to tend (this probably refers to an early period of his residence at Medîna). His flocks grazed at Ohod and Himna alternately, and were brought back to the house of that wife whose turn it was for Mahomet to be in her abode. A favourite goat having died, the Prophet desired its skin to be tanned.

“Mahomet attached a peculiar blessing to the possession of goats. ‘There is no house,’ he would say, ‘possessing a goat, but a blessing abideth thereon; and there is no house possessing three goats, but the angels pass the night there praying for its inmates until the morning.’

“Servants.

“Fourteen or fifteen persons are mentioned who served the Prophet at various times. His slaves he always freed.

“Houses.

“Abdallah ibn Yazîd relates that he saw the houses in which the wives of the Prophet dwelt, at the time when Omar ibn Al Azîz, Governor of Medîna (about A.H. 100) demolished them. They were built of unburnt bricks, and had separate apartments made of palm-branches, daubed (or built-up) with mud; he counted nine houses, each having separate apartments, in the space extending from the house of Ayesha and the gate of Mahomet to the house of Asma, daughter of Hosein. Observing the dwelling-place of Omm Salma, he questioned her grandson concerning it, and he told him that when the Prophet was absent on the expedition to Dûma, Omm Salma built up an addition to her house with a wall of unburnt bricks. When Mahomet returned, he went in to her, and asked what new building this was. She replied, ‘I purposed, O Prophet, to shut out the glances of men thereby!’ Mahomet answered: ‘O Omm Salma! verily, the most unprofitable thing that eateth up the wealth of the Believer is building.’ A citizen of Medîna present at the time, confirmed this account, and added that the curtains of the door were of black hair-cloth. He was present, he said, when the despatch of the Caliph Abd al Malîk (A.H. 86–88) was read aloud, commanding that these houses should be brought within the area of the mosque, and he never witnessed sorer weeping than there was amongst the people that day. One exclaimed: ‘I wish, by the Lord! that they would leave these houses alone thus as they are; then would those that spring up hereafter in Medîna, and strangers from the ends of the earth, come and see what kind of building sufficed for the Prophet’s own abode, and the sight thereof would deter men from extravagance and pride.’

“There were four houses of unburnt bricks, the apartments being of palm-branches; and five houses made of palm-branches built up with mud and without any separate apartments. Each was three Arabian yards in length. Some say they had leather curtains for the doors. One could reach the roof with the hand.

“The house of Hâritha (Ḥāris̤ah) was next to that of Mahomet. Now whenever Mahomet took to himself a new wife, he added another house to the row, and Hâritha was obliged successively to remove his house, and to build on the space beyond. At last this was repeated so often, that the Prophet said to those about him: ‘Verily, it shameth me to turn Hâritha over and over again out of his house.’

“Properties.

“There were seven gardens which Mukheirîck the Jew left to Mahomet. Omar ibn Al Azîz, the Caliph, said that, when Governor of Medîna, he ate of the fruit of these, and never tasted sweeter dates. Others say that these gardens formed a portion of the confiscated estates of the Bani Nadhîr. They were afterwards dedicated perpetually to pious purposes.

“Mahomet had three other properties:—

“I. The confiscated lands of the Bani Nadhîr. The produce of these was appropriated to his own wants. One of the plots was called Mashruba Omm Ibrahîm, the ‘summer garden of (Mary) the mother of Ibrahîm,’ where the Prophet used to visit her.

“II. Fadak; the fruits of this were reserved as a fund for indigent travellers.

“III. The fifth share, and the lands received by capitulation, in Kheibar. This was divided into three parts. Two were devoted for the benefit of the Moslems generally (i.e. for State purposes); the proceeds of the third, Mahomet assigned for the support of his own family; and what remained over he added to the fund for the use of the Moslems.” (The Life of Mahomet, by William Muir, Esq., London, 1861, vol. iv., p. 325.)

(2) Dr. A. Sprenger, Persian translator of the Government of India, and Principal of the Calcutta Madrasah, gives the following valuable review of the character of Muḥammad, as regards his assumption of the prophetic office:—

“Up to his fortieth year, Mohammad devoutly worshipped the gods of his fathers. The predominance of his imaginative powers, and his peculiar position, gave him a turn for religious meditation. He annually spent the month of Ramazan in seclusion in a cave of Mount Hirá, where the Qorayshites used to devote themselves to ascetic exercises. In this retreat he passed a certain number of nights in prayers, fasted, fed the poor, and gave himself up to meditation; and on his return to Makkah he walked seven times round the Kaʿbah before he went to his own house.

“When he was forty years of age, the first doubts concerning idolatry arose in his mind. The true believers ascribe this crisis to a divine revelation, and therefore carefully conceal the circumstances which may have given the first impulse. It is likely that the eccentric Zaid, whom he must have met in Mount Hirá, first instilled purer notions respecting God into his mind, and induced him to read the Biblical history. To abjure the gods, from whom he had hoped for salvation, caused a great struggle to Mohammad, and he became dejected and fond of solitude. He spent the greater part of his time in Hirá, and came only occasionally to Makkah for new provisions.

“Undisturbed meditation increased his excitement, and his overstrained brains were, even in sleep, occupied with doubts and speculations. In one of his visions he saw an angel, who said to him, ‘Read.’ He answered, ‘I am not reading.’ The angel laid hold of him and squeezed him, until Mohammad succeeded in making an effort. Then he released him, and said again, ‘Read.’ Mohammad answered, ‘I am not reading.’ This was repeated three times; and at length the angel said, ‘Read in the name of thy Lord, the Creator, who has created man of congealed blood;—read, for thy Lord is most beneficent. It is He who has taught by the pen (has revealed the Scriptures); it is He who has taught man what he does not know.’ These are the initial words of a Surah of the Quran, and the first revelation which Mohammad received. If this dream was as momentous as authentic traditions make it, it must have been the crisis, which caused Mohammad to seek for truth in the books of the Jews and Christians. The words of the angel admit hardly any other sense. After much hesitation he determines to study the tenets of another faith, which was hostile to that of his fathers. His resolve is sanctioned by a vision, and he thanks the Creator, whom the Qorayshites always considered the greatest among their gods, for having sent a revelation to direct man.

“It is certain, however, that no Musalman will admit the sense which I give to these verses of the Quran; and Mohammad himself, in the progress of his career, formally denied having read any part of the Scriptures before the Quran had been revealed to him. This, however, can only be true if he meant the first verses of the Quran, that is to say, those mentioned above; for in the following revelations he introduces the names of most prophets, he holds up their history as an example to the Makkians, he borrows expressions from the Bible which he admired for their sublimity, he betrays his acquaintance with the gospels by referring to an erroneously translated verse of St. John, for a proof of his mission, and he frequently alludes to the legends of the Rabbins and Christians. Whence has the Prophet of the Gentiles obtained his knowledge of the Biblical history? He answers the question himself: It is God who has revealed it to me. This assertion satisfies the believer, and is a hint to the inquirer in tracing the sources of his information. He would hardly have hazarded it had he not obtained his instruction under considerable secrecy. The spirit of persecution at Makkah, which manifested itself against Zaid, made caution necessary for Mohammad, though originally he may have had no ulterior views, in making himself acquainted with another faith. Yet with all his precautions, the Qorayshites knew enough of his history to disprove his pretensions. He himself confesses, in a Surah revealed at Makkah (Sūrah xxv. 5), that they said that the Quran was a tissue of falsehood; that several people had assisted him; and that he preached nothing more than what was contained in the “Asátyr of the Ancients,” which he used to write, from the dictation of his teachers, morning and evening. Who were the men who instructed Mohammad? It is not likely that he would have dared to declare before them, that the doctrines which he had received from them had been revealed to him; nor is it likely that, had they been alive after the new religion had become triumphant, they would have allowed him to take all the credit to himself. Those who exercised an influence upon Mohammad were his disciples; but we find no instance in which he appeared to buy secrecy by submitting to the dictation of others. I am inclined to think, therefore, that his instructors died during his early career; and this supposition enables us to ascertain the names of some of them. The few specimens of the sayings of Zaid, which have been preserved, prove that Mohammad borrowed freely from him, not only his tenets, but even his expressions; and Zaid did not long survive Mohammad’s assumption of his office. It is likely that Waraqah, the cousin of Khadyjah, who, it would appear, brought about her marriage with Mohammad, who was the first to declare that the Great Law [NAMUS] would be revealed to him, and who expressed a wish to assist him during the persecutions to which every prophet was subject, was one of his teachers. Waraqah died shortly before the time when he publicly proclaimed his mission. The defence of the Prophet, that the man, of whom his countrymen said that he assisted him in writing the Quran, was a foreigner (Sūrah xvi. 105), and unable to write so pure Arabic as the language of the Quran was, leads us to suspect that one of his chief authorities for the Biblical legends was ʾAddas, a monk of Nineveh, who was settled at Makkah. (See Tafsīru ʾl-Baiẓāwī on Sūrah xxv. 6.) And there can be no doubt that the Rabbins of the Hijaz communicated to Mohammad their legends. The commentators upon the Quran inform us further, that he used to listen to Jabr and Yasár, two sword-manufacturers at Makkah, when they read the scriptures; and Ibn Isháq says, that he had intercourse with ʾAbdal-Rahmán, a Christian of Zamámah; but we must never forget that the object of these authorities, in such matters, is not to instruct their readers, but to mislead them.

“It is certain, from the context, where the expression occurs, and from the commentators on the Quran, that ‘Asátyr of the Ancients’ is the name of a book; but we have very little information as to its origin and contents. (See the Commentaries of al-Baiẓāwī and the Jalālān on Sūrah xxv.) That dogmas were propounded in it, besides Biblical legends, appears from several passages of the Quran, where it is said that it contained the doctrine of the Resurrection. (Sūrahs xxvii. 70, xlvi. 16.) It is also clear that it was known at Makkah before Mohammad; for the Qorayshites told him that they and their fathers had been acquainted with it before he taught it, and that all that he taught was contained in it. (Sūrah lxviii. 15.) Mohammad had, in all likelihood, besides, a version of portions of the scriptures, both of the genuine and some of the apocryphal works; for he refers his audience to them without reserve. Tabary informs us that when Mohammad first entered on his office, even his wife Khadyjah had read the scriptures, and was acquainted with the history of the prophets. (See Balʾāmy’s translation of Tabary in Persian.)

“In spite of three passages of the Quran quoted above, the meaning of which they clumsily pervert, almost all modern Musalman writers, and many of the old ones, deny that Mohammad knew reading or writing. Good authors, however, particularly among the Shiahs, admit that he knew reading; but they say he was not a skilful penman. The only support of the opinion of the former is one passage of the Quran, Sūrah vii. 156, in which Mohammad says that he was the Prophet of the Ummis, and an Ummi himself. This word, they say, means illiterate; but others say it means a man who is not skilful in writing; and others suppose it to mean a Makkian or an Arab. It is clear that they merely guess, from the context, at the meaning of the word. Ummi is derived from ummah, ‘nation’ (Latin gens, Greek ethnos), and on comparing the passages of the Quran, in which it occurs, it appears that it means gentile (Greek ethnicos). It is said in the Quran, that some Jews are honest, but others think there is no harm in wronging the Ummis. Imám Sadiq observes (Ḥayātu ʾl-Qulūb, vol. ii. chapter 6, p. 2) on this passage, that the Arabs are meant under Ummis, and that they are called so, though they knew writing, because God had revealed no book to them, and had sent them no prophet. Several instances in which Mohammad did read and write are recorded by Bokhary, Nasay, and others. It is, however, certain that he wished to appear ignorant, in order to raise the elegance of the composition of the Quran into a miracle.

“According to one record, the doubts, indecision, and preparation of the Prophet for his office lasted seven years; and so sincere and intense were his meditations on matters of religion, that they brought him to the brink of madness. In the Quran we can trace three phases in the progress of the mind of Mohammad from idolatry to the formation of a new creed. First, the religion of the Kaʿbah, in which he sincerely believed, seems to have formed the principal subject of his meditations. The contemplation of nature, probably assisted by instruction, led him to the knowledge of the unity of God; and there is hardly a verse in the Quran which does not shew how forcibly he was struck with this truth. By satisfying the faith of his fathers, he tried to reconcile it with the belief in one God; and for some time he considered the idols round the Kaʾbah daughters of God, who intercede with Him for their worshippers. But he gave up this belief, chiefly because he could not reconcile himself to the idea that God should have only daughters, which was ignominious in the eyes of an Arab; and that men should have sons, who reflect honour on a family. He also connected the idolatrous worship of the black stone, and the ceremonies of the Hajj, and almost all the other pagan usages of the Haramites, with their Abraham. This idea was not his own. The sceptics who preceded him held the same opinion; yet it was neither ancient nor general among the pagan Arabs. We find no connexion between the tenets of Moses and those of the Haramites; and though Biblical names are very frequent among the Musalmans, we do not find one instance of their occurrence among the pagans of the Hijaz before Mohammad.

“It has been mentioned that the vision in which he was ordered to read, caused him finally to renounce idolatry; we are told that after this vision an intermission of revelation, called fatrah, took place, which lasted upwards of two years. The meaning of fatrah is simply that, though this vision was a revelation, he did not assume his office for two or three years. It is certain that he composed many Surahs of the Quran during this time; and it must have been during this period that the tenets of the Jews and Christians seriously occupied his mind. Before the vision he was an idolater; and after the fatrah he possessed the acquaintance with the scriptural history which we find in the Quran. Even after he had declared himself a prophet, he shewed, during the beginning of his career, a strong leaning towards, and a sincere belief in, the scriptures and Biblical legends; but in proportion to his success he separated himself from the Bible.

“This is the second phase in the progress of the Prophet’s mind. His belief in the scriptures does not imply that he ever belonged to the Christian or Jewish Church. He never could reconcile his notions of God with the doctrine of the Trinity, and with the Divinity of Christ, and he was disgusted with the monkish institutions and sectarian disputes of the Christians. His creed was: ‘He is God alone, the Eternal God; He has not begotten, and is not begotten; and none is His equal.’ (See Sūrah cxii.) Nothing, however, can be more erroneous than to suppose that Mohammad was, at any period of his early career, a deist. Faith, when once extinct, cannot be revived; and it was his enthusiastic faith in inspiration that made him a prophet. Disappointed with the Jewish and Christian religions, he began to form a system of faith of his own; and this is the third phase of the transition period. For some time, it seems, he had no intention to preach it publicly, but circumstances, as well as the warm conviction of the truth of his creed, at length prevailed upon him to spread it beyond the circle of his family and friends.

“The mental excitement of the Prophet was much increased during the fatrah, and like the ardent scholar in one of Schiller’s poems, who dared to lift the veil of truth, he was nearly annihilated by the light which broke in upon him. He usually wandered about in the hills near Makkah, and was so long absent, that on one occasion, his wife being afraid that he was lost, sent men in search of him. He suffered from hallucinations of his senses, and, to finish his sufferings, he several times contemplated suicide by throwing himself down from a precipice. His friends were alarmed at his state of mind. Some considered it as the eccentricities of a poetical genius; others thought that he was a kahin, or soothsayer; but the majority took a less charitable view (see Sūrahs lxix. 40, xx. 5), and declared that he was insane; and, as madness and melancholy are ascribed to supernatural influence in the East, they said that he was in the power of Satan and his agents, the jinn. They called in exorcists; and he himself doubted the soundness of his mind. ‘I hear a sound,’ he said to his wife, ‘and see a light. I am afraid there are jinn in me.’ And on other occasions he said, ‘I am afraid I am a kahin.’ ‘God will never allow that such should befall thee,’ said Khadyjah; ‘for thou keepest thy engagements, and assistest thy relations.’ According to some accounts, she added, ‘Thou wilt be the prophet of thy nation.’ And, in order to remove every doubt, she took him to her cousin Waraqah; and he said to her, ‘I see thou (i.e. thy explanation) art correct; the cause of the excitement of thy husband is the coming to him of the great nomos, law, which is like the nomos of Moses. If I should be alive when he receives his mission, I would assist him; for I believe in him.’ After this Khadyjah went to the monk, ʾAddas, and he confirmed what Waraqah had said. Waraqah died soon after, before Mohammad entered on his mission.

“The words of Mohammad, ‘I am afraid I am a kahin,’ require some explanation. The Arabs, previous to the promulgation of Islam, believed in kahins, soothsayers; and even in our days they have greater faith in saints and inspired persons than other equally uncivilized nations. Such a belief is so necessary a limitation of the personal freedom of the Bedouins, which knows no other bounds, that I consider it as the offspring of liberty. Even the most refractory spirit sees no humiliation in confessing his wrong-doings to a helpless seer, and in submitting to his decisions; and by doing so, if he has embroiled himself, he can return to peace with himself and with society. We find, therefore, in the ancient history of Arabia, that litigations were frequently referred to celebrated kahins. These, it would appear, were eccentric persons, of great cunning, and not without genius. The specimens which we have of their oracles are obscure, and usually in rhymed prose and incoherent sentences; and they are frequently preceded by a heavy oath to the truth of what they say, like some of the Surahs of the Quran. It was believed that they knew what was concealed from the eyes of the common mortals; but they were looked upon with awe; for the Arabs conceived that they were possessed by, or allied with, Satan and the jinn. The evil spirits used to approach the gates of heaven by stealth, to pry into the secrets which were being transacted between God and the angels, and to convey them to the kahins. Existing prejudices left no alternative to Mohammad but to proclaim himself a prophet who was inspired by God and His angels, or to be considered a kahin possessed by Satan and his agents the jinn.

“Khadyjah and her friends advised him to adopt the former course; and, after some hesitation, he followed their advice, as it would appear, with his own conviction. His purer notions of the Deity, his moral conduct, his predilection for religious speculations, and his piety, were proofs sufficiently strong to convince an affectionate wife that the supernatural influence, under which he was, came from heaven. But, as the pagan Arabs had very imperfect notions of divine inspiration, it was necessary for him to prove to them, by the history of the prophets, that some seers were inspired by God; and to this end, he devoted more than two-thirds of the Quran to Biblical legends, most of which he has so well adapted to his own case, that if we substitute the name of Mohammad for Moses and Abraham, we have his own views, fate, and tendency. And, in order to remove every doubt as to the cause of his excitement, Mohammad subsequently maintained, that since he had assumed his office, heaven was surrounded by a strong guard of angels; and if the jinn venture to ascend to its precincts, a flaming dart, that is to say, a shooting star, is thrown at them, and they are precipitated to the lower regions; and, therefore, the kahins ceased with the commencement of his mission.

“The declaration of Waraqah, and of the monk ʾAddas, that the great nomos would descend upon him, and the faith of his wife, neither conveyed full conviction nor gave they sufficient courage to Mohammad to declare himself publicly the messenger of God; on the contrary, they increased the morbid state of his mind. A fatalist, as he was, it was a hallucination and a fit which decided him to follow their advice. One day, whilst he was wandering about in the hills near Makkah, with the intention to destroy himself, he heard a voice; and, on raising his head, he beheld Gabriel, between heaven and earth; and the angel assured him that he was the prophet of God. This hallucination is one of the few clearly stated miracles to which he appeals in the Quran. Not even an allusion is made, in that book, to his fits, during which his followers believe that he received the revelations. This bears out the account of Wáqidy, which I have followed, and proves that it was rather the exalted state of his mind, than his fits, which caused his friends to believe in his mission. Frightened by this apparition, he returned home; and, feeling unwell, he called for covering. He had a fit, and they poured cold water upon him; and when he was recovering from it, he received the revelation, ‘O thou covered, arise and preach, and magnify thy Lord, and cleanse thy garment, and fly every abomination’; and henceforth, we are told, he received revelations without intermission; that is to say, the fatrah was at an end, and he assumed his office.

“This crisis of Mohammad’s struggles bears a strange resemblance to the opening scene of Goethe’s Faust. He paints, in that admirable drama, the struggles of mind which attend the transition, in men of genius, from the ideal to the real—from youth to manhood. Both in Mohammad and in Faust the anguish of the mind, distracted by doubts, is dispelled by the song of angels, which rises from their own bosoms, and is the voice of the consciousness of their sincerity and warmth in seeking for truth; and in both, after this crisis, the enthusiasm ebbs gradually down to calm design, and they now blasphemously sacrifice their faith in God to self-aggrandisement. In this respect the resemblance of the second part of Faust to Mohammad’s career at Madinah is complete. As the period of transition in the life of the Prophet has hitherto been completely unknown in Europe, Goethe’s general picture of this period, in the life of enthusiasts, is like a prediction in reference to the individual case of Mohammad.

