“La ilaha illa Allah,” Abd Umar repeated softly to himself as he resumed his transit of the swamp. “There is no God but Allah.” It was a rubric of Muhammad’s which fascinated men, its poetry matching its philosophy, and it summed up all that Abd Umar now believed. As he wandered along the last portion of the distracting swamp he repeated the formula automatically, “La ilaha illa Allah,” satisfied that it would protect him from the dangers of the forest, and it was in this kind of hypnosis, thinking of things permanent, that he led his men around a final bend in the path to a spot where the dark waters ended and where there were no more snakes or frogs; and as he saw firm land opening before him, and the approaches to Makor, his mind at last apprehended in solid form the vague intimations that had been formulating in the swamp.
Like most of the early followers of Muhammad, Abd Umar had begun by interpreting the Prophet’s religion as no more than a personal experience undergone by Muhammad—no one could stand near this charismatic general, this servant of God, without acknowledging his leadership—but there had been much speculation as to what would happen when he died; and Abd Umar had been among those who had expected the movement to collapse. He would never forget that mournful day on which the Prophet had actually died: he had wept like a child, for his world had come to an end, but old Abu Bakr had come from the death tent bringing the words that made continued life possible: “Those of you who worshiped Muhammad must know that he is dead like any man, but those of you who worshiped God know that He lives forever.” And it was this continuity of God that had given Arabs like Abd Umar the power to go forward.
“I shall never return to the desert,” he whispered to himself as he left the swamp. “Today we shall conquer Makor and, in a little while, Akka, and there I will take a boat and sail to islands and to kingdoms … I, who have never seen the sea.” And he visualized in general terms the magnitude of the venture upon which he was engaged: the extension of Arabia’s religion throughout the world. If he was saying farewell to the mysterious swamp which terrified his camels and horses, he was likewise saying farewell to the desert, where his camels and horses had roamed hopefully toward endless horizons.
“Those deserts I shall see no more,” he said, accepting the finality of God’s decision. “La ilaha illa Allah,” he intoned, for if there was but one God, and if He directed all, it was best to accept His dictates. If God led a half-Negro slave through the dangerous swamps and trees, He had the right to say where that slave should go next.
Will I ever see my wives again? Abd Umar wondered, visualizing those women who had always remained with his children in Medina. Like Muhammad he had married a Negro woman from Ethiopia and she was his beloved, but he also protected the daughter of Sulayman and the sister of Khaled Yezd the warrior. Would they, in some mysterious manner, be able to follow him across the seas, running to him in some unknown city, with bare feet and children clinging to their skirts?
The Damascus road lay just ahead and scouts were shouting from their newly mounted camels that all was well. Makor must lie beyond that hill, the one covered with trees. The forced march through the swamp had succeeded, and the battle, if there was to be one, would be engaged in a few minutes. “La ilaha illa Allah,” Abd Umar muttered, climbing aboard his own camel and checking the horses. But as he entered upon that most ancient of roads upon which the invaders of this region had always traveled, he found its solid footing reassuring, and only briefly did he reflect upon his discovery that the years ahead were to be remote and battle-filled and lonely: When we take the town I’d like to find a good slave girl … or perhaps a young widow. He added this afterthought because Muhammad himself had taken eleven wives, and ten of them had been widows, and few men in Arabia had known a happier domestic life than the Prophet.
Within the doomed precincts of Makor the pagans waited, and even the dullest realized that for them the coming of Islam could signify only the end of one world and the beginning of a new. Who were these pagans who had resisted the pressure of Judaism and the proselytizing zeal of Christians like Father Eusebius? Some had joined the fire worship of the Persians when the latter swept through Palestine some twenty years before, holding it briefly as part of their empire. Others, slaves imported from the upper reaches of the Nile, remained faithful to their river god Serapis, and a sturdy few, whose ancestors could be traced back to the cave men who had sprung from this rocky mound, remained faithful to Baal.
