nnumerable unexpected obstacles
which he encountered. Hence the variability of the practical directions
contained in the Qoran; they are constantly altered according to
circumstances. Allah's words during the last part of Mohammed's life:
"This day have I perfected your religion for you, and have I filled up
the measure of my favours towards you, and chosen Islam for you as your
religion," have in no way the meaning of the exclamation: "It is finished,"
of the dying Christ. They are only a cry of jubilation over the degradation
of the heathen Arabs by the triumph of Allah's weapons. At Mohammed's death
everything was still unstable; and the vital questions for Islam were
subjects of contention between the leaders even before the Prophet had been
buried.

The expedient of new revelations completing, altering, or abrogating former
ones had played an important part in the legislative work of Mohammed. Now,
he had never considered that by his death the spring would be stopped,
although completion was wanted in every respect. For, without doubt,
Mohammed felt his weakness in systematizing and his absence of clearness
of vision into the future, and therefore he postponed the promulgation of
divine decrees as long as possible, and he solved only such questions
of law as frequently recurred, when further hesitation would have been
dangerous to his authority and to the peace of the community.

At Mohammed's death, all Arabs were not yet subdued to his authority.
The expeditions which he had undertaken or arranged beyond the northern
boundaries of Arabia, were directed against Arabs, although they were
likely to rouse conflict with the Byzantine and Persian empires. It would
have been contrary to Mohammed's usual methods if this had led him to form
a general definition of his attitude towards the world outside Arabia.

As little as Mohammed, when he invoked the Meccans in wild poetic
inspirations to array themselves behind him to seek the blessedness of
future life, had dreamt of the possibility that twenty years later the
whole of Arabia would acknowledge his authority in this world, as little,
nay, much less, could he at the close of his life have had the faintest
premonition of the fabulous development which his state would reach half
a century later. The subjugation of the mighty Persia and of some of the
richest provinces of the Byzantine Empire, only to mention these, was never
a part of his program, although legend has it