followers among the citizens of Medina.  At the utmost, therefore, the number of disciples gained over by the simple resort to teaching and preaching did not, during the first twelve years of Mohammed’s ministry, exceed a few hundreds.  It is true that the soil of Mecca was stubborn and (unlike that of Judea) wholly unprepared.  The cause also, at times, became the object of sustained and violent opposition.  Even so much of success was consequently, under the peculiar circumstances, remarkable.  But it was by no means singular.  The progress fell far short of that made by Christianity during the corresponding period of its existence,[36] and indeed by many reformers who have been the preachers of a new faith.  It gave no promise whatever of the marvelous spectacle that was about to follow.

[Sidenote:  II.  Change of policy at Medina, A.D. 622-632.  Arabia converted from Medina at the point of the sword.] Having escaped from Mecca and found a new and congenial home in Medina, Mohammed was not long in changing his front.  At Mecca, surrounded by enemies, he taught toleration.  He was simply the preacher commissioned to deliver a message, and bidden to leave the responsibility with his Master and his hearers.  He might argue with the disputants, but it must be “in a way most mild and gracious;” for “in religion” (such was his teaching before he reached Medina) “there should be neither violence nor constraint."[37] At Medina the precepts of toleration were quickly cast aside and his whole policy reversed.  No sooner did Mohammed begin to be recognized and obeyed as the chief of Medina than he proceeded to attack the Jewish tribes settled in the neighborhood because they refused to acknowledge his claims and believe in him as a prophet foretold in their Scriptures; two of these tribes were exiled, and the third exterminated in cold blood.  In the second year after the Hegira[a], or flight from Mecca (the period from which the Mohammedan era dates), he began to plunder the caravans of the Coreish, which passed near to Medina on their mercantile journeys between Arabia and Syria.  So popular did the cause of the now militant and marauding prophet speedily become among the citizens of Medina and the tribes around that, after many battles fought with varying success, he was able, in the eighth year of the Hegira[b] to re-enter his native city at the head of ten thousand armed followers.  Thenceforward success was assured.  None dared to oppose his pretensions.  And before his death, in the eleventh year of the Hegira[c], all Arabia, from Bab-el-Mandeb and Oman to the confines of the Syrian desert, was forced to submit to the supreme authority of the now kingly prophet and to recognize the faith and obligations of Islam.[38]