He now began to seek in greater measure the society of women, although the consuming sexual life of his later years had hardly awakened. While Khadijah was with him he remained faithful to her, but her bright presence once withdrawn, he was impelled by a kind of impassioned seeking to the quest for her substitute, and not finding it in one woman, to continue his search among others. He now married Sawda, a nonentity with a certain physical charm but no personality, and sued for the hand of Ayesha, the small daughter of Abu Bekr.
Mahomet at this time was not blessed with many riches. His frugal, anxious life led him to perform many small duties of his household for himself. His food was coarse and often scanty, and he lived among his followers as one of themselves. It is no small tribute to his singleness of mind and lofty character that in the "dreary intercourse of daily life," lived in that primitive, communal fashion, which admits of no illusions and scarcely any secrets, he retained by the force of personality the reverence of the faithful, and ever in this hour of defeat and negation remained their leader and lord—the symbol, in fact, of their loyalty to Allah, and their supreme belief in his guidance and care.
CHAPTER VII
THE CHOSEN CITY
Medina, city of exile and despairing beginnings, destined to achieve glory by difficult ways, only to be eclipsed finally by its mightier neighbour and mistress, became, rather by chance than by design, the scene of Mahomet's struggles for temporal power and his ruthless wielding of the sword for God and Islam. The city lies north-east of Mecca, on the opposite side of the mountain spur that skirts the eastern boundary. Always weakly peopled, it remained from immemorial time an arena of strife, for it was on the borderland, the boundary of several tribes, and was far enough north for the outer waves of Syrian disturbances to fling their varying tides upon its shores—a meagre city, always fiercely at civil warfare, impotent, unfertile.
In the dark days of Judaea's humiliation at the hands of Titus, two Jewish tribes, the Kainukua and the Koreitza, outcast and desolate, even as they had been warned in their time of dominion, lighted upon Medina in desperate search for a dwelling-place and a respite from persecution, and forthwith took possession of the little hill-girt town. They settled there, driving out or conciliating the former inhabitants, until in the fourth century their tenuous prosperity was disturbed by the inroads of two Bedouin tribes, the Beni Aus and the Beni Khazraj. The desert was wide, and these tribes were familiar with its manifold opportunities and devious ways. Against such a foe, who swooped down suddenly upon the city, plundered and then escaped into the limitless unknown, the Jews had no chance of reprisal.
Before long the Beni Aus and Khazraj had subjugated the Jewish communities, and their dominion in Medina was only weakened by their devastating quarrels among themselves. The city therefore offered a peculiar opening for the teaching of Islam within it. Its religious life indeed was varied and chaotic. Jews, Arabian idolaters, immigrants from Christian Syria, torn by schisms, thronged its public places, and this confusion of faiths sharpened the religious and debating instincts of its people. The ground was thus broken up for the reception of the new creed of one God and of his messenger, who had already divided Mecca into believers and heretics, and who was spoken of in the city with that awe that attaches itself to distant marvels.
Intercourse with Mecca was chiefly carried on at the time of the yearly Pilgrimage; the Greater Pilgrimage, only undertaken during Dzul Hijj, corresponding then to our March, and in Dzul Hijj, 620, came a band of strangers over the hills, along the toilsome caravan route to the Kaaba, the goal of their intentions, the shrine of all their prayers. They performed all the necessary ceremonies at Mecca, and were proceeding to Mina, a small valley just east of Mecca, for the completion of their sacred duties, when they were accosted by Mahomet.
The Prophet was despondent and sceptical of his power to persuade, though his belief in Allah's might never wavered. He had failed so far to produce any decisive impression upon the Meccan people, but might there not be another town in Arabia which would receive his message? The little band of pilgrims seemed to him sent in answer to his self-distrust, and his failure at Taif as eclipsed by this sudden success. The caravan returned to its native city, and there remained little for Mahomet to do except to wait for the arrival of next year's pilgrims, and to keep shining and ambient the flame of his religious fervour. He remained in Mecca virtually on sufferance, and rapidly recognised the uselessness of attempting any further conversions. His hopes were now definitely set on Medina, and to this end he seems to devoted himself more than ever to the perusal and interpretation of the Jewish scriptures.
The portion of the Kuran written at this time contains little else than Bible stories told and retold to the point of weariness. Lot, of course, is the characteristic figure; but we also have the life stories of Abraham, Moses, Jonah, Joseph, and many others. The style has suffered a marked diminution in poetic qualities. It has become reiterative and even laboured. He continues his practice of alluding to current events, which at Medina he was to pursue to the extent of making the Kuran a kind of spasmodic history of his time, as well as an elementary text-book of law and morality. In one of the suras—"The Cow"—Mahomet makes first mention of that comfortable doctrine of "cancelling," by which later verses of the Kuran cancel all previous revelations dealing with the same subject if these prove contradictory: "Whatever verses we cancel or cause thee to forget, we bring a better or its like; knowest thou not that God hath power over all things?"