that he sent out written
challenges to the six princes of the world best known to him. Yet we
may say that Mohammed's successors in the guidance of his community, by
continuing their expansion towards the north, after the suppression of the
apostasy that followed his death, remained in Mohammed's line of action.
There is even more evident continuity in the development of the empire of
the Omayyads out of the state of Mohammed, than in the series of events
by which we see the dreaded Prince-Prophet of Medina grew out of the
"possessed one" of Mecca. But if Mohammed had been able to foresee how the
unity of Arabia, which he nearly accomplished, was to bring into being a
formidable international empire, we should expect some indubitable traces
of this in the Qoran; not a few verses of dubious interpretation, but
some certain sign that the Revelation, which had repeatedly, and with the
greatest emphasis, called itself a "plain Arabic Qoran" intended for those
"to whom no warner had yet been sent," should in future be valid for the
'Ajam, the Barbarians, as well as for the Arabs.

Even if we ascribe to Mohammed something of the universal program, which
the later tradition makes him to have drawn up, he certainly could not
foresee the success of it. For this, in the first place, the economic and
political factors to which some scholars of our day would attribute the
entire explanation of the Islam movement, must be taken into consideration.
Mohammed did to some extent prepare the universality of his religion and
make it possible. But that Islam, which came into the world as the Arabian
form of the one, true religion, has actually become a universal religion,
is due to circumstances which had little to do with its origin.[1] This
extension of the domain to be subdued to its spiritual rule entailed
upon Islam about three centuries of development and accommodation, of a
different sort, to be sure, but not less drastic in character than that of
the Christian Church.

[Footnote 1: Sir William Muir was not wrong when he said: "From first to
last the summons was to Arabs and to none other... The seed of a universal
creed had indeed been sown; but that it ever germinated was due to
circumstances rather than design."]

II

THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF ISLAM

We can hardly imagine a poorer, more miserable population than that of the
South-Arabian country Hadramaut. All moral and social progress is there
impeded by the conti