If

threw up their commissions because they were superseded. he selected a child, what then?-could not God give victory to a child? Moreover, all the latent forces which social order restrains were instantly at his disposal. Every strong man, kept down by circumstances, had an instinctive desire to believe in the faith which removed at a stroke every obstacle to a career. To this hour this principle is still of vital importance in all Mahometan countries. A dozen times has a Sultan utterly ruined stooped among his people, found, in a water-carrier, a tobacconist, a slave, or a renegade, the required man, raised him in a day to power, and supported him to save the empire. If the snuffdealer can rule Egypt, why should he not rule Egypt? He is as near to God as any other Mussulman, save only the heir of the Khalifate; and accordingly Mehemet Ali finds birth, trade, and want of education no obstacles in his path. The pariah who in Madras turns Christian is a pariah still; but if he turns Mussulman, the proudest Mussulman noble will, if he rises, give him his daughter, or serve him as a sovereign, without a thought of his descent. Mahomet, like all real kings, knew men when he saw them; gave power to Omar, the man of the blue blood, or Zeid, the slave, indifferently, and found therefore invariably that the special talent he wanted was at his command.

These immense advantages could not, however, preserve Mahomet invariably from disaster. In the middle of January 625, years after he had reached Medina, the Koreish determined once for all to end the quarrel with their dangerous adversary. Summoning all their allies, and devoting all the treasure saved in Abu Sofian's caravan to military purposes, they raised what was then, in Arabia, a formidable force. Neither then nor at any other time were the Arabs exclusively or mainly cavalry. They admired and cherished horses, and most men could ride; but the possession of a horse was a sign of wealth, and among the mountaineers and citizens by no means a common one. The army, therefore, though 3000 in number, comprised only 200 horse, and its principal reliance was on 700 footmen equipped in mail, and in the archers, who did duty, as in feudal Europe, for light troops. Mahomet, though at first inclined to stand on the defensive, yielded to the ardour of his younger followers, and marched out of Medina with a force which victory, conversions, and new hope had swelled from the 300 of Badr to 1000 strong. Of this force, however, 300, commanded by Abdallah, chief of the Bani Khazraj, indignant at Mahomet's hostility to the Jews, deserted and returned to Mecca; the remainder, though not a fourth of their enemies in number, determined to give them battle, and accordingly took up their position on a small stony plain, above which rose arid and red the frowning

rocks of the mountain Ohod. The battle began, as usual, in a series of single combats, in which, of course, those who believed death only an entrance to paradise had signally the advantage. Excited by perpetual small successes, and perhaps rendered imprudent by their confident hope of divine aid, the Mussulmans pressed on too rapidly, pierced the enemy's line, and began plundering the baggage. The rear-guard joined in this exciting game, and the Koreish horse, seeing their opportunity, swept down on the Moslem from behind. There was a panic, a mad flight, and a rally round the person of the Prophet. Mahomet was felled to the ground, and for a few minutes the course of history was doubtful; but his personal friends protected his body, raised him, and with the broken army made for the rocks and defiles of Ohod. The victors approached, and taunted their defeated enemies; but a charge up the rocks, in the teeth of Moslem soldiers, was beyond their courage, and they retired slowly to their own city. The Moslem also returned to Medina, to find every element of disaffection at full work. Seventy-four of the army had fallen, and every man was in an Arab tribe known and classed like an English noble. The charm of invincibility which attached to the Prophet was shattered, the Jews were sarcastic, and the Medinese openly murmured that if Badr were the seal of Islam, Ohod showed the visible wrath of the Almighty. The refugees, however, had seen worse days than these. The Prophet stood, as usual in disaster, firm and gentle. He passed over Abdallah's desertion, ordered a mock pursuit of the Koreish, which gave the talkers something to discuss, and, in a thundering Sura, comforted the faithful, and threatened the wrath of God on the disaffected. "Who am I," he said, "that I should not be defeated?"

"Mahomet is no more than an Apostle, as other Apostles that have gone before him. What! if he were to die or be killed, must ye needs turn back upon your heels? He that turneth back upon his heels injureth not God in the least degree; but God will reward the thankful.

'Furthermore, no soul dieth but by the permission of God, as it is written and predestined. .

How many prophets have fought against those that had multitudes on their side. And they were not cast down at that which befell them fighting in the way of God, neither did they become weak, nor make themselves abject; and God loveth the persevering.'

The magic eloquence of the leader completed the work; and never was Mahomet stronger with his followers than a month after the defeat of Ohod.

The remainder of the year (625) passed in expeditions of various issue. The Beni Asad, a powerful clan who were con

nected with the Koreish, and raised the standard against Medina, were plundered and dispersed; but on the other hand, seventy Moslem were decoyed by the Beni Aamir into their hands, under pretext of desiring teachers for the faith, and treacherously put to death. The Beni Nadhir, a Jewish tribe, were driven from their possessions, and their estates divided among the refugees, who thus rose into instant affluence. With 1500 men Mahomet maintained his camp for eight days at Badr, waiting attack from the Arab world; and next year he advanced by a march of more than a month along the border of Syria. The Beni Mustalick had, it would seem, menaced him; but the tribe was surrounded, and the prisoners, after a short hesitation, embraced the creed of Medina. These petty expeditions were, however, only the preparations for a new danger.

