While every impartial student will admit the justice of Ibn Qutayba's claim that no religion has such historical attestations Character of Moslem tradition. as Islam— laysa li-ummat inmina ’l-umami asnád unka-asnádihim276—he must at the same time cordially assent to the observation made by another Muḥammadan: "In nothing do we see pious men more given to falsehood than in Tradition" ( lam nara ’l-ṣáliḥína fí shay’ inakdhaba minhum fi ’l-ḥadíth).277 Of this severe judgment the reader will find ample confirmation in the Second Part of Goldziher's Muhammedanische Studien.278 During the first century of Islam the forging of Traditions became a recognised political and religious weapon, of which all parties availed themselves. Even men of the strictest piety practised this species of fraud ( tadlís), and maintained that the end justified the means. Their point of view is well expressed in the following words which are supposed to have been spoken by the Prophet: "You must compare the sayings attributed to me with the Koran; what agrees therewith is from me, whether I actually said it or no;" and again, " Whatever good saying has been said, I myself have said it."279 As the result of such principles every new doctrine took the form of an Apostolic Ḥadíth; every sect and every system defended itself by an appeal to the authority of Muḥammad. We may see how enormous was the number of false Traditions in circulation from the fact that when Bukhárí (õ 870 a.d.) drew up his collection entitled 'The Genuine' ( al-Ṣaḥíḥ), he limited it to some 7,000, which he picked out of 600,000.
The credibility of Tradition, so far as it concerns the life of the Prophet, cannot be discussed in this place.280 The oldest and best biography, that of Ibn Isḥáq, undoubtedly contains a great deal of fabulous matter, but his narrative appears to be honest and fairly authentic on the whole.
If we accept the traditional chronology, Muḥammad, son of ‘Abdulláh and Ámina, of the tribe of Quraysh, was born at Mecca on the 12th of Rabí‘ al-Awwal, in the Birth of Muḥammad. Year of the Elephant (570-571 a.d.). His descent from Quṣayy is shown by the following table:—
Shortly after his birth he was handed over to a Bedouin nurse—Ḥalíma, a woman of the Banú Sa‘d—so that until he His childhood. was five years old he breathed the pure air and learned to speak the unadulterated language of the desert. One marvellous event which is said to have happened to him at this time may perhaps be founded on fact:—
"He and his foster-brother" (so Ḥalíma relates) "were among the cattle behind our encampment when my son came running to us and cried, 'My brother, the Qurayshite! two men clad Muḥammad and the two angels. in white took him and laid him on his side and cleft his belly; and they were stirring their hands in it.' When my husband and I went out to him we found him standing with his face turned pale, and on our asking, 'What ails thee, child?' he answered, 'Two men wearing white garments came to me and laid me on my side and cleft my belly and groped for something, I know not what.' We brought him back to our tent, and my husband said to me, 'O Ḥalíma, I fear this lad has been smitten ( uṣíba); so take him home to his family before it becomes evident.' When we restored him to his mother she said, 'What has brought thee, nurse? Thou wert so fond of him and anxious that he should stay with thee.' I said, 'God has made him grow up, and I have done my part. I feared that some mischance would befall him, so I brought him back to thee as thou wishest.' 'Thy case is not thus,' said she; 'tell me the truth,' and she gave me no peace until I told her. Then she said, 'Art thou afraid that he is possessed by the Devil?' I said, 'Yes.' 'Nay, by God,' she replied, 'the Devil cannot reach him; my son hath a high destiny.'"281
Other versions of the story are more explicit. The angels, it is said, drew forth Muḥammad's heart, cleansed it, and removed the black clot— i.e., the taint of original sin.282 If these inventions have any basis at all beyond the desire to glorify the future Prophet, we must suppose that they refer to some kind of epileptic fit. At a later period he was subject to such attacks, which, according to the unanimous voice of Tradition, often coincided with the revelations sent down from heaven.
