As for his having been a mere victorious soldier, he was in the beginning “precisely in a minority of one.” Your Napoleon finds in patriotism his most successful recruiting sergeant. But the call of patriotism had summoned to Muhammad’s standard not a single recruit, because he was despised by the patriotic (if the Kuraish, the predominant tribe in Arabia, and the keepers of the Ka’bah, deserved to be so called) and was rejected by them. Assuredly Muhammad drew the sword; he was driven to draw it in the end. But how did he get the sword, and to what purpose did he put it when he had it? Muhammad’s sword was forged in the furnace of that passionate, human soul of his, was tempered in the flame of divine compassion, and gave to every Arab an Empire and a creed. Islám was the sword! The blade of steel achieved no miracle, it merely drew blood--sufficiently corrupt. It was the sword of Muhammad’s word which freed the Arab heart from its vices and fired it with a wider patriotism and a purer faith. His battle-cry was the declaration of God’s unity; his sword was the faith; his battlefield the human heart and soul; and his enemy idolatry and corruption. “Yá Alláh!” and “Yá Muhammad!” carried the Arabian conquest from Mecca to Granada, and from Arabia to Delhi. The conquering hosts fought rather with their hearts and with their souls than with their swords and their strong right hands; inculcating in the conquered no earthly vanities, as do modern Muhammadan rulers, but the principles of liberty, solidarity, unity, equality, and compassion. Forty thousand Arabs, under their famous leader, Sád Vaghás, having defeated five hundred thousand Persians and overthrown the mighty Persian Empire, in the battle of Khadasieh, on the plain of Nahavend, deeply rooted their faith in the heart of the alien race, and then left her to be ruled by her own people, in accordance with the precepts of the new revelation. Omar, perhaps the greatest Caliph, is said to have lived throughout his life on a loaf of barley bread and a cup of sour milk a day. And Alí’ the Prophet’s son-in-law, whom the Persians revere as his true successor, lived for no other purpose than to help the poor and to succour the weak. He was, as Carlyle assures us, a man worthy of Christian knighthood. So also was his son, Huseyn, whose glorious martyrdom has endeared him to the hearts of the Persian people.