Mahomet - Founder of Islam | Page 5

city that hath
cast thee forth?"--The Kuran.
In Arabia nature cannot be ignored. Pastures and cornland, mountain
slopes and quiet rivers may be admired, even reverenced; but they are
things external to the gaze, and make no insistent demand upon the
spirit for penetration of their mystery. Arabia, and Mecca as typical of
Arabia, is a country governed by earth's primal forces. It has not yet
emerged from the shadow of that early world, bare and chaotic, where a
blinding sun pours down upon dusty mountain ridges, and nothing is
temperate or subdued. It fosters a race of men, whose gods are
relentless and inscrutable, revealing themselves seldom, and dwelling
in a fierce splendour beyond earthly knowledge. To the spirit of a
seeker for truth with senses alert to the outer world, this country speaks
of boundless force, and impels into activity under the spur of
conviction; by its very desolation it sets its ineradicable mark upon the
creed built up within it.
Mahomet spent forty years in the city of Mecca, watching its temple
services with his grandfather, taking part in its mercantile life, learning
something of Christian and Jewish doctrine through the varied
multitudes that thronged its public places. In the desert beyond the city
boundaries he wandered, searching for inspiration, waiting dumbly in
the darkness until the angel Gabriel descended with rush of wings
through the brightness of heaven, commanding:
"Cry aloud, in the name of the Lord who created thee. O, thou
enwrapped in thy mantle, arise and warn!"
Mecca lies in a stony valley midway between Yemen, "the Blessed,"
and Syria, in the midst of the western coast-chain of Arabia, which
slopes gradually towards the Red Sea. The height of Abu Kobeis
overlooks the eastern quarter of the town, whence hills of granite
stretch to the holy places, Mina and Arafat, enclosed by the ramparts of
the Jebel Kora range. Beyond these mountains to the south lies Taif,
with its glory of gardens and fruit-trees. But the luxuriance of Taif
finds no counterpart on the western side. Mecca is barren and treeless;
its sandy stretches only broken here and there by low hills of quartz or

gneiss, scrub-covered and dusty. The sun beats upon the shelterless
town until it becomes a great cauldron within its amphitheatre of hills.
During the Greater Pilgrimage the cauldron seethes with heat and
humanity, and surges over into Mina and Arafat. In the daytime Mecca
is limitless heat and noise, but under the stars it has all the magic of a
dream-city in a country of wide horizons.
The shadow of its ancient prosperity, when it was the centre of the
caravan trade from Yemen to Syria, still hung about it in the years
immediately before the birth of Mahomet, and the legends concerning
the founding of the city lingered in the native mind. Hagar, in her
terrible journey through the desert, reached Mecca and laid her son in
the midst of the valley to go on the hopeless quest for water. The child
kicked the ground in torment, and God was merciful, so that from his
heel marks arose a spring of clear water--the well Zemzem, hallowed
ever after by Meccans. In this desolate place part of the Amalekites and
tribes from Yemen settled; the child Ishmael grew up amongst them
and founded his race by marrying a daughter of the chief. Abraham
visited him, and under his guidance the native temple of the Kaaba was
built and dedicated to the true God, but afterwards desecrated by the
worship of idols within it.
Such are the legends surrounding the foundation of Mecca and of the
Kaaba, of which, as of the legends concerning the early days of Rome,
it may be said that they are chiefly interesting as throwing light upon
the character of the race which produced them. In the case of Mecca
they were mainly the result of an unconscious desire to associate the
city as far as possible with the most renowned heroes of old time, and
also to conciliate the Jewish element within Arabia, now firmly planted
at Medina, Kheibar, and some of the adjoining territory, by insisting on
a Jewish origin for their holy of holies, and as soon as Abraham and
Ishmael were established as fathers of the race, legends concerning
them were in perpetual creation.
The Kaaba thus reputed to be the work of Abraham bears evidence of
an antiquity so remote that its beginnings will be forever lost to us.
From very early times it was a goal of pilgrimage for all Arabia,

because of the position of Mecca upon the chief trade route, and united
in its ceremonies the native worship of the sun and stars, idols and
misshapen stones. The Black Stone, the kissing of which formed the
chief ceremonial, is