‘Abdulláh had died before the birth of his son, and when, in his sixth year, Muḥammad lost his mother also, the charge of the orphan was undertaken first by his grandfather, the aged ‘Abdu ’l-Muṭṭalib, and then by his uncle, Abú Ṭálib, a poor but honourable man, who nobly fulfilled the duties of a guardian to the last hour of his life. Muḥammad's small patrimony was soon spent, and he was reduced to herding sheep—a despised employment which usually fell to the lot of women or slaves. In his twelfth year he accompanied Abú Ṭálib on a trading expedition to Syria, in the course of which he is said to have encountered a Christian His meeting with the monk Baḥírá. monk called Baḥírá, who discovered the Seal of Prophecy between the boy's shoulders, and hailed him as the promised apostle. Such anticipations deserve no credit whatever. The truth is that until Muḥammad assumed the prophetic rôle he was merely an obscure Qurayshite; and scarcely anything related of him anterior to that event can be deemed historical except his marriage to Khadíja, an elderly widow of considerable fortune, which took place when he was about twenty-five years of age.
During the next fifteen years of his life Muḥammad was externally a prosperous citizen, only distinguished from those around him by an habitual expression of thoughtful melancholy. What was passing in his mind may be conjectured with some probability from his first utterances when he came forward as a preacher. It is certain, and he himself has acknowledged, that he formerly shared the idolatry of his countrymen. " Did not He find thee astray and lead thee aright?" (Kor. xciii, 7). When and how did the process of conversion begin? These questions cannot be answered, but it is natural to suppose that the all-important result, on which Muḥammad's biographers concentrate their attention, was preceded by a long period of ferment and immaturity. The idea of monotheism was represented in Arabia by the Jews, who were particularly numerous in the Ḥijáz, and by several gnostic sects of an ascetic character— e.g., the Ṣábians283 and the Rakúsians. Furthermore, "Islamic tradition knows of a number of religious thinkers before Muḥammad who are described as Ḥanífs,"284 and of whom the best known are Waraqa b. Nawfal of Quraysh; Zayd b. ‘Amr The Ḥanífs. b. Nufayl, also of Quraysh; and Umayya b. Abi ’l-Ṣalt of Thaqíf. They formed no sect, as Sprenger imagined; and more recent research has demonstrated the baselessness of the same scholar's theory that there was in Pre-islamic times a widely-spread religious movement which Muḥammad organised, directed, and employed for his own ends. His Arabian precursors, if they may be so called, were merely a few isolated individuals. We are told by Ibn Isḥáq that Waraqa and Zayd, together with two other Qurayshites, rejected idolatry and left their homes in order to seek the true religion of Abraham, but whereas Waraqa is said to have become a Christian, Zayd remained a pious dissenter unattached either to Christianity or to Judaism; he abstained from idol-worship, from eating that which had died of itself, from blood, and from the flesh of animals offered in sacrifice to idols; he condemned the barbarous custom of burying female infants alive, and said, "I worship the Lord of Abraham."285 As regards Umayya b. Abi ’l-Ṣalt, according to the notice of him in the Aghání, he had inspected and read the Holy Scriptures; he wore sackcloth as a mark of devotion, held wine to be unlawful, was inclined to disbelieve in idols, and earnestly sought the true religion. It is said that he hoped to be sent as a prophet to the Arabs, and therefore when Muḥammad appeared he envied and bitterly opposed him.286 Umayya's verses, some of which have been translated in a former chapter,287 are chiefly on religious topics, and show many points of resemblance with the doctrines set forth in the early Súras of the Koran. With one exception, all the Ḥanífs whose names are recorded belonged to the Ḥijáz and the west of the Arabian peninsula. No doubt Muḥammad, with whom most of them were contemporary, came under their influence, and he may have received his first stimulus from this quarter.288 While they, however, were concerned only about their own salvation, Muḥammad, starting from the same position, advanced far beyond it. His greatness lies not so much in the sublime ideas by which he was animated as in the tremendous force and enthusiasm of his appeal to the universal conscience of mankind.