“Some authors consider the fits of the Prophet as the principal evidence of his mission, and it is therefore necessary to say a few words on them. They were preceded by a great depression of spirits; he was despondent, and his face was clouded; and they were ushered in by coldness of the extremities and shivering. He shook, as if he were suffering of ague, and called out for covering. His mind was in a most painfully excited state. He heard a tinkling in his ears, as if bells were ringing; or a humming, as if bees were swarming round his head; and his lips quivered; but this motion was under the control of volition. If the attack proceeded beyond this stage, his eyes became fixed and staring, and the motions of his head became convulsive and automatic. At length, perspiration broke out, which covered his face in large drops; and with this ended the attack. Sometimes, however, if he had a violent fit, he fell comatose to the ground, like a person who is intoxicated; and (at least at a latter period of his life) his face was flushed, and his respiration stertorous, and he remained in that state for some time. The bystanders sprinkled water in his face; but he himself fancied that he would derive a great benefit from being cupped on the head. This is all the information which I have been able to collect concerning the fits of Mohammad. It will be observed that we have no distinct account of a paroxysm between the one which he had in his infancy, and the one after which he assumed his office. It is likely that up to his forty-fourth year they were not habitual. The alarm of the nurse, under whose care he had been two years before he had the former of these two fits, shews that it was the first, and the age and circumstances under which he had it, render it likely that it was solitary, and caused by the heat of the sun and gastric irritation. The fit after which he assumed his office was undoubtedly brought on by long-continued and increasing mental excitement, and by his ascetic exercises. We know that he used frequently to fast, and that he sometimes devoted the greater part of the night to prayer. The bias of the Musalmans is to gloss over the aberration of mind, and the intention to commit suicide, of their prophet. Most of his biographers pass over the transition period in silence. We may, therefore, be justified in stretching the scanty information which we can glean from them to the utmost extent, and in supposing that he was for some time a complete maniac; and that the fit after which he assumed his office was a paroxysm of cataleptic insanity. This disease is sometimes accompanied by such interesting psychical phenomena, that even in modern times it has given rise to many superstitious opinions. After this paroxysm the fits became habitual, though the moral excitement cooled down, and they assumed more and more an epileptic character.” (The Life of Mohammad from Original Sources, by A. Sprenger, M.D., part i., Allahabad, 1851, p. 949.)

(3) Dr. Marcus Dodds, in his Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ, says:—

“But is Mohammed in no sense a prophet? Certainly he had two of the most important characteristics of the prophetic order. He saw truth about God which his fellow-men did not see, and he had an irresistible inward impulse to publish this truth. In respect of this latter qualification, Mohammed may stand comparison with the most courageous of the heroic prophets of Israel. For the truth’s sake he risked his life, he suffered daily persecution for years, and eventually banishment, the loss of property, of the goodwill of his fellow-citizens, and of the confidence of his friends; he suffered, in short, as much as any man can suffer short of death, which he only escaped by flight, and yet he unflinchingly proclaimed his message. No bribe, threat, or inducement, could silence him. ‘Though they array against me the sun on the right hand and the moon on the left, I cannot renounce my purpose.’ And it was this persistency, this belief in his call, to proclaim the unity of God, which was the making of Islam.

“Other men have been monotheists in the midst of idolaters, but no other man has founded a strong and enduring monotheistic religion. The distinction in his case was his resolution that other men should believe. If we ask what it was that made Mohammed aggressive and proselytizing, where other men had been content to cherish a solitary faith, we must answer that it was nothing else than the depth and force of his own conviction of the truth. To himself the difference between one God and many, between the unseen Creator and these ugly lumps of stone or wood, was simply infinite. The one creed was death and darkness to him, the other life and light. It is useless seeking for motives in such a case—for ends to serve and selfish reasons for his speaking; the impossibility with Mohammed was to keep silence. His acceptance of the office of teacher of his people was anything but the ill-advised and sudden impulse of a light-minded vanity or ambition. His own convictions had been reached only after long years of lonely mental agony, and of a doubt and distraction bordering on madness. Who can doubt the earnestness of that search after truth and the living God, that drove the affluent merchant from his comfortable home and his fond wife, to make his abode for months at a time in the dismal cave on Mount Hira? If we respect the shrinking of Isaiah or Jeremiah from the heavy task of proclaiming unwelcome truth, we must also respect the keen sensitiveness of Mohammed, who was so burdened by this same responsibility, and so persuaded of his incompetency for the task, that at times he thought his new feelings and thoughts were a snare of the Devil, and at times he would fain have rid himself of all further struggle by casting himself from a friendly precipice. His rolling his head in his mantle, the sound of the ringing of bells in his ears, his sobbing like a young camel, the sudden grey hairs which he himself ascribed to the terrific Suras—what were all these but so many physical signs of nervous organization overstrained by anxiety and thought?

“His giving himself out as a prophet of God was, in the first instance, not only sincere, but probably correct in the sense in which he himself understood it. He felt that he had thoughts of God which it deeply concerned all around him to receive, and he knew that these thoughts were given him by God, although not, as we shall see, a revelation strictly so called. His mistake by no means lay in his supposing himself to be called upon by God to speak for Him and introduce a better religion, but it lay in his gradually coming to insist quite as much on men’s accepting him as a prophet as on their accepting the great truth he preached. He was a prophet to his countrymen in so far as he proclaimed the unity of God, but this was no sufficient ground for his claiming to be their guide in all matters of religion, still less for his assuming the lordship over them in all matters civil as well. The modesty and humility apparent in him, so long as his mind was possessed with objective truth, gradually gives way to the presumptuousness and arrogance of a mind turned more to a sense of its own importance. To put the second article of the Mohammedan creed on the same level as the first, to make it as essential that men should believe in the mission of Mohammed as in the unity of God, was an ignorant, incongruous, and false combination. Had Mohammed known his own ignorance as well as his knowledge, the world would have had one religion the less, and Christianity would have had one more reformer.” (Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ, p. 17.)

(4) Thomas Carlyle, in his lecture, “The Hero as Prophet,” says:—

“Mahomet himself, after all that can be said about him, was not a sensual man. We shall err widely if we consider this man as a common voluptuary, intent mainly on base enjoyments—nay, on enjoyments of any kind. His household was of the frugalest, his common diet barley-bread and water; sometimes for months there was not a fire once lighted on his hearth. They record with just pride that he would mend his own shoes, patch his own cloak. A poor hard-toiling, ill-provided man; careless of what vulgar men toil for. Not a bad man, I should say; something better in him than hunger of any sort—or these wild Arab men fighting and jostling three and twenty years at his hand, in close contact with him always, would not have reverenced him so! These were wild men, bursting ever and anon into quarrel, into all kinds of fierce sincerity; without right, worth, and manhood, no man could have commanded them. They called him Prophet, you say? Why, he stood there face to face with them; bare, not enshrined in any mystery, visibly clouting his own cloak, cobbling his own shoes, fighting, counselling, ordering in the midst of them, they must have seen what kind of a man he was, let him be called what you like! No emperor with his tiaras was obeyed as this man in a cloak of his own clouting. During three and twenty years of rough actual trial, I find something of a veritable Hero necessary for that of itself.

“His last words are a prayer, broken ejaculations of a heart struggling-up in trembling hope towards its Maker. We cannot say his religion made him worse; it made him better; good, not bad. Generous things are recorded of him; when he lost his daughter, the thing he answers is, in his own dialect, everyway sincere, and yet equivalent to that of Christians: ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ He answered in like manner of Said, his emancipated well-beloved slave, the second of the believers. Said had fallen in the war of Tâbûc, the first of Mahomet’s fightings with the Greeks. Mahomet said it was well, Said had done his Master’s work, Said had now gone to his Master; it was all well with Said. Yet Said’s daughter found him weeping over the body; the old gray-haired man melting in tears! What do I see? said she. You see a friend weeping over his friend. He went out for the last time into the mosque two days before his death; asked, If he had injured any man? Let his own back bear the stripes. If he owed any man? A voice answered, ‘Yes, me; three drachms, borrowed on such an occasion.’ Mahomet ordered them to be paid. ‘Better be in shame now,’ said he, ‘than at the Day of Judgment.’ You remember Kadîjah, and the ‘No by Allah!’ Traits of this kind show us the genuine man, the brother of us all, brought visible through twelve centuries, the veritable son of our common Mother.” (Lectures on Heroes, p. 66.)

(5) The Rev. Dr. Badger remarks:—

“With respect to the private as distinct from the public character of Muhammad, from the time of his settlement at al-Madīnah, it does not appear to have deteriorated, except in one particular, from what it had been prior to the flight from Mecca. He was still frugal in his habits, generous and liberal, faithful to his associates, treasured up the loving memory of absent and departed friends, and awaited his last summons with fortitude and submission. That he entertained an excessive passion for women, was lustful, if you will, cannot be denied; but the fourteen wives whom from first to last he married, and his eleven (? two: see MUHAMMAD’S WIVES) concubines, figure favourably by the side of David’s six wives and numerous concubines (2 Sam. v. 13; 1 Chron. iii. 1–9; xiv. 3), Solomon’s 700 wives and 300 concubines (1 Kings xi. 3), and Rehoboam’s eighteen wives and sixty concubines (2 Chron. xi. 21), a plurality expressly forbidden to the sovereign of Israel, who was commanded not to multiply wives to himself. (Deut. xvii. 17.)

“It is not so much his polygamy, considering all the circumstances of the case, which justly lays Muhammad open to reproach, but his having deliberately infringed one of his own alleged divine revelations, which restricted the number of wives to ‘four and no more’ (Sura iv. 3); also, for having in the first instance dallied with Zainab, the wife of his freedman and adopted son Zaid-ibn-Harithah, who complacently divorced her in order that she might espouse the Prophet. In this case, moreover, as has already been related, he adduced the authority of God as sanctioning on his behoof first, and thenceforth in the behoof of all Muslims, the marriage of a man with the divorced wife of his adopted son, which up to that time had been considered incestuous. Whatever apology may be adduced for Muhammad in this matter of polygamy, there is no valid plea to justify his improbity and impiety in the case of Zainab.”

(6) Sir William Muir says:—

“I would warn the reader against seeking to portray in his mind a character in all its parts consistent with itself as the character of Mahomet. The truth is, that the strangest inconsistencies blended together (according to the wont of human nature) throughout the life of the Prophet. The student of the history will trace for himself how the pure and lofty aspirations of Mahomet were first tinged, and then gradually debased by a half-unconscious self-deception, and how in this process truth merged into falsehood, sincerity into guile, these opposite principles often co-existing even as active agencies in his conduct. The reader will observe that simultaneously with the anxious desire to extinguish idolatry, and to promote religion and virtue in the world, there was nurtured by the Prophet in his own heart, a licentious self-indulgence, till in the end, assuming to be the favourite of Heaven, he justified himself by ‘revelations’ from God in the most flagrant breaches of morality. He will remark that while Mahomet cherished a kind and tender disposition, ‘weeping with them that wept,’ and binding to his person the hearts of his followers by the ready and self-denying offices of love and friendship, he could yet take pleasure in cruel and perfidious assassination, could gloat over the massacre of an entire tribe, and savagely consign the innocent babe to the fires of hell. Inconsistencies such as these continually present themselves from the period of Mahomet’s arrival at Medîna, and it is by the study of these inconsistencies that his character must be rightly comprehended. The key to many difficulties of this description may be found, I believe, in the chapter ‘on the belief of Mahomet in his own inspiration.’ When once he had dared to forge the name of the Most High God as the seal and authority of his own words and actions, the germ was laid from which the errors of his after life freely and fatally developed themselves.” (Life of Mahomet, new ed. p. 535.)

(7) Mr. Bosworth Smith, in his Mohammed and Mohammedanism, says:—

“Mohammed did not, indeed, himself conquer a world like Alexander, or Cæsar, or Napoleon. He did not himself weld together into a homogeneous whole a vast system of states like Charles the Great. He was not a philosophic king, like Marcus Aurelius, nor philosopher like Aristotle or like Bacon, ruling by pure reason the world of thought for centuries with a more than kingly power; he was not a legislator for all mankind, nor even the highest part of it, like Justinian; nor did he cheaply earn the title of the Great by being the first among rulers to turn, like Constantine, from the setting to the rising sun. He was not a universal philanthropist, like the greatest of the Stoics.

“Nor was he the apostle of the highest form of religion and civilisation combined, like Gregory or Boniface, like Leo or Alfred the Great. He was less, indeed, than most of these in one or two of the elements that go to make up human greatness, but he was also greater. Half Christian and half Pagan, half civilised and half barbarian, it was given to him in a marvellous degree to unite the peculiar excellences of the one with the peculiar excellences of the other. ‘I have seen,’ said the ambassador sent by the triumphant Quraish to the despised exile at Medina—‘I have seen the Persian Chosroes and the Greek Heraclius sitting upon their thrones; but never did I see a man ruling his equals as does Mohammed.’

“Head of the State as well as of the Church, he was Cæsar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without the Pope’s pretensions, Cæsar without the legions of Cæsar. Without a standing army, without a body-guard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue; if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by a right divine, it was Mohammed, for he had all the power without its instruments, and without its supports.

“By a fortune absolutely unique in history, Mohammed is a three-fold founder—of a nation, of an empire, and of a religion. Illiterate himself, scarcely able to read or write, he was yet the author of a book which is a poem, a code of laws, a Book of Common Prayer, and a Bible in one, and is reverenced to this day by a sixth of the whole human race, as a miracle of purity of style, of wisdom, and of truth. It was the one miracle claimed by Mohammed—his standing miracle he called it; and a miracle indeed it is. But looking at the circumstances of the time, at the unbounded reverence of his followers, and comparing him with the Fathers of the Church or with mediæval saints, to my mind the most miraculous thing about Mohammed is, that he never claimed the power of working miracles. Whatever he had said he could do, his disciples would straightway have seen him do. They could not help attributing to him miraculous acts which he never did, and which he always denied he could do. What more crowning proof of his sincerity is needed? Mohammed to the end of his life claimed for himself that title only with which he had begun, and which the highest philosophy and the truest Christianity will one day, I venture to believe, agree in yielding to him, that of a Prophet, a very Prophet of God.” (Mohammed and Mohammedanism, p. 340.)

(8) Major Robert Durie Osborn, in his Islām under the Arabs, says:—

“He (Muḥammad) was brought face to face with the question which every spiritual reformer has to meet and consider, against which so many noble spirits have gone to ruin. Will not the end justify the means? ‘Here am I a faithful servant of God, eager only to enthrone Him in the hearts of men, and at the very goal and termination of my labours I am thwarted by this incapacity to work a miracle. It is true, as these infidels allege, that the older prophets did possess this power, and I, unless the very reason and purpose of my existence is to be made a blank, must also do something wonderful. But what kind of miracle?’ In his despair, Muḥammad declared that the Qurʾān itself was that constantly-recurring miracle they were seeking after. Had they ever heard these stories of Noah, Lot, Abraham, Joseph, Zacharias, Jesus, and others? No; neither had he. They were transcripts made from the ‘preserved Table,’ that stood before the throne of God. The archangel Gabriel had revealed them to Muḥammad, written in pure Arabic, for the spiritual edification of the Quraish. Thus in the twelfth Sūrah, where he details at great length an exceedingly ridiculous history of Joseph, he commences the narrative with these words, as spoken by God:—

‘These are signs of the clear Book.
An Arabic Qurʾān have we sent it down, that ye might understand it.’

And at the close of the Sūrah, we are told:—

‘This is one of the secret histories which we reveal unto thee. Thou wast not present with Joseph’s brethren when they conceived their design and laid their plot: but the greater part of men, though thou long for it, will not believe. Thou shalt not ask of them any recompense for this message. It is simply an instruction for all mankind.’

And, again, in the LXVIIth Sūrah, he declares respecting the Qurʾān:—

‘It is a missive from the Lord of the worlds.
But if Muḥammad had fabricated concerning us any sayings,
We had surely seized him by the right hand,
And had cut through the vein of his neck.’

“It would be easy to multiply extracts of similar purport; but the above will suffice by way of illustration. There are modern biographers of the Prophet who would have us believe that he was not conscious of falsehood when making these assertions. He was under a hallucination, of course, but he believed what he said. This to me is incredible. The legends in the Qurʾān are derived chiefly from Talmudic sources. Muḥammad must have learned them from some Jew resident in or near Mekka. To work them up into the form of rhymed Sūrahs, to put his own peculiar doctrines in the mouth of Jewish patriarchs, the Virgin Mary, and the infant Jesus (who talks like a good Moslem the moment after his birth), must have required time, thought, and labour. It is not possible that the man who had done this could have forgotten all about it, and believed that these legends had been brought to him ready prepared by an angelic visitor. Muḥammad was guilty of falsehood under circumstances where he deemed the end justified the means.” (Islām under the Arabs, p. 21.)

(9) The character of Muḥammad is a historic problem, and many have been the conjectures as to his motives and designs. Was he an impostor, a fanatic, or an honest man—“a very prophet of God”? And the problem might have for ever remained unsolved, had not the Prophet himself appealed to the Old and New Testaments in proof of his mission. This is the crucial test, established by the Prophet himself. He claims to be weighed in the balance with the divine Jesus.

Objection has often been made to the manner in which Christian divines have attacked the private character of Muḥammad. Why reject the prophetic mission of Muḥammad on account of his private vices, when you receive as inspired the sayings of a Balaam, a David, or a Solomon? Missionaries should not, as a rule, attack the character of Muḥammad in dealing with Islām; it rouses opposition, and is an offensive line of argument. Still, in forming an estimate of his prophetic claims, we maintain that the character of Muḥammad in an important consideration. We readily admit that bad men have sometimes been, like Balaam and others, the divinely appointed organs of inspiration; but in the case of Muḥammad, his professed inspiration sanctioned and encouraged his own vices. That which ought to have been the fountain of purity was, in fact, the cover of the Prophet’s depravity. But how different it is in the case of the true prophet David, where, in the words of inspiration, he lays bare to public gaze the enormity of his own crimes. The deep contrition of his inmost soul is manifest in every line—“I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me: against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Thy sight.”

The best defenders of the Arabian Prophet are obliged to admit that the matter of Zainab, the wife of Zaid, and again, of Mary, the Coptic slave, are “an indelible stain” upon his memory; that “he is once or twice untrue to the kind and forgiving disposition of his best nature; that he is once or twice unrelenting in the punishment of his personal enemies; and that he is guilty even more than once of conniving at the assassination of inveterate opponents”; but they give no satisfactory explanation or apology for all this being done under the supposed sanction of God in the Qurʾān.

In forming an estimate of Muḥammad’s prophetical pretensions, it must be remembered that he did not claim to be the founder of a new religion, but merely of a new covenant. He is the last and greatest of all God’s prophets. He is sent to convert the world to the one true religion which God had before revealed to the five great law-givers—Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus! The creed of Muḥammad, therefore, claims to supersede that of the Lord Jesus. And it is here that we take our stand. We give Muḥammad credit as a warrior, as a legislator, as a poet, as a man of uncommon genius raising himself amidst great opposition to the pinnacle of renown; we admit that he is, without doubt, one of the greatest heroes the world has ever seen; but when we consider his claims to supersede the mission of the divine Jesus, we strip him of his borrowed plumes, and reduce him to the condition of an impostor! For whilst he has adopted and avowed his belief in the sacred books of the Jew and the Christian, and has given them all the stamp and currency which his authority and influence could impart, he has attempted to rob Christianity of every distinctive truth which it possesses—its divine Saviour, its Heavenly Comforter, its two Sacraments, its pure code of social morals, its spirit of love and truth—and has written his own refutation and condemnation with his own hand, by professing to confirm the divine oracles which sap the very foundations of his religious system. We follow the Prophet in his self-asserted mission from the cave of Ḥirāʾ to the closing scene, when he dies in the midst of the lamentations of his ḥarīm, and the contentions of his friends—the visions of Gabriel, the period of mental depression, the contemplated suicide, the assumption of the prophetic office, his struggles with Makkan unbelief, his flight to al-Madīnah, his triumphant entry into Makkah—and whilst we wonder at the genius of the hero, we pause at every stage and inquire, “Is this the Apostle of God, whose mission is to claim universal dominion, to the suppression not merely of idolatry, but of Christianity itself?” Then it is that the divine and holy character of Jesus rises to our view, and the inquiring mind sickens at the thought of the beloved, the pure, the lowly Jesus giving place to that of the ambitious, the sensual, the time-serving hero of Arabia. In the study of Islām, the character of Muḥammad needs an apology or a defence at every stage; but in the contemplation of the Christian system, whilst we everywhere read of Jesus, and see the reflection of His image in everything we read, the heart revels in the contemplation, the inner pulsations of our spiritual life bound within us at the study of a character so divine, so pure.

We are not insensible to the beauties of the Qurʾān as a literary production (although they have, without doubt, been overrated); but as we admire its conceptions of the Divine nature, its deep and fervent trust in the power of God, its frequent deep moral earnestness, and its sententious wisdom, we would gladly rid ourselves of our recollections of the Prophet, his licentious ḥarīm, his sanguinary battle-fields, his ambitious schemes; whilst as we peruse the Christian Scriptures, we find the grand central charm in the divine character of its Founder. It is the divine character of Jesus which gives fragrance to His words; it is the divine form of Jesus which shines through all He says or does; it is the divine life of Jesus which is the great central point in Gospel history. How, then, we ask, can the creed of Muḥammad, the son of ʿAbdu ʾllāh, supersede and abrogate that of Jesus, the Son of God? And it is a remarkable coincidence that, whilst the founder of Islām died feeling that he had but imperfectly fulfilled his mission, the Founder of Christianity died in the full consciousness that His work was done—“It is finished.” It was in professing to produce a revelation which should supersede that of Jesus, that Muḥammad set the seal of his own refutation. (Hughes, Notes on Muhammadanism, p. 2.)

