ans of Mecca are
said to have happened during the first and the second year of the
Hegira, or before the battle of Badr. It remains for me now to mention
the only remaining instance of Moslem's foray upon the Koreishite
caravan, which took place in the sixth year A.H. at _Al-Is_. The attack
was completely successful.

[Sidenote: 42. The interceptions were impossible under the circumstances
in which Mohammad was placed.]

I have already explained (from paras. 21-24) that these early
expeditions, numbered 1 to 8, are not corroborated by authentic and
trustworthy traditions, and I have also given the probable nature of
those marked 4, 5 and 6.

It was impossible for Mohammad and his adherents, situated as they were,
to make any hostile demonstrations or undertake a pillaging enterprise.
The inhabitants of Medina, where the Prophet with his followers had
sought a safe asylum, and at whose invitation he had entered their city,
had solemnly bound themselves on sacred oaths to defend Mohammad, so
long as he was not himself the aggressor, from his enemies as they would
their wives and their children.[202] Mohammad, on his own part, had
entered into a holy compact with them not to plunder or commit
depredations.[203]

Upon these considerations it was impossible that the people of Medina
would have permitted or overlooked the irruptions so often committed by
Mohammad upon the caravans of the Koreish: much less would they have
joined with their Prophet, had he or any of his colleagues ventured to
do so. But granting that the Medinites allowed Mohammad to manifest
enmity towards the Koreish by a display of arms, or that no restraint
was put by them upon him when he encroached upon the territories of the
neighbouring tribes, and that the caravans were molested without any
grounds of justice, was it possible, I ask, for the people of Medina to
avoid the troubles they would be necessarily involved in by the refuge
they had given to their Prophet? They had long suffered from internal
feuds, and the sanguinary conflict of Boas, a few years ago, which had
paralyzed their country, and humiliated its citizens, was but too fresh
in their memory yet.

[Sidenote: 43. The interceptions, if occurred, were justified by way of
reprisals.]

Let us suppose that these alleged interceptions of the Meccan caravans
by the Moslems did actually take place, as related by the biographers of
Mohammad, were they not all justified by the International