Page:The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930).pdf/25

 allies of the Prophet might do so, and any tribe or clan who wished to share in the treaty as allies of Qureysh might do so.

There was dismay among the Muslims at these terms. They asked one another: "Where is the victory that we were promised?" It was during the return journey from Al-Ḥudeybiyah that the sûrah entitled "Victory" was revealed. This truce proved, in fact, to be the greatest victory that the Muslims had till then achieved. War had been a barrier between them and the idolaters, but now both parties met and talked together, and the new religion spread more rapidly. In the two years which elapsed between the signing of the truce and the fall of Mecca the number of converts was greater than the total number of all previous converts. The Prophet travelled to Al-Ḥudeybiyah with 1400 men. Two years later, when the Meccans broke the truce, he marched against them with an army of 10,000.

In the seventh year of the Hijrah the Prophet led a campaign against Kheybar, the stronghold of the Jewish tribes in North Arabia, which had become a hornets' nest of his enemies. The forts of Kheybar were reduced one by one, and the Jews of Kheybar became thenceforth tenants of the Muslims until the expulsion of the Jews from Arabia in the Caliphate of Omar. On the day when the last fort surrendered Ja'far son of Abû Tâlib, the Prophet's first cousin, arrived with all who remained of the Muslims who had fled to Abyssinia to escape from persecution in the early days. They had been absent from Arabia fifteen years. It was at Kheybar that a Jewess prepared for the Prophet poisoned meat, of which he only tasted a morsel without swallowing it, then warned his comrades that it was poisoned. One Muslim, who had already swallowed a mouthful, died immediately, and the Prophet himself, from the mere taste of it, derived the illness which eventually caused his death. The woman who had cooked the meat was brought before him. When she said that she had done it on account of the humiliation of her people, he forgave her.

In the same year the Prophet's vision was fulfilled: he visited the holy place at Mecca unopposed. In accordance with the terms of the truce the idolaters evacuated the city, and from the surrounding heights watched the procedure of the Muslims. At the end of the stipulated three days the chiefs of Qureysh sent to remind the Prophet