To give any account of these campaigns is beyond the scope of the present work, but it is important to show that Muḥammad, when he found himself at the head of a band of armed followers, was not transformed at once, as some would have us believe, from a peaceful preacher into a fanatic, sword in hand, forcing his religion on whomsoever he could. [30] It has been frequently asserted by European writers that from the date of Muḥammad’s migration to Medina, and from the altered circumstances of his life there, the Prophet appears in an entirely new character. He is no longer the preacher, the warner, the apostle of God to men, whom he would persuade of the truth of the religion revealed to him, but now he appears rather as the unscrupulous bigot, using all means at his disposal of force and statecraft to assert himself and his opinions. But it is false to suppose that Muḥammad in Medina laid aside his rôle of preacher and missionary of Islam, or that when he had a large army at his command, he ceased to invite unbelievers to accept the faith. Ibn Saʻd gives a number of letters written by the Prophet from Medina to chiefs and other members of different Arabian tribes, in addition to those addressed to potentates living beyond the limits of Arabia, inviting them to embrace Islam; and in the following pages will be found instances of his having sent missionaries to preach the faith to the unconverted members of their tribes, whose very ill-success in some cases is a sign of the genuinely missionary character of their efforts and the absence of an appeal to force. A typical example of such an unsuccessful mission is that sent to preach Islam to the Banū ʻĀmir b. Ṣaʻṣaʻah in the year A.H. 4. The chief of this tribe, Abū Barā ʻĀmir, visited Muḥammad in Medina, listened to his teaching, but declined to become a convert; he seemed, however, to be favourably disposed towards the new faith and asked the Prophet to send some of his followers to Najd to preach to the people of that country. The Prophet sent a party of forty Muslims, most of them young men of Medina, who were skilled in reciting the Qurʼān, and had been accustomed to meet together at night for study and prayer. But in spite of the safe conduct given them by Abū Barā ʻĀmir, they were treacherously murdered and three only of the party escaped with their lives. [31] The successes of the Muslim arms, however, attracted every day members of various tribes, particularly those in the vicinity of Medina, to swell the ranks of the followers of the Prophet; and “the courteous treatment which the deputations of these various clans experienced from the Prophet, his ready attention to their grievances, the wisdom with which he composed their disputes, and the politic assignments of territory by which he rewarded an early declaration in favour of Islam, made his name to be popular and spread his fame as a great and generous prince throughout the Peninsula.” [32]