"He is come! He is come!" cried the Faithful in Medina, flocking to meet the wayworn travellers as they entered the city.
And thus a new chapter was opened in the history of Islam.
CHAPTER II
Mohammed as Conqueror
He is come to ope
The purple testament of bleeding war.
SHAKESPEARE: Richard II.
The year which marked Mohammed's triumphant entry into Medina is known in the Mohammedan world as the Hegira, and counts as the Year One in their calendar—the year from which all others are reckoned. For the first time the faith of Islam was preached openly, and the claim of Mohammed to be merely one of the "prophets" gave place to a demand for acknowledgment as the chief of all, a demand calculated to arouse the antagonism of all other existing forms of religion. The other important development of his teaching at this time was that all faithful Moslems—the followers of the Prophet—must entirely abstain from the use of intoxicating drink.
Moreover, though at first Mohammed (possibly to please the Jews in Medina) had commanded that at the hour of prayer every Moslem should turn his face towards Jerusalem, in course of time, when he began to see the impossibility of uniting the Jewish believers with those of Islam, he suddenly, after the usual prostration, turned towards the Temple at Mecca. From that moment down to the present day the Moslem, wherever he is, follows this example at the fivefold hour of prayer.
At Medina, Mohammed married the young girl Ayesha, and, as permitted by the Moslem faith, soon brought other wives to the simply built house by the mosque which he and his converts were building just outside the city. Yet, though a man of fifty-three, the Prophet by no means intended to pass the rest of his life in ease and domestic comfort. He had been forced by violence to flee from Mecca. He now conceived it his duty to make himself master of his native city by means of the sword.
The sons of the desert are born fighters, and whether his motive was to enforce the Moslem faith at the peril of the sword, or merely to assert his personal rights, the fact remains that he had no difficulty whatever in rallying to his standard a small though most enthusiastic army.