The Qur'an

106	THE MADINA PERIOD

and his companions have desecrated the holy month by shedding blood, seizing goods and making captives in it;' but this violation of the sacred months lost him no followers, for the actors in it retained four-fifths of the plunder for themselves.

These small warlike expeditions provided the booty which was so necessary, for the Muslims were then very poor.¹ They also prepared the way for greater efforts, and in the revelations of this period a distinct advance is made in inculcating the spirit of retaliation and in stirring up a feeling of military ardour. Sura Ar-Ra'd (xiii) is the latest Meccan one, but the forty-first verse belongs to the Madina period and must have been inserted in this Sura afterwards either by Muhammad himself, or by compilers of the Qur'an. It refers to the encroachments of the Muslims over the territories of the pagan Arabs:—

See they not that we come into their land and cut short its borders? God pronounceth a doom, and there is none to reverse this doom. Sura Ar Ra'd (xiii) 41.

Sura Al-Hajj (xxii) is most probably a Meccan one, but some verses are clearly of a later date and belong to Madina, such as:—

A sanction is given to those who because they have suffered outrages have taken up arms, and verily God is well able to succour them.
Those who have been driven from their homes wrongfully only because they say, 'Our Lord is the God.' 40-1.

¹ They were hewers of wood and drawers of water: Abu Bakr sold clothes; 'Uthman fruit and others were employed in servile occupations. For the original authorities in support of this statement, see Margoliouth, Mohammed, pp. 234-8.

THE WARLIKE SPIRIT

107

In the second year at Madina Muhammad saw clearly that open war with his countrymen was now unavoidable. So in Sura Al-Baqarah (ii) the earliest Madina one, we read:—

War is prescribed for you, but it is hateful to you; yet haply ye hate a thing which is better for you. 212-3.
Fight for the cause of God. 245.

There are in the same Sura verses of a similar character, but they probably belong to a somewhat later period, the time of the first pilgrimage to Mecca in the year, A.H. 7, and if so, they refer to the people of Mecca only, and in their case only if they should prove faithless to the treaty of Hudaibiyah.¹ The verses are:—

Fight for the cause of God against those who fight against you; but commit not the injustice of attacking them first.² God loveth not such injustice.
And kill them wherever ye shall find them, and eject them from whatever place they have ejected you, for civil discord is worse than carnage. 187-8.
Fight, therefore, against them until there be no more civil discord,³ and the only worship be that of God,

¹At the time of the first expedition against Mecca (A.H. 6) a treaty was made between them and Muhammad by which there was to be peace for ten years; tribes were to be free to join either side, regulations as regards runaways and renegades were made; the Muslims were to depart now, but, in the following year an unarmed body of Muslims was to be allowed to make the pilgrimage. This is referred to in Sura Al-Fath (xlviii) 1:—

Verily we have won for thee an undoubted victory.

For a full account of the Hudaibiya affair and of the treaty there made see Mirkhund, Raudatu's-Safa, part ii, vol. ii, pp. 494-504.
² At Hudaibiya, where the Muslims were encamped, their position, from a military point of view, was one of some danger. It was thus excellent tactics to advise the Muslims to remain on the defensive. The reference is purely to a local situation and its general application is clearly negated in the following verses.
³Rodwell, following Baidawi, interprets this to mean 'their driving you out of Mecca, or, the temptation to idolatry.' Sale translates it
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