Mohammedanism and the Negro Race.
TO students of general literature in Europe and the United States, until within the last few years, the Orientals most celebrated in religion or politics, in literature or learning, were known only by name. The Oriental world, to the student aiming at practical achievements, presented a field of so little promise that he scarcely ever ventured beyond a distant survey of what seemed to him a boundless and impracticable area. But, thanks to the exigencies of commerce, to philanthropic zeal, and to the scientific impulse, the East is daily getting to be “nearer seen and better known,” not only in its outward life, but in those special aspects which, in religion and government, in war and policy, differentiate Eastern from Western races. It has been recently stated by a distinguished authority that “the intimate acquaintance with the languages, thoughts, history and monuments of Eastern nations is no longer a luxury, but a necessity.” And the visits, within the last ten years, of Oriental rulers to Europe—the Sultan of Turkey, the Khedive of Egypt, the Shah of Persia, and the Seyyid of Zanzibar— have stimulated in the popular mind a livelier curiosity as to the character, condition, and influence of Mohammedan countries.
Drawn away from the beaten track of Roman and Greek antiquity by considerations, for the most part, of a material nature, and wandering into paths which, heretofore, were trodden only by such enthusiastic pioneers as Sir William Jones, the Western student finds rewards far rarer and richer than he had anticipated. And even those who have not the opportunity of familiarising themselves with Oriental languages find enough in translations—inadequate and unsatisfactory as they often are—to inspire them with a desire not only to increase their acquaintance with Eastern subjects, but. to impart the knowledge they glean to others.
To the latter class belongs Mr. R. Bosworth Smith, the author of the work before us.[1] He informs us at the outset that “the only qualification he would venture to claim for himself,” as a writer on Islam, “is that of a sympathetice interest in his subject,” his work having been “derived in the main from the study of books in the European languages.”
Mr. Bosworth Smith, who is a graduate of one of the English Universities, of only twelve years’ standing, and therefore, we gather, a comparatively young man, may be regarded as one of the earliest collateral results of that increased activity in Oriental research which Dr. Birch has told us “marks the advance of civilization.” And if he does stand upon the shoulders of Caussin de Perceval, Sprenger, Muir, and Deutsch, he may, without immodesty, claim to be taller than they; for we are very much mistaken if his book does not form an important starting-point on the road to a more tolerant—if not sympathetic—view among popular readers of the chief religion of the Oriental world. The works of the writers just mentioned were designedly not popular, but written by scholars for scholars, maintaining or opposing theories for the most part of merely literary or historical significance. Mr. Bosworth Smith has brought to his work not only a thorough appreciation of the literary and historical questions involved, but an earnest respect “for the deeper problems of the human soul,” cherishing the sound and fruitful conviction, which he strives to impart to his readers, “that Mohammedans may learn much from Christians, and yet remain Mohammedans; that Christians have something at least to learn from Mohammedans, which will make them not less but more Christian than they were before.”
Mr. Bosworth Smith pursues the discussion of this important subject, which, as a labour of love, he entered upon, with a degree of earnestness, perspicuity, catholicity, and force of reasoning that renders his work not only most instructive, but highly interesting as an indication of the tendency and direction of cultivated thought in England. He has entered into the spirit of Islam in a manner which, but for the antecedent labours of Lane, Sprenger, Deutsch, and Weil, would be astounding in a Western scholar and an Englishman.
Drawn away from the beaten track of Roman and Greek antiquity by considerations, for the most part, of a material nature, and wandering into paths which, heretofore, were trodden only by such enthusiastic pioneers as Sir William Jones, the Western student finds rewards far rarer and richer than he had anticipated. And even those who have not the opportunity of familiarising themselves with Oriental languages find enough in translations—inadequate and unsatisfactory as they often are—to inspire them with a desire not only to increase their acquaintance with Eastern subjects, but. to impart the knowledge they glean to others.
To the latter class belongs Mr. R. Bosworth Smith, the author of the work before us.[1] He informs us at the outset that “the only qualification he would venture to claim for himself,” as a writer on Islam, “is that of a sympathetice interest in his subject,” his work having been “derived in the main from the study of books in the European languages.”
Mr. Bosworth Smith, who is a graduate of one of the English Universities, of only twelve years’ standing, and therefore, we gather, a comparatively young man, may be regarded as one of the earliest collateral results of that increased activity in Oriental research which Dr. Birch has told us “marks the advance of civilization.” And if he does stand upon the shoulders of Caussin de Perceval, Sprenger, Muir, and Deutsch, he may, without immodesty, claim to be taller than they; for we are very much mistaken if his book does not form an important starting-point on the road to a more tolerant—if not sympathetic—view among popular readers of the chief religion of the Oriental world. The works of the writers just mentioned were designedly not popular, but written by scholars for scholars, maintaining or opposing theories for the most part of merely literary or historical significance. Mr. Bosworth Smith has brought to his work not only a thorough appreciation of the literary and historical questions involved, but an earnest respect “for the deeper problems of the human soul,” cherishing the sound and fruitful conviction, which he strives to impart to his readers, “that Mohammedans may learn much from Christians, and yet remain Mohammedans; that Christians have something at least to learn from Mohammedans, which will make them not less but more Christian than they were before.”
Mr. Bosworth Smith pursues the discussion of this important subject, which, as a labour of love, he entered upon, with a degree of earnestness, perspicuity, catholicity, and force of reasoning that renders his work not only most instructive, but highly interesting as an indication of the tendency and direction of cultivated thought in England. He has entered into the spirit of Islam in a manner which, but for the antecedent labours of Lane, Sprenger, Deutsch, and Weil, would be astounding in a Western scholar and an Englishman.
Footnotes
1 Mohammed and Mohammedanism.—Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain,
in February and March, 1874, by R. Bosworth Smith, M.A., Assistant-Master in Harrow School, late
Fellow of Trinity College,. Oxford—London: Smith, Elder and Co.
1 Mohammed and Mohammedanism.—Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain,
in February and March, 1874, by R. Bosworth Smith, M.A., Assistant-Master in Harrow School, late
Fellow of Trinity College,. Oxford—London: Smith, Elder and Co.
Dean Stanley’s lecture on the same subject, though marked by the breadth of view, generous impartiality, and geniality of spirit which so honourably distinguish all the writings of that scholarly and Christian divine, is fragmentary—necessarily limited in its range by the nature and scope of the work. To Mr. Bosworth Smith, then, must be awarded the credit not only of having fully, fairly, and freely investigated the practical features of Islam, but of having rendered a clear, unbiassed, and unambiguous verdict, the influence of which, whether acknowledged or not, must be felt throughout the literary world. Such works as those of Maracci, Prideaux, and White are hereafter impossible in polemico-religious literature. No cultivated man, however inquisitorial his temperament, will ever, in the future, be tempted—or at least yield to the temptation—to subject any religious system to the Procrustean ordeal.
And, so far as Islam is concerned, scholars are arising within its ranks imbued with Western learning, and taking the part not only of defenders of their faith, but of interpreters between the Eastern and Western world. It has recently occasioned some surprise and comment that a Mohammedan writer should have written an able work in the English tongue, “challenging European and Christian thinkers on their own ground.”[2] Since the appearance of Syed Ahmed’s essays, another work has appeared in the English language, written by a young Mohammedan, in which he has briefly, temperately, and ably discussed the various subjects in relation to which Islam is usually assailed.[3]
But it is not only in recent days, as the writer in the British Quarterly Review would Seem to imply, that Mohammedans have availed themselves of the power of the pen, in defence of their faith. There have always been, and there are now, able controversialists among them altogether unknown to Western fame. The celebrated work of Dr. Pfander, the Mizan-al-Hakk, attacking the Mohammedan system, has been reviewed in the Arabic language by a Mohammedan scholar, Rahmat Allah, in a learned and incisive reply, in which he reveals a marvellous acquaintance with European literature. We have heard of no attempt at a rejoinder to the work of Rahmat Allah. We saw a copy of this book in the hands of a West African Mohammedan at Sierra Leone, who was reading and commenting upon it to a number of his co-religionists.
We are glad to notice that Mr. Bosworth Smith’s book has been republished in the United States, and that the able article of Deutsch on Islam has been reproduced in the same volume as an appendix. They are fit companions—par nobile fratrum. The traveller, contemplating a visit to Mohammedan countries, or the theologian wishing to get a clear view of a religious system which is shaping the destiny of millions of the race, may now carry in his pocket a complete compendium of Mohammedan literature. If we except the very remarkable article on the ‘Historical Statements in the Koran,’ written in 1832, by the then stripling reviewer, Mr. J. Addison
Alexander, of Princeton, and the able ‘Review of the Koran,’ by Professor Draper, of the New York University, in his History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, American scholarship has as yet, as far as we are aware, produced nothing of importance in this branch of literature.
And, so far as Islam is concerned, scholars are arising within its ranks imbued with Western learning, and taking the part not only of defenders of their faith, but of interpreters between the Eastern and Western world. It has recently occasioned some surprise and comment that a Mohammedan writer should have written an able work in the English tongue, “challenging European and Christian thinkers on their own ground.”[2] Since the appearance of Syed Ahmed’s essays, another work has appeared in the English language, written by a young Mohammedan, in which he has briefly, temperately, and ably discussed the various subjects in relation to which Islam is usually assailed.[3]
But it is not only in recent days, as the writer in the British Quarterly Review would Seem to imply, that Mohammedans have availed themselves of the power of the pen, in defence of their faith. There have always been, and there are now, able controversialists among them altogether unknown to Western fame. The celebrated work of Dr. Pfander, the Mizan-al-Hakk, attacking the Mohammedan system, has been reviewed in the Arabic language by a Mohammedan scholar, Rahmat Allah, in a learned and incisive reply, in which he reveals a marvellous acquaintance with European literature. We have heard of no attempt at a rejoinder to the work of Rahmat Allah. We saw a copy of this book in the hands of a West African Mohammedan at Sierra Leone, who was reading and commenting upon it to a number of his co-religionists.
We are glad to notice that Mr. Bosworth Smith’s book has been republished in the United States, and that the able article of Deutsch on Islam has been reproduced in the same volume as an appendix. They are fit companions—par nobile fratrum. The traveller, contemplating a visit to Mohammedan countries, or the theologian wishing to get a clear view of a religious system which is shaping the destiny of millions of the race, may now carry in his pocket a complete compendium of Mohammedan literature. If we except the very remarkable article on the ‘Historical Statements in the Koran,’ written in 1832, by the then stripling reviewer, Mr. J. Addison
Alexander, of Princeton, and the able ‘Review of the Koran,’ by Professor Draper, of the New York University, in his History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, American scholarship has as yet, as far as we are aware, produced nothing of importance in this branch of literature.
Footnotes
2 British Quarterly Review for January, 1872, in a Review of ‘A Series of Essays on the Life of
Mohammed,⁏ &c; by Syed Ahmed Khan Bahador, C.S.I., Vol. I.—London, Trübner and Co., 1870.
3 A Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Mohammed; by Syed Ameer Ali Moulvi,
M.A., LL.B., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law, &c.— London: Williams and Norgate, 1873.
2 British Quarterly Review for January, 1872, in a Review of ‘A Series of Essays on the Life of
Mohammed,⁏ &c; by Syed Ahmed Khan Bahador, C.S.I., Vol. I.—London, Trübner and Co., 1870.
3 A Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Mohammed; by Syed Ameer Ali Moulvi,
M.A., LL.B., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law, &c.— London: Williams and Norgate, 1873.
The portion of the interesting work now before us, which we propose more particulary to notice, is that part of the first lecture which refers to the character and influence of Islam in Western and Central Africa. Dean Stanley says:--
It cannot be forgotten that Mohammedanism is the only higher religion which has hitherto made progress in the vast continent of Africa. Whatever may be the future fortunes of African Christianity, there can be no doubt that they will be long affected by its relations with the most fanatical and the most proselytising portion of the Mussulman world in its Negro converts.[4]
If this view is correct, then the Christian world cannot be indifferent to the discussion of a subject so full of importance affecting one branch of the philanthropic interests into which the Christian Church, more than ever before, is now pouring its most eager life.[5]
Three streams of influence have always penetrated into Negro land; one, from Egypt, through Nubia, to Bornou and Hausa; another, from Abyssinia to Yoruba and Ashantee; the third, from the Barbary States across the desert to Timbuktu. By the first two, Egypt and Arabia exchanged their productions for the raw materials of the Soudan. By the third, the ports of the Mediterranean, through the Great Desert, having Timbuktu as a centre, became outlets for the wealth of Nigritia. Even in the days of Herodotus there appears to have been intercourse between the region of the Tsad and the Mediterranean, and the valuable products collected at various centres by the itinerant traffic, which still flourishes in the interior, shared by numerous caravans, found their way by means of Phoenician ships to different countries of Europe and the Levant.
