Muhammad and his power - Peirce De Lacy Henry Johnstone
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| Muhammad and his power |
So much has been written, and so much learning and study devoted to the history of Muhammad and the religious and political power which he founded, and which now, after thirteen centuries, seems as a religion not less firmly established than ever it was, that one who approaches the subject to-day cannot hope to do much more than sift and select from the labours of those who have gone before him.
The struggle of- Christianity with the forces of Islam began within* five years of the Flight from Mecca, but the study of its documents and the history of its rise and progress 4 (that is, of course, by those who are outside its pale) has been the growth of the last century and a half. In our own country the strength and, scarcely less, the- weaknesses of the founder and of the system have roused the admiration of Gibbon and Carlyle, and have been the object of profound study by such scholars and administrators as Edward Lane and Sir William Muir, and have been the goal of travellers like Richard Burton and Gifford Palgrave, Burkhardt and Carsten Niebuhr. In this, as in most other domains of knowledge,
Caussin de Perceval, and the masterly though short book of St. Hilaire, are witness to the debt which we owe in these studies to France also. To one book I am myself under a particular obligation to Hughes's Dictionary of Islam, a work of great grasp and deep learning, not only embodying the substance of the most important work of his predecessors but also instinct with that familiarity with his theme which can only be got by a life spent among Muhammadans, together with wide study of their literature and modes of thought.
Having thus made a general acknowledgement of the sources of the present work, it will not be necessary to burden my pages with particular references, and the reader will readily excuse me from making them. One part of the field of inquiry still lies imperfectly worked, the relation of Islam to Judaism, which was made a reproach to Muhammad by his unbelieving countrymen: it is to be hoped that someday we shall have exhaustive treatment of the subject, on the lines already drawn by those brilliant Jewish scholars, Deutsch and Geiger. The earlier chapters of the book give a sketch of the land, the people, and the conditions in which the Prophet arose, for he was an Arab of the Arabs; in the latest is shown how his successors prosecuted his work, and some account is given of that wonderful Quran which is the Charter of Islam.
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