acking party. They bore down upon the
Kureisch, showering arrows in their path, so that one man was killed and
several wounded. The rest forsook their merchandise and fled, leaving
behind them two prisoners, whose retreat had been cut off. Abdallah was
left in possession of the field, and joyfully he returned to Medina,
bearing with him the first plunder captured by the Muslim.

But his return led Mahomet into a quandary from which there seemed
no escape. Politically, he was bound to approve Abdallah's deed;
religiously, he could neither laud it nor share the fruits of it. For
days the spoils remained undivided, but Abdallah was not punished or even
reprimanded. Meanwhile, the Jews and the Kureisch vied with one another
in execrating Mahomet, and even his own people murmured against him. It
was clearly time that an authoritative sanction should be given to the
deed, and accordingly in the sura, "The Cow," we have the revelation from
Allah proclaiming the greater culpability of the Infidels and of those
who would stir up civil strife:

"They will ask thee concerning war in the Sacred Month. Say: To war
therein is bad, but to turn aside from the cause of God, and to have no
faith in Him, and in the Sacred Temple, and to drive out its people, is
worse in the sight of God; civil strife is worse than bloodshed."

No possible doubt must be cast in this and similar cases upon Mahomet's
sincerity. The Kuran was the vehicle of the Lord; he had used it to
proclaim his unity and power and his warnings to the unrighteous. Now
that Islam had recognised his august and indissoluble majesty, and had
accorded the throne of Heaven and the governance of earth to him
indivisibly, the world was split up into Believers and Unbelievers. The
Kuran, therefore, must of necessity cease to be merely the proclamation
of divine unity that it had been and become the vehicle for definite
orders and regulations, the outcome of those theocratic ideas upon which
Mahomet's creed was founded. The justification would not appeal to the
people unless Allah's sanction supported it, and Mahomet realised with
all his ardour of faith that the transgression was slight compared with
the result achieved towards the progress of Islam. The Prophet therefore
received, with Allah's approval, a fifth of the spoil, but the captives
he released after receiving ransom.

"This," says the historian, "was the first booty that Mahomet obtained,
the first captives they seized