conduct, exclaimed, "Who will deliver me from the son of Al-Ashraf ?" A ready instrument was not wanting: Mohammed, the son of Mosalama, answered, "I, O Apostle of God, will rid you of him." Caab was soon after murdered by Mohammed, while hospitably entertaining one of the assassin's followers. War was immediately renewed.

Space will not permit us to enumerate the various battles fought by Mahomet; according, however, to the computation of some authors, no less than twenty-seven expeditions were undertaken, in which he personally commanded; and in which nine pitched battles were fought. During the same period, he was besieged in Medina, by the implacable Koreish; but, by his own skill, and the bravery of his troops, he repelled all their attacks. In the sixth year of the Hejira, with fourteen hundred men, he meditated what he asserted to be a peaceful pilgrimage to the holy temple of Mecca. Entrance into the city being refused by the people, the prophet, in his anger, determined to force his way. At this critical juncture an ambassador was dispatched from Mecca to demand a peace. The policy of Mahomet induced him to lay aside his determination of assaulting his native city, and to accept the peaceful offers of his countrymen. A truce of ten years was consequently concluded between the prophet and the Koreish.

The

Two years had hardly elapsed when Mahomet accused the people of Mecca of a breach of their engagement. When a man is really desirous of quarrelling, a pretext is never wanting. He was now strong, and his enemies were weak. His superstitious reverence for the city of his nativity, and for the temple it contained, served also to influence his determination for war. time since the concluding of the truce had been skilfully employed in seducing the adherents of the Koreish, and converting to his religion the chief citizens of Mecca. With an army of ten thousand men, he marched to besiege it, and no sooner did he appear before the walls, than the city surrendered at discretion. Abu Sophyân, the inveterate enemy of Mahomet and his religion, presented the keys of the city to the conqueror; and yielding to the arguments enforced by the scimitar of the furious Omar, he bowed down before the prophet, and acknowledged him to be the apostle of God. Mahomet, though a conqueror, and an impostor, was not cruel; his anger was directed rather against the gods of his country, than its inhabitants. He destroyed the whole of the idols, but executed no more than three men and two women belonging to the party of his enemies. The chiefs of the Koreish prostrated themselves before him, and earnestly demanded mercy at his hands. "What mercy can you expect from the man whom you have wronged?" exclaimed Mahomet, in reply to their supplication. "We confide in the generosity of our kinsman." "You shall not confide in vain," was the politic, perhaps generous, reply of the impostor. "Be gone; you are safe; you are free." They were thenceforth left unmolested, and places of honour and trust were still confided to their care. The religion of Mahomet may be considered now to have been permanently settled. The conquest of Mecca and of the Koreish was the signal for the submission of the rest of Arabia. The events of the prophet's after life cease, therefore, to possess an interest for an European reader. They were, for the most part, merely expeditions undertaken for the purpose of reducing the petty tribes who still resisted his authority and were all of them eventually successful. The influence and religion of Mahomet continued rapidly to extend his difficulties were over; and the hour of his prosperity has nothing to instruct or to amuse the general reader. Between the taking of Mecca

:

and the period of his death, not more than three years elapsed. In that short period he had destroyed the idols of Arabia; had extended his conquests to the borders of the Greek and Persian empires; had rendered his name formidable to those once mighty kingdoms; had tried his arms against the disciplined troops of the former, and defeated them in a desperate encounter at Muta. His throne was now firmly established, and an impetus given to the Arabian nations, that in a few years induced them to invade, and enabled them to subdue, a great portion of the globe. India, Persia, the Greek empire, the whole of Asia Minor, Egypt, Barbary, and Spain, were reduced by their victorious arms. And although Mahomet did not live to see such mighty conquests, he laid the first foundations of this wide-spreading dominion, and established over the whole of Arabia, and some parts of Syria, the religion he had pursued.

