Hitherto Islam had been a religion of peace and love, and Mohammed had inculcated no precept as he had that of gentleness in word and deed. But now that he found himself at the head of a submissive host of followers and in a position to oppose his enemies by force of arms, he declared the struggle against the infidel, the spread of his doctrines by fire and sword, to be the sacred duty binding on all Moslems, a precept which gave Islam an aggressive direction and had in its results a world-shaking significance. Not to bring peace, but a sword, had he, the last and greatest of the prophets, appeared on earth; the struggle against the enemies of Islam was a sacred struggle; he who fell in the contest would pass, free from all sin and punishment, safely into paradise, that abode of the blessed which he had painted to his converts with all the ardour of his imagination as a place of earthly pleasures and all the joys of sense; and still further to inflame their courage he planted in their souls the contempt of death by teaching them that the duration of life as well as the destiny and end of mankind had been fixed beforehand by a divine decree, by an unchangeable fate; if the hour of death had come, none could escape his destiny, if the end of life had not yet approached, he might unhesitatingly venture the utmost. Relying on the warlike impulse which such doctrines must have engendered in the fiery soul of the Arab, Mohammed, at the head of his fellow tribesmen, allies, and believing followers, now undertook warlike expeditions against the Koreish who had driven him from his native city. He knew that he could not more effectively punish the haughty merchant princes of Mecca than by lying in wait for their caravans and robbing them of the valuable wares which they were accustomed to take to Syria. At the same time he could absolutely rely on the assistance of his new fellow-citizens in these struggles, for the merchants of Mecca looked down with contempt on the agricultural people of Medina. He himself generally marched into the field more to fire the courage of the combatants by his prayers and promises of heavenly support than for the purpose of himself bearing the white standard, which he generally entrusted to the valiant Omar, or the heroic Ali, the “father of the dust.” Ali, to whom Mohammed gave his favourite daughter Fatima in marriage at Medina, is the purest and noblest figure among the followers of Mohammed, the “Siegfried of Islam,” as a modern writer has designated him. All his life he adhered to the prophet and the faith of his youth with complete submission and eager admiration. If his fiery, pure, and magnanimous character made him the boast and ornament of the Moslems, he was also by his heroism and bravery the bold vindicator of Islam, the trumpet of the strife in struggle and danger.