k in the Qoran, and with
great cautiousness in the Tradition, a few principal points of his life and
work, in order to see how in his mind the intense feeling of discontent
during the misery of his youth, together with a great self-reliance, a
feeling of spiritual superiority to his surroundings, developed into
a call, the form of which was largely decided by Jewish and Christian
influence.

While being struck by various weaknesses which disfigured this great
personality and which he himself freely confessed, we must admire the
perseverance with which he retained his faith in his divine mission, not
discouraged by twelve years of humiliation, nor by the repudiation of the
"People of Scripture," upon whom he had relied as his principal witnesses,
nor yet by numbers of temporary rebuffs during his struggle for the
dominion of Allah and His Messenger, which he carried on through the whole
of Arabia.

Was Mohammed conscious of the universality of his mission? In the beginning
he certainly conceived his work as merely the Arabian part of a universal
task, which, for other parts of the world, was laid upon other messengers.
In the Medina period he ever more decidedly chose the direction of "forcing
to comply." He was content only when the heathens perceived that further
resistance to Allah's hosts was useless; their understanding of his "clear
Arabic Qoran" was no longer the principal object of his striving. _Such_
an Islam could equally well be forced upon _non-Arabian_ heathens. And,
as regards the "People of Scripture," since Mohammed's endeavour to be
recognized by them had failed, he had taken up his position opposed to
them, even above them. With the rise of his power he became hard and cruel
to the Jews in North-Arabia, and from Jews and Christians alike in Arabia
he demanded submission to his authority, since it had proved impossible to
make them recognize his divine mission. This demand could quite logically
be extended to all Christians; in the first place to those of the Byzantine
Empire. But did Mohammed himself come to these conclusions in the last part
of his life? Are the words in which Allah spoke to him: "We have sent thee
to men in general,"[1] and a few expressions of the same sort, to be taken
in that sense, or does "humanity" here, as in many other places in the
Qoran, mean those with whom Mohammed had especially to do? Noldeke is
strongly of opinion that the principal lines of the program of conquest
ca