Page:The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930).pdf/16

 from them. This they all signed, and it was deposited in the Ka'bah. Then, for three years, the Prophet was shut up with all his kinsfolk in their stronghold which was situated in one of the gorges which run down to Mecca. Only at the time of pilgrimage could he go out and preach, or did any of his kinsfolk dare to go into the city.

At length some kinder hearts among Qureysh grew weary of the boycott of old friends and neighbours. They managed to have the document which had been placed in the Ka'bah brought out for reconsideration; when it was found that all the writing had been destroyed by white ants, except the words Bismika Allâhumma ("In thy name, O Allah"). When the elders saw that marvel the ban was removed, and the Prophet was again free to go about the city. But meanwhile the opposition to his preaching had grown rigid. He had little success among the Meccans, and an attempt which he made to preach in the city of Tâ'îf was a failure. His Mission was a failure, judged by worldly standards, when, at the season of the yearly pilgrimage, he came upon a little group of men who heard him gladly.

They came from Yathrib, a city more than two hundred miles away, which has since become world-famous as Al-Madînah, "the City" par excellence. At Yathrib there were Jewish tribes with learned rabbis, who had often spoken to the pagans of a Prophet soon to come among the Arabs, with whom, when he came, the Jews would destroy the pagans as the tribes of A'âd and Thamûd had been destroyed of old for their idolatry. When the men from Yathrib saw Muhammad they recognised him as the Prophet whom the Jewish rabbis had described to them. On their return to Yathrib they told what they had seen and heard, with the result that at the next season of pilgrimage a deputation came from Yathrib purposely to meet the Prophet. These swore allegiance to him in the first pact of Al-'Aqabah, the oath they took being that which was afterwards exacted from women converts, with no mention of fighting. They then returned to Yathrib with a Muslim teacher in their company, and soon "there was not a house in Yathrib wherein there was not mention of the messenger of Allah."

In the following year, at the time of pilgrimage, seventy-three Muslims from Yathrib came to Mecca to vow allegiance to the Prophet and invite him to their city. At Al-'Aqabah, by night, swore to defend him as they would defend their own wives and