Mahomet (play)

Mahomet
Frontispiece of the 1753 edition
Written by	Voltaire
Characters	Mahomet, founder of Islam Zopir, leader of Mecca Omar, general and lieutenant to Mahomet Seid, Zopir's son, abducted and enslaved by Mahomet Palmira, Zopir's daughter, abducted and enslaved by Mahomet Phanor, senator of Mecca Meccan tribes Mahomet's followers
Date premiered	25 April 1741
Place premiered	Lille, France
Original language	French
Subject	Religious fanaticism
Genre	Tragedy

Mahomet (French: Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le Prophete, literally Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet) is a five-act tragedy written in 1736 by French playwright and philosopher Voltaire. It received its debut performance in Lille on 25 April 1741.

The play is a study of religious fanaticism and self-serving manipulation based on an episode in the traditional biography of Muhammad in which he orders the murder of his critics. Voltaire described the play as "written in opposition to the founder of a false and barbarous sect to whom could I with more propriety inscribe a satire on the cruelty and errors of a false prophet".

Plot summary

The story of "Mahomet" unfolds during Muhammad's post exile siege of Mecca in 630 AD, when the opposing forces are under a short term truce called to discuss the terms and course of the war.

In the first act we are introduced to a fictional leader of the Meccans, Zopir, an ardent and defiant advocate of free will and liberty who rejects Mahomet . Mahomet is presented through his conversations with his second in command Omar and with his opponent Zopir and with two of Zopir's long lost children (Seid and Palmira) whom, unbeknownst to Zopir, Mahomet had abducted and enslaved in their infancy, fifteen years earlier.

The now young and beautiful captive Palmira has become the object of Mahomet's desires and jealousy. Having observed a growing affection between Palmira and Seid, Mahomet devises a plan to steer Seid away from her heart by indoctrinating young Seid in religious fanaticism and sending him on a suicide attack to assassinate Zopir in Mecca, an event which he hopes will rid him of both Zopir and Seid and free Palmira's affections for his own conquest. Mahomet invokes divine authority to justify his conduct.

Seid, still respectful of Zopir's nobility of character, hesitates at first about carrying out his assignment, but eventually his fanatical loyalty to Mahomet overtakes him and he slays Zopir. Phanor arrives and reveals to Seid and Palmira to their disbelief that Zopir was their father. Omar arrives and deceptively orders Seid arrested for Zopir's murder despite knowing that it was Mahomet who had ordered the assassination. Mahomet decides to cover up the whole event so as to not be seen as the deceitful impostor and tyrant that he is.

Having now uncovered Mahomet's "vile" deception Palmira renounces Mahomet's god and commits suicide rather than to fall into the clutches of Mahomet.

Analysis and reception

Voltaire indicated that the play was not historical, but rather a representation of fanaticism. The play is a direct assault on the moral character of Muhammad. The characters of Seid and Palmira represent Muhammad's adopted son Zayd ibn Harithah and his wife Zaynab bint Jahsh. The play’s plot contradicts the version of the respective Surah in the Qu’ran:

37. Behold! Thou didst say to one who had received the grace of Allah and thy favour: "Retain thou (in wedlock) thy wife, and fear Allah." But thou didst hide in thy heart that which Allah was about to make manifest: thou didst fear the people, but it is more fitting that thou shouldst fear Allah. Then when Zaid had dissolved (his marriage) with her, with the necessary (formality), We joined her in marriage to thee: in order that (in future) there may be no difficulty to the Believers in (the matter of) marriage with the wives of their adopted sons, when the latter have dissolved with the necessary (formality) (their marriage) with them. And Allah.s command must be fulfilled. Qur'an Sura 33:37

Pierre Milza, posits that, it may have been "the intolerance of the catholic Church and its crimes done on behalf of the Christ" that were targeted by the philosopher, Voltaire's own statement about it in a letter in 1742 was quite vague: "I tried to show in it into what horrible excesses fanaticism, led by an impostor, can plunge weak minds.". It is only in another letter dated from the same year that he explains that this plot is an implicit reference to Jacques Clément, the monk who assassinated Henri III in 1589 ”. That letter, written in september 1742, has not been published until 1856. Voltaire will then clarify his thoughts in 1748 in an article on the Quran published after this tragedy: "If his book is poor for our times and for us, it was much good for its contemporaries, and its religion even better. One has to accept he withdrew idolatry from the whole of Asia".

In 2005, a production of the play in Saint-Genis-Pouilly, Ain, France, resulted in demands for cancellation and street disturbances outside the performance itself.

However, like often in Voltaire’s texts, it was indeed not Islam that was the plot about, but Christianity. His aim when writing the text was to condemn “the intolerance of the Church and the crimes that have been committed in the name of the Christ”. In a letter he wrote in 1742, he explains that “My tragedy describes, under the nickname of “Muhammad”, how the Prior of Jacobins put his knife in the hands of Jacques Clément.”. The real aim of his text had been clearly identified by his contemporary politicians, and as a result, Voltaire got sued by Christian religious authorities of his time and the plot has been condemned to be removed from public play. The fact that this text is actually about a very specific event strictly related to the Christianity of his time is widely unknown in the English speaking world, where many still naively think that it is an attack against Islam, being unaware of the Jacobins controversy. Voltaire gives a more detailed view about his real opinion on Muhammad in a text dated from later in his life, in 1772:

“No, Muhammad didn’t do any of those miracles operated in a village that we start speaking only 100 years after the so-called even […]. His religion is wise, strict, chaste, and human: wise, because it doesn’t fall in the foolishness of associating any idea to God, and because it doesn’t have any “mystery”; strict, because it forbids gambling, wine and alcohol, and commends to pray five times a day, chaste, because it limits to a maximum of four a number of wives that was previously numerous like it is so common in the bed of all princes of the Orient, human, because it commands charity even more strongly than the pilgrimage to Mecca itself. Add to this all the character of truth and tolerance.”

The tolerance is an explicit reference to the way that the Ottomans of his time were allowing to Jews and Christian to get high social responsibilities, while in the Western World of that time had much more intolerant policies toward the minorities.

Yet there is no doubt that Voltaire was opposed to Muhammad and Islam, which is indicated by this quote from a letter he wrote to Frederick the Great, King of Prussia in 1740:

“But that a camel-merchant should stir up insurrection in his village; that in league with some miserable followers he persuades them that he talks with the angel Gabriel; that he boasts of having been carried to heaven, where he received in part this unintelligible book, each page of which makes common sense shudder; that, to pay homage to this book, he delivers his country to iron and flame; that he cuts the throats of fathers and kidnaps daughters; that he gives to the defeated the choice of his religion or death: this is assuredly nothing any man can excuse, at least if he was not born a Turk, or if superstition has not extinguished all natural light in him.”

External links

• Le Fanatisme ou Mahomet (French)* Voltaire essay on the Qur'an in the DICTIONNAIRE PHILOSOPHIQUE (French)