Indian Antiquary Vol 15

SR No.: 032507
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: John Faithfull Fleet, Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 446
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 20 MB

Page 355

OCTOBER, 1886.]
MISCELLANEA.
313
under the influence of Muhammad the old names Khuzka'ites, had each in succession obtained of the months became 'totally abolished.'10 Now, ascendancy there at distances of time approximat. Prideaux (apart altogether from his personal ing to that figure ; Fihr, Kilâb, Qusai, Hashim, characteristics as a controversialist) was, and is had severally had their day; and at length, in to this day, a very high authority in Arabian | apparent obedience to this singular law (first learning: yet, this statement of his is a pure pointed out by a great Oriental savant of our own lapsus memoria, and is an additional proof that times, Dr. Aloys Sprenger)" Muhammad's turn even 'Homer sometimes nods': for the learned arrived. These men and dynasties left each of Doctor himself gives us on the same page of his them their mark upon the national history of the imperishable work, an historical account of the Arabs, in one way or another; and the part Arabian calendar directly subversive of his own reserved for Kilab was the reform of the calendar assertion. The truth is, that the names at present and the giving of new names to the months. The in vogue for the Muhammadan months were first principle which influenced him in the change he applied to them by Kiláb-ibn-Murra, a scion of authorized, was that he might apply to the months the great tribe of the Quraish. This man was names expressive of customs and phenomena with father of the celebrated Qusai, and fifth in which the Arabs in general were familiar; and descent from Fihr Quraish, and was according to while doing so, to mark, at the same time, the the calculations of M. Caussin de Percival) born Sacred Months and the season of the national in A.D. 358,-just two centuries and twelve pilgrimage. This he did, by giving to the 'four years before the birth of Muhammad." He was sacred months,' so-called the first, the seventh, the great-grandfather of Hashim, himself the the eleventh, and the twelfth) names appropriate great-grand-father of Muhammad, and was thus to the sentiments which the Arabs had come to the Prophet's sixth ancestor. There is reason to cherish towards them, and by stamping upon the believe that this man, Kiláb, borrowed the solar name of one of them (the twelfth) the designation or intercalary method which he established in the of the yearly pilgrimage. Hijaz, from the Jews; and it is understood by the Now, apart from the fact that the statement generality of Arabicists that he did so with the of Dr. Prideaux might very reasonably lend supview of fixing the time of the annual pilgrimage port to the inference that down to the time of to Makka (a religious observance of the Arabs Muhammad, the months of the Arabs bore dif. from unknown ages before the time of Muham. ferent names to those they now bear-an inference mad) to a convenient season of the year. This is the unsoundness of which has been shewn in the evident from the meanings of the names which he facts just stated this learned writer further tells applied to the months. For prior to the time of us that the names given by Kildb were adopted this incient Arab Chief, the months of the Arabs all over Arabia 'when Mahomet bad brought all the had other names than those they now bear; and rest of the tribes, besides the Korasnites, (Qurais the new ones, having been adopted by the tribe of under his power. But it has been repeatedly the Quraish (whose influence in commercial and proved by different writers, that the whole of tho ecclesiastical affairs at Makka was predominant) Arabs never were converted to Islam;" that of eventually superseded the others. Now, it is those who in Muhammad's life-time professed a curious historical phenomenon that down to the conversion to it, the greater number apostatized time of Muhammad, Arabia had long produced a as soon as the news of his decease reached them, great man once in about two centuries, the influ- and became forthwith the enemies of those who ence of whom had centred in Makka, and had continued in the Faith ;" and that to this day the extended more or less extensively over the entire
Badawis, who more than any others may be continent. The Amalekites, the Jurhumites, the said to be the children of the son, are the one
10 Prideaux, Life of Mahomet, p. 2 (Edn. 7th, Lond. ** Cf. the Genealogical Lists of the Arabs in Sale, do 1718.)
Percival, Muir, Sprenger and other writers. We use this language advisedly, for a work that
10 Muir, Life of Mahomet, i. Introd. p. covi. (note.) wont through threo editions in one year in times when
10 Prideaux, Life of Mahomat, p. 2. books were costly and readers of such weighty works as
1 Sprenger, Life of Mohammad, 83 (Edn. Allahabad, his were comparatively few; a work from which friends and foes have never ceased to borrow, and over which,
1. Muir, Life of Mahomet, i, Introd. Pp. cevi-vii. after the lapse of a couple of centuries, controversialists
** Namely, Zall-Hijja, lit. that to which the Haj' of all shades of opinion still think it worth their while to
(the Pilgrimage) appertains. quarrel, such a work as that must be possessed of quite
80 Prideaux, Life of Mahomet, p. 2. unusual vitality.
" Burton, Pilgrimage to Meccah, ii. 109, (Edn. 2nd 1 Lane, Arabic Lexicon, p. 1254, col. 2.
(Lond. 1857). 13 De Percival, Histoire des Arabes, i. 231 (Edn. Paris
» In Muir's Annals of the Early Caliphate, Osborn's 1847), Muir, Life of Mahomet, i. Introd. PP. cxcv., cxcix.
Llam under the Arabs, Oekley's History of the Saracens,
and in many other works treating of the times immediand p. 13 of the Biography there. Cf. Golius Nota, ad ately following the Prophet's decease, overwhelming eviAlfruganum, p. 4.
denoo in corroboration of this statement will be found.
1861) jais,