whether he might not find that worldly protection, that fleshly arm of human help, in one of the neighbouring towns, or amongst the roaming Bedouin tribes, which was refused him by his fellow-citizens in Mecca. The first attempt of this kind he made in Taif, the nearest town of importance, in whose neighbourhood many of the Meccan grandees kept gardens. The close intercourse thus fostered between the two towns afforded him an opportunity of which he availed himself. He went in company with his liberated slave Zeid, and addressing himself to the leading men of the Thakifites, requested them, as Ibn Ishak tells us, 'to aid and protect him against his own tribe, hoping that they would receive his revelation.' But they turned from his proposals in derision, and did not even heed his expressed request, at least to keep secret the interview which he had with them. Instead of promising protection or encouraging his pretensions to a heavenly mission, they stirred up the mob to drive him away with ignominy. A hostile crowd pursued him with missiles, so that he was wounded in his legs, and Zeid, who endeavoured to protect him with his own body, received a severe injury in his head.

The attempt to obtain in Taif what had been denied him in Mecca signally failed; and the biographers, always partial to their hero, endeavour to compensate for the humiliating disappointment, by treating us to the story that when Mohammed, on his way back to Mecca, performed his evening prayers at Nakhla, a number of demons who were just coming from Nissibin, stopped to listen to him. What they heard induced them to embrace Islam, which henceforth they spread amongst their fellow-demons.

After his ignominious failure in Taif to find partisans and protectors against the hostile Koreish, Mohammed did not venture to re-enter Mecca, but halted at Mount Hira for the purpose of first securing the protection of some mighty man. His trust in God evidently did not raise him above the fear of man. In two cases his application for protection was coldly declined on some slight excuse; but finally he succeeded in obtaining the consent of Motim Ibn Adi. Accordingly Motim, with his armed retainers, awaited Mohammed and Zeid at the Kaaba, and on their arrival

called out, 'Hear, ye Koreishites, I am protecting Mohammed: take care not to offend him.'

Thus protected, Mohammed could, for his own person, live quietly in Mecca; but it had become abundantly clear that the bulk of his fellow-townsmen had fully made up their minds to treat his arrogant pretensions with sovereign disdain. Ibn Ishak says, 'When Mohammed had returned to Mecca, the people gainsaid him more than before and kept aloof from his faith, except a few weak ones who believed in him.' There being, therefore, no hope left him of gaining over so important a city as Mecca, or even Taif, he employed all his efforts to obtain a foothold amongst any of the Arab tribes who visited the Kaaba during the annual festival. According to Ibn Ishak, 'he showed himself to the Kabiles on the days of the feast, exhorted them to believe in God, whose prophet he was, and requested them to acknowledge and protect him as such, so that he might expound to them God's revelation; and in the same way he also presented himself to individual persons whom he knew to possess great influence.' Evidently his motto was not, 'The poor have the Gospel preached unto them;' but he cared for men of influence and power, for the adhesion of whole tribes, to secure his own protection and the establishment of a worldly dominion.

The following narrative in which Ibn Ishak communicates the result of these efforts, shows that Mohammed's designs were looked through, and that the Kabiles had no wish to risk their necks for his aggrandisement and the domination of his party.' Mohammed visited the Beni Kinda in their encampment, whose chief was Muleih, and requested them to believe in Allah whose prophet he was: but they turned away from him. He also went to the camp of a branch of the Kalbites, inviting them to believe in Allah and in himself; but neither did they hearken to him. In like manner he visited the Beni Hanifa, exhorting them to accept Islam; but no Arab ever gave him a ruder answer than they did. He also wanted to convert the Beni Amir, on which occasion one of them, Beihara by name, said to him, "By Allah, if I took this man from the Koreish, I could, with him, stir up all the Arabs into rebellion. Now, O Mohammed, if