Mahomet - Founder of Islam | Page 7

of strange armies from the south.
At Sana, capital of Yemen, ruled Abraha, king of the southern province.
He built a vast temple within its walls, and purposed to make Sana the
pilgrim-city for all Arabia. But the old custom still clove to Mecca, and
finding he could in nowise coerce the people into forsaking the Kaaba,
he determined to invade Mecca itself and to destroy the rival place of
worship. So he gathered together a great army, which numbered
amongst it an elephant, a fearful sight to the Meccans, who had never
seen so great an animal. With this force he marched upon Mecca, and
was about to enter the city after fruitless attempts by Abd al Muttalib to
obtain quarter, when God sent down a scourge of sickness upon his
army and he was forced to retreat, returning miserably to Sana with a
remnant of his men. But so much had the presence of the elephant
alarmed the Meccans that the year (A.D. 570) was called ever after
"The Year of the Elephant," and in August thereof Mahomet was born.
Then Amina sent for Abd al Muttalib and told him the marvels she had
seen and heard, and his grandfather took the child and presented him in
the Kaaba, after the manner of the Jews, and gave him the name
Mahomet (the Praised One), according as the angel had commanded
Amina.
The countless legends surrounding Mahomet's birth, even to the
physical marvel that accompanied it, cannot be set aside as utterly
worthless. They serve to show the temper of the nation producing them,
deeply imaginative and incoherently poetical, and they indicate the
weight of the personality to which they cling. All the devotion of the
East informs them; but since the spirit that caused them to be is in its
essence one of relentless activity, neither contemplative nor mystic,
they lack that subtle sweetness that belongs to the Buddhist and
Christian histories, and dwell rather within the region of the marvellous
than of the spiritually symbolic. Neither Mahomet's father nor mother
are known to us in any detail; they are merely the passive instruments
of Mahomet's prophetic mission. His real parents are his grandfather

and his uncle Abu Talib; but more than these, the desert that nurtured
him, physically and mentally, that bounded his horizon throughout his
life and impressed its mighty mysteries upon his unconscious
childhood and his eager, imaginative youth.

CHAPTER II
CHILDHOOD
"Paradise lies at the feet of mothers."--MAHOMET.
No more beautiful and tender legends cluster round Mahomet than
those which grace his life in the desert under the loving care of his
foster-mother Hailima. She was a woman of the tribe of Beni Sa'ad,
who for generations had roamed the desert, tent-dwellers, who visited
cities but rarely, and kept about them the remoteness and freedom of
their adventurous life beneath the sun and stars.
About the time of Mahomet's birth a famine fell upon the Beni Sa'ad,
which left nothing of all their stores, and the women of the tribe
journeyed,[28] weary and stricken with hunger, into the city of Mecca
that they might obtain foster-children whose parents would give them
money and blessings if they could but get their little ones taken away
from that unhealthy place. Among these was Hailima, who, according
to tradition, has left behind her the narrative of that dreadful journey
across the desert with her husband and her child, and with only an ass
and a she-camel for transport. Famine oppressed them sorely, together
with the heat of desert suns, until there was no sustenance for any
living creature; then, faint and travel-weary, they reached the city and
began their quest.
Mahomet was offered to every woman of the tribe, but they rejected
him as he had no father, and there was little hope of much payment
from the mothers of these children. Those of rich parents were eagerly
spoken for, but no one would care for the little fatherless child. And it
happened that Hailima also was unsuccessful in her search, and was

like to have returned to her people disconsolate, but when she saw
Mahomet she bethought herself and said to her husband:
"By the God of my fathers, I will not go back to my companions
without foster-child. I will take this orphan."
And her husband replied: "It cannot harm thee to do this, and if thou
takest him it may be that through him God will bless us."
So Hailima took him, and she relates how good fortune attended her
from that day. Her camels gave abundant milk during the homeward
journey, and in the unfruitful land of the Beni Sa'ad her cattle were
always fattest and yielded most milk, until her neighbours besought her
to allow them to pasture their cattle with hers. But,