Central Africa has never been cut off commercially from European and Asiatic intercourse. But it was not until the ninth century of the Christian era that any knowledge of the true God began to penetrate into Negroland. To Akbah, a distinguished Muslim general, belongs the credit or discredit of having subdued North Africa to Islam. He marched from Damascus at the head of ten thousand enthusiastic followers, and in a short time spread his conquests along the shores of North Africa, advancing to the very verge of the Atlantic, whose billows alone checked his westward career.[6] But the energy which could not proceed westward turned northward and southward.
In its southern progress it crossed the formidable wastes of the Sahara, penetrated into the Soudan, and established the centre of its influence at Timbuktu. In less than a century from that time several large Nigritian tribes had yielded to the influence of Islam; and it shaped so rapidly the ideas, the manners, and the history of those tribes, that when in the Middle Ages Ibn Batoutah, an Arab traveller, visited those regions, he found that Islam had taken firm root among several powerful peoples, had mastered their life and habits, and dominated their whole social and religious policy. Among the praiseworthy qualities which attracted his attention as a result of their conversion, he mentions their devotion to the study of the Koran, and relates the following illustrative incidents, which we give in the French version now before us:--
Ils ont un grand zèle pour apprendre par cœur le sublime Coran. Dans le cas ouu leurs enfants font preuve de négligence à cet égard, ils leur mettent des entraves aux pieds et ne les leur ôtent pas qu’ils ne le sachent reciter de meemoire. Le jour de la fête, étant entré chez le juge, et ayant vu ses enfants enchainés, je lui dis: “Est-ce que tu ne les mettras pas en libertee?” Il repondit: “Je ne le ferai que lorsqu’ils sauront par coooeur le Coran.” Une autre jour, je passai devant un jeune nègre, beau de figure, revêtu d’habits superbes, et portant aux pieds une lourde chaiine. Je dis à la personne qui m’accom-pagnait: “Qu’a fait ce garccon? Est-ce qu’il a assassinee quelqu’un?” Le jeune neegre entendit mon propos et se mit à rire. On me dit: “Il a été en-chaíné uniquement pour le forcer à apprendre le Coran de meemoire.”[7]
Mohammedanism in Africa counts in its ranks the most energetic and enterprising tribes. It claims as adherents the only people who have any form of civil polity or bond of social organisation. It has built and occupies the largest cities in the heart of the continent. Its laws regulate the most powerful kingdoms—Futah, Masina, Hausa, Bornou, Waday, Darfur, Kordofan, Senaar, &c. It produces and controls the most valuable commerce between Africa and Foreign countries; it is daily gaining converts from the ranks of Paganism; and it commands respect among. all Africans wherever it is known, even where the people have not submitted to the sway of the Koran.
It cannot be forgotten that Mohammedanism is the only higher religion which has hitherto made progress in the vast continent of Africa. Whatever may be the future fortunes of African Christianity, there can be no doubt that they will be long affected by its relations with the most fanatical and the most proselytising portion of the Mussulman world in its Negro converts.[4]
If this view is correct, then the Christian world cannot be indifferent to the discussion of a subject so full of importance affecting one branch of the philanthropic interests into which the Christian Church, more than ever before, is now pouring its most eager life.[5]
Three streams of influence have always penetrated into Negro land; one, from Egypt, through Nubia, to Bornou and Hausa; another, from Abyssinia to Yoruba and Ashantee; the third, from the Barbary States across the desert to Timbuktu. By the first two, Egypt and Arabia exchanged their productions for the raw materials of the Soudan. By the third, the ports of the Mediterranean, through the Great Desert, having Timbuktu as a centre, became outlets for the wealth of Nigritia. Even in the days of Herodotus there appears to have been intercourse between the region of the Tsad and the Mediterranean, and the valuable products collected at various centres by the itinerant traffic, which still flourishes in the interior, shared by numerous caravans, found their way by means of Phoenician ships to different countries of Europe and the Levant.
Central Africa has never been cut off commercially from European and Asiatic intercourse. But it was not until the ninth century of the Christian era that any knowledge of the true God began to penetrate into Negroland. To Akbah, a distinguished Muslim general, belongs the credit or discredit of having subdued North Africa to Islam. He marched from Damascus at the head of ten thousand enthusiastic followers, and in a short time spread his conquests along the shores of North Africa, advancing to the very verge of the Atlantic, whose billows alone checked his westward career.[6] But the energy which could not proceed westward turned northward and southward.
In its southern progress it crossed the formidable wastes of the Sahara, penetrated into the Soudan, and established the centre of its influence at Timbuktu. In less than a century from that time several large Nigritian tribes had yielded to the influence of Islam; and it shaped so rapidly the ideas, the manners, and the history of those tribes, that when in the Middle Ages Ibn Batoutah, an Arab traveller, visited those regions, he found that Islam had taken firm root among several powerful peoples, had mastered their life and habits, and dominated their whole social and religious policy. Among the praiseworthy qualities which attracted his attention as a result of their conversion, he mentions their devotion to the study of the Koran, and relates the following illustrative incidents, which we give in the French version now before us:--
Ils ont un grand zèle pour apprendre par cœur le sublime Coran. Dans le cas ouu leurs enfants font preuve de négligence à cet égard, ils leur mettent des entraves aux pieds et ne les leur ôtent pas qu’ils ne le sachent reciter de meemoire. Le jour de la fête, étant entré chez le juge, et ayant vu ses enfants enchainés, je lui dis: “Est-ce que tu ne les mettras pas en libertee?” Il repondit: “Je ne le ferai que lorsqu’ils sauront par coooeur le Coran.” Une autre jour, je passai devant un jeune nègre, beau de figure, revêtu d’habits superbes, et portant aux pieds une lourde chaiine. Je dis à la personne qui m’accom-pagnait: “Qu’a fait ce garccon? Est-ce qu’il a assassinee quelqu’un?” Le jeune neegre entendit mon propos et se mit à rire. On me dit: “Il a été en-chaíné uniquement pour le forcer à apprendre le Coran de meemoire.”[7]
Mohammedanism in Africa counts in its ranks the most energetic and enterprising tribes. It claims as adherents the only people who have any form of civil polity or bond of social organisation. It has built and occupies the largest cities in the heart of the continent. Its laws regulate the most powerful kingdoms—Futah, Masina, Hausa, Bornou, Waday, Darfur, Kordofan, Senaar, &c. It produces and controls the most valuable commerce between Africa and Foreign countries; it is daily gaining converts from the ranks of Paganism; and it commands respect among. all Africans wherever it is known, even where the people have not submitted to the sway of the Koran.
Footnotes
4 Eastern Church, p. 259.
5 Mr. Monier Williams, the Boden Professor of Sanscrit at Oxford, has recently expressed the opinion, in a paper read at the Conference on Foreign Missions, held at tho Cannon Street Hotel in London (June 22, 1875), that, unless a fresh and powerful impulse is given to Christian missionary effort, Mohammedanism will speedily overrun the whole African continent.
6 Gibbon's Decline and Fall, &o., chap. Ii.
7 Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah, texte et traduction; par Defremery et Sangui-netti.—Paris, 1858; vol. iv, pp. 422, 423.
4 Eastern Church, p. 259.
5 Mr. Monier Williams, the Boden Professor of Sanscrit at Oxford, has recently expressed the opinion, in a paper read at the Conference on Foreign Missions, held at tho Cannon Street Hotel in London (June 22, 1875), that, unless a fresh and powerful impulse is given to Christian missionary effort, Mohammedanism will speedily overrun the whole African continent.
6 Gibbon's Decline and Fall, &o., chap. Ii.
7 Voyages d'Ibn Batoutah, texte et traduction; par Defremery et Sangui-netti.—Paris, 1858; vol. iv, pp. 422, 423.
No one can travel any distance in the interior of West Africa without being struck with the different aspects of society in different localities, according as the population is Pagan or Mohammedan. Not only is there a difference in the methods of government, but in the general regulations of society, and even in the amusements of the people. The love of noisy terpsichorean performances, so noticeable in Pagan communities, disappears as the people come under the influence of Mohammedanism. It is not a fact that “when the sun goes down, all Africa dances;” but it might be a fact if it were not for the influence of Islam. Those who would once have sought pleasure in the excitement of the tom-tom, now repair five times a-day to the mosque, where they spend a quarter of an hour on each occasion in devotional exercises. After the labours of the day they assemble in groups near the mosque to hear the Koran recited, or the Traditions or some other book read. In traversing the region of country between Sierra Leone and Futah Jallo in 1873, we passed through populous Pagan towns; and the transition from these to Mohammedan districts was striking. When we left a Pagan and entered a Mohammedan community, we at once noticed that we had entered a moral atmosphere widely separated from, and loftier far than, the one we had left. We discovered that the character, feelings, and conditions of the people were profoundly altered and improved.
It is evident that, whatever may be said of the Koran, as long as it is in advance of the Shamanism or Fetichism of the African tribes who accept it— and no one will doubt that Islam as a creed is an enormous advance not only on all idolatries, but on all systems of purely human origin—those tribes must advance beyond their primitive condition.
The Koran is, in its measure, an important educator. It exerts among a primitive people a wonderful influence. It has furnished to the adherents of its teachings in Africa a ground of union which has contributed vastly to their progress. Hausas, Foulahs, Mandin-goes, Soosoos, Akus, can all read the same books and mingle in worship together, and there is to all one common authority and one ultimate umpirage. They are united by a common religious sentiment, by a common antagonism to Paganism. Not only the sentiments, but the language, the words of the sacred book are held in the greatest reverence and esteem. And even where the ideas are not fully understood, the words seem to possess for them a nameless beauty and music, a subtle and indefinable charm, incomprehensible to those acquainted only with European languages. It is easy for those not acquainted with the language in which the Koran was written, and therefore, judging altogether as outsiders, to indulge in depreciation of its merits.[8] Such critics lose sight of the fact that the Koran is a poetical composition, and a poetical composition of the earliest and most primitive kind, and that therefore its ideas and the language in which they are conveyed cannot well be separated. The genuine poet not only creates the conception, but the word which is its vehicle. The word becomes the inseparable drapery of the idea. Hence the highest poetry cannot be translated. We see this in the numerous versions by which it has been sought in every age to reach the sense of the poetical portions of the Bible. No words yet furnished by Greek, Roman, or Teutonic literature have been fully adequate to bring out the subtle beauties of the Semitic original. Among Mohammedans, written or printed translations of the Koran are discouraged. The Chinese, Hindoos, Persians, Turks, Mandingoes Foulahs, &c., who have embraced Islam, speak in their “own tongues wherein they were born” but read the Koran in Arabic.
Mr. Bosworth Smith was right to begin his preparations for the valuable work he has written by a careful study of the Koran. But it is to be regretted that he had not access to the force and beauty of the original, which neither Sale, Kasimirsky, Lane, nor Rodwell have been able—though they laboured hard to do so—to retain in their excellent translations. A distinguished Oriental scholar and critic says:--
There can be no doubt that, to understand thoroughly this wonderful book the aid of those learned men, Arabs and others, who have devoted themselves to the careful study of it, is not only desirable, but necessary. . . . The subject is of sufficient importance to men of research to render it advisable that it should be examined from ail points of view, for by no other means can we hope to obtain as clear an insight into the origin of Islam, as by a careful study of the book which contains its fundamental principles.[9]
To the outside world, easily swayed by superficial impressions, and carried away by matters of mere dramatic interest, there may be nothing attractive in the progress of Islam in Africa, because, as far as known to Western readers, the history of African Mohammedanism is deficient in great characters and in remarkable episodes. There has been, it is supposed, no controlling mind developed, which has moved great masses of men. But the words of Horace are applicable here:--
Omnes illacrimabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longa
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.
