supreme deity. That may be so, but I think that the influence of the monotheistic religions had also played its part in breaking up the polytheistic system. That the name Allah is borrowed I should not like to assert categorically. We sometimes find the proper Arabic form al-'ilah, and Allah may have arisen by contraction. Still it is very like the Syriac term Alaha, and that Christian form of the name and the Christian idea, penetrating along with it, had probably some influence upon the ideas of the Arabs and upon the form which their name for the supreme deity assumed.

In any case the fact is certain. Nowhere do we find any evidence of strong religious attachment to the old deities. The Badawi is not as a rule very susceptible to religious emotions. He is, on the other hand, very tenacious of established custom. In that sense the old religious practices survived. The sacred months, in which war was forbidden, were observed in a way which one would hardly have expected in so turbulent a country. The Arabs were shocked when Muhammad broke the peace of these sacred months which had been to them their period of security, in which they could travel in safety for business or for pleasure. The Pilgrimage brought annually a great concourse to Mecca. But it was as much business as religion that brought them, or perhaps more. Great markets were held in the neighbourhood of Mecca at the same time, notably that at Ukaz. It was a "holy fair", and the same may probably be said of the Pilgrimage as a whole. This we may surmise

brought considerable profit to Mecca; and in that (and also perhaps in the claim to personal authority which I think was implicit in Muhammad's claim to be recognised as a prophet from the first), we may suppose, lay the root of the stubborn opposition with which he was met, rather than in any real attachment to the old religion. In any case the Qur'an itself bears out the fact that the old polytheism had no real hold as a religion, and that Allah was in a sense recognised as a supreme deity by the polytheists themselves. Muhammad's hesitation in adopting that name for the God whom he proclaimed—for considerable hesitation he does show—was probably due to that fact. In all the opposition to Muhammad we scarcely meet a defence of the old religion which can be called an argument in its favour. The Qur'an is quite frank in recording the objections raised by opponents; but there is no reference to any defence of polytheism which could be said to rest on a conviction of its truth. There are arguments against Muhammad's own doctrines which he finds it necessary to combat—especially against his doctrine of the resurrection and future judgement. But in regard to their gods his opponents seem to have appealed simply to tradition. He was, they said, casting contempt upon the gods of their fathers. The one idea which he deals with, which perhaps implies a measure of real belief, is that of the intercession of the gods with Allah. The idea of intercession is one with which he himself played nearly all through the Qur'an, rejecting it utterly as applied to the heathen gods