Mahomet, Founder of Islam

by Gladys M. Draycott

Then was shown in all its fullness the implacable despotism conceived by Mahomet as the only possible method of government, which indeed for those times and with that nation it certainly was. The order went forth for the slaying and despoiling of the Kainukaa, and the grim work began by the seizure of their armour, precious stones, gold, and goldsmith's tools. But Abdallah, chief of the Khazraj, and formerly leader of the Disaffected, became suppliant for their release. He sought audience of Mahomet, and there petitioned with many tears for the lives of his friends and kinsmen. But Mahomet turned his back upon him. Abdallah, in an ecstacy of importunity, grasped the skirt of Mahomet's garment.

"Loose thou thy hand!" cried Mahomet, while his face grew dark with anger.

But Abdallah in the boldness of desperation replied, "I will not let thee go until thou hast shown favour to my kinsmen."

Then said Mahomet, "As thou wilt not be silent, I give thee the lives of those I have taken prisoner."

Nevertheless, the exile of the tribe was enforced, and Mahomet compelled their immediate removal from the outskirts of Medina. The Prophet's later policy towards the Jews was hereby inaugurated. He set himself deliberately to break up their strongholds one by one, and did not swerve from his purpose until the whole of the hated race had been removed either by slaughter or by enforced exile from the precincts of his adopted city. He would suffer no one but himself to govern, and uprooted, with his unwavering purpose, all who refused to accept him as lord.

For about a month affairs took their normal and uninterrupted course in Medina, but in the following month, Dzul Higg (March), the last of that eventful second year, a slight disturbance of his steady work of government threatened his followers.

Abu Sofian's vow pressed sorely upon his conscience until, unable to endure inaction further, he gathered together 200 horsemen and took the highway towards Medina. He travelled by the inland road, and arrived at length at the settlements of the Beni Nadhir, one of the Jewish tribes in the vicinity of Medina. He harried their palm-gardens, burnt their cornfields, and killed two of their men. Mahomet had plundered the Meccan wealth, his allies should in turn be harassed by his victims. It was purely a private enterprise undertaken out of bravado and in fulfilment of a vow. As soon as the predatory attack had been made, Abu Sofian deemed himself absolved and prepared to return.

But Mahomet was on his traces. For five days he pursued the flying Kureisch, whose retreat turned into such a headlong rout that they threw away their sacks of meal so as to travel more lightly. Therefore the incident has been known ever since, according to the vivid Arab method of description, as the Battle of the Meal-bags. But the foe was not worthy of his pursuit, and Mahomet made no further attempt to come up with Abu Sofian, but returned at once to Medina. The attack had ended more or less in fiasco, and as a trial of strength upon either side it was negligible.

The sacred month, Dzul Higg, and the only one in which it was lawful to make the Greater Pilgrimage in far-off Mecca, was now fully upon him, and Mahomet felt drawn irresistibly to the ceremonies surrounding the ancient and now to him distorted faith. He felt compelled to acknowledge his kinship with the ancient ritual of Arabia, and to this end appointed a festival, Eed-al-Zoha, to be celebrated in this month, which was not only to take the place of the Jewish sacrificial ceremony, but to strengthen his connection with the rites still performed at Mecca, of which the Kaaba and the Black Stone formed the emblem and the goal.

In commemoration of the ceremonial slaying of victims in the vale of Mina at the end of the Greater Pilgrimage, Mahomet ordered two kids to be sacrificed at every festival, so that his people were continually reminded that at Mecca, beneath the infidel yoke, the sacred ritual, so peculiarly their own by virtue of the Abrahamic descent and their inexorable monotheism, was being unworthily performed.