Mahomet Founder of Islam

d the Scriptures, yet Thy Kibla they will not adopt; nor shalt thou adopt the

strife, still both their leaders and the Muslim perceived that their disaffection was inevitable. Insecurity at home, however, did not prevent him from sending out an expedition in Rajab (October) of that year under Abdallah. Rajab is a sacred month in the Mohamedan calendar, one in which war is forbidden. Strictly,

k upon his enemy by a company so far removed from its base is convincing proof, should any be needed, of his

south of Medina. At sunset on the second day he came with his eight followers to a well in the midst o

between Taif and Mecca; there lie in wait for the Ku

een apprehension and daring, and turning

to say unto you whoever desireth martyrdom for Islam let him follow me, and whoever will not su

umed their march and arrived at length at Nakhla, where they encountered the Kureisch caravan laden with spice and leather.

is day, they will e

arrows in their path, so that one man was killed and several wounded. The rest forsook their merchandise and fled, leaving behind them two prisoners, whose retre

ined undivided, but Abdallah was not punished or even reprimanded. Meanwhile, the Jews and the Kureisch vied with one another in execrating Mahomet, and even his own people murmured against him. It was clearly time that an

urn aside from the cause of God, and to have no faith in Him, and in the Sacred Temple, and

him indivisibly, the world was split up into Believers and Unbelievers. The Kuran, therefore, must of necessity cease to be merely the proclamation of divine unity that it had been and become the vehicle for definite orders and regulations, the outcome of those theocratic ideas upon which Mahomet's creed was founded. The justification would

ommander of the Faithful-a title which recalls inseparably the cruelty and magnificence, the glamour and rapacity, of Arabian Bagdad under Haroun-al-Raschid. The valorous enterprise had now been achieved, the Kureisch caravan was despoiled, and the Kureisch themselves wrought into fury

y would have been successful but for Mahomet's efficient system of espionage, a method upon which he relied throughout his life. Failing to foment a rebellion in secret they proceeded to open hostilities, and the Muslim, jealous for their f

s enthusiasm to overwhelm their own. The Rabbis felt that Mahomet and his warrior heroes-Ali, Omar, Othman, and the rest-would in time dislodge from their high places their own peculiar saints, just as they saw Mahomet with Abu Bekr and his personnel of administrators and informers already overriding their own councillors in the civil and military departments of their state. The old regime could not amalgamate with the new, for that would mean absorption by its more v

aba at Mecca. What prevision or prophetic inspiration prompted Mahomet to turn his followers' eyes away from the north and fix them upon their former home with its fierce and ruthless heat, the materialisation, it seeme

anctity became henceforth a potent reminder for the Muslim of his special duties towards Allah, of the reverence meet to be accorded to the Divine Upholder of Islam. During all the days of Ramadan, no food or drink might pass a Muslim lip, nor might he touch a woman, but the moment the sun's rim dipped below the horizon he was absolved from the fast until dawn. No institution in Islam is so peculiarly sacred as Ramadan, and none so scrupu

lels in no religion-the Adzan, or call to prayer. Mahomet wished to summon the Believers to the Mosque, and there was no way except to ring a bell such as

rein a "spirit, in the guise of man, clad in green garments," appeared to him and summoned

there is no God but God, and Mahomet is His Prophet. Come unto pr

teach it to Bilal, that he may call to pr

up to the Mosque, and climbing its highest minare

han sleep, prayer i

o Mahomet and declared that he had the

wered him, "Pra

nd knows that, behind this outward manifestation, lies a faith, at root incomprehensible by reason of its aloofness from the advancing streams of modern thought, a faith spiritually impotent, since it flees from mysticism, generating an energy which has expended its vital force in conquest, only to find itself too intellectually backward and physically sluggish to gather in prosperity the fruits of its attainments. Its lack of imagination, its utter ignorance of the lure of what is strange, have been responsible for its

embryo in the small Medinan community; for their leader, by his own creative ardour, imposed upon his flock e