Incredible as it may seem, these resolute men and women of Baal had withstood the full onslaught of Egyptian, Jewish, Christian and Persian persuasion, plus the temptations of a dozen other religious powers, including Antiochus Epiphanes and Caesar Augustus, remaining loyal to the primitive god of the mountain. On dark nights, at the equinoxes and at the ripening of the olive groves, these determined pagans still climbed the mountain back of town where monoliths remained only in memory, and there they worshiped the permanent god of Makor.
When the Byzantines stationed soldiers on the mountain with orders to kill any pagans coming to worship Baal, the tough old Canaanites stayed inside the town and whispered to each other the oldest and best-kept secret of the village: their fathers had been told by their fathers that directly under the altar in the large basilica, hidden permanently in the bowels of the earth, stood the everlasting altar of Baal, a monolith of black stone which had existed on that spot from the time when men first knew Makor.
So the pagans cheerfully attended Christian worship in the basilica, listening to the priests and bowing reverently to the altar rather more frequently than Christian ritual demanded. Of course, when the Byzantine guard was withdrawn, the priests having informed Constantinople that all worshipers of Baal were now eliminated, the hard-headed pagans again slipped away at night to climb their sacred mountain.
What had been the secret of their extraordinary longevity? It must have been that any sensible man who lived in close contact with nature, as the people of Makor did, knew in his heart that the forces which guided the rain and the thunderstorm were mysterious, and not mysterious in some subtle way that brings war over the matter of whether Jesus Christ had one body or two, one will or two, or whether a Jew might wear a gold tooth on Shabbat, but in a fundamental, perceptible way. In the spring, when new buds began to unfold at the tips of branches, some to form leaves and others blossoms from which fruit would develop, even the most stupid man in Makor could perceive that something mysterious was afoot, and he required neither priest nor rabbi to initiate him into this basic mystery. It was simplest, perhaps, to allocate the mystery to Baal, who lay hidden in the earth under the Christian altar, for it could not have been by accident that the priests of the basilica had chosen that precise spot for the heart of their structure. Baal, in his ancient wisdom, had directed them there.
In a sense, the old pagans were right. It was not by chance that the altar of the basilica stood over the spot where Baal had reigned, but rather by the sensible logic that pervaded all religions: the Jews had borrowed from the Canaanites, and the Christians had borrowed from the Jews. Now there was approaching from the desert a newer religion that had borrowed even more extensively from both Jew and Christian, but all went back to those primitive urgings which had found expression in Baal, and before him in the primogenitive divinity of all, the mysterious and self-effacing El.
But harsh judgment was at hand for the pagans. Muhammad had differentiated sharply between “the people of the Book,” which included Jews and Christians, and those who knew no Book, the pagans. The former would always have an honorable place in the Arab religion; the latter were to be offered either conversion or extirpation, and word of this final choice had filtered through to Makor, so that the pagans knew that when the Arabs came clattering down the road a moment of decision was upon them.
In the hours of waiting the citizens of Makor made their various decisions. The orthodox priests of Byzantium wanted to defend the town, but the schismatic Christians, whom they had abused for so long, let it be known that they woul
d refuse to fight; indeed, they welcomed the coming of Muhammad, for they suspected that under the Arabs they would know greater toleration than they had under the Byzantines. The Jews looked forward to another dispersion; where they would go this time they did not know—perhaps overland to the newly forming countries of Europe. In the meantime their community was divided between those who held that the widow Shimrith should be forced to marry her brother-in-law Aaron, and those who felt that in view of that man’s rape and probable murder she should be exempt. To the warring Jews the advent of the Arabs was merely another incident which they hoped they could survive. But to the pagans the new religion represented the end of the road, and they waited in terror.
