THE

RISE AND DECLINE OF ISLAM.

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION.

[Sidenote:  Islam pre-eminent in its rapid spread.] Among the religions of the earth Islam must take the precedence in the rapidity and force with which it spread.  Within a very short time from its planting in Arabia the new faith had subdued great and populous provinces.  In half a dozen years, counting from the death of the founder, the religion prevailed throughout Arabia, Syria, Persia, and Egypt, and before the close of the century it ruled supreme over the greater part of the vast populations from Gibraltar to the Oxus, from the Black Sea to the river Indus.

[Sidenote:  Propagation far quicker than of Christianity.] In comparison with this grand outburst the first efforts of Christianity were, to the outward eye, faint and feeble, and its extension so gradual that what the Mohammedan religion achieved in ten or twenty years it took the faith of Jesus long centuries to accomplish.

[Sidenote:  Object of the Tract.] The object of these few pages is, first, to inquire briefly into the causes which led to the marvelous rapidity of the first movement of Islam:  secondly, to consider the reasons which eventually stayed its advance; and, lastly, to ascertain why Mohammedan countries have kept so far in the rear of other lands in respect of intellectual and social progress.  In short, the question is how it was that, Pallas-like, the faith sprang ready-armed from the ground, conquering and to conquer, and why, the weapons dropping from its grasp, Islam began to lose its pristine vigor, and finally relapsed into inactivity.

I.

THE RAPID SPREAD OF ISLAM.

[Sidenote:  Two periods in the mission of Mohammed.] The personal ministry of Mohammed divides itself into two distinct periods:  first, his life at Mecca as a preacher and a prophet; second, his life at Medina as a prophet and a king.

[Sidenote:  I. Ministry at Mecca, A.D. 609-622.  Success at Mecca limited.] It is only in the first of these periods that Islam at all runs parallel with Christianity.  The great body of his fellow-citizens rejected the ministry of Mohammed and bitterly opposed his claims.  His efforts at Mecca were, therefore, confined to teaching and preaching and to the publishing of the earlier “Suras,” or chapters of his “Revelation.”  After some thirteen years spent thus his converts, to the number of about a hundred and fifty men and women, were forced by the persecution of the Coreish (the ruling tribe at Mecca, from which Mohammed was descended) to quit their native city and emigrate to Medina.[35] A hundred more had previously fled from Mecca for the same cause, and found refuge at the court of the Negus, or king of Abyssinia; and there was already a small company of