The Koreish could neither forgive Mahomet, nor escape the idea that he was to them an imminent and ever-pressing peril. They resolved on an effort which gives a high idea at once of their strength and weakness. Summoning all their allies, they advanced, in February 627, on Medina, and besieged it with an army of 10,000 men. Such a force menaced the city with destruction, but its hour had not arrived. Mahomet had in his ranks a man who knew something of Roman fortification, and when the Meccans arrived under the walls they found themselves confronted by a deep ditch. They exclaimed loudly against the cowardice of the device, but they could not pass the ditch, and fell back on stratagem. They made an agreement with the strongest Jewish tribe left in the city, the Koreitza, to attack Mahomet from behind, while they themselves essayed to pass the trench. Mahomet, however, discovered the plot, and by a clever device-which Mr. Muir must pardon us for saying is quite within allowable military expedients, and was imitated by Major Edwardes with effect at the siege of Mooltan-he contrived to make each party think the other was watching to betray them. The grand attack therefore failed ignominiously; a few Koreish only leaping the trench, to be speared without mercy. An Arab army had no commissariat. Provisions ran short, the weather was wretched, and at last, after fifteen days of the siege, Abu Sofian, irritated to madness by personal discomfort, leaped on his horse, and rode away to Mecca. The great army melted away, and Mahomet turned on his domestic foes. He besieged the Koreitza in their faubourg, and after a brief resistance they surrended at discretion. The Beni Aws begged hard for their lives as old allies, and Mahomet promised the doom of the Jews should be fixed by a man of the allied clan. He selected Sad ibn Muadz, who accepted the office, and took an oath from the people to stand by his de

cision. To the dismay of his kinsmen, rearing his mighty figure above the crowd, he pronounced the awful sentence-the men to death, the women to slavery; and the doom was accepted by Mahomet. The Koreitza, eight hundred in number, were slain in batches, and the bodies buried, while the women were carried away. "Islam has cut all ties," was the stern comment of the allies of the murdered tribe. This was the worst deed ever sanctioned by Mahomet, but there is a word to be said in his defence. He undoubtedly regarded these men as traitors as well as rebels, and there is not the slightest evidence that the Koreitza, even by European codes, had not deserved their doom. They had plotted against their own allies on the battlefield, and there is no European general who would not have pronounced them worthy of death, however strongly the modern respect for life might have modified his actual sentence. In this affair, as in the execution of one or two private individuals, Mahomet acted simply as an Oriental prince, neither better nor worse; and we shall presently see how little personal enmity ever influenced his decisions.

The fifth year of the Hegira, A.D. 627, passed away in comparative tranquillity. Mahomet still seemed far from his aim— the mastery of Arabia; but his expeditions continued, and every foray brought him wealth, disciples, and increase of reputation. In one of these raids, his men punished some prisoners guilty of treachery in a manner so barbarous, that Mahomet published a revelation making death by the sword, cord, or crucifixion, the only capital punishments a Moslem could lawfully inflict. The mutilation of the hand was alone retained for larceny, a punishment certainly cruel; but not so especially cruel in relation to the crime as Europeans will be apt to believe. All Asiatics hold larceny a crime only second to murder. Englishmen of the educated class, rich in all necessaries, and habitually careless, cannot even conceive the irritation the practice of small theft creates in a poverty-stricken community, to whom every thing is valuable, and by whom every thing is remembered. They will not endure it; and to this day the first charge of a native of India against the British Government is its leniency to larceny, and the second most frequent cause of murder is the determination of the people to punish theft with corporal chastisement carried to an extreme. Mr. Muir rightly condemns mutilation; but when he styles the law one which reflects discredit on Mahomet, he should remember that it is not thirty years since English bankers clamoured for the retention of death as the only true punishment for forgery.

In the sixth year of the Flight, A.D. 628, Mahomet determined to bring himself once more in contact with the represen

tatives of all Arabia, by attending the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. He started with a powerful force, hoping, apparently, that the Meccans would be too jealous for the prerogative of their city to refuse entrance even to him. He was disappointed, and in his anxiety to be once more enabled to visit the city he so greatly loved, he signed a treaty of amity with his determined foes. Under its provisions, which were to be valid for ten years, all Arabs who chose were to join him without opposition from the Koreish, and all Moslem who chose were to abandon him without punishment. The Meccans, moreover, were to give the shrine up to his followers for three days in every year. Entrance for that year was, however, refused, and Mahomet returned to send ambassadors abroad to four of the sovereigns whose reputation had reached Arabia. Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium, then in the full tide of victory over Chosroes, received the summons to embrace Islam and obey the Prophet in a plainly worded letter, which, of course, he laid aside; Siroes, King of Persia, tore up his missive, provoking from Mahomet the exclamation, that his kingdom should be similarly torn in pieces; Mukoukas, the Roman, or rather Greek, Governor of Egypt, had a nearer view of the power of his strange correspondent. He answered kindly, and sent to Mahomet a present of two Coptic slave-girls, one of whom, Mary, is the heroine of many a Mussulman legend, and would, had her son Ibrahim lived, have been in all probability regarded to this day as the sainted mother of dynasties. The Prince of Abyssinia alone, it is said, obeyed the missive, and even that solitary concession rests upon no evidence but Mahometan tradition, and Abyssinia remains Christian to this day. The embassies are curious proofs of Mahomet's absolute confidence in his own empire, and as the only positive indications of that vast ambition which the achievements of his successors reflected back upon his character. Every creed claims to be universal; but that Mahomet ever contemplated distinctly the conquest of the world is to our minds more than doubtful. He hoped, perhaps, for Syria, but his distinct policy was limited to Syria, and the first mighty outflow of Arabia upon civilisation was caused by the necessity of finding occupation for the tribes who groaned and fretted under the yoke of his successor.

We must pass more briefly over one or two years studded with incident and adventure, to arrive at the crowning achievement of Mahomet's life. In the same year, A.D. 628, he conquered Kheibar one of the richest valleys in Arabia, occupied by Jews, and divided the lands among his followers. It was a woman of this tribe who, by giving him a poisoned shoulder of mutton, laid, in Mussulman ideas, the foundation of the disease