half the army is to pray while
the other half remains at its post. Instances may be multiplied without
ceasing of this building up of a whole social code upon the most casual
foundations. But unheeding as was its genesis, it was in the main effective
for those times, and in any case it substituted definite laws for the
measureless wastes of tradition and custom.

It is probable that Mahomet relied a great deal upon existing usages. He
was too wise to disturb them unnecessarily. His was a nature of extremes
combined with a wisdom that came as a revelation to his followers. Where
he hates it is with a hurricane of wrath and destruction, where he loves
it is with the same impetuous tenacity. His denunciations of the
infidels, of his enemies among the Kureisch, of the laggards within his
own city, of the defamers of holy things, of drunkards, of the unclean,
of those who even copy the features of their kindred or picture their
idea of God, are written in the most violent words, whose fury seems to
smite upon the ear with the rushing of flame.

And so the prevailing stamp upon Muslim institutions is fanaticism and
intolerance. As the Prophet drew up hard-and-fast rules, so his followers
insisted upon their remorseless continuance. Mahomet found himself
compelled to issue ordinances, often hurried and unreflecting, to meet
immediate needs, to settle disputes whose prolongation would have meant
his ruin. He possessed the qualities of poet, seer, and religious mystic,
but these in his later life were overshadowed by the characteristics of
lawgiver, soldier, and statesman demanded by his position as head of a
body of men. But neither his mysticism nor his poetic feeling entirely
desert him. They flash out at rare moments in the later suras of the
Kuran, and are apparent in his actions and the traditional accounts of
his sayings, while his creed remained steadfast and unassailable with a
strength that neither defeat nor disaffection could shake. With all
the incompleteness and often contradiction of his administration, he
nevertheless was able to satisfy his followers as to its efficacy mainly
by his exhaustless belief in himself and his work.

In military development his contribution was unique. He gathered together
all the war-loving propensities of the Faithful, and wove them into a
solidarity of aim. His personal courage was not great, but his strategy
and above all his invincible confidence, which refused to admit defeat,