al an entry as his former one. The populace
awaited him in expectation and reverence, and hailed him as their
Prophet, the mighty leader who had come to their deliverance. They
surrounded his camel Al-Caswa, and the camels of his followers, and when
Al-Caswa stopped outside the house of Abu Ayub, Mahomet once more
received the beast's augury and sojourned there until the building of the
Mosque. As Al-Caswa entered the paved courtyard, Mahomet dismounted to
receive the allegiance of Abu Ayub and his household; then, turning to
the people, he greeted them with words of good cheer and encouragement,
and they responded with acclamations.

For seven months the Prophet lodged in the house of Abu Ayub, and he
bought the yard where Al-Caswa halted as a token of his first entry into
Medina, and a remembrance in later years of his abiding place during the
difficult time of his inception. The decisive step had been taken. The
die was now cast. It was as if the little fleet of human souls had
finally cast its moorings and ventured into the unpathed waters of
temporal dominion under the command of one whose skill in pilotage was as
yet unknown. Many changes became necessary in the conduct of the
enterprise, of which not the least was the change of attitude between the
leader and his followers. Mahomet, heretofore religious visionary and
teacher, became the temporal head of a community, and in time the leader
of a political State. The changed aspect of his mission can never be
over-emphasised, for it altered the tenor of his thoughts and the
progress of his words. All the poetry and fire informing the early pages
of the Kuran departs with his reception at Medina, except for occasional
flashes that illumine the chronicle of detailed ordinances that the Book
has now become.

This apparent death of poetic energy had crept gradually over the Kuran,
helped on by the controversial character of the last two Meccan periods,
when he attempted the conciliation of the Jewish element within Arabia
with that long-sightedness which already discerned Medina as his possible
refuge. In reality the whole energy of his nature was transmuted from his
words to his actions and therein he found his fitting sphere, for he was
essentially the doer, one whose works are the expression of his secret,
whose personality, in fact, is only gauged by his deeds. As a result of
his political leadership, the despotism of his nature, inherent in his
conception of God,