Mohammed

or Mahomet (570-632), the founder of Mohammedanism. He was born at Mecca. His father was a man in reduced circumstances, but he belonged to the Koreish, a tribe in charge of the sacred Caaba. There is a tradition to the effect that the father was a handsome man, and that no less than ten score virgins died of broken hearts on the occasion when he took a bride. Mohammed was an only child. The father died before he saw his boy. The mother died when the lad was six; his grandfather when he was eight. He was brought up by an uncle. The Koreish were not prevented by their religious duties from engaging in commerce. Mecca was then, as now, a place of holy pilgrimage and the seat of an annual festival and fair. Mohammed accompanied the caravans of his relatives on more than one occasion. He became acquainted with both Jews and Christians in what were, to the Arabs, remote parts of the world. He engaged particularly in the service of a wealthy widow, whom later he married.

The Arabs were idolaters, worshipers of many gods. They were of blood akin to the Israelites. There were religious reformers, who preached the need of a purer form of religion. Mohammed became impressed by their teaching. He retired frequently to solitary places to pray and commune. He appears to have been subject to a sort of religious frenzy, bordering on fits. Upon coming out of one of these, he declared that he had received a divine revelation to reform the faith of his people and to bring them to a belief in the one only God. The first convert was naturally his wife, next a faithful servant, and later a nephew. As soon as his teaching began to attract attention his followers were obliged to meet in secret places in the mountains that surround Mecca, or in houses privately. Persecution arose and many of his adherents fled to Medina.

The merchants of Medina, who came with their caravans to the annual feast and fair, were much more impressed by the preaching of Mohammed than were his fellow citizens. On one occasion twelve of them met with him and professed a belief in his teachings. A year later they returned to the fair. Though still converts in secret their number had increased to seventy. In 622 the opposition to Mohammed was so bitter in his native city, and the merchants of Medina were so pressing in their invitation to Mohammed to remove to their city, that the prophet and his Mecca followers migrated to Medina. This is known in Mohammedanism as The Hegira, or The Flight. It is the date from which Mohammedan history is reckoned. The Mohammedan year began 622 years after ours, and it is ten days shorter. The new year beginning 1328 fell on our January 13, 1910. Their next new year, beginning the Mohammedan year 1329, falls on our January 2, 1911.

Mohammed was at the time of the Hegira merely a religious preacher or exhorter. In Medina, the number of his followers increased rapidly until, by virtue of being at the head of the new church, he found himself at the head practically of a state. He then enunciated the doctrine, that membership in the church was superior to all earthly ties. The tie between Moslem and Moslem was stronger than that between father and son. The next step was a natural one. Mohammed became a worldly leader. He led a force of his Medina friends to attack the Assyrian caravan of his former friends and neighbors, the merchants of Mecca. Rich booty was the reward. A thirst for plunder brought tribe after tribe to his support. The conversion of a tribe was arranged by diplomacy with the native sheik rather than by preaching to the masses. Local strongholds in various directions were stormed one after another. An army of 10,000 men intimidated Mecca to a peaceful surrender.

Mohammed had the shrewdness to announce that Islam, as he called his new religion, was but a purification of the faith of various religions held by the Arabs. He accepted the books of Moses, and pleaded for a return to the religion of Abraham and of Ishmael. He took possession of the Caaba at Mecca--the sacred stone to which all paid reverence--and made it, if we may so speak, the cornerstone of the Mohammedan religion, enjoining a pilgrimage thither at least once in the life of every Moslem. He went so far even as to exclude from its worship Arabs who did not join the reformed faith.

During its founder's life the Moslem faith was extended to the remotest parts of Arabia. Syria was wrested from the Roman Empire. Mohammed died in 632. During his short life he was a successful merchant, a devotee to the verge of fanaticism, a great religious teacher, and a successful military leader--the founder of an empire unequaled in extent. His teachings rose to prominence more quickly and have swayed the lives of more persons than those of any character known to history. He is said to have been a little above the middle height, and of commanding features. His diet was frugal. He was passionately fond of perfumes. Although he enjoined single marriage upon others, he himself had nine wives at the time of his death. He is represented variously as a kind and humane man and as a cold, perfidious assassin. It is probable that both estimates are true.