It is not, however, that no bard has written, but they have had very few readers in Christian countries. To those acquainted with the interior of Africa—to the Mohammedan world of North Africa and Arabia—it is well known that numerous characters have arisen in Africa—Negro Muslims—who have exerted no little influence in the military, political, and ecclesiastical affairs of Islam, not only in Africa, but in the lands of their teachers. In the biographies of Ibn Khallikan are frequent notices of distinguished Negro Mohammedans. Koelle, in his Polyglotta Africana, gives a graphic account of the proceedings of the great Fodie, whose zeal, enthusiasm, and bravery spread Islam over a large portion of Nigritia.
It is evident that, whatever may be said of the Koran, as long as it is in advance of the Shamanism or Fetichism of the African tribes who accept it— and no one will doubt that Islam as a creed is an enormous advance not only on all idolatries, but on all systems of purely human origin—those tribes must advance beyond their primitive condition.
The Koran is, in its measure, an important educator. It exerts among a primitive people a wonderful influence. It has furnished to the adherents of its teachings in Africa a ground of union which has contributed vastly to their progress. Hausas, Foulahs, Mandin-goes, Soosoos, Akus, can all read the same books and mingle in worship together, and there is to all one common authority and one ultimate umpirage. They are united by a common religious sentiment, by a common antagonism to Paganism. Not only the sentiments, but the language, the words of the sacred book are held in the greatest reverence and esteem. And even where the ideas are not fully understood, the words seem to possess for them a nameless beauty and music, a subtle and indefinable charm, incomprehensible to those acquainted only with European languages. It is easy for those not acquainted with the language in which the Koran was written, and therefore, judging altogether as outsiders, to indulge in depreciation of its merits.[8] Such critics lose sight of the fact that the Koran is a poetical composition, and a poetical composition of the earliest and most primitive kind, and that therefore its ideas and the language in which they are conveyed cannot well be separated. The genuine poet not only creates the conception, but the word which is its vehicle. The word becomes the inseparable drapery of the idea. Hence the highest poetry cannot be translated. We see this in the numerous versions by which it has been sought in every age to reach the sense of the poetical portions of the Bible. No words yet furnished by Greek, Roman, or Teutonic literature have been fully adequate to bring out the subtle beauties of the Semitic original. Among Mohammedans, written or printed translations of the Koran are discouraged. The Chinese, Hindoos, Persians, Turks, Mandingoes Foulahs, &c., who have embraced Islam, speak in their “own tongues wherein they were born” but read the Koran in Arabic.
Mr. Bosworth Smith was right to begin his preparations for the valuable work he has written by a careful study of the Koran. But it is to be regretted that he had not access to the force and beauty of the original, which neither Sale, Kasimirsky, Lane, nor Rodwell have been able—though they laboured hard to do so—to retain in their excellent translations. A distinguished Oriental scholar and critic says:--
There can be no doubt that, to understand thoroughly this wonderful book the aid of those learned men, Arabs and others, who have devoted themselves to the careful study of it, is not only desirable, but necessary. . . . The subject is of sufficient importance to men of research to render it advisable that it should be examined from ail points of view, for by no other means can we hope to obtain as clear an insight into the origin of Islam, as by a careful study of the book which contains its fundamental principles.[9]
To the outside world, easily swayed by superficial impressions, and carried away by matters of mere dramatic interest, there may be nothing attractive in the progress of Islam in Africa, because, as far as known to Western readers, the history of African Mohammedanism is deficient in great characters and in remarkable episodes. There has been, it is supposed, no controlling mind developed, which has moved great masses of men. But the words of Horace are applicable here:--
Omnes illacrimabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longa
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro.
It is not, however, that no bard has written, but they have had very few readers in Christian countries. To those acquainted with the interior of Africa—to the Mohammedan world of North Africa and Arabia—it is well known that numerous characters have arisen in Africa—Negro Muslims—who have exerted no little influence in the military, political, and ecclesiastical affairs of Islam, not only in Africa, but in the lands of their teachers. In the biographies of Ibn Khallikan are frequent notices of distinguished Negro Mohammedans. Koelle, in his Polyglotta Africana, gives a graphic account of the proceedings of the great Fodie, whose zeal, enthusiasm, and bravery spread Islam over a large portion of Nigritia.
Footnotes
8 The case cited by Dr. Mühleisen Arnold, in his work on Islam, of an Arab philosopher and unbeliever in Mohammed, who lived in the eighth cdntury, depreciating the literary merits of the Koran, is no more in point as an argument against the book, it appears to us, than if a Mohammedan controversialist were to quote from Voltaire or Tom Paine against the Bible.
9 W. Nassau Lees, in the prefaoe to his edition of the Commentary of Zamakhshari.
8 The case cited by Dr. Mühleisen Arnold, in his work on Islam, of an Arab philosopher and unbeliever in Mohammed, who lived in the eighth cdntury, depreciating the literary merits of the Koran, is no more in point as an argument against the book, it appears to us, than if a Mohammedan controversialist were to quote from Voltaire or Tom Paine against the Bible.
9 W. Nassau Lees, in the prefaoe to his edition of the Commentary of Zamakhshari.
One of the most remarkable characters who have influenced the history of the region of country between Timbuktu and the West Coast was a native of Futah Toro, known as the Sheikh Omaru Al-Hajj. He is said to have been a Waleeu,[10] a man of extraordinary endowments, of commanding presence, and great personal influence. He was educated by the Sheikh Tijani, a Muslim missionary from Arabia. Having spent several years under the instruction of this distinguished teacher, visiting Mecca in the meanwhile, he became profoundly learned in the Arabic language. After the death of his master, he went twice to Mecca on pilgrimage. On his return to his country the second time, he undertook a series of proselytising expeditions against the powerful Pagan tribes on the east and south-east of Futah Toro. He conquered several powerful chiefs and reduced their people to the faith of Islam. He banished Paganism from Sego, and purified the practices of several Mohammedan districts which had become imbued with heathenish notions.
He thus restored Jenne, and Hamd-Allahi, and was on his way to Timbuktu, about ten years ago, when, through the treachery of the Arabs of that region, he was circumvented and killed at a town in Masina. One of his sons, Ahmadu, is now King of Sego, another rules over Hamd-Allahi, two of the largest cities in Central Africa.
Al-Hajj Omaru wrote many Arabic works in prose and poetry. His poems are recited and sung in every Mohammedan town and village, from Futlah- town, in Sierra Leone, to Kano. His memory is held in the greatest respect by all native students, and they attribute to him many extraordinary deeds, and see in his successful enterprises, literary and military, proofs of divine guidance.[11]
We have heard of numerous instances of these “half-military, half- religious geniuses,” as Mr. Bosworth Smith calls them, “which Islam always seems capable of producing.”
To the Mohammedans of Negroland, far away from the complex civilisation of European life, with its multifarious interests, the struggle for the ascendancy of Islam is the one great object which should engage the attention of a rational being. It is a struggle between light and darkness, between knowledge and ignorance, between good and evil, The traditional enthusiasm of their faith makes them utterly indifferent to the sufferings of any who stand in the way of the dissemination of the truth, and patient of any evils they may have to endure in order to ensure the triumph of their cause.
“Paradise is under the shadow of swords,” is one of their stimulating proverbs.
There is one passage in Mr. Bosworth Smith’s book, of which we do not think that the author, who, as it seems, has not himself been in Africa, perceived the full import, but which the Christian world, it appears to us, would do well to ponder. It is as follows:--
Christian travellers, with every wish to think otherwise, have remarked that the Negro[12] who accepts Mohammedanism acquires at once a sense of the dignity of human nature not commonly found even among those who have been brought to accept Christianity.[13]
Having enjoyed exceptional advantages for observation and comparison in the United States, the West Indies, South America, Egypt, Syria, West and Central Africa, we are compelled, however reluctantly, to endorse the statement made by Mr. B. Smith. And we are not surprised at his seizing hold, in his researches, of this most important fact and giving it such prominence—a prominence it richly deserves—in the discussion. Wherever the Negro is found in Christian lands, his leading trait is not docility, as has been often alleged, but servility. He is slow and unprogressive. Individuals here and there may be found of extraordinary intelligence, enterprise, and energy, but there is no Christian community of Negroes anywhere which is self-reliant and independent. Haïti and Liberia, so-called Negro Republics, are merely struggling for existence, and hold their own by the tolerance of the civilised powers.[14] On the other hand, there are numerous Negro Mohammedan communities and states in Africa which are self-reliant, productive, independent, and dominant, supporting, without the countenance or patronage of the parent country, Arabia, whence they derived them, their political, literary, and ecclesiastical institutions. In Sierra Leone, the Mohammedans, without any aid from Government—Imperial or local—or any contributions from Mecca or Constantinople, erect their mosques, keep up their religious services, conduct their schools, and contribute to the support of missionaries from Arabia, Morocco, or Futah when they visit them. The same compliment cannot be paid to the Negro Christians of that settlement. The most enlightened native Christians there look forward with serious apprehension— and, perhaps, not without good grounds—to the time when, if ever, the instructions and influence from London will be withheld.
An able paper on the ‘Condition and Wants of Liberia,’ by an intelligent and candid Liberian, has the following:
We want, as a people, the spirit of liberality. We have learned to depend upon foreign institutions to support our churches. This should not be so. If, indeed, we have not enough of the Christian religion to induce us to contribute! liberally to the cause of the Gospel; if we have not enough zeal for the cause of Christ to make us willing to sacrifice time and money for its good, &c, we had as well give up churches and religion. . . . . I have known some persons to change a two cent piece so as to get one cent for the church. Alas, for such religion! alas for the churches thus supported! [15]
He thus restored Jenne, and Hamd-Allahi, and was on his way to Timbuktu, about ten years ago, when, through the treachery of the Arabs of that region, he was circumvented and killed at a town in Masina. One of his sons, Ahmadu, is now King of Sego, another rules over Hamd-Allahi, two of the largest cities in Central Africa.
Al-Hajj Omaru wrote many Arabic works in prose and poetry. His poems are recited and sung in every Mohammedan town and village, from Futlah- town, in Sierra Leone, to Kano. His memory is held in the greatest respect by all native students, and they attribute to him many extraordinary deeds, and see in his successful enterprises, literary and military, proofs of divine guidance.[11]
We have heard of numerous instances of these “half-military, half- religious geniuses,” as Mr. Bosworth Smith calls them, “which Islam always seems capable of producing.”
To the Mohammedans of Negroland, far away from the complex civilisation of European life, with its multifarious interests, the struggle for the ascendancy of Islam is the one great object which should engage the attention of a rational being. It is a struggle between light and darkness, between knowledge and ignorance, between good and evil, The traditional enthusiasm of their faith makes them utterly indifferent to the sufferings of any who stand in the way of the dissemination of the truth, and patient of any evils they may have to endure in order to ensure the triumph of their cause.
“Paradise is under the shadow of swords,” is one of their stimulating proverbs.
There is one passage in Mr. Bosworth Smith’s book, of which we do not think that the author, who, as it seems, has not himself been in Africa, perceived the full import, but which the Christian world, it appears to us, would do well to ponder. It is as follows:--
Christian travellers, with every wish to think otherwise, have remarked that the Negro[12] who accepts Mohammedanism acquires at once a sense of the dignity of human nature not commonly found even among those who have been brought to accept Christianity.[13]
Having enjoyed exceptional advantages for observation and comparison in the United States, the West Indies, South America, Egypt, Syria, West and Central Africa, we are compelled, however reluctantly, to endorse the statement made by Mr. B. Smith. And we are not surprised at his seizing hold, in his researches, of this most important fact and giving it such prominence—a prominence it richly deserves—in the discussion. Wherever the Negro is found in Christian lands, his leading trait is not docility, as has been often alleged, but servility. He is slow and unprogressive. Individuals here and there may be found of extraordinary intelligence, enterprise, and energy, but there is no Christian community of Negroes anywhere which is self-reliant and independent. Haïti and Liberia, so-called Negro Republics, are merely struggling for existence, and hold their own by the tolerance of the civilised powers.[14] On the other hand, there are numerous Negro Mohammedan communities and states in Africa which are self-reliant, productive, independent, and dominant, supporting, without the countenance or patronage of the parent country, Arabia, whence they derived them, their political, literary, and ecclesiastical institutions. In Sierra Leone, the Mohammedans, without any aid from Government—Imperial or local—or any contributions from Mecca or Constantinople, erect their mosques, keep up their religious services, conduct their schools, and contribute to the support of missionaries from Arabia, Morocco, or Futah when they visit them. The same compliment cannot be paid to the Negro Christians of that settlement. The most enlightened native Christians there look forward with serious apprehension— and, perhaps, not without good grounds—to the time when, if ever, the instructions and influence from London will be withheld.
An able paper on the ‘Condition and Wants of Liberia,’ by an intelligent and candid Liberian, has the following:
We want, as a people, the spirit of liberality. We have learned to depend upon foreign institutions to support our churches. This should not be so. If, indeed, we have not enough of the Christian religion to induce us to contribute! liberally to the cause of the Gospel; if we have not enough zeal for the cause of Christ to make us willing to sacrifice time and money for its good, &c, we had as well give up churches and religion. . . . . I have known some persons to change a two cent piece so as to get one cent for the church. Alas, for such religion! alas for the churches thus supported! [15]
Footnotes
10 This word is used by the Mohammedans of Negroland in a peculiar sense. It means one called of God, and endowed with special gifts to exercise authority in ecclesiastical and sometimes political matters, inferior in offioial rank— according to their estimation—only to a prophet. Such men have, from time to time, arisen among African Mohammedans, and have oarried out important reforms in Church and State.
11 Report on the Expedition to Timbo made to the Governor of Sierra Leone, 1873. See also the
African Sketch Book, by Winwood Reade, vol. i, p. 317.
12 Mr. Bosworth Smith writes this word with a small “ n,” but we do not see why, if it is used to designate one of the great families of man, it should not be entitled to the same distinction as such words as Indian, Hindoo, China-jnan, &c. Why give more dignity to the specific than to the general? Why write Ashantee, Congo, Mandingo, with capitals, and Negro, the generic appellation, with a small “n”? Is not this in deference to the sort of prejudice against which Mr. B. Smith himself protests?
13 Lecture I, p. 32.
14 The Official Journal, dated May 1, 1875, contained intelligence of & conspiracy which had just been suppressed, and a Presidential decree banishing forty of tho conspirators.
15 The Annual Address delivered before the City Council and Citizens of Monrovia, July 27, 1874; by Jehu T. Dimery.
10 This word is used by the Mohammedans of Negroland in a peculiar sense. It means one called of God, and endowed with special gifts to exercise authority in ecclesiastical and sometimes political matters, inferior in offioial rank— according to their estimation—only to a prophet. Such men have, from time to time, arisen among African Mohammedans, and have oarried out important reforms in Church and State.
11 Report on the Expedition to Timbo made to the Governor of Sierra Leone, 1873. See also the
African Sketch Book, by Winwood Reade, vol. i, p. 317.
12 Mr. Bosworth Smith writes this word with a small “ n,” but we do not see why, if it is used to designate one of the great families of man, it should not be entitled to the same distinction as such words as Indian, Hindoo, China-jnan, &c. Why give more dignity to the specific than to the general? Why write Ashantee, Congo, Mandingo, with capitals, and Negro, the generic appellation, with a small “n”? Is not this in deference to the sort of prejudice against which Mr. B. Smith himself protests?
13 Lecture I, p. 32.
14 The Official Journal, dated May 1, 1875, contained intelligence of & conspiracy which had just been suppressed, and a Presidential decree banishing forty of tho conspirators.
15 The Annual Address delivered before the City Council and Citizens of Monrovia, July 27, 1874; by Jehu T. Dimery.
In the recent Ashantee war the most trustworthy Negro troops were the Haussas, who are rigid Mohammedans. The West India Christian Negro troops were not relied on to the same extent.
Now, what has produced this difference in the effects of the two systems upon the Negro race? In reply, we remark generally that the difference must be attributed to the difference in the conditions under which the systems came to those of the Negro race who embraced the one or the other, Mohammedanism found its Negro converts at home in a state of freedom and independence of the teachers who brought it to them. When it was offered to them they were at liberty to choose for themselves. The Arab missionaries, whom we have met in the interior, go about without “purse or scrip,” and disseminate their religion by quietly teaching the Koran. The native missionaries—Man-dingoes and Foulahs—unite with the propagation of their faith active trading. Wherever they go, they produce the impression that they are not preachers only, but traders; but, on the other hand, that they are not traders merely, but preachers. And, in this way, silently and almost unobtrusively, they are causing princes to become obedient disciples and zealous propagators of Islam. Their converts, as a general thing, become Muslims from choice and conviction, and bring all the manliness of their former condition to the maintenance and support of their new creed.
When the religion was first introduced it found the people possessing all the elements and enjoying all the privileges of an untrammelled manhood. They received it as giving them additional power to exert an influence in the world. It sent them forth as the guides and instructors of their less favoured neighbours, and endowed them with the self-respect which men feel who acknowledge no superior. While it brought them a great deal that was absolutely new, and inspired them with spiritual feelings to which they had before been utter strangers, it strengthened and hastened certain tendencies to independence and self-reliance which were already at work. Their local institutions were not destroyed by the Arab influence introduced. They only assumed new forms, and adapted themselves to the new teachings. In all thriving Mohammedan communities, in West and Central Africa, it may be noticed that the Arab superstructure has been superimposed on a permanent indigenous substructure; so that what really took place, when the Arab met the Negro in his own home, was a healthy amalgamation, and not an absorption or an undue repression.
The Oriental aspect of Islam has become largely modified in Negroland, not, as is too generally supposed, by a degrading compromise with the Pagan superstitions, but by shaping many of its traditional customs to suit the milder and more conciliatory disposition of the Negro. As long as Timbuktu, which was but a continuation of Morocco, retained its ascendency, Islam kept up its strictly Arabian aspect; but since the seat of literary activity and ecclesiastical influence has been transferred to Kuka, and since Kano has become the commercial centre—two purely Negro cities grown up under Muslim influence—and since the religion has taken root among the large indigenous communities near the source of the Niger, it has been largely affected by the geographical and racial influences to which it has been exposed. The absence of political pressure has permitted native peculiarities to manifest themselves, and to take an effective part in the work of assimilating the new elements.
Christianity, on the other hand, came to the Negro as a slave, or at least as a subject race in a foreign land. Along with the Christian teaching, he and his children received lessons of their utter and permanent inferiority and subordination to their instructors, to whom they stood in the relation of chattels. Christianity took them fresh from the barbarism of ages, and forced them to embrace its tenets. The religion of Jesus was embraced by them as the only source of consolation in their deep disasters. In their abject miseries, keen anguish, and hopeless suffering they seized upon it as promising a country where, after the unexampled sorrows of this life, “the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” It found them down-trodden, oppressed, scorned; it soothed their sufferings, subdued their hearts, and pointed them, in its exhaustless sympathy, to the “Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” In their condition of outcasts and pariahs, it directed their aspirations to a heavenly and eternal citizenship; it put new songs in their mouths—those melodies inimitable to the rest of the world—which, from the lips of emancipated slaves, have recently charmed the ears and captivated the hearts of royalty and nobles in Europe by a tenderness, a sweetness, an earnestness, and a solemnity, born of adversity, in the house of bondage. A popular London preacher says:
The Negro is more really musical than the Englishman. . . . Singing very often merrily with the tears wet upon his ebony cheek, no record of his joy or sorrow passed unaccompanied by a cry of melody, or a wail of plaintive and harmonious melancholy. If we could divest ourselves of prejudice, the songs that float down the Ohio river are one in feeling and character with the songs of the Hebrew captives by the waters of Babylon. We find in them the same tale of bereavement and separation, the same irreparable sorrow, the same wild tenderness and passionate sweetness, like music in the night.[16]
Now, what has produced this difference in the effects of the two systems upon the Negro race? In reply, we remark generally that the difference must be attributed to the difference in the conditions under which the systems came to those of the Negro race who embraced the one or the other, Mohammedanism found its Negro converts at home in a state of freedom and independence of the teachers who brought it to them. When it was offered to them they were at liberty to choose for themselves. The Arab missionaries, whom we have met in the interior, go about without “purse or scrip,” and disseminate their religion by quietly teaching the Koran. The native missionaries—Man-dingoes and Foulahs—unite with the propagation of their faith active trading. Wherever they go, they produce the impression that they are not preachers only, but traders; but, on the other hand, that they are not traders merely, but preachers. And, in this way, silently and almost unobtrusively, they are causing princes to become obedient disciples and zealous propagators of Islam. Their converts, as a general thing, become Muslims from choice and conviction, and bring all the manliness of their former condition to the maintenance and support of their new creed.
When the religion was first introduced it found the people possessing all the elements and enjoying all the privileges of an untrammelled manhood. They received it as giving them additional power to exert an influence in the world. It sent them forth as the guides and instructors of their less favoured neighbours, and endowed them with the self-respect which men feel who acknowledge no superior. While it brought them a great deal that was absolutely new, and inspired them with spiritual feelings to which they had before been utter strangers, it strengthened and hastened certain tendencies to independence and self-reliance which were already at work. Their local institutions were not destroyed by the Arab influence introduced. They only assumed new forms, and adapted themselves to the new teachings. In all thriving Mohammedan communities, in West and Central Africa, it may be noticed that the Arab superstructure has been superimposed on a permanent indigenous substructure; so that what really took place, when the Arab met the Negro in his own home, was a healthy amalgamation, and not an absorption or an undue repression.
The Oriental aspect of Islam has become largely modified in Negroland, not, as is too generally supposed, by a degrading compromise with the Pagan superstitions, but by shaping many of its traditional customs to suit the milder and more conciliatory disposition of the Negro. As long as Timbuktu, which was but a continuation of Morocco, retained its ascendency, Islam kept up its strictly Arabian aspect; but since the seat of literary activity and ecclesiastical influence has been transferred to Kuka, and since Kano has become the commercial centre—two purely Negro cities grown up under Muslim influence—and since the religion has taken root among the large indigenous communities near the source of the Niger, it has been largely affected by the geographical and racial influences to which it has been exposed. The absence of political pressure has permitted native peculiarities to manifest themselves, and to take an effective part in the work of assimilating the new elements.
Christianity, on the other hand, came to the Negro as a slave, or at least as a subject race in a foreign land. Along with the Christian teaching, he and his children received lessons of their utter and permanent inferiority and subordination to their instructors, to whom they stood in the relation of chattels. Christianity took them fresh from the barbarism of ages, and forced them to embrace its tenets. The religion of Jesus was embraced by them as the only source of consolation in their deep disasters. In their abject miseries, keen anguish, and hopeless suffering they seized upon it as promising a country where, after the unexampled sorrows of this life, “the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.” It found them down-trodden, oppressed, scorned; it soothed their sufferings, subdued their hearts, and pointed them, in its exhaustless sympathy, to the “Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” In their condition of outcasts and pariahs, it directed their aspirations to a heavenly and eternal citizenship; it put new songs in their mouths—those melodies inimitable to the rest of the world—which, from the lips of emancipated slaves, have recently charmed the ears and captivated the hearts of royalty and nobles in Europe by a tenderness, a sweetness, an earnestness, and a solemnity, born of adversity, in the house of bondage. A popular London preacher says:
The Negro is more really musical than the Englishman. . . . Singing very often merrily with the tears wet upon his ebony cheek, no record of his joy or sorrow passed unaccompanied by a cry of melody, or a wail of plaintive and harmonious melancholy. If we could divest ourselves of prejudice, the songs that float down the Ohio river are one in feeling and character with the songs of the Hebrew captives by the waters of Babylon. We find in them the same tale of bereavement and separation, the same irreparable sorrow, the same wild tenderness and passionate sweetness, like music in the night.[16]
Footnotes
16 Rev. H. R. Haweis in Mvsic and Morals, p. 500.—London, 1874.
16 Rev. H. R. Haweis in Mvsic and Morals, p. 500.—London, 1874.
These are great and precious advantages; but, nevertheless, owing to the physical, mental, and social pressure under which the Africans received these influences of Christianity, their development was necessarily partial and one- sided, cramped and abnormal. All tendencies to independent individuality were repressed and destroyed. Their ideas and aspirations could be expressed only in conformity with the views and tastes of those who held rule over them. All avenues to intellectual improvment were closed against them, and they were doomed to perpetual ignorance.
