Page:Thomas Patrick Hughes - Notes on Muhammadanism - 2ed. (1877).djvu/47

 26 nological sequence. If, therefore, we arrange them according to the order which is given in Syuty's Itqán, we shall not fail to mark the gradual development of Muhammad's mind from that of a mere moral teacher and reformer, to that of a prophet and warrior chief. The contrast between the earlier, middle, and later Súrás is very striking. He who at Mecca is the admonisher and persuader, at Medína is the legislator and the warrior, who dictates obedience, and uses other weapons than the pen of the poet and the scribe. When business pressed, as at Medína, poetry makes way for prose; and although touches of the poetical element occasionally break forth, and he has to defend himself up to a very late period against the charge of being merely a poet, yet this is rarely the case in the Medína Súrás, in which we go frequently meet with injunctions to obey God and the Prophet.

To fully realize the gradual growth of Mu-