$ 42. LIFE AND CHARACTER OF MOHAMMED. 169
of a universal religion, which was to absorb the other religions, and to be propagated by violence. It is diflieult to draw the line in sueh a character between honest zeal and selfish ambition, the fear of God and the love of power and glory.
He despised a throne and a diadem, lived with his wives in a row of low and homely eottages of unbaked bricks, and aided them in their household duties; he was strictly temperate in eat ing and drinking, his chief diet being dates and water; he was not ashamed to milk his goats, to mend his clothes and to cobble his shoes; his personal property at his death amounted to some confiscated lands, fourteen or fifteen slaves, a few camels and mules, a hundred sheep, and a rooster. This simplicity of a Bedouin Sheikh of the desert contrasts most favorably with the luxurious style and gorgeous display of Mohammed's successors, the Califs and Sultans, who have dozens of palaces and harems filled with eunuchs and women that know nothing beyond the vanities of dress and etiquette and a little music. lie was easy of access to visitors who approached him with faith and reverence ; patient, generous, and (according to Ayesha) as modest and bashful "as a veiled virgin." But towards his enemies he was cruel and revengeful. He did not shrink from perfidy. He believed in the use of the sword as the best mis sionary, and was utterly unscrupulous as to the means of success. He had great moral, but little physical courage; he braved for thirteen years the taunts and threats of the people, but never exposed himself to danger in battle, although he always accom panied his forces.
Mohammed was a slave of sensual passion. Ayesha, who knew him best in his private character and habits, used to say: "The prophet loved three things, women, perfumes and food; he had his heart's desire of the two first, but not of the last." The mo tives of his excess in polygamy were his sensuality which grew with his years, and his desire for male offspring. His followers excused or justified him by the examples of Abraham, David and Solomon, and by the difficulties of his prophetic office, which
170 FOURTH PERIOD. A.D. 590-1049.
were so great that God gave him a compensation in sexual en joyment, and endowed him with greater capacity than thirty ordinary men. For twenty-four years he had but one wife, his beloved Chadijah, who died in 619, aged sixty-five, but only two months after her death he married a widow named Sawda (April 619), and gradually increased his harem, especially during the last two years of his life. When he heard of a pretty woman, says Sprenger, he asked her hand, but was occasionally refused. He had at least fourteen legal wives, and a number of slave con cubines besides. At his death he left nine widows. He claimed special revelations which gave him greater liberty of sexual indul gence than ordinary Moslems (who are restricted to four wives), and exempted him from the prohibition of marrying near rela tives.1 He married by divine command, as he alleged, Zeynab, the wife of Zayd, his adopted son and bosom-friend. His wives were all widows except Ayesha. One of them was a beautiful and rich Jewess ; she was despised by her sisters, who sneeringly said: " Pshaw, a Jewess!" He told her to reply: "Aaron is my father and Moses my uncle!" Ayesha, the daughter of Abu Bakr, was his especial favorite. He married her when she was a girl of nine years, and he fifty-three years old. She brought her doll-babies with her, and amused and charmed the prophet by her playfulness, vivacity and wit. She could read, had a copy of the Koran, and knew more about theology, genealogy and poetry than all the other widows of Mohammed. He announced that she would-be his wife also in Paradise. Yet she was not free from suspicion of unfaithfulness until he received a revela-
1 He speaks freely of this subject in the Koran, Sur. 4, and 33. In the latter (Rodman's transl., p. 568) this scandalous passage occurs: "O Prophet! we allow thee thy wives whom thou hast dowered, and the slaves whom thy right hand possesseth out of the booty which God hath granted thee, and the daugh ters of thy uncle, and of thy paternal and maternal aunts who fled with thee to Medina, and any believing woman who hath given herself up to the Prophet, if the Prophet desired to wed her, a privilege for thee above the rest of the faithfill." Afterwards in the same Sura (p. 569) he says : " Ye must not trouble the Apostle of God, nor marry his wives after him forever. This would be a grave offence with God."