Mohammedanism and learning to the Muslim Negro were coeval. No sooner was he converted than he was taught to read, and the importance of knowledge was impressed upon him. The Christian Negro came in contact with mental and physical proscription and the religion of Christ, contemporaneously. If the Mohammedan Negro had at any time to choose between the Koran and the sword, when he chose the former, he was allowed to wield the latter as the equal of any other Muslim; but no amount of allegiance to the Gospel relieved the Christian Negro from the degradation of wearing the chain which he received with it, or rescued him from the political and, in a measure, ecclesiastical proscription which he still undergoes in all the countries of his exile.[17] Everywhere in Christian lands he plays, at the present moment, the part of the slave, ape or puppet. Only a few here and there rise above the general degradation, and these become targets to their unappreciative brethren--
Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto.
Is it any wonder, then, that “Christian travellers, with every wish to think otherwise,” in commenting upon the difference between Christian and Mohammedan Negroes, with respect to true manliness, must do so to the disadvantage of the former?
Another reason for the superior manliness and amour propre of Negro Mohammedans may be found in the fact that, unlike their Christian brethren, they have not been trained under the depressing influence of Aryan art.
Deutsch says:--
The Shemites from some strange idiosyncrasy, perpetuated by religious ordinances, abhorred, all of them, at certain stages, the making visible pictures of things they revered, loved or worshipped.[18]
The Second Commandment, with Mussulmans as with Jews, is construed literally into the prohibition of all representations of living creatures of all kinds; not merely in sacred places but everywhere.[19] Josephus tells us that the Jews would not even tolerate the image of the emperor, which was represented on the eagles of the soldiers.[20] The early Christian Fathers believed that painting and sculpture were forbidden by the Scriptures, and that they were therefore wicked arts. Among the Mohammedans of Negroland it is considered a sin to make even the rudest representation of any living thing on the ground or on the side of a house. We shall never forget the disgust with which a Mandingo from Kankan, who was, for the first time, visiting the sea-board at Monrovia, turned from a marble figure in the cemetery through which we were showing him, exclaiming, “Amâl Shaitân! amaal Shaitân!”—the work of Satan.[21]
No one can deny the great æsthetic and moral advantages which have accrued to the Caucasian race from Christian art, through all its stages of development, from the Good Shepherd of the Catacombs to the Transfiguration of Raphael, from rough mosaics to the inexpressible delicacy and beauty of Giotto and Fra Angelico.[22] But to the Negro all these exquisite representations exhibited only the physical characteristics of a foreign race; and, while they tended to quicken the tastes and refine the sensibilities of that race, they had only a depressing influence upon the Negro, who felt that he had neither part nor lot, so far as his physical character was concerned, in those splendid representations. A strict adherence to the letter of the Second Commandment .would have been no drawback to the Negro. To him the painting and sculpture of Europe as instruments of education, have been worse than failures. They have really raised barriers in the way of his normal development. They have set before him models for imitation; and his very effort to conform to the canons of taste thus practically suggested, has impaired, if not destroyed, his self-respect, and made him the weakling and creeper which he appears in Christian lands. It was our lot not long since to hear an illiterate Negro in a prayer-meeting in New York entreat the Deity to extend his “lily white hands” and bless the waiting congregation. Another,[23] with no greater amount of culture, preaching from 1 John, iii, 2, “We shall be like Him,” &c., &c., exclaimed, “Brethren, imagine a beautiful white man with blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and flaxen hair, and we shall be like him” The conceptions of these worshippers were what they had gathered from plastic and pictorial representations as well as from the characteristics of the dominant race around them. The Mohammedan Negro, who is not familiar with such representations, sees God in the great men of his country. The saying is attributed to an ancient philosopher[24] that if horses, oxen, and lions could paint they would certainly make gods in their own image:--
If oxen or lions had hands, and could work in man’s fashion, And trace out with chisel and brush their conception of Godhead, Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing.
This is no doubt true, and the Negro who grew up normally would certainly not be inferior to lions, horses, and oxen. The Christian Negro, abnormal in his development, pictures God and all beings remarkable for their moral and intellectual qualities with the physical characteristics of Europeans, and deems it an honour if he can approximate—by a mixture of his blood, however irregularly achieved—in outward appearance, at least, to the ideal thus forced upon him of the physical accompaniments of all excellence. In this way he loses that “sense of the dignity of human nature” observable in his Mohammedan brother.
A third very important influence which has retarded the development of the Christian Negro may be found in the social and literary pressure which he has undergone. It is not too much to say that the popular literature of the Christian world since the discovery of America, or, at least for the last two hundred years, has been anti-Negro. The Mohammedan Negro has felt nothing of the withering power of caste. There is nothing in his colour or race to debar him from the highest privileges, social or political, to which any other Muslim can attain. The slave who becomes a Mohammedan is free.[25] Mohammedan history abounds with examples of distinguished Negroes. The eloquent Azân, or “Call to Prayer,” which to this day summons at the same hours millions of the human race to their devotions, was first uttered by a Negro, Bilâl by name, whom Mohammed, in obedience to a dream, appointed the first Muezzin, or Crier.[26] And it has been remarked that even Alexander the Great is in Asia an unknown personage by the side of this honoured Negro. Mr. Muir notices the inflexible constancy of Bilâl to the faith of Islam under the severest trials.[27] Ibn Khallikan mentions a celebrated Negro Khalif, who reigned at Bagdad in the ninth century.[28] He describes him as a man of great merit, and a perfect scholar. None of the sons of Khalifs spoke with greater propriety and elegance, or composed verses with greater ability. The following lines were addressed to him by a contemporary poet:--
Blackness of skin cannot degrade an ingenious mind, or lessen the worth of the scholar or the wit.
Let blackness claim the colour of your body; I claim as mine your fair and candid soul.
Mohammedanism and learning to the Muslim Negro were coeval. No sooner was he converted than he was taught to read, and the importance of knowledge was impressed upon him. The Christian Negro came in contact with mental and physical proscription and the religion of Christ, contemporaneously. If the Mohammedan Negro had at any time to choose between the Koran and the sword, when he chose the former, he was allowed to wield the latter as the equal of any other Muslim; but no amount of allegiance to the Gospel relieved the Christian Negro from the degradation of wearing the chain which he received with it, or rescued him from the political and, in a measure, ecclesiastical proscription which he still undergoes in all the countries of his exile.[17] Everywhere in Christian lands he plays, at the present moment, the part of the slave, ape or puppet. Only a few here and there rise above the general degradation, and these become targets to their unappreciative brethren--
Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto.
Is it any wonder, then, that “Christian travellers, with every wish to think otherwise,” in commenting upon the difference between Christian and Mohammedan Negroes, with respect to true manliness, must do so to the disadvantage of the former?
Another reason for the superior manliness and amour propre of Negro Mohammedans may be found in the fact that, unlike their Christian brethren, they have not been trained under the depressing influence of Aryan art.
Deutsch says:--
The Shemites from some strange idiosyncrasy, perpetuated by religious ordinances, abhorred, all of them, at certain stages, the making visible pictures of things they revered, loved or worshipped.[18]
The Second Commandment, with Mussulmans as with Jews, is construed literally into the prohibition of all representations of living creatures of all kinds; not merely in sacred places but everywhere.[19] Josephus tells us that the Jews would not even tolerate the image of the emperor, which was represented on the eagles of the soldiers.[20] The early Christian Fathers believed that painting and sculpture were forbidden by the Scriptures, and that they were therefore wicked arts. Among the Mohammedans of Negroland it is considered a sin to make even the rudest representation of any living thing on the ground or on the side of a house. We shall never forget the disgust with which a Mandingo from Kankan, who was, for the first time, visiting the sea-board at Monrovia, turned from a marble figure in the cemetery through which we were showing him, exclaiming, “Amâl Shaitân! amaal Shaitân!”—the work of Satan.[21]
No one can deny the great æsthetic and moral advantages which have accrued to the Caucasian race from Christian art, through all its stages of development, from the Good Shepherd of the Catacombs to the Transfiguration of Raphael, from rough mosaics to the inexpressible delicacy and beauty of Giotto and Fra Angelico.[22] But to the Negro all these exquisite representations exhibited only the physical characteristics of a foreign race; and, while they tended to quicken the tastes and refine the sensibilities of that race, they had only a depressing influence upon the Negro, who felt that he had neither part nor lot, so far as his physical character was concerned, in those splendid representations. A strict adherence to the letter of the Second Commandment .would have been no drawback to the Negro. To him the painting and sculpture of Europe as instruments of education, have been worse than failures. They have really raised barriers in the way of his normal development. They have set before him models for imitation; and his very effort to conform to the canons of taste thus practically suggested, has impaired, if not destroyed, his self-respect, and made him the weakling and creeper which he appears in Christian lands. It was our lot not long since to hear an illiterate Negro in a prayer-meeting in New York entreat the Deity to extend his “lily white hands” and bless the waiting congregation. Another,[23] with no greater amount of culture, preaching from 1 John, iii, 2, “We shall be like Him,” &c., &c., exclaimed, “Brethren, imagine a beautiful white man with blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and flaxen hair, and we shall be like him” The conceptions of these worshippers were what they had gathered from plastic and pictorial representations as well as from the characteristics of the dominant race around them. The Mohammedan Negro, who is not familiar with such representations, sees God in the great men of his country. The saying is attributed to an ancient philosopher[24] that if horses, oxen, and lions could paint they would certainly make gods in their own image:--
If oxen or lions had hands, and could work in man’s fashion, And trace out with chisel and brush their conception of Godhead, Then would horses depict gods like horses, and oxen like oxen, Each kind the divine with its own form and nature endowing.
This is no doubt true, and the Negro who grew up normally would certainly not be inferior to lions, horses, and oxen. The Christian Negro, abnormal in his development, pictures God and all beings remarkable for their moral and intellectual qualities with the physical characteristics of Europeans, and deems it an honour if he can approximate—by a mixture of his blood, however irregularly achieved—in outward appearance, at least, to the ideal thus forced upon him of the physical accompaniments of all excellence. In this way he loses that “sense of the dignity of human nature” observable in his Mohammedan brother.
A third very important influence which has retarded the development of the Christian Negro may be found in the social and literary pressure which he has undergone. It is not too much to say that the popular literature of the Christian world since the discovery of America, or, at least for the last two hundred years, has been anti-Negro. The Mohammedan Negro has felt nothing of the withering power of caste. There is nothing in his colour or race to debar him from the highest privileges, social or political, to which any other Muslim can attain. The slave who becomes a Mohammedan is free.[25] Mohammedan history abounds with examples of distinguished Negroes. The eloquent Azân, or “Call to Prayer,” which to this day summons at the same hours millions of the human race to their devotions, was first uttered by a Negro, Bilâl by name, whom Mohammed, in obedience to a dream, appointed the first Muezzin, or Crier.[26] And it has been remarked that even Alexander the Great is in Asia an unknown personage by the side of this honoured Negro. Mr. Muir notices the inflexible constancy of Bilâl to the faith of Islam under the severest trials.[27] Ibn Khallikan mentions a celebrated Negro Khalif, who reigned at Bagdad in the ninth century.[28] He describes him as a man of great merit, and a perfect scholar. None of the sons of Khalifs spoke with greater propriety and elegance, or composed verses with greater ability. The following lines were addressed to him by a contemporary poet:--
Blackness of skin cannot degrade an ingenious mind, or lessen the worth of the scholar or the wit.
Let blackness claim the colour of your body; I claim as mine your fair and candid soul.
Footnotes
17 For an interesting discussion of this subject from the pen of a Negro, see Tanner's Apology for African Methodism in the United States.
18 Literary Remains, p. 161.
19 Mischat ul-Masabih, vol. ii, p. 368.
20 Antiq. xviii—iii, 1, &c.
21 See Koran, v, 92,
22 See a paper on the Roman Catacombs, &c, read by. Dean Stanley before the Royal Institution, May 29, 1874.
23 The putting forward of thoroughly illiterate men to expound the Scriptures among the Negro Christians has been another great
drawback to their proper development.
