lude in
the daily life of prayer, civil and domestic cares and regulations which
took up Mahomet's life in the breathing space before the great Meccan
attack.

Mahomet was absent from Medina but fifteen days, and he returned home
resolved to take advantage of the respite from war. Not long after his
return he happened to visit the house of Zeid, his adopted son, and
chanced not on Zeid, but on his wife at her tiring. Mahomet was filled
with her beauty, for her loveliness was past praise, and he coveted her.
Zeinab herself was proud of the honour vouchsafed her, and was willing,
indeed anxious, to become divorced for so mighty a ruler. Zeid, her
husband, with that measureless devotion which the Prophet inspired in his
followers, offered to divorce her for him. Mahomet at first refused,
declaring it was not meet that such a thing should be, but after a time
his desire proved too strong for him, and he consented. So Zeinab was
divorced, and passed into the harem of the Prophet. And he justified the
proceedings in Sura 33:

"And when Zeid had settled concerning her
to divorce her, we married her to thee, that it
might not be a crime in the Faithful to marry
the wives of their adopted sons, when they have
settled the affair concerning them.... No
blame attacheth to the Prophet when God hath
given him a permission."

There follows the sum of Mahomet's restrictions upon the dress and
demeanour of women. They are to veil their faces when abroad, and suffer
no man but their intimate kinsmen to look upon them. The Faithful are
forbidden to go near the dwelling-places of the Prophet's wives without
his permission, nor are they even to desire to marry them after the
Prophet is dead. By such casual means, by decrees born out of the
circumstances of his age and personal temperament, did Mahomet institute
the customs which are more vital to the position and fate of Muslim women
than all his utterances as to their just treatment and his injunctions
against their oppression.

Power was already taking its insidious hold upon him, and his feet were
set upon the path that led to the despotism of the Chalifate and the
horrors of Muslim conquests. Allah is still omnipotent, but He is making
continual and indispensable use of temporal means to achieve His ends,
and His servant does likewise.

After the interlude of peace, Mahomet was called upon in July, 626,
to undertake a punitive expedition to Jumat-al-Gandal, an oasi