The Source by James A. Michener
Their leader stood by a pillar of the caravanserai, a tall, slim man wearing a gray headdress that reached to his waist and a multicolored robe composed of many strips of cloth sewn together. He wore heavy sandals and a wide belt of woven goat’s hair which supported a leather loop from which hung a medium-sized sword. He was a man of dark countenance, in his mid-thirties, and he said little. Keeping to the shadows he observed his men as they checked their battle equipment, then directed one to find out whether all animals had been watered. He studied with approval the forty-odd horses that stood easily in the midst of the caravanserai, excellent beasts which had proved their mettle at Damascus. They wore no saddles, but three large camels stood nearby loaded with their equipment, including spare saddles, and the tall man in the many-colored robe moved slowly, like a merchant on an ordinary day, to inspect these camels, assuring himself that his own red-studded saddle was included in the luggage. He then returned to his pillar, from which he studied the eastern sky, where above the Sea of Tabariyyah the stars were fading and the light of sunrise was beginning to show.
He was Abd Umar, and his first name signified that he had been born a slave: his father had been some unknown desert warrior, his mother a black Abyssinian slave captured on some raid to the south, but he had never known either of his parents. He had grown up in the Arabian city of Yathrib and had spent his early years leading camel caravans from that trading center over the seven hundred miles to Damascus and back. He spoke Arabic and Greek, and when the Arabs burst out of the desert with a new message for the world he had found a place among the armies and a position of responsibility among the chiefs of the tribes. In what other nation could a half-Negro slave win a post of such honor? For the Prophet had said that when God created men he lifted dust from all parts of the earth, and some was black and some red and some white, but all men were made of that dust and all were therefore brothers.
It was this slave who had been picked for the day’s important mission. The Arabs hoped that while Abu Zeid and his ruffians were subduing Safat in the hills, the disciplined troops of Abd Umar might succeed in capturing Makor without much killing, for if that town could be occupied peacefully, the crucial seaport of Ptolemais, which the Arabs knew by the ancient name of Akka, might surrender without a siege, and retention of this port was necessary if places like Tyre, Cyprus and mighty Egypt were to be invaded. It was with knowledge of these strategies that the slave now walked among his men, whispering, “It’s almost dawn.”
Silently, as if they too appreciated the gravity of the day, his men mounted their camels, keeping the forty riderless horses under control: those handsome brown-flanked beasts would be used by a picked group for the final assault on Makor and must be kept rested during the initial part of the expedition. Now the warriors atop the camels became visible in the gray light which spread over Tabariyyah, bringing the hills into relief: they were hardened fighters who had met the best mercenaries that Byzantium could throw against them. Many wore short beards but most were clean-shaven like their leader. They wore robes of every hue and dimension; when their clothes were of a dun color the men seemed to merge into the bodies of their camels, but when the robes were alternate lengths of purple, red, yellow, brown, green and blue, the Arabs were like bright birds that had flown in from the desert, seeking the valleys of Palestine. In eight years this resolute body of men had not known defeat and they were now quietly determined that this day would see both their victories and their faith extended. Waiting quietly for Abd Umar to mount and lead them forth, the Arabs relaxed on their camels as if they were sleeping centaurs, while their horses stood with equal patience.
But Abd Umar was not ready to depart. Leaving his men he walked with military grace out of the caravanserai and across to a small hut standing by the lake, where the light of an oil lamp showed a mean interior: bare mud walls, no furniture, a few cracked dishes and some clay pots. This was the headquarters selected by the general of the Arab troops when he captured Tabariyyah, and now he slept soundly on the floor, a rugged man in his fifties, with the ends of his beard trailing in the dust, his right cheek cradled on his right palm in the manner used by Muhammad when he slept.
“General,” Abd Umar whispered. There was no response from the sleeping warrior, so the former slave remained kneeling beside his superior, not certain what he should do next. Like Abd Umar the general had invaded Byzantium not to gain wealth or comfort for himself; a hovel with a dirt floor was sufficient, for he rode only to extend the spiritual dominion of the Prophet.
“General, we go,” Abd Umar whispered, still reluctant to touch the sleeping man. In seven major battles the general had led his troops to spectacular victories, but now he refused to rise when his subordinates were setting forth on important engagements. He had instructed them well and he trusted both the wild-headed Abu Zeid and the sagacious slave Abd Umar. There was nothing he could tell them now and he needed sleep, for if Abd Umar succeeded in capturing Makor, all the Arabs would rush westward to besiege Akka, and the coming days might be exhausting.
Finally Abd Umar shook the general. “Tomorrow you may ride to Akka,” he told him. “By nightfall Makor will be yours.”
Grudgingly the sleeper raised himself on one elbow, intending to berate the slave, but when he saw Abd Umar’s intense, dark face he realized how eagerly the young captain had wanted to speak before marching westward. “You have your instructions,” he growled. “No killing.”
“I shall obey,” Abd Umar said, and he rose to go, but the general caught his sleeve.
“You wanted to talk about the battle?”
“Yes,” the former slave replied.
