16 THE FACTORS OF HIS PROPHETSHIP. [BK. I.

Satih continued, 'I swear by the wild beasts of the field that the Abyssinians will invade your land and take possession of the provinces between Abjan and Jorash.' The king said, 'By thy father, O Satih! this is sad news; and when is it to come to pass, in my time or later?' Satih replied, 'Not for sixty or seventy years.' The king inquired, 'Will their dominion be lasting or not?' Satih answered, 'After continuing for upwards of seventy years, part of them will perish and part be routed.' The king asked, 'Who will defeat them and drive them out of the country?' Satih answered, 'Arim dzu Yezen will come against them from Aden and will not leave one of them in Yemen.' The king: 'Will his dominion last?' Satih: 'It also will come to an end.' The king: 'Who will put an end to it?' Satih: A pure prophet, the receiver of revelations from the Most High, with whose people the dominion will remain to the end of time.' The king: Hast thou told me the truth?' Satih: 'By the evening redness, by the night, and by the early dawn, I have told thee the truth.' Then also came Shik, narrated and interpreted the dream in substantially the same way. King Rabia was so impressed with what he heard that he sent away his wife and children with provisions for the journey and a letter to Sabur I., king of Persia, who assigned a residence to them in Hira.

It is nothing more than retranslating the scope of this spurious prophecy into history, to affirm that Mohammed, by pondering the political events which had lately passed or were just passing in his country, was led to conceive the idea that it was fully as practicable for him, in the character of a heaven-commissioned ambassador, to gain political authority over the multitudinous tribes of Arabia, as for those foreigners who had successively exercised their humiliating domination; and that, having once formed this conviction, he also possessed enterprise, self-confidence, and daring enough to attempt the proud plan, and, favoured by circumstances, marvellously to succeed in its realisation. In the sense of Rabia's symbolical dream, Mohammed, by the system of violence and conquest in the name of religion, which he inaugurated and began to carry out with all the rapidity and irresistibility of a conflagration, only fulfilled the fore-ordained decree of an inscrutable Providence.
CHAP. I. SEC. II.] THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR. 17

It is a known fact that in the age and fatherland of Mohammed, politics and religion were closely intertwined and inseparably bound up together. The several political parties exercising power and dominion, also represented different tenets of belief and sundry religious interests. The Romans and Abyssinians were identified with Christianity. Whole tribes and districts held up the banner of Judaism and waged war in its propagation. The Persian power was the exponent of fire-worship; and the Arabs in general were devoted to that native idolatry which had its centre in the national sanctuary of the Kaaba. Under these circumstances it could hardly be otherwise, but that any great national movement for breaking the yoke of foreign usurpation and enforcing the principle of 'Arabia for the Arabs, under one central government purely native,' should also essentially bear a religious character.

II. The Religious Factor.

The religion most widely prevalent in Arabia, when Mohammed began life, was a species of heathenism or idol-worship, which had its local centre in Mecca and its temple. The city of Mecca was the religious metropolis of the nation, and consequently its influence extended to every part of Arabia where the sanctity of its shrine was acknowledged. In the days of Mohammed the Kaaba or Meccan temple was already of high antiquity; and as early as the time of Christ, the Roman historian Diodorus Siculus mentions a celebrated temple in the Hejaz which was revered and visited by all the Arabs. According to a theory held by many, this temple had been originally connected with the ancient worship of the sun, moon, and stars, and its circumambulation by the worshippers had a symbolical reference to the rotation of the heavenly bodies.1 Within its precincts

1 Dr. L. Krehl, in his carefully written Das Leben des Muhammed, says on p. 21: The primitive religion of the Arabs was a worship of the stars, itself a transmutation of the still more ancient worship of light, which was intended for the powers on high, symbolised by the visible heaven, and in which idea and symbol were easily confounded. Taking the image for the ideal itself, man came to regard the celestial bodies as deities, and as controