300

Character of Heraclius

[629

to the imperial style the proud title of Bariλeús. The restoration of the Cross suggested the sign which had been given to the great Constantine, and Africa adopted (629) the first Greek inscription to be found on the imperial coinage-the motto év TOỨT víka. This may stand for us as a symbol of the decline of the Latin element within the Empire: from the reign of Phocas the old Roman names disappear and those of Graeco-Oriental origin take their place.

With these campaigns the period of the successors of Justinian has reached its end and a new epoch begins. The great contest between the Empires has weakened both combatants and has rendered possible the advance of the invaders from the South. Spain has driven out her last imperial garrisons, the Lombards are settled in Italy, the Slavs have permanently occupied the Danubian provinces -Rome's dominions take a new shape and the statesmen of Constantinople are faced with fresh problems. Imperialist dreams are past, and for a time there is no question of expansion: at moments it is a struggle for bare existence. In his capital the old Emperor, broken in health and harassed by domestic feuds, watches the peril from the desert spreading over the lands which his sword had regained and views the ruin of his cherished plans for a united Empire.

The character of Heraclius has fascinated the minds of historians from the time of Gibbon to the present day, but surely much of the riddle rests in our scanty knowledge of the early years of his reign: the more we know, the more comprehensible does the Emperor become. At the first Priscus commanded the troops and Priscus was disaffected: Heraclius was powerless, for he had no army with which to oppose his mutinous general. With the disappearance of Priscus the Emperor was faced with the problem of raising men and money from a ruined and depopulated empire. After the ill-success of his untrained army in 613, by the loss of Syria and Egypt the richest provinces and even the few recruiting grounds that remained fell into the enemy's hands. Heraclius was powerless: the taunt of Phocas must have rung in his ears: “Will you govern the Empire any better?" Africa appeared the sole way of escape: among those who knew him and his family he might awake sacrifice and enthusiasm and obtain the sinews of war. The project worked wonders—but in other ways than he had schemed. Men were impressed by the strength of his sincerity and the force of his personality -more, the Church would lend her wealth. Then came the Khagan's treachery-the loss of thousands of men who might have been enrolled in the new regiments which he was raising: the peace with the Avars and after two more years had been spent in further preparations, including probably the building of fresh fortifications for the capital which he was leaving to its own resources, the campaigns against Persia. At last, through long-continued hardships in the field, through ceaseless labours that defied ill-health, his physical strength gave way and he

The First of the Crusaders

301

became a prey to disease and nervous fears. Do we really need finespun psychological theories to explain the reign with its alternations of failure and success? It may at least be doubted.

Yet it is not in these last years of gloom and suspicion that we would part with Heraclius: we would rather recall in him despite all his limitations the successful general, the unremitting worker for the preservation and unity of the Empire which he had sailed from Africa to save, an enthusiast with the power to inspire others, a practical mystic serving the Lord Christ and the Mother of God-one of the greatest of Rome's Caesars.

CHAPTER X

MAHOMET AND ISLAM

OUR knowledge of Mahomet, his life and his teaching, is derived entirely from documents which have been handed down by Muslims; no contemporary non-Muslim account is extant, and the testimony of later non-Muslim writers has as little claim to consideration as the statements in the Talmud concerning Christ. Among our authorities the Koran, for obvious reasons, occupies the foremost place. The pieces of which it is composed are acknowledged, alike by those who assert and by those who deny its supernatural character, to have been promulgated as divine revelations by the Founder of the religion himself, nor is there any ground for the supposition that the text underwent substantial change in later times. But although the authenticity of the Koran admits of no dispute its interpretation is involved in peculiar difficulties. It was not put together till about two years after Mahomet's death, and the arrangement of the chapters is wholly arbitrary, without regard to subject-matter or chronological sequence. Even a single chapter, as is recognised not only by modern European critics but also by all Muslim theologians of repute, sometimes consists of earlier and later fragments which were combined either by accident or through some mistake as to their import. Such mistakes were all the more likely to occur in consequence of the peculiarly allusive style in which the Koran is written; when it refers to contemporary persons or events, which is often the case, it seldom mentions them in explicit terms, but employs various circumlocutions. Hence it is impossible to explain the book without continually calling in the aid of Muslim tradition, as embodied in the works of theologians and historians, the earliest of whom lived some generations after the time of the Prophet. This literature is of enormous extent, but it contains many unintentional misrepresentations and many deliberate falsehoods. To separate the historical from the unhistorical elements is often difficult and sometimes impossible.

