d continue. Then the people of Taif, hoping once more for clemency,
asked to be released from the obligation of daily prayer. This request
Mahomet also refused, but in deference to their ancestral worship, and no
doubt in some pity for their plight, he allowed their idol to be
destroyed by other hands than their own. Abu Sofian and Molleima were
despatched with a covering force to destroy the great image Lat, which
had stood for time immemorial in the centre of Taif and was the shrine
for all the prayers and devotions of that fair and ancient city.

Taif was the last stronghold of the idolaters. When that had fallen
beneath the sway of the Prophet and his remote, austerely majestic
God-head, indivisible and personless, the doom of the old gods was at
hand. They were dethroned from their high places at the bidding of a man;
but they had not bowed their heads before his proclaimed message, but
before the strength of his armies, the onward sweep of his ceaseless and
victorious warfare. To Mahomet, indeed, Allah had never shown himself
more gracious than at the fall of idolatrous Taif. He resolved thereupon
that the crowning act of homage should be fulfilled. He would make a
solemn journey to the holy city, and accomplish the Greater Pilgrimage
with purified rites freed from the curse of the worship of many gods.

But when he came to the setting forth, and the sacred month of Dzul Higg
was upon him, he found that many idolatrous practices still remained as
part of the great ceremonial. He could not contaminate himself by
undertaking the pilgrimage while these remained, but he could send Abu
Bekr to ensure that none should remain after this year's cleansing. He
was now strong enough to insist that the rooting out of idolatry was his
chief policy, and to make the breaking up of the ancestral gods incumbent
upon the whole country. Abu Bekr was commissioned to set forth upon his
task with 300 men, and to spare neither himself nor them until the
mission was accomplished and every idolatrous practice blotted out.

And now follows one of the most characteristic acts Mahomet ever
performed, wherein obligation is made to bow to expediency and the bonds
of treaties snap and break before the wind of the Prophet's will. Abu
Bekr had started but one day's journey upon the Meccan road when Ali was
sent after him with a document bearing the Prophet's seal. This he was to
read to the Faithful, and receive their pledge that they would act u