Ye shall assuredly be tried in your possessions and in yourselves.
CHAPTER THE FOURTH
PERSECUTION
uoth the Prophet: "Allah created Paradise for the man who obeyeth Him, even if only a black Abyssinian slave; and Hell for the man rebelling against Him, even if he be a nobleman of the Quraish."
Islam, tending towards the perfect equality of castes and races, naturally attracted all the poor and downtrodden of the city. With increasing vexation, the idolatrous masters saw their slaves, in eager crowds, converted to the new faith. But as these wretched folks were in the tyrants' power, they glutted their vengeance on them, not daring to attack disciples of the Prophet occupying higher rank.
Oummayatah ibn Khalaf, having become aware of the conversion of his black slave, Bilal ibn Hammah, was engrossed with but a single thought: that of torturing him with the most dastardly refinements. Placing his neck in a noose made from a rough rope of palm-fibre, he gave him into the hands of boys knowing no pity. They dragged him along behind them, like a beast of burden, just for amusement. The rope, pulled this way and that by the juvenile wrongdoers, ploughed a sanguinary furrow in Bilal's flesh. Nevertheless, he seemed insensible to pain. Thereupon his master deprived him of food and drink, and led him from the town at noonday, in the middle of summer, throwing him out in the "Ramda," a sandy plain, so torrid that a slice of meat, thrown on the ground, cooked itself immediately. He made his slave lie down, stretched out on his back, an enormous stone on his breast. 'Thou shalt stop there,' he ordered, 'until thou dost abjure Mohammad's doctrines, and worship Lat and Uzza.'