Whilst Moḥammad’s supremacy was being established and maintained among the mixed population of Mekka, a vigorous warfare was being carried on outside with his old persecutors, the Ḳureysh. On the history of this war, consisting as it did mainly of small raids and attacks upon caravans, I need not dwell; its leading features were the two battles of Bedr and Oḥud, in the first of which three hundred Muslims, though outnumbered at the odds of three to one, were completely victorious (A.D. 624, A.H. 2); whilst at Oḥud, being outnumbered in the like proportion and deserted by the ‘Disaffected’ party, they were almost as decisively defeated (A.H. 3). Two years later the Ḳureysh, gathering together their allies, advanced upon Medina and besieged it for fifteen days; but the foresight of Moḥammad in digging a trench, and the enthusiasm of the Muslims in defending it, resisted all assaults, and the coming of the heavy storms for which the climate of Medina is noted drove the enemy back to Mekka. The next year (A.H. 6) a ten years’ truce was concluded with the Ḳureysh, in pursuance of which a strange scene took place in the following spring. It was agreed that Moḥammad and his people should perform the Lesser Pilgrimage, and that the Ḳureysh should for that purpose vacate Mekka for three days. Accordingly, in March 629, about two thousand Muslims, with Moḥammad at their head on his famous camel El-Ḳaṣwá—the same on which he had fled from Mekka—trooped down the valley and performed the rites which every Muslim to this day observes. ‘It was surely a strange sight which at this time presented itself in the vale of Mekka,—a sight unique in the history of the world. The ancient city is for three days evacuated by all its inhabitants, high and low, every house deserted; and, as they retire, the exiled converts, many years banished from their birthplace, approach in a great body, accompanied by their allies, revisit the empty homes of their childhood, and within the short allotted space fulfil the rites of pilgrimage. The ousted inhabitants, climbing the heights around, take refuge under tents or other shelter among the hills and glens; and, clustering on the overhanging peak of Aboo-Ḳubeys, thence watch the movements of the visitors beneath, as with the Prophet at their head they make the circuit of the Kaạbeh and the rapid procession between Eṣ-Ṣafá and Marwah; and anxiously scan every figure if perchance they may recognise among the worshippers some long-lost friend or relative. It was a scene rendered possible only by the throes which gave birth to Islám.’[15]