system that Moses assuredly would not have approved. For it must be demonstrated that Allah was more powerful than Jehovah; that Mohammed, as the last of a long line of prophets, had an ultimate claim upon the sacerdotal office; and that the superior wisdom which the Jews boasted concerning celestial matters over which he had hitherto asserted his sole jurisdiction would be of no use whatever to them--after they were dead. III The triumph of Bedr encouraged Mohammed to expedite his plans of revenge against his internal foes; directly or indirectly, he stimulated his accomplices to assassinate them. Peculiarly sensitive as he was to the slurring satires and puns which the Jews had aimed against some of his most cherished speeches, and being wholly incapable of retorting in kind, he was only too pleased when the Moslems showed a demoniacal readiness to avenge his wounded honor with sharper-pointed weapons than epigrams. Asma, a poetess strongly on the side of the Jews, composed some verses that castigated the disaffected Medinese for bowing before an interloper whom she represented as hoping that the city would “be done brown” so that he might enjoy a toothsome banquet; shortly afterward, one of the Prophet’s men stole into her room at midnight and, after taking the trouble to remove her nursing baby, thrust his sword through her breast. Next morning Mohammed paused in his prayers at the Mosque long enough to inquire of the murderer, “Hast thou slain the daughter of Merwan?” “Yes,” was the reply, “but tell me now, is there cause of apprehension?” “None,” the Prophet assured him, “a couple of goats will hardly knock their heads together for it.” Then, turning toward the congregation, he shouted: “If ye desire to see a man that hath assisted the Lord and His Prophet, look ye here!” A second satirist, old Abu Afak, a Jewish convert, foolishly attempted to carry on the work begun by Asma. “Who will rid me of this pestilent fellow?” inquired Mohammed; and within a few hours Abu Afak, while carelessly sleeping in a courtyard, was also transfixed with a sword. Both of these deeds were committed within a week after Bedr. About six months later one Ka’b, another Jewish versifier who, like most satirists of his time, signalized his craft by anointing his hair on one side, allowing his clothes to become disordered, and wearing but one shoe, decided to amuse himself by making public a series of poems that were intimately concerned with the amatory charms of some of the most generous Moslem women. Of a beauty named Um al-Fadl he wrote: “Of saffron color is she; so full of charms that if thou wert to clasp her, there would be pressed forth Wine, Henna, and Katam; So slim that her figure, from ankle to shoulder, bends as she desires to stand upright, and cannot. When we met she caused me to forget my own wife Um Halim, although the cord that bindeth me to her is not to be broken.