P. 122. _It is written in the Book_: _i.e._ Every event is set down in the Preserved Book before the event itself is created. _God is rich_: _i.e._ He has no need of your grudging alms. * * * * * VICTORY. P. 124.--The victory in question was probably the peaceful but real triumph of the Truce of Hudeybia, in A.H. 6; though some commentators prefer to regard the speech as prophetical of the conquest of Mekka two years later. P. 125. _The Arabs of the desert who were left behind_ were certain tribes who held aloof from the pilgrimage towards Mekka, which ended in the Truce of Hudeybia. Mohammad punished them by refusing to allow them to share in the booty which soon after fell to the faithful in the Khaibar expedition; hence the reference on p. 126. P. 128. _In the valley of Mekka_: referring to the Truce of Hudeybia. _Kept you away from the Sacred Mosque_: the Koreysh refused to allow Mohammad and his followers to enter Mekka or perform the pilgrimage; whereupon the truce was concluded, by which the pilgrimage was to take place (_Ye shall surely enter the Sacred Mosque_) in the following year (see Introduction, p. xlv.) P. 129. _Traces_: _i.e._ dust from touching the ground. * * * * * P. 130. HELP.--Revealed after the conquest of Mekka, and shortly before Mohammad’s death, and believed to have given him warning of it. THE LAW GIVEN AT MEDINA. The forty paragraphs arranged on pp. 133-144, contain, it is believed, all the definite ordinances of Mohammad as set forth in the Medina speeches, with the exception of some regulations relating to women. The bulk of the Medina speeches are indeed rather collections of separate decisions or “rulings” put together for convenience of reference by the Muslims themselves than separate and complete orations. But as the practical teaching is interspersed with frequent and verbose prophetical legends of the kind with which the reader is already perhaps only too familiar and with animadversions on the political parties of Medina, and similar ephemeral matters, it has been thought best to extract the marrow of these lengthy and composite harangues, and place them in some sort of connected order. Chapter II., for instance, “The Cow,” contains 286 verses; the first half is filled with the usual arguments and illustrations, and the old stories about Adam and Moses; whilst the second half contains a certain number of laws and precepts mixed with many repetitions of the proofs and appeals to reason which occur in most of the preceding speeches: altogether, 29 verses out of 286 are needed for the purpose of showing what Mohammad actually prescribed in civil and religious law. For an account of the modern interpretation of this law, see LANE’S _Modern Egyptians_, 5th ed. Ch. III.; SELL’S _Faith of Islam_; and HUGHES’ _Notes on Mohammadanism_, 2d ed. 1877.