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Mohammed and the Islam of the Koran
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 November 2011
Extract
It is reckoned that Islam is now professed by from 150 to 200 million people, nearly one-seventh of the population of the globe. For thirteen centuries it has played a great rôle in the history of religion. Its adherents have been found among civilized, half-civilized, and barbarous peoples; its theory and its practice have traversed the whole gamut of religious thought and experience; it has sometimes been associated with the leadership of thought in Western Asia, Egypt, and Europe; and it has maintained its position against the assaults and seductions of neighboring faiths. It presents an interesting and perplexing problem to students of religion, of anthropology and psychology, and of the general history of civilization. Recent events have raised afresh the question of its achievements in the past and its possibilities for the future, and writers of various points of view and various degrees of knowledge and insight have discussed its genesis and its essential nature and the character of its founder. It is the object of this article to state some of the questions thus raised and to examine briefly some of the answers that have been offered.
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- Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1912
References
1 A list of some useful works on Mohammed and Islam is given at the end of this article.
2 Ibn Isḥaq, the earliest biographer, died in the year 768; his work is lost, but a great part of it is preserved in a compilation by Ibn Hisham, who died in 834. Ibn Sa‘d, the secretary of Al-Waqidi, died in 845; his biography is presumably based on the materials left by his famous master.
3 This date may be regarded as fairly well fixed.
4 Poetry and poets were, however, highly regarded, especially by the desert tribes, among whom were not a few men of poetical genius.
5 And he, in his turn, hated the poets (26 224 f.).
6 His insistence on this point constituted an appeal to the national feeling of his audience.
7 One of these slaves was the Abessinian black, Bilal, who was afterwards the first muezzin; he was bought and freed by Abu Bekr in Mecca.
8 There is a vague reference to a murderous plot in the Koran (8 29).
9 About this time also (619) death deprived him of two stanch friends, his wife and his uncle Abu Talib.
10 This is the date of the hijra (hejĭra), the Mohammedan chronological epoch.
11 They must have heard much of prophets from their Jewish neighbors, perhaps a prediction of an expected prophet who would do great things; and here was a prophet of their own nation!
12 These are the “hypocrites” so vehemently denounced in the Koran: they probably regarded themselves as patriots.
13 See Suras 59 and 33.
14 Two of his uncles took a different attitude: Abbas long stood aloof from him, and Abu Lahab was his bitter enemy.
15 A prophet, identifying his opinion with the will of God, must necessarily be implacable toward religious opponents; compare Ezekiel's anathema against Zedekiah (Ezek. 17 11 ff.), whom he regarded as an enemy of Yahweh, and early Christian anathemas against heretics.
16 This incident, referred to very simply by Mohammed, is enormously expanded in the tradition (Weil's translation of Ibn Isḥaq, pp. 200 ff.).
17 If Allah had been meant, the statement would have indicated him clearly.
18 He married Sauda a few months after Khadijah's death, and took the Coptic maid Mary as concubine about two years before his own death.
19 One of his sons was named Abd Menāf, “servant of Menāf,” a minor Koreish god. This was before he began to preach, at a time when he worshipped the local deities.
20 An instance of a less worthy regard for his dignity as ruler and great man is the injunction to his followers (49 2 ff.) not to talk familiarly with him or loudly in his presence; those who lower their voices, it is said, will hiive great reward.
21 This is the only case in which a follower of Mohammed is mentioned by name in the Koran.
22 He was not guilty of adultery and murder like David in the affair with Bathsheba, but in other respects his offence was more heinous than that of the Hebrew king.
23 He asserted that the Jews had corrupted their scriptures (3 64 f.).
24 Ibn Isḥaq, pp. 688 ff., Germ. tr., pp. 107 ff. It is here said that the number of men killed in cold blood was, according to one report, between six and seven hundred, or, according to another report, between eight and nine hundred.
25 His adopted son was Zeid son of Haritha.
26 There is here, perhaps, an allusion to Hobal, the patron deity of Mecca. This deity is not mentioned by name in the Koran, but the Meccans would naturally think of him when they heard the expression quoted in the text; Allah, “the god,” was for them their special god.
27 Allah's sway embraces everything, from the courses of the heavenly bodies and of empires to the details of Mohammed's management of his wives. He combines the functions of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and the protecting deities of the Roman household.
28 For Mohammed a trinitarian conception of the deity was unthinkable, as, indeed, no Semitic people has ever adopted such a conception. His understanding was that the Christian Trinity consisted of God, Jesus, and the mother of Jesus (5 116).
