n him in any aggressive steps
towards the Koreish. The attention of Mohammad and his followers who had
fled with him was mainly occupied in preaching and teaching the tenets
of Islam, in establishing a fraternity between the refugees and the
citizens, in building a house for prayer, in providing houses for
refugees, in contracting treaties of neutrality with the Jews of Medina
and other surrounding tribes, Bani Zamra (a tribe connected with Mecca)
and also with Bani Mudlij (a tribe of Kinana related to the Koreish), in
anticipation of the impending danger[2] from the Koreish, who had
pursued them on the similar occasions before, and in organizing, above
all these, some of the religious and civil institutions for the
Moslems, who were now fast assuming the position of an independent
society or commonwealth. Under such circumstances, it was next to
impossible for Mohammad or his adherents to think of anything like an
offensive war with their inveterate foes, or to take up arms for
proselytizing purposes.

[Footnote 2: See Sura XXIV, verse 54.]

[Sidenote: The Koreish first attacked the Moslems at Medina. They could
not forbear the escape of the Moslems.]

6. The Koreish, seeing the persecuted had left almost all their native
lands for a distant city out of their approach, except by a military
expedition, and losing Mohammad, for whose arrest they had tried their
utmost, as well as upon hearing the reception, treatment, religious
freedom and brotherly help the Moslems received and enjoyed at Medina,
could not subdue their ferocious animosity against the exiles. The
hostility of the Koreish had already been aroused. The severity and
injustice of the Koreish was so great, that when, in 615 A.D., a party
of 11 Moslems had emigrated to Abyssinia, they had pursued them to
overtake them. And again, in 616 A.D., when the persecution by the
Koreish was hotter than before, a party of about 100 Moslems had fled
from Mecca to Abyssinia, the Koreish sent an embassy to Abyssinia to
obtain the surrender of the emigrants. There is every reason to believe
that the Koreish, enraged as they were on the escape of the Moslems in
their third and great emigration in 622 A.D., would naturally have
taken every strong and hostile measure to persecute the fugitives.[3]

It was in the second year from the general expulsion of the Moslems from
Mecca that the Koreish, with a large army of one thousand strong,
marched upon the Moslems at Medina.