and a messenger announced that the Koreishites had been overthrown; small children, we are told, were excited with the dreadful triumph of the warrior, and ran about the streets crying out in exultation over the fallen enemy. In Mecca far different feelings were excited; sullen hate was aroused, and the natural grief for the lost that rose unbidden was stifled by the determination to have bloody revenge. "Weep not for your slain," they cried, "bewail not their loss, neither let the bard mourn for them. Show yourselves men,-heroes! Let not wailing and lamentation diminish your hate for Mohammed and his fellows. They will scorn us and make us the butt of their laughter if we expose to them our weaknesses! We shall again go forth, and verily, we shall have revenge!" Thus, for days, even for weeks, the spirit of hate sustained the people; but the time came when nature could bear the strain no longer, and all the wild demonstrations that mark the expression of Oriental sorrow broke forth in every quarter, for there was hardly a house in which kindred did not mourn their captives or their dead. In every quarter except one,-for Hind, the stern wife of the leader of the caravan, gave no expression to womanly feeling; she declared: "Not till ye again. wage war against Mohammed and his fellows, shall tears flow from my eyes! If tears would wash away grief, I would now weep, even as ye; but it is not so with me!"

VICTORY FOR MECCA.

MOHAMMED would have the Moslems believe that angels fought for them, and that Satan took the part of the Koreishites; but it was not the being of the "unconquerable will" that Milton painted; it was a jinn of the utmost cowardice. "Iblis bepraised their works, and said: There is no man who can prevail against you this day, for, verily, I am your sworn brother!' When the two troops came face to face, he quickly turned his heels and cried: 'Verily, I am quit of you; verily, I see that which ye do not see; verily, I fear Allah, for Allah is keen to punish!'" The arrant coward saw the thousands of angels, and left his confederates to their fate!

By such a fiction Mohammed impressed his followers with the belief that Allah and the angels were on their side, that Iblis and the evil jinns were with their enemies; that it was the sword which was to prove the truth of his mission. Victory in battle. was his only trust henceforth; his former dependence upon measures of peace had left him; no seer is needed to tell what the harvest is to be. The Koreishites had been defeated not because they were enemies of the people of Medina, but because

they were opposed to the religion of Allah; and this fact which the prophet impressed upon all about him had its lesson for those who still refused to adopt Islam, and there were not a few such among the influential citizens besides the Jews. The first among them to suffer was a woman who composed some couplets that went from mouth to mouth in Medina. after the battle of Bedr, in which the folly of putting trust in one who had killed chief men among his own tribe was denounced. In the dead of night, surrounded by her little ones, this woman was stricken by the dagger of an assassin, who was the next day applauded by Mohammed in the mosque for his hideous deed. Some weeks after this another versifier met death in the same way, at the direct instigation of the prophet, who had been again stung by readily remembered poetry. This time it was a pervert to Judaism, and his taking off gave those of his adopted faith new cause to dread the anger of Mohammed. The denunciations of the Jews in the Koran were followed by their persecution, exile, and slaughter, until they were all removed, and the suras contain no further notices of them.*

* "There were no police, or law-courts, or even courts-martial at Medina; some one of the followers of Mohammed must therefore be the executer of the sentence of death, and it was better it should be done quietly, as the executing of a man openly before his clan would have caused a brawl, and more bloodshed and retaliation, till the whole city had become mixed up in the quarrel. If 'secret assassination is the word for such deeds, secret assassination was a necessary part of the internal government of Medina. The men must be killed, and best in that way."-"Studies in a Mosque," by Stanley Lane-Poole, page 69.

MOHAMMED A TRIUMPHANT CHIEFTAIN. 153

While these and other petty affairs disturbed the tranquillity of Medina, the wrath of the Meccans was only smouldering. The chief, whose caravan had been saved before the battle of Bedr, had vowed vengeance. In the spring following that event he collected a small force and made an ineffectual raid towards Medina; was chased by Mohammed, and ingloriously hastened homewards despite his terrible threats. Each of the two hundred fleet horsemen who accompanied him had carried at his saddle-bow a sack of meal as his provision for the raid, and when the leader fled each threw off his sack, from which circumstance the affair has been called the Battle of the Mealsacks.

Mohammed was no longer a simple prophet, but had become a triumphant chieftain, and his utterances changed to those of a law-giver and king. His simple artlessness of living and behavior did not desert him, however, in spite of the wishes of some of his followers that he should assume some thing of the royal magnificence of the other rulers of the East. When one spoke to him on the subject, he replied: "Art thou not content that thou shouldest have the portion of futurity, and they the portion of the present life?" While he spoke thus, he took no delight in unnecessary asceticism, and taught that Allah was not a friend of those who wantonly harm their bodies; he permitted the weak and sickly to omit fasts, and to shorten the prescribed prayers; and when he wished any necessary thing that money or power could obtain, he supplied the innocent demand. He required the customary reverential salų

tations from his subjects, placing in the thirty-third sura an order to that effect.

About a year after the victory of Bedr, the prophet was in the mosque at Koba, when a breathless messenger startled him by suddenly appearing at his side and placing in his hand a sealed letter from his double-faced uncle Abbas, who informed him that the hero of the Battle of the Mealsacks was again prepared to engage in hostilities. The caravan that the Meccans had saved had been set aside, and a fund provided with which a powerful army was equipped and provisioned; the Bedawins around had been called upon to unite in a determined onslaught upon the threatening Moslems of Medina; and even then the northward march had begun. Kindling their fury by the help of verses chanted to the music of timbrels by women who had, like Hind, the Tearless One, so loudly demanded war, they cried out for vengeance as they marched; they devastated fields, and drove the frightened farmers before them in search of places of refuge. Fugitives brought to the prophet exaggerated estimates of the vastness. of the horde that was approaching, and Medina was, indeed, alarmed. Counsel was divided; the advancing army seemed, however, to loiter by the way, and the time was employed in discussion; the result was that Mohammed decided to gird on his armor and take the field outside the city.

After the Friday prayers had been said in the afternoon, the people assembled before the mosque armed for the strife; and with all the circumstance he could command, the prophet issued from his