The Martyrdom of Man - Winwood Reade (golden son ebook txt) 📗

is the Zemzem well, and while some

of the pilgrims are standing by its mouth waiting to be served, or walking

round the Caaba, or stooping to kiss the stone, other scenes may be

observed in the cloisters and the square; and, as in the Temple at

Jerusalem, these are not all of the most edifying nature. Children are

playing at games, or feeding the wild pigeons whom long immunity has

rendered tame. Numerous schools are going on, the boys chanting in a

loud voice, and the master’s baton sometimes falling on their backs. In

another corner a religious lecture is being delivered. Men of all nations

are clustered in separate groups—the Persian heretics, with their caps

mounting to heaven and their beards descending to the earth; the Tartar,

with oblique eyes and rounded limbs and light silk handkerchief tied

round his brow; Turks with shaven faces and in red caps; the lean Indian

pauper, begging with a miserable whine; and one or two wealthy Hindu

merchants not guiltless of dinners given to infidels, and of iced

champagne. At the same time an active business is being done in sacred

keepsakes—rosaries made of camel bone, bottles of Zemzem water, dust

collected from behind the veil, tooth-sticks made of a fibrous root such as

that which Mohammed himself was wont to use, and coarsely executed

pictures of the Caaba. Mecca itself, like most cities frequented by

strangers, whether pilgrims or mariners, is not an abode of righteousness

and virtue. As the Tartars say of it, “The Torch is dark at its foot,” and

many a pilgrim might exclaim with the Arabian Ovid;

 

“I set out in the hopes of lightening my sins,

And returned, bringing home with me a fresh load of transgressions.”

 

But the very wickedness of a holy city deepens real enthusiasm into

severity and wrath. When Abd-ul-Wahhab saw taverns opened in Mecca

itself, and the inhabitants alluring the pilgrims to every kind of vice;

when he found that the sacred places were made a show, that the mosque

was inhabited by guides and officials who were as greedy as beasts of

prey, that wealth, not piety, was the chief object of consideration in a

pilgrim, he felt as Luther felt at Rome. The disgust which was excited in

his mind by the manners of the day was extended also to the doctrines

that were in vogue. The prayers that were offered up to Mohammed and

the saints resembled the prayers that were once offered up to the

Daughters of Heaven, the intercessors of the ancient Arabs. The

pilgrimages that were made to the tombs of holy men were the old

journeys to the ancestral graves. The worship of one God, which

Mohammed had been sent to restore, had again become obscured; the

days of darkness had returned. He preached a Unitarian revival; he held

up as his standard and his guide the Koran, and nothing but the Koran; he

founded a puritan sect which is now a hundred years of age, and still

remains an element of power and disturbance in the East.

 

Othman Dan Fodio, the Black Prophet, also went out of Mecca, his soul

burning with zeal. He determined to reform the Sudan. He forbade, like

Abd-ul-Wahhab, the smoking of tobacco, the wearing of ornaments and

finery. But he had to contend with more gross abuses still. In many

negro lands which professed Islam, palm wine and millet beer were

largely consumed; the women did not veil their faces nor even their

bosoms; immodest dances were performed to the profane music of the

drum; learned men gained a livelihood by writing charms, the code of the

Koran was often supplanted by the old customary laws. Dan Fodio sent

letters to the great kings of Timbuktu, Haoussa, and Bornu, commanding

them to reform their own lives and those of their subjects, or he would

chastise them in the name of God. They received these instructions from

an unknown man, as the King of Kings received the letter of Mohammed,

and their fate resembled his. Dan Fodio united the Fulah tribes into an

army which he inspired with his own spirit. Thirsting for plunder and

paradise, the Fulahs swept over the Sudan; they marched into battle with

shouts of frenzied joy, singing hymns and waving their green flags on

which texts of the Koran were embroidered in letters of gold. The empire

which they established at the beginning of this century is now crumbling

away, but the fire is still burning on the frontiers. Wherever the Fulahs

are settled in the neighbourhood of pagan tribes they are extending their

power, and although the immediate effects are disastrous—villages being

laid in ashes, men slaughtered by thousands, women and children sold as

slaves—yet in the end these crusades are productive of good. The

villages are converted into towns; a new land is brought within the sphere

of commercial and religious intercourse, and is added to the Asiatic

world.

 

The phenomenon of a religious Tamerlane has been repeated more than

once in Central Africa. The last example was that of Oumar the Pilgrim,

whose capital was Segou, and whose conquests extended from Timbuktu

to Senegal, where he came into contact with French artillery and for ever

lost his prestige as a prophet. But we are taught by the science of history

that these military empires can never long endure. It is probable that

Mohammedan Sudan will in time become a province of the Turks.

Central Africa, as we have shown, received its civilisation not from Egypt

but from the grand Morocco of the Middle Ages. Egypt has always lived

with its back to Africa, its eyes and often its hands on Syria and Arabia.

Abyssinia was not subdued by the caliphs because it was not coveted by

them, and there was little communication between Egypt and the Sudan.

Mohammed Ali was the first to re-establish the kingdom of the Pharaohs

in Ethiopia, and to organise negro regiments. Since his time the Turkish

power has been gradually spreading towards the interior, and the

expedition of Baker Pasha, whatever may be its immediate result, is the

harbinger of great events to come. Should the Turks be driven out of

Europe, they would probably become the emperors of Africa, which in

the interests of civilisation would be a fortunate occurrence. The Turkish

government is undoubtedly defective in comparison with the

governments of Europe, but it is perfection itself in comparison with the

governments of Africa. If the Egyptians had been allowed to conquer

Abyssinia there would have been no need of an Abyssinian expedition,

and nothing but Egyptian occupation will put an end to the wars which

are always being waged and always have been waged in that country

between bandit chiefs. Those who are anxious that Abyssinian

Christianity should be preserved need surely not be alarmed, for the Pope

of Abyssinia is the Patriarch of Cairo, a Turkish subject, and the aboona

or archbishop has always been an Egyptian. But the Turks no longer

have it in their power to commit actions which Europeans would

condemn. They now belong to the civilised system; they are subject to the

law of opinion. Already they have been compelled by that mysterious

power to suppress the slave-making wars which were formerly waged

every year from Kordofan and Sennaar, and which are still being waged

from the independent kingdoms of Darfur, Waday, Bagirmi, and Bornu.

Wherever the Turks reign a European is allowed to travel; wherever a

European travels a word is spoken on behalf of the oppressed. That word

enters the newspapers, passes into a diplomatic remonstrance, becomes a

firman, and a governor or commandant in some sequestered province of

an Oriental empire suffers the penalty of his misdeeds. It should be the

policy of European Powers to aid the destruction of all savage kingdoms,

or at least never to interfere on their behalf.

 

It has now been shown that a vast region within the Dark Continent, the

world beyond the sandy ocean, is governed by Asiatic laws and has

attained an Asiatic civilisation. We must next pass to the Atlantic side,

and study the effects which have been produced among the negroes by

the intercourse of Europeans. It will be found that the transactions on the

coast of Guinea belong not only to the biography of Africa but also to

universal history, and that the domestication of the negro has indirectly

assisted the material progress of Europe and the development of its

morality. The programme of the next chapter will be as follows: The rise

of Europe out of darkness; the discovery of Western Africa by the

Portuguese; the institution of the slave-trade, and the history of that great

republican and philanthropic movement which won its first victory in the

abolition of the slave-trade in 1807, its last in the taking of Richmond in

1865.