“I can repeat only what the Prophet told me when we approached Mecca that first time. ‘Be merciful … if you can. Spare the aged, the women, the children … if you can. Give every man an honest chance to join you, and if he submits, accept him as he is. But even if the enemy resists, kill no sheep, no camel, no ox—unless you intend to eat it. And let no man harm a palm tree or an olive.’ ”
“I have my instructions,” Abd Umar said.
The general dropped back to the ground and returned to sleep.
Thus Abd Umar, the servant of Muhammad, received his commission to explore the possibilities of compassion and conciliation as weapons of empire, and as he walked thoughtfully toward the caravanserai he thought of that morning when he had stood at the gates of Yathrib, watching as the Prophet, accompanied by a few devotees from Mecca, came seeking refuge in the northern city. It was an ugly day, Abd Umar remembered, with enemies eager to jeer the bearded, thick-set man with lustrous eyes and black hair reaching to his shoulders who claimed to have heard God speaking to him, and at that time Abd Umar had not appreciated the significance of Muhammad’s arrival either in Yathrib or among the Arabs. For some years he had known vaguely of the man’s existence, and after the arrival he had heard that Muhammad was adding to the revealed writings which he had brought with him from Mecca, but for Abd Umar the actuality of the Prophet had not been great.
Then war came, with the people of Mecca trying to invade Yathrib, that they might kill the Prophet, and Abd Umar had volunteered to defend him and had engaged in many bloody encounters in which as a half-Negro slave he rode in the personal entourage of the Prophet, thus seeing at first-hand the brilliant generalship of the holy man. Once Abd Umar told his own fighters, “Three times in those days our side was surely defeated, except that Muhammad rallied us with clever moves, and each time he succeeded in throwing a superior enemy off balance and defeating him.” Any successful military tactics that Abd Umar now possessed he had gained from watching Muhammad.
It was through this military service that Abd Umar had first come to respect Muhammad, but it was not long before he began to feel the man’s spiritual force as well. Abd Umar had been too young to be termed a friend of the Prophet’s, but he had been close enough to know the impact of what Muhammad had preached—a lesson whose five steps were so simple that any human being could un
Thus when Abd Umar walked toward the caravanserai in the cold morning air, preparing to invest a town he had never seen, he moved with a confidence that the defenders of the town could not have; for they were either Jews whose religion had grown old and meaningless or Christians who had misinterpreted their Jesus as the final prophet. In no way did Abd Umar hate his adversaries; he felt sorry for their temporary blindness and he intended to help them find God. It was true that in the capture of both Damascus and Tabariyyah some Jews and Christians had been slow to grasp the message of the Prophet, and there had been killings, but those days were past. Starting now, with Makor, there would be no more killing of either Jew or Christian, for the three faiths must live together in tolerance; the leaders of Islam now realized that if Jews and Christians were kept alive they would not only help to make the land rich, but after a few years would acknowledge the moral superiority of Muhammad’s revelation and their conversion would be accomplished as a matter of course.
In this reflective mood Abd Umar re-entered the caravanserai and without speaking climbed aboard his camel, signaling that he was ready. There were no shouts, no clattering of swords such as had marked Abu Zeid’s departure for Safat; the troops responsible for this new type of Arab policy moved quietly out of town, avoided the established roads and sought a path that would take them quickly onto high ground, from which they would traverse the mountains and swamps separating them from Makor. It would be a punishing cross-country ride, but they would come at last upon the Damascus road, down which they could make their final dash on horseback. The first part of the journey, climbing the steep hills to the west of Tabariyyah, would be the most difficult, and Abd Umar led the way, encouraging his men until they had scrambled to the top of the curious camel-shaped hill called the Horns of Hattin, where he halted his troops to inspect the horses. There he delivered his last instructions.
“You are to kill no one. Set no fires. And no man may touch a palm tree or an olive.” He waited until these new orders had had time to be understood, then rode to each of his lieutenants, reminding them personally, “Tonight Makor must accept the Prophet, and its people must be our friends.” The grim-faced men agreed, and he led them westward.
As he rode into the heart of Palestine he recalled the first time he had heard of this rich land: he had for some years been leading desert caravans between Yathrib and Damascus, six weeks in the saddle each way, and he had been vaguely aware that off to the west lay a small land occupied by Greeks and Romans; but it had made no impression on him until on one trip, made before he knew Muhammad, he was returning to Arabia with a cargo of gold from Byzantium when he overtook the caravan of a trader from Mecca and with him traveled south for several days. Finally the Meccan had said, “I must turn westward toward Jerusalem,” and for the first time Abd Umar had discussed that city.
“It’s torn by strife between the Christians,” the Meccan said.
“The Christians against whom?” Abd Umar inquired.
“Themselves,” the Meccan replied, shaking his head in confusion, and he had led his camels toward the hills which protected the Jordan.
