139

OF MOSLEM TRADITIONS

It will thus be understood that the lower links of the family pedigrees are for the most part historical. The more distant are legendary, and consist of names assumed from the floating elements of popular tradition, or invented sometimes on grounds of probability, sometimes without any grounds at all, for the purpose of fitting in the family pedigree to the great tribal system of the Peninsula. 

The family tree of Mahomet, embracing the Coreish and allied stocks, was naturally the first elaborated, and hence became the standard by which all other pedigrees were framed. The succession ascends through eleven generations from the Prophet to Fihr Coreish, the progenitor of the clan or family; and through eight generations more to Nizâr, the common ancestor of the tribe 

[Footnote continued from previous page]  that they did not really stand in the same close relation to Mahomet as represented by tradition, but that this fictitious relationship was conceded with two objects,—first, to add prestige to Mahomet's own branch, the Hâshimite, by the establishment of a close connection between them and the "patrician," or leading clan of Abd Shams; and secondly, with the view of aggrandising the latter powerful family when its representative Othmân was Caliph, by placing their privileges on a par with the Hâshimite. Both reasons (besides their inherent improbability) are inadequate to account for the unanimity of tradition on the descent of Abd Shams and Hâshim from the same father. It is inconceivable that the relationship could have been invented in the way supposed, or that Othmân could have effected a change in the popular tradition so many years after Mahomet's death, without eliciting fierce declamation from his bitter antagonists, the adherents of Aly. It would certainly in after days have been paraded as a leading charge against the Omeyyads by the Hâshimites and Abassides, in whose cause it would have been a most effective argument. Yet not a whisper is on any side raised, casting doubt on the common descent of the four stocks from Abdmenâf. There were aged men alive when Mahomet reached power, to whom the facts must have been known at a time when all claims to relationship with his family would be closely canvassed; and in a society like that of Mecca, where the ties of blood were paramount, it is hardly possible to conceive the deception supposed by Sprenger gaining currency. The truth is, that the prominence assigned by the Coran (S. VIII., v. 42) to the relations of Mahomet, originated at a time when the Abd-shamsite branch was waging open war with Mahomet; that family was consequently on political grounds placed on a lower scale than the Hâshimite; and the difference was perpetuated in the practice of Mahomet himself, and in the civil list of Omar.