MUḤAMMAD (محمد‎). The title of the XLVIIth Sūrah of the Qurʾān, in the second verse of which the word occurs: “Believe in what hath been revealed to Muḥammad.”

The name Muḥammad occurs only in three more places in the Qurʾān:—

Sūrah iii. 138: “Muḥammad is but an apostle of God.”

Sūrah xxxiii. 40: “Muḥammad is not the father of any of your men, but the Apostle of God, and the Seal of the Prophets.”

Sūrah xlviii. 29: “Muḥammad is the Apostle of God.”

MUḤAMMAD, The Wives of. Arabic al-azwāju ʾl-mut̤ahharāt (الازواج المطهرات‎), i.e. “The pure wives.” According to the Traditions, Muḥammad took to himself eleven lawful wives, and two concubines. (See Majmaʿu ʾl-Biḥār, p. 528.)

(1) K͟hadījah (خديجة‎), a Quraish lady, the daughter of K͟huwailid ibn Asad. She was a rich widow lady, who had been twice married. She was married to Muḥammad when he was 25 years old, and she was 40 years, and remained his only wife for twenty-five years, until she died (A.D. 619), aged 65, Muḥammad being 50 years old. She bore Muḥammad two sons, al-Qāṣim and ʿAbdu ʾllāh, surnamed at̤-T̤āhir and at̤-T̤aiyib, and four daughters, Zainab, Ruqaiyah, Fāt̤imah, and Ummu Kuls̤ūm. Of these children, only Fāt̤imah (the wife of ʿAlī) survived Muḥammad.

(2) Saudah (سودة‎), daughter of Zamaʿah, the widow of as-Sakrān (a Quraish and one of the Companions). Married about two months after the death of K͟hadījah.

(3) ʿĀyishah (عائشة‎), the daughter of Abū Bakr. She was betrothed when she was only 7 years old, and was married at 10, about the ninth month after the flight to al-Madīnah.

(4) Juwairīyah (جويرية‎), a widow, the daughter of al-Ḥāris̤ ibn Abī Ẓirār, the chief of the Banū Muṣt̤aliq. Muḥammad ransomed her from a citizen who had fixed her ransom at nine ounces of gold. It is related that ʿĀyishah said, “No woman was ever a greater blessing to her people than this Juwairīyah.”

(5) Ḥafṣah (حفصة‎), the daughter of ʿUmar. She was the widow of K͟hunais, an early convert to Islām. Muḥammad married her about six months after her former husband’s death.

(6) Zainab, the daughter of K͟huzaimah (زينب بنت خزيمة‎), the widow of Muḥammad’s cousin ʿUbaidah, who was killed at the battle of Badr. She was called the “Mother of the Poor,” Ummu ʾl-Masākīn, on account of her care of destitute converts. She died before Muḥammad.

(7) Ummu Salimah (ام سلمة‎), the widow of Abū Salimah, one of the Refugees, who was wounded at the battle of Uḥud, and afterwards died of his wounds.

(8) Zainab the daughter of Jaḥsh (زينب بنت جحش‎), the wife of Muḥammad’s adopted son Zaid. Zaid divorced her to please the Prophet. She was (being the wife of an adopted son) unlawful to him, but Sūrah xxxiii. 36 was produced to settle the difficulty.

(9) Ṣafīyah (صفية‎), daughter of Ḥayī ibn Ak͟ht̤ab, the widow of Kinānah, the K͟haibar chief, who was cruelly put to death. It was said that Muḥammad wished to divorce her, but she begged that her turn might be given to ʿĀyishah.

(10) Ummu Ḥabībah (ام حبيبة‎), the daughter of Abū Sufyān and the widow of ʿUbaidu ʾllāh, one of the “Four Enquirers,” who, after emigrating as a Muslim to Abyssinia, had embraced Christianity there, and died in the profession of that faith.

(11) Maimūnah (ميمونة‎), the daughter of al-Ḥāris̤ and widowed kinswoman of Muḥammad, and the sister-in-law of al-ʿAbbās. She is said to have been 51 years of age when she married Muḥammad.

Muḥammad’s concubines were:—

(1) Mary the Copt (مارية القبطية‎). A Christian slave-girl sent to Muḥammad by al-Muqauqis, the Roman Governor in Egypt. She became the mother of a son by Muḥammad, named Ibrāhīm, who died young.

(2) Rīḥānah (ريحانة‎), a Jewess, whose husband had perished in the massacre of the Banū Quraiz̤ah. She declined the summons to conversion, and continued a Jew; but it is said she embraced Islām before her death.

At the time of Muḥammad’s death, he had nine wives and two concubines living, (Ṣaḥīḥu ʾl-Buk͟hārī, p. 798), K͟hadījah and Zainab bint K͟huzaimah having died before him.

According to the Shīʿahs, Muḥammad had, in all, twenty-two wives. Eight of these never consummated the marriage. Their names are ʿAlīyah bint Zabyān, Fatīlah bint Qais, Fāt̤imah bint Ẓaḥḥāf, Asmāʾ bint Kanaʿān, Mulaikah bint Suwaid, Lailah bint K͟hāt̤ib, and Shabah bint Ṣīlah. Twelve were duly married. Their names are K͟hadījah, Saudah, Hind (or Ummu Salimah), ʿĀyishah, Ḥafṣah, Zainab bint Jaḥsh, Ramalah bint Abī Sufyān (or Ummu Ḥabībah), Maimūnah, Zainab bint ʿUmais, Juwairīyah bint al-Ḥāris̤ of the Banū Muṣt̤aliq, Ṣafīyah, K͟haulah bint Ḥakīm, and Ummiāni, a sister to ʿAlī. Two were bondwomen: Māriyatu ʾl-Qibt̤īyah and Rīḥānah. (See Jannātu ʾl-K͟hulūd, p. 14.)

MUḤAMMAD, The Children of. According to the Majmaʿu ʾl-Biḥār, p. 538, Muḥammad had seven children. Two sons and four daughters by K͟hadījah, and one son by Mary, his Coptic slave.

The two sons by K͟hadījah were al-Qāsim and ʿAbdu ʾllāh (called also at̤-T̤āhir and at̤-T̤aiyib); and the four daughters were Zainab, Ruqaiyah, Fāt̤imah, and Ummu Kuls̤ūm. The son by his bondwoman Mary was Ibrāhīm. All these children died before Muḥammad, with the exception of Fāt̤imah, who married ʿAlī, the fourth K͟halīfah, and from whom are descended the Saiyids. [SAIYID.]

Zainab married Abū ʾl-ʿĀṣ bnu ʾr-Rabīʿ. Ruqaiyah married ʿUtbah ibn Abū Lahab, by whom she was divorced. She afterwards married ʿUs̤mān, the third K͟halīfah.

MUḤAMMAD’S GRAVE. [HUJRAH.]

MUḤAMMADAN. Arabic Muḥammadī (محمدى‎). A name seldom used in Muḥammadan works for the followers of Muḥammad, who call themselves either Muʾmins, Muslims, or Musalmāns. It is, however, sometimes used in Indian papers and other popular publications, and it is not, as many European scholars suppose, an offensive term to Muslims.

MUḤAMMADANISM. The religion of Muḥammad is called by its followers al-Islām (الاسلام‎), a word which implies the entire surrender of the will of man to God. [ISLAM.] Its adherents speak of themselves as Muslims, pl. Muslimūn, or Muʾmin, pl. Muʾminūn; a Muʾmin being a “believer.” In Persian these terms are rendered by the word Musalmān, pl. Musalmānān.

The principles of Islām were first enunciated in portions of the Qurʾān, as they were revealed piecemeal by Muḥammad, together with such verbal explanations as were given by him to his followers; but when the final recension of the Qurʾān was produced by the K͟halīfah ʿUs̤mān, about twenty-two years after Muḥammad’s death, the Muslims possessed a complete book, which they regarded as the inspired and infallible word of God. [QURʾAN.] But as an interpretation of its precepts, and as a supplement to its teachings, there also existed, side by side with the Qurʾān, the sayings, and practice of Muḥammad, called the Aḥādīs̤ and Sunnah. These traditions of what the Prophet “did and said,” gradually laid the foundations of what is now called Islām. For whilst it is a canon in Islām that nothing can be received or taught which is contrary to the literal injunctions of the Qurʾān, it is to the Traditions rather than to the Qurʾān that we must refer for Muḥammadan law on the subject of faith, knowledge, purification, prayer, almsgiving, fasting, marriage, barter, inheritance, punishments, fate, duties of magistrates, religious warfare, lawful food, death, Day of Judgment, &c., and each collection of traditions has sections devoted to these subjects; so that it is upon these traditional sayings, quite as much as upon the Qurʾān itself, that the religious and civil law of the Muslims is based, both Shīʿah and Sunnī appealing alike to Tradition in support of their views.

When the Prophet was alive, men could go direct to him with their doubts and difficulties; and an infallible authority was always present to give “inspired” directions. But after the deaths of all those who knew Muḥammad personally, it became absolutely necessary to systematise the great mass of traditional sayings then afloat amongst Muslims, and thus various schools of jurisprudence were formed; the concurrent opinion of those learned regarding matters of dispute in Muslim law being called Ijmāʿ [IJMAʿ]. Upon this naturally followed the system of analogical reasoning called Qiyās [QIYAS]; thus constituting the four “pillars” or foundations of Islām, known as the Qurʾān, Ḥadīs̤, Ijmāʿ, and Qiyās.

Islām, whether it be Shīʿah, Sunnī, or Wahhābī, is founded upon these four authorities, and it is not true, as is so frequently asserted, that the Shīʿahs reject the Traditions. They merely accept different collections of Aḥādīs̤ to those received by the Sunnīs and Wahhābīs. Nor do the Wahhābīs reject Ijmāʿ and Qiyās, but they assert that Ijmāʿ was only possible in the earliest stages of Islām.

A study of the present work will show what an elaborate system of dogma Muḥammadanism is. This system of dogma, together with the liturgical form of worship, has been formulated from the traditional sayings of Muḥammad rather than from the Qurʾān itself. For example, the daily ritual, with its purifications, which are such a prominent feature in Islām, is entirely founded on the Traditions. [PRAYER.] Circumcision is not once mentioned in the Qurʾān.

The Dīn, or religion of the Muslim, is divided into Imān, or “Faith,” and ʿAmal, or “Practice.”

Faith consists in the acceptance of six articles of belief:—

1. The Unity of God.

2. The Angels.

3. The Inspired Books.

4. The Inspired Prophets.

5. The Day of Judgment.

6. The Decrees of God.

Practical Religion consists in the observance of—

1. The recital of the Creed—“There is no deity but God, and Muḥammad is the Prophet of God.”

2. The five stated periods of prayer.

3. The thirty days fast in the month Ramaẓān.

4. The payment of Zakāt, or the legal alms.

5. The Ḥajj, or Pilgrimage to Makkah.

A belief in these six articles of faith, and the observance of these five practical duties, constitute Islām. He who thus believes and acts is called a Muʾmin, or “believer”; but he who rejects any article of faith or practice is a Kāfir, or “infidel.”

Muḥammadan theology, which is very extensive, is divided into—

1. The Qurʾān and its commentaries.

2. The Traditions and their commentaries.

3. Uṣūl, or expositions on the principles of exegesis.

4. ʿAqāʾid, or expositions of scholastic theology founded on the six articles of faith.

5. Fiqh, or works on both civil and religious law. [THEOLOGY.]

Muḥammadanism is, therefore, a system which affords a large field for patient study and research, and much of its present energy and vitality is to be attributed to the fact that, in all parts of Islām, there are in the various mosques students who devote their whole lives to the study of Muslim divinity.

The two leading principles of Islām are those expressed in its well-known creed, or kalimah, namely, a belief in the absolute unity of the Divine Being, and in the mission of Muḥammad as the Messenger of the Almighty. [KALIMAH.]

“The faith,” says Gibbon, “which he (Muḥammad) preached to his family and nation, is compounded of an eternal truth and a necessary fiction: That there is only one God, and that Muḥammad is the Apostle of God.” (Roman Empire, vol. vi. p. 222.)

“Moḥammad’s conception of God,” says Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole, “has, I think, been misunderstood, and its effect upon the people consequently under-estimated. The God of Islám is commonly represented as a pitiless tyrant, who plays with humanity as on a chessboard, and works out his game without regard to the sacrifice of the pieces; and there is a certain truth in the figure. There is more in Islám of the potter who shapes the clay than of the father pitying his children. Moḥammad conceived of God as the Semitic mind has always preferred to think of Him: his God is the All-Mighty, the All-Knowing, the All-Just. Irresistible Power is the first attribute he thinks of: the Lord of the Worlds, the Author of the Heavens and the Earth, who hath created Life and Death, in whose hand is Dominion, who maketh the Dawn to appear and causeth the Night to cover the Day, the Great, All-Powerful Lord of the Glorious Throne; the thunder proclaimeth His perfection, the whole earth is His handful, and the heavens shall be folded together in His right hand. And with the Power He conceives the Knowledge that directs it to right ends. God is the Wise, the Just, the True, the Swift in reckoning, who knoweth every ant’s weight of good and of ill that each man hath done, and who suffereth not the reward of the faithful to perish.

“ ‘God! There is no God but He, the Ever-Living, the Ever-Subsisting. Slumber seizeth Him not nor sleep. To Him belongeth whatsoever is in the Heavens and whatsoever is in the Earth. Who is he that shall intercede with Him, save by his permission? He knoweth the things that have gone before and the things that follow after, and men shall not compass aught of His knowledge, save what He willeth. His throne comprehendeth the Heavens and the Earth, and the care of them burdeneth Him not. And He is the High, the Great.’—Ḳur-án, ii. 256.

“But with this Power there is also the gentleness that belongs only to great strength. God is the Guardian over His servants, the Shelterer of the orphan, the Guider of the erring, the Deliverer from every affliction; in His hand is Good, and He is the Generous Lord, the Gracious, the Hearer, the Near-at-Hand. Every soorah of the Ḳur-án begins with the words, ‘In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful,’ and Moḥammad was never tired of telling the people how God was Very-Forgiving, that His love for man was more tender than the mother-bird for her young.

“It is too often forgotten how much there is in the Ḳur-án of the loving-kindness of God, but it must be allowed that these are not the main thoughts in Moḥammad’s teaching. It is the doctrine of the Might of God that most held his imagination, and that has impressed itself most strongly upon Muslims of all ages. The fear rather than the love of God is the spur of Islám. There can be no question which is the higher incentive to good; but it is nearly certain that the love of God is an idea absolutely foreign to most of the races that have accepted Islám, and to preach such a doctrine would have been to mistake the leaning of the Semitic mind.

“The leading doctrine of Moḥammad, then, is the belief in One All-Powerful God. Islám is the self-surrender of every man to the will of God. Its danger lies in the stress laid on the power of God, which has brought about the stifling effects of fatalism. Moḥammad taught the foreknowledge of God, but he did not lay down precisely the doctrine of Predestination. He found it, as all have found it, a stumbling-block in the way of man’s progress. It perplexed him, and he spoke of it, but often contradicted himself; and he would become angry if the subject were mooted in his presence: ‘Sit not with a disputer about fate,’ he said, ‘nor begin a conversation with him.’ Moḥammad vaguely recognised that little margin of Free Will which makes life not wholly mechanical.

“This doctrine of one Supreme God, to whose will it is the duty of every man to surrender himself, is the kernel of Islám, the truth for which Moḥammad lived and suffered and triumphed. But it was no new teaching, as he himself was constantly saying. His was only the last of revelations. Many prophets—Abraham, Moses, and Christ—had taught the same faith before; but people had hearkened little to their words. So Moḥammad was sent, not different from them, only a messenger, yet the last and greatest of them, the ‘seal of prophecy,’ the ‘most excellent of the creation of God.’ This is the second dogma of Islám: Moḥammad is the Apostle of God. It is well worthy of notice that it is not said, ‘Moḥammad is the only apostle of God.’ Islám is more tolerant in this matter than other religions. Its prophet is not the sole commissioner of the Most High, nor is his teaching the only true teaching the world has ever received. Many other messengers had been sent by God to guide men to the right, and these taught the same religion that was in the mouth of the preacher of Islám. Hence Muslims reverence Moses and Christ only next to Moḥammad. All they claim for their founder is that he was the last and best of the messengers of the one God.” (Introduction to Lane’s Selections, 2nd ed., p. lxxix. et seqq.)

Islām does not profess to be a new religion, formulated by Muḥammad (nor indeed is it), but a continuation of the religious principles established by Adam, by Noah, by Abraham, by Moses, and by Jesus, as well as by other inspired teachers, for it is said that God sent not fewer than 313 apostles into the world to reclaim it from superstition and infidelity. The revelations of these great prophets are generally supposed to have been lost, but God, it is asserted, had retained all that is necessary for man’s guidance in the Qurʾān, although, as a matter of fact, a very large proportion of the ethical, devotional, and dogmatic teaching in Islām, comes from the traditional sayings of Muḥammad and not from the Qurʾān itself. [TRADITIONS.]

In reading the different articles in the present work, the reader cannot fail to be struck with the great indebtedness of Muḥammad to the Jewish religion for the chief elements of his system. Mr. Emanuel Deutsch has truly remarked “that Muḥammadanism owes more to Judaism than either to Heathenism or to Christianity. It is not merely parallelisms, reminiscences, allusions, technical terms, and the like of Judaism, its lore and dogma and ceremony, its Halacha, and its Haggadah, its Law and Legend, which we find in the Qurʾān; but we think Islām neither more nor less than Judaism—as adapted to Arabia—plus the Apostleship of Jesus and Muḥammad. Nay, we verily believe that a great deal of such Christianity as has found its way into the Qurʾān, has found it through Jewish channels.” (Literary Remains, p. 64.)

Its conception of God, its prophets, its seven heavens and seven hells, its law of marriage and divorce, its law of oaths, its purifications and ritual, its festivals, are all of marked Jewish origin, and prove that Talmudic Judaism forms the kernel of Muḥammadanism, which even according to the words of the founder, professed to be the “religion of Abraham.” See Sūrah iii. 60: “Abraham was neither a Jew nor Christian, but he was a Ḥanīf, a Muslim.” Nevertheless, Muḥammad, although he professed to take his legislation from Abraham, incorporated into his system a vast amount of the law of Moses.

The sects of Islām have become numerous; indeed, the Prophet is related to have predicted that his followers would be divided into seventy-three. They have far exceeded the limits of that prophecy, for, according to ʿAbdu ʾl-Qādir al-Jīlānī, there are at least 150. The chief sect is the Sunnī, which is divided into four schools of interpretation, known after their respective founders, Ḥanafī, Shāfiʿī, Malakī, Ḥanbalī. The Shīʿahs, who separated from the so-called orthodox Sunnīs on the question of the K͟halīfate, maintaining that ʿAlī and not Abū Bakr was the rightful successor to Muḥammad, are divided also into numerous sects. [SHIʿAH.] The Wahhābīs are a comparatively modern sect, who are the Puritans of Islām, maintaining that Islām has very far departed from the original teaching of Muḥammad, as expressed in the Traditions. They consequently reject very many of the so-called Ijtihād of the Sunnīs, and take the literal meaning of the Traditional sayings of the Prophet as the best exposition of the Qurʾān.

The Shīʿah sect is almost entirely confined to Persia, although there are a few thousand in Lucknow and other parts of India. Of the Sunnīs, the Ḥanafīs are found chiefly in Turkey, Arabia, India, and Central Asia, the Shāfiʿīs in Egypt, and the Malakīs in Morocco and Tunis. The Ḥanbalī are a small sect found in Arabia. Wahhābīism, as will be seen upon reference to the article on the subject, is a principle of reform which has extended itself to all parts of Islām. It is scarcely to be called a sect, but a school of thought in Sunnī Islām.

One hundred and seventy millions of the human race are said to profess the religion of Muḥammad; and, according to the late Mr. Keith Johnstone’s computations, they are distributed as follows:—In Europe, 5,974,000; in Africa, 50,416,000; in Asia, 112,739,000.

Mr. W. S. Blunt divides 175 millions as follows:—Turkey, Syria, and ʿIrāq, 22 millions; Egypt, 5 millions; North Africa, 18 millions; Arabia, 11½ millions; Central Africa, 11½ millions; Persia, 8 millions; India, 40 millions; Malays (Java), 30 millions; China, 15 millions; Central Asia, 11 millions; Afghanistan, 3 millions. No census having been taken of any of these countries, except India, the numbers are merely an approximation. Out of this supposed population of Islām, 93,250 pilgrims were present at Makkah in the year 1880. (Blunt’s Future of Islam, p. 10.)

In some parts of the world—in Africa for example—Muḥammadanism is spreading; and even in Borneo, and in other islands of the Indian Archipelago, we are told that it has supplanted Hinduism. In Central Asia, within the last twenty years, numerous villages of Shiaposh Kafirs have been forcibly converted to Islām, and in Santalia and other parts of India, the converts to Islām from the aboriginal tribes are not inconsiderable.

But, although Muḥammadanism has, perhaps, gained in numerical strength within the last few years, no candid Muslim will deny that it has lost, and is still losing, its vital power. Indeed, “this want of faith and decline in vitality” are regarded as the signs of the last days by many a devout Muslim.

