The battle (Ramaḍān 19, A.H. 2, usually made to synchronize with March 17, 624) ended in a complete victory for Mahomet, whose followers killed seventy of the enemy and took seventy prisoners—if we may trust what seem to be round numbers; it was attributed by him to divine co-operation, taking the form of an illusion wrought on the enemy, and the despatch of a regiment of angels to the assistance of the Believers, while on the other hand the treachery of the Devil did mischief to the Meccans. The popular tradition attributed it to the prowess of some of Mahomet’s followers, especially his uncle Ḥamza and his cousin Ali. In the narratives which have come down and which seem to be authentic the result is amply accounted for by the excellence of the Moslem discipline and the complete absence of any on the Meccan side. Mahomet himself is said to have fainted at the first sight of blood, and to have remained during the battle in a hut built for him to which swift camels were tied, to be used in case of a defeat; yet these accounts make him responsible for the tactics, whilst assigning the credit for the strategy to one Ḥobab b. al-Mondhir. Several of Mahomet’s old enemies and friends of Meccan days perished on this occasion; notably one Abu Jahl, his uncle, but represented as an implacable enemy; another hostile uncle, Abu Lahab, who is cursed in the Koran, was not present but died shortly after the battle.
The day is called in the Koran by a Syriac expression the “Day of Deliverance,” and both for internal and external politics it was of incalculable advantage to Islam. The booty and the ransoms of the prisoners provided the means for dealing with distress; the story of supernatural aid soothed the feelings of the defeated Meccans and had a tendency to disarm resistance elsewhere; whilst Mahomet in the popularity acquired by his victory was able to strike forcibly at his enemies in Medina. One of the sequels to the victory was a series of assassinations whereby critics of his actions were removed.
The defeat at Badr naturally led to efforts on the part of the Meccans to avenge their dead and besides to secure the commerce, by which they lived, from an enemy who was gradually getting all the seaboard that lay between Jeddah The Taking of Mecca. and Yanbo within his sphere of influence; and the year after Badr (A.H. 3) Abū Sofiān was able to lead a force said to be three times as great as that which had been defeated, and so numbering some 3000 men, against Medina itself; part of it was under Khālid b. al-Walid, one of the greatest of Arab captains, afterwards conqueror of Syria. It is said that Mahomet’s plan was to remain in Medina itself, and leave it to the Meccan commander to discover some way of taking the place; but that his hand was forced by his more ardent followers. Others, however, assign this advice to Abdallah b. Ubayy, and make the Prophet anxious to fight from the first. A battle was in consequence fought under Mt Uḥud (or Ohod), north-west of Medina, wherein Khālid succeeded in inflicting a severe defeat on Mahomet’s forces; his uncle Ḥamza, hero of Badr, was killed on this occasion. Fortunately for the Moslems, the Meccans considered that they had finished their task when they discovered that they had killed a number of the former equal to those who had fallen at Badr on their own side; instead therefore of pursuing their victory they went home. The immediate effect on Arabia appears to have been to dissipate the illusion that the Prophet could count on supernatural assistance in his wars; and we hear of some blows being dealt him from outside. Meanwhile his relations towards the Medinese Jews had grown more and more hostile, and these are credited with doing their best to rouse the Meccans to a sense of the danger which threatened them in the continuance of the Prophet’s power, and in general to stir up hostility against him in Arabia. Whether this part was played by them or not, in the fifth year of the Prophet’s stay at Medina a fresh invasion of the territory took place by a vast confederate force of Meccans with their allies, the tribes Fazarah, Asad, Murrah, &c., to the number, it is said, of 10,000. This time the intention of the leaders was undoubtedly to stamp out Islam. For the first time in Arab warfare Mahomet resorted to the expedient of defending his city by a trench, called by a Persian name, and suggested by a Persian convert. But he also employed agents to sow dissension among the confederates, and succeeded with this no less than with the other expedient. After a brief stay, and scarcely striking a blow, the confederacy dispersed, leaving the Jews who still remained in Medina to the summary vengeance of the Prophet. The want of records written from the Meccan standpoint renders the abortiveness of this last attempt at storming the Prophet’s stronghold scarcely intelligible.
From this time, however, the road towards the eventual taking of Mecca became easy, and we are told that such was the importance attached to that city throughout Arabia that its acquisition meant for the Prophet the acquisition of the whole peninsula. The next year (A.H. 6) he deemed it advisable to make a truce with the Meccans (the Truce of Ḥodaibiyah), whereby he secured for his followers the right of performing the pilgrimage in the following year; on this occasion he even consented to forgo his title “Prophet of Allah,” when the Meccans refused to sign a deed in which it was employed, greatly to the scandal of his more earnest followers, including Omar; they were however too deeply committed to Islam to be able to defy the Prophet. When the pilgrimage was performed (A.H. 7), Mahomet not only won important converts in the persons of Khālid and the no less able ‘Amr b. al-‘Aṣ, but in general impressed the population with the idea that his was the winning side. An excuse was easily found for invading Mecca itself in the following year, when Abū Sofiān took the opportunity of embracing Islam before it was too late. Very little resistance was now made by the Meccans, whose chiefs were already in Mahomet’s camp, and Mahomet used his victory with great moderation; his proscription list was finally reduced to two. The theory that all offences were cancelled by conversion was loyally observed. Moreover the Prophet incurred the displeasure of his Medinese friends by the anxiety which he displayed to soothe the feelings of his former enemies and antagonists. The Medinese, however, prevailed upon him to maintain their city as his political capital, while making Mecca the religious centre of his system; and this arrangement accounts perhaps more than anything else for the persistence of the system amid so many dynastic changes.
