daughter. This was the first flight; but afterwards several others followed them, retiring one after another, to the number of eighty-three men and eighteen women, besides children.1 These refugees were kindly received by the Najâshi,2 or king of Ethiopia, who refused to deliver them up to those whom the Koreish sent to demand them, and, as the Arab writers unanimously attest, even professed the Mohammedan religion. In the sixth year of his mission3 Mohammed had the pleasure of seeing his party strengthened by the conversion of his uncle Hamza, a man of great valour and merit, and of Omar Ebn al Khattâb, a person highly esteemed, and once a violent opposer of the prophet. As persecution generally advances rather than obstructs the spreading of a religion, Islamism made so great a progress among the Arab tribes, that the Koreish, to suppress it effectually, if possible, in the seventh year of Mohammed's mission,4 made a solemn league or covenant against the Hashemites and the family of al Motalleb, engaging themselves to contract no marriages with any of them, and to have no communication with them; and to give it the greater sanction, reduced it into writing, and laid it up in the Caaba. Upon this the tribe became divided into two factions; and the family of Hashem all repaired to Abu Tâleb, as their head; except only Abd'al Uzza, surnamed Abu Laheb, who, out of his inveterate hatred to his nephew and his doctrine, went over to the opposite party, whose chief was Abu Sofiân Ebn Harb, of the family of Ommeya. The families continued thus at variance for three years; but in the tenth year of his mission, Mohammed told his uncle Abu Tâleb that GOD had manifestly showed his disapprobation of the league which the Koreish had made against them, by sending a worm to eat out every word of the instrument except the name of GOD. Of this accident Mohammed had probably some private notice; for Abu Tâleb went immediately to the Koreish and acquainted them with it; offering, if it proved false, to deliver his nephew up to them; but in case it were true, he insisted that they ought to lay aside their animosity, and annul the league they had made against the Hashemites. To this they acquiesced, and going to inspect the writing, to their great astonishment found it to be as Abu Tâleb had said; and the league was thereupon declared void. In the same year Abu Tâleb died, at the age of above fourscore; and it is the general opinion that he died an infidel, though others say that when he was at the point of death he embraced Mohammedism, and produce some passages out of his poetical compositions to confirm their assertion. About a month, or as some write, three days after the death of this great benefactor and patron, Mohammed had the additional mortification to lose his wife Khadîjah, who had so generously made his fortune. For which reason this year is called the year of mourning.5