“As for their victories and their battles, verily their cavalry reached Africa and the uttermost parts of Khurásán and crossed the Oxus.”

Muḥammad's task was no easy one, and for the first eight or ten years of his mission, in fact till his flight (hijra) from Character of the Arabs. Mecca to Madína in A.D. 622—the epoch whence to this day his followers date—must have appeared hopeless save to such as were possessed by a faith which neither recognised impossibility nor admitted despair. It was not only that the Arabs, especially the Bedouin of the desert, did not wish to abandon their old gods and their ancient customs; they definitely disliked the pious ideals of Islám, disbelieved in its threats and promises of pains and pleasures beyond the grave, and intensely resented the discip­line to which it would subject them. The genuine Arab of the desert is and remains at heart a sceptic and a materialist; his hard, clear, keen, but somewhat narrow intelligence, ever alert in its own domain, was neither curious nor credulous in respect to immaterial and supra-sensual things; his egotistical and self-reliant nature found no place and felt no need for a God who, if powerful to protect, was exacting of service and self-denial. For the rest, Alláh ta'álá, the Supreme God preached by Muḥammad, was no new discovery of Islám, and if He received from the old Pagan Arabs less attention and poorer offerings than the minor deities, it was because the latter, being in a sense the property of the tribe, might fairly be expected to concern themselves more diligently about its affairs. Yet even to them scant reverence was paid, unless matters went as their worshippers desired. “À la moindre occasion,” says Dozy, “on se fâchait contre les dieux, on leur disait comme il faut leurs vérités et on les outrageait.” Oracles which failed to give the desired reply were insulted; idols which did not accept the sacrifices offered to them in a becoming manner were abused and pelted with stones; gods were deposed and improvised on the smallest provocation. Yet all this did not dispose the Arabs to accept a new and exacting religion. The old gods, if ineffectual, were at least intimate and inoffensive, and if they gave little, they expected little in return. Islám, moreover, was uncompromising in its attitude towards them; they and their followers—even those who lived before the Light came—were in hell-fire, and no favourite fetish was suffered to endure for a moment by the iconoclastic zeal of the new faith. More than this, as Dr. Goldziher has well shown in the first chapter of his luminous and erudite Muhammedanische Studien, wherein, under the title “Dín and Muruwwa,” he contrasts the ideals of the Jáhiliyya, or pagan times, with those of Islám, these ideals were in many respects incompatible, and even diametri­cally opposed. Personal courage, unstinted generosity, lavish hos­pitality, unswerving loyalty to kinsmen, ruthlessness in avenging any wrong or insult offered to one's self or one's relations or tribesmen: these were the cardinal virtues of the old pagan Arab; while resignation, patience, subordination of personal and tribal interests to the demands of a common faith, un­worldliness, avoidance of ostentation and boastfulness, and many other things enjoined by Islám were merely calculated to arouse his derision and contempt.

To make the contrast clearer, let us compare the spirit revealed by the two following passages, of which the first is Ideals of the Jáhiliyya and of Islám contrasted. taken (v. 178) from the second súra of the Qur'án (entitled “the Cow”), while the second is a poem ascribed to the old robber-minstrel Ta'abbaṭa Sharr^an, a name suggestive enough, for it signifies “he took an armful of wickedness.”

The first runs as follows:—

“Righteousness is not that ye turn your faces to the East and to the West, but righteousness is this: whosoever believeth in God, Qur'án, ii, 178. and the Last Day, and the Angels, and the Book, and the Prophets; and whoso, for the love of God, giveth of his wealth unto his kindred, and unto orphans, and the poor, and the traveller, and to those who crave an alms, and for the release of the captives; and, whoso observeth prayer and giveth in charity; and those who, when they have covenanted, fulfil their covenant; and who are patient in adversity and hardship, and in times of violence. These are the righteous and they that fear the Lord!”