24 Xenophanes of Colophon (six centuries B.C.).
25 Ockley's History of the Saracens, sixth edition.—London, 1871, p. 14.
26 Muir's Life of Mahomet, vol. iii, p. 54.
27 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 129.
28 Biographies of Ibn Khallikan, translated by Baron de Slane, vol. i, p. 18.
17 For an interesting discussion of this subject from the pen of a Negro, see Tanner's Apology for African Methodism in the United States.
18 Literary Remains, p. 161.
19 Mischat ul-Masabih, vol. ii, p. 368.
20 Antiq. xviii—iii, 1, &c.
21 See Koran, v, 92,
22 See a paper on the Roman Catacombs, &c, read by. Dean Stanley before the Royal Institution, May 29, 1874.
23 The putting forward of thoroughly illiterate men to expound the Scriptures among the Negro Christians has been another great
drawback to their proper development.
24 Xenophanes of Colophon (six centuries B.C.).
25 Ockley's History of the Saracens, sixth edition.—London, 1871, p. 14.
26 Muir's Life of Mahomet, vol. iii, p. 54.
27 Ibid., vol. ii, p. 129.
28 Biographies of Ibn Khallikan, translated by Baron de Slane, vol. i, p. 18.
The poet Abu Ishak Assabi, who lived in the tenth century, had a black slave named Yumna, to whom he was greatly attached, and on whom he wrote some remarkable verses, which are much quoted by Muslims. Notice the following:--
The dark-skinned Yumna said to one whose colour equals the whiteness of the eye, “Why should your face boast its white complexion? Do you think that by so clear a tint it gains additional merit? Were a mole of my colour on that face it would adorn it; but one of your colour on my cheek would disfigure me.”
Here is another:--
Black misbecomes you not; by it you are increased in beauty; black is the only colour princes wear. Were you not mine, I should purchase you with all my wealth. Did I not possess you, I should give my life to obtain you.[29]
Ibn Muslimeh, an enthusiastic lover, exclaims, “If a mole be set in an ugly cheek it endows it with beauty and grace; how then should the heart-stricken be blamed for looking upon his mistress as a mole all over?”[30]
Mr. Gifford Palgrave, whose travels in Eastern countries have no doubt diminished the sensitiveness of his Western prejudices, concludes his brilliant Essays on Eastern Questions with a poem composed by a Negress in memory of her celebrated semi-Arab son, who had perished in one of his daring adventures.
Now, it must be evident that Negroes trained under the influence of such a social and literary atmosphere must have a deeper self-respect and higher views of the dignity of human nature than those trained under the blighting influence of caste, and under the guidance of a literature in which it has been the fashion for more than two hundred years to caricature the African, to ridicule his personal peculiarities, and to impress him with a sense of perpetual and hopeless inferiority. Christian literature has nothing to show on behalf of the Negro comparable to Mohammedan literature; and there is nothing in Mohammedan literature corresponding to the Negro—or “nigger,” as even a liberal clergyman like Mr. Haweis will call him[31]—of Christian caricaturists. A distinguished American scholar and thinker has noticed this. He says:--
The black man in literature is either a weakling or caricature. The comic side of him alone comes into view. The single sonnet of Wordsworth upon the chieftain Toussaint, and the “sparkles dire of fierce, vindictive song” from the American Whittier, are almost the only literary allusions to the sublime and tragic elements in the Negro’s nature and condition; certainly the only allusions that, without any abatement and introduction of ludicrous traits, ally him solely with human“. . . . Exultations, agonies, And love, and man’s unconquerable mind,”[32]
No one will charge the Negro Mohammedans with giving ground for the notion, put forward recently from a very distinguished source, that the African entertains “a superstitious awe and dread of the white man.” Ibn Batoutah, cited before, though a Mohammedan, experienced no greater respect among the Muslims of Negroland on account of his colour, than a Negro in the same position would have received. He complains of the cool and haughty bearing of a certain Negro prince towards himself and a number of European and Arab traders who appeared in the royal presence. “It was then,” he says, “that I regretted having entered the country of Negroes on account of their bad education, and the little regard they have for white men.” And what was the evidence of this “bad education and little regard for white men? “The chief chose to speak to them through a third party, “although they were very near him.” “This was done,” observes the sensitive traveller, “solely on account of his contempt” for them. Réné Caillié, the French traveller, who made the journey from West Africa to Morocco, via Timbuktu, was compelled to travel in strict disguise as a poor Muslim. His sojourn in Timbuktu was of only fourteen days; and, as he was in constant danger of being discovered, he could neither move about freely nor note down all that he wished. Even Barth was obliged, for a short time, to adopt the character of a Muslim. Of course these things occurred before the days of Sir Garnet Wolseley, who, in a grave official document, thought it necessary to reassure his troops in the following terms:--
It must never be forgotten by our soldiers that Providence has implanted in the heart of every native of Africa a superstitious awe and dread of the white man that prevents the Negro from daring to meet us face to face in combat.[33]
But Sir Garnet also deemed it important to bring to bear against these awe- struck Negroes armed with cheap flint muskets, all the appliances of modern warfare, and, no doubt, bore in mind the Roman poet’s advice--Ne crede colori. As a ruse de guerre—a military expedient—the statement served its purpose, and is one among the many evidences of Sir Garnet’s skill and readiness in not only availing himself of advantageous elements in the situation, but of creating them, if they do not exist. In this case, he adroitly played upon the “superstition” of white men:--
An dolus an virtus, quis in hoste requirat?
A cool and discriminating critic at home, however, at the close of the war assured us that, “without arms of precision, guns and rockets, and English skill and discipline, no invader could have made his way to Coomassie.”
Had Sir Garnet, even before his practical experience, read the history of the great Civil War in America, he would have found in the thrilling records of many a desperate encounter, in which the Negro proved himself no mean antagonist when he met the white man “face to face in combat,” materials for imposing a check upon that exuberance of imagination which tempted him to so sweeping an assertion. We admit that the Negro in Christian lands, and all along the Coast where he has been under the training of the white man, exhibits a cringing and servile spirit; but this, as we have endeavoured to show, is the natural result of that habit of mind which it was the interest of his masters to impress upon him. Sir Garnet’s dogma is only one of the innumerable lessons which the Negro is constantly made to imbibe, even at times from his religious guides and teachers,[34] the tendency of which is to blunt his “sense of the dignity of human nature.”
Another very important element which has given the Mohammedan Negro the advantage over his Christian brother is the more complete sympathy which has always existed between him and his foreign teacher. Mr. Bosworth Smith says:--
The Mussulman missionaries exhibit a forbearance, a sympathy, and a respect for native customs and prejudices, and even for their more harmless beliefs, which is, no doubt, one reason of their success, and which our own missionaries and school-masters would do well to imitate.[35]
Long prior to the rise of Islam, as we have seen above, the Arab merchant had been in communication with the interior of Africa, and had opened the way for the Arab missionary. When, therefore, the Muslim missionary came as the propagator of a higher religion than any that had been known, he did not enter the country as a stranger. The political and social institutions of the Arabs had already been tried and found suitable to the wants and tastes of the Negro tribes; indeed, the two peoples, if not of cognate origin, have by protracted intercommunication, and by the similarity of the physical influences which have, for ages, operated upon them, become similar in tastes; and it was not difficult for the Arabs to conform to a great extent to the social and domestic customs of the Africans. The Muslim missionary often brought to the aid of his preaching the influence of social and domestic relationships—an influence which in all efforts to convert a people is not to be entirely ignored. “The conversion of the Russian nation,” we are told by Dean Stanley, “was effected, not by the preaching of the Byzantine clergy, but by the marriage of a Byzantine princess.” [36] So the Arab missionaries often entered into the bonds of wedlock with the daughters of Negroland;[37] and by their teaching, by their intelligence, by their intermarriages with the natives, by the trade and generosity of their merchants, they enlisted so many interests and such deep sympathies, that they rapidly took abiding root in the country. Some of the brightest names in the annals not only of Islamitic but of pre-Islamitic literature, are those of the descendants of Arabs and Africans. One of the authors of the Muallakat, for instance, was half Arab and half Negro.
The dark-skinned Yumna said to one whose colour equals the whiteness of the eye, “Why should your face boast its white complexion? Do you think that by so clear a tint it gains additional merit? Were a mole of my colour on that face it would adorn it; but one of your colour on my cheek would disfigure me.”
Here is another:--
Black misbecomes you not; by it you are increased in beauty; black is the only colour princes wear. Were you not mine, I should purchase you with all my wealth. Did I not possess you, I should give my life to obtain you.[29]
Ibn Muslimeh, an enthusiastic lover, exclaims, “If a mole be set in an ugly cheek it endows it with beauty and grace; how then should the heart-stricken be blamed for looking upon his mistress as a mole all over?”[30]
Mr. Gifford Palgrave, whose travels in Eastern countries have no doubt diminished the sensitiveness of his Western prejudices, concludes his brilliant Essays on Eastern Questions with a poem composed by a Negress in memory of her celebrated semi-Arab son, who had perished in one of his daring adventures.
Now, it must be evident that Negroes trained under the influence of such a social and literary atmosphere must have a deeper self-respect and higher views of the dignity of human nature than those trained under the blighting influence of caste, and under the guidance of a literature in which it has been the fashion for more than two hundred years to caricature the African, to ridicule his personal peculiarities, and to impress him with a sense of perpetual and hopeless inferiority. Christian literature has nothing to show on behalf of the Negro comparable to Mohammedan literature; and there is nothing in Mohammedan literature corresponding to the Negro—or “nigger,” as even a liberal clergyman like Mr. Haweis will call him[31]—of Christian caricaturists. A distinguished American scholar and thinker has noticed this. He says:--
The black man in literature is either a weakling or caricature. The comic side of him alone comes into view. The single sonnet of Wordsworth upon the chieftain Toussaint, and the “sparkles dire of fierce, vindictive song” from the American Whittier, are almost the only literary allusions to the sublime and tragic elements in the Negro’s nature and condition; certainly the only allusions that, without any abatement and introduction of ludicrous traits, ally him solely with human“. . . . Exultations, agonies, And love, and man’s unconquerable mind,”[32]
No one will charge the Negro Mohammedans with giving ground for the notion, put forward recently from a very distinguished source, that the African entertains “a superstitious awe and dread of the white man.” Ibn Batoutah, cited before, though a Mohammedan, experienced no greater respect among the Muslims of Negroland on account of his colour, than a Negro in the same position would have received. He complains of the cool and haughty bearing of a certain Negro prince towards himself and a number of European and Arab traders who appeared in the royal presence. “It was then,” he says, “that I regretted having entered the country of Negroes on account of their bad education, and the little regard they have for white men.” And what was the evidence of this “bad education and little regard for white men? “The chief chose to speak to them through a third party, “although they were very near him.” “This was done,” observes the sensitive traveller, “solely on account of his contempt” for them. Réné Caillié, the French traveller, who made the journey from West Africa to Morocco, via Timbuktu, was compelled to travel in strict disguise as a poor Muslim. His sojourn in Timbuktu was of only fourteen days; and, as he was in constant danger of being discovered, he could neither move about freely nor note down all that he wished. Even Barth was obliged, for a short time, to adopt the character of a Muslim. Of course these things occurred before the days of Sir Garnet Wolseley, who, in a grave official document, thought it necessary to reassure his troops in the following terms:--
It must never be forgotten by our soldiers that Providence has implanted in the heart of every native of Africa a superstitious awe and dread of the white man that prevents the Negro from daring to meet us face to face in combat.[33]
But Sir Garnet also deemed it important to bring to bear against these awe- struck Negroes armed with cheap flint muskets, all the appliances of modern warfare, and, no doubt, bore in mind the Roman poet’s advice--Ne crede colori. As a ruse de guerre—a military expedient—the statement served its purpose, and is one among the many evidences of Sir Garnet’s skill and readiness in not only availing himself of advantageous elements in the situation, but of creating them, if they do not exist. In this case, he adroitly played upon the “superstition” of white men:--
An dolus an virtus, quis in hoste requirat?
A cool and discriminating critic at home, however, at the close of the war assured us that, “without arms of precision, guns and rockets, and English skill and discipline, no invader could have made his way to Coomassie.”
Had Sir Garnet, even before his practical experience, read the history of the great Civil War in America, he would have found in the thrilling records of many a desperate encounter, in which the Negro proved himself no mean antagonist when he met the white man “face to face in combat,” materials for imposing a check upon that exuberance of imagination which tempted him to so sweeping an assertion. We admit that the Negro in Christian lands, and all along the Coast where he has been under the training of the white man, exhibits a cringing and servile spirit; but this, as we have endeavoured to show, is the natural result of that habit of mind which it was the interest of his masters to impress upon him. Sir Garnet’s dogma is only one of the innumerable lessons which the Negro is constantly made to imbibe, even at times from his religious guides and teachers,[34] the tendency of which is to blunt his “sense of the dignity of human nature.”
Another very important element which has given the Mohammedan Negro the advantage over his Christian brother is the more complete sympathy which has always existed between him and his foreign teacher. Mr. Bosworth Smith says:--
The Mussulman missionaries exhibit a forbearance, a sympathy, and a respect for native customs and prejudices, and even for their more harmless beliefs, which is, no doubt, one reason of their success, and which our own missionaries and school-masters would do well to imitate.[35]
Long prior to the rise of Islam, as we have seen above, the Arab merchant had been in communication with the interior of Africa, and had opened the way for the Arab missionary. When, therefore, the Muslim missionary came as the propagator of a higher religion than any that had been known, he did not enter the country as a stranger. The political and social institutions of the Arabs had already been tried and found suitable to the wants and tastes of the Negro tribes; indeed, the two peoples, if not of cognate origin, have by protracted intercommunication, and by the similarity of the physical influences which have, for ages, operated upon them, become similar in tastes; and it was not difficult for the Arabs to conform to a great extent to the social and domestic customs of the Africans. The Muslim missionary often brought to the aid of his preaching the influence of social and domestic relationships—an influence which in all efforts to convert a people is not to be entirely ignored. “The conversion of the Russian nation,” we are told by Dean Stanley, “was effected, not by the preaching of the Byzantine clergy, but by the marriage of a Byzantine princess.” [36] So the Arab missionaries often entered into the bonds of wedlock with the daughters of Negroland;[37] and by their teaching, by their intelligence, by their intermarriages with the natives, by the trade and generosity of their merchants, they enlisted so many interests and such deep sympathies, that they rapidly took abiding root in the country. Some of the brightest names in the annals not only of Islamitic but of pre-Islamitic literature, are those of the descendants of Arabs and Africans. One of the authors of the Muallakat, for instance, was half Arab and half Negro.
Footnotes
29 Ibn Khallikan, vol. i, p. 32.
30 The Assemblies of Al-Harîri, Translated by Thomas Ohenery; Wilfiams and Norgate, 1870. This work is also called tho Makamat, &o.
31 Music and Morals, p. 550.
32 Professor W, G. T. Shedd, in an Address delivered before the Massachusetts Colonisation Society, Boston, May 27, 1857. The remarkable Address of Wendell Phillips on Toussaint L'Ouverture must not be forgotten. Mr. Phillips is the only American orator who has had the temerity to lavish the flowers of a brilliant rhetoric in adorning the memory of a Negro.
33 Notes issued for use of the troops by order of Sir Garnet Wolseley, dated. Cape Coast Castle, December 20, 1873.
34 See an article on the ‘Negro’ in the Church Missionary Intelligencer for August 1, 1873. The special correspondent of the Daily News at Cape Coast, under date of October 2, 1873, speaks of the Native Chiefs as follows:—“There is nothing that seems to signify power about their dignity; and knowing, as we did, that it has been our policy on the Coast for years to deprive these chiefs of all real influence, their very solemnity of manner left on me an impression of the theatrical.”
35 P. 34.
36 Eastern Church, p. 34.
37 Mr. Palgravo tells us that intermarriages between Arabs and Negroes have been at no period rare or abnormal; to such admixtures, indeed, the East owes not a few of her best celebrities.—Essays on Eastern Questions, p. 837.
29 Ibn Khallikan, vol. i, p. 32.
30 The Assemblies of Al-Harîri, Translated by Thomas Ohenery; Wilfiams and Norgate, 1870. This work is also called tho Makamat, &o.
31 Music and Morals, p. 550.
32 Professor W, G. T. Shedd, in an Address delivered before the Massachusetts Colonisation Society, Boston, May 27, 1857. The remarkable Address of Wendell Phillips on Toussaint L'Ouverture must not be forgotten. Mr. Phillips is the only American orator who has had the temerity to lavish the flowers of a brilliant rhetoric in adorning the memory of a Negro.
33 Notes issued for use of the troops by order of Sir Garnet Wolseley, dated. Cape Coast Castle, December 20, 1873.
34 See an article on the ‘Negro’ in the Church Missionary Intelligencer for August 1, 1873. The special correspondent of the Daily News at Cape Coast, under date of October 2, 1873, speaks of the Native Chiefs as follows:—“There is nothing that seems to signify power about their dignity; and knowing, as we did, that it has been our policy on the Coast for years to deprive these chiefs of all real influence, their very solemnity of manner left on me an impression of the theatrical.”
35 P. 34.
36 Eastern Church, p. 34.
37 Mr. Palgravo tells us that intermarriages between Arabs and Negroes have been at no period rare or abnormal; to such admixtures, indeed, the East owes not a few of her best celebrities.—Essays on Eastern Questions, p. 837.
The sympathy, therefore, between the Arab missionary and the African is more complete than that between the European and the Negro. With every wish, no doubt, to the contrary, the European seldom or never gets over the feeling of distance, if not of repulsion, which he experiences on first seeing the Negro.[38] While he joyfully admits the Negro to be his brother, having the same nature in all its essential attributes, still, owing to the diversity in type and colour, he naturally concludes that the inferiority which to him appears on the surface must extend deeper than the skin, and affect the soul.
Therefore, very often in spite of himself, he stands off from his African convert, even when, under his training, he has made considerable advance in civilisation and the arts. And especially is this the case in West Africa, where, living among large masses of his countrymen, the African Christian, who from the pressure of circumstances has been forced into European customs, presents very often to the foreign observer, in contrast with his native brethren, an artificial and absurd appearance. And the missionary, looking from a comfortable social distance, surveys the Europeanised native, sometimes with pity, sometimes with dismay, seldom with thorough sympathy. He
Back recoils, he knows not why,
Even at the sound himself has made.
Or, like the stream it Racine, at the sight of the monster it had washed to the shore:--
Le flot qui l’apportat recule épouvanté.[39]
The African convert, under such practical teaching, looking upon his instructor as superior to himself—or at least apart from himself, not only in spiritual and temporal knowledge, but in every other respect—acquires a very low opinion of himself, learns to depreciate and deprecate his own personal characteristics, and loses that “sense of the dignity of human nature” which observant travellers have noticed in the Mohammedan Negro.
The Arab missionary, on the other hand, often of the same complexion as his hearer, does not “require any long habit to reconcile the eye to him.” He takes up his abode in Negroland, often for life, and, mingling his blood with that of the inhabitants, succeeds, in the most natural manner, in engrafting Mohammedan religion and learning upon the ignorance and simplicity of the people. Innocent of the scientific attainments of the day, and with no other apparatus than his portable bed and dingy manuscripts, he may be inferior to the theological and classical scholar fresh from College in Europe or America, but he has the advantage of speaking to the people in a sympathetic and perfectly intelligible language.
We will conclude with one more extract from Mr. Bosworth Smith:--
That Mohammedanism may, when mutual misunderstandings are removed, be elevated, chastened, purified by Christian influences and a Christian spirit, and that evils such as the slave trade, which are really foreign to its nature, can be put down by the heroic efforts of Christian philanthropists, I do not doubt; and I can, therefore, look forward, if with something of anxiety, with still more of hope, to what seems the destiny of Africa, that Paganism and Devil-worship will die out, and that the main part of the continent, if it cannot become Christian, will become what is next best to it—Mohammedan.[40]
West Africa has been in contact with Christianity for three hundred years, and not one single tribe, as a tribe, has yet become Christian. Nor has any influential chief adopted the religion brought by the European missionary.
From Gambia to Gaboon, the native rulers, in constant intercourse with Christians, and in the vicinity of Christian settlements, still conduct their government according to the customs of their fathers, where those customs have not been altered or modified by Mohammedan influence. The Alkali of Port Loko, and the chief of Bullom, under the shadow of Sierra Leone, are quasi Mohammedan. The native chiefs of Cape Coast and Lagos are Pagans.[41] So, in the territory ruled by Liberia, the native chiefs in the four countries—Mesurado, Bassa, Sinou, and Cape Palmas—are Pagans. There is not a single spot along the whole coast, except, perhaps, the little island of Corisco, where Christianity has taken any hold among large numbers of the indigenous tribes.
But we do not believe that these tribes are hopelessly inaccessible to the influence of the religion of the Gospel. We believe that “when mutual misunderstandings are removed;” when the race is better understood; when the effort at indiscriminate Europeanising ceases; when the missionary keeps before his mind—if he knows, or learns if he does not know—that “the
idiosyncrasy of a people is a sacred gift, given for some Divine purpose, to be sacredly cherished and patiently unfolded;”[42] there will be nothing to prevent Christianity from spreading among the Pagan tribes, and from eventually uprooting the imperfect Mohammedanism which so extensively prevails. In the meantime, we ought not to grudge the Africans the glimpses of truth which they catch from the Koran; for “a knowledge of a part is better than ignorance of the whole.”[43]
Therefore, very often in spite of himself, he stands off from his African convert, even when, under his training, he has made considerable advance in civilisation and the arts. And especially is this the case in West Africa, where, living among large masses of his countrymen, the African Christian, who from the pressure of circumstances has been forced into European customs, presents very often to the foreign observer, in contrast with his native brethren, an artificial and absurd appearance. And the missionary, looking from a comfortable social distance, surveys the Europeanised native, sometimes with pity, sometimes with dismay, seldom with thorough sympathy. He
Back recoils, he knows not why,
Even at the sound himself has made.
Or, like the stream it Racine, at the sight of the monster it had washed to the shore:--
Le flot qui l’apportat recule épouvanté.[39]
The African convert, under such practical teaching, looking upon his instructor as superior to himself—or at least apart from himself, not only in spiritual and temporal knowledge, but in every other respect—acquires a very low opinion of himself, learns to depreciate and deprecate his own personal characteristics, and loses that “sense of the dignity of human nature” which observant travellers have noticed in the Mohammedan Negro.
The Arab missionary, on the other hand, often of the same complexion as his hearer, does not “require any long habit to reconcile the eye to him.” He takes up his abode in Negroland, often for life, and, mingling his blood with that of the inhabitants, succeeds, in the most natural manner, in engrafting Mohammedan religion and learning upon the ignorance and simplicity of the people. Innocent of the scientific attainments of the day, and with no other apparatus than his portable bed and dingy manuscripts, he may be inferior to the theological and classical scholar fresh from College in Europe or America, but he has the advantage of speaking to the people in a sympathetic and perfectly intelligible language.
We will conclude with one more extract from Mr. Bosworth Smith:--
That Mohammedanism may, when mutual misunderstandings are removed, be elevated, chastened, purified by Christian influences and a Christian spirit, and that evils such as the slave trade, which are really foreign to its nature, can be put down by the heroic efforts of Christian philanthropists, I do not doubt; and I can, therefore, look forward, if with something of anxiety, with still more of hope, to what seems the destiny of Africa, that Paganism and Devil-worship will die out, and that the main part of the continent, if it cannot become Christian, will become what is next best to it—Mohammedan.[40]
West Africa has been in contact with Christianity for three hundred years, and not one single tribe, as a tribe, has yet become Christian. Nor has any influential chief adopted the religion brought by the European missionary.
