"Even though thou shouldst bring every kind of sign to those who have received the Scriptures, yet Thy Kibla they will not adopt; nor shalt thou adopt their Kibla; nor will one part of them adopt the Kibla of the other."—The Kuran.

Mahomet realised the position of affairs at Medina too acutely to allow of his undertaking in person any predatory expeditions against the Kureisch during the autumn and winter of 623. The Jews were chafing under his tacit assumption of State control, and although their murmurings had not reached the recklessness of 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, therefore, in sending out an expedition at all just then Mahomet was transgressing against the laws of that religion which, purged of its idolatries, he claimed as his own. But it was a favourable opportunity to attack the Kureischite caravan on its way to Taif, and therefore Mahomet recked nothing of the prohibition.

Taif was a very distant objective for an expeditionary band from Medina, and that Mahomet contemplated attack upon his enemy by a company so far removed from its base is convincing proof, should any be needed, of his confidence in his followers' prowess and his conciliation of the tribes lying between the two hostile cities.

Sealed orders were given to Abdallah, with instructions not to open the parchment until he was two days south of Medina. At sunset on the second day he came with his eight followers to a well in the midst of the desert. There under the few date palms, which gave them rough shelter, he broke the seal and read:

"When thou readest this writing depart unto Nakhla, between Taif and Mecca; there lie in wait for the Kureisch, and bring thy comrades news concerning them."

As Abdallah read his mind alternated between apprehension and daring, and turning to his companions he took counsel of them.

"Mahomet has commanded me to go to Nakhla and there await the Kureisch; also he has commanded me to say unto you whoever desireth martyrdom for Islam let him follow me, and whoever will not suffer it, let him turn back. As for me, I am resolved to carry out the commands of God's Prophet"

Then one and all the eight companions assured him they would not forsake him until the quest was achieved. At dawn they resumed their march and arrived at length at Nakhla, where they encountered the Kureisch caravan laden with spice and leather. Now, it was the last day of the month of Rajab, wherein it was unlawful to fight, wherefore the Muslim took counsel, saying:

"If we fight not this day, they will elude us and escape."

But the Prophet's implied command was strong enough to induce initiative and hardihood in the small attacking party. They bore down upon the Kureisch, showering 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 retreat had been cut off. Abdallah was left in possession of the field, and joyfully he returned to Medina, bearing with him the first plunder captured by the Muslim.

But his return led Mahomet into a quandary from which there seemed no escape. Politically, he was bound to approve Abdallah's deed; religiously, he could neither laud it nor share the fruits of it. For days the spoils remained 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 authoritative sanction should be given to the deed, and accordingly in the sura, "The Cow," we have the revelation from Allah proclaiming the greater culpability of the Infidels and of those who would stir up civil strife:

"They will ask thee concerning war in the Sacred Month. Say: To war therein is bad, but to turn aside from the cause of God, and to have no faith in Him, and in the Sacred Temple, and to drive out its people, is worse in the sight of God; civil strife is worse than bloodshed."

No possible doubt must be cast in this and similar cases upon Mahomet's sincerity. The Kuran was the vehicle of the Lord; he had used it to proclaim his unity and power and his warnings to the unrighteous. Now that Islam had recognised his august and indissoluble majesty, and had accorded the throne of Heaven and the governance of earth to 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 not appeal to the people unless Allah's sanction supported it, and Mahomet realised with all his ardour of faith that the transgression was slight compared with the result achieved towards the progress of Islam. The Prophet therefore received, with Allah's approval, a fifth of the spoil, but the captives he released after receiving ransom.

"This," says the historian, "was the first booty that Mahomet obtained, the first captives they seized, and the first life they took." The significance of the event was vividly felt throughout Islam, and Abdallah, its hero, received at Mahomet's hands the title of "Amir-al- Momirim," Commander 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 against the Prophet's insolence; but more than all, the channel of Mahomet's policy of warfare became thereby so deeply carved that he could not have effaced it had he desired. Henceforth his creative genius limited itself to the deepening of its course and the direction of its outlet.

The Jews had not rested content with murmuring against Mahomet's rule, they sought to embarrass him by active sedition. One of their first attempts against Mahomet's regime was to stir up strife between the Refugees and Helpers. In this they 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 faith, retaliated by contempt and estrangement. During the winter of 623 personal attack was made by the mob upon Mahomet. The people were hounded on by their leaders to stone the Prophet, but he was warned in time and escaped their assaults.

