Medina feared that after the conquest of it he would transfer his residence thither again, and who at the very end incorporated the Ka'ba with its Black Stone, and the Pilgrimage—an extraneous chunk of heathenism—into the religion he had founded. In fact, the Ka'ba played a more important part in Muhammad's thoughts all through than is generally recognised.

The same motive seems to lie behind another passage which is certainly early, though its first phrase is a somewhat stereotyped introduction; Surah cv.;

Hast thou not considered how thy Lord did with them of the elephant?
Did He not put their scheme awry?
He sent upon them birds in flocks ¹
Which pelted them with stones of sijjil.²
Thus He made them like green shoots eaten down.

The reference is to the deliverance of Mecca from Abraha's expedition. It is unlikely that Muhammad invented the miraculous elements of the story. The legend may quite well have developed in the forty years which had elapsed. He uses it to advance the claims to worship of the Lord of the Ka'ba, who had so wonderfully vindicated his power to preserve His temple and territory.

There is abundant evidence in the Qur'an to show how fundamental in Muhammad's mind was the idea of gratitude to God. The common word

for unbeliever is kafir, which really means an ungrateful, unthankful person. The believer is either mu'min, "one who puts his trust in" God, or muslim, "one who surrenders to, or makes peace with" God. In this latter, and in the name he gave to his religion, Islam, which is the verbal noun from the same root, we see the prominence of the idea of power. To Muhammad the manifestations of God's goodness were principally manifestations of His creative power. In Surah lxxix. vv. 27-33 he asks:

Are ye more difficult to create, or the heaven? He built it,
Lifted up its vault and poised it,
Made dark its night and brought forth its dawn;
The earth thereafter He spread out,
Brought forth from it its water and its pasture;
The mountains He set firm,
A provision for you and your flocks.

This last verse is out of rhyme, and does not come quite appropriately after the reference to the mountains. It occurs again, though again out of rhyme, in Surah lxxx. vv. 24-32:

Let man consider his food.
Verily We have poured down water in showers,
And have broken up the ground in rents,
And have caused grain to sprout up in it,
And grapes and herbs
And olives and palms
And gardens thickly planted
And fruits and pastures,
A provision for you and your flocks.