JAHAD. ARAB. A religious war of the Muhammadans ; generally used to designate a war against other religionists. It is described by the Arabs as Jahad-fi-Sabil Allah, a war on the path of the Lord. Unprovoked war is contrary to the letter and spirit of the Koran ; but war against the enemies of El Islam, who have been the first aggressors, is enjoined as a sacred duty ; and he who loses his life in fulfilling this duty (if unpaid) is promised the rewards of a martyr. Verses 40, 41, chapter 21st of the Koran, are believed to be the first passage that was revealed respecting religious war. From Mahomed's time there were many small religious wars ; but of memorable jahads, two by Harfin-fir-Rashid in A.D. 902 against the emperor Nicephorus, all those of the Crusades led by Salah-ud-Din and others, and the great Wahabee movement at the close of the 18th century in Arabia, aimed at bringing Islam back to the actual state of things which existed in the prophet's time. This was a jahad pure and simple, and its promoters not only attacked Christians as unbelievers, but drove out their Turkish Muslim masters, and sacked the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, because they had been profaned with foreign rites. The movement was a purely Arab one, but it relied upon precisely the same principles as those of Mahomed himself ; and as these are the recognised foundations of Islam, it found an echo elsewhere. Yet when, later on, it was endeavoured to prove that India was a dal ul harb, or enemy's country, and that it was the duty of all Muhammadans, as such, to rise against their Christian rulers, the Ulema, with scarcely an exception, pronounced fatwas adverse to this opinion, and a meeting of doctors at Mecca taking the same view, the jahad was negatived once for all, and made impossible in the future. So far as Wahabeeism appealed to
Arab peoples, it was eminently successful ; else where the summons was unheeded. Some of the Arab tribes, and with them some of their descend ants, are exceedingly excitable, and there have been instances of this excitability among the Turk and Mongol converts ; and the proclamation of a jahad would probably have met with response among the Arabs who migrated to Africa, and who set up the rival Muhammadan khalifat in Spain. But the jahad of the Crusades was brought about by the Christians themselves, who took the initiative. The Saracen rulers and inhabitants of the Holy Land, whether of Arab, Persian, or Moghul descent, found their very existence suddenly threatened, and banded to gether to avert the common danger. How high Muhammadan feeling ran at the time may be gathered from a contemporary Arabic ode, addressed to a grandson of Salah-ud-Din on the construction of extra fortifications at Damietta. The poet says :— In India the influence of Muhammadanism has been scarcely more than superficial. Even at the present day an Indian Muslim, in his observances and tenets, is following several Hindu customs. The notion of ceremonial defilement if an Indian Muhammadan even eat out of a vessel which has been touched by Christian hands, is not anywhere sanctioned by Islam, the Koran itself expressly saying that the food of those who have received the Scriptures '—that is, Christians and Jews—is lawful for the true believer.