and protector of the Faithful.  Lustration before prayer was instituted as symbolic of the Believers’ purification of heart before entering the presence of God, and provision for the ceremony made inside the Mosque.  The public service on Friday, instituted at Coba, was continued at Medina, and consisted chiefly of a sermon given by Mahomet from a pulpit, erected inside the Mosque, whose sanctity was proverbial and unassailed.  Thus the seed was sown of a corporate religious life, the embryo from which the Arabian military organisation, its polity, even its social system, were to spring.

In spite of the increasing numbers of the Ansar, there still remained a party in Medina, “the Disaffected,” who had not as yet accepted the Prophet or his creed.  Over these Mahomet exercised a strict surveillance, in accordance with his conviction that a successful ruler leaves nothing to Providence that he can discover and regulate for himself.  “Trust in God, but tie your camel.”  By this means, as well as by personal influence and exhortation, “Disaffected” were controlled and ultimately converted into good Muslim; for the more cautious of them—­those who waited to see how events would shape—­soon assured themselves of Mahomet’s capacity, and the weakly passive were caught in the swirl of enthusiasm surrounding the Prophet that continually drew unto itself all conditions of men within its ever-widening circle.

Having organised his own followers, and secured their immunity from internal strife, Mahomet was forced to turn his attention to the Jewish element within his adopted city, and to decide swiftly his policy towards the three Israelite tribes who comprised the wealthier and trading population of Medina.

From the first, Mahomet’s desires were in the direction of a federal union, wherein each party would follow his own faith and have control of his own tribal affairs and finances, save when the necessity of mutual protection against enemies called for a union of forces.  Again Mahomet framed his policy upon the doctrine of opportunism.  His ultimate aim was beyond doubt to unite both Jews and Medinans under his rule in a common religious and political bond, but he recognised the present impossibility of such action in view of the Jews’ greater stability and the weakness of his party within the city.  His negotiations and conciliations with the Jews offer one of the many examples of his supreme skill as a statesman.

The Jews themselves, taken almost unawares by the suddenness of Mahomet’s entry into their civic life, agreed to the treaty he proposed, and acquiesced unconsciously in his subtle attempts to merge the two faiths into a whole wherein Islam would be the dominant factor.  When Mahomet made Jerusalem his Kibla, or direction of prayer, and emphasised the connection between Jewish and Arabian history, they suffered these advances, and agreed to a treaty which would have formed the foundations of a political and social convergence and ultimate absorption of their own nation.