The popular fury was merely the reflex of a fundamental division of
thought between the opposing parties. The Jewish and Muslim systems
could never coalesce, for each claimed the dominance and ignored all
compromise. The age-long, hallowed traditions of the Jews which supported
a theocracy as unyielding as any conception of Divine sovereignty
preached by Mahomet, found themselves faced with a new creative force
rapidly evolving its own legends, and strong enough in its enthusiasm to
overwhelm their own. The Rabbis felt that Mahomet and his warrior
heroes--Ali, Omar, Othman, and the rest--would in time dislodge from
their high places their own peculiar saints, just as they saw Mahomet
with Abu Bekr and his personnel of administrators and informers
already overriding their own councillors in the civil and military
departments of their state. The old regime could not amalgamate with the
new, for that would mean absorption by its more vigorous neighbour, and
the Jewish spirit is exclusive in essence and separatist perforce.
Mahomet took no pains to conciliate his allies; they had made a treaty
with him in the days of his insecurity and he was grateful, but now his
position in Medina was beyond assailment, and he was indifferent to their
goodwill. As their aggression increased he deliberately withdrew his
participation in their religious life, and severed his connection with
their rites and ordinances.

The Kibla of the Muslim, whither at every prayer they turned their faces,
and which he had declared to be the Temple at Jerusalem, scene of his
embarkation upon the wondrous "Midnight Journey," was now changed to the
Kaaba at Mecca. What prevision or prophetic inspiration prompted Mahomet
to turn his followers' eyes away from the north and fix them upon their
former home with its fierce and ruthless heat, the materialisation, it
seemed, of his own inexorable and passionate aims? Henceforth Mecca