f his career see MAHOMET. It is
enough here to outline his actions in so far as he attempted to create a
united, and then a conquering, Arabia. Though the external conquests of
the Arabs belong more properly to the period of the caliphate, yet they
were the natural outcome of the prophet's ideas. His idea of Arabia for
the Arabians could only be realized by summoning the great kings of the
surrounding nations to recognize Islam; otherwise Abyssinia, Persia and
Rome (Byzantium) would continue their former endeavours to influence and
control the affairs of the peninsula. Tradition tells that a few years
before his death he did actually send letters to the emperor Heraclius,
to the negus of Abyssinia, the king of Persia, and Cyrus, patriarch of
Alexandria, the "Mukaukis" of Egypt, summoning them to accept Islam and
threatening them with punishment in case of refusal. But the task of
carrying out these threats fell to the lot of his successors; the work
of the prophet was to be the subjugating and uniting of Arabia. This
work, scarcely begun in Mecca, was really started after the migration to
Medina by the formation of a party of men--the _Muhajirun_ (Refugees or
Emigrants) and the _Ansar_ (Helpers or Defenders)--who accepted Mahomet
as their religious leader. As the necessity of overcoming his enemies
became urgent, this party became military. A few successes in battle
attracted to him men who were interested in fighting and who were
willing to accept his religion as a condition of membership of his
party, which soon began to assume a national form. Mahomet early found
an excuse for attacking the Jews, who were naturally in the way of his
schemes. The Bani Nadir were expelled, the Bani Quraiza slaughtered. By
the time he had successfully stormed the rich Jewish town of Khaibar, he
had found that it was better to allow industrious Jews to remain in
Arabia as payers of tribute than to expel or kill them: this policy he
followed afterwards. The capture of Mecca (630) was not only an evidence
of his growing power, which induced Arabs throughout the peninsula to
join him, but gave him a valuable centre of pilgrimage, in which he was
able by a politic adoption of some of the heathen Arabian ceremonies
into his own rites to win men over the more easily to his own cause. At
his death in 623 Mahomet left Arabia practically unified. It is true
that rival prophets were leading rebellions in various parts of Arabia,
that the tax-collect