Scorned and rejected by his own townsmen, to whom he had delivered his message with so little success for ten years, he resolved to see if there were not others who might be more ready to listen, among whom the seeds of faith might find a more receptive and fruitful soil. With this hope he set out for Ṭāʼif, a city about seventy miles from Mecca. Before an assembly of the chief men of the city, he expounded his doctrine of the unity of God and of the mission he had received as the Prophet of God to proclaim this faith; at the same time he besought their protection against his persecutors in Mecca. The disproportion between his high claims (which moreover were unintelligible to the heathen people of Ṭāʼif) and his helpless condition only excited their ridicule and scorn, and pitilessly stoning him with stones they drove him from their city.
On his return from Ṭāʼif the prospects of the success of Muḥammad seemed more hopeless than ever, and the agony of his soul gave itself utterance in the words that he puts into the mouth of Noah: “O my Lord, verily I have cried to my people night and day; and my cry only makes them flee from me the more. And verily, so oft as I cry to them, that Thou mayest forgive them, they thrust their fingers into their ears and wrap themselves in their garments, and persist (in their error), and are disdainfully disdainful.” (lxxi. 5–6.)
It was the Prophet’s habit at the time of the annual pilgrimage to visit the encampments of the various Arab tribes and discourse with them upon religion. By some his words were treated with indifference, by others rejected with scorn. But consolation came to him from an unexpected quarter. He met a little group of six or seven persons whom he recognised as coming from Medina, or, as it was then called, Yat͟hrib. “Of what tribe are you?” said he, addressing them. “We are of the K͟hazraj,” they answered. “Friends of the Jews?” “Yes.” “Then will you not sit down awhile, that I may talk with you?” “Assuredly,” [[20]]replied they. Then they sat down with him, and he proclaimed unto them the true God and preached Islam and recited to them the Qurʼān. Now so it was, in that God wrought wonderfully for Islam that there were found in their country Jews, who possessed scriptures and wisdom, while they themselves were heathen and idolaters. Now the Jews ofttimes suffered violence at their hands, and when strife was between them had ever said to them, “Soon will a Prophet arise and his time is at hand; him will we follow, and with him slay you with the slaughter of ʻĀd and of Iram.” When now the apostle of God was speaking with these men and calling on them to believe in God, they said one to another: “Know surely that this is the Prophet, of whom the Jews have warned us; come let us now make haste and be the first to join him.” So they embraced Islam, and said to him, “Our countrymen have long been engaged in a most bitter and deadly feud with one another; but now perhaps God will unite them together through thee and thy teaching. Therefore we will preach to them and make known to them this religion, that we have received from thee.” So, full of faith, they returned to their own country.[6]
Such is the traditional account of this event which was the turning-point of Muḥammad’s mission. He had now met with a people whose antecedents had in some way prepared their minds for the reception of his teaching and whose present circumstances, as afterwards appeared, were favourable to his cause.
The city of Yat͟hrib had been long occupied by Jews whom some national disaster, possibly the persecution under Hadrian, had driven from their own country, when a party of wandering emigrants, the two Arab clans of K͟hazraj and Aws, arrived at Yat͟hrib and were admitted to a share in the territory. As their numbers increased they encroached more and more on the power of the Jewish rulers, and finally, towards the end of the fifth century, the government of the city passed entirely into their hands.
Some of the Arabs had embraced the Jewish religion, and many of the former masters of the city still dwelt there in [[21]]the service of their conquerors, so that it contained in Muḥammad’s time a considerable Jewish population. The people of Yat͟hrib were thus familiar with the idea of a Messiah who was to come, and were consequently more capable of understanding the claim of Muḥammad to be accepted as the Prophet of God, than were the idolatrous Meccans to whom such an idea was entirely foreign and especially distasteful to the Quraysh, whose supremacy over the other tribes and whose worldly prosperity arose from the fact that they were the hereditary guardians of the national collection of idols kept in the sacred enclosure of the Kaʻbah.
Further, the city of Yat͟hrib was distracted by incessant civil discord through a long-standing feud between the Banū K͟hazraj and the Banū Aws. The citizens lived in uncertainty and suspense, and anything likely to bind the conflicting parties together by a tie of common interest could not but prove a boon to the city. Just as the mediæval republics of Northern Italy chose a stranger to hold the chief post in their cities in order to maintain some balance of power between the rival factions, and prevent, if possible, the civil strife which was so ruinous to commerce and the general welfare, so the Yat͟hribites would not look upon the arrival of a stranger with suspicion, even though he was likely to usurp or gain permission to assume the vacant authority.
On the contrary, one of the reasons for the warm welcome which Muḥammad received in Medina would seem to be that the adoption of Islam appeared to the more thoughtful of its citizens to be a remedy for the disorders from which their society was suffering, by its orderly discipline of life and its bringing the unruly passions of men under the discipline of laws enunciated by an authority superior to individual caprice.[7]
These facts go far to explain how eight years after the Hijrah Muḥammad could, at the head of 10,000 followers, enter the city in which he had laboured for ten years with so meagre a result.
But this is anticipating. Muḥammad had proposed to [[22]]accompany his new converts, the K͟hazrajites, to Yat͟hrib himself, but they dissuaded him therefrom, until a reconciliation could be effected with the Banū Aws. “Let us, we pray thee, return unto our people, if haply the Lord will create peace amongst us; and we will come back again unto thee. Let the season of pilgrimage in the following year be the appointed time.” So they returned to their homes, and invited their people to the faith; and many believed, so that there remained hardly a family in which mention was not made of the Prophet.