Almohads

“ As before, the sect grew into an army, and the army grew into an empire. The new dynasty were called Almohades from Al Mehdi, and by his appointment a certain Abdelmumen was elected Caliph and Commander of the Faithful. Under his vigorous guidance the new kingdom rapidly grew, till the Almohades obtained quite the upper hand in Africa, and in 1146 they too passed into Spain. Under Abdelmumen and his successors, Joseph and Jacob Almansor, the Almohades entirely supplanted the Almoravides, and became more formidable foes than they had been to the rising Christian powers. ”

“ What has happened is no less than the rebirth of Islam. We all know from our school books that Islam began with Mohammed in Mecca, that under his immediate successors it conquered the greater part of the civilized world, and that there was developed within the century a civilization without a contemporary rival. We may further remember that the original Arab rulers were supplanted by Persians, Moors, and Turks, and that the civilization was transformed and then began to decline. ”

“ It was the time when the Almohades, a Berber tribe of Mount Atlas, had acquired the control of Moslem Spain, and removed the seat of government from Cordova to Morocco. The Sultan Abdelmuman governed Spain through his Walis and Alcaydes; and his son, Sidi Abu Said, was made Wali of Granada. He governed in his father’s name with royal state and splendor, and with despotic sway. Being a stranger in the country, and a Moor by birth, he sought to strengthen himself by drawing round him popular persons of the Arab race ”

“ Men trained in European ideas of religion have always found a difficulty in understanding the fascination which the Muslim faith has for so many minds in the East. ‘There is no god but God, and Moḥammad is His Prophet.’ There is nothing in this, they say, to move the heart. Yet this creed has stirred an enthusiasm that has never been surpassed. Islám has had its martyrs, its self-tormentors, its recluses, who have renounced all that life offered and have accepted death with a smile for the sake of the faith that was in them. ”

“ You have climbed the Ḥijáz—the ‘barrier’—and are come to the steppes of the Nejd—the ‘highland.’ In the valleys of this barrier-land are the Holy Cities, Mekka and Medina. Here is the birthplace of Islám: the Arab tribes of the Ḥijáz and the Nejd were the first disciples of Moḥammad.
One may tell much of a people’s character from its [Pg xiii] home. Truism as it seems, there is yet a meaning in the saying that the Arabs are peculiarly the people of Arabia. Those who have travelled in this wonderful land tell us of the quickening influence of the air and scene of the desert. ”

“ So Abdullah took the savoury gum and chewed it, and Almasta told him the tale which here follows.
'There is in the north, beyond Persia, a great and prosperous kingdom, lying between two seas, and resembling paradise for its wonderful beauty. All the hills are covered with trees of every description in which innumerable birds make their nests, all of a beautiful plumage and good for man to eat. ”

“ When Moḥammad turned abroad the current of Arab life, he changed the character of the people. The mixture with foreign nations, and the quiet town-life that succeeded to the tumult of conquest, gradually effaced many of the leading ideas of the old Arab nature, and the remnant that still dwell in the land of their fathers have lost much of that nobleness of character which in their ancestors covered a multitude of sins. ”

“ Then he told of the revenge taken by the Turkish garrison for the revolt of Mecca, how a shell fell but four feet from the very house of Allah, how the rug that covered the Sacred Black Stone was fired, the despair of the pious as they saw it and the killing of worshippers every day within the sacred precincts until worship was perforce discontinued. No westerner can realize the thrill of horror such sacrilege must produce in the breast of every true Muslim. Islam had not risen when the Turks, at the dictation of their infidel masters, had preached the Holy War. ”

“ I have endeavoured to explain the ascendency of the Omeyyad house; and then, briefly showing how the Abbasside dynasty rose upon its ruins, my purpose being ended, I close the book. Thereafter the history of Islam spreads itself out into the history of the world.
The materials for the work will be understood by the reader as he goes along. They are purely Arabian. Christian authorities there are absolutely none to speak of. We depend entirely upon Mahometan tradition; and that in a form very different from what we have been accustomed to in the Life of Mahomet. ”

