Mohammad’s position at Medina was totally different from that he occupied at Mekka. Instead of a struggling reformer, despised and ridiculed by almost every man he met, he was a king, ruling a large city with despotic power, and needing every resource of statecraft to maintain order among its contentious elements. There was a large party, known in the Korān as the “Disaffected” or “Hypocrites,” who found it politic to profess Islām, but were ready to avail themselves of any propitious occasion to overturn or injure it. Still more important were the Jewish Arab tribes settled at Medina, who at first hoped to find a tool to their hands in the new prophet, who seemed to teach something very like Judaism; but who, when they found him unmanageable, straightway turned upon him with double malignity, and exerted themselves in all treacherous ways to countermine his authority and help his enemies within and without the city. Mohammad has been blamed for the severity with which he suppressed the rebellious parties in his state, and the sentences of exile and death passed upon the Jews have been regarded as proofs of a vindictive nature. An impartial study of the facts of the case, however, shows plainly that strong measures were needed for the preservation of the Muslim religion and polity; and the vigorous blows struck by Mohammad at rebellion in the beginning probably saved bloodshed afterwards. Whilst the prophet’s supremacy was being established and maintained among the mixed population of Medina, a vigorous warfare was carried on outside with his old persecutors, the Koreysh. On the history of this war, consisting as it did mainly of small raids and attacks upon caravans, I need not dwell. Its leading features were the two battles of Bedr and Ohud, in the first of which three hundred Muslims, though outnumbered at the odds of three to one, were completely victorious (A.D. 624, A.H. 2); whilst at Ohud, being outnumbered in the like proportion, and deserted by the “Disaffected” party, they were almost as decisively defeated (A.H. 3). Two years later the Koreysh gathered together their allies, advanced upon Medina, and besieged it for fifteen days; but the foresight of Mohammad in digging a trench, and the enthusiasm of the Muslims in defending it, resisted all assaults, and the coming of the heavy storms for which the climate of Medina is noted drove the enemy back to Mekka. The next year (A.H. 6) a ten years’ truce (see _The Victory_, p. 124, and notes) was concluded with the Koreysh, in pursuance of which a strange scene took place in the following spring. It was agreed that Mohammad and his people should perform the Lesser Pilgrimage, and that the Koreysh should for that purpose vacate Mekka for three days. Accordingly in March 629, about two thousand Muslims, with Mohammad at their head on his famous camel, El-Kaswa,--the camel on which he had fled from Mekka,--trooped down the valley and performed the rites which every