In the main he appears to have introduced little alteration into the government of Mecca, and it is said that he even declined to retaliate on those who had confiscated the possessions of the Refugees. Even the Ka‘ba was left in the keeping of its former custodian, though of course its interior as well as its precincts were cleansed of all that could offend monotheists. In the following year the pilgrimage was for the first time conducted by a Moslem official, Abū Bekr. A proclamation was made on that occasion, forbidding idolaters in future to take part in the pilgrimage, and giving all Arabs who were not as yet converted four months’ grace before force was to be brought to bear upon them. In the following year Mahomet conducted the Pilgrimage himself. This solemn occasion (the “Farewell Pilgrimage”) was also employed for the delivery of an important proclamation, wherein the Prophet declared that God had completed their religion. The principle whereon he specially insisted was the brotherhood of Islam; but there is some difficulty in enucleating the original sermon from later additions.
It would seem that Mahomet’s enterprise originally comprised the conversion of Mecca only, and that he thought of himself as sent to his fellow-citizens only, as had been the case with earlier prophets, whose message was for Conquest of Arabia. their “brethren.” His views took a somewhat different direction after his brief exile to Ṭāif, and the conquest of Arabia was in a way forced upon him in the course of his struggle with the Meccans. It is not indeed perfectly clear by what process he arrived at the resolution to exclude paganism from Arabia; at first he appears to have tolerated it at Medina, and in some of his earlier contracts with neighbouring tribes he is represented as allowing it, though some of our texts make him reserve to himself the right of enforcing Islam if he chose; only the Meccans were at first, according to the most authentic documents, excluded from all truce or treaty. At the battle of Badr he appears to have formulated the rule that no one might fight on his side who had not embraced Islam; and when once he had won fame as a successful campaigner, those who wished to share his adventures had to pass the Islamic test. After the battle of Uhud (Ohod) we hear of a tribe demanding missionaries to instruct them in Islamic principles; and though in the case recorded the demand was treacherous, the idea of sending missionaries appears not to have been unfamiliar even then, albeit the number sent (70), if rightly recorded, implies that the Prophet suspected the good faith of the applicants. After the taking of Mecca, whereby the chief sanctuary at any rate of north Arabia had been cleared of all idolatrous associations, and consecrated to monotheism, paganism in general was conscious of being attacked; and the city had scarcely been brought under the new régime before the Prophet had to face a confederation of tribes called Hawāzin and Thaqīf. The battle which ensued, known as the Day of Honain, was near ending disastrously for Islam; some of Mahomet’s sturdiest followers fled; but the terrible danger of a defeat in the neighbourhood of recently conquered Mecca roused the Prophet and Ali to heroism, and they saved the day. Emissaries were now sent far and wide demanding the destruction of idols, and only Ṭāif appears to have made any considerable resistance; against this place for the first time the Prophet made use of siege artillery, such as was employed by the Byzantines; though compelled by the bravery of the inhabitants to raise the siege, he was afterwards able to take the city by capitulation. It has been observed that here only do we read of much attachment to the old deities; in most places they were discarded with few regrets when once their impotence had been found out. After the taking of Mecca and the victory of Honain there appears to have been a general desire, extending even to the extreme south of Arabia, to make the best terms with the conqueror so soon as possible; iconoclasm became general. Flatterers of various kinds, including poets, came to seek the favour of the sovereign; and a mock war of words appears to have been substituted by some tribes for more serious fighting, to terminate in surrender. For warfare of his sort Mahomet had a powerful helper in the poet Ḥāssan b. Thābit, for whose effusions a pulpit was erected in the Medina mosque, and whose verses were said to be inspired by the Holy Spirit; though, as has been seen, Mahomet was not himself able to judge of their artistic merit. It was not, however, found easy to enforce the payment of the alms on these new converts; and this taxation caused an almost general revolt so soon as Mahomet’s death had been ascertained.
