of God, 'the Merciful, the Compassionate,' but as a sanguinary warrior, Mohammed made his cause triumphant.

The booty taken from these industrious and thrifty Jewish communities was very great. The treasure of the Beni Nadhir alone, which had been removed from Medina merely to fall into the Moslems' hands in Khaibar, contained a single set of jewels, often hired out at weddings, which was estimated at a value of 10,000 dinars in gold. All the moveable property was treated as lawful spoil, of which one-fifth was appropriated by Mohammed and the remaining four-fifths divided amongst his warriors. The latter also obtained one half of the lands of Khaibar, whilst Mohammed claimed the other half; and, on the plea that Fadak, Tamai, and Wadi el Kora, were not taken by actual fighting, but had freely surrendered, the modest prophet demanded the entire spoil of those places for himself, to be disposed of as he pleased.

It was first intended to send all the Jews who had capitulated out of the country. But as then there would not have remained cultivators enough for the lands they left behind, their proposal to be allowed to continue in the occupation of the ground was accepted, on the condition of their yielding up half the produce to the Moslems. This formal arrangement remained in force till the Calif Omar arbitrarily set it aside, by removing the Jews to lands in Syria, in order that, as it already had been Mohammed's wish, there should only exist one religion throughout all Arabia.

Some episodes of this campaign are recorded which likewise show up Mohammed in the light of a common, rather unscrupulous, conqueror, and as glaringly wanting in the characteristics of the true, heavenly-minded prophet. Among the women made captive in one of the first Khaibar strongholds taken, was Safia (= Sophie), daughter of the chief of the Beni Nadhir, and hence probably known to Mohammed by sight. Her husband, Kinana, was accused by Mohammed of concealing part of his treasure, and was cruelly tortured to death. Safia and some other females, on being taken to Mohammed, passed their newly slain husbands and relatives on the way, and naturally burst into a paroxysm of grief. The Prophet, seeing them in this state, said, 'Take these

demons away from me;' but he detained Safia, casting his mantle over her, thus marking her as destined for his own harem.

According to the rules of his religion, such captives may not be married till at the expiration of three months; but this Prophet's carnal passions were so strong that he could not brook the delay, and he actually made her his wife, almost within sight of the place where her husband and friends had been slaughtered only a few days before. Abu Eyub, with drawn sword, unbidden, circumambulated the tent where they spent the first night together; and when Mohammed, in the morning, asked him for the reason of his solicitude, he replied, 'I felt anxious for thee on account of this woman, whose father, husband, and relatives thou bast caused to be slain, and who herself has been an unbeliever till quite lately.' Mohammed's cruel outrage of the feelings of a woman whose nearest relatives he had just put to death, casts so unfavourable a light upon his character, that, to screen him, his biographers tell a story, obviously invented for the purpose, which represents Safia as a willingly consenting party. According to this story, Mohammed observed a blue mark on her eye, and inquiring after the cause, she told him that having communicated to her late husband one of her dreams, to the effect that she had seen the moon fall into her lap, he gave her a blow in the face which left the blue mark on her eye, saying, 'Thou wishest to have Mohammed for thy husband, the king of the Hejaz.'

Another Jewish woman, Zeinab by name, whose husband and male relatives had likewise been killed, nearly succeeded in avenging herself on Mohammed by poisoning him. She roasted a lamb for his party, and having first ascertained that he had a predilection for the shoulder, rubbed more poison into that part than the rest. The biographers say, that he only took a mouthful and threw it out again without swallowing it, exclaiming, 'This shoulder tells me that it is poisoned.' But this is again an obvious invention of pious Mussulmans, for the purpose of investing their prophet with that supernatural knowledge which they thought he ought to have possessed. The actual fact seems to have been, that Mohammed really did eat some of the poisoned shoulder,