Page:The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930).pdf/19



In the first year of his reign at Yathrib the Prophet made a solemn treaty with the Jewish tribes, which secured to them equal rights of citizenship and full religious liberty in return for their support of the new State. But their idea of a Prophet was one who would give them dominion, not one who made the Jews who followed him brothers of every Arab who might happen to believe as they did. When they found that they could not use the Prophet for their own ends, they tried to shake his faith in his Mission and to seduce his followers; behaviour in which they were encouraged secretly by some professing Muslims who considered they had reason to resent the Prophet's coming, since it robbed them of their local influence. In the Madînah sûrahs there is frequent mention of these Jews and Hypocrites.

Till then the Qiblah (the place toward which the Muslims turn their face in prayer) had been Jerusalem. The Jews imagined that the choice implied a leaning toward Judaism and that the Prophet stood in need of their instruction. He received command to change the Qiblah from Jerusalem to the Ka'bah at Mecca. The whole first part of sûrah II relates to this Jewish controversy.

The Prophet's first concern as ruler was to establish public worship and lay down the constitution of the State; but he did not forget that Qureysh had sworn to make an end of his religion, nor that he had received command to fight against them till they ceased from persecution. After he had been twelve months in Yathrib several small expeditions went out, led either by the Prophet himself or some other of the fugitives from Mecca, for the purpose of tions reconnoitring and of dissuading other tribes from siding with Qureysh. These are generally represented as warlike but, considering their weakness and the fact that they did not result in fighting, they can hardly have been that, though it is certain that they