His wife shall be laden with firewood—
On her neck a rope of palm fibre.”
But Abu Lahab, who by fits and starts relied on the goddess Al-Uzza for protection, did not cease his mud-slinging; and he was ably assisted by Pagans from foreign tribes who would taunt Mohammed thus: “Thine own kindred and people should know thee best; wherefore is it that they have cast thee off?” Then the Prophet would turn his face despairingly toward heaven and say, “O Lord, if Thou willedst, it would not be thus!” But Allah—Who, logically, should be as much of a nomad as his creatures—seems to have been enjoying a vacation just then.
In 619 the hostile edict was withdrawn; but the reasons for its abrogation are obscure. Some believe that the Koreish lifted it when (it must be repeated that the dates of these events are vague) Mohammed agreed to a compromise with the Pagan deities of Mecca; others think that the better nature of the Koreish at last caused them to pity the famishing exiles. Whatever the facts may be, it was discovered that the parchment on which the edict was written had been mostly devoured by some ants that, however, had taken devout care to leave the inscribed name of God intact. The Koreish were so confounded by this direct manifestation of Allah’s displeasure that, when five of their leaders declared they were opposed to the continued banishment of the Hashimites, opposition collapsed and the weary outcasts returned to their homes.
Mohammed, overjoyed at this unexpected good fortune and completely oblivious to the major part played by the insects, rightly gave thanks to Allah. But new, and even more sinister, events impended. Within a few months death deprived him of the loyal protection of Abu Talib and the tender ministrations of Khadija. He comforted his wife’s dying hours with the assurance that she, together with three other well-known women—the Virgin Mary, Potiphar’s wife, and “Kulthum, Moses’ sister”—would occupy his chamber in Paradise; but all he could conscientiously promise his expiring uncle was that he would inhabit the coolest, or at any rate the least hot, regions in Hell. The contingent deaths of these two made the Prophet’s position very precarious: Khadija had constantly nerved him to face the severest trials, and Abu Talib had just as constantly kept the number of those trials down. Abu Talib, in fact, was barely in his grave when the populace of Mecca cast dust on Mohammed’s head; and he therefore betook himself to At-Taif, a city some seventy miles east of Mecca, to test its possibilities as a refuge. Arriving there early in 620, he was much disconcerted to learn that none of its inhabitants had even so much as heard of his ten-year-old mission; and when he attempted to enlighten them, the sheiks and their groundlings merely sneered in open contempt. He then besought them not to divulge his religious views—an exhibition of invaliant diplomacy that caused the people to hoot and hurl stones at him, until he fled from the city with blood flowing down his legs. Utterly cast down in spirit, he spent the next two months in seclusion at Mecca. During the pilgrimage month of Dhul-Hijja, while he was addressing the crowds of visitors in his usual way, a coincidence of measureless significance occurred. Mohammed chanced to notice a little group of men whom he recognized as inhabitants of Medina.
V
THE HEGIRA
I
Ancient Yathrib, commonly called Medina, was familiar to the Arabs as “the pleasing” city, for it lay in a fertile plain teeming with “green fields, running water, every blessing the Eastern mind can desire.” For ages it had been inhabited by expatriated Jews; but early in the fourth century two Arab tribes, the Aus and the Khazraj, settled there. But the Hebrew residents were much superior to the newcomers in general culture, in agriculture and wealth, and, it was darkly rumored, in the black art of magic; for the Pagan usurpers held to the primitive belief that the perfect man was one who could write Arabic, swim and shoot—and not many of them could write Arabic. Jealousy of the more competent Jews, therefore, impelled the Yathribites to make war against them, and the sons of Abraham were decidedly disinclined to battle and bloodshed. Accordingly, having fought the Jews with very fair success, the two victorious clans had speedily decided to fight each other, with the result that Medina, for some generations, had been continually rent by tribal and civil wars. At present all parties were so tired of this everlasting strife that they had chosen one of the chief men among the Khazraj, Abdallah ibn Obei, to direct their fortunes; for the battle of Boath (616) had completely exhausted all the factions involved. Nevertheless, everybody was still dissatisfied, since it was feared that the truce was only temporary.
Now, for many centuries, despite one or two notable disappointments, the Jews had expectantly awaited the coming of a genuine prophet—a longing that had been communicated, probably through racial miscegenation, even to the Aus and the Khazraj—and lo! the news of Mohammed’s ministry was already common knowledge at Medina. When the little troop of Medinese chanced to meet Mohammed at the sacred fair, therefore, they spoke thus with each other: “Know surely that this is the prophet with whom the Jews are ever threatening us; wherefore let us make haste and be the first to join him.” For it was clear that languishing Medina, long disrupted by internecine struggles, needed above all else a leader capable of harmonizing all discordant elements and balancing the scales of justice impartially for all—except, it might be, the Jews—a leader, too, who would introduce no dangerous foreign ideas, but whose vital beliefs were grafted on a common Arabian stock. Perhaps there was some truth in the saying of Mohammed’s child-wife, Ayesha, that the battle of Boath had been engineered by Allah for the benefit of the Moslems.