been responsible for its achievement of
stupendous tasks, for the driving energy behind was never appalled by
anticipation, nor checked by any realisation of coming stress and terror.
And the same qualities that led the Muslim to world-conquest thereafter
caused their downfall, for their minds could not visualise that world of
imagination necessary for any creative science, while they were not
attuned in intellect for the reception of such generative ideas as have
contributed to the philosophic and speculative development of the Western
world.

All the characteristics which distinguish Islam to the making and the
blasting of its fortunes may be found in embryo in the small Medinan
community; for their leader, by his own creative ardour, imposed upon his
flock every idea which shaped the form and content of its future career
from its rising even to its zenith and decline.

CHAPTER XI

THE BATTLE OF BEDR

_"They plotted, but God plotted, and of plotters is God the best."--The
Koran_.

Mahomet's star, now continually upon the ascendant, flamed into sudden
glory in Ramadan of the second year of the Hegira. Its brilliance and the
bewilderment caused by its triumphant continuance is reflected in all the
chronicles and legends clustered around that period.

If Nakhlu had been an achievement worthy of God's emissary, the victory
which followed it was an irrefutable argument in favour of Mahomet's
divinely ordained rulership of the Arabian peoples. It appeared to the
Muslim, and even to contemporary hostile tribes, nothing less than a
stupendous proof of their championship by God. Muslim poets and
historians are never weary of expatiating upon the glories achieved by
their tiny community with little but abiding zeal and supreme faith with
which to confound their foes. No military event in the life of the
Prophet called forth such rejoicings from his own lips as the triumph at
Bedr:

"O ye Meccans, if ye desired a decision, now hath the decision come to
you. It will be better for you if ye give over the struggle. If ye
return to it, we will return, and your forces, though they be many, shall
never avail you aught, for God is with the Faithful."

Through the whole of Sura viii the strain of exultation runs, the
presentment in dull words of fierce and splendid courage wrought out into
victory in the midst of the storms and lightnings of Heaven.

Such an earth-shaking event, the effects of which reached far beyon