Slowly, with pain and striving, Mahomet was overcoming the measureless opposition to things new. Six years of ceaseless effort, warfare and exhortation, compulsion and rewards were needed to secure for him the undisputed exercise of his religion in the place that was its sanctuary. Faith, backed by the strength and wealth of his armies, now gathered in the choicest of his opponents. The time was come when he was beginning to taste the wine of success. He had scarcely penetrated the borderland of that delectable garden, but the first meagre fruit thereof was sweet. It spurred him on to the perpetual renewal of alertness that he might keep what he had won and pursue his way to the innermost far-off enclosure, around the portal of which was written, as a mandate for all the world: "Bear witness, there is no God but God, and Mahomet is His Prophet." The Fulfilled Pilgrimage, however, was but the preliminary to his master-stroke of policy strengthened by force of arms: months of hard fighting and diplomacy were needed before he could direct the blow that made his triumph possible. For the time he had simply made clear to Arabia that Mecca was his holy city, the queen of his would-be dominion, and by scrupulous performance of the old religious rites he had identified Islam both to his followers and to the Meccans themselves with the ancient fadeless traditions of their earlier faith, purified and made permanent by their homage to one God, "the Compassionate, the Merciful, the Mighty, the Wise." CHAPTER XVIII THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY "When the help of God and the Victory arrive, And thou seest men entering the religion of God by troops, Then utter the praise of thy Lord, implore His pardon, for He loveth to turn in mercy."--_The Kuran._