d before
the following Institutions: Columbia University, Yale University, The
University of Pennsylvania, Meadville Theological Seminary, The University
of Chicago, The Lowell Institute, and the Johns Hopkins University.

The Committee owes a debt of deep gratitude to Mr. Charles R. Crane for
having made possible the course of lectures for the year 1914.

RICHARD GOTTHEIL

CRAWFORD H. TOY

_Committee on Publication_.

April, 1916.

* * * * *

CONTENTS

SOME POINTS CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF ISLAM.

THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAM.

THE POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAM.

ISLAM AND MODERN THOUGHT.

INDEX.

Mohammedanism

I

SOME POINTS CONCERNING THE ORIGIN OF ISLAM

There are more than two hundred million people who call themselves after
the name of Mohammed, would not relinquish that name at any price, and
cannot imagine a greater blessing for the remainder of humanity than to be
incorporated into their communion. Their ideal is no less than that the
whole earth should join in the faith that there is no god but Allah and
that Mohammed is Allah's last and most perfect messenger, who brought the
latest and final revelation of Allah to humanity in Allah's own words. This
alone is enough to claim our special interest for the Prophet, who in the
seventh century stirred all Arabia into agitation and whose followers soon
after his death founded an empire extending from Morocco to China.

Even those who--to my mind, not without gross exaggeration--would seek the
explanation of the mighty stream of humanity poured out by the Arabian
peninsula since 630 over Western and Middle Asia, Northern Africa, and
Southern Europe principally in geographic and economic causes, do not
ignore the fact that it was Mohammed who opened the sluice gates. It would
indeed be difficult to maintain that without his preaching the Arabs of the
seventh century would have been induced by circumstances to swallow up
the empire of the Sasanids and to rob the Byzantine Empire of some of its
richest provinces. However great a weight one may give to political and
economic factors, it was religion, Islam, which in a certain sense united
the hitherto hopelessly divided Arabs, Islam which enabled them to found
an enormous international community; it was Islam which bound the speedily
converted nations together even after the shattering of its political
power, and which still binds them today wh