From Gambia to Gaboon, the native rulers, in constant intercourse with Christians, and in the vicinity of Christian settlements, still conduct their government according to the customs of their fathers, where those customs have not been altered or modified by Mohammedan influence. The Alkali of Port Loko, and the chief of Bullom, under the shadow of Sierra Leone, are quasi Mohammedan. The native chiefs of Cape Coast and Lagos are Pagans.[41] So, in the territory ruled by Liberia, the native chiefs in the four countries—Mesurado, Bassa, Sinou, and Cape Palmas—are Pagans. There is not a single spot along the whole coast, except, perhaps, the little island of Corisco, where Christianity has taken any hold among large numbers of the indigenous tribes.
But we do not believe that these tribes are hopelessly inaccessible to the influence of the religion of the Gospel. We believe that “when mutual misunderstandings are removed;” when the race is better understood; when the effort at indiscriminate Europeanising ceases; when the missionary keeps before his mind—if he knows, or learns if he does not know—that “the
idiosyncrasy of a people is a sacred gift, given for some Divine purpose, to be sacredly cherished and patiently unfolded;”[42] there will be nothing to prevent Christianity from spreading among the Pagan tribes, and from eventually uprooting the imperfect Mohammedanism which so extensively prevails. In the meantime, we ought not to grudge the Africans the glimpses of truth which they catch from the Koran; for “a knowledge of a part is better than ignorance of the whole.”[43]
Footnotes
38 Bishop Heber, in one of his letters written on his first arrival in India, says: “There is, indeed, something in a Negro which requires long habit to reconcile the eye to him, but for this the features and hair, far more than the colour, are responsible.”—Life of Heber, by Taylor; 2nd ed., p. 147. And what this distinguished prelate experienced and so candidly avowed, must be experienced in a still greater degree by minds of less calibre and less culture than his. “The more ignorant the whites are,” says Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton. New Jersey, “the more violent and unreasonable are their prejudices on this subject.”—Hodge’s Essays and Reviews, p. 519.
39 Racine: Phèdre, Acte V, Scène VI.
40 P.40.
41 See Governor Pope Hennessy’s Blue Book Report. Papers relating to Her Majesty’s Colonial Possessions. Part II, 1873, 2nd division.
42 Compare the views of Stopford Brooke in Sermons on Christ in Modern Life, p. 58.
43 Abu-l-Fida.
38 Bishop Heber, in one of his letters written on his first arrival in India, says: “There is, indeed, something in a Negro which requires long habit to reconcile the eye to him, but for this the features and hair, far more than the colour, are responsible.”—Life of Heber, by Taylor; 2nd ed., p. 147. And what this distinguished prelate experienced and so candidly avowed, must be experienced in a still greater degree by minds of less calibre and less culture than his. “The more ignorant the whites are,” says Dr. Charles Hodge, of Princeton. New Jersey, “the more violent and unreasonable are their prejudices on this subject.”—Hodge’s Essays and Reviews, p. 519.
39 Racine: Phèdre, Acte V, Scène VI.
40 P.40.
41 See Governor Pope Hennessy’s Blue Book Report. Papers relating to Her Majesty’s Colonial Possessions. Part II, 1873, 2nd division.
42 Compare the views of Stopford Brooke in Sermons on Christ in Modern Life, p. 58.
43 Abu-l-Fida.
A singular anxiety seems to prevail in certain quarters to disparage and depress the character of Mohammedan influence, especially in Africa, by endeavouring to show that wherever it prevails it erects an insurmountable barrier to our further progress —that it produces a far greater than Chinese immobility. We are surprised that a writer, apparently so well informed as the author of the article on Mahomet, in the British Quarterly Review for January, 1872, should have put forward the following:--
Islam is a reform which has stifled all other reforms. It is a reform which has chained down every nation which has accepted it at a certain stage of moral and political growth.
In keeping with this is a remarkable statement of Mr. Freeman’s is his History and Conquests of the Saracens, a work described by a recent subtle and eloquent writer as “more equitable and conscientious than Gibbon’s”! Mr. Freeman says that Mohammedanism has “consecrated despotism; it has consecrated polygamy; it has consecrated slavery;” and Dean Church, to whom we are indebted for the quotation, not only endorses it, but adds, “It has done this directly, in virtue of its being a religion, a religious reform.” [44]
A Mohammedan writer, taking the same superficial view of the effects of Christianity, and with the same love for epigrammatic terseness, might say, “Christianity has consecrated drunkenness; it has consecrated Negro slavery; it has consecrated war;” and he might gather ample materials for sustaining his position from the history of Christianity during the last three hundred years, especially in the Western hemisphere. When we see so many evils known to be antagonistic to the Christian religion still, after eighteen hundred years, prevalent in Christian lands, why should Mohammedanism be so fiercely assailed because, during the twelve hundred years of its existence, it has not extirpated from the countries in which it prevails all social evils?
Must we not suppose that, as with other creeds so with Islam, its theology is capable of being made subservient to worldly interests? May we not believe that many of the evils in lands under its sway are due, not to its teachings, but to human passions? “As late as the fifteenth century,” we are told by Mr. Maclear, “the Church in Europe was engaged in eradicating the remains of Sclavonic Heathenism, and protesting against a rude Fetishism and serpent worship.”[45]
It is to be regretted that statements such as those referred to above continue to be made by men whose character, position, and literary ability make them the guides of thousands. They tend to perpetuate in the Christian Church the feeling of distrust in any effort to evangelise the Mohammedan— to keep alive the suspicion that “the successes of the Mohammedan missionary condemn beforehand the labours of the Christian missionary to be in vain”—feelings which a closer acquaintance with the facts—we speak especially for Africa—does not justify. We are satisfied, however, that with the light which, increasing every day, is now being thrown upon the religion of Mohammed, writings based more upon the opinions and theories of the Middle Ages—as Mr. Bosworth Smith has so well shown—than upon the demonstrated facts of to-day, are almost sure, in proportion to the growth of a more accurate knowledge and a more thoroughly discriminating and literary appreciation of Islam, to be riddled out into oblivion as inappropriate platitudes and barren superfluities.[46]
We entertain the deliberate conviction—gathered not from reading at home, but from travels among the people—that, whatever it may be in other lands, in Africa the work of Islam is preliminary and preparatory. Just as Ishmael came before Isaac in the history of the great Semitic families, so here the descendant of Ishmael has come before the illustrious descendant of Isaac. The African Mohammedans, as far as we have observed, are tolerant and accessible, anxious for light and improvement from any quarter. They are willing to have Christian Schools in their towns, to have the Christian Scriptures circulated among them, and to share with Christians the work of reclaiming the Pagans.[47]
In view, then, of the work which Islam has already accomplished for Africa and the Negro race, and the work which it may yet accomplish, we may express the belief of Möhler, quoted by the Guardian,[48] that “one day the true labourers may find (in Africa) a harvest ready for their reaping, and the Gospel speed thither on its way rejoicing, and Mahomet prove a servant of Christ.” Till then, all earnest Christians may consistently join in the prayer of Abraham, adopted in the liturgy of the Moravian Church, “Oh, that Ishmael may live before Thee!”
Islam is a reform which has stifled all other reforms. It is a reform which has chained down every nation which has accepted it at a certain stage of moral and political growth.
In keeping with this is a remarkable statement of Mr. Freeman’s is his History and Conquests of the Saracens, a work described by a recent subtle and eloquent writer as “more equitable and conscientious than Gibbon’s”! Mr. Freeman says that Mohammedanism has “consecrated despotism; it has consecrated polygamy; it has consecrated slavery;” and Dean Church, to whom we are indebted for the quotation, not only endorses it, but adds, “It has done this directly, in virtue of its being a religion, a religious reform.” [44]
A Mohammedan writer, taking the same superficial view of the effects of Christianity, and with the same love for epigrammatic terseness, might say, “Christianity has consecrated drunkenness; it has consecrated Negro slavery; it has consecrated war;” and he might gather ample materials for sustaining his position from the history of Christianity during the last three hundred years, especially in the Western hemisphere. When we see so many evils known to be antagonistic to the Christian religion still, after eighteen hundred years, prevalent in Christian lands, why should Mohammedanism be so fiercely assailed because, during the twelve hundred years of its existence, it has not extirpated from the countries in which it prevails all social evils?
Must we not suppose that, as with other creeds so with Islam, its theology is capable of being made subservient to worldly interests? May we not believe that many of the evils in lands under its sway are due, not to its teachings, but to human passions? “As late as the fifteenth century,” we are told by Mr. Maclear, “the Church in Europe was engaged in eradicating the remains of Sclavonic Heathenism, and protesting against a rude Fetishism and serpent worship.”[45]
It is to be regretted that statements such as those referred to above continue to be made by men whose character, position, and literary ability make them the guides of thousands. They tend to perpetuate in the Christian Church the feeling of distrust in any effort to evangelise the Mohammedan— to keep alive the suspicion that “the successes of the Mohammedan missionary condemn beforehand the labours of the Christian missionary to be in vain”—feelings which a closer acquaintance with the facts—we speak especially for Africa—does not justify. We are satisfied, however, that with the light which, increasing every day, is now being thrown upon the religion of Mohammed, writings based more upon the opinions and theories of the Middle Ages—as Mr. Bosworth Smith has so well shown—than upon the demonstrated facts of to-day, are almost sure, in proportion to the growth of a more accurate knowledge and a more thoroughly discriminating and literary appreciation of Islam, to be riddled out into oblivion as inappropriate platitudes and barren superfluities.[46]
We entertain the deliberate conviction—gathered not from reading at home, but from travels among the people—that, whatever it may be in other lands, in Africa the work of Islam is preliminary and preparatory. Just as Ishmael came before Isaac in the history of the great Semitic families, so here the descendant of Ishmael has come before the illustrious descendant of Isaac. The African Mohammedans, as far as we have observed, are tolerant and accessible, anxious for light and improvement from any quarter. They are willing to have Christian Schools in their towns, to have the Christian Scriptures circulated among them, and to share with Christians the work of reclaiming the Pagans.[47]
In view, then, of the work which Islam has already accomplished for Africa and the Negro race, and the work which it may yet accomplish, we may express the belief of Möhler, quoted by the Guardian,[48] that “one day the true labourers may find (in Africa) a harvest ready for their reaping, and the Gospel speed thither on its way rejoicing, and Mahomet prove a servant of Christ.” Till then, all earnest Christians may consistently join in the prayer of Abraham, adopted in the liturgy of the Moravian Church, “Oh, that Ishmael may live before Thee!”
Footnotes
44 Lectures on the Influences of Christianity, &c; by R. W. Church, M.A., Dean of St. Paul’s; p. 8.
45 Apostles of Mediæval Europe, p. 32.
46 See an able discussion of this subject in Syed Ameer Ali’s Life and Teachings of Mohammed,
chap. 15.
47 Bishop Orowther, in his Report for 1874, says: “I have not met with a stern opposer of Christianity, as far as I had conversation with Mohammedans, up the Niger. . . . . The reception of an Arabic Bible, which was presented to the Emir of Nupe, from the Church Missionary Society, with a childlike glee, in the presence of his courtiers, was a proof that this people desire to hear and search after the truth. Another copy was sent through him to Alihu, the King of Ilorin, who is also an Arabic scholar. . . . . In all our religious conversation with these Mohammedans we never mot with an obstinate disputer, or a bigoted denial of what we read or said to them.”—Monthly Reporter of Church Missionary Society, February, 1875.
48 November 4, 1874.
44 Lectures on the Influences of Christianity, &c; by R. W. Church, M.A., Dean of St. Paul’s; p. 8.
45 Apostles of Mediæval Europe, p. 32.
46 See an able discussion of this subject in Syed Ameer Ali’s Life and Teachings of Mohammed,
chap. 15.
47 Bishop Orowther, in his Report for 1874, says: “I have not met with a stern opposer of Christianity, as far as I had conversation with Mohammedans, up the Niger. . . . . The reception of an Arabic Bible, which was presented to the Emir of Nupe, from the Church Missionary Society, with a childlike glee, in the presence of his courtiers, was a proof that this people desire to hear and search after the truth. Another copy was sent through him to Alihu, the King of Ilorin, who is also an Arabic scholar. . . . . In all our religious conversation with these Mohammedans we never mot with an obstinate disputer, or a bigoted denial of what we read or said to them.”—Monthly Reporter of Church Missionary Society, February, 1875.
48 November 4, 1874.
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