Christianity and Islam | Page 8

Hellenism of antiquity was to Christianity that which the Christian Oriental Hellenism of a few centuries later was to Islam.
We must now attempt to realise the nature of this event so important in the history of the world. A nomadic people, recently united, not devoid of culture, but with a very limited range of ideas, suddenly gains supremacy over a wide and populous district with an ancient civilisation. These nomads are as yet hardly conscious of their political unity and the individualism of the several tribes composing it is still a disruptive force: yet they can secure domination over countries such as Egypt and Babylonia, with complex constitutional systems, where climatic conditions, the nature of the soil and centuries of work have combined to develop an intricate administrative system, which newcomers could not be expected to understand, much less to recreate or to remodel. Yet the theory has long been held that the Arabs entirely reorganised the constitutions of these countries. Excessive importance has been attached to the statements of Arab authors, who naturally regarded Islam as the beginning of all things. In every detail of practical life they regarded the prophet and his contemporaries as their ruling ideal, and therefore naturally assumed that the constitutional practices of the prophet were his own invention. The organisation of the conquering race with its tribal subordination was certainly purely Arab in origin. In fact the conquerors seemed so unable to adapt themselves to the conditions with which they met, that foreigners who joined their ranks were admitted to the Muhammedan confederacy only as clients of the various Arab tribes. This was, however, a mere question of outward form: the internal organisation continued unchanged, as it was bound to continue unless chaos were to be the consequence. In fact, pre-existing administrative regulations were so far retained that the old customs duties on the former frontiers were levied as before, though they represented an institution wholly alien to the spirit of the Muhammedan empire. Those Muhammedan authors, who describe the administrative organisation, recognise only the taxes which Islam regarded as lawful and characterise others as malpractices which had crept in at a later date. It is remarkable that these so-called subsequent malpractices correspond with Byzantine and Persian usage before the conquest: but tradition will not admit the fact that these remained unchanged. The same fact is obvious when we consider the progress of civilisation in general. In every case the Arabs merely develop the social and economic achievements of the conquered races to further issues. Such progress could indeed only be modified by a general upheaval of existing conditions and no such movement ever took place. The Germanic tribes destroyed the civilisations with which they met; they adopted many of the institutions of Christian antiquity, but found them an impediment to the development of their own genius. The Arabs simply continued to develop the civilisation of post-classical antiquity, with which they had come in contact.
This procedure may seem entirely natural in the department of economic life, but by no means inevitable where intellectual progress is concerned. Yet a similar course was followed in either case, as may be proved by dispassionate examination. Islam was a rising force, a faith rather of experience than of theory or dogma, when it raised its claims against Christianity, which represented all pre-existing intellectual culture. A settlement of these claims was necessary and the military triumphs are but the prelude to a great accommodation of intellectual interests. In this Christianity played the chief part, though Judaism is also represented: I am inclined, however, to think that Jewish ideas as they are expressed in the Qoran were often transmitted through the medium of Christianity. There is no doubt that in Medina Muhammed was under direct Jewish influence of extraordinary power. Even at that time Jewish ideas may have been in circulation, not only in the Qoran but also in oral tradition, which afterwards became stereotyped: at the same time Muhammed's utterances against the Jews eventually became so strong during the Medina period, for political reasons, that I can hardly imagine the traditions in their final form to have been adopted directly from the Jews. The case of Jewish converts is a different matter. But in Christianity also much Jewish wisdom was to be found at that time and it is well known that even the Eastern churches regarded numerous precepts of the Old Testament, including those that dealt with ritual, as binding upon them. In any case the spirit of Judaism is present, either directly or working through Christianity, as an influence wherever Islam accommodated itself to the new intellectual and spiritual life which it had encountered. It was a compromise which affected the most trivial details of life, and in these matters religious scrupulosity was carried to a ridiculous