Sufián, the kingdom of thy brother's son hath now become a great kingdom. Ill betide thee! rejoined Al Abbás; you mean to say, the prophetical rank of my brother's son? O, ay! replied Abú Sufián, certainly.

Omar-Ibn-Al-Khattáb, the future Khalíf, to whom allusion has just been made, was a much earlier convert. He had resolved to kill Muhammad, but was dissuaded by a friend from a design which would have brought upon his head the irreconcilable vengeance of the prophet's powerful clansmen. At the same time he was advised rather to reserve his displeasure for his own sister, who, with her husband, had embraced Islám. To them Omar repaired in a rage; but the interview ended in his own conformity to the new religion. It is remarkable that Muhammad is said to have prayed for the conversion either of Abú Jahl, or of Omar, in order to strengthen his own authority against the attacks of the Koraish, and replace the loss of his uncle and protector, Abú Tálib.

The above instances present specimens of different converts; and into one of them may possibly be resolved most of the individual cases of early assent. After the storm or surrender of Mecca, the principle of compulsion was openly acted upon, and outward conformity was a matter of

necessity. Some further hints may tend to explain the subject of preceding acquiescence and following zeal. Our facts are but slight; yet they may indicate the course of influential feeling. Umaiyah, father of Abú Sufián, died shortly after the battle of Bedr. He is said to have been skilful in reading books, and to have examined into the prophet's mission, which, from motives of envy, he denied. He foolishly imagined that he himself would be the Sent One. Had Umaiyah been content to hold the second place, his mind was, in other respects, prepared for Muhammadanism. His grandson, Moáwiyah, a forced convert, succeeded in wresting from the family of Muhammad himself all the splendid fruits of their founder's laborious fraud and success. Meccan, named Makías, was resolved to revenge the death of a brother, a Moslem, killed by one of the Helpers, by mischance, the latter having supposed him to be one of the Infidels. Makías came to Medína, professed Islám, and after a time demanded of the prophet the price of blood for his brother. It was paid accordingly; but Makías, shortly after, killed the homicide, fled to Mecca, and there denounced Muhammadanism. At the surrender of Mecca he was one of the proscribed, and was put to death.

A

In the sixth year of the Hijra, Muhammad,

under the pretence of performing the pilgrimage to the Kaaba, determined to attack Mecca. He encouraged his followers by an alleged vision of happy omen; but he was refused admittance into the city, and for some reason declined to attack it; and entering into a truce, in the preliminary forms of which he consented to waive his prophetic title, he returned to Medína, to the deep vexation and disgust of his followers.

The circumstances attending these two occurrences would convince Muhammad of the necessity of diverting or destroying the feeling of clanship, and of the attachment of his countrymen and followers to the sacred customs and rites connected with the Kaaba. It is to be noted, that Muhammad, shortly after this, married by proxy the daughter of Abú Sufián, chief of Mecca. He had emigrated into Ethiopia with her husband, one of the early professors of Islám, who there embraced Christianity, and died. One of the Medinían Helpers professed to have received, by revelation, the precept of the viva voce summons to prayer, as distinguished from the clappers of the Christians and the trumpets of the Jews. This revelation the prophet admitted and adopted. After the violation of the truce by the Meccans, the prophet resolved to march upon the city with all his forces before they had time to

make preparation for effectual resistance; but one Hátib, a fugitive, sent a letter to the Koraish by a slave named Sara, informing them of the approaching expedition. This letter Muhammad intercepted, and called upon Hátib to explain his treacherous proceeding. The latter asserted his constancy in the faith; but declared that he wished to concilitate the Koraish of Mecca, in which city his family and children remained; adding his conviction of the approaching destruction of the Koraish. Omar upon this, crying out that Hátib was a hypocrite, desired leave to cut off his head; but Muhammad refused, and observed, It may be that God does reveal himself to those who fought at Bedr.

Abdulláh-Ibn-Saad was a writer of the Korán, under the illiterate prophet. He was accused of corrupting (probably by interpolating) the sacred signs; and, subsequently flying to Mecca, he renounced Islám. Upon the capture of the city, it was with the utmost difficulty that his brother scribe, Othman (afterwards Khalíf), obtained his pardon from Muhammad. Upon the same occacasion Muhammad ordered a poet, who had satirized him, to be put to death.

Do not the above instances display a politic willingness to admit any pretensions to divine intercommunication which did not interfere with

his own supremacy, and a determination to visit with the utmost vengeance any one who should expose his fraud, or throw contempt upon his character? When the prophet's crier ascended the roof of the Kaaba, on the day of the capture, to proclaim the hour of prayer, the vanquished could not refrain from expressions of grief and indignation. Soon after the surrender of Mecca, a tribe of Koraish, named Hawá Zan, (;) dwelling in a valley three miles distant, resolved to oppose the prophet by force of arms. In the conflict that ensued, the Moslem, for a time, gave way the newly-enforced Meccan converts began to hope an approaching deliverance. Abú Sufián took out his divining arrows, which he had concealed in his quiver, crying out, "The sea alone will stop their flight." Calda exclaimed, "But charms are now useless! (i. e. since the prophetic light has appeared.)" "Be still," exclaimed his father Sufián: "God stop thy mouth! If a man of the Koraish must be my master, I would rather that one of the Hawázenites should lord it over me." The conflict ended, however, in the defeat of the hostile tribe, who fled and took refuge in the city of Táíf (b), a small rich city, at some distance east of Mecca. This place had incurred Muhammad's especial displeasure. At an early period he had attempted to obtain that