Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348

The Saracens, therefore, had no great merit even in their earliest exploits; and the impetus of their movement forwards, that principle of proselytism which carried them so strongly “ahead” through a few generations, was very soon brought to a stop. Mr Finlay, in our mind, does right to class these barbarians as “socially and politically little better than the Gothic, Hunnish, and Avar monarchies.” But, on consideration, the Gothic monarchy embosomed the germs of a noble civilization; whereas the   Saracens have never propagated great principles of any kind, nor attained even a momentary grandeur in their institutions, except where coalescing with a higher or more ancient civilization.

Meantime, ascending from the earliest Mahometans to their prophet, what are we to think of him? Was Mahomet a great man? We think not. The case was thus: the Arabian tribes had long stood ready, like dogs held in a leash, for a start after distant game. It was not Mahomet who gave them that impulse. But next, what was it that had hindered the Arab tribes from obeying the impulse? Simply this, that they were always in feud with each other; so that their expeditions, beginning in harmony, were sure to break up in anger on the road. What they needed was, some one grand compressing and unifying principle, such as the Roman found in the destinies of his city. True; but this, you say, they found in the sublime principle that God was one, and had appointed them to be the scourges of all who denied it. Their mission was to cleanse the earth from Polytheism; and, as ambassadors from God, to tell the nations—“Ye shall have no other gods but me.” That was grand; and that surely they had from Mahomet? Perhaps so; but where did he get it? He stole it from the Jewish Scriptures, and from the Scriptures no less than from the traditions of the Christians. Assuredly, then, the first projecting impetus was not impressed upon Islamism by Mahomet. This lay in a revealed truth; and by Mahomet it was furtively translated to his own use from those oracles which held it in keeping. But possibly, if not the principle of motion, yet at least the steady conservation of this motion was secured to Islamism by Mahomet. Granting (you will say) that the launch of this religion might be due to an alien inspiration, yet still the steady movement onwards of this religion through some centuries, might be due exclusively to the code of laws bequeathed by Mahomet in the Koran. And this has been the opinion of many European scholars. They fancy that Mahomet, however worldly and sensual as the founder of a pretended revelation, was wise in the wisdom of this world; and that, if ridiculous as a prophet, he was worthy of veneration as a statesman. He legislated well and presciently, they imagine, for the interests of a remote posterity. Now, upon that question let us hear Mr Finlay. He, when commenting upon the steady resistance offered to the Saracens by the African Christians of the seventh and eighth centuries—a resistance which terminated disastrously for both sides—the poor Christians being exterminated, and the Moslem invaders being robbed of an indigenous working population, naturally enquires what it was that led to so tragical a result? The Christian natives of those provinces were, in a political condition, little favourable to belligerent efforts; and there cannot be much doubt, that, with any wisdom or any forbearance on the part of the intruders, both parties might soon have settled down into a pacific compromise of their feuds. Instead of this, the cimeter was invoked and worshipped as the sole possible arbitrator; and truce there was none until the silence of desolation brooded over those once fertile fields. How savage was the fanaticism, and how blind the worldly wisdom, which could have co-operated to such a result! The cause must have lain in the unaccommodating nature of the Mahometan institutions, in the bigotry of the Mahometan leaders, and in the defect of expansive views on the part of their legislator. He had not provided even for other climates than that of his own sweltering sty in the Hedjas, or for manners more polished, or for institutions more philosophic, than those of his own sun-baked Ishmaelites. “The construction of the political government of the Saracen empire”—says Mr Finlay, (p. 462-3)—“was imperfect, and shows that Mahomet had neither contemplated extensive foreign conquests, nor devoted the energies of his powerful mind to the consideration of the questions of administration which would arise out of the difficult task of ruling a numerous and wealthy population, possessed of property, but deprived of civil rights.” He then shows how the whole power of the state settled into the hands of a chief priest—systematically   irresponsible. When, therefore, that momentary state of responsibility had passed away, which was created (like the state of martial law) “by national feelings, military companionship, and exalted enthusiasm,” the administration of the caliphs became “far more oppressive than that of the Roman empire.” It is in fact an insult to the majestic Romans, if we should place them seriously in the balance with savages like the Saracens. The Romans were essentially the leaders of civilization, according to the possibilities then existing; for their earliest usages and social forms involved a high civilization, whilst promising a higher: whereas all Moslem nations have described a petty arch of national civility—soon reaching its apex, and rapidly barbarizing backwards. This fatal gravitation towards decay and decomposition in Mahometan institutions, which, at this day, exhibits to the gaze of mankind one uniform spectacle of Mahometan ruins, all the great Moslem nations being already in a Strulbrug state, and held erect only by the colossal support of Christian powers, could not, as a reversionary evil, have been healed by the Arabian prophet. His own religious principles would have prevented that, for they offer a permanent bounty on sensuality; so that every man who serves a Mahometan state faithfully and brilliantly at twenty-five, is incapacitated at thirty-five for any further service, by the very nature of the rewards which he receives from the state. Within a very few years, every public servant is usually emasculated by that unlimited voluptuousness which equally the Moslem princes and the common Prophet of all Moslems countenance as the proper object of human pursuit. Here is the mortal ulcer of Islamism, which can never cleanse itself from death and the odour of death. A political ulcer would or might have found restoration for itself; but this ulcer is higher and deeper:—it lies in the religion, which is incapable of reform: it is an ulcer reaching as high as the paradise which Islamism promises, and deep as the hell which it creates. We repeat, that Mahomet could not effectually have neutralized a poison which he himself had introduced into the circulation and life-blood of his Moslem economy. The false prophet was forced to reap as he had sown. But an evil which is certain, may be retarded; and ravages which tend finally to confusion, may be limited for many generations. Now, in the case of the African provincials which we have noticed, we see an original incapacity of Islamism, even in its palmy condition, for amalgamating with any superior culture. And the specific action of Mahometanism in the African case, as contrasted with the Roman economy which it supplanted, is thus exhibited by Mr Finlay in a most instructive passage, where every negation on the Mahometan side is made to suggest the countervailing usage positively on the side of the Romans. O children of Romulus! how noble do you appear when thus fiercely contrasted with the wild boars who desolated your vineyards! “No local magistrates elected by the people, and no parish priests connected by their feelings and interests both with their superiors and inferiors, bound society together by common ties; and no system of legal administration, independent of the military and financial authorities, preserved the property of the people from the rapacity of the government.”