29 53 19; 16 59 ff.
30 2 32; but in 18 48 he is said to be one of the jinn—a revised opinion, perhaps, to free the angelic host from so undesirable a member.
31 88 17 ff.; 55; 30 36 34 ff.; 27 60 ff.; 13 2 ff., 13 ff.
32 He is here called Dhu al-qarnein, “he of the two horns,” a name probably derived from the representations of Alexander on coins on which he is depicted with horns as the symbol of divinity.
33 2 32 ff.; 4 117 ff.; 7 10 ff.; 38 71 ff.
34 That is, he was of the class of gods, and thus above a human being.
35 A similar liberty is accorded the Evil Power in the New Testament (2 Thess. 2 9 ff.; Rev. 20 7 ff.), and is assumed in the Avesta and the Bundahish.
36 46 28 ff.; 72 1–14; cf. Jas. 2 19; 1 Pet. 3 19.
37 The rabbinical descriptions of the Tora as the copy of a heavenly book are, doubtless, figurative representations of the eternal significance of the national Law.
38 It is doubtful whether Mohammed had any definite knowledge of Mazdeanism; its dual scheme is not mentioned in the Koran, and would naturally be incomprehensible or absurd to a strictly monocratic Semitic prophet.
39 Josephus, Antiq. 1 7.
40 Wellhausen (Reste arabischen Heidentumes, pp. 207 f.) thinks it is employed simply in the sense of “Christian”; but though it includes Christians, it is doubtful whether it did not also include any monotheists.
41 Perhaps because it was a foreign (Jewish) title of the Deity. It was also South Arabian.
42 See the excellent injunction in 49 9–12, and cf. 3 97 (the bond of faith is stronger than the bond of blood).
43 This principle is illustrated in the story of Moses' journey (18 59 ff.). The prophet who is his guide does things that seem to Moses to be cruel, but they are shown to be wise and kind.
44 2 192–199, 22 25 ff., 37 ff.
45 The corresponding Hebrew word, kohen, means “priest.” The offices of soothsayer and priest go back to the same original, the magician.
46 The length of the fast was, perhaps, suggested by that of the Christian Lent. In modern times the smoking of tobacco has been included in the prohibitory rule. It is said that there is more quarrelling in Ramadan than in any other month of the year.
47 The civil code, like that of the Old Testament, recognizes the lex talionis (2 173 ff.).
48 With them are included the Sabians, an obscure Christian sect.
49 Here the Magians also are included. Mohammed seems to have known nothing of Zoroastrianism beyond the fact that it was not idolatrous.
50 Mohammed, as is noted above, often confesses that he is a sinner, but the nature of his sin is not stated.
51 Eve is included in the history, but merely as the companion of Adam; she is not the first transgressor.
52 The statement that the Lord drew forth their posterity from the loins of the sons of Adam (7 171) is simply an expression of descent; so in Heb. 7 5, 10.
53 The vanity of earthly things is insisted on in 57 19, 47 38, 16 78.
54 Apparently, believers pass immediately at death into paradise (3 152). And there are suggestions of something better than sensual pleasures, a general happy peace. But of spiritual delights nothing is said.
55 The idea of bodily resurrection was taken by Mohammed from the Jews and the Christians.
56 See suras 75–101; 39 68 ff.; 3 193.
57 The huris (56 22 ff., 34 f.).
58 In 6 121 the eating of forbidden food is described as “iniquity.” In 9 112 ff. the requirements are: to fight for Allah's cause, to fast, bow down, and worship, to command what is just and forbid what is evil, and observe the ordinances of Allah.
59 Apostates may repent, and be forgiven, provided they do not go on in unbelief (3 79 ff.).
60 Sura 2 256; 9 81.
61 The verb is sometimes jahad, “work earnestly” for the cause, sometimes qatal, “kill”; the two are here often synonyms. The noun jihād is practically “sacred war.”
62 This term has come into English in the French form marabout.
63 It is noteworthy that these unitarian Berbers, affected by the culture of Moslem Spain, became patrons of learning, especially of philosophy. It must be added, in justice to the Berbers, that in the fourteenth century they produced Ibn Ḫaldun, the greatest of the Moslem historians.
64 The separate existence of the soul as an entity is assumed in the Koran, but there is no discussion or explanation of its nature and powers, or of its relation to the body.