Mahomet - Founder of Islam | Page 9

must have brought back with him to Mecca confused but vivid
impressions of the long journey and of the catastrophe which lay at the
end of it. The uncertainty of his future, and the joys of gaining at last a
foster-father in Abd al Muttalib, finds reflection in the Kuran in one
little burst of praise to God: "Did He not find thee an orphan, and
furnish thee with a refuge?"
Life for two years as the foster-child of Abd al Muttalib, the venerable,
much honoured chief of the house of Hashim, passed very pleasantly
for Mahomet. He was the darling of his grandfather's last years of life;
for, perhaps having pity on his defencelessness, perhaps divining with
that prescience which often marks old age, something of the revelation
this child was to be to his countrymen, he protected him from the
harshness of his uncles. A rug used to be placed in the shadow of the
Kaaba, and there the aged ruler rested during the heat of the day, and
his sons sat around him at respectful distance, listening to his words.
But the child Mahomet, who loved his grandfather, ran fearlessly up,
and would have seated himself by Abd al Muttalib's side. Then the sons
sought to punish him for his lack of reverence, but their father
prevented them:
"Leave the child in peace. By the God of my fathers, I swear he will
one day be a mighty prophet."

So Mahomet remained in close attendance upon the old man, until he
died in the eighth year after the Year of the Elephant, and there was
mourning for him in the houses of his sons.
When Abd al Muttalib knew his end was near he sent for his daughters,
and bade them make lamentation over him. We possess traditional
accounts of these funeral songs; they are representative of the wild
rhetorical eloquence of the poetry of the day. They lose immensely in
translation, and even in reading with the eye instead of hearing, for they
were never meant to find immortality in the written words, but in the
speech of men.
"When in the night season a voice of loud lament proclaimed the
sorrowful tidings I wept, so that the tears ran down my face like pearls.
I wept for a noble man, greater than all others, for Sheibar, the
generous, endowed with virtues; for my beloved father, the inheritor of
all good things, for the man faithful in his own house, who never
shrank from combat, who stood fast and needed not a prop, mighty,
well-favoured, rich in gifts. If a man could live for ever by reason of his
noble nature--but to none is this lot vouchsafed--he would remain
untouched of death because of his fair fame and his good deeds."
The songs furnish ample evidence as to the high position which Abd al
Muttalib held among the Kureisch. His death was a great loss to his
nation, but it was a greater calamity to his little foster-child, for it
brought him from ease and riches to comparative poverty and obscurity
with his uncle, Abu Talib. None of Abd al Muttalib's sons inherited the
nature of their father, and with his death the greatness of the house of
Hashim diminished, until it gave place to the Omeyya branch, with
Harb at its head. The offices at Mecca were seized by the Omeyya, and
to the descendants of Abd al Muttalib there remained but the privilege
of caring for the well Zemzem, and of giving its water for the
refreshment of pilgrims. Only two of his sons, except Abu Talib, who
earns renown chiefly as the guardian of Mahomet, attain anything like
prominence. Hamza was converted at the beginning of Mahomet's
mission, and continued his helper and warrior until he died in battle for
Islam; Abu Lahab (the flame) opposed Mahomet's teaching with a

vehemence that earned him one of the fiercest denunciations in the
early, passionate Suras of the Kuran:
"Blasted be the hands of Abu Lahab; let himself perish; His wealth and
his gains shall avail him not; Burned shall he be with the fiery flame,
His wife shall be laden with firewood-- On her neck a rope of palm
fibre."
Mahomet, bereft a second time of one he loved and on whom he
depended, passed into the care of his uncle, Abu Talib. This was a man
of no great force of character, well-disposed and kindly, but of
straitened means, and lacking in the qualities that secure success. Later,
he seems to have attained a more important position, mainly, one
would imagine, through the lion courage and unfaltering faith in the
Prophet of his son, the mighty warrior Ali, of whom it is written,
"Mahomet is the City of Knowledge, and Ali is the Gate thereof."