In an undisciplined community like an Arabian town such an order would not be strictly kept, and for three years Mahomet was able to defy the ban, but every day his position grew more precarious and the sufferings of his followers from hunger and poverty increased. During this time too both Khadijah and Abu Talib died, and the Prophet, almost overwhelmed with his misfortunes, was only kept from doubting his mission by the faith and loyalty of those who would not desert him. Weary of trying to convert Mecca he sent messengers through Arabia to find if there were any tribe that would welcome a prophet, and at last he received an invitation to go to Yathrib. This was a larger town than Mecca, farther to the north, and was populated mainly by Jewish tribes who hated the Arabian idol-worshippers and welcomed the idea of a teacher whose views were based largely on Jewish traditions. [Sidenote: The Hijrah] In 622, therefore, Mahomet and his followers fled secretly from Mecca to Yathrib, later called Medinah or ‘the city of the Prophet’; and this date of the ‘Hijrah’ or ‘Flight’, when the new religion broke definitely with old Arab traditions, was taken as the first year of the Moslem calendar, just as Christians reckon their time from the birth of Christ. Here in Medinah was built the first mosque, or temple of the new faith, a faith christened by its believers Islam, a word meaning ‘surrender’, for in surrender to Allah and to the will of his Prophet lay the way of salvation to the Moslem Garden of Paradise. So beautiful to the Arab mind were the very material luxuries and pleasures with which Mahomet entranced the imagination of believers that in later years his soldiers would fling themselves recklessly against their enemies’ spears in order to gain Paradise the quicker. The alternative for the unbeliever was Hell, the everlasting fires of the Old Testament that so terrified the minds of mediaeval Christians; and between Paradise and Hell there was no middle way. The Jews in Medinah were, like Mahomet, worshippers of one God, but they soon showed that they were not prepared to accept this wandering Arab as Jehovah’s final revelation to man. They demanded miracles, sneered at the Koran, which they declared was a parody of their own Scriptures, and took advantage of the poverty of the refugees to drive hard bargains with them. At length it became obvious that the Moslems must find some means of livelihood or else Medinah, like Mecca, must be left for more friendly soil.