The condition of Arabia in pre-Muslim times is, from the nature of the case, very imperfectly known to us. The great majority of the inhabitants consisted of small nomadic tribes who recognized no authority but that of their own chiefs. The nomads, being wholly

ignorant of the art of writing, could leave behind them no permanent records, and as tribes were frequently broken up, in consequence of famine, internal dissensions, and other calamities, their oral traditions had little chance of surviving. It was only in a few districts that a settled and comparatively civilised population existed. Wherever such a centre of civilisation was formed, the nomads in the immediate vicinity had a tendency to fall under the influence of their more cultured neighbours, and sometimes tribal confederacies, dignified with the name of "kingdoms," came into being. In early times, by far the most important of these civilised regions was to be found in south-western Arabia, the land of the Sabaeans, or, as it is now called, Yaman (i.e. the South). The power and prosperity of the Sabaeans, to which innumerable ruins and inscriptions still bear witness, began to decline about the time of Christ and were utterly overthrown, near the beginning of the sixth century, by the inroads of the half-savage Abyssinians. Meanwhile other Arabian kingdoms had arisen in the north, in particular that of the clan called the Ghassan, on the eastern frontier of Palestine, and that of the Lakhm on the Euphrates; the former kingdom was politically subject to the Byzantine Emperors, the latter to the Persians. But about the time when Mahomet came forward as a prophet both of these vassal kingdoms ceased to exist, and for a while there was nowhere within the borders of Arabia any political organisation which deserved to be called a State.

In religious, as in political matters, Arabia presented no appearance of unity. The paganism of the Arabs was in general of a remarkably crude and inartistic kind, with no ritual pomp, no elaborate mythology, and, it hardly needs to be said, no tinge of philosophical speculation. The religion of the ancient Sabaeans probably bore a greater resemblance to that of the more advanced nations, but in the time of Mahomet this Sabaean religion was almost wholly forgotten, and the paganism which still survived consisted mainly of certain very primitive rites performed at particular sanctuaries. An Arabian sanctuary was, in some cases, a rudely constructed edifice containing images of the gods or other objects of worship, but often it was nothing more than an open space marked by a sacred tree or a few blocks of stone. Some sanctuaries were frequented only by members of a particular tribe, while others were annually visited by various tribes from far and near. The settled Arabs, as a rule, paid more attention than the nomads to religion, but even in the settled districts there seems to have been a singular lack of religious fervour. The traditional rites were kept up from mere conservatism and with hardly any definite belief as to their meaning. Hence wherever the Arabs came into close contact with a foreign religion, they readily adopted it, at least in name. Arabian communities professing some sort of Christianity were to be found not only on the northern frontier but also at Najran in the south. Judaised communities were especially numerous

304

Месса

[c. 570 in the north-west of the Arabian peninsula, and Zoroastrian communities in the neighbourhood of the Persian Gulf.

Among the centres of Arabian paganism, none occupied a more distinguished place than Mecca (in Arabic Makka, or sometimes Bakka) which, thirteen centuries ago, was a small town situated in a barren valley, about 50 miles from the Red Sea coast. In an open space near the middle of the town stood the local sanctuary, a kind of rectangular hut, known as the Ka'ba (i.e. Cube), which contained an image of the Meccan god Hubal and various other sacred objects. A large proportion of the Arabian tribes regarded Mecca with exceptional veneration ; all the surrounding district was a sacred-territory, within which no blood might be shed. Some miles from the town a yearly festival took place and was attended by crowds of pilgrims from all quarters. Recent investigations have proved that this institution, called in Arabic the Hajj, i.e. "festival" or "pilgrimage," originally had no connexion with Mecca itself, and may possibly have been established before Mecca and the Ka'ba had come into existence. However this may be, it is certain that in historical times the pilgrims who attended the festival usually visited the Ka'ba and were treated by the Meccans as their guests; hence the annual Pilgrimage came to be intimately associated with the ¦ holy city.

In the sixth century after Christ most of the inhabitants of Mecca belonged to a tribe which bore the name of Kuraish. It was well known, however, that the Kuraish were recent immigrants. Both the town and the sanctuary had formerly been in the possession of other tribes, but as to the origin of Mecca no credible tradition survived. The Kuraish were subdivided into a number of clans, each of which claimed the right of managing its own affairs. On important occasions the chief men of the various clans met to deliberate; but there was no central authority. The sterility of the soil rendered agriculture almost impossible, and the Meccans had long subsisted by trading with distant countries. Every year great caravans were despatched to Syria and returned laden with wares, which the Meccans sold at a large profit to the neighbouring Bedouins. The mercantile population of the town was naturally far superior, in general intelligence and knowledge of the outer world, to the mass of the Arabs. A considerable proportion of the Meccans had learnt the art of writing, but they used it for practical purposes only. Book-learning, as we understand it, was quite unknown to them.

At Mecca, about A.D. 570,2 Mahomet (properly Muhammad) was born. The clan to which he belonged, the Banu Hashim, is commonly represented by Muslim writers as one of the most distinguished branches

1 A pilgrimage to Mecca which is not performed in connexion with the yearly festival is called 'umra, i.e. visit," sometimes translated by "lesser pilgrimage."

2 The evidence clearly shews that the early disciples of the Prophet had no trustworthy information as to the precise year of his birth.