entering the Mosque bound himself to one of
its pillars, whence it is called the Pillar of Repentance to this day. At
last the Jews, worn out with the siege, without resources, allies, or any
hope of relief, surrendered at discretion to the Beni Aus. Immediately
their citadel was seized and plundered, while their men were handcuffed
and kept apart, their women and children given into the keeping of a
renegade Jew. Their cattle were driven into Medina before their eyes, and
soon the whole tribe was withdrawn from its ancestral habitation,
awaiting what might come from the hand of their terrible foe.

Then Mahomet pronounced judgment. He sent for Sa'ad ibn Muadh, the chief
of the Beni Aus, and into his hands he gave the fate of all those souls
who belonged to the tribe of Koreitza. Sa'ad was elderly, fat, irritable,
and vindictive. He had a long-standing grudge against this people, and
knew nothing of the mercy which greater men bestow upon the fallen.

"My judgment is that the men shall be put to death, the women and
children sold into slavery, and the spoil divided among the army."

Mahomet was exultant at the sentence.

"Truly the judgment of Sa'ad is the judgment of God pronounced on high
from beyond the seventh Heaven."

It accorded with his mood of angry resentment against the earlier
treachery of the Koreitza, but why he deputed its pronouncement to Sa'ad
instead of taking it upon himself is not easy to discover. Possibly he
may have dreaded to acquire such a reputation for cruelty as this would
bestow upon him, possibly he wished to make clear to the world that the
Jews had been doomed to death by a member of their allied tribe.
Certainly he welcomed the terrible sentence, and ensured its
accomplishment. The Koreitza were dragged pitilessly to Medina, the men
kept together under strict guard, the women and children made ready to be
sold at the marts within the city.

That night the outskirts of Medina became the scene of grim activity. In
the soft darkness of the Arabian night Mahomet's followers laboured with
dreadful haste at the digging of many trenches. The day dawned upon their
uncompleted work, and not until the sun was high did they return to the
heart of the city. Then the men of the Koreitza were divided into
companies and led out in turn to the trenches. The slaughter began. As
they filed to the edge of the pits they were struck down by the waiting
Muslim, so that their bodies fell into the common g