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The existence of a fortune-telling class among the Arabs shows that Muhammed may well have been endowed with psychological tendencies which only awaited the vivifying influence of Judaism and Christianity to emerge as the prophetic impulse forcing him to stand forth in public and to stir the people from their indifference: "Be ye converted, for the day of judgment is at hand: God has declared it unto me, as he declared it unto Moses and Jesus.
Despite the enmity between them, Muhammed ibn Raik sent his own son to el-Ikshid, charged with messages of condolence for the loss he had sustained and bearing proposals of peace. Muhammed el-Ikshid received the son of his enemy with much respect, and invested him with a mantle of honour.
His first step was to dismiss Abu Bekr Muhammed, the receiver of the Egyptian tributes, against whom he had received well-merited complaints. In his place he appointed a native of Mardin, also called Muhammed, of whose honesty and kindliness he was well aware. He then took his pupil to Egypt, which country they reached in the month of Safar in the year 335 of the Hegira.
Muhammed was replaced in Egypt by his cousin, Hassan ibn Yusuf, who only held office for three years, resigning voluntarily in the year 730 a.d., or 108 of the Hegira.
Even to-day Hindus may be seen to tremble when they meet the sinister fanatical glance of a Mohammedan. This man, whose memory even to-day is revered by the Hindus, was a descendant of Baber, Abul Fath Jelâleddin Muhammed, known by the surname Akbar "the Great," which was conferred upon the child even when he was named, and completely supplanted the name that properly belonged to him.
Diogo do Couto, another celebrated historian, who prosecuted his inquiries in India, mentions the arrival at Malacca of an Arabian priest who converted its monarch to the faith of the khalifs, and gave him the name of Shah Muhammed in the year 1384. This date however is evidently incorrect, as that king's reign was earlier by fifty years.
In 1857, during the Indian Mutiny, the Amir Dost Muhammed was true to his bond, when he might have been a thorn in our side; and during the Great War the late Amir Halilullah, in the face of appalling difficulties, maintained the neutrality of his country, as he promised, and was eventually murdered, a martyr to his own good faith to us.
Even the idea of love towards enemies, which would have been unintelligible to Muhammed, made its way into the traditions: "the most virtuous of acts is to seek out him who rejects thee, to give to him that despises thee and to pardon him that oppresses thee." A man's "neighbour" has ever been, despite the teaching of Jesus, to the Christian and to the Muhammedan, his co-religionist.
Muhammed must also have denied the divinity of Christ: this is an obvious result of the course of mental development which we have described and of his characteristically Semitic theory of the nature of God. To him, God is one, never begetting and never begotten. Denying the divinity of Jesus, Muhammed naturally denies the redemption through the Cross and also the fact of the Crucifixion.
They traced their descent from Fatima, a daughter of the Prophet, whom Muhammed himself regarded as one of the four perfect women. At the age of fifteen she married Ali, of whom she was the only wife, and the partisans of Ali, as we have seen, disputed with Omar the right to the leadership of Islam upon the Prophet's death.
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