Muhammed seemed not to know that religion cannot be the gift, as it is not the property, of any single man; it belongs to mankind. Any particular creed lives only by its inherent force, independently of the founder, who retires and leaves nothing behind him but his name as a mere distinction from that of another religion. Every individual action is of little avail, if it does not proceed from the free and pure impulse of the spirit, which must revive in all succeeding generations. This is acknowledged in the Dabistán[162] by giving a very philosophic explanation of the expression _prophetic seal_, or “the last of prophets:” “That which is reared up by superior wisdom, renders the prophet’s knowledge vain, and takes his color; that is to say: if one hundred thousand prophets like himself realise in themselves the person of superior wisdom, they are possessors of the seal, the last prophets, because it is superior wisdom which is the seal, and they know themselves to be _effaced_, and superior wisdom existing.” Muhammed, although wise enough to connect himself with other prophets, his predecessors, pretended however to close the series, and to be the last of prophets, or “the seal of prophetism.” Vain project! immediately after him violent contests arose, “And discord, with a thousand various mouths.” Thirty years after his death his family was dispossessed of the Khalifat. This passed to the Moaviyahs, who, residing in Damascus, kept it during 90 years, and then ceded it to the Abbasides, who established their seat at Baghdad. The impulse and development of the Islam was overwhelming during the one hundred and twenty years after the prophet’s death; the mighty spirit of conquest had arisen and was――I shall not say irresistible――but certainly badly resisted by the nations assailed. The Romans and Persians were then hard pressed themselves; on the West by the Goths, on the East by the Huns:――whilst the Greeks had sunk into general luxury and degeneracy; all feebly sustained the attack of hardy and active men, whose native habit of rapine and devastation was then exalted and sanctified by the name of religion, and continually invigorated by rich, splendid, and easy conquests. Thus, the khalifs, who were divided into two great lines, the before-mentioned _Abbasides_ and the _Fatimites_, extended their empire within 600 years after Muhammed, not only over the greatest part of Asia, but also along the western shore of Africa, Egypt, Spain, and Sicily; threatening the rest of Europe.