adding to "the triumph and the vanity, the rapture of the strife" the grandeur of moral well-doing, has proved the political safeguard of the Mussulman tribes, urging them onwards perpetually to broader dominion, and enabling them, when defeated, to die fighting in the assured hope of a sensual immortality. It is quite certain that at Mecca Mahomet never issued the command in any distinct form, and that he hoped against hope, for twelve long years, to succeed by the simple massiveness of his doctrine and the eloquence of his own tongue. It was in all probability not till the resort of the Koreish to force made him doubt whether argument would henceforward be even accessible to them, that the thought of compulsion, of arguments addressed to the fears instead of the reason, flashed across his mind. The idea, however, was developed fullgrown, for the Sura which recommended the first war with Mecca promised also paradise to him who fell in arms; and of all the revelations this was the one most eagerly believed. It is to this day the last which a sceptical Mahometan doubts, and it exercises a power over inferior races almost as extraordinary as the sway Christian truth can sometimes obtain. It is related of Tippoo's Hindoo converts, 70,000 of whom were made Mussulmans by force in a single day, that this was the doctrine they accepted with their hearts; and at the siege of Seringapatam they courted death in scores: men utterly lost to every call of honour, or patriotism, or family affection, whose only occupation is eating, and whose only recreation is woman, still thrill with excitement at the summons for the faith, and meet death with a contempt the Red Indian could only envy. In the recent war in Upper India even the Highlanders wavered as the Ghazees flung themselves on their bayonets; and the Moplahs have been known to yell with exultation as the bayonets passed through them far enough to allow their short knives to stab deep. The promulgation of this order marked the completion of a political rather than a religious position. Mahomet could add nothing to his power as prince: no compact with his people, no conceivable subtilty of legislation, no fanaticism of loyalty, could invest him with any thing but a faint shadow of the despotic power which must appertain to a recognised vice-gerent of God. But the additional belief that death in war is an instant passport to heaven turned all his followers into willing conscripts, and war into the most solemn and most sacred of ordinary duties. Imagine the Puritan soldiers convinced, not only that their cause was favoured of God, but that Cromwell was his vicegerent, and that the Day of Judgment could never arrive for the soldier slain in battle, and we gain some idea of the spirit in which the first followers of Mahomet advanced to the conflict with the infidels.

Mahomet arrived in the outskirts of Medina on 28th June, A.D. 622, and after a halt of a few days to ascertain the state of opinion in the town, he entered the city on a Friday,—a day thenceforward set apart for public worship throughout the Moslem world; and throwing the reins on the neck of his camel, Al Caswa, bade her seek her resting-place through the rejoicing crowds. Al Caswa halted in an open courtyard, and Mahomet descended and marked out the site for his first house, and the mosque in which pilgrims to Medina still recall his flight. He did not, of course, though it is often asserted, assume any power over Mcdina. The dislocated social condition universal throughout Arabia enabled him to exercise the direct and sole sovereignty over his own followers; and their attachment, his own popularity, and the mysterious awe with which he began to be regarded, gave him vast influence over the inhabitants; but of direct authority he had scarcely any. Each tribe governed itself. The two strongest, the Beni Khazraj and the Beni Aws, were passively favourable, but he had frequently to conciliate them, and Abdallah, the chieftain of the first-named clan, regarded him with strong jealousy and disfavour. He would have been prince of Medina but for Mahomet's arrival, and though he remained through life an ally, he pressed his influence arrogantly, and has the honour of being the only man who ever turned Mahomet from a declared purpose. The remaining tribes seem to have been friendly, with the exception of the Jews, who were numerous and powerful, and who gradually became objects of intense dislike to Mahomet. He had once entertained the idea of taking them into his religious system, and he made on his arrival a covenant with one tribe, granting them privileges very similar to those enjoyed in after times by the Jews of Cordova. He soon, however, when in actual contact with them, discovered what so many princes had discovered before, that Judaism cannot by its very nature coalesce with any other creed, and the revelations gradually became hostile to their claims. The Jews fell back entirely; and as Mahomet had not discovered the second truth, that force applied to Jews is waste of power, he assumed a position of open hostility to the tribes.

This, however, is an anticipation. For the first six months after his arrival he busied himself with the organisation of his faith. The practice of lustration was regularly introduced. The daily prayers were reduced to five. The first Kebleh Jerusalem was exchanged for Mecca, thus linking Islam with the ancient Pagan cult instead of Judaism, and the month Ramadhan was selected as the period of annual fasting. The day of fast-breaking was also appointed, and finally Mahomet, in obedience to a dream related by a disciple, bade a Negro slave ascend to the

top of a lofty house, and there cry aloud at the appointed times, "Prayer is better than sleep; prayer is better than sleep." Even Alexander the Great is in Asia an unknown personage by the side of the slave Billal, whose cry to this day summons at the same hours a fourth of the human race to the same devotions. As soon as the mosque was completed Mahomet recommenced his personal teaching, preaching from the top of the steps of a high pulpit, in the modern Protestant style. The religious life of Islam was then complete, and to the day of his death the Prophet added only to what may be called the dogmas of jurisprudence. For nearly two years he continued this course of life, slowly the while building up his personal authority. Abdallah, chief of the Bani Khazraj, was troublesome, and the Jews very sarcastic; but day by day the number of his followers increased. The people came over to his side. Each man as he joined him gave up his ties of tribe and kinsmanship, and bound himself a subject to Mahomet alone. He began, also, to use his followers to arms, organising small expeditions against the Koreish caravans; and although these were at first unsuccessful, they accustomed the faithful to the idea of hostilities with the sacred clan, and to habits of military obedience. In three of these forays he commanded in person, and in three the command passed with the Prophet's white banner to his nominee. This was at first always a Medinese chief, and it was not till the third expedition that he ventured to select a commander solely for devotion to himself, and intrust the white banner to the faithful Zeid. The uniform escape of the Koreish induced Mahomet at length to suspect treachery; and on the seventh expedition, in November 623, he sent a Meccan named Abdallah in command, with sealed instructions. This expedition succeeded, but the success was gained in the holy month, and Mahomet for some days had the booty laid aside. At last he relented, his delay having fully established the principle that the disposal of booty rested with him; and reserving one fifth for his own use, or rather that of the state, he divided the spoil. It was shortly after this success that the series of revelations commenced, declaring war against the infidel a main duty of the faithful; and the rich spoil and the splendid future proved too much for the men of Medina. Thenceforward open opposition within the city disappeared; and when, in January 624, Mahomet once more raised his standard, he was followed by the Medinese as readily as by his own people. He nominated a governor during his absence, as if the city belonged to himself alone; and mustering his force outside the walls, found that it had increased from the eighty refugees to three hundred and five.