The popular fury was merely the reflex of a fundamental division of thought between the opposing parties. The Jewish and Muslim systems could never coalesce, for each claimed the dominance and ignored all compromise. The age-long, hallowed traditions of the Jews which supported a theocracy as unyielding as any conception of Divine sovereignty preached by Mahomet, found themselves faced with a new creative force rapidly evolving its own legends, and strong enough in its 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 vigorous neighbour, and the Jewish spirit is exclusive in essence and separatist perforce. Mahomet took no pains to conciliate his allies; they had made a treaty with him in the days of his insecurity and he was grateful, but now his position in Medina was beyond assailment, and he was indifferent to their goodwill. As their aggression increased he deliberately withdrew his participation in their religious life, and severed his connection with their rites and ordinances.

The Kibla of the Muslim, whither at every prayer they turned their faces, and which he had declared to be the Temple at Jerusalem, scene of his embarkation upon the wondrous "Midnight Journey," was now changed to the Kaaba 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 seemed, of his own inexorable and passionate aims? Henceforth Mecca became unconsciously the goal of every Muslim, the desired city, to be fought for and died for, the dwelling-place of their Prophet, the crown of their faith.

The Jewish Fast of Atonement, which plays so important a part in Semite faith and doctrine, had been made part of the Muslim ritual in 622, while a federal union still seemed possible, but the next year such an amalgamation could not take place. In Ramadan (Dec. to January), therefore, Mahomet instituted a separate fast for the Faithful. It was to extend throughout the Sacred Month in which the Kuran had first been sent down to men. Its sanctity 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 scrupulously observed, even when, by the revolution of the lunar year, the fast falls during the bitter heat of summer. It is a characteristic ordinance, and one which emphasises the vivid Muslim apprehension of the part played by abstention in their religious code. At the end of the fast—that is, upon the sight of the next new moon—Mahomet proclaimed a festival, Eed-al-Fitr, which was to take the place of the great Jewish ceremony of rejoicing.

At this time, too, Mahomet, evidently bent on consolidating his religious observances and regulating their conduct, decreed a fresh institution, with parallels 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 the Christians use, which rite was displeasing to the Faithful. Indeed, Mahomet is reported later to have said, "The bell is the devil's musical instrument."

But Abdallah, a man of profound faith and love for Islam, received thereafter a vision wherein a "spirit, in the guise of man, clad in green garments," appeared to him and summoned him to call the Believers to prayer from the Mosque at every time set apart for devotion.

"Call ye four times 'God is great,' and then, 'I bear witness that there is no God but God, and Mahomet is His Prophet. Come unto prayer, come unto salvation. God is great; there is no God but Him.'"

"A true vision," declared Mahomet. "Go and teach it to Bilal, that he may call to prayer, for he has a better voice than thou."

When Bilal, a slave, received the command, he went up to the Mosque, and climbing its highest minaret, he cried aloud his summons, adding at each dawn:

"Prayer is better than sleep, prayer is better than sleep."

And when Omar heard the call, he went to Mahomet and declared that he had the previous night received the same vision.

And Mahomet answered him, "Praise be to Allah!"

Therewith was inaugurated the most characteristic observance in Islam, the one which impresses itself very strongly upon the Western traveller as he hears in the dimness of every dawning, before the sun's edge is seen in the east, the voices of the Muezzin from each mosque in the city proclaiming their changeless message, their insistent command to prayer and praise. He sees the city leap into magical life, the dark figures of the Muslim hurrying to the Holy Place that lies shimmering in the golden light of early day, and 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 achievement of stupendous tasks, for the driving energy behind was never appalled by anticipation, nor checked by any realisation of coming stress and terror. And the same qualities that led the Muslim to world-conquest thereafter caused their downfall, for their minds could not visualise that world of imagination necessary for any creative science, while they were not attuned in intellect for the reception of such generative ideas as have contributed to the philosophic and speculative development of the Western world.

All the characteristics which distinguish Islam to the making and the blasting of its fortunes may be found in embryo in the small Medinan community; for their leader, by his own creative ardour, imposed upon his flock every idea which shaped the form and content of its future career from its rising even to its zenith and decline.