Page:History of Mahomet, that grand impostor.pdf/28

 near that city. He retained however, the office of chief priest of his religion, and transmitted both the regal and pontifical functions to his successors, which continued so for near 300 years after his death, when the governors of the several provinces of the empire assumed the regal authority, and left the Caliph nothing but the priesthood.

When Mahomet had finished his mosque at Medina, he used to officiate in it himself; praying and preaching to the people, as he leaned upon a piece of a beam or stump of a tree, driven into the ground for that purpose; but being now advanced to the regal dignity, he did not think this accommodation suitable to his grandeur; and therefore by the advice of one of his wives, he caused a pulpit to be erected, with a seat in it, from whence he afterwards harangued the audience. Hereupon, say the Mahometans, the beam or stump he used to lean on groaned, thereby expressing its grief for being thus deserted, and no longer thought worthy to be employed in so honourable a service.

Mahomet still vigorously pushed on the war against the Jewish Arabs, and having taken the city of Choibar, fixed his quarters in the house of one of the principle inhabitants, whose daughter dressing a shoulder of mutton for his supper, poisoned it, in order to make trial whether he was a prophet or not, as she herself acknowledged; for if he was a prophet, she concluded, he could certainly know that the meat was poisoned, and so would receive no harm: but if he was not a prophet, she thought it would be doing the world a good service to rid it of so great a tyrant and impostor