The holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Higaz, where the gold of Moizz had been prudently distributed some years before, responded to his generosity and success by proclaiming his supremacy in the mosques; the Hamdanide prince who held Northern Syria paid similar homage to the Fatimite Caliph at Aleppo, where the Abbassides had hitherto been recognized.

Especially after the Hijrah, when the prophet had to provide the state established by him at Medina with inspired regulations, the words of God became in almost every respect different from what they had been at first.

The theological development of this system is to be attributed chiefly to groups of pious thinkers in Medina: they were excluded from political life when the capital was transferred from Medina to Damascus and were left in peace to elaborate their theory of the Muhammedan divine polity.

After the swordless triumph of Dzul Cada, 629, Mahomet rested in Medina for about nine months, while he sent out his leaders of expeditions into all parts of the peninsula wherever a rising was threatened, or where he saw the prospect of a conversion by force of arms.

Mahomet came unexpectedly upon their habitations, carried off some of their women as slaves, and returned to Medina after fifteen days, having effectively crushed the incipient rising against him.

This apparent death of poetic energy had crept gradually over the Kuran, helped on by the controversial character of the last two Meccan periods, when he attempted the conciliation of the Jewish element within Arabia with that long-sightedness which already discerned Medina as his possible refuge.

They returned to Medina at sunset, a mournful and piteous band, bearing with them their leader, whose wounds had been hastily dressed on the field.

At length the cavalcade was ready; 1500 men in the garments of pilgrims, but with swords and armour accompanying them in the rear, journeyed over the desert track that had seen the migration to Medina of a small hunted band six short years previously.

Mahomet remained in Medina throughout the year 631 and the beginning of 632, keeping his state like unto that of a king, surrounded by his Companions and Believers, receiving and sending forth embassies, receiving also tribute from those lands he had conquered, the beginning of that wealth which was to create the magnificence of Bagdad, the treasures of Cordova.

He aimed at nothing less than the complete union of all Medina under his leadership and in one religious belief.

Enter Cardinall, and Medina like a French Doctor.

Their cattle were driven into Medina before their eyes, and soon the whole tribe was withdrawn from its ancestral habitation, awaiting what might come from the hand of their terrible foe.

These points of view were principally characteristic of the temperament of the scholars who held them; they did not really advance our understanding of the events that took place at Mecca and Medina between 610 and 632 A.D., that prologue to a perplexing historical drama.