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OCTOBER, 1903.)
MUHAMMAD. HIS LIFE, &c.
897
esteemed traditions. Still, if the testimony of the earliest oomrades is not forthcoming, we bave that of the Qorán - a testimony which is authentio and not buried in a mass of apocrypha.
Primitivo Islam based on Social Beform. Now since the testimony of Moslem tradition is extremely doubtful, we shall do well to have solved by Muhammad himself the problem of the origin of the Islamic movement and the circumstances in particular under which Muhammad set out on bis career as the founder of a religion, that is, in other words, with the help of the intimation the Prophet affords us in his Qorán.
No idea or view in the Qorán is inculcated with such sustained insistence as that the Book was the reproduction or recapitulation of supernatural revelation, to proclaim which to the world Muhammad was appointed by God. The manner and mode of this apocalypse is represented in varying images and concepts not lacking a certain air of the mysterious about them. Nevertheless it is not claimed for these inspired divalgations that they are without a precedent or parallel, and that Muhammad, as the messenger of the divine commands and prohibitions, occupied en unique unexampled position in the scheme of creation. On the contrary, the Qorán witnesses to several personages of Arab and non-Arab descent, who were the recipients of the written word of God, the 80-called Kitáb; and in virtue of the writing vouchsafed to bimself, Muhammad seems to have regarded himself, not as a superhuman being, but only as a link in the chain of divinely-favoured men. Besides, the times in which he lived evince striking instances of the phenomenon of prophetic vocation assumed by Muhammad. There was a class of men of an extraordinary mental disposition, whose proclivities, to our thinking, bordered upon hallucination. In this connection an inscription, which, along with several others constituting a group, has been recently brought to light,18 is worthy of notice. The peculiarity of these stone-out writinge consists in their manifestly monotheistic tone, in which we fail to discover any specifio Jewish or Christian traite. The age of the inscriptions may, with certainty, be fixed at the middle of the fifth century; but they may be even of a later origin. They embody prayers in a style greatly akin to the Qoranic diction and addressed to Rahman or the Merciful, imploring his forgiveness for Eins committed, and his acceptance of the offered sacrifices and desiring that he would grant revelations if the interpretation here does aot err - and unfold the future to the faithful. This lends probability to the assumption that in South Arabia there prevailed a monotheistio soot, socording to whose tenets God favoured the men who offered prayers to Him with revelations, though we are left in the dark relative to the mode and the import of such celestial communications. It must have been an analogous notion or belief, with which people were actuated or inspired in Muhammad's age in various localities of Mid and South Arabia, and which expressed itself in pretensions to divine communion. Of these pretenders, the prophet of Yemama, called Maslama, whom the Moslems derisively stigmatized the "diminutive," excites special interest. His teachings, which bear a peculiar and rational stamp of their own, and by no means contain all the doctrines of Islam, argue that he was no shallow and sheer imitator of Muhammad. Ibn Hisham (p. 189) says that so early as in the pre-Meccan period the small Maslama was known as the preceptor of the Prophet, which, if a fact, would demonstrate that Maslama's prophetic calling began before Muhammad's. Besides, there arose in the tribe of Aus a prophet El-Aswad by name, who carried with him a large part of Yemen. Further, there aroge a prophetess called Sagah, in whose character, as well as in that of El-Aswad, we come upon many a feature reminiscent of Muhammad. They consider themselves inspired, but whether their claim was based on imitation of Muhammad's pretensions, who had set up as God's mouthpiece much earlier, is an obscure point.
Finally, the systein of the Kabing, divination, which was flourishing mainly in South Arabia, was, As Wellhausen (Skizzen und Vorarbeiten. III. 133) properly observes, rooted in the popular belief or fallacy that demons or supra-terrestrial existences utilized certain among men as the organs through whom to announce the future. And we have handed down to us aphorismg of Kahins, in which they speak directly in the first person of the Deity.
# Wiener Zeitechrift für Kunde du Morgenlands, 1896, p. 285, reg.
