In the great plague which devastated Syria seven
years after the prophet's death Khalid, the Sword of God, lost _forty_
sons. Abdal Rahman, one of the "companions" of Mohammed, had issue by
sixteen wives, not counting slave-girls.[62] Moghira ibn Shoba, another
"companion," and governor of Kufa and Bussorah, had in his harem eighty
consorts, free and servile. Coming closer to the Prophet's household, we
find that Mohammed himself at one period had in his harem no fewer than
nine wives and two slave-girls. Of his grandson Hasan we read that his
vagrant passion gained for him the unenviable sobriquet of _The
Divorcer_; for it was only by continually divorcing his consorts that he
could harmonize his craving for fresh nuptials with the requirements of
the divine law, which limited the number of his free wives to four. We
are told that, as a matter of simple caprice, he exercised the power of
divorce seventy (according to other traditions ninety) times. When the
leading men complained to Aly of the licentious practice of his son his
only reply was that the remedy lay in their own hands, of refusing Hasan
their daughters altogether.[63] Such are the material inducements, the
"works of the flesh," which Islam makes lawful to its votaries, and
which promoted thus its early spread.
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