unt of them, the reader is referred to pages 87-91 of this book.

[Sidenote: Expedition to Tabuk to check the advancing enemy. No war took
place.]

13. The expedition of Mecca, already described, ended in a submission
and compromise without any resort to arms; that against Tabuk was
undertaken, as it is admitted by all writers, Moslem and European, for
purely defensive purposes. Mohammad was much alarmed on this occasion
owing to the threatening news of a foreign invasion against the Moslem
commonwealth. The following verses of the Ninth Sura are most probably
directed towards the Romans and their Jewish and Christian allies,[19]
if not towards the Jews of Khyber:--

29. "Make war upon such of those to whom the Scriptures have been
given as believe not in God or in the last day, and who forbid not
that which God and His Apostle have forbidden, and who profess not
the profession of the Truth, until they pay tribute out of hand,
and they be humbled."

124. "Believers wage war against such of the unbelievers as are
your neighbours, and let them assuredly find rigour in you, and
know that God is with those who fear him."--_Sura IX._

Mohammad returned without any war, and there was no occasion to carry
out the injunctions contained in these verses.

Mohammad had taken great pains, according to the severity of the
impending danger, to induce the Moslems to go to war in their own
defence. But as the season was hot, and the journey a long one, some of
them were very backward in doing so.

There is a very violent denunciation against those who on various false
pretences held back on the occasion.

[Footnote 19: The Jews of Macna Azruh and Jabra, and the Christian
Chiefs of Ayla and Duma.]

[Sidenote: Number of the wars of Mohammad.]

14. The above sketch of the hostilities will show that there were only
five battles in which actual fighting took place. The biographers of
Mohammad and the narrators of his campaigns are too lax in enumerating
the expeditions led by Mohammad. They have noted down the names and
accounts of various expeditions without having due regard to a rational
criticism, or without being bound by the stringent laws of the technical
requirements of traditionary evidence. Consequently, they give us
romances of the expeditions without specifying which of them are true
and which fictitious. There are many expeditions enumerated by the
biographers[20] which ha