Although the central portions of the peninsula in Mahomet’s time were practically independent, large portions of the north-west and south-east were provinces of the Byzantine and Persian empires respectively, whence any scheme Plan of World-conquest. for the conquest of Arabia would necessarily involve the conqueror in war with these great powers. The conquest of Persia is said to have been contemplated by the Prophet as early as A.H. 5, when the famous Trench was being dug; but it was not till the year A.H. 7, on the eve of the taking of Mecca, that the Prophet conceived the idea of sending missives to all known sovereigns and potentates, promising them safety if, but only if, they embraced Islam. The text of these letters, which only varied in the name of the person addressed, is preserved (doubtless faithfully) by the Moslem Oral Tradition; in the middle of the last century a French explorer professed to discover in Egypt the original of one of them—addressed to the mysterious personage called the Muqauqis (Muḳauḳis) of Egypt—and this, it appears, is still preserved amid other supposed relics of the Prophet in Constantinople, though there is little reason for believing it to be genuine. The anecdotes dealing with the reception of these letters by their addressees are all fabulous in character. Two appear to have sent favourable replies: the king of Axum, who now could send the exiles whom he had so long harboured to their successful master; and the Egyptian governor, who sent Mahomet a valuable present, including two Coptic women for his harem. The emperor Heraclius is claimed as a secret convert to Islam, on whom pressure had to be put by his advisers to conceal his convictions. The Persian king is said to have sent orders to have Mahomet arrested; his messengers arrived in Medina, but were unable to carry out the commands of their master, who died while they were there. Two of the letters are said to have had important results. One was addressed to the Himyarite chiefs (called by the south Arabian appellation qail) in Yemen, and effected their conversion; another to the governor of Bostra in Roman Arabia, who put the bearer of this insolent message to death; a force was despatched by Mahomet immediately afterwards (beginning of A.H. 8) to avenge this outrage; and though the Moslems were defeated in their first encounter with the Byzantine forces at Mutah, they appear to have given a good account of themselves; it was here that Ja‘far, cousin of the Prophet, met his death. In A.H. 9 a successful expedition was led by the Prophet himself northward, in which, though no Byzantine force was encountered, a considerable region was withdrawn from the Byzantine sphere of influence, and made either Islamic or tributary to Islam. At the time of his death (of fever, after a short illness) he was organizing an expedition for the conquest of Syria.
The Prophet claimed throughout that his revelation confirmed the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and this claim is on the whole reasonable, though his acquaintance with both was in the highest degree vague and inaccurate. Jewish and Christian Communities. Still he reproduced the Old Testament as faithfully as he could, and though he patriotically endeavours to shed some lustre on his supposed ancestor Ishmael, he does not appear to have questioned the Biblical theory according to which the founder of the north Arabian nations was the son of a slave girl. On neither the truth of the Biblical history and miracles nor the validity of the Mosaic legislation does he appear to have cast any doubt. He even allows that Israel was the chosen people. The Gospel was known to him chiefly through apocryphal and heretical sources, which cannot certainly be identified; but he accepted the doctrine of the Virgin-birth, the miracles of healing the sick and raising the dead, and the ascension; the crucifixion and resurrection were clearly denied by the sect from whom he had received his information, and rejected by him, though certainly not because of any miracle which the latter involved. His quarrel with the Jews at Medina appears to have been by no means of his own seeking, but to have arisen unavoidably, owing to his particular view of his office being such as they could not accept; and his attempt to discredit, not the Mosaic Law, but the form in which they presented it, was an expedient to which he resorted in self-defence. An attempt was made shortly after his arrival at Medina to settle the relations between the two communities by a treaty, according to which, while their equality was guaranteed there should be little interference between the two; this, however, was found unworkable, and each victory of Mahomet over the Meccans was followed by violent measures against the Medinese Israelites. When experience had shown him their military incompetence he appears to have been unable to resist the temptation to appropriate their goods for the benefit of his followers; and his attack on the flourishing Jewish settlement of Khaibar, after the affair of Ḥodaibiyah, appears to have been practically unprovoked, and designed to satisfy his discontented adherents by an accession of plunder. Yet the consciousness that this process was economically wasteful suggested to him an idea which Islamic states are only now abandoning, viz. that of a tolerated caste, who should till the soil and provide sustenance for the Believers who were to be the fighting caste. Whereas then his former plan in dealing with Israelites had been to banish or massacre, he now left the former owners of Khaibar (who had survived the capture of the place) in possession of the soil, of whose produce they were to pay a fixed proportion to the Islamic state. The same principle was adopted in the case of later conquests of Jewish settlements.
Disputes with Christians occur somewhat later in the Prophet’s career than those with Jews, for neither at Mecca nor Medina were the former to be found in any numbers; individuals are likely to have been found in both cities, and we hear of one Medinese “Abu’Amir the Monk,” who after Mahomet’s arrival at Medina branded him as an impostor, and, going himself into exile, made many an abortive attempt to discredit and injure Mahomet’s cause. The notices of him are meagre and obscure. Mahomet’s manifesto to the world, about the time of the taking of Khaibar, appears to represent his definite breach with Christianity; and when in the “year of the embassies” the Christians of Najran sent a deputation to him, they found that the breach between the two systems was not to be healed. Of the three alternatives open to them—conversion, internecine war, and tribute, they chose the last. The Christian tribes of north Arabia showed greater inclination towards the first. The Prophet’s policy was to give Christians lighter terms than Jews, and though the Koran reflects the gradual adoption by the Prophet of an attitude of extreme hostility to both systems, its tone is on the whole far more friendly to the former than to the latter. Some other communities are mentioned in the Koran, but merely in casual allusions: thus we know that Mahomet’s sympathy was with the Byzantines in their struggle with Persia, but in his most tolerant utterance the Magians or Mazdians as well as the Sabians (with whom his followers were identified by the Meccans) are mentioned with respect.