and my vizier?" [113] No answer was returned, till the silence of
astonishment, and doubt, and contempt, was at length broken by the
impatient courage of Ali, a youth in the fourteenth year of his age. "O
prophet, I am the man: whosoever rises against thee, I will dash out his
teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly. O prophet,
I will be thy vizier over them." Mahomet accepted his offer with
transport, and Abu Taled was ironically exhorted to respect the superior
dignity of his son. In a more serious tone, the father of Ali advised
his nephew to relinquish his impracticable design.

"Spare your remonstrances," replied the intrepid fanatic to his uncle
and benefactor; "if they should place the sun on my right hand, and
the moon on my left, they should not divert me from my course." He
persevered ten years in the exercise of his mission; and the religion
which has overspread the East and the West advanced with a slow and
painful progress within the walls of Mecca. Yet Mahomet enjoyed the
satisfaction of beholding the increase of his infant congregation of
Unitarians, who revered him as a prophet, and to whom he seasonably
dispensed the spiritual nourishment of the Koran. The number of
proselytes may be esteemed by the absence of eighty-three men and
eighteen women, who retired to Aethiopia in the seventh year of his
mission; and his party was fortified by the timely conversion of his
uncle Hamza, and of the fierce and inflexible Omar, who signalized
in the cause of Islam the same zeal, which he had exerted for its
destruction. Nor was the charity of Mahomet confined to the tribe of
Koreish, or the precincts of Mecca: on solemn festivals, in the days
of pilgrimage, he frequented the Caaba, accosted the strangers of every
tribe, and urged, both in private converse and public discourse, the
belief and worship of a sole Deity. Conscious of his reason and of his
weakness, he asserted the liberty of conscience, and disclaimed the use
of religious violence: [114] but he called the Arabs to repentance, and
conjured them to remember the ancient idolaters of Ad and Thamud, whom
the divine justice had swept away from the face of the earth. [115]

[Footnote 111: Before I enter on the history of the prophet, it is
incumbent on me to produce my evidence. The Latin, French, and English
versions of the Koran are preceded by historical discourses, and the
three translators, Maracci, (tom. i. p. 10-32,) Savary, (tom. i