[307] Muir, Life of Mahomet, vol. ii, p. 151.
[308] We have seen (p. 91 supra) that the heathen Arabs disliked female offspring, yet they called their three principal deities the daughters of Allah.
[309] It is related by Ibn Isḥáq (Ṭabarí, i, 1192, 4 sqq.). In his learned work, Annali dell' Islam, of which the first volume appeared in 1905, Prince Caetani impugns the authenticity of the tradition and criticises the narrative in detail (p. 279 sqq.), but his arguments do not touch the main question. As Muir says, "it is hardly possible to conceive how the tale, if not founded in truth, could ever have been invented."
[310] The Meccan view of Muḥammad's action may be gathered from the words uttered by Abú Jahl on the field of Badr—"O God, bring woe upon him who more than any of us hath severed the ties of kinship and dealt dishonourably!" (Ṭabarí, i, 1322, l. 8 seq.). Alluding to the Moslems who abandoned their native city and fled with the Prophet to Medína, a Meccan poet exclaims (Ibn Hishám, p. 519, ll. 3-5):—
They (the Quraysh slain at Badr) fell in honour. They did not sell their kinsmen for strangers living in a far land and of remote lineage;
Unlike you, who have made friends of Ghassán (the people of Medína), taking them instead of us—O, what a shameful deed!
Tis an impiety and a manifest crime and a cutting of all ties of blood: your iniquity therein is discerned by men of judgment and understanding.
[311] Súra is properly a row of stones or bricks in a wall.
[312] See p. 74 supra.
[313] Koran, lxix, 41.