Such, we are to understand, was not the Mahometan system: such had been the system of Rome. “Socially and politically,” proceeds the passage, “the Saracen empire was little better than the Gothic, Hunnish, and Avar monarchies; and that it proved more durable, with almost equal oppression, is to be attributed to the powerful enthusiasm of Mahomet’s religion, which tempered for some time its avarice and tyranny.” The same sentiment is repeated still more emphatically at p. 468—“The political policy of the Saracens was of itself utterly barbarous; and it only caught a passing gleam of justice from the religious feeling of their prophet’s doctrines.”

Thus far, therefore, it appears that Mahometanism is not much indebted to its too famous founder: it owes to him a principle, viz. the unity of God, which, merely through a capital   itself. Nothing but the grossest ignorance in Mahomet, nothing but the grossest non-acquaintance with Greek authors on the part of the Arabs, could have created or sustained the delusion current amongst that illiterate people—that it was themselves only who rejected Polytheism. Had but one amongst the personal enemies of Mahomet been acquainted with Greek, there was an end of the new religion in the first moon of its existence. Once open the eyes of Arabs to the fact, that Christians had anticipated them in this great truth of the divine unity, and Mahometanism could only have ranked as a subdivision of Christianity. Mahomet would have ranked only as a Christian heresiarch or schismatic; such as Nestorius or Marcian at one time, such as Arius or Pelagius at another. In his character of theologian, therefore, Mahomet was simply the most memorable of blunderers, supported in his blunders by the most unlettered of nations. In his other character of legislator, we have seen, that already the earliest stages of Mahometan experience exposed decisively his ruinous imbecility. Where a rude tribe offered no resistance to his system, for the simple reason that their barbarism suggested no motive for resistance, it could be no honour to prevail. And where, on the other hand, a higher civilization had furnished strong points of repulsion to his system, it appears plainly that this pretended apostle of social improvement had devised or hinted no readier mode of conciliation than by putting to the sword all dissentients. He starts as a theological reformer, with a fancied defiance to the world which was no defiance at all, being exactly what Christians had believed for six centuries, and Jews for six-and-twenty. He starts as a political reformer, with a fancied conciliation to the world which was no conciliation at all, but was sure to provoke imperishable hostility wheresoever it had any effect at all.

We have thus reviewed some of the more splendid aspects connected with Mr Finlay’s theme; but that theme, in its entire compass, is worthy of a far more extended investigation than our own limits will allow, or than the historical curiosity of the world (misdirected here as in so many other cases) has hitherto demanded. The Greek race, suffering a long occultation under the blaze of the Roman empire, into which for a time it had been absorbed, but again emerging from this blaze and reassuming a distinct Greek agency and influence, offers a subject great by its own inherent attractions, and separately interesting by the unaccountable neglect which it has suffered. To have overlooked this subject, is one amongst the capital oversights of Gibbon. To have rescued it from utter oblivion, and to have traced an outline for its better illumination, is the peculiar merit of Mr Finlay. His greatest fault is to have been careless or slovenly in the niceties of classical and philological precision. His greatest praise, and a very great one indeed, is—to have thrown the light of an original philosophic sagacity upon a neglected province of history, indispensable to the arrondissement of Pagan archæology.