FELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Mohammed
to read what appears in the Koran as Surah xcvi. 1-5, he began to preach.
His earliest labors were in his family and among his intimates. Hadijah was his first convert, Ali and Zaid, his adopted children, were next, and then his friend Abu Bekr. Three years of preaching gained him about fifty followers, and then (612) he began to teach in public, using a house 2. Second opposite the Kaaba. His points were Period, three: (1) the oneness and absoluteness of Allah who (2) revealed his will to men (3) by chosen men who were prophets (cf. the beginning of Surah xcvi.). By this time he had abandoned idolatry in consequence of his first principle. Part of the period following the beginning of his work was marked by intervals of depression during which Hadijah alone could comfort him. His hearers demanded credentials of his mission in the shape of miracles. But he disclaimed the power to produce these: his claim was that his witness; was his preaching, in which he resembled his predecessors Adam, Abraham, Moses, David, and Jesus; and that since he was sent to preach, his hearers would reject him at their peril. When his audience became indifferent, he used invective, and this in turn evoked insult and persecution, so that his followers fled to Abyssinia. At this time he compromised with idolatry, having been misled, as he claimed, by Satan. The Meccans urged that if one revelation was Satanic, others might be, to which Mohammed could reply only by passionate oratory. Avoided by the Meccans, he began to preach to strangers visiting Mecca, among them some from Yathrib (soon to be known as Medinat al-Nabi, " City of the Prophet," or simply as Medina), who carried his story home and sent others and still more to hear him. The Medinans urged him to leave Mecca and adopt their city as his home, promising him protection there. The rancorous opposition of Meccans continuing and extending even to the point of banning him and his supporters, he exiled himself, and in the Hejira, " Flight," to Medina he took the step which made the Mohammedan era, June 16, 622 a.d. This was the turning-point in his career, the beginning of success.
Mohammedanism owes much to the differences between Mecca (q.v.) and Medina. The former, gathered about the Kaaba (q.v.), in which were collected about the Black Stone more than 300 idols representative of the gods of the tribes, 3. The made trade of religion then as now, Medina and was the seat of such fanaticism as Period, perhaps only Arabs could show. Mohammed's propaganda seemed to strike at the very foundations of the city's trade and preeminence, and its present prestige and future prospects seemed menaced when Mohammed attacked idolatry. Medina, 250 miles north, was a center of traffic, open therefore to the civilizing influences of the empires of Rome and Persia, consequently more cosmopolitan and tolerant. Idolatry was already under suspicion, and there was consequently an opening for the prophet's resolute preaching. Mohammed's repute for wisdom grew with the frequency with which he was called upon to act as
arbiter; his decisions he claimed not as his own but as the dictates of Allah, and his position soon came to be practically that of city judge and dictator. Ordinances for practise were soon formulated by the prophet; prayer was directed toward Mecca (not Jerusalem, which, in the endeavor to conciliate the Jews and gain their support, he had formerly adopted), the fast of Tisri was changed for that of Ramadan. The five fundamentals of Islam (see below, IV.) were conceived and formulated at Medina. Most important of all, citizenship was made dependent not on family but on faith, preparing the way for a united Arabia and a world religion. For the triumph of the faith the bonds of kinship had to yield if they stood in its way — Mohammed did not blanch at fratricidal war. The idolater, even though a brother, was doomed unless he gave up this practise, and to the believer belonged the idolater's goods. In this last was manifested Mohammed's shrewdness, making capital of, the Arab's lust for plunder. Mecca was idolatrous,, therefore its caravans were fair booty. When the Meccans retaliated, they were defeated by the appalling fury of the Moslems' attack. Thus the battle of Bedr (Jan. 13, 624) was the result of a raid in which Mohammed hoped to capture a rich Meccan caravan, but instead he found himself confronted by an unencumbered armed force of twice his own strength, over whom he won a decisive victory. Yet the Medina period was not one of unvarying success. Mohammed lost heavily in the battle of Ohod (Jan. 625), when the Koraish defeated the Moslems, and in some minor affairs his followers lost. This period was marked also by many assassinations instigated or sanctioned by the leader and by wholesale slaughter of those opposed to him or whose wealth he coveted for his followers, including that of the Jews. These latter looked with scorn upon Mohammed's claim that he was reinstating the religion of Abraham, while in retaliation for treachery he had the men of a whole tribe, 800 in number, slaughtered in cold blood and their women and children sold into slavery, while the proceeds were divided among his followers. In self-interest Arabs flocked to him, and he was soon ready to march upon Mecca, which he had already fixed upon as the center of the faith. In thus deciding, he was doubtless influenced by his kinship with the Koraish, also doubtless by the fact that in this method he was following the lines of least resistance and would eventually conciliate the Meccans.
The start for Mecca was made early in Jan., 630. The city fell easily, doubtless because of an arrangement with some inside who favored Mohammed, and in part because his force was too great to be resisted. A general amnesty was proclaimed from which ten persons were excluded,
4. Final though of these, through the interces- Period. sion of persons in Mohammed's own circle, only four were put to death. The Kaaba was swept of all idols except the Black Stone. The Koraish were conciliated and the traditional privileges of the city as a religious center were retained. The Medinans, to whose fidelity so much was due, were disappointed, but were reconciled by Mohammed's impassioned appeals to their
Mohammed