His object was to intercept the caravan which, with Abu

Sofian, chief of the Koreish, at its head, was crawling from Syria down the coast of the Red Sea on its way to Mecca. With this view he marched rapidly to Badr, where the Meccan road strikes the great Syrian route; but he had, as usual, been betrayed by some secret friend of the Koreish among the Medinese. Abu Sofian hurried on a swift messenger to Mecca imploring aid, while he himself, leaving the coast-route, struck with his caravan direct for the city, which he reached in safety. The Koreish, however, were weary of Mahomet's audacity, and though still divided among themselves as to his claim of kindred, pushed their army of relief forward to Badr, determined to make a signal example. Mahomet was equally eager, and his followers, when consulted, pledged themselves to follow him to the world's end. Fanaticism had destroyed their remembrance of the ties of kindred, and then prayed openly for the destruction of their relatives. They arrived first upon the field, a sandy valley traversed by a small spring which feeds a series of small cisterns. Mahomet filled them all except the one nearest to the enemy, and bade his followers stand on the defensive, and regard that cistern as their citadel. The Koreish crossed the low hills in front of this position on 13th January 624, and began the action in the true Arabian and Homeric style. Three warriors stepping forward challenged the whole of the faithful, and Mahomet, accepting the challenge, ordered three of his relatives, Ali, Hamza, and Obeida, to stand forward. The combat ended in their favour, and the Mahometans, maddened with excitement, and favoured by the wind, which blew a storm of dust in the faces of the Koreish, charged upon a force three times the number of their own with irresistible effect. The Koreish maintained their reputation; but the Moslem craved death as much as victory, and acts such as are ordinarily only dictated by despair signalised their hope of heaven. Omeir, a lad of sixteen, flung away the dates he was eating with a vow to eat the next in paradise; and Muadz ibn Amr, with his arm cut through at the shoulder, tore off the limb as it hung by the skin, bound the wound, and fought on unmindful. Against men of this temper ordinary courage was unavailing, and the Koreish, abandoning forty-nine bodies and the same number of prisoners, all their animals and all their baggage, fled precipitately on the road to Mecca. Six of the prisoners were executed as avowed enemies of Mahomet or his creed, but the remainder were treated with a kindness they publicly acknowledged, and most of them embraced the faith. Every man in the army had at least two camels out of the spoil, and Mahomet averred boldly that Badr was the visible seal of Islam, a battle won by the immediate interposition of the Almighty on behalf of his Prophet. On his return he

assumed the full authority of a prince over the city: ordered Asma, a Jewess who had published satirical verses against him, to be put to death, slew a Jew guilty of the same offence, and besieged the Bani Cainucaa, a Jewish tribe of Medina, in their own faubourg. The Jews, after a siege of fifteen days, submitted at discretion; and Mahomet, who held them to be rebels and infidels, at once ordered them to execution. He was compelled, however, to yield to the remonstrance of Abdallah, the chief of the Beni Khazraj, and patronus of the Jewish clans, and still too powerful to be safely or irremediably offended. Expedition now followed on expedition. The Beni Suleim and the Beni Ghatafan were successively attacked and plundered; a roving band of the Koreish, headed by their leader, Abu Sofian, were repulsed; and at last the annual Meccan caravan, laden with bars of silver for the purchase of goods in Syria, was captured, yielding to every man in the army 800 dirhems, a fortune in a country where a dirhem a day was considered fair pay for the governor of a great city. Every expedition increased the confidence of Mahomet's followers, and developed the habit of obedience, until at length the Prophet's whisper was sufficient sentence of death, and the Moslem exulted in their willingness to slay their own brothers at his command. A central authority thus obeyed doubled the active force of Medina. There alone in Arabia a single man of commanding ability could plan without counsellors, and command without explaining his objects. There too alone in Arabia was at work the strangely vivifying principle which, for want of a better term, we must style equality.

The operation of this principle as one of the many causes which favoured the development of Islam has been too frequently overlooked. Despotisms very often, though not always, produce an imperfect equality. In Russia, for example, though the favour of the Czar can raise a serf into a prince, still the prince has under all other circumstances the advantage over the serf. Under Mahomet, however, there sprang up ex necessitate rei a form of democratic equality more absolute than the world has elsewhere seen. Claims of birth and wealth could be of no value in the presence of a master whose favour implied the favour of the Deity. The proudest Arab could not murmur if God chose a slave like Zeid to be leader of armies, and visibly confirmed his choice with the seal of victory. It was a principle also of the new sect that Islam extinguished all relations. The slave, once a Moslem, was free; the foe, once a Moslem, was dearer than any kinsman; the pagan, once a Moslem, might preach, if the Prophet bade, to attentive listeners. Mahomet was enabled, therefore, at all times to command the absolute aid of every man of capacity within his ranks. No officers of his