In no Muḥammadan state is Muslim law administered in its strict integrity, and even in the Sultan’s own dominion, some of the most sacred principles of the Prophet’s religion are set at naught by the civil power; and, as far as we can ascertain (and we speak after a good deal of personal research), the prevalence of downright infidelity amongst educated Muslims is unmistakable. “No intelligent man believes in the teaching of the Muslim divines,” said a highly educated Muḥammadan Egyptian not long ago; “for our religion is not in keeping with the progress of thought.” The truth is, the Arabian Prophet over-legislated, and, as we now see in Turkey, it is impossible for civilised Muḥammadans to be tied hand and foot by laws and social customs which were intended for Arabian society as it existed 1,200 years ago; whilst, on the contrary, Christianity legislates in spirit, and can therefore be adapted to the spiritual and social necessities of mankind in the various stages of human thought and civilisation.

Mr. Palgrave, in his Central and Eastern Arabia, remarks:—

“Islam is in its essence stationary, and was framed thus to remain. Sterile like its God, lifeless like its first principle and supreme original in all that constitutes true life—for life is love, participation, and progress, and of these, the Coranic Deity has none—it justly repudiates all change, all advance, all development. To borrow the forcible words of Lord Houghton, the ‘written book’ is there, the ‘dead man’s hand,’ stiff and motionless; whatever savours of vitality is by that alone convicted of heresy and defection.

“But Christianity with its living and loving God, Begetter and Begotten, Spirit and Movement, nay more, a Creator made creature, the Maker and the made existing in One, a Divinity communicating itself by uninterrupted gradation and degree, from the most intimate union far off to the faintest irradiation, through all that it has made for love and governs in love; One who calls His creatures not slaves, not servants, but friends, nay sons, nay gods—to sum up, a religion in whose seal and secret ‘God in man is one with man in God,’ must also be necessarily a religion of vitality, of progress, of advancement. The contrast between it and Islam is that of movement with fixedness, of participation with sterility, of development with barrenness, of life with petrifaction. The first vital principle and the animating spirit of its birth must indeed abide ever the same, but the outer form must change with the changing days, and new offshoots of fresh sap and greenness be continually thrown out as witnesses to the vitality within, else were the vine withered and the branches dead.

“I have no intention here—it would be extremely out of place—of entering on the maze of controversy, or discussing whether any dogmatic attempt to reproduce the religious phase of a former age is likely to succeed. I only say that life supposes movement and growth, and both imply change; that to censure a living thing for growing and changing is absurd; and that to attempt to hinder it from so doing, by pinning it down on a written label, or nailing it to a Procrustean framework, is tantamount to killing it altogether.

“Now Christianity is living, and because living must grow, must advance, must change, and was meant to do so; onwards and forwards is a condition of its very existence; and I cannot but think that those who do not recognize this, show themselves so far ignorant of its true nature and essence. On the other hand, Islam is lifeless, and because lifeless cannot grow, cannot advance, cannot change, and was never intended so to do; ‘Stand still’ is its motto and its most essential condition.” (Central and Eastern Arabia, vol. i. p. 372.)

Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, in his Introduction to Lane’s Selections, says:—

“Islám is unfortunately a social system as well as a religion; and herein lies the great difficulty of fairly estimating its good and its bad influence on the world. It is but in the nature of things that the teacher who lays down the law of the relation of man to God should also endeavour to appoint the proper relation between man and his neighbour.

“Moḥammad not only promulgated a religion; he laid down a complete social system, containing minute regulations for a man’s conduct in all circumstances of life, with due rewards or penalties according to his fulfilment of these rules. As a religion, Islám is great: it has taught men to worship one God with a pure worship who formerly worshipped many gods impurely. As a social system, Islám is a complete failure: it has misunderstood the relations of the sexes, upon which the whole character of a nation’s life hangs, and, by degrading women, has degraded each successive generation of their children down an increasing scale of infamy and corruption, until it seems almost impossible to reach a lower level of vice.”

Mr. W. E. H. Lecky remarks:—

“In the first place, then, it must be observed that the enthusiasm by which Mahometanism conquered the world, was mainly a military enthusiasm. Men were drawn to it at once, and without conditions, by the splendour of the achievements of its disciples, and it declared an absolute war against all the religions it encountered. Its history, therefore, exhibits nothing of the process of gradual absorption, persuasion, compromise, and assimilation, that are exhibited in the dealings of Christianity with the barbarians. In the next place, one of the great characteristics of the Koran is the extreme care and skill with which it labours to assist men in realising the unseen. Descriptions, the most minutely detailed, and at the same time the most vivid, are mingled with powerful appeals to those sensual passions by which the imagination in all countries, but especially in those in which Mahometanism has taken root, is most forcibly influenced. In no other religion that prohibits idols is the strain upon the imagination so slight.” (History of the Rise and Influence of Rationalism, vol. i. p. 223.)

“This great religion, which so long rivalled the influence of Christianity, had indeed spread the deepest and most justifiable panic through Christendom. Without any of those aids to the imagination which pictures and images can furnish, without any elaborate sacerdotal organization, preaching the purest Monotheism among ignorant and barbarous men, and inculcating, on the whole, an extremely high and noble system of morals, it spread with a rapidity, and it acquired a hold over the minds of its votaries, which it is probable that no other religion has altogether equalled. It borrowed from Christianity that doctrine of salvation by belief, which is perhaps the most powerful impulse that can be applied to the characters of masses of men, and it elaborated so minutely the charms of its sensual heavens and the terrors of its material hell, as to cause the alternative to appeal with unrivalled force to the gross imaginations of the people. It possessed a book which, however inferior to that of the opposing religion, has nevertheless been the consolation and the support of millions in many ages. It taught a fatalism which, in its first age, nerved its adherents with a matchless military courage, and which, though in later days it has often paralysed their active energies, has also rarely failed to support them under the pressure of inevitable calamity. But, above all, it discovered the great though fatal secret, of uniting indissolubly the passion of the soldier with the passion of the devotee. Making the conquest of the infidel the first of duties, and proposing heaven as the certain reward of the valiant soldier, it created a blended enthusiasm that soon overpowered the divided counsels and the voluptuous governments of the East, and within a century of the death of Muḥammad, his followers had almost extirpated Christianity from its original home, founded great monarchies in Asia and Africa, planted a noble, though transient and exotic, civilisation in Spain, menaced the capital of the Eastern empire, and but for the issue of a single battle, they would probably have extended their sceptre over the energetic and progressive races of Central Europe. The wave was broken by Charles Martel, at the battle of Poictiers, and it is now useless to speculate what might have been the consequences, had Muḥammadanism unfurled its triumphant banner among those Teutonic tribes, who have so often changed their creed, and on whom the course of civilisation has so largely depended.” (Hist. of European Morals, vol. ii. p. 266.)

“The influence of Catholicism was seconded by Muḥammadanism, which on this (suicide), as on many other points, borrowed its teaching from the Christian Church, and even intensified it; for suicide, which is never expressly condemned in the Bible, is more than once forbidden in the Qurʾān, and the Christian duty of resignation was exaggerated by the Moslem into a complete fatalism. Under the empire of Catholicism and Muḥammadanism, suicide, during many centuries, almost absolutely ceased in all the civilised, active and progressive part of mankind. When we recollect how warmly it was applauded, or how faintly it was condemned in the civilisations of Greece and Rome, when we remember, too, that there was scarcely a barbarous tribe from Denmark to Spain who did not habitually practise it, we may realise the complete revolution which was effected in this sphere by the influence of Christianity.” (Hist. of European Morals, vol. ii. p. 56.)

Major Durie Osborn says:—

“When Islam penetrates to countries lower in the scale of humanity than were the Arabs of Muhammad’s day, it suffices to elevate them to that level. But it does so at a tremendous cost. It reproduces in its new converts the characteristics of its first—their impenetrable self-esteem, their unintelligent scorn, and blind hatred of all other creeds. And thus the capacity for all further advance is destroyed; the mind is obdurately shut to the entrance of any purer light. But it is a grievous error to confound that transient gleam of culture which illuminated Baghdad under the first Abbaside khalifs with the legitimate fruits of Islam. When the Arabs conquered Syria and Persia, they brought with them no new knowledge to take the place of that which had preceded them. Mere Bedouins of the desert, they found themselves all at once the masters of vast countries, with everything to learn. They were compelled to put themselves to school under the very people they had vanquished. Thus the Persians and Syrians, conquered though they were and tributary, from the ignorance of their masters, retained in their hands the control of the administrative machinery. The Abbaside khalifs were borne into power by means of a Persian revolution, headed by a Persian slave. Then began the endeavour to root the old Greek philosophy, and the deep and beautiful thoughts of Zoroaster, on the hard and barren soil of Muhammadanism. It was an impossible attempt to make a frail exotic flourish on uncongenial soil. It has imparted, indeed, a deceptive lustre to this period of Muhammadan history; but the orthodox Muhammadans knew that their faith and the wisdom of the Greeks could not amalgamate, and they fought fiercely against the innovators. Successive storms of barbarians sweeping down from the north of Asia, tore up the fragile plant by the roots, and scattered its blossoms to the winds. The new comers embraced the creed of the Koran in its primitive simplicity; they hated and repudiated the refinements which the Persians would fain have engrafted on it. And they won the day. The present condition of Central Asia is the legitimate fruit of Islam; not the glories of Baghdad, which were but the afterglow of the thought and culture which sank with the fall of the Sassanides, and the expulsion of the Byzantine emperors. So also in Moorish Spain. The blossom and the fruitage which Muhammadanism seemed to put forth there were, in fact, due to influences alien to Islam—to the intimate contact, namely, with Jewish and Christian thought; for when the Moors were driven back into northern Africa, all that blossom and fruitage withered away, and Northern Africa sank into the intellectual darkness and political anarchy in which it lies at the present time. There are to be found in Muhammadan history all the elements of greatness—faith, courage, endurance, self-sacrifice; but, closed within the narrow walls of a rude theology and barbarous polity, from which the capacity to grow and the liberty to modify have been sternly cut off, they work no deliverance upon the earth. They are strong only for destruction. When that work is over, they either prey upon each other, or beat themselves to death against the bars of their prison-house. No permanent dwelling-place can be erected on a foundation of sand; and no durable or humanising polity upon a foundation of fatalism, despotism, polygamy and slavery. When Muhammadan states cease to be racked by revolutions, they succumb to the poison diffused by a corrupt moral atmosphere. A Darwesh, ejaculating ‘Allah!’ and revolving in a series of rapid gyrations until he drops senseless, is an exact image of the course of their history.” (Islam under the Arabs, p. 93.)

Lieutenant-Colonel W. F. Butler, C.B., remarks:—

“The Goth might ravage Italy, but the Goth came forth purified from the flames which he himself had kindled. The Saxon swept Britain, but the music of the Celtic heart softened his rough nature, and wooed him into less churlish habits. Visigoth and Frank, Heruli and Vandal, blotted out their voracity in the very light of the civilisation they had striven to extinguish. Even the Hun, wildest Tartar from the Scythian waste, was touched and softened in his wicker encampment amid Pannonian plains; but the Turk—wherever his scymitar reached—degraded, defiled, and defamed; blasting into eternal decay Greek, Roman and Latin civilisation, until, when all had gone, he sat down, satiated with savagery, to doze for two hundred years into hopeless decrepitude.” (Good Words for September 1880.)

Literature on the subject of Muḥammadanism:—

Muhamedis Imposturæ. W. Bedwell. London 1615

A Lytell Treatyse of the Turkes Law called Alcoran. W. De Worde. London. No date.

Mahomet Unmasked. W. Bedwell. London 1642

The Alcoran of Mahomet. Alex. Ross. London 1642

Religion and Manners of Mahometans. Joseph Pitts. Exon 1704

History of the Saracens. S. Ockley. London 1708

Four Treatises by Reland and others. London 1712

The True Nature of the Imposture. Dean Prideaux. London 1718

Abulfeda. Translated into Latin. J. Gagnier. London 1723

Muhammadanism Explained. Joseph Morgan. London 1723

Life of Mahomet. Count Boulainvilliers. Translated. London 1731

Translation of Koran and Preliminary Discourse. G. Sale. London 1734

Reflections on Mohammedism (sic) Anon. London 1735

The Morality of the East, extracted from the Koran. Anon. London 1766

Roman Empire. E. Gibbon. London 1776

The Koran. Translated. Savary 1782

Bampton Lectures. Rev. J. White. Oxford 1784

The Hidayah. Translated by C. Hamilton. London 1791

The Rise of Mahomet accounted for. N. Alcock. London 1796

Life of Mahomet. Anon. London 1799

The Mishkāt. Translated by Matthews. Calcutta 1809

History of Muhammedanism. C. Mills. London 1817

Christianity compared with Hinduism and Muhamadanism. London 1823

The Muhammedan System. Rev. W. H. Mills 1828

Mahometanism Unveiled. Rev. C. Forster. London 1829

An Apology for the Life of Mohammed. G. Higgins. London 1829

A Reply to Higgins. R. M. Beverley. Beverley 1829

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Animadversions on Higgins. Rev. P. Inchbald. Doncaster 1830

Notes on Bedouins and Wahhabis. J. L. Burckhardt. London 1830

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Qanoon-e-Islam. Dr. Herklots. London 1832

History of Muhammadanism. W. C. Taylor. London 1834

History of the Wahhabies. Sir H. J. Brydges. London 1834

Muhammedan Dynasties in Spain. Al Makkari. Translated. London 1840

The Hero as Prophet. Thomas Carlyle. London 1840

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The Relation of Islam to the Gospel. Dr. J. A. Moehler. Translated by J. P. Menge. Calcutta 1847

Life of Mahomet. Washington Irving. London 1850

Life of Mohammed. By Abulfeda. Translated by Rev. W. Murray. Elgin. No date.

Muhammadan Law of Sale. N. B. E. Baillie. London 1850

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Islamism, its Rise and Progress. F. A. Neale. London 1854

Pilgrimage to El Medinah and Mecca. R. F. Burton. London 1855

Life of Mahomet. W. Muir. London 1858

Mohammedan Religion Explained. Rev. J. D. Macbride. London 1859

Ishmael. Rev. J. M. Arnold. London 1859

Arabian Nights with Notes. E. W. Lane. London 1859

Imposture instanced in the Life of Mahomet. Rev. G. Akehurst. London 1859

Testimony borne by the Koran. W. Muir. Allahabad 1860

Religions of Syria. Rev. John Wortabet. London 1860

Muhammedan Commentary on the Bible. Syed Ahmad. Ghazeepur 1862

Digest of Muhammadan Law. Hanifi Code. N. B. E. Baillie. London 1865

Food for Reflection. Rev. Dr. Koelle. London 1865

Central and Eastern Arabia. W. G. Palgrave. London 1865

The Mizān ul Haqq. Dr. Pfander. Translated. London 1867

Aīn i Akbari of Abul Fazl. Translated. H. Blochmann. Calcutta 1868

Notes on Islam. Rev. A. Brinckman. London 1868

Digest of Muhammadan Law. Imameea Code. N. B. E. Baillie. London 1869

Law of Inheritance. S. G. Grady. London 1869

Al Sirajiyyah. Translated. A. Rumsey. London 1869

Apology for Muhammad. John Davenport. London 1869

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Our Indian Musulmans. W. W. Hunter. London 1871

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The Koran Translated. Rev. J. M. Rodwell. London 1871

Essays on the Life of Muhammad. Syed Ahmed Khan. London 1871

Essays on Eastern Questions. W. G. Palgrave. London 1872

Manual of Laws. J. B. S. Boyle. Lahore 1873

Life of Muhammad. Syed Ameer Ali. London 1873

Tagore Lectures. Shama Churun Sircar. Calcutta 1873

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Islām and Christianity. Rev. J. M. Arnold. London 1874

Mohammed and Mohammedanism. R. Bosworth Smith. London 1874

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Islam under the Arabs. R. D. Osborn. London 1876

Notes on Muhammadanism. Rev. T. P. Hughes. London. 2nd ed. 1877

Christianity and Islam. Rev. W. R. W. Stephens. London 1877

Islam and its Founder. J. W. H. Stobart. London 1878

Mohammed, Buddha, and Christ. Marcus Dods. London 1878

Islam, its Origin, Genius, and Mission. J. J. Lake. London 1878

Islam under the Khalifs of Baghdad. R. D. Osborn. London 1878

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The Miracle Play of Hasan and Husain. Sir Lewis Pelly. London 1879

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Essai sur l’Histoire de l’Islamisme. R. Dozy 1879

MUḤARRAM (محرم‎). Lit. “That which is forbidden.” Anything sacred. (1) The first month of the Muḥammadan year [MONTHS.] (2) The first ten days of the month, observed in commemoration of the martyrdom of al-Ḥusain, the second son of Fāt̤imah, the Prophet’s daughter, by ʿAlī. [AL-HUSAIN.] These days of lamentation are only observed by the Shīʿah Muslims, but the tenth day of Muḥarram is observed by the Sunnīs in commemoration of its having been the day on which Adam and Eve, heaven and hell, the pen, fate, life and death, were created. [ʿASHURAʾ.]

The ceremonies of the Muḥarram differ much in different places and countries. The following is a graphic description of the observance of the Muḥarram at Ispahan in the year 1811, which has been taken, with some slight alterations from Morier’s Second Journey through Persia:—

The tragical termination of al-Ḥusain’s life, commencing with his flight from al-Madīnah and terminating with his death on the plain of Karbalāʾ, has been drawn up in the form of a drama, consisting of several parts, of which one is performed by actors on each successive day of the mourning. The last part, which is appointed for the Roz-i-Qatl, comprises the events of the day on which he met his death, and is acted with great pomp before the King, in the largest square of the city. The subject, which is full of affecting incidents, would of itself excite great interest in the breasts of a Christian audience; but allied as it is with all the religious and national feelings of the Persians, it awakens their strongest passions. Al-Ḥusain would be a hero in our eyes; in theirs he is a martyr. The vicissitudes of his life, his dangers in the desert, his fortitude, his invincible courage, and his devotedness at the hour of his death, are all circumstances upon which the Persians dwell with rapture, and which excite in them an enthusiasm not to be diminished by lapse of time. The celebration of this mourning keeps up in their minds the remembrance of those who destroyed him, and consequently their hatred for all Musalmāns who do not partake of their feelings. They execrate Yazīd and curse ʿUmar with such rancour, that it is necessary to have witnessed the scenes that are exhibited in their cities to judge of the degree of fanaticism which possesses them at this time. I have seen some of the most violent of them, as they vociferated, “O Ḥusain!” walk about the streets almost naked, with only their loins covered, and their bodies streaming with blood, by the voluntary cuts which they have given to themselves, either as acts of love, anguish, or mortification. Such must have been the cuttings of which we read in Holy Writ, which were forbidden to the Israelites by Moses (Lev. xix. 28, Deut. xiv. 1), and these extravagances, I conjecture, must resemble the practices of the priests of Baal, who cried aloud and cut themselves after this manner with knives and lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. 1 Kings xviii. 28; see also Jeremiah xvi. 5, 6, and 7.

The preparations which were made throughout the city consisted in erecting large tents, that are there called takiyah, in the streets and open places, in fitting them up with black linen, and furnishing them with objects emblematical of the mourning. These tents are erected either at the joint expense of the district, or by men of consequence, as an act of devotion; and all ranks of people have a free access to them. The expense of a takiyah consists in the hire of a mulla, or priest, of actors and their clothes, and in the purchase of lights. Many there are who seize this opportunity of atoning for past sins, or of rendering thanks to heaven for some blessing, by adding charity to the good act of erecting a takiyah, and distribute gratuitous food to those who attend it.

Our neighbour Muḥammad K͟hān had a takiyah in his house, to which all the people of the district flocked in great numbers. During the time of this assemblage we heard a constant noise of drums, cymbals, and trumpets. We remarked that besides the takiyah in different open places and streets of the town, a wooden pulpit, without any appendage, was erected, upon which a mulla, or priest, was mounted, preaching to the people who were collected around him. A European ambassador, who is said to have intrigued with Yazīd in favour of al-Ḥusain, was brought forward to be an actor in one of the parts of the tragedy, and the populace were in consequence inclined to look favourably upon us. Notwithstanding the excitation of the public mind, we did not cease to take our usual rides, and we generally passed unmolested through the middle of congregations, during the time of their devotions. Such little scruples have they at our seeing their religious ceremonies, that on the eighth night of the Muḥarram the Grand Vizier invited the whole of the embassy to attend his takiyah. On entering the room we found a large assembly of Persians clad in dark-coloured clothes, which, accompanied with their black caps, their black beards, and their dismal faces, really looked as if they were afflicting their souls. They neither wore their daggers, nor any parts of their dress which they look upon as ornamental. A mulla of high consideration sat next to the Grand Vizier, and kept him in serious conversation, whilst the remaining part of the society communicated with each other in whispers. After we had sat some time, the windows of the room in which we were seated were thrown open, and we then discovered a priest placed on a high chair, under the covering of a tent, surrounded by a crowd of the populace; the whole of the scene being lighted up with candles. He commenced by an exordium, in which he reminded them of the great value of each tear shed for the sake of the Imām al-Ḥusain, which would be an atonement for a past life of wickedness; and also informed them with much solemnity, that whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in the same day, shall be cut off from among the people. He then began to read from a book, with a sort of nasal chaunt, that part of the tragic history of al-Ḥusain appointed for the day, which soon produced its effect upon his audience, for he scarcely had turned over three leaves, before the Grand Vizier commenced to shake his head to and fro, to utter in a most piteous voice the usual Persian exclamation of grief, “Wahi! Wahi! Wahi!” both of which acts were followed in a more or less violent manner by the rest of the audience. The chaunting of the mulla lasted nearly an hour, and some parts of his story were indeed pathetic, and well calculated to rouse the feelings of a superstitious and lively people. In one part of it, all the company stood up, and I observed that the Grand Vizier turned himself towards the wall, with his hand extended before him, and prayed. After the mulla had finished, a company of actors appeared, some dressed as women, who chaunted forth their parts from slips of paper, in a sort of recitative, that was not unpleasing even to our ears. In the very tragical parts, most of them appeared to cry very unaffectedly; and as I sat near the Grand Vizier, and to his neighbour the priest, I was witness to many real tears that fell from them. In some of these mournful assemblies, it is the custom for a mulla to go about to each person at the height of his grief, with a piece of cotton in his hand, with which he carefully collects the falling tears, and which he then squeezes into a bottle, preserving them with the greatest caution. This practically illustrates that passage in the 56th Psalm, verse 8, “Put thou my tears into thy bottle.” Some Persians believe that in the agony of death, when all medicines have failed, a drop of tears so collected, put into the mouth of a dying man, has been known to revive him; and it is for such use, that they are collected.

On the Roz-i-Qatl, or day of martyrdom, the tenth day, the Ambassador was invited by the King to be present at the termination of the ceremonies, in which the death of al-Ḥusain was to be represented. We set off after breakfast, and placed ourselves in a small tent, that was pitched for our accommodation over an arched gateway, which was situated close to the room in which His Majesty was to be seated.

We looked upon the great square which is in front of the palace, at the entrance of which we perceived a circle of Cajars, or people of the King’s own tribe, who were standing barefooted, and beating their breasts in cadence to the chaunting of one who stood in the centre, and with whom they now and then joined their voices in chorus. Smiting the breast is a universal act throughout the mourning; and the breast is made bare for that purpose, by unbuttoning the top of the shirt. The King, in order to show his humility, ordered the Cajars, among whom were many of his own relations, to walk about without either shoes or stockings, to superintend the order of the different ceremonies about to be performed, and they were to be seen stepping tenderly over the stones, with sticks in their hands, doing the duties of menials, now keeping back a crowd, then dealing out blows with their sticks, and settling the order of the processions.

Part of the square was partitioned off by an enclosure, which was to represent the town of Karbalāʾ, near which al-Ḥusain was put to death; and close to this were two small tents, which were to represent his encampment in the desert with his family. A wooden platform covered with carpets, upon which the actors were to perform, completed all the scenery used on the occasion.

A short time after we had reached our tent, the King appeared, and although we could not see him, yet we were soon apprised of his presence by all the people standing up, and by the bowing of his officers. The procession then commenced as follows:—First come a stout man, naked from the waist upwards, balancing in his girdle a long thick pole, surmounted by an ornament made of tin, curiously wrought with devices from the Qurʾān, in height altogether about thirty feet. Then another, naked like the former, balanced an ornamental pole in his girdle still more ponderous, though not so high, upon which a young darvesh resting his feet upon the bearer’s girdle had placed himself, chaunting verses with all his might in praise of the King. After him a person of more strength and more nakedness, a water carrier, walked forwards, bearing an immense leather sack filled with water slung over his back. This personage, we were told, was emblematical of the great thirst which al-Ḥusain suffered in the desert.

A litter in the shape of a sarcophagus, which was called Qabr-i-Ḥusain, or the tomb of al-Ḥusain (a Tāʿziyah) succeeded, borne on the shoulders of eight men. On its front was a large oval ornament entirely covered with precious stones, and just above it, a great diamond star. On a small projection were two tapers placed on candlesticks enriched with jewels. The top and sides were covered with Cashmere shawls, and on the summit rested a turban, intended to represent the head-dress of the K͟halīfah. On each side walked two men bearing poles, from which a variety of beautiful shawls were suspended. At the top of which were representations of al-Ḥusain’s hand studded with jewellery.

After this came four led horses, caparisoned in the richest manner. The fronts of their heads were ornamented with plates, entirely covered with diamonds, that emitted a thousand beautiful rays. Their bodies were dressed with shawls and gold stuffs; and on their saddles were placed some objects emblematical of the death of al-Ḥusain. When all these had passed, they arranged themselves in a row to the right of the King’s apartment.

After a short pause, a body of fierce-looking men, with only a loose white sheet thrown over their naked bodies, marched forwards. They were all begrimed with blood; and each brandishing a sword, they sang a sort of a hymn, the tones of which were very wild. These represented the sixty-two relations, or the Martyrs, as the Persians call them, who accompanied al-Ḥusain, and were slain in defending him. Close after them was led a white horse, covered with artificial wounds, with arrows stuck all about him, and caparisoned in black, representing the horse upon which al-Ḥusain was mounted when he was killed. A band of about fifty men, striking two pieces of wood together in their hands, completed the procession. They arranged themselves in rows before the King, and marshalled by a maître de ballet, who stood in the middle to regulate their movements, they performed a dance, clapping their hands in the best possible time. The maître de ballet all this time sang in recitative, to which the dancers joined at different intervals with loud shouts and reiterated clapping of their pieces of wood.

The two processions were succeeded by the tragedians. Al-Ḥusain came forward, followed by his wives, sisters, and first relatives. They performed many long and tedious acts; but as our distance from the stage was too great to hear the many affecting things which they no doubt said to each other, we will proceed at once to where the unfortunate al-Ḥusain lay extended on the ground, ready to receive the death-stroke from a ruffian dressed in armour, who acted the part of executioner. At this moment a burst of lamentation issued from the multitude, and heavy sobs and real tears came from almost every one of those who were near enough to come under our inspection. The indignation of the populace wanted some object upon which to vent itself, and it fell upon those of the actors who had performed the part of Yazīd’s soldiers. No sooner was al-Ḥusain killed, than they were driven off the ground by a volley of stones, followed by shouts of abuse. We were informed that it is so difficult to procure performers to fill these characters, that on the present occasion a party of Russian prisoners were pressed into the army of Yazīd, and they made as speedy an exit after the catastrophe as it was in their power.

The scene terminated by the burning of Karbalāʾ. Several reed huts had been constructed behind the enclosure before mentioned, which of a sudden were set on fire. The tomb of al-Ḥusain was seen covered with black cloth, and upon it sat a figure disguised in a tiger’s skin, which was intended to represent the miraculous lion, recorded to have kept watch over his remains after he had been buried. The most extraordinary part of the whole exhibition was the representation of the dead bodies of the martyrs; who having been decapitated, were all placed in a row, each body with a head close to it. To effect this, several Persians buried themselves alive, leaving the head out just above ground; whilst others put their heads under ground, leaving out the body. The heads and bodies were placed in such relative positions to each other, as to make it appear that they had been severed. This is done by way of penance; but in hot weather, the violence of the exertion has been known to produce death. The whole ceremony was terminated by a k͟hut̤bah, or oration, in praise of al-Ḥusain. (Morier’s Second Journey through Persia.)

“The martyrdom of Hasan and Husain is celebrated by the Shiahs all over India, during the first ten days of the month of Mohurrum. Attached to every Shiah’s house is an Imambarrah, a hall or inclosure built expressly for the celebration of the anniversary of the death of Husain. The enclosure is generally arcaded along its side, and in most instances it is covered in with a domed roof. Against the side of the Imambarrah, directed towards Mecca, is set the tabut—also called tazia (taʿziyah), or model of the tombs at Kerbela. In the houses of the wealthier Shiahs, these tabuts are fixtures, and are beautifully fashioned of silver and gold, or of ivory and ebony, embellished all over with inlaid work. The poorer Shiahs provide themselves with a tabut made for the occasion of lath and plaster, tricked out in mica and tinsel. A week before the new moon of the Mohurrum, they enclose a space, called the tabut khana, in which the tabut is prepared; and the very moment the new moon is seen, a spade is struck into the ground before “the enclosure of the tombs,” where a pit is afterwards dug, in which a bonfire is lighted, and kept burning through all the ten days of the Mohurrum solemnities. Those who cannot afford to erect a tabut khana, or even to put up a little tabut or taziah in their dwelling-house, always have a Mohurrum fire lighted, if it consist only of a night-light floating at the bottom of an earthen pot or basin sunk in the ground. It is doubtful whether this custom refers to the trench of fire Husain set blazing behind his camp, or is a survival from the older Ashura (ten days) festival, which is said to have been instituted in commemoration of the deliverance of the Hebrew Arabs from Pharaoh and his host at the Red Sea; or from the yet more ancient Bael fire. But, in India, these Mohurrum fires, especially among the more ignorant populace, Hindus as well as Mohammedans, are regarded with the most superstitious reverence, and have a greater hold on them even than the tabuts. All day long the passers by stop before the fires and make their vows over them, and all night long the crowds dance round them, and leap through the flames and scatter about the burning brands snatched from them. The tabut is lighted up like an altar, with innumerable green wax candles, and nothing can be more brilliant than the appearance of an Imambarrah of white stone, or polished white stucco, picked out in green, lighted up with glass chandeliers, sconces, and oil-lamps, arranged along the leading architectural lines of the building, with its tabut on one side, dazzling to blindness. Before the tabut are placed the “properties” to be used by the celebrants in the “Passion Play,” the bows and arrows, the sword and spear, and the banners of Husain, &c.; and in front of it is set a movable pulpit, also made of the richest materials, and covered with rich brocades in green and gold. Such is the theatre in which twice daily during the first ten days of the month of Mohurrum, the deaths of the first martyrs of Islam are yearly commemorated in India. Each day has its special solemnity, corresponding with the succession of events during the ten days that Husain was encamped on the fatal plain of Kerbela; but the prescribed order of the services in the daily development of the great Shiah function of the Mohurrum would appear not to be always strictly observed in Bombay.” (Pelly’s Miracle Play of Hasan and Husain, Preface, p. xvii.)

The drama, or “Miracle Play” which is recited in Persia during the Muḥarram, has been rendered into English by Colonel Sir Lewis Pelly, K.C.B. (Allen & Co., 1879), from which we take the death scene of al-Ḥusain on the battle-field of Karbalāʾ, a scene which, the historian Gibbon (Decline and Fall, vol. ix. ch. 341) says, “in a distant age and climate, will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader.”

“Husain.—I am sore distressed at the unkind treatment received at the hands of the cruel heavens. Pitiful tyranny is exercised towards me by a cruel, unbelieving army! All the sorrows and troubles of this world have overwhelmed me! I am become a butt for the arrow of affliction and trouble. I am a holy bird stript of its quills and feathers by the hand of the archer of tyranny, and am become, O friends, utterly disabled, and unable to fly to my sacred nest. They are going to kill me mercilessly, for no other crime or guilt except that I happen to be a prophet’s grandson.

“Shimar (challenging him).—O Husain, why dost thou not appear in the field? Why dost not thy majesty show thy face in battle? How long art thou going to sit still without displaying thy valour in war? Why dost thou not put on thy robe of martyrdom and come forth? If thou art indeed so magnanimous as not to fear death, if thou carest not about the whistling sounds of the arrows when let fly from the bow, mount thou, quickly, thy swift horse named Zúʾl janáh, and deliver thy soul from so many troubles. Yea, come to the field of battle, be it as it may. Enter soon among thy women, and with tears bid them a last farewell; then come forth to war, and show us thy great fortitude.

“Husain (talking to himself).—Although the accursed fellow, Shimar, will put me to death in an hour’s time, yet the reproachful language of the enemy seems to be worse than destruction itself. It is better that the foe should sever my head cruelly from the body, than make me hear these abusive words. What can I do? I have no one left to help me, no Kásim to hold my stirrup for a minute when about to mount. All are gone! Look around if thou canst find anyone to defend the descendant of Muhammad, the chosen of God—if thou canst see any ready to assist the holy family of God’s Prophet! In this land of trials there is no kind protector to have compassion on the household of the Apostle of God, and befriend them.

“Zainab.—May I be offered for the sad tones of thy voice, dear brother! Time has thrown on my head the black earth of sorrow. It has grieved me to the quick. Wait, brother, do not go till thy Kásim arrives. Have patience for a minute, my ʾAlí Akbar is coming.

“Husain (looking around).—Is there one who wishes to please God, his Maker? Is there any willing to behave faithfully towards his real friends? Is there a person ready to give up his life for our sake, to save us, to defend us in this dreadful struggle of Karbalá?

“Zainab.—O Lord, Zainab’s brother has no one to assist or support him! Occasions of his sorrows are innumerable, without anyone to sympathise with him in the least? Sad and desolate, he is leaning on his spear! He has bent his neck in a calamitous manner; he has no famous ʾAlí Akbar, no renowned ʾAbbás any more!

“Husain.—Is there anyone to pity our condition, to help us in this terrible conflict of Karbalá? Is there a kind soul to give us a hand of assistance for God’s sake?

“Zainab.—Brave cavalier of Karbalá, it is not fitting for thee to be so hurried. Go a little more slowly; troubles will come quickly enough. Didst thou ever say thou hadst a Zainab in the tent? Is not this poor creature weeping and mourning for thee?

“The Imam Husain.—Dear sister, thou rest of my disquieted, broken heart, smite on thy head and mourn, thou thousand-noted nightingale. To-day I shall be killed by the ignoble Shimar. To-day shall the rose be turned out of its delightful spot by the tyranny of the thistle. Dear sister, if any dust happen to settle on the rosy cheeks of my lovely daughter Sukainah, be pleased to wash it away most tenderly with the rose-water of thy tears? My daughter has been accustomed to sit always in the dear lap of her father whenever she wished to rest; for my sake, receive and caress her in thy bosom.

“Zainab.—O thou intimate friend of this assembly of poor afflicted strangers, the flaming effect of thy speech has left no rest in my mind. Tell me, what have we done that thou shouldest so reward us? Who is the criminal among us for whose sake we must suffer thus? Take us back, brother, to Madínah, to the sacred monument of our noble grandfather; let us go home, and live like queens in our own country.

“Husain.—O my afflicted, distressed, tormented sister, would to God there were a way of escape for me! Notwithstanding they have cruelly cut down the cypress-like stature of my dear son ʾAlí Akbar; notwithstanding Kásim my lovely nephew tinged himself with his own blood; still they are intent to kill me also. They do not allow me to go back from ʾIrák, nor do they let me turn elsewhere. They will neither permit me to go to India, nor the capital of China. I cannot set out for the territory of Abyssinia, or take refuge in Zanzibar.

“Zainab.—Oh, how am I vexed in my mind, dear brother, on hearing these sad things! May I die, rather than listen to such affecting words any more! What shall we, an assembly of desolate widows and orphans, do after thou art gone? Oh! how can we live?

“Husain.—O miserable creature, weep not now, nor be so very much upset; thou shalt cry plentifully hereafter, owing to the wickedness of time. When the wicked Shimar shall sever my head from the body; when thou shalt be made a captive prisoner, and forced to ride on an unsaddled camel; when my body shall be trampled under foot by the enemy’s horses, and trodden under their hoofs; when my beloved Sukainah shall be cruelly struck by Shimar, my wicked murderer; when they shall lead thee away captive from Karbalá to Shám; and when they shall make thee and others live there in a horrible, ruined place; yea, when thou shalt see all this, then thou mayest, and verily wilt, cry. But I admonish thee, sister, since this sad case has no remedy but patience, to resign the whole matter, submissively, to the Lord, the good Maker of all! Mourn not for my misfortune, but bear it patiently, without giving occasion to the enemy to rejoice triumphantly on this account, or speak reproachfully concerning us.

“Kulsúm.—Thou struttest about gaily, O Husain, thou beloved of my heart. Look a little behind thee; see how Kulsúm is sighing after thee with tearful eyes! I am strewing pearls in thy way, precious jewels from the sea of my eyes! Let me put my head on the hoof of thy winged steed, Zúʾl janáh.

“Husain.—Beloved sister, kindle not a fire in my heart by so doing. Take away thy head from under the hoof of my steed. O thousand-noted nightingale, sing not such a sad-toned melody. I am going away; be thou the kind keeper of my helpless ones.

“Kulsúm.—Behold what the heavens have at length brought on me! what they have done also to my brother! Him they have made to have parched lips through thirst, and me they have caused to melt into water, and gush out like tears from the eyes! Harsh severity is mingled with tyrannous cruelty.

“Husain.—Trials, afflictions, and pains, the thicker they fall on man, the better, dear sister, do they prepare him for his journey heavenward. We rejoice in tribulations, seeing they are but temporary, and yet they work out an eternal and blissful end. Though it is predestined that I should suffer martyrdom in this shameful manner, yet the treasury of everlasting happiness shall be at my disposal as a consequent reward. Thou must think of that, and be no longer sorry. The dust raised in the field of such battles is as highly esteemed by me, O sister, as the philosopher’s stone was, in former times, by the alchemists; and the soil of Karbalá is the sure remedy of my inward pains.

“Kulsúm.—May I be sacrificed for thee! Since this occurrence is thus inevitable, I pray thee describe to thy poor sister Kulsúm her duty after thy death. Tell me, where shall I go, or in what direction set my face? What am I to do? and which of thy orphan children am I to caress most?

“Husain.—Show thy utmost kindness, good sister, to Sukainah, my darling girl, for the pain of being fatherless is most severely felt by children too much fondled by their parents, especially girls. I have regard to all my children, to be sure, but I love Sukainah most.

“An old Female Slave of Husain’s mother.—Dignified master, I am sick and weary in heart at the bare idea of separation from thee. Have a kind regard to me, an old slave, much stricken with age! Master, by thy soul do I swear that I am altogether weary of life. I have grown old in thy service; pardon me, please, all the faults ever committed by me.

“Husain.—Yes, thou hast served us, indeed, for a very long time. Thou hast shown much affection and love toward me and my children, O handmaid of my dear mother Fátimah; thou hast verily suffered much in our house: how often didst thou grind corn with thine own hand for my mother! Thou hast also dandled Husain most caressingly in thy arms. Thou art black-faced, that is true, but thou hast, I opine, a pure white heart, and art much esteemed by us. To-day I am about to leave thee, owing thee, at the same time, innumerable thanks for the good services thou hast performed; but I beg thy pardon for all inconsiderate actions on my part.

“The Maid.—May I be a sacrifice for thee, thou royal ruler of the capital of faith! turn not my days black, like my face, thou benevolent master. Truly I have had many troubles on thy behalf. How many nights have I spent in watchfulness at thy cradle! At one moment I would caress thee in my arms, at another I would fondle thee in my bosom. I became prematurely old by my diligent service, O Husain! Is it proper now that thou shouldst put round my poor neck the heavy chain of thy intolerable absence? Is this, dear master, the reward of the services I have done thee?

“Husain.—Though thy body, O maid, is now broken down by age and infirmity, yet thou hast served us all the days of thy life with sincerity and love; thou must know, therefore, that thy diligence and vigilance will never be disregarded by us. Excuse me to-day, when I am offering my body and soul in the cause of God, and cannot help thee at all; but be sure I will fully pay the reward of thy services in the day of universal account.

“The Maid.—Dost thou remember, good sir, how many troubles I have suffered with thee for the dear sake of ʾAlí Akbar, the light of thine eyes? Though I have not suckled him with my own breasts, to be sure, yet I laboured hard for him till he reached the age of eighteen years and came here to Karbalá. But, alas! dear flourishing ʾAlí Akbar has been this day cruelly killed—what a pity! and I strove so much for his sake, yet all, as it were, in vain. Yea, what a sad loss!

“Husain.—Speak not of my ʾAlí Akbar any more, O maiden, nor set fire to the granary of my patience and make it flame. (Tuning to his sister.) Poor distressed Zainab, have the goodness to be kind always to my mother’s old maid, for she has experienced many troubles in our family; she has laboured hard in training ʾAlí Akbar my son.

“Umm Lailah (the mother of ʾAlí Akbar).—The elegant stature of my Akbar fell on the ground; like as a beautiful cypress tree it was forcibly felled! Alas for the memory of thy upright stature! Alas, O my youthful son of handsome form and appearance! Alas my troubles at night-time for thee! How often did I watch thy bed, singing lullabies for thee until the morning! How sweet is the memory of those times! yea, how pleasant the very thought of those days! Alas! where art thou now, dear child? O thou who art ever remembered by me, come and see thy mother’s wretched condition, come!

“Husain.—O Lord, why is this mournful voice so affecting? Methinks the owner of it, the bemoaning person, has a flame in her heart. It resembles the doleful tone of a lapwing whose wings are burned! like as when a miraculous lapwing, the companion of Solomon the wise, the king of God’s holy people, received intelligence suddenly about the death of its royal guardian!

