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The best of their race, the pious Omar, was dissatisfied with his own title: their personal virtues were insufficient to justify a departure from the order of succession; and the eyes and wishes of the faithful were turned towards the line of Hashem, and the kindred of the apostle of God.
It turned out that he was a liberated slave, who, ten years before, had been brought from the Soos through the country of Sidi Hosain ben Hashem, having been torn away from his wife, who was since dead, and from his only child, who thus strangely rejoined him.
Yet the son of Abdallah was ever dear to the aged chief: and he protected the fame and person of his nephew against the assaults of the Koreishites, who had long been jealous of the preëminence of the family of Hashem.
"Hashem," say the authors of the "Modern Universal History," "succeeded his father Abd al Menaf in the principality of the Koreish, and consequently in the government of Mecca, and the custody of the Caaba." So far the genealogy of the prophet is supported by authentic history that he was descended from the princes of his people cannot be denied.
One hears of Mohammed's beauty: his fine sagacious honest face, brown florid complexion, beaming black eyes; I somehow like too that vein on the brow, which swelled-up black when he was in anger: like the "horse-shoe vein" in Scott's Red-gauntlet. It was a kind of feature in the Hashem family, this black swelling vein in the brow; Mahomet had it prominent, as would appear.
Reversed, this apprehension produced the concept of the Chillul Hashem, "the profanation of the Name." Israel, in his turn, was in honour bound not to lower the reputation of the Deity, who had chosen him out. On the contrary, he was to promote the Kiddush Hashem "the sanctification of the Name." Thus the doctrine of election made not for arrogance but for a sense of Noblesse oblige.
He derived his descent from the family of the Prophet, and the race or tribe of Hashem, in witness of which genealogy he wore a green turban of large dimensions. He had also three times performed the journey to Mecca, from which he derived his epithet of El Hadgi, or the Pilgrim.
Instead of placing his cosmology at the beginning of his system and proceeding from that as a basis to the other parts of his work, the psychology and the ethics, Levi ben Gerson, whose "Milhamot Hashem" is not so much a systematic work as an aggregation of discussions, reversed the process.
The hereditary claim and lofty spirit of Ali were offensive to an aristocracy of elders, desirous of bestowing and resuming the sceptre by a free and frequent election: the Koreish could never be reconciled to the proud preëminence of the line of Hashem; the ancient discord of the tribes was rekindled, the fugitives of Mecca and the auxiliaries of Medina asserted their respective merits; and the rash proposal of choosing two independent caliphs would have crushed in their infancy the religion and empire of the Saracens.
A marked reform was imperatively needed to restore the belief in the unity of God and set up a higher standard of morality. It is claimed that Mohammed brought such a reform. He was born in the year 570, of the family of Hashem and the tribe of Koreish, to whom was intrusted the keeping of the Black Stone. He therefore belonged to the highest Arabian aristocracy.
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