“ As a peace-maker, prophet, or messiah, he would be equally welcome in a city torn asunder by party jealousies.
When the time of pilgrimage again came round, Moḥammad waited at the appointed place in a secluded glen, and there met him men from the two pagan tribes of [Pg lv] Yethrib—the clans of Khazraj and Aws—ten from one and two from the other. They told him of the willingness of their people to embrace Islám, and their hope to make ready the city for his welcome. They plighted their faith with him in these words: ‘We will not worship save one God ”

“ Moḥammad not only promulgated a religion; he laid down a complete social system, containing minute regulations for a man’s conduct in all circumstances of life, with due rewards or penalties according to his fulfilment of these rules. As a religion Islám is great: it has taught men to worship one God with a pure worship who formerly worshipped many gods impurely. ”

“ Even in the eyes of the most implacable enemies of the Ommeyade dynasty, a sacred character invested the Western metropolis as the seat of one of the most famous shrines of Islam. Far more intense was the feeling of reverence in the minds of the devoted adherents of that dynasty. There was the throne of the Commander of the Faithful, in whose person the pious believer recognized not only the representative of a line of princes whose genius had added vast provinces to the Moslem empire, but also the venerated successor of the Arabian Prophet. ”

“ It was reserved for Moḥammad to formulate the faith of the Ḥaneefs in the dogmas of Islám. For the leader of these few ‘skeptics’ was Zeyd ibn ́Amr, to whom Moḥammad often resorted, and another, Waraḳah, was the cousin of the Prophet and his near neighbour: and thus the Ḥaneefs were the forerunners of the man who was to change the destinies of the Arabs.
We can no longer see the true Arab as he was in ‘the Time of Ignorance,’ and we cannot but regret our loss; for the Pagan Arab is a noble type of man, though there be nobler. ”

“ In India, there are a number of enlightened Muhammadans, ornaments to native society, useful servants of the State, men who show a laudable zeal in all social reforms, so far as is consistent with a reputation for orthodoxy. Their number is far too few, and they do not, in many cases, represent orthodox Islám, nor do I believe their counterpart would be found amongst the 'Ulamá of a Muslim State. The fact is that the wave of scepticism which has passed over Europe has not left the East untouched. ”

“ A prophet for the Arabs must fulfil two conditions if he will bring with his good tidings the power of making them accepted: he must spring from the traditional centre of Arabian religion, and he must come of a noble family of pure Arab blood. Moḥammad fulfilled both. His family was that branch of the Ḳureysh which had raised Mekka to the dignity of the undisputed metropolis of Arabia, and which, though impoverished, still held the chief offices of the sacred territory. Moḥammad’s grandfather was the virtual chief of Mekka ”

“ The original faith of Moḥammad has not gained by its development in foreign lands and alien minds, and perhaps the best we can hope for modern Islám is that it may try the experiment of retrogression, or rather seek to regain the simplicity of the old form without losing the advantages (if there be any) which it has acquired from contact with Western civilisation.
Islám is unfortunately a social system as well as a religion; and herein lies the great difficulty of fairly estimating its good and its bad influence on the world. ”

“ He was soon after assassinated, [1] and the spirit and courage of his party vanished with the {47} occurrence of that event. The sons of Ali made efforts to reanimate the ardour of his partisans, but in vain.
Thus, in the midst of broils, revolts, and civil wars, the Ommiades still remained in possession of the Caliphate of Damascus. [2] It was during the reign of one of these princes, Valid the First, that the Arabian conquests extended in the East to the banks of the Ganges, and in the West to the shores of the Atlantic. ”

“ Several historians, who speak of Mohammed under the title of Mohammed Alhamar, assure us that he commenced his career as a simple shepherd, and that, having afterward borne arms, he aspired to the attainment of royal power in consequence of his martial exploits. Such an incident is not extraordinary among the Arabs, where all who are not descended either from the family of the Prophet or from the royal race, possessing none of the privileges of birth, are esteemed solely according to their personal merits. ”

