ontempt at Mecca, gaining none to his cause, but still filled with
the fervent conviction of his future triumph, which neither wavered
nor faltered. The divine fire which upheld him during the period of
his violent persecution burned within his soul, and never was his
steadfastness of character and faith in himself and his mission more
fully manifested than during these despondent months.

He now began to seek in greater measure the society of women, although
the consuming sexual life of his later years had hardly awakened. While
Khadijah was with him he remained faithful to her, but her bright
presence once withdrawn, he was impelled by a kind of impassioned seeking
to the quest for her substitute, and not finding it in one woman, to
continue his search among others. He now married Sawda, a nonentity with
a certain physical charm but no personality, and sued for the hand of
Ayesha, the small daughter of Abu Bekr.

Mahomet at this time was not blessed with many riches. His frugal,
anxious life led him to perform many small duties of his household for
himself. His food was coarse and often scanty, and he lived among his
followers as one of themselves. It is no small tribute to his singleness
of mind and lofty character that in the "dreary intercourse of daily
life," lived in that primitive, communal fashion, which admits of no
illusions and scarcely any secrets, he retained by the force of
personality the reverence of the faithful, and ever in this hour of
defeat and negation remained their leader and lord--the symbol, in fact,
of their loyalty to Allah, and their supreme belief in his guidance and
care.

CHAPTER VII

THE CHOSEN CITY

Medina, city of exile and despairing beginnings, destined to achieve
glory by difficult ways, only to be eclipsed finally by its mightier
neighbour and mistress, became, rather by chance than by design, the
scene of Mahomet's struggles for temporal power and his ruthless wielding
of the sword for God and Islam. The city lies north-east of Mecca, on the
opposite side of the mountain spur that skirts the eastern boundary.
Always weakly peopled, it remained from immemorial time an arena of
strife, for it was on the borderland, the boundary of several tribes, and
was far enough north for the outer waves of Syrian disturbances to fling
their varying tides upon its shores--a meagre city, always fiercely at
civil warfare, impotent, unfertile.

In the dark days of Judaea's humiliatio