“Umm Lailah.—Again I am put in mind of my dear son! O my heart, melted into blood, pour thyself forth! Dear son, whilst thou wast alive, I had some honour and respect, everybody had some regard for me; but since thou art gone, I am altogether abandoned. Woe be to me! woe be to me! I am despised and rejected. Woe unto me! woe unto me!

“Husain.—Do not set fire to the harvest of my soul any further. Husain is, before God, greatly ashamed of his shortcomings towards thee. Come out from the tent, for it is the last meeting previous to separating from one another for ever; thy distress is an additional weight to the heavy burden of my grief.

“The Mother of ʾAlí Akbar.—I humbly state it, O glory of all ages, that I did not expect from thy saintship that thou wouldest disregard thy handmaid in such a way. Thou dost show thy kind regard and favour to all except me. Dost thou not remember my sincere services done to thee? Am I not by birth a descendant of the glorious kings of Persia, brought as a captive to Arabia when the former empire fell and gave place to the new-born monarchy of the latter kingdom? The Judge, the living Creator, was pleased to grant me an offspring, whom we called ʾAlí Akbar, this day lost to us for ever. May I be offered for thee! While ʾAlí Akbar my son was alive, I had indeed a sort of esteem and credit with thee; but now that my cypress, my newly-sprung-up cedar, is unjustly felled, I have fallen from credit too, and must therefore shed tears.

“Husain.—Be it known unto thee, O thou violet of the flower-garden of modesty, that thou art altogether mistaken. I swear by the holy enlightened dust of my mother Zahrah’s grave, that thou art more honourable and dearer now than ever. I well remember the affectionate recommendations of ʾAlí Akbar. our son, concerning thee. How much he was mindful of thee at the moment of his parting! How tenderly he cared for thee, and spoke concerning thee to every one of his family!

“ʾAlí Akbar’s Mother.—O gracious Lord, I adjure thee, by the merit of my son, ʾAlí Akbar, never to lessen the shadow of Husain from over my head. May no one ever be in my miserable condition—never be a desolate, homeless woman, like me!

“Husain.—O thou unfortunate Zainab, my sister, the hour of separation is come! The day of joy is gone for ever! the night of affliction has drawn near! Drooping, withering sister, yet most blest in thy temper, I have a request from thee which I fear to make known.

“Zainab.—May I be a sacrifice for thy heart, thou moon-faced, glorious sun! there is nobody here, if thou hast a private matter to disclose to thy sister.

“Husain.—Dear unfortunate sister, who art already severely vexed in heart, if I tell thee what my request is, what will be thy condition then? Though I cannot restrain myself from speaking, still I am in doubt as to which is better, to speak, or to forbear.

“Zainab.—My breast is pierced! My heart boils within me like a cauldron, owing to this thy conversation. Thou soul of thy sister, hold not back from Zainab what thou hast in thy mind.

“Husain.—My poor sister, I am covered with shame before thee, I cannot lift up my head. Though the request is a trifle, yet I know it is grievous to thee to grant. It is this; bring me an old, dirty, ragged garment to put on. But do not ask me, I pray thee, the reason why, until I myself think it proper to tell thee.

“Zainab.—I am now going to the tent to fetch thee what thou seekest; but I am utterly astonished, brother, as to why thou dost want this loathsome thing. (Returning with a tattered shirt.) Take it, here is the ragged robe for which thou didst ask. I wonder what thou wilt do with it.

“Husain.—Do not remain here, dear sister. Go for awhile to thine own tent; for if thou see that which I am about to do, thou wilt be grievously disturbed. Turn to thy tent, poor miserable sister, listen to what I say, and leave me, I pray thee, alone.

“Zainab (going away).—I am gone, but I am sorry I cannot tell what this enigma means. It is puzzling indeed! Remain thou with thy mysterious coat, O Husain! May all of us be offered as a ransom for thee, dear brother! Thou art without any to assist or befriend thee! Thou art surrounded by the wicked enemy! Yes, thy kind helpers have all been killed by the unbelieving nation!

“Husain (putting on the garment).—The term of life has no perpetual duration in itself. Who ever saw in a flower-garden a rose without its thorn! I will put on this old robe close to my skin, and place over it my new apparel, though neither the old nor the new of this world can be depended on. I hope Zainab has not been observing what I have been doing, for, poor creature, she can scarcely bear the sight of any such like thing.

“Zainab.—Alas! I do not know what is the matter with Husain, my brother. What has an old garment to do with being a king? Dost thou desire, O Husain, that the enemy should come to know this thing and reproach thy sister about it? Put off, I pray thee, this old ragged garment, otherwise I shall pull off my head-dress, and uncover my head for shame.

“Husain.—Rend not thy dress, modest sister, nor pull off thy head-covering. There is a mystery involved in my action. Know that what Husain has done has a good meaning in it. His putting on an old garment is not without its signification.

“Zainab.—What mystery can be in this work, thou perfect high priest of faith? I will never admit any until thou shalt have fully explained the thing according to my capacity.

“The Imám.—To-day, dear sister, Shimar will behave cruelly towards me. He will sever my dear head from the body. His dagger not cutting my throat, he will be obliged to sever my head from behind. After he has killed me, when he begins to strip me of my clothes, he may perchance be ashamed to take off this ragged robe and thereby leave my body naked on the ground.

“Zainab.—O Lord, have mercy on my distracted heart! Thou alone art aware of the state of my mind. Gracious Creator, preserve the soul of Husain! Let not heaven pull down my house over me!

“Sukainah.—Dear father, by our Lord it is a painful thing to be fatherless; a misery, a great calamity to be helpless, bleeding in the heart, and an outcast! Dismount from the saddle, and make me sit by thy side. To pass over me or neglect me at such a time is very distressing. Let me put my head on thy dear lap, O father. It is sad thou shouldst not be aware of thy dear child’s condition.

“Husain.—Bend not thy neck on one side, thou my beloved child; nor weep so sadly, like an orphan. Neither moan so melodiously, like a disconsolate nightingale. Come, lay thy dear head on my knees once more, and shed not so copiously a flood of tears from thine eyes, thou spirit of my life.

“Sukainah.—Dear father, thou whose lot is but grief, have mercy on me, mercy! O thou my physician in every pain and trouble, have pity on me! have pity on me! Alas, my heart, for the mention of the word separation! Alas, my grievance, for what is unbearable!

“Husain.—Groan not, wail not, my dear Sukainah, my poor oppressed, distressed girl. Go to thy tent and sleep soundly in thy bed until thy father gets thee some water to drink.

“Zainab.—Alas! alas! woe to me! my Husain is gone from me! Alas! alas! the arrow of my heart is shot away from the hand! Woe unto me, a thousand woes! I am to remain without Husain! The worshipper of truth is gone to meet his destined fate with a blood-stained shroud!

“Husain.—My disconsolate Zainab, be not so impatient. My homeless sister, show not thyself so fretful. Have patience, sister, the reward of the patient believers is the best of all. Render God thanks, the crown of intercession is fitted for our head only.

“Zainab.—O my afflicted mother, thou best of all women, pass a minute by those in Karbalá! see thy daughters prisoners of sorrow! behold them amidst strangers and foreigners. Come out awhile from thy pavilion in Paradise, O Fátimah, and weep affectionately over the state of us, thy children!

“Husain.—I have become friendless and without any helper, in a most strange manner. I have lost my troop and army in a wonderful way. Where is Akbar my son? let him come to me and hold the bridle of my horse, that I may mount. Where is Kásim my nephew? will he not help me and get ready my stirrup to make me cheerful? Why should I not shed much blood from mine eyes, seeing I cannot behold ʾAbbás my standard-bearer? A brother is for the day of misfortune and calamity! A brother is better than a hundred diadems and thrones! A brother is the essence of life in the world! He who has a brother, though he be old, yet is young. Who is there to bring my horse for me? there is none. There is none even to weep for me in this state of misery!

“Kulsúm.—Because there is no ʾAlí Akbar, dear brother, to help thee, Zainab, thy sister, will hold the horse for thee; and seeing ʾAbbás, thy brother, is no longer to be found, I myself will bear the standard before thy winged steed instead of him.

“Zainab.—Let Zainab mourn bitterly for her brother’s desolation. Who ever saw a woman, a gentlewoman, doing the duty of a groom or servant? Who can know, O Lord, besides Thee, the sad state of Husain in Karbalá, where his people so deserted him that a woman like myself is obliged to act as a servant for him?

“Kulsúm.—I am a standard-bearer for Husain, the martyr of Karbalá, O Lord God. I am the sister of ʾAbbás; yea, the miserable sister of both. O friends, it being the tenth day of Muharram, I am therefore assisting Husain. I am bearing the ensign for him instead of ʾAbbás my brother, his standard-bearer.

“Zainab.—Uncover your breasts a minute, O ye tear-shedding people, for it is time to beat the drum, seeing the king is going to ride. O Solomon the Prophet, where is thy glory? what has become of thy pompous retinue? Where are thy brothers, nephews, and companions?

“Husain.—There are none left to help me. My sister Zainab holds the bridle of the horse, and walks before me. Who ever saw a lady acting thus?

“Zainab.—Thou art going all alone! May the souls of all be a ransom for thee! and may thy departure make souls quit their bodies! A resurrection will be produced in thy tent by the cry of orphans and widows.

“Husain.—Sister, though it grieves me to go, yet I do it; peradventure I may see the face of Ashgar and the countenance of Akbar, those cypresses, those roses of Paradise.

“Zainab.—Would to God Zainab had died this very minute before thy face, in thy sight, that she might not behold such elegant bodies, such beautiful forms, rolling in their own blood!

“Husain.—O poor sister, if thou die here in this land in that sudden way that thou desirest, then who will ride in thy stead, in the city of Kúfah, on the camel’s back?

“Zainab.—Slight not my pain, dear brother, for Zainab is somewhat alarmed as to the import of thy speech. What shall I do with thy family—with the poor widows and young children?

“Husain.—O afflicted one, it is decreed I should be killed by means of daggers and swords; henceforth, dear sister, thou shalt not see me. Behold, this is separation between me and thee!

“The nephew of Husain.—Dear uncle, thou hast resolved to journey. Thou art going once again to make me an orphan. To whom else wilt thou entrust us? Who is expected to take care of us? Thou wast, dear uncle, instead of my father Hasan, a defence to this helpless exiled creature.

“Husain.—Sorrow not, thou faithful child, thou shalt be killed too in this plain of trials. Return thou now to thy tent in peace, without grieving my soul any further, poor orphan!

“The Darwísh from Kábul.—O Lord God, wherefore is the outward appearance of a man of God usually without decoration or ornament? And why is the lap of the man of this world generally full of gold and jewels? On what account is the pillow of this great person the black dust of the road? and for what reason are the bed and the cushion of the rebellious made of velvet and stuffed with down? Either Islám, the religion of peace and charity, has no true foundation in the world, or this young man, who is so wounded and suffers from thirst, is still an infidel.

“Husain.—Why are thine eyes pouring down tears, young darwísh? Hast thou also lost an Akbar in the prime of his youth? Thou art immersed, as a water-fowl, in thy tears. Has thine ʾAbbás been slain, thirsting, on the bank of the River Euphrates, that thou cryest so piteously? But if thou art sad only on account of my misfortune, then it matters not. Let me know whence comest thou, and whither is thy face set?

“The Darwísh.—It happened, young man, that last night I arrived in this valley, and made my lodging there. When one-half of the night had passed, of a sudden a great difficulty befell me, for I heard a child bemoaning and complaining of thirst, having given up altogether the idea of living any longer in this world. Sometimes it would beat its head and cry out for water; at other times it appeared to fall on the ground, fainting and motionless. I have, therefore, brought some water in this cup for that poor child, that it may drink and be refreshed a little. So I humbly beg thee, dear sir, to direct me to the place where the young child may be found, and tell me what is its name.

“Husain.—O God, let no man be ever in my pitiful condition, nor any family in this sad and deplorable state to which I am reduced. O young man, the child mentioned by thee is the peace of my troubled mind; it is my poor, miserable little girl.

“The Darwísh.—May I be offered for thee, dear sir, and for thy tearful eyes! Why should thy daughter be so sadly mourning and complaining? My heart is overwhelmed with grief for the abundance of tears running down thy cheeks. Why should the daughter of one like thee, a generous soul, suffer from thirst?

“Husain.—Know, O young man, that we are never in need of the water of this life. Thou art quite mistaken if thou hast supposed us to be of this world. If I will, I can make the moon, or any other celestial orb, fall down on the earth; how much more can I get water for my children. Look at the hollow made in the ground with my spear; water would gush out of it if I were to like. I voluntarily die of thirst to obtain a crown of glory from God. I die parched, and offer myself a sacrifice for the sins of my people, that they should be saved from the wrath to come.

“The Darwísh.—What is thy name, sir? I perceive that thou art one of the chief saints of the most beneficent God. It is evident to me that thou art the brightness of the Lord’s image, but I cannot tell to which sacred garden thy holy rose belongs.

“Husain.—O darwísh, thou wilt soon be informed of the whole matter, for thou shalt be a martyr thyself; for thy plans and the result thereof have been revealed to me. Tell me, O darwísh, what is the end thou hast in view in this thy hazardous enterprise? When thou shalt have told me that, I will disclose to thee who I am.

“The Darwísh.—I intend, noble sir, after I have known the mystery of thy affairs, to set out, if God wills, from Karbalá to Najaf, namely, to the place where ʾAlí, the highly exalted king of religion, the sovereign lord of the empire of existence, the supreme master of all the darwíshes, is buried. Yea, I am going to visit the tomb of ʾAlí, the successor of the chosen of God, the son-in-law of the Prophet, the lion of the true Lord, the prince of believers, Haidar, the champion of faith.

“Husain.—Be it known unto thee, O darwísh, that I, who am so sad and sorrowful, am the rose of the garden of that prince. I am of the family of the believers thou hast mentioned. I am Husain, the intercessor on the Day of Resurrection, the rose of the garden of glory.

“The Darwísh.—May I be offered a sacrifice for thy blessed arrival! Pardon me my fault, and give me permission to fight the battle of faith, for I am weary of life. It is better for me to be killed, and delivered at once from so many vexations of spirit. Martyrdom is, in fact, one of the glories of my faith.

“Husain.—Go forth, O atom, which aspirest to the glory of the sun; go forth, thou hast become at last worthy to know the hidden mysteries of faith. He who is slain for the sake of Husain shall have an abundant reward from God; yea, he shall be raised to life with ʾAlí Akbar the sweet son of Husain.

“The Darwísh (addressing Husain’s antagonists).—You cruel people have no religion at all. You are fire-worshippers, ignorant of God and His law. How long will you act unjustly towards the offspring of the priesthood? Is the account of the Day of Resurrection all false?

“Ibn Saʾd (the general of Yazíd’s army).—O ye brave soldiers of Yazíd, deprive this fellow of his fund of life. Make his friends ready to mourn for him.

“Husain.—Is there anyone to help me? Is there any assistant to lend me his aid?

“Jaʾfar (the king of jinns, with his troops, coming to Husain’s assistance).—O king of men and jinns, O Husain, peace be on thee! O judge of corporeal and spiritual beings, peace be on thee!

“Husain.—On thee be peace, thou handsome youth! Who art thou, that salutest us at such a time? Though thine affairs are not hidden from me at all, still it is advisable to ask thy name.

“Jaʾfar.—O lord of men and jinns, I am the least of thy servants, and my name is Jaʾfar, the chief ruler of all the tribes of jinns. To-day, while I was sitting on the glorious throne of my majesty, easy in mind, without any sad idea or thought whatever, I suddenly heard thy voice, when thou didst sadly implore assistance; and on hearing thee I lost my patience and senses. And, behold, I have come out with troops of jinns, of various abilities and qualifications, to lend thee help if necessary.

“Husain.—In the old abbey of this perishable kingdom, none can ever, O Jaʾfar, attain to immortality. What can I do with the empire of the world, or its tempting glories, after my dear ones have all died and gone? Is it proper that I, an old man, should live, and Akbar, a blooming youth, die in the prime of age? Return thou, Jaʾfar, to thy home, and weep for me as much as thou canst.

“Jaʾfar (returning).—Alas for Husain’s exile and helplessness! Alas for his continual groans and sighs!

“Husain (coming back from the field, dismounts his horse, and making a heap of dust, lays his head on it).—O earth of Karbalá, do thou assist me, I pray! since I have no mother, be thou to me instead of one.

“Ibn Saʾd (orders the army to stone Husain).—O ye men of valour, Husain the son of ʾAlí has tumbled down from the winged horse; if I be not mistaken, heaven has fallen to earth! It is better for you to stone him most cruelly. Dispatch him soon, with stones, to his companions.

“Husain.—Ah, woe to me! my forehead is broken; blood runs down my luminous face.

“Ibn Saʾd.—Who is that brave soldier, who, in order to show his gratitude to Yazíd his sovereign lord, will step forward and, with a blow of his scymetar, slay Husain the son of ʾAlí?

“Shimar.—I am he whose dagger is famous for bloodshed. My mother has borne me for this work alone. I care not about the conflict of the Day of Judgment; I am a worshipper of Yazíd, and have no fear of God. I can make the great throne of the Lord to shake and tremble. I alone can sever from the body the head of Husain the son of ʾAlí. I am he who has no share in Islám. I will strike the chest of Husain, the ark of God’s knowledge, with my boots, without any fear of punishment.

“Husain.—Oh, how wounds caused by arrows and daggers do smart! O God, have mercy in the Day of Judgment on my people for my sake. The time of death has arrived, but I have not my Akbar with me. Would to God my grandfather the Prophet were now here to see me!

“The Prophet (appearing).—Dear Husain, thy grandfather the Prophet of God has come to see thee. I am here to behold the mortal wounds of thy delicate body. Dear child, thou hast at length suffered martyrdom by the cruel hand of my own people! This was the reward I expected from them; thanks be to God! Open thine eyes, dear son, and behold thy grandfather with dishevelled hair. If thou hast any desire in thy heart, speak it out to me.

“Husain.—Dear grandfather, I abhor life; I would rather go and visit my dear ones in the next world. I earnestly desire to see my companions and friends—above all, my dearly beloved son ʾAlí Akbar.

“The Prophet.—Be not grieved that ʾAlí Akbar thy son was killed, since it tends to the good of my sinful people on the day of universal gathering.

“Husain.—Seeing ʾAlí Akbar’s martyrdom contributes to the happiness of thy people, seeing my own sufferings give validity to thy office of mediation, and seeing thy rest consists in my being troubled in this way, I would offer my soul, not once or twice, but a thousand times, for the salvation of thy people!

“The Prophet.—Sorrow not, dear grandchild; thou shalt be a mediator, too, in that day. At present thou art thirsty, but to-morrow thou shalt be the distributor of the water of Al Kausar.

“Husain.—O Lord God, besides Husain, who has happened to be thus situated? Every one when he dies has at least a mother at his head. But my mother is not here to rend her garments for me; she is not alive, that she might close my eyes when I die.

“Fátimah, his mother (appearing).—I am come to see thee, my child, my child! May I die another time, my child, my child! How shall I see thee slain, my son, my son! Rolling in thine own blood, my child, my child!

“Husain.—Come, dear mother, I am anxiously waiting for thee. Come, come! I have partly to complain of thee. How is it that thou hast altogether forsaken thy son? How is it thou camest so late to visit me?

“Fátimah.—May I be offered for thy wounded, defaced body! Tell me, what dost thou wish thy mother to do now for thee?

“Husain.—I am now, dear mother, at the point of death. The ark of life is going to be cast on shore, mother. It is time that my soul should leave the body. Come, mother, close my eyes with thy kind hand.

“Fátimah.—O Lord, how difficult for a mother to see her dear child dying! I am Zahrah who am making this sad noise, because I have to close the eyes of my son Husain, who is on the point of death. Oh, tell me if thou hast any desire long cherished in thy heart, for I am distressed in mind owing to thy sad sighs!

“Husain.—Go, mother, my soul is come to my throat; go, I had no other desire except one, with which I must rise in the Day of Resurrection, namely, to see ʾAlí Akbar’s wedding.

“Shimar.—Make thy confession, for I want to sever thy head, and cause a perpetual separation between it and the body.

“Zainab.—O Shimar, do not go beyond thy limit; let me bind something on my brother’s eyes.

“Husain.—Go to thy tent, sister, I am already undone. Go away; Zahrah my mother has already closed my eyes. Show to Sukainah my daughter always the tenderness of a mother. Be very kind to my child after me.

“Shimar (addressing Husain).—Stretch forth thy feet toward the holy Kiblah, the sacred temple of Makkah. See how my dagger waves over thee! It is time to cut thy throat.

“Husain.—O Lord, for the merit of me, the dear child of thy Prophet; O Lord, for the sad groaning of my miserable sister; O Lord, for the sake of young ʾAbbás rolling in his blood, even that young brother of mine that was equal to my soul, I pray thee, in the Day of Judgment, forgive, O merciful Lord, the sins of my grandfather’s people, and grant me, bountifully, the key of the treasure of intercession. (Dies.)”—(Pelly’s Miracle Play, vol. ii. p. 81 seqq.)

MUḤARRAMĀT (محرمات‎), pl. of Muḥarramah. Those persons with whom it is not lawful to contract marriage. [MARRIAGE.]

MUHĀYĀT (مهاياة‎). A legal term used for the partition of usufruct. According to the Hidāyah, vol. iv. 31:—

Partition of property is more effectual than partition of usufruct in accomplishing the enjoyment of the use; for which reason, if one partner apply for a partition of property, and another for a partition of usufruct, the Qāẓī must grant the request of the former, and if a partition of usufruct should have taken place with respect to a thing capable of a partition of property (such as a house or a piece of ground), and afterwards one of the partners apply for a partition of property, the Qāẓī must grant a partition of property and annul the partition of usufruct.

MUḤĀẒARAH (محاضرة‎). Lit. “Being present.” A term used by the Ṣūfīs for presenting of the soul to God in the service of ẕikr in order to obtain all the spiritual blessing possible from a contemplation of the ninety-nine attributes and titles of God. [ZIKR, GOD.]

MUḤRIM (محرم‎). The pilgrim in a state of Iḥrām, that is, after he has assumed the pilgrim’s dress. [PILGRIMAGE.]

AL-MUḤṢĪ (المحصى‎). “The Counter.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It is referred to in the Qurʾān, Sūrah xxxvi. 11: “Verily We quicken the dead and write down what they have done before, and the traces which they leave behind, and everything do We set down (lit. reckon up) in the clear Book of our decrees.”

MUḤTAKIR (محتكر‎). Lit. “A forestaller.” One who monopolises grain and other necessaries of life, which is unlawful. [MONOPOLY.]

MUḤTASIB (محتسب‎). The public censor of religion and morals, who is appointed by a Muslim ruler, to punish Muslims for neglecting the rites of their religion.

Sir Alexander Burnes, in his Travels in Bokhara (vol. i. p. 313), relates that he saw persons publicly scourged because they had slept during prayer-time and smoked on Friday. [DIRRAH.]

Burckhardt, in his account of the Wahhābīs (vol. ii. p. 146), says, the neglect of religious duty is always severely punished.… When Saʿūd took al-Madīnah, he ordered some of his people after prayers in the mosque to call over the names of all the grown up inhabitants of the town who were to answer individually. He then commanded them to attend prayers regularly; and if any one absented himself two or three times, Saʿūd sent some of his Arabs to beat the man in his own house. At Makkah, when the hour of prayer arrived, he ordered the people to patrol the streets, armed with large sticks, and to drive all the inhabitants by force into the mosque; a harsh proceeding, but justified by the notorious irreligion of the Makkans.

Dr. Bellew, in his Kashmīr and Kashgār (p. 281), gives an animated account of the way in which the Muḥtasib performed his duties in the streets of Kashgār.

AL-MUḤYĪ (المحيى‎). “The giver of life.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It occurs twice in the Qurʾān:—

Sūrah xxx. 49: “Look then to the vestiges of God’s mercy, how he quickens the earth after its death; verily He is the quickener of the dead.”

Sūrah xli. 39: “Verily, he who quickens (the earth) will surely quicken the dead.”

AL-MUʿĪD (المعيد‎). “The Restorer” (to life). One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. The word does not occur in the Qurʾān, but the idea is expressed in Sūrah lxxxv. 13, and many other places, “Verily He produces and restores.”

AL-MUʿIZZ (المعز‎). “The One who giveth honour.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. The word does not occur in the Qurʾān, but the attribute is referred to in Sūrah iii. 25: “Thou honourest whom Thou pleasest.”

AL-MUJĀDILAH (المجادلة‎). Lit. “She who disputed.” The title of the LVIIIth Sūrah of the Qurʾān, in which the expression occurs: “Now hath God heard the speech of her who disputed with thee concerning her husband.” Which refers to K͟haulah bint S̤aʿlabah, the wife of Aus ibn Ṣāmit, who being divorced by her husband in the “time of ignorance,” came to ask whether the divorce was lawful.

MUJĀHID (مجاهد‎). A warrior in the cause of religion. [JIHAD.]

AL-MUJĪB (المجيب‎). “The One who answers to” (a prayer). One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It occurs in the Qurʾān, Sūrah xi. 64: “Verily my Lord is nigh and answers” (prayer).

MUʿJIZAH (معجزة‎). [MIRACLES.]

MUJTAHID (مجتهد‎), pl. mujtahidūn. Lit., “One who strives” to attain to a high position of scholarship and learning.

The highest degree amongst Muḥammadan divines which is conferred either by the people or the ruler of a Muslim country upon eminent persons. The four doctors of the Sunnīs and their disciples were of this degree, but there are none of these enlightened teachers amongst the Sunnīs of the present day. They still exist in Persia, and are appointed by the people, the appointment being confirmed by the king. Malcolm, in his account of Persia, says:—

“There are seldom more than three or four priests of the dignity of Mujtahid in Persia. Their conduct is expected to be exemplary, and to show no worldly bias; neither must they connect themselves with the king or the officers of Government. They seldom depart from that character to which they owe their rank. The reason is obvious; the moment they deviate, the charm is broken which constitutes their power; men no longer solicit their advice or implore their protection; nor can they hope to see the monarch of the country courting popularity by walking to their humble dwellings, and placing them on the seat of honour when they condescend to visit his court. When a Mujtahid dies, his successor is always a person of the most eminent rank in the ecclesiastical order; and, though he may be pointed out to the populace by others of the same class seeking him as an associate, it is rare to hear of any intrigues being employed to obtain this enviable dignity.

“The Mujtahids of Persia exercise a great, though undefined, power over the courts of law, the judges of which constantly submit cases to their superior knowledge; and their sentence is deemed irrevocable, unless by a Mujtahid whose learning and sanctity are of acknowledged higher repute than that of the person by whom judgment has been pronounced. But the benefits which the inhabitants of Persia derive from the influence of these high priests, is not limited to their occasional aid of the courts of justice. The law is respected on account of the character of its ministers; kings fear to attack the decrees of tribunals over which they may be said to preside, and frequently endeavour to obtain popularity by referring cases to their decision. The sovereign, when no others dare approach him, cannot refuse to listen to a revered Mujtahid when he becomes an intercessor for the guilty. The habitations of this high order of priesthood are deemed sanctuaries for the oppressed; and the hand of despotic power is sometimes taken off a city, because the monarch will not offend a Mujtahid who has chosen it for his residence, but who refuses to dwell amid violence and injustice.”

There is a common opinion that the title of Mujtahid can only be granted to those who are masters of seventy sciences. A full account of the conditions of obtaining this rank, as expressed by a modern Muslim writer, will be found in the article on Ijmāʿ. [IJMAʿ.]

MUKĀRĪ (مكارى‎). A legal term for a person who lets horses, camels, &c., to hire. (Hidāyah, vol. iii. p. 371.)

MUKĀTAB (مكاتب‎). A slave who ransoms himself or herself, with the permission of the owner. [SLAVERY.]

MUK͟HADDARAH (مخدرة‎). A legal term for a woman in a state of purity. It is also used for a veiled woman, the word being derived from k͟hidr, a “curtain or veil.”

MUK͟HĀLAT̤AH (مخالطة‎). Lit. “Intermingling,” or mixing together. A term used for general intercourse, but specially applied to intercourse with those who are ceremonially unclean.

MULES. Arabic bag͟hl (بغل‎), pl. big͟hāl.

Muḥammad forbade the breeding of mules, for Ibn ʿAbbās says the three special injunctions which he received were (1) to perform the ablutions thoroughly, (2) not to take alms, (3) not to breed mules. (Mishkāt, book xvii. ch. ii.)

The flesh of a mule is unlawful. (Hidāyah, vol. iv. p. 74.)

They are not liable to zakāt. (Hidāyah, vol. i. p. 16.)

MULḤAQ (ملحق‎). Lit. “Joined.” A term used by the Ṣūfīs for the condition of the human soul when “it is absorbed into the essence of God.” (ʿAbdu ʾr-Razzāq’s Dictionary of Ṣūfī Terms.)

MULḤID (ملحد‎). An infidel. Lit. “One who has deviated, or turned aside from the truth.”

AL-MULK (الملك‎). Lit. “The Kingdom.” The title of the LXVIIth Sūrah of the Qurʾān in the first verse of which the word occurs: “Blessed is He in whose hand is the kingdom.”

MULLĀ (ملا‎). A Persian form used for the Arabic Maulawī, “a learned man, a scholar.”

In the G͟hiyās̤u ʾl-Lug͟hah it is said that a learned man is called a Mullā because he is “filled” with knowledge; from malaʾ, “to fill.”

MUʾMIN (مومن‎), pl. Muʾminūn; from Īmān, “faith.” One who believes.

(1) A term generally used for Muḥammadans in the Qurʾān and in all Muslim books.

(2) Al-Muʾmin. The title of the XLth Sūrah of the Qurʾān, in the 29th verse of which the word occurs: “A man of the family of Pharaoh who was a believer, but hid his faith.”

(3) Al-Muʾmin, “The Faithful.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It occurs in the Qurʾān, Sūrah lix. 28: “He is … the Faithful.”

AL-MUʾMINŪN (المومنون‎). Lit. “The Believers.” The title of the XXIIIrd Sūrah of the Qurʾān, in the first verse of which the word occurs: “Prosperous are the believers.”

AL-MUMĪT (المميت‎). “The Killer.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It is referred to in the Qurʾān, Sūrah ii. 26: “He will kill you and then make you alive.”

MUMSIK (ممسك‎). Lit. “One who withholds, a miser.” Used for a miserly person in contradistinction to munfiq, “a liberal person.” [MUNFIQ.]

AL-MUMTAḤINAH (الممتحنة‎). Lit. “She who is tried.” The title of the LXth Sūrah of the Qurʾān, from the expression in the 10th verse: “O believers! when believing women come over to you as refugees, then make trial of them.”

Al-Baiẓāwī says: “When such women sought an asylum at al-Madīnah, Muḥammad obliged them to swear that they were prompted only by a desire of embracing Islām, and that hatred of their husbands, or love of some Muslim, had not any influence on their conduct.”

MUNĀFIQ (منافق‎), pl. munāfiqūn. “Hypocrite.” A term especially given to those who in the time of the Prophet, whilst outwardly professing to believe in his mission, secretly denied the faith. They form the subject of the LXIIIrd Sūrah of the Qurʾān, which hence is termed the Sūratu ʾl-Munāfiqūn.

AL-MUNĀFIQŪN (المنافقون‎). “The Hypocrites.” Title of the LXIIIrd Sūrah of the Qurʾān, whose opening verses are:—

“When the Hypocrites come to thee, they say, ‘We bear witness that thou art the Sent One of God.’ God knoweth that thou art His Sent One: but God beareth witness that the hypocrites do surely lie. Their faith have they used as a cloak, and they turn aside others from the way of God! Evil are all their doings. This, for that they believed, then became unbelievers! Therefore hath a seal been set upon their hearts, and they understand not.”

MUNĀJĀT (مناجاة‎). Lit. “Whispering to, confidential talk.” Generally used for the extempore prayer offered after the usual liturgical form has been recited. [PRAYERS.]

MUNAṢṢAF (منصف‎). Lit. “Reduced to one-half.” A species of prohibited liquor. The juice of grapes boiled until a quantity less than two-thirds evaporates. (Hidāyah, vol. iv. 158.)

MUNF, MANF (منف‎). The ancient Memphis. Mentioned in the Commentary of the Jalālān on the Qurʾān, Sūrah xxviii. 14, as the city in which Moses killed the Egyptian.

MUNFIQ (منفق‎). Lit. “One who spends.” A charitable person. Qurʾān, Sūrah iii. 15: “Upon the patient, the truthful, the devout, the charitable, and those who ask for pardon at the dawn.” [MUMSIK.]

MUNKAR and NAKĪR (منكر و نكير‎). “The Unknown” and “The Repudiating.” The two angels who are said by Muḥammad to visit the dead in their graves and to interrogate them as to their belief in the Prophet and his religion.

They are described as two black angels with blue eyes. (Mishkāt, book i. ch. v.) [PUNISHMENTS OF THE GRAVE.]

AL-MUNTAQIM (المنتقم‎). “The Avenger.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It is referred to in the Qurʾān, Sūrah xxxii. 22: “Verily We will take vengeance on the sinners.” Also Sūrahs xliii. 40, and xliv. 15.

AL-MUQADDIM (المقدم‎). “The Bringer-forward.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It does not occur in the Qurʾān, but is given in the Ḥadīs̤.

MUQAUQIS (مقوقس‎). The Roman Viceroy of Egypt; al-Muqauqis being his official title.

Muḥammad, in the year A.H. 7 (A.D. 628), sent an embassy to this official, inviting him to Islām. The Governor received the embassy kindly, and sent the following reply, “I am aware that a prophet is yet to arise; but I am of opinion he will appear in Syria. Thy messenger hath been received with honour. I send for thine acceptance two female slaves, who are much admired by the Copts, and also a present of raiment, and a mule for thee to ride on.”

Mary, the fairest of the Coptic damsels, Muḥammad kept for himself, and gave the other to Ḥassān the poet. [MUHAMMAD, MARY THE COPT.]

MUQĀYAẒAH (مقايضة‎). Exchanging, bartering, giving an equivalent in anything but money. (Hidāyah, Arabic ed., vol. iii. p. 8.)

AL-MUQĪT (المقيت‎). “The Mighty or Guardian.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. Sūrah iv. 88: “Verily God keepeth watch over everything.”

AL-MUQSIT̤ (المقسط‎). “The Equitable.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It does not occur in the Qurʾān, but is given in the Ḥadīs̤.

MUQTADĀ (مقتدى‎). Lit. “Followed, worthy to be followed.” An exemplary person, as being eminent for sanctity of character.

MUQTADĪ (مقتدى‎). “Follower.” The person who stands behind the Imām in the usual prayers and recites the Iqāmah. [IQAMAH.]

AL-MUQTADIR (المقتدر‎). “The Powerful or Prevailing.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It occurs three times in the Qurʾān:—

Sūrah xviii. 43: “For God is powerful over all.”

Sūrah liv. 42: “As he only can punish, who is the Mighty, the Strong.”

Sūrah v. 55: “With the powerful king.”

MURĀBAḤAH (مرابحة‎). A legal term for selling a thing for a profit, when the seller distinctly states that he purchased it for so much and sells it for so much.

MURĀHAQAH (مراهقة‎). Arriving at Makkah when the ceremonies of the ḥajj are nearly finished. [HAJJ.]

MURĀHIQ (مراهق‎). A legal term for a boy or girl who is near the age of puberty.

MURĀQABAH (مراقبة‎). Meditation; contemplation. An act of devotion performed by the Ṣūfīs. [SUFI.]

MURDER. Arabic qatl (قتل‎). Homicide of which Muḥammadan law takes cognisance is of five kinds: (1) Qatlu ʾl-ʿAmd; (2) Qatl shibhu ʾl-ʿAmd; (3) Qatlu ʾl-K͟hat̤āʾ; (4) Qatl qāʾim maqāma ʾl-K͟hat̤āʾ; (5) Qatl bi-Sabab.

(1) Qatlu ʾl-ʿAmd (قتل العمد‎), or “wilful murder,” is where the perpetrator wilfully kills a person with a weapon, or something that serves for a weapon, such as a club, a sharp stone, or fire. If a person commit wilful murder, two points are established: first, that the murderer is a sinner deserving of hell, for it is written in the Qurʾān (Sūrah iv. 95), “Whosoever slayeth a believer purposely, his reward is hell”; and, secondly, that he is liable to retaliation, because it is written in the Qurʾān (Sūrah ii. 173), “It is incumbent on you to execute retaliation (Qiṣāṣ) for murder.” But although retaliation is the punishment for wilful murder, still the heir or next of kin can either forgive or compound the offence; as the verse already quoted continues—“Yet he who is pardoned at all by his brother must be prosecuted in reason, and made to pay with kindness.” In this respect Muḥammad departed from the Old Testament law, which made the retaliation compulsory on the next of kin.

One effect of wilful murder is that the murderer is excluded from being heir to the murdered person.

According to Abū Ḥanīfah, there is no expiation for wilful murder, but ash-Shāfiʿī maintains that expiation is incumbent as an act of piety.

(2) Qatl shibhu ʾl-ʿAmd (قتل شبه العمد‎), or “manslaughter,” or, as Hamilton more correctly renders it, “A semblance of wilful murder, is when the perpetrator strike a man with something which is neither a weapon nor serves as such.”

The argument adduced by Abū Ḥanīfah is a saying of the Prophet: “Killing with a rod or stick is not murder, but only manslaughter, and the fine for it is a hundred camels, payable within three years.”

Manslaughter is held to be sinful and to require expiation, and it excludes the manslayer from inheriting the property of the slain.

(3) Qatlu ʾl-K͟hat̤āʾ (قتل الخطاء‎), or “homicide by misadventure,” is of two kinds: error in intention, and error in the act. Error in the act is where a person intends a particular act, and another act is thereby occasioned; as where, for instance, a person shoots an arrow at a mark and it hits a man. Error in intention, on the other hand, is where the mistake occurs not in the act, but with respect to the subject; as where a person shoots an arrow at a man supposing him to be game; or at a Muslim, supposing him to be a hostile infidel. The slayer by misadventure is required to free a Muslim slave, or fast two months successively, and to pay a fine within three years. He is also excluded from inheriting the property of the slain.

(4) Qatl qāʾim maqāma ʾl-K͟hat̤āʾ (قتل قائم مقام الخطاء‎), or “homicide of a similar nature to homicide by misadventure,” is where, for example, a person walking in his sleep falls upon another, so as to kill him by the fall. It is subject to the same rules with homicide by misadventure.

(5) Qatl bi-Sabab (قتل بسبب‎), or, “homicide by intermediate cause,” is where, for instance, a man digs a well, or sets up a stone, and another falls into the well, or over the stone, and dies. In this case a fine must be paid, but it does not exclude from inheritance, nor does it require expiation.

No special mention is made in either the Qurʾān or in Muḥammadan law books, of taking the life by poison. (The same remark applies to the Mosaic law. See Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, Article “Murder.”)

With regard to retaliation, a freeman is slain for a freeman, and a slave for a slave; a freeman is also slain for the wilful murder of a slave the property of another.

According to Abū Ḥanīfah, a Muslim is put to death for killing an unbeliever, but ash-Shāfiʿī maintains otherwise, because the Prophet said, “A Muslim shall not suffer death for an unbeliever.”

A man is slain for a woman; a father is not slain for his child, but a child is slain for the murder of his father; a master is not slain for the murder of his own slave, or for the slave of his child.

If a person immerse another into water whence it is impossible for him to escape by swimming, according to Abū Ḥanīfah, retaliation is not incurred, but ash-Shāfiʿī maintains that the murderer should be drowned.

Al-Baiẓāwī the commentator, in writing on Sūrah ii. 174, “This is an alleviation from your Lord and a mercy,” says that in the Jewish law retaliation for murder was compulsory, but in the law of Christ the Christians were enjoined to forgive the murderer, whilst in the Qurʾān the choice is given of either retaliation or forgiveness.

MURĪD (مريد‎). Lit. “One who is desirous or willing.” A disciple of some murshid, or leader, of a mystic order. Any student of divinity. [SUFI.]

MURJĪYAH, MURJIʾAH (مرجية‎). Lit. “The Procrastinators.” A sect of Muslims who teach that the judgment of every true believer, who hath been guilty of a grievous sin, will be deferred till the Resurrection; for which reason they pass no sentence on him in this world, either of absolution or condemnation. They also hold that disobedience with faith hurteth not, and that, on the other hand, obedience with infidelity profiteth not. As to the reason of their name the learned differ, because of the different significations of its root, each of which they accommodate to some opinion of the sect. Some think them so called because they postpone works to intention, that is, esteem works to be inferior in degree to intention, and profession of the faith; others, because they allow hope, by asserting that disobedience with faith hurteth not, &c.; others take the reason of the name to be, their deferring the sentence of the heinous sinner till the Resurrection; and others, their degrading of ʿAlī, or removing him from the first degree to the fourth for the Murjīyahs in some points relating to the office of Imām, agree with the K͟hārijīyahs. This sect is divided into four classes, three of which, according as they happen to agree in particular dogmas with the K͟hārijīyahs, the Qādirīyahs, or the Jabarīyahs, are distinguished as Murjīyahs of those sects, and the fourth is that of the pure Murjīyahs, which last class is again subdivided into five others. The opinions of Mukātil and Bashar, both of a sect of the Murjīyahs called S̤aubanians, should not be omitted. The former asserted that disobedience hurts not him who professes the unity of God, and is endued with faith; and that no true believer shall be cast into hell; he also thought that God will surely forgive all crimes except infidelity; and that a disobedient believer will be punished at the Day of Resurrection, on the bridge Sirāt̤, laid over the midst of hell, where the flames of hell-fire shall catch hold on him, and torment him in proportion to his disobedience, and that he shall then be admitted into Paradise.

The latter held, that if God do cast the believers guilty of grievous sins into hell, yet they will be delivered thence after they shall have been sufficiently punished; but that it is neither possible nor consistent with justice that they should remain therein for ever.

MURSAL (مرسل‎), pl. mursalūn. A messenger or apostle. A term frequently used in the Qurʾān for the prophets. It is only applied to those who are said to be bringers of inspired books. [PROPHET.]