Now Abd Umar himself was involved in Palestine and he was finding it as perplexing as the long-ago Meccan had indicated: when the Arabs ventured into Tabariyyah following their conquest of Damascus they had met with little armed resistance, but the leaders of three different Christian churches had come bearing complaints one against the other so that brawling had broken out with loss of life. Spies had come to the caravanserai at Tabariyyah with reports that similar conditions prevailed in both Safat and Makor, while Akka was bitterly divided over which church had the right to collect money from pilgrims arriving from Rome and the west to visit the Sea of Galilee. At Damascus, of course, the contentions between the Christian churches had been disgraceful, and as a result of these confusions, plus the desire to keep Christian pilgrims visiting their holy places—for they brought much wealth—Abd Umar had begun to make a study of the Christians and their habits, gathering what information he could from spies and the leaders of churches in captured Damascus and Tabariyyah.
In this work he was encouraged by something Muhammad had once told him: “There are only three permissible religions—Judaism, Christianity and ours—and these are acceptable because each relies upon a Book which God has personally handed down.” He pointed out that the Jews had their Old Book delivered to them through Moses, while the Christians had their New called forth by Jesus Christ, but the Arabs had the Koran, and since the latter summarized the best of the preceding two, the former were no longer essential. On one memorable day Muhammad had told his companions, “You are to follow the traditions of the Jews and Christians span by span and cubit by cubit … so closely that you will go after them even if they creep into the hole of a lizard.” Later, when there had been much discussion of this teaching, the Prophet had predicted in Abd Umar’s hearing, “You will always find that our most affectionate friends will be those who say, ‘We are Christians,’ for they like us are people of the Book.” At Tabariyyah, after Abd Umar had halted the brawling among the various sectors of the Christian church, he had asked the priests to instruct him in their faith and he was relieved to find that what Muhammad had said was true: these Christians accepted three of the Prophet’s favorite predecessors, John Baptist, Mary the Virgin and Jesus Christ. In fact, he discovered that the Christians revered Mary almost as much as the Arabs did, and this was reassuring.
At the same time, however, he discovered that the Christian church was so badly split between Byzantine, Roman and Egyptian factions—regarding points of theology which he could not untangle—that any hope of reconciliation was impossible. He suspected that because of its hateful fights Christianity would soon wither like a rootless plant exposed to sunlight in a desert wadi, and it was his job to make the last days of the religion as pleasant as possible. At Makor he was determined to accord the Christians every courtesy, hoping that they would of themselves see their error and join Islam.
Was he arrogant in these assumptions? Not especially, for in those springtime years of Arabian faith, when leaders like Abd Umar had known Muhammad personally, Islam seemed a marvel of cohesion and order; when compared to the confusions that tormented the Christian church and the inadequacy that had overtaken the Jews, it had both commitment and direction, so that Abd Umar could be excused if he believed that the future lay with his kind. For the days had not yet come when Islam was to be shattered into worse schisms than even the Christians knew, but the great separation into hostile camps was even then building. Before Abd Umar was dead the saintly Ali, cousin of the Prophet and husband of his daughter Fatima, would be slain; his sons would be hounded into near-divinities around whom would rally many of the greatest minds of Islam and much of its propulsive power, forming a breach that would never be healed.
If Abd Umar had looked closely at his own religion he could have seen these strains developing, but like most religious persons of his day he was more concerned about the divisions that rent other religions than about the strife that would soon shatter his own, so as he pressed his troops toward the forest that separated him from Makor, he cautioned himself: Under no circumstances must we become involved in the quarrels of the Christians, for they will soon fall apart and join us.
Within the vanished walls of Makor the Christians waited. They were a sorely divided lot torn into four fragments which reflected the various schisms that racked Christianity in this period. Not even the loss of Damascus to the Arabs and the consequent halt of trade had inspired the sects to unite against their common enemy. The fall o
Of course, the basic argument—was Jesus man-and-God-at-the-same-time as Egyptians argued, or was He man-then-God as those of Constantinople believed?—had long been settled precisely as Father Eusebius had foreseen: each side was wrong and all good Christians now acknowledged that Christ owned two complete natures, one forever human, the other forever divine, though the Egyptians still refused to abandon their contention and on it had constructed a separatist church. But with the problem of Christ’s physical nature thus solved to most people’s satisfaction debate was moved onto a higher level, for the problem which now tormented the church was this: Was the spiritual nature of Jesus human or divine?
In the Basilica of St. Mary Magdalene, built nearly three centuries before and well known in Europe for the mosaics which pilgrims visited on their way to and from the holy places, a bishop reigned, appointed by the emperor in Constantinople and obedient to the desires of that imperial ruler. He was an ineffectual man who had at first tried to bring some kind of peace to Makor, but in making this attempt he had insisted upon the orthodox opinion that Christ had two separate natures, human and completely divine; but this doctrine was not acceptable to the simple-minded people of Makor, who knew in their hearts that Christ could have had only one nature, human and divine at the same time. So the two-nature bishop in his basilica preached the ideas of Constantinople to an ever-dwindling congregation, while in the ramshackle church east of the main gate the one-nature citizens worshiped according to the popular rites of Egypt. They were sometimes threatened by the bishop, who imported imperial troops from Constantinople, and when these soldiers appeared, the one-nature people filed meekly into the basilica to promise both the bishop and the mercenaries that they would henceforth accept the orthodox contention that Christ had two natures, but as soon as the soldiers disappeared they would go roaring back to their own church, shouting: