of the Jews voiced itself more and more loudly as the year advanced. The
suras of the period are full of revilings and threats against them, and
form a greater contrast coming after the later Meccan suras wherein
Israel was honoured and its heroes held up as examples. A few Jews had
been won over to his cause, but the mass showed themselves either hostile
or indifferent to the federal idea. As yet no definite sundering
of relationships had occurred, but everything pointed to a speedy
dissolution of the treaty unless one side or the other moderated its
views.

The autumn of 628 saw Mahomet fully established in Medina. He had made
his worth known by his energy and organising power, by his devotion to
Allah and his zeal for the faith he had founded. The Medinans regarded
him already as their natural leader, and he had definitely adopted their
city as his headquarters. Through his skill as a statesman and his
loyalty to an idea he wrought out, the foundations of his future state,
and if the latter months of 623 saw him not yet strong enough to overcome
the Meccans, at least he was so firmly established that he could afford
to dispense with any overtures to the increasingly hostile Jews, and he
had gained sufficient adherents to allow him to contemplate with
equanimity the prospect of a sharp and prolonged struggle with the
Kureisch.




CHAPTER X


THE SECESSION OF THE JEWS