and the sagacious counsels of Amr also won him a high place in the annals of Islam. Furthermore, the accession of these two was not without its immediate effect. They were straws that showed how the wind was veering: the Koreish had not only failed to recover the prestige they had dropped at Bedr, and to benefit by the Moslem debacle at Uhud, but they had lost the confidence of some of their outstanding men of action. The time was swiftly approaching when the rankling stigma of Uhud would be blotted out, when the Prophet would take a final and complete revenge on his life-long enemies, and when the Meccans would treat Allah with an even more touching reverence than they already bestowed upon Al-Ozza, Hubal, the Kaba and the Black Stone. II A serious reverse suffered by the army of Islam postponed the inevitable surrender of Mecca for a year. One of Mohammed’s emissaries, sent with a message urging a certain Syrian leader to join Islam, had been murdered by another Syrian chieftain; and the Prophet, presumably ignorant that an attack on Syria was equivalent to a declaration of war against the Roman Empire itself, immediately sent a force of three thousand Moslems to avenge the crime. As the soldiers departed, he invoked this blessing on their errand: “The Lord shield you from every evil, and bring you back in peace, laden with spoil!” He then privately gave Zeid the permission to make treaties in his own name, instead of in the name of Mohammed himself, in order that the covenants might the more readily be broken.