In this demoralized condition the little town of Makor prepared to confront the Arabs, who came united as no preceding conqueror had ever come, unified by one religious ideal as none had been unified before. It was a most curious chance of history that the Arabs arrived when they were strongest, in the throbbing flush of self-discovery and unification, and that they reached Makor when it was at its worst and weakest. In nearly six hundred years no one had thought to rebuild the town walls or to dig out the well.
Why had such sterile days befallen a civilization once capable of producing men like Tarphon the gymnasiarch, Timon Myrmex the architect, Bishop Eusebius and the young Jew Menahem ben Yohanan, honored in church history as St. Mark of Antioch? The only logical explanation was that the Greek concept of life had simply run out of inspiration. After nearly a thousand years of control its polity had become rigid, its art moribund and its military capacity deficient. Even its marvelous new religion, Christianity, which Greeks had molded upon the divine presence of Christ and the theological statesmanship of Paul, had grown formalized and sterile, bringing to its Palestinian followers neither security nor inspiration. Christians inclining toward the more liberal policies of Rome were tyrannized; those who clung to Egypt were persecuted; while the poor Nestorians were periodically tortured, one emperor after another convincing himself that if he could only punish the Nestorians enough he could stamp out their abominable heresy. It was in this faltering and pathetic posture that Hellenism was required to confront the rising power of the Arabs. The consequence was bound to be humiliating and perhaps in the interests of world history it was proper that it should be so.
Now Abd Umar, the servant of Muhammad, brought his squadron out of the swamp and ordered all to remount camels for a gallop to the Damascus road, where he had barely time to notice that the wintry sky had cleared and was flecked with clouds, when scouts reported that the olive grove of Makor lay ahead and the town must be close at hand. The tall slave ordered his camel to kneel, and when the beast had done so, dismounted and ordered forty of his best men to do the same. The swift and rested horses were brought forward, and swords were unsheathed while the unnecessary camels were led to a grazing area off the road. Abd Umar, adjusting his striped and many-colored robe and tightening the cords of his headdress, sat easily upon his small sand-colored horse, his long legs looking awkward as his feet fitted themselves to the basketlike stirrups; and in this position of battle he surveyed his men, knowing that he had no need to address them in words of courage. He gave only one battle command, “Kill no one,” after which he wheeled his horse, spun in a tight circle and started galloping down the road; but at the bend where he first saw the unprotected town, he also saw, to the left of the road, a sight which distracted his attention and reminded him of the confusions he was encountering on this cold, damp afternoon. At the edge of the olive grove stood an ordinary farmhouse: the owners tilled a small plot of land, raising grain which they sold to the groats maker, and such farms had always constituted the backbone of Jewish Palestine, and Roman as well; but to the hard-riding Arab the little establishment was an affront. Like most men from the desert he held in contempt any man who would tie himself to a piece of land instead of remaining free to roam wherever trade or battle took him. Farmers were the despised creatures of this world, the cowards, the conservatives, the shameless ones who knew nothing of sword or camel, and for Abd Umar suddenly to find that the town he was about to invade was the center of such farmers was repellent. Even more than the trees and the swamp, this farmhouse unsettled him … made him ill at ease in ways he could not have described.
But much as he despised the farmhouse he could not keep his eyes from it, so as he galloped toward the town that loomed ahead on the foreboding hill, Abd Umar glanced sideways at the menace and swore that if he succeeded this day in capturing Makor, he would destroy every farm within the radius of a day’s journey. He remembered that the Koran mentioned little about farming but spoke at length regarding merchants and warriors; yet even as he rode past the farmhouse he realized that his initial idea of burning such places was ridiculous; he was talking like Abu Zeid and was ashamed of himself. The Arabs had come out of the desert to bring Muhammad to strange lands, and the customs of those lands must be respected, insofar as they did not controvert the teachings of the Prophet. But even this philosophical concession did not erase from Abd Umar’s mind the contempt he held for whatever men lived inside that miserable house. “If this is a town of farmers,” he muttered to himself as he galloped toward Makor, “it’s hardly worth conquering.”
