Victory. P. [124].—The victory in question was probably the peaceful but real triumph of the Truce of Hudeybia, in a.h. 6; though some commentators prefer to regard the speech as prophetical of the conquest of Mekka two years later.
P. [125]. The Arabs of the desert who were left behind were certain tribes who held aloof from the pilgrimage towards Mekka, which ended in the Truce of Hudeybia. Mohammad punished them by refusing to allow them to share in the booty which soon after fell to the faithful in the Khaibar expedition; hence the reference on p. [126].
P. [128]. In the valley of Mekka: referring to the Truce of Hudeybia. Kept you away from the Sacred Mosque: the Koreysh refused to allow Mohammad and his followers to enter Mekka or perform the pilgrimage; whereupon the truce was concluded, by which the pilgrimage was to take place (Ye shall surely enter the Sacred Mosque) in the following year (see Introduction, p. xlv.)
P. [129]. Traces: i.e. dust from touching the ground.
P. [130]. Help.—Revealed after the conquest of Mekka, and shortly before Mohammad’s death, and believed to have given him warning of it.
The Law Given at Medina.
The forty paragraphs arranged on pp. [133]-[144], contain, it is believed, all the definite ordinances of Mohammad as set forth in the Medina speeches, with the exception of some regulations relating to women. The bulk of the Medina speeches are indeed rather collections of separate decisions or “rulings” put together for convenience of reference by the Muslims themselves than separate and complete orations. But as the practical teaching is interspersed with frequent and verbose prophetical legends of the kind with which the reader is already perhaps only too familiar and with animadversions on the political parties of Medina, and similar ephemeral matters, it has been thought best to extract the marrow of these lengthy and composite harangues, and place them in some sort of connected order. Chapter II., for instance, “The Cow,” contains 286 verses; the first half is filled with the usual arguments and illustrations, and the old stories about Adam and Moses; whilst the second half contains a certain number of laws and precepts mixed with many repetitions of the proofs and appeals to reason which occur in most of the preceding speeches: altogether, 29 verses out of 286 are needed for the purpose of showing what Mohammad actually prescribed in civil and religious law. For an account of the modern interpretation of this law, see Lane’s Modern Egyptians, 5th ed. Ch. III.; Sell’s Faith of Islam; and Hughes’ Notes on Mohammadanism, 2d ed. 1877.
P. [134]. Observe the prayer, and the middle prayer. It is not easy to make out the five daily prayers of Islam in the Korān. In the speech entitled “Hūd” (Mekka, Third Period, xi. 116) it is enjoined: “Observe prayer at two ends of the day, and at two parts of the night”; and again, in “T. H.” (xx. 130), the praises of God are to be celebrated “before the rising of the sun and before its setting, and at times of the night and at the ends of the day”; and in “The Greeks” (xxx. 17) praise is ordained “in the evening and in the morning, and at the evening and at noon.” The Muslim commentators differ as to the application of these injunctions to the five times of prayer recognized throughout the Mohammadan world; which are (1) just after sunset, (2) at nightfall, (3) at daybreak, (4) just after noon, and (5) in the middle of the afternoon.