courage of the faithful was stimulated
by the promise of rich booty and by the assurance that those who fell
in battle would go straight to the joys of Paradise; and the wars
they waged acquired in consequence a relentless character which was
new in Arabia. They were allowed to fight in the sacred month, in
which ancient custom ordained a universal truce. They fought with a
gloomy determination, and used their victories with a relentless
cruelty, which excited the consternation and horror of all witnesses.
They did not scruple, as other Arabs did, to fight against their
kinsmen. "Islam has rent all bonds asunder, Islam has blotted out all
treaties," they said, when reproached with their disregard of old
understandings. The prophet himself was foremost in this unrelenting
policy. Captives taken in battle were slaughtered; a whole tribe was
massacred which had joined the enemy, and had surrendered after a
siege in the hope of merciful treatment.

Breach with Judaism and Christianity.--As Mahomet thus freed himself,
in spreading the faith of "the most merciful God," from all
considerations of mercy and of honour, he also shook off, as his
position grew strong, relations which might have proved embarrassing
with other religions. In his earlier teaching he speaks of his own
religion as being substantially the same as Judaism and Christianity.
All three have "the Book"; the Koran is a continuation and supplement
of the Jewish and Christian revelations, and he is only the last
figure in the great line of prophets who had appeared in these
religions. Like other founders, he did not at first intend to found a
new religion, but only to bring to light again and restore to
authority the original truths of these faiths, which had become
obscured. His attitude at first, therefore, was friendly to both Jews
and Christians, and his friendly feelings for the former were likely
to be strengthened by the circumstances of his coming to Medina. Not
long after his arrival, however, his attitude towards the Jews was
changed. His followers had at first prayed with their faces turned in
the direction of Jerusalem; but the prophet ordained that this should
be altered, and that they should pray with their faces turned not
towards Jerusalem but towards Mecca. This setting of a new "kiblah"
as it is called, declared that Islam was a different religion from
Judaism, and had an Arab not a Jewish centre. The hostility to the
Jews, of which this was a