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Updated: June 20, 2025
It is, however, certain that the discontent of the Jews voiced itself more and more loudly as the year advanced. The suras of the period are full of revilings and threats against them, and form a greater contrast coming after the later Meccan suras wherein Israel was honoured and its heroes held up as examples.
This book, at whose contents many a Meccan scholar of the old style will shake his head and exclaim: "We seek refuge near Allah from Satan, the cursed!" has been adopted by the Egyptian Department of Public Instruction as a reading-book for the schools.
At one time Mahomet acted as shepherd upon the Meccan hills low, rocky ranges covered with a dull scrub, and open to the limitless vaults of sky. Here, whether under sun or stars, he learned that love and awe of Nature that throbs through the early chapters of the Kuran like a deep organ note of praise, dominated almost always with fear.
Displaying from the first a studious and religious bent, he soon acquired a reputation for learning and sanctity. Making the Meccan pilgrimage while still a young man, he studied at Medina and travelled as far as Persia, returning ultimately to the Nejd. He returned burning with holy wrath at what he had seen, and determined to preach a puritan reformation.
Confined within so limited an area, his energy recoiled upon itself, and the despondency that so easily besets men of action when that necessity is denied them, overcame his mind. Only at the yearly pilgrimage was he able to gain a hearing from his Meccan brethren, and then, says the chronicler bitterly, "none would believe."
There are pure-bred Arab nomads of the desert; there are Arabs who have settled in towns or on the land, some within the last generation, like the Muntefik in Mesopotamia, some a millennium or two ago, like the Meccan Koreish, but who still retain their tribal consciousness of race; there are Arabs in name who have nothing Arabic about them but their language most of the peasantry of Syria are such, and the inhabitants of ancient centres of population like Damascus or Bagdad; in Syria many of these "Arabs" are Christians, and some Christians, though they speak Arabic, have retained their separate sense of nationality notably the Roman Catholic Maronites of the Lebanon and would hardly be considered as Arabs either by themselves or by their neighbours.
It is now almost thirty years since I lived the life of a Meccan student during one university year, after having become familiar with the matter taught by the professors of the temple of Mecca, the Haram, by privately studying it, so that I could freely use all my time in observing the mentality of people learning those things not for curiosity, but in order to acquire the only true direction for their life in this world and the salvation of their souls in the world to come.
Dost thou understand its interpretation and hast thou studied it, according to the various versions and readings? 'Yes, answered she; and he said, 'What, then, is the number of its chapters, how many are Meccan and how many Medinan? The Prophet was used, whenas he was about to open the Koran, to say, "I take refuge with God from Satan the Stoned." Praise be to God abundantly!
He adorns his description of the holy places and of the pilgrimage-rites with the unctuous phrases used in handbooks for the hajji, and he does not disturb the mind of the pious reader by any historical criticism of the traditions connected with the House of Allah, the Black Stone, and the other sanctuaries, but he loses no opportunity to show his dislike of all superstition; sometimes, as if to prevent Western readers from indulging in mockery, he compares Meccan rites or customs with superstitious practices current amongst Jews or Christians of today.
An order was promulgated forbidding bloodshed, and the orderly settlement of Believers among the Meccan population embarked upon. Only one commander violated the peace. Khalid, sent to convert the Jadzima just outside the city, found them recalcitrant and took ruthless vengeance. He slew them most barbarously, and returned to Mecca expecting rewards.
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