AL-MURSALĀT (المرسلات‎). Lit. “Those who are sent.” The title of the LXXVIIth Sūrah of the Qurʾān, in the first verse of which the word occurs. “By the angels who are sent by God, following one another.”

MURSHID (مرشد‎). A guide. From rashād, “a straight road.” The title given to the spiritual director of any religious order. [SUFI.]

MURTADD (مرتد‎). [APOSTATE.]

AL-MUSABBIḤĀT (المسبحات‎). “The Praisers.” A title given to those Sūrahs of the Qurʾān, which begin with Subḥāna (Glory to), or Sabbaḥa (he glorified), or Yusabbiḥu (he glorifies), or Sabbiḥ (glorify thou), viz. Sūrahs xvii., lvii., lix., lxi., lxii., lxiv., lxxxvii.

ʿIrbāẓ ibn Sāriyah relates that Muḥammad used to repeat the Musabbiḥāt before going to sleep, and that he said, “In them there is a verse which is better than a thousand.” Most writers say this verse is concealed like the Lailatu ʾl-Qadr (the night of power), or the Sāʿatu ʾl-Jumʿah (the hour on Friday), but ʿAbdu ʾl-Ḥaqq says it is most probably either the last verse of the Sūratu ʾl-Ḥashr (lix.), “He is God, the Pardoner, the Maker, the Fashioner! To him are ascribed excellent titles,” &c. Or, the first verse of the Sūratu ʾl-Ḥadīd (lvii.), “All that is in the Heavens and in the Earth praiseth God.” (See Majmaʿu ʾl-Biḥār, p. 86; Mishkāt, book viii. ch. i.)

MUṢADDIQ (مصدق‎). The collector of the zakāt and ṣadaqah, or legal alms. In Muḥammadan states he is appointed by the state. This officer does not now exist in Hindustan under British rule.

MUṢĀFAḤAH (مصافحة‎). Taking the hand. Joining or shaking hands. A custom expressly enjoined by Muḥammad, who said, “If two Muslims meet and join hands (i.e. shake hands), their sins will be forgiven before they separate.” (Mishkāt, book xxii. ch. iii. pt. 2.)

MUSAILAMAH (مسيلمة‎). An impostor who appeared in the time of Muḥammad, and claimed the Prophetic office, surnamed Musailamatu ʾl-Kaẕẕāb, or, “Musailamah the Liar.” He headed an embassy sent by his tribe to Muḥammad in the ninth year of the Hijrah, and professed himself a Muslim; but on his return home, considering that he might possibly share with Muḥammad in his power, the next year he set up for a prophet also, pretending to join with him in the commission to recall mankind from idolatry to the worship of the true God; and he published written revelations, in imitation of the Qurʾān, of which Abū ʾl-Faraj has preserved the following passage, viz. “Now hath God been gracious unto her that was with child, and hath brought forth from her the soul which runneth between the peritonœum and the bowels.”

Musailamah, having formed a considerable party, began to think himself upon equal terms with Muḥammad, and sent him a letter, offering to go halves with him, in these words: “From Musailamah, the Apostle of God, to Muḥammad, the Apostle of God. Now let the earth be half mine and half thine.” But Muḥammad, thinking himself too well established to need a partner, wrote him this answer: “From Muḥammad, the Apostle of God, to Musailamah, the Liar. The earth is God’s; He giveth the same for inheritance unto such of His servants as He pleaseth; and the happy issue shall attend those who fear Him.”

During the few months which Muḥammad lived after this revolt, Musailamah rather gained than lost ground, and grew very formidable; but Abū Bakr, in the eleventh year of the Hijrah, sent a great army against him, under the command of that consummate general K͟hālid ibn al-Walīd, who engaged Musailamah in a bloody battle, wherein the false prophet happening to be slain by Waḥshī, the negro slave who had killed Ḥamzah at Uḥud, and by the same lance, the Muslims gained an entire victory, ten thousand of the apostates being left dead on the spot, and the rest returning to Muḥammadanism.

MUṢALLĀ (مصلا‎). The small mat, cloth, or carpet on which a Muslim prays. The term sajjādah is used in Egypt. In Persia Jai-namaz.

MUS̤ALLAS̤ (مثلث‎). Lit. “Made into three, or into a third.” An aromatic wine composed of new wine boiled to a third part and then mixed with sweet herbs. It is said by Abū Ḥanīfah to be a lawful drink. (Hidāyah, vol. iv. p. 162.)

MUSALMĀN (مسلمان‎). The Persian form of the word Muslim. A Muḥammadan. [MUHAMMADANISM.]

MUSĀMARAH (مسامرة‎). Lit. “Holding night conversations.” A term used by the Ṣūfīs for God’s converse with the heart of man. (ʿAbdu ʾr-Razzāq’s Dict. of Ṣūfī Terms.)

MUSAQĀT (مساقاة‎). A compact entered into by two persons, by which it is agreed that the one shall deliver over to the other his fruit trees, on condition that the other shall take care of them, and whatever is produced shall belong to them both, in the proportions of one half, one third, or the like, as may be stipulated. (Hidāyah, vol. iv., p. 54.)

AL-MUṢAWWIR (المصور‎). “The Fashioner.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It occurs once in the Qurʾān, Sūrah lix. 24: “He is God, the Creator, the Maker, the Fashioner.”

MUSHABBIHAH (مشبهة‎). Lit. “The Assimilators.” A sect of Muḥammadans who allowed a resemblance between God and His creatures, supposing Him to be a figure composed of members or parts, and capable of local motion. Some of the Shīʿahs belong to this sect.

MUSHĀHADAH (مشاهدة‎). A vision or revelation. A Sūfīistic expression for spiritual enlightenment.

MUSHRIK (مشرك‎), pl. mushrikūn. Those who give companions to God. It is used by modern Muslims for both Christians and idolaters, for those who believe in the Holy Trinity as well as for those who worship idols. The Wahhābīs also call their religious opponents Mushrikūn, because they pray to saints for assistance. In the Qurʾān the term is always used for the Makkan idolaters, and the Imām al-Bag͟hawī says, in his commentary on Sūrah xcviii. 1, that the term Ahlu ʾl-Kitāb is always used for the Jews and Christians and Mushrikūn for those who worship idols.

MUSHROOMS. Arabic kamʾ (كمء‎), pl. akmuʾ, kamʾah. Abū Hurairah relates that Muḥammad said: “Mushrooms are a kind of manna which God sent to Moses, and its water is a cure for sore eyes.” (Mishkāt, book xxi. ch. i.)

MUSIC. Arabic mūsīqā (موسيقا‎), mūsīqī (موسيقى‎), which the author of the G͟hiyās̤u ʾl-Lug͟hah says is a Syriac word. It is generally held by Muḥammadans to be contrary to the teachings of the Prophet; for Nāfiʿ relates that when he was walking with Ibn ʿUmar on a road, they heard the music of a pipe, and that Ibn ʿUmar put his fingers into his ears, and went on another road. Nāfiʿ then asked Ibn ʿUmar why he did so, and he said, “I was with the Prophet, and when he heard the noise of a musical pipe, he put his fingers into his ears; and this happened when I was a child.” (Mishkāt, book xxii. ch. ix., pt. 3.)

Muḥammadan doctors, however, are not agreed on the subject, for Abū Ḥanīfah says, “If a person break a lute or tabor, or pipe, or cymbal belonging to a Muslim, he is responsible, because the sale of such articles is lawful.” But his two disciples, Imāms Muḥammad and Abū Yūsuf, do not agree with him. (Hidāyah, vol. iii. p. 558.)

MUS̤LAH (مثلة‎). The mutilation of the body, which is forbidden by Muslim law, except in the case of retaliation. (Mishkāt, book xii. ch. ii.)

MUSLIM (مسلم‎), from Islām. One who has received Islām. A Muḥammadan. [MUHAMMADANISM, ISLAM.]

MUSLIM (مسلم‎). Abū ʾl-Ḥusain Muslim, son of al-Ḥajjāj al-Qushairī, the compiler of the collection of the Traditions known as the Ṣaḥīḥu Muslim, was born at Naishapūr, A.H. 204, and died A.H. 261. His book of traditions ranks amongst the Sunnīs as but second in authority to the Ṣaḥīḥu ʾ-Buk͟hārī. The two works being styled the Ṣaḥīḥān, or the “two authentics.” It is said to contain 3,000 authentic traditions. [TRADITIONS.]

MUSTAḤĀẒAH (مستحاضة‎). A woman who has an issue of blood (istiḥāẓah), independent of the menses or of the cleansings after parturition. A mustaḥāẓah is not considered junub, or unclean, but may say her prayers and perform the other religious offices. Compare Leviticus xv. 3.

MUṢT̤ALIQ (مصطلق‎). Banū Muṣt̤aliq. An Arabian tribe in the time of Muḥammad. He attacked the Banū Muṣt̤aliq in A.H. 5, and took many of them prisoners. (Muir’s Life of Mahomet, vol. iii. p. 237). They embraced Islām at an early period.

MUSTAʾMIN (مستامن‎). Lit. “One who seeks security.” One who, being a foreigner, and not a Muslim, enters Muḥammadan territory, and claims safe conduct and immunity from hostilities.

AL-MUTAʿĀLĪ (المتعالى‎). “The Exalted.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It occurs in the Qurʾān, Sūrah xiii. 10: “He knows the unseen, and the visible,—the Great, the Lofty One.”

MUʿTADDAH (معتدة‎). A woman in her ʿiddah, or period of probation, after the death of her husband, or after her divorce.

MUTʿAH (متعة‎). Lit. “Usufruct, enjoyment.” A marriage contracted for a limited period, for a certain sum of money. Such marriages are still legal amongst the Shīʿahs, and exist in Persia (Malcolm’s Persia, vol. ii. p. 591) to the present day, but they are said to be unlawful by the Sunnīs. They were permitted by the Arabian Prophet at Aut̤ās, and are undoubtedly the greatest stain upon his moral legislation; but the Sunnīs say that he afterwards prohibited a mutʿah marriage at K͟haibar. (Vide Mishkāt, book xiii. ch. iv. pt. 2.)

The Shīʿahs establish the legality of mutʿah not only upon the traditions, but also upon the following verse in the Qurʾān, the meaning of which, according to the commentary Tafsīr-i-Maz̤harī, is disputed. Sūrah iv. 28: “Forbidden to you also are married women, except those who are in your hands as slaves. This is the law of God for you. And it is allowed you, beside this, to seek out wives by means of your wealth, with modest conduct, and without fornication. And give those with whom ye have cohabited their dowry. This is the law. But it shall be no crime in you to make agreements over and above the law. Verily, God is Knowing, Wise!”

According to the Imāmīyah Code of Jurisprudence, the following are the conditions of Mutʿah, or “temporary marriages.” There must be declaration and acceptance, as in the case of nikāḥ, and the subject of the contract must be either a Muslimah, a Christian, or a Jewess, or (according to some) a Majūsī; she should be chaste, and due inquiries should be made into her conduct, as it is abominable to enter into contract with a woman addicted to fornication, nor is it lawful to make such a contract with a virgin who has no father. Some dower must be specified, and if there is a failure in this respect, the contract is void. There must also be a fixed period, but its extent is left entirely to the parties: it may be a year, a month, or a day, only some limit must be distinctly specified, so as to guard the period from any extension or diminution. The practice of ʿazl (extrahere ante emissionem seminis) is lawful, but if, notwithstanding this the woman becomes pregnant, the child is the temporary husband’s; but if he should deny the child, the denial is sustained by the law. Mutʿah marriages do not admit of divorce or repudiation, but the parties become absolutely separated on the expiration of the period. (Baillie’s Digest.)

There is a curious account of a discussion at the Court of the Emperor Akbar with reference to the subject of Mutʿah marriages in the ʿAīn-i-Akbari (Translation by H. Blochmann, M.A., p. 173). At one of the meetings for discussion, the Emperor asked how many free-born women a man may legally marry. The lawyers answered that four was the limit fixed by the Prophet. His Majesty thereupon remarked that, from the time he had come of age he had not restricted himself to that number, and in justice to his wives, of whom he had a large number, both free-born and slaves, he now wanted to know what remedy the law provided for his case. Most of the Maulawīs present expressed their opinions, when the Emperor remarked that Shaik͟h ʿAbdu ʾn-Nabī had once told him that one of the Mujtahids had had as many as nine wives. Some of those present said that some learned men had allowed even eighteen from a too literal translation of the second verse of Sūratu ʾn-Nisāʾ in the Qurʾān. [MARRIAGE.] After much discussion, the learned men present, having collected every tradition on the subject, decreed, first, that by mutʿah a man may marry any number of wives; and, secondly, that mutʿah marriages were sanctioned by the Imām Mālik; but a copy of the Muwat̤t̤aʾ of the Imām Mālik was brought, and a passage cited from that collection of traditions against the legality of mutʿah marriages.

The disputation was again revived at a subsequent meeting, when at the request of the Emperor, Badāʾonī gave the following summary of the discussion: “Imām Mālik, and the Shīʿahs are unanimous in looking upon mutʿah marriages as legal; Imām ash-Shāfiʿī and the great Imām Abū Ḥanīfah look upon mutʿah marriages as illegal. But should at any time a Qāẓī of the Malakī sect decide that mutʿah is legal, it is legal, according to the common belief, even for Shāfiʿīs and Ḥanafīs. Every other opinion on this subject is idle talk.” This saying pleased the Emperor, and he at once appointed a Qāẓī, who gave a decree which made mutʿah marriages legal.

In permitting these usufructuary marriages Muḥammad appears but to have given Divine (?) sanction to one of the abominable practices of ancient Arabia, for Burckhardt (vol. ii. p. 378) says, it was a custom of their forefathers to assign to a traveller who became their guest for the night, some female of the family, most commonly the host’s own wife!

AL-MUTAKABBIR (المتكبر‎). “The Great.” (When used of a human being it implies haughtiness.) One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It occurs in the Qurʾān, Sūrah lix. 23: “He is … the Great One!”

MUʿTAMIR (معتمر‎). A performer of the ʿUmrah. [UMRAH.]

MUʿTAQ (معتق‎). An emancipated slave. [SLAVERY.]

MUTAQĀDIM (متقادم‎). Such a distance of time as suffices to prevent punishment. It operates in a way somewhat similar to the English statutory limitations.

MUTAWALLĪ (متولى‎). Lit. “A person endowed with authority.” A legal term used for a person entrusted with the management of a religious foundation. [MASJID.]

MUʿTAZILAH (معتزلة‎). Lit. “The Separatists.” A sect of Muḥammadans founded by Wāṣil ibn ʿAt̤āʾ, who separated from the school of Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (A.H. 110). The following are their chief tenets: (1) They entirely reject all eternal attributes of God, to avoid the distinction of persons made by the Christians; saying that eternity is the proper or formal attribute of his essence; that God knows by His essence, and not by His knowledge: and the same they affirm of His other attributes (though all the Muʿtazilahs do not understand these words in one sense). Hence this sect is also named Muʿat̤t̤ilī, from their divesting God of His attributes; for they went so far as to say, that to affirm these attributes is the same thing as to make more eternals than one, and that the unity of God is inconsistent with such an opinion. This was the true doctrine of Wāṣil, their master, who declared that whoever asserted an eternal attribute asserted there were two gods. This point of speculation concerning the divine attributes was not ripe at first, but was at length brought to maturity by Wāṣil’s followers, after they had read the books of the philosophers. (2) They believe the word of God to have been created in subjecto (as the schoolmen term it), and to consist of letters and sound; copies thereof being written in books, to express or imitate the original. (3) They also go farther, and affirm that whatever was created in subjecto is also an accident, and liable to perish. They deny absolute predestination, holding that God is not the author of evil, but of good only; and that man is a free agent; which is the opinion of the Qadarīyah sect. On account of this tenet and the first, the Muʿtazilahs look on themselves as the defenders of the unity and justice of God. (4) They hold that if a professor of the true religion be guilty of a grievous sin, and die without repentance, he will be eternally damned, though his punishment will be lighter than that of the infidels. (5) They deny all vision of God in Paradise by the corporeal eye, and reject all comparisons or similitudes applied to God.

According to Shahrastānī, the Muʿtazilah hold:—

“That God is eternal; and that eternity is the peculiar property of His essence; but they deny the existence of any eternal attributes (as distinct from His nature). For they say, He is Omniscient as to His nature; Living as to His nature; Almighty as to His nature; but not through any knowledge, power or life existing in Him as eternal attributes; for knowledge, power and life are part of His essence, otherwise, if they are to be looked upon as eternal attributes of the Deity, it will give rise to a multiplicity of eternal entities.

“They maintain that the knowledge of God is as much within the province of reason as that of any other entity: that He cannot be beheld with the corporeal sight; and, with the exception of Himself, everything else is liable to change or to suffer extinction. They also maintain that Justice is the animating principle of human actions: Justice according to them being the dictates of Reason and the concordance of the ultimate results of this conduct of man with such dictates.

“Again, they hold that there is no eternal law as regards human actions; that the divine ordinances which regulate the conduct of men are the results of growth and development; that God has commanded and forbidden, promised and threatened by a law which grew gradually. At the same time, say they, he who works righteousness merits rewards, and he who works evil deserves punishment. They also say that all knowledge is attained through reason, and must necessarily be so obtained. They hold that the cognition of good and evil is also within the province of reason; that nothing is known to be right or wrong until reason has enlightened us as to the distinction; and that thankfulness for the blessings of the Benefactor is made obligatory by reason, even before the promulgation of any law upon the subject. They also maintain that man has perfect freedom; is the author of his actions both good and evil, and deserves reward or punishment hereafter accordingly.”

During the reigns of the Abbaside K͟halīfahs al-Maʾmūn, al-Muʿtaṣim, and al-Was̤iq (A.H. 198–228) at Bag͟hdād, the Muʿtazilah were in high favour. Mr. Syed Ameer Ali Moulvi, M.A., LL.B., in the preface to his book, The Personal Law of the Mahommedans (W. H. Allen and Co.), claims to belong to “the little known, though not unimportant philosophical and legal school of the Mutazalas,” and he adds, “the young generation is tending unconsciously toward the Mutazalite doctrines.”

According to the Sharḥu ʾl-Muwāqif, the Muʿtazilah are divided into twenty sects, viz.: Waṣilīyah, ʿUmarīyah, Huẕailīyah, Naz̤āmīyah, Aswārīyah, Askāfīyah, Jāfarīyah, Basharīyah, Mazdārīyah, Hishāmīyah, Ṣālhīyah, Hābit̤īyah, Hadbīyah, Maʿmarīyah, S̤amāmīyah, K͟haiyāt̤īyah, Jāhiẓīyah, Kaʿbīyah, Jubāʾīyah, and Buhshamīyah.

AL-MUʿT̤Ī (المعطى‎). “The Giver.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God. It is referred to in the Qurʾān, Sūrah cviii. verse 1: “Verily we have given thee al-Kaus̤ar.”

MUTILATION. [THEFT.]

MUʿTIQ (معتق‎). The master who emancipates a slave. [SLAVERY.]

MUWAḤḤID (موحد‎), pl. muwaḥḥidūn. A believer in one God. A term often used by Muslims to express their belief as Unitarians.

MUWAT̤T̤Aʾ (موطاء‎). Lit. “That which has been compiled.” A title given to the book of traditions compiled by the Imām Mālik (died A.H. 179). It is the earliest compilation of traditions, and is placed by some amongst the Kutubu ʾs-Sittah, or the “six (correct) books.” [TRADITIONS.]

MUZĀBANAH (مزابنة‎). Lit. “Repelling or pushing back.” Selling without measure, for example, selling green dates upon trees in exchange for dry ones in the house, and the seller saying that the loss or gain rests with him. This kind of sale is forbidden. (Mishkāt, book xii. ch. 5.)

MUZĀRAʿAH (مزارعة‎). Giving over land to the charge of another party on condition of receiving a fixed proportion of its produce.

MUẒĀRABAH (مضاربة‎). In the language of the law, Muẓārabah signifies a contract of copartnership, of which the one party (namely, the proprietor) is entitled to a profit on account of the stock, he being denominated Rabbu ʾl-Māl, or proprietor of the stock (which is termed Rāsu ʾl-Māl), and the other party is entitled to a profit on account of his labour, and this last is denominated the muẓārib (or manager), inasmuch as he derives a benefit from his own labour and endeavours. A contract of muẓārabah, therefore, cannot be established without a participation in the profit, for if the whole of the profit be stipulated to the proprietor of the stock, then it is considered as a biẓāʿah; or, if the whole be stipulated to the immediate manager, it must be considered as a loan.

AL-MUẔILL (المذل‎). “The One who abases.” One of the ninety-nine names or attributes of God referred to in the Qurʾān, Sūrah iii. 25: “Thou honourest whom Thou pleasest and abasest whom Thou pleasest.”

AL-MUZZAMMIL (المزمل‎). Lit. “The Wrapped up.” The title of the LXXIVth Sūrah of the Qurʾān, in the first verse of which the word occurs. “O Thou, enwrapped, arise to prayer.” It is said the chapter was revealed to Muḥammad when he was wrapped up in a blanket at night.