At Medina the Disaffected were triumphantly gathered beneath his banner;
his position became, for the time at least, established. No longer did he
need to conciliate, flatter, spy upon the various factions within his
walls. His prisoners were kindly treated, and some converted by these
means to the faith he had vainly sought to impose upon them. Affairs
within the city were organised and consolidated. Registers were prepared,
the famous "Registers of Omar," which were to contain the names of all
those who had given distinguished service to the cause of Allah, and to
confer upon them exalted rank. The three hundred names inscribed therein
were the embryo of a Muslim aristocracy, constituting, in fact, a peerage
of Islam. Mahomet's religious ordinances were strengthened and confirmed,
while his faith received that homage paid to success which had raised its
founder from the commander of a small hand of religionists to the chief
of a prosperous city, the leader of an efficient army, the head of a
community which held within itself the future dominion of Arabia, of
western Asia, southern Europe, in fact, the greater part of the middle
world.
More than ever Mahomet perceived that his success lay in the sword. Bedr
set the seal upon his acceptance of warfare as a means of propaganda.
Henceforth the sword becomes to him the bright but awful instrument
through which the will of Allah is achieved. In the measure that he
trusted its power and confided to it his own destiny and that of his
followers, so did war exact of him its ceaseless penalty, urging him on
continually, through motives of policy and self-defence, until he became
its slave, compelled to continue along the path appointed him, or perish
by that very instrument by which his power had been wrought. Henceforward
his activities consist chiefly of wars aggressive and defensive, while
the religion actuating them receives slighter notice, because the main
thesis has been established in his own state and requires the force of
arms to obtain its supremacy over alien races.
After Bedr, the poet and Prophet becomes the administrator and Prophet.
The quietude and meditation of the Meccan hill-slopes are exchanged for
the council-chamber and the battlefield, and appear upon the background
of his anxious life with the glamour and aloofness of a dream-country;
the inevitable turmoil and preoccupation which accompanies the direction
of affairs took hold upon his life. The fervour of his nature, its
remorseless activity, compelled him to legislate for his followers with
that minute attention to detail almost inconceivable to the modern mind
with its conceptions of the various "departments" of state.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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