centre of his first great propaganda.
There Mahomet died; in the Great Mosque is his tomb, and Medina is
sometimes called the "City of the Prophet." From this centre began
the development and spread of Islam into a world-religion, which
has flourished to the present day, when its followers are estimated
at nearly two hundred millions, having large empire and still wider
influence among some of the most important races of the East.

WASHINGTON IRVING

The fortunes of Mahomet were becoming darker and darker in his native
place. Kadijah, his original benefactress, the devoted companion of his
solitude and seclusion, the zealous believer in his doctrines, was in
her grave; so also was Abu-Taleb, once his faithful and efficient
protector. Deprived of the sheltering influence of the latter, Mahomet
had become, in a manner, an outlaw in Mecca; obliged to conceal himself,
and remain a burden on the hospitality of those whom his own doctrines
had involved in persecution. If worldly advantage had been his object,
how had it been attained? Upward of ten years had elapsed since first he
announced his prophetic mission; ten long years of enmity, trouble, and
misfortune. Still he persevered, and now, at a period of life when men
seek to enjoy in repose the fruition of the past, rather than risk all
in new schemes for the future, we find him, after having sacrificed
ease, fortune, and friends, prepared to give up home and country also,
rather than his religious creed.

As soon as the privileged time of pilgrimage arrived, he emerged once
more from his concealment, and mingled with the multitude assembled from
all parts of Arabia. His earnest desire was to find some powerful tribe,
or the inhabitants of some important city, capable and willing to
receive him as a guest, and protect him in the enjoyment and propagation
of his faith.

His quest was for a time unsuccessful. Those who had come to worship at
the Kaaba[49] drew back from a man stigmatized as an apostate; and the
worldly-minded were unwilling to befriend one proscribed by the powerful
of his native place.

At length, as he was one day preaching on the hill Al Akaba, a little to
the north of Mecca, he drew the attention of certain pilgrims from the
city of Yathreb. This city, since called Medina, was about two hundred
and seventy miles north of Mecca. Many of its inhabitants were Jews and
heretical Christians. The pilgrims in question were