xercise of his religion in the place that was its sanctuary.
Faith, backed by the strength and wealth of his armies, now gathered in
the choicest of his opponents. The time was come when he was beginning to
taste the wine of success. He had scarcely penetrated the borderland of
that delectable garden, but the first meagre fruit thereof was sweet. It
spurred him on to the perpetual renewal of alertness that he might keep
what he had won and pursue his way to the innermost far-off enclosure,
around the portal of which was written, as a mandate for all the world:
"Bear witness, there is no God but God, and Mahomet is His Prophet."

The Fulfilled Pilgrimage, however, was but the preliminary to his
master-stroke of policy strengthened by force of arms: months of hard
fighting and diplomacy were needed before he could direct the blow that
made his triumph possible. For the time he had simply made clear to
Arabia that Mecca was his holy city, the queen of his would-be dominion,
and by scrupulous performance of the old religious rites he had
identified Islam both to his followers and to the Meccans themselves with
the ancient fadeless traditions of their earlier faith, purified and made
permanent by their homage to one God, "the Compassionate, the Merciful,
the Mighty, the Wise."

CHAPTER XVIII

THE TRIUMPHAL ENTRY

"When the help of God and the Victory arrive,
And thou seest men entering the religion of God by troops,
Then utter the praise of thy Lord, implore His pardon, for He
loveth to turn in mercy."--_The Kuran._

After the swordless triumph of Dzul Cada, 629, Mahomet rested in Medina
for about nine months, while he sent out his leaders of expeditions into
all parts of the peninsula wherever a rising was threatened, or where he
saw the prospect of a conversion by force of arms. The Beni Suleim, whose
more powerful allies, the Ghatafan, had given Mahomet much trouble in the
past, were still recusant. Mahomet sent an expedition to essay their
conversion early in the year, but the Suleim persisted in their enmity
and received the Muslim envoys with a shower of arrows. They retired
hastily, being insufficiently equipped to risk an attack, and came back
to Medina. The Prophet, unabashed, now sent a detachment against the Beni
Leith. The encampment was surprised, their camels plundered, their
chattels seized, while they themselves were forced to flee in haste to
the fastnesses of the desert. The Beni Murra,