“ But what they want in real claims they generally make up for in the eloquence and loudness and perseverance with which they ask for alms. There is no hour of the day, and no day of the week, that does not, according to them, seem to afford a special reason why people should at that particular time be charitable. It would seem to be held by them as being almost beyond question, that a mendicant who demands alms on the night of Friday is entitled to receive relief. A still more cogent reason is the recurrence of any feast-day, such as that of the birth of Mahomed, or of Ali, or of Hussein. ”

“ In a desperate conflict on the banks of the Euphrates, nearly al the male descendants of the prophet were slain [see MAHOMETAN CONQUEST &c.: A. D. 680] , and almost the entire Mohammedan peoples, from India to Spain, thenceforward became Sunnees—that is, they embraced belief in the succession of the line of the house of Moawiyeh, called the Ommiades. But there was an exception to this uniformity of belief. The Persians, as has been seen, were a people deeply given to religious beliefs and mystical speculations to the point of fanaticism. ”

“ Why—Algiers means——"
"Paradise to me!"
"But a paradise with the doors locked and bolted. You see—over there everything is so different from Paris. There is the veil—the haremlik..."
"Sidi Mahmoud is westernized."
"But he is a just man—so just! He would not wound his countrymen's prejudices. And then there are his other two wives—the wives of his youth, older than I. They are jealous of me. They do not like me. Really, Roger——"
"Love will find a way," he 'said with boyish assurance, "unless, of course, you forbid me to come." ”

“ Faisul, in assisting the oppressed, has only performed one of the first duties of our religion and of the Arab's faith. I say with confidence and pride that the Armenian race and other races in similar plight are regarded by us as partners in weal and woe. We ask God before everything to give us strength to enable us to do them helpful service by which to prove to the world the true feelings of Islam, whose watchword is freedom. ”

“ From thence the tide of Moslem conquest had rolled on to the shores of the Atlantic, so that all Almagreb, or Western Africa, had submitted to the standard of the Prophet, with the exception of a portion of Tingitania, lying along the straits,—being the province held by the Goths of Spain, and commanded by Count Julian. The Arab invaders were a hundred thousand strong, most of them [Pg 46] veteran troops, seasoned in warfare and accustomed to victory. They were led by an old Arab general, Muza ben Nosier, to whom was confided the government of Almagreb,—most of which he had himself conquered. ”

“ Within a century of Mohammad's flight from Mecca, the Moslem empire stretched from Kashgar and Mooltan to Morocco and the Pyrenees, and the Arab man of letters was exposed to the corrupting propinquity of men of very different races. Only a poet of Ignorance, that is, one who died before the preaching of Islam, or a Mokhadram, that is, who was contemporary with it, was looked upon as of paramount and unquestionable authority. ”

“ To say that Moḥammad, or any other Arab, was sensual in a higher degree than an ordinary European is simply to enounce a well-worn axiom: the passions of the men of the sunland are not as those of the chill north. But to say that Moḥammad was a voluptuary is false. The simple austerity of his daily life, to the very last, his hard mat for sleeping on, his plain food, his self-imposed menial work, point him out as an ascetic rather than a voluptuary in most senses of the word. ”

“ In all these reasons the religion itself is left out of the question. Decidedly Islám itself was the main cause of its triumph. By some strange intuition Moḥammad succeeded in finding the one form of Monotheism that has ever commended itself to any wide section of the Eastern world. It was only a remnant of the Jews that learned to worship the one God of the prophets after the hard lessons of the Captivity. Christianity has never gained a hold upon the East. ”

“ The Mahomedans have a horror, either instinctive or instilled, of all these people, whom they stigmatise as pagans, and the latter, in their turn, loath the very name of Islamism, a name which to them means their own subjection and enslavement. ”