Relying on the warlike impulse which such doctrines must have engendered in the fiery soul of the Arab, Mohammed, at the head of his fellow tribesmen, allies, and believing followers, now undertook warlike expeditions against the Koreish who had driven him from his native city. He knew that he could not more effectively punish the haughty merchant princes of Mecca than by lying in wait for their caravans and robbing them of the valuable wares which they were accustomed to take to Syria. At the same time he could absolutely rely on the assistance of his new fellow-citizens in these struggles, for the merchants of Mecca looked down with contempt on the agricultural people of Medina. He himself generally marched into the field more to fire the courage of the combatants by his prayers and promises of heavenly support than for the purpose of himself bearing the white standard, which he generally entrusted to the valiant Omar, or the heroic Ali, the “father of the dust.”
Ali, to whom Mohammed gave his favourite daughter Fatima in marriage at Medina, is the purest and noblest figure among the followers of Mohammed, the “Siegfried of Islam,” as a modern writer has designated him. All his life he adhered to the prophet and the faith of his youth with complete submission and eager admiration. If his fiery, pure, and magnanimous character made him the boast and ornament of the Moslems, he was also by his heroism and bravery the bold vindicator of Islam, the trumpet of the strife in struggle and danger.
If at first warfare was suspended during the sacred months, according to the practice of former generations, Mohammed soon tore down this barrier. For instance, Abdallah ben Jash fell on the Koreish in the valley of Nakhla during the sacred month of Rajab, robbed their wagons, and slew some of the escort and took others prisoners; and when the prophet, who had himself recommended this act to the leader in a dubiously worded document, perceived that it had excited general indignation, he issued a proclamation by which war against the infidel was declared to be lawful at any period—a proof “that he was no longer acting according to the will of God but according to his own will”; and that the utterances of the Koran were so many “pictures reflecting” his own position. In the second year of the Hegira the fight of Bedr took place; and here was manifested for the first time how the hope of a blessed hereafter had filled the believing Moslems with an enthusiasm which defied death and despised pain.
THE BATTLE OF BEDR (624 A.D.)
[624 A.D.]
In order to rescue a large caravan from danger and distress, the Koreish marched into the field a thousand strong, with seven hundred camels and one hundred horses. The train of merchandise escaped the ambush by the clever management of Abu Sufyan, but nevertheless Abu Jahl persisted in the conflict. At Bedr, a camping ground and market, noted even at the present day for its plentiful supply of water, the Meccans encountered the hostile bands, who were not half so strong, and made ready for battle. Three Meccans, kinsmen of those who had fallen at Nakhla, came forward and challenged three of the opposite party to single combat. Hamza, Ali, and Obaida opposed themselves to them and slew them, whereupon the fight became general. Mohammed, who was watching the encounter from a leafy hut on a rising ground and praying to God with great ardour and excitement that he would not allow his faithful few to be destroyed, suddenly declared that victory had been promised him in a vision, and flinging a handful of dust after the Koreish, he called out, “Shame on their faces!”
Soon confusion seized the enemy and the battle ended with a complete defeat of the Koreish. Seventy heads of distinguished houses were slain during the battle or on the flight. Amongst the fallen were Otba and Shaiba, and, above all Abu Jahl (called the enemy of God), Mohammed’s bitterest opponent; amongst the prisoners were his uncle Abbas and Abul-Aas, the husband of his eldest daughter Zainab. Both were ransomed and returned to Mecca. Abbas probably henceforth served his nephew as a spy and Abul-Aas had to send his wife back to her father. Two other prisoners, Al-Nadr and Okba, who had belonged to Mohammed’s most eager adversaries in Mecca, were executed. But the prophet, always inclined to mildness, deplored the rash act when he heard the touching lament of the former’s daughter, a lament which is still preserved to us. For the rest, the battle of Bedr was of the greatest importance for the victory of Islam, and in consequence all the combatants whose names were entered in the lists henceforth formed the highest nobility of the Moslems. The spoil and the ransoms were equally divided, but soon after a saying of the Koran commanded that in future the fifth part of all spoil should go to the prophet, for himself, his kinsmen, for the poor, orphans, and wanderers.
BATTLE OF OHOD (MARCH, 625 A.D.)
[625 A.D.]
The battle of Bedr was the first step of Islam to dominion. Whilst the inhabitants of Medina and the Bedouin tribes of the neighbourhood drew from the prophet’s success a belief in his divine mission and gathered round him with enthusiasm, in Mecca there was great despair. Abu Lahab, Mohammed’s uncle and enemy, died seven days later of a disease resembling smallpox, full of affliction and anger at the success of his nephew; and Okba’s daughter Hind, the passionate wife of Abu Sufyan, cried day and night in ungoverned fury for revenge for her fallen kinsmen. Her lord actually went against Medina with two hundred Koreish; but their belief in their own cause was shaken, and when Mohammed marched against them they fled home in such haste that they left their stock of meal behind.
In the months after this “meal-campaign,” certain Jews in Medina, having made a mock of Mohammed in their verses, were put to death, and their co-religionists who had refused to go over to Islam, in particular the Beni Kainoka, the most skilful of the wealthy goldsmiths in the country, were driven into banishment in Syria. Abu Sufyan now marched a second time to the fight, on this occasion with a force of three thousand Koreish, at whose head stood three brave men, Akrama a son of Abu Jahl, Khalid, and Amru, afterwards the most distinguished heroes of the faithful. In the rearguard was the terrible Hind, with fifteen other women and certain poets who roused the spirit of vengeance in the army by laments over those slain at Bedr.
Mohammed wished to await the enemy in the city, but the young men, in their eagerness for war, demanded a pitched battle. The prophet yielded to their demand with inward misgivings. On the mount Ohod, whose solitary granite mass, bare of tree or bush, rises about a league to the north of Medina, he ranged his warriors, who did not exceed seven hundred, as he had disdained the help of the Jews and thus so deeply offended their patron, the Khazrayite Abdallah ben Obayyah, who apart from this was a secret envier and opponent of Mohammed, that he too had withdrawn with his army. Mohammed himself fought in the front rank; wearing a red fillet round his head and waving “the sword of God and his envoy,” he encouraged his men with axioms of the new faith. Here, too, victory seemed first to incline to the Moslems; strenuously as Hind and her women, “the daughters of the stars, with cloudy hair and pearl-ornamented necks,” might encourage the combatants, promising loving embraces to the victors, and threatening the flying with shame and death, the ranks of the Meccans nevertheless gave way. Seven members of the family of Abd ad-Dar, who each in turn performed the hereditary office of standard-bearer, rolled in the dust. Then the bowmen, fearing to be too late for the spoil, left the secure position which Mohammed had assigned them behind the mountain, and thus gave Khalid an opportunity to fall with his cavalry on the Moslem rear. The battle now suddenly took a new turn; the superior numbers of the Koreish carried the day, Mohammed was wounded and fell, face downwards, into a trench. His standard-bearer Mussab, fell, and as he resembled Mohammed in appearance the rumour, “Mohammed is dead,” was quickly disseminated and proved as encouraging to the infidels as it was destructive to the Moslem. The defeated were already hurrying away towards Medina, when the poet Kaab, the son of Malik, recognised the prophet amongst the wounded, in his helmet and coat of mail.