*

The second is sometimes considered to be a forgery made by that clever but not very scrupulous scholar Khalaf al- The qaṣída of Ta'abbaṭa Sharran. Aḥmar; but the late Professor Robertson Smith held, as it seems to me with good reason, that it breathes throughout so essentially pagan a spirit that it can scarcely be regarded as a fabrication; or, if it be such, it is so artfully devised as to sum up, as it were, the whole spirit of the old pagan Arabs.* The poem celebrates the vengeance exacted by the singer from the tribe of Hudhayl for the murder of his uncle, with a description of whose virtues it opens:—

“Verily in the ravine below Sal'a lies a murdered man whose blood
is not suffered to rest unavenged.
He left and bequeathed the burden [of vengeance] to me, and
blithely did I take up the burden for him.
And in quest of the blood-revenge, on my part, is a sister's son, a
swordsman whose harness is not loosened,
A stealthy tracker who sweats venom, tracking like the rustling
viper, spitting poison.

Grievous and crushing were the tidings that reached us, waxing
great till the greatest seemed small beside them!
Fate hath robbed us (and she was ever faithless) of one hard of
approach whose client was never abased!
A sun-beam in the winter-weather, until, when the Dog-star blazed,
he was a coolness and a shadow;
Lean of the sides, but not from want, open-handed, wise and
disdainful;
Journeying with prudence, so that, when he halted, prudence
halted where he halted;
The rushing rain of the rain-cloud when he would confer benefits,
and, when he sprang to the fray, a conquering lion;
Long-bearded in the tribe, swarthy, ample-skirted; and, when on
the war-path, a slim hyæna-wolf.
And he had two tastes, honey and colocynth, of which two tastes
every one had tasted.
He would ride through the ‘Terror’ [i.e., the Desert] alone, none
bearing him company save his notched sword-blade of Yemen.

A band of brave fellows travelling through the noon-day glare and
then on through the night, until, when the morning mists were
dispelled, they alighted;
Each keen warrior girt with a keen blade, flashing like the light-
ning when unsheathed.
So we exacted from them the blood-revenge, and of the two
factions there escaped not save the fewest.
They were sipping breaths of sleep, and when they dozed I smote
them with consternation and they were scattered.

And if Hudhayl broke his sword-blade, many a sword-blade of
Hudhayl did he break!
And many a time did he make them kneel down in a jagged
kneeling-place, whereon the feet were torn!
And many a time did he surprise them at morning in their shelter,
whereby there was plundering and looting when the killing
was done!

Hudhayl hath been roasted by me, a gallant warrior who wearieth
not of evil till they weary,
Who giveth his spear its first drink, so that, when it hath drunk its
first draught, it hath thereafter its second draught.
Wine hath become lawful to me when it was unlawful; and by
what labour did it scarce become lawful!
Give me to drink, then, O Sawád son of 'Amr, for verily my body
hath waxed lean since my uncle's death!

The hyæna laughs over the slain of Hudhayl, and thou may'st see
the wolf baring his gleaming teeth upon them,
And the birds of prey awake gorged in the morning, trampling
upon them, unable to fly!”

“Honour and revenge,” in short, as Muir well says, were the keynotes of the pagan Arab's ideal muruwwa (“manli­ness” or “virtue”); to be free, brave, generous; to return good for good and evil for evil with liberal measure; to hold equally dear wine, women, and war; to love life and not fear death; to be independent, self-reliant, boastful, and predatory; above all, to stand by one's kinsmen, right or wrong, and to hold the blood-tie above all other obligations, such were the ideals of the old pagan Arabs, as they are still of the Bedouin, who are Muslims in little else than the name. Alike typical and touching was the attitude of Muḥammad's uncle Abú Ṭálib towards his nephew. “O my nephew,” he said, in reply to the Prophet's earnest attempts to convert him to Islám, “I cannot forsake the faith of my fathers and what they held, but, by Alláh! naught shall be suffered to befall thee whereby thou may'st be vexed so long as I remain alive!”

*