One year before the taking of Mecca, Mahomet had been poisoned by a Jewish female at Chaibar. From the effects of this poison he is supposed never afterwards to have recovered. Day by day he visibly declined, and at the end of four years after that event, and in the sixty-third year of his age, it was evident that his life was hastening to a close. Some time previous, he was conscious of the approach of death, and met it with firmness and composure. Till within three days of his end, he regularly performed the service of his church, and preached to his people. "If there be any man,' said the prophet from the pulpit, 'whom I have unjustly scourged, I submit my own back to the lash of retaliation. Have I aspersed the reputation of any Mussulman? let him proclaim my faults in the face of the congregation. Has any one been despoiled of his goods? the little which I possess shall compensate the interest and principal of the debt.' 'Yes,' replied a voice from the crowd, 'I am entitled to three drachms of silver.' Mahomet heard the complaint, satisfied the demand, and thanked his creditor that he had accused him in this world rather than at the day of judgment."* He enfranchised his slaves, and quietly awaited the approach of death. The violence of his fever, however, rendered him delirious, and during one of his paroxysms he demanded pen and ink, to compose or dictate a divine book. Omar, who was watching his dying moments, refused his request, lest the expiring prophet might dictate anything that should supersede the Koran. The traditions of his wives and companions relate that at the hour of his death, he maintained the same character he had borne through life. He declared that Gabriel visited him, and respectfully asked permission to separate his soul from his body. The prophet granted his request, and the agonies of death came upon him. The blooming Ayesha, the best beloved of his wives, hung tenderly over her expiring husband; her knee sustained his drooping head as he lay stretched upon the floor; she watched with trembling anxiety his changing countenance, and heard the last broken sounds of his voice. Recovering from a swoon into which the agony of his pains had thrown him, with a calm and steady gaze, he raised his eyes to heaven, but with faltering accents exclaimed, -"Ó! God, pardon my sins. Yes, I come among my fellow-labourers on high." He then sprinkled his face with water, and quietly expired. Medina, in the very chamber where he breathed his last, the piety of his votaries deposited his remains, and erected over them a simple and unadorned monument. Medina, on account of the precious relics of the prophet, has become sacred in the eyes of all Moslem nations, and holds the second place

At

among the cities of the earth. And the pious pilgrim on his way to Mecca increases the worth of his pilgrimage if he turns aside to visit also the city which contains the ashes of Mahomet.

Mahomet established no other form of administration than the usual despotism of oriental nations, even for the central government; and although superior to his countrymen in the qualifications requisite to lead and impose upon a barbarous people, he was possessed of little really useful knowledge. He had just arrived at that degree of knowledge which renders a man sensible of the necessity of some government; of some person to lead the armies of his nation in war, and to adjudge their differences in peace; beyond this he had made no advance. He knew not that the same circumstances which render a governor necessary, create also a necessity that some securities should exist against the abuse of power by the governor himself.

That Mahomet was an impostor cannot be doubted. In the early part of his public life he might have fancied himself somewhat peculiarly gifted; but that his self-delusion should have continued to the later years of his life, to such an extent as to acquit him of fraud, is utterly impossible. His story of the heavenly journey was a fiction, which nothing but absolute madness could have permitted him to believe. Moreover, the constant visits of the angel Gabriel, precisely at the critical moment when his aid was needed, are sufficient evidence of a perfect absence of all self-delusion. But, being an impostor, did he employ the power he acquired to the advantage of his people or to his own aggrandisement? He exalted himself to a throne, and, possibly, when his own interests were not concerned, did, as far as his abilities enabled him, further the welfare of the people. He was not cruel, nor sanguinary: his conquests were generally speaking marked by no butchery; nor was his government a tyrannical one. In his private life he was mild and gentle; affection

ate to his friends and his wives; and just and honourable in his dealings. As a private man, among his own people, he was esteemed virtuous and beneficent. For the most part he wanted rather the knowledge than the will to be an estimable citizen, as well as a beneficent legislator. His vices were the vices of his age; and, as he was little superior in knowledge to the men by whom he was surrounded, it is not wonderful that he did not greatly surpass them in virtue.

From this hasty and imperfect sketch of Mahomet's actions as a legislator, the reader will be able to form a tolerably correct estimate of his public character. That he was a barbarian, unskilled in the sciences of which he professed himself the inspired teacher, and deserving a very small portion of applause, as having advanced the civilization of his people beyond the point at which he found it, is abundantly manifest: that he was superior to the age in which he lived may be believed from the success of his imposture. Among a people so rude as the Arabs, however, a very slight superiority was sufficient to render him thus successful. His talents contributed to his own fortune, not to his nation's improvement; he was skilled in whatever was necessary for his personal aggrandisement; in whatever was useful to others he was miserably deficient.