Arabia had at the time when Mohammed appeared, all the elements for a wild, warlike,
eclectic religion like the one which he established. It was inhabited by heathen star-worshippers,
Jews, and Christians.
The heathen were the ruling race, descended from Ishmael, the bastard son of Abraham
(Ibrahim), the real sons of the desert, full of animal life and energy. They had their sanctuary in
the Kaaba at Mecca, which attracted annually large numbers of pilgrims long before Mohammed.
The Jews, after the destruction of Jerusalem, were scattered in Arabia, especially in the
district of Medina, and exerted considerable influence by their higher culture and rabbinical
traditions.
The Christians belonged mostly to the various heretical sects which were expelled from the
Roman empire during the violent doctrinal controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries. We find
there traces of Arians, Sabellians, Ebionites, Nestorians, Eutychians, Monophysites, Marianites,
and Collyridians or worshippers of Mary. Anchorets and monks settled in large numbers in Wady
Feiran around Mount Serbal, and Justinian laid the foundation of the Convent of St. Catharine at
the foot of Mount Sinai, which till the year 1859 harbored the oldest and most complete uncial
manuscript of the Greek Scriptures of both Testaments from the age of Constantine. But it was a
very superficial and corrupt Christianity which had found a home in those desert regions, where
even the apostle Paul spent three years after his conversion in silent preparation for his great mission.
These three races and religions, though deadly hostile to each other, alike revered Abraham,
the father of the faithful, as their common ancestor. This fact might suggest to a great mind the idea
to unite them by a national religion monotheistic in principle and eclectic in its character. This
seems to have been the original project of the founder of Islâm.
It is made certain by recent research that there were at the time and before the call of
Mohammed a considerable number of inquirers at Mecca and Medina, who had intercourse with
Eastern Christians in Syria and Abyssinia, were dissatisfied with the idolatry around them, and
inclined to monotheism, which they traced to Abraham. They called themselves Hanyfs, i.e. Converts,
Puritans. One of them, Omayah of Tâif, we know to have been under Christian influence; others
seem to have derived their monotheistic ideas from Judaism. Some of the early converts of
Mohammed as, Zayd (his favorite slave), Omayab, or Umaijah (a popular poet), and Waraka (a
cousin of Chadijah and a student of the Holy Scriptures of the Jews and Christians) belonged to
this sect, and even Mohammed acknowledged himself at first a Hanyf.^148 Waraka, it is said, believed
in him, as long as he was a Hanyf, but then forsook him, and died a Christian or a Jew.^149
Mohammed consolidated and energized this reform-movement, and gave it a world-wide
significance, under the new name of Islâm, i.e. resignation to God; whence Moslem (or Muslim),
one who resigns himself to God.
(^148) Sprenger I. 45: "Die bisher unbekannt gebliebenen Hanyfen waren die Vorläufer des Mohammad. Er nennt sich selbst
einen Hanyf, und während der ersten Periode seines Lehramtes hat er wenig anderes gethan, als ihre Lehre bestätigt."
(^149) According to Sprenger, I. 91 sqq., he died a Christian; but Deutsch, l.c., p. 77, says: "Whatever Waraka was originally,
he certainly lived and died a Jew." He infers this from the fact that when asked by Chadijah for his opinion concerning
Mohammed’s revelations, he cried out: "Koddus! Koddus! (i.e., Kadosh, Holy). Verily this is the Namus (i.e.,νόμος, Law)
which came to Moses. He will be the prophet of his people."