§ 41. THE HOME, AND THE ANTECEDENTS OF ISLAM. 159
Arabia had at the time when Mohammed appeared, all the elements for a wild, warlike, eclectic religion like the one which he established. It was inhabited by heathen star- worshippers, Jews, and Christians.
The heathen were the ruling rare, descended from Ishmael, the bastard son of Abraham (Ibrahim), the real sons of the desert, full of animal life and energy. They had their sanctuary in the Ivaaba at Mecca, which attracted annually large numbers of pilgrims long before Mohammed.
The Jews, after the destruction of Jerusalem, were scattered in Arabia, especially in the district of Medina, and exerted con siderable influence by their higher culture and rabbinical tra ditions.
The Christians belonged mostly to the various heretical sects which were expelled from the Roman empire during the violent doctrinal controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries. We find there traces of Arians, Sabellians, Ebionites, Xcstorians, Eutychians, Monophysites, Marianites, and Collyridians or wor shippers of Mary. Anchorets and monks settled in large num bers in AVady Feiran around Mount Serbal, and Justinian laid the foundation of the Convent of St. Catharine at the foot of Mount Sinai, which till the year 1859 harbored the oldest and most complete uncial manuscript of the Greek Scriptures of both Testaments from the age of Constant! ne. But it was a very superficial and corrupt Christianity which had found a home in those desert regions, where even the apostle Paul spent three years after his conversion in silent preparation for his great mission.
These three races and religions, though deadly hostile to each other, alike rovercd Abraham, the father of the faithful, as their common ancestor. This fact might suggest to a great mind the idea to unite them by a national religion monotheistic in princi ple and eclectic in its character. This seems to have been the original project of the founder of Islam.
It is made certain by recent research that there were at the
160 FOURTH PERIOD. A.D. 590-1049.
time and before the call of Mohammed a considerable number of inquirers at Mecca and Medina, who had intercourse with Eastern Christians in Syria and Abyssinia, were dissatisfied with the idolatry around them, and inclined to monotheism, which they traced to Abraham. They called themselves Hanyfs, i. e. Converts, Puritans. One of them, Omayah of Taif, we know to have been under Christian influence; others seem to have de rived their monotheistic ideas from Judaism. Some of the early converts of Mohammed as, Zayd (his favorite slave), Omayah, or Umaijah (a popular poet), and Waraka (a cousin of Chadijah and a student of the Holy Scriptures of the Jews and Christians) belonged to this sect, and even Mohammed acknowledged him self at first a Hanyf.1 Waraka, it is said, believed in him, as long as he was a Hanyf, but then forsook him, and died a Chris tian or a Jew.2
Mohammed consolidated and energized this reform-movement, and gave it a world-wide significance, under the new name of Isldm, i. e. resignation to God ; whence Moslem (or Muslim), one who resigns himself to God.
§ 42. Life and Character of Mohammed.
Mohammed, an unschooled, self-taught, semi-barbarous son of nature, of noble birth, handsome person, imaginative, energetic, brave, the ideal of a Bedouin chief, was destined to become the political and religious reformer, the poet, prophet, priest, and king of Arabia.
He was born about A. D. 570 at Mecca, the only child of a
1 Sprenger I. 45: "Die bisher unbekannt gebliebenen Hanyf en waren die Vor- Idufer des Mohammad. Er nennt sich selbst einen Hanyf, und wdhrend der ersten Periode seines Lehramtes hat er wenig anderes gethan, als ihre Lehre bestatiyt."
2 According to Sprenger, I. 91 sqq., he died a Christian ; but Deutsch, /. c., p. 77, says : " Whatever Waraka was originally, he certainly lived and died a Jew." He infers this from the fact that when asked by Chadijah for his opinion concerning Mohammed's revelations, he cried out : " Koddus ! Koddus ! (i. e., Kadosh, Holy). Verily this is the Namus (i. e., vfyzof, Law) which came to Moses. He will be the prophet of his people."