Джеймс Миченер - The Source

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 understand: the old gods were dead; there was only one God; He had been discovered by the Jews; He sent the great prophet Jesus Christ to reveal His views; and now He had sent the final prophet, Muhammad, to complete them. On one point Muhammad had always insisted when Abd Umar heard him speak: he had not come out of Arabia with some strange new doctrine, but only with the fulfillment of what the Jews and Christians had started before.

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.