Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/380

358 THE DECLINE AND FALL and fidelity. Once only the concord was slightly ruffled by an accidental quarrel : a patriot of Medina arraigned the insolence of the strangers, but the hint of their expulsion was heard with abhorrence, and his own son most eagerly offered to lay at the apostle's feet the head of his father. ^'if^^.^ From his establishment at Medina, Mahomet assumed the dignity. A.D. „ 622-632 exercise of the regal and sacerdotal office ; and it was impious to appeal from a judge whose decrees were inspired by the divine wisdom. A small portion of ground, the patrimony of two orphans, was acquired by gift or purchase ; ^^^ on that chosen spot he built an house and a mosch, more venerable in their rude simplicity than the palaces and temples of the Assyrian caliphs. His seal of gold, or silver, was inscribed with the apostolic title ; when he prayed and preached in the weekly assembly, he leaned against the trunk of a palm-tree ; and it was long before he indulged himself in the use of a chair or pulpit of rough timber.^^i After a reign of six years, fifteen hundred Moslems, in arms and in the field, renewed their oath of allegiance ; and their chief repeated the assurance of protection, till the death of the last member or the final dissolution of the party. It was in the same camp that the deputy of Mecca was astonished by the attention of the faithful to the words and looks of the prophet, by the eagerness with which they collected his spittle, an hair that dropped on the ground, the refuse water of his lustrations, as if they participated in some degree of the prophetic virtue. " I have seen," said he, " the Chosroes of Persia and the Caesar of Rome, but never did I behold a king among his subjects like Mahomet among his companions." The devout fervour of en- thusiasm acts with more energy and truth than the cold and formal servility of courts. He declares In the State of nature every man has a right to defend, by war against r n ^ . ii. .. i theinideij lorcc oi arms, his person and his possessions ; to repel, or even isoprideaux (Life of Mahomet, p. 44) reviles the wickedness of the impostor, who despoiled two poor orphans, the sons of a carpenter : a reproach which he drew from the Disputatio contra Saracenos, composed in Arabic before the year 1130; but the honest Gagnier (ad Abulfed. p. 53) has shewn that they were deceived by the word A I Najjar, which signifies, in this place, not an obscure trade, but a noble tribe of Arabs. The desolate state of the ground is described by Abulfeda ; and his worthy interpreter has proved, from Al Bochari, the offer of a price ; from Al Jannabi, the fair purchase ; and from Ahmed Ben Joseph, the payment of the money by the generous Abubeker. On these grounds the prophet must be honourably acquitted. '•'1 Al Jannabi (apud Gagnier, tom. ii. p. 246, 324) describes the seal and pulpit as two venerable relics of the apostle of God ; and the portrait of his court is taken from Abulfeda (c. 44, p. 85).