aying "war verily was a game
of deception." Nueim excited mutual distrust between the Jews and the
Koreish. He told the Jews not to fight against Mohammad until they got
hostages from the Koreish as a guarantee against their being deserted.
And to the Koreish he said that the Jews intended to ask hostages from
them. "Do not give them," he said, "they have promised Mahomet to give
up the hostages to be slain."[269]

This is one tradition, and there is another to the effect that the Jews
had themselves asked for the hostages, but the Koreish had not replied
yet, when Nueim came to the Jews and said, he was there with Abu Sofian
when their messenger had come for the demand of hostages, and that Abu
Sofian is not going to send them any.[270]

A third tradition in Motamid Ibn Solyman's supplement to Wackidi's
_Campaigns of Mohammad_ gives no such story at all. It has altogether a
different narration to the effect, that there was a spy of the Koreish
in the Moslem camp who had overheard Abdullah-bin-Rawaha saying, that
the Jews had asked the Koreish to send them seventy persons, who, on
their arrival, would be killed by them. Nueim went to the Koreish, who
were waiting for his message, and told what he had heard as already
related.[271] This contradicts the story given by Ibn Hisham and Mr.
Muir. But anyhow the story does not prove that Mohammad had given
permission to Nueim to speak falsehood or spread treacherous reports.

[Sidenote: 80. Deception in way allowed by the international law.]

Sir W. Muir is not justified in his remarks when he writes,--"We cannot,
indeed, approve the employment of Nueim to break up the confederacy by
falsehood and deception, but this perhaps would hardly affect his
character in Arab estimation;"[272] and further on he writes,--"When
Medina was beleagured by the confederate army, Mahomet sought the
services of Nueim, a traitor, and employed him to sow distrust among the
enemy by false and treacherous reports: for," said he, "what else is war
but a game at deception."[273] The utmost that can be made out from the
former tradition quoted by Mr. Muir, and contradicted by another
tradition of equal force, is that Mohammad allowed deception in war by
quoting the proverbial saying, that "war is a game at deception." In
this he had the sanction of the military law or the international law,
as deception in war is a "military necessity," and allowed by the law
and usages of war. A modern author on th