A lieutenant leading a contingent of men sped past, shouting, “Abd Umar, I shall ride into the town first.” The ex-slave understood that his subordinate was trying to protect him from the first flight of arrows, but he held the offer to be humiliating and spurred his sand-colored horse until he was again in his lead position, and in this formation the Arabs galloped up the winding road and into the town. There was no first flight of arrows, nor any, and within a few exhilarating moments the Arab horsemen had stormed unopposed into the heart of the town and were milling about the square before the basilica, wondering what to do next.
The easy conquest had caught Abd Umar by surprise: he had supposed that in the first clash of swords his brain would clear and he would sense what steps to take, but when the citizens refused to fight and merely presented themselves like cattle, he was caught off guard and was as perplexed as his men. Then, as his own horse whinnied in agitation at the sight of so many people, he remembered the instructions of the Koran and he shouted to one of his lieutenants, “Tribute, on the backs of their hands,” and Arabs who could speak Greek dismounted to instruct the Jews and Christians that in accordance with the Koran they were to kneel, bow their heads and offer tribute on the backs of their hands held out parallel to the earth, in the humiliating posture reserved for slaves.
So all four congregations of the Christian church knelt in the dust to offer tribute, and both factions of Jews did the same, Aaron kneeling in one group, Shimrith in the other, so that Arab soldiers could move among them, collecting the submission money. And when it was placed before him Abd Umar—using the Greek he had learned while trading at Damascus—announced to these two groups, “Allah is gratified that we have met in peace, and we shall live that way forever. You are people of the Book, and you may rise and face me honorably.” When all had done so he made the simple offer under which the followers of Muhammad would rule their conquered territories, now that the first savage blood-slaughters had ended: “Surrender your arms. All Greeks and other robbers must leave the country, but others may remain and keep your own religion. Pay a modest tax and we will grant you full protection. Or if you prefer, accept Islam now and become a full member of our community, in which you will have the same rights as we do.” Having said these words, he waited.
At this critical moment a Christian named Nicanor, a follower of Byzantium and the theory that Jesus Christ was of two natures, cried, “Do you accept Jesus Christ?”
“He is revered in our Koran as a mighty prophet,” Abd Umar replied, and the Christian threw himself on the ground, crying, “I accept Islam,” but when he did so, one of the Byzantine priests stepped forward to forestall him. A sword flashed and the priest’s thumb was cut off. It could just as easily have been h
is head, and all appreciated this act of mercy.
Coldly Abd Umar announced, “At the moment this man said, ‘I accept Islam,’ he became one of us, and it is forbidden for any of you to speak to him against the faith he has chosen. Who else accepts the Prophet?” A large number—truly a surprising number—came forward to accept the conquering faith, but the Egyptians who held that Jesus Christ was of one body only and that Mary was the Mother of God, approached Abd Umar and through their unkempt little priest asked, “Did you speak the truth when you said that if we obey your laws we are free to keep our own religion?” The soldier who had sliced off the thumb of the Byzantine priest was offended by this oblique suspicion of dishonesty and would have struck the Egyptian, but Abd Umar interrupted: “It is difficult to know the truth, and you do well to investigate. But I did speak honestly. You will be free to live as you wish.”
The Egyptian priest bowed his head, then said boldly, “Son of Allah, we of Egypt choose to pay your taxes and to keep our little church.”
“It is done,” Abd Umar announced. Then he addressed the Christians. “You shall live with us in peace, and I shall protect you as I have just done. You may not prevent those of your followers who wish to join us from doing so. Nor may you ride either horses or camels, but donkeys and mules you are allowed. You may have no building, neither church nor home, that is taller than ours, nor may you build any new churches beyond those that you already have.” He stopped. “I see no children,” he said.
“They are hidden,” the Egyptian priest explained.
“Bring them all forward,” Abd Umar announced, and terrified mothers scattered through the town to bring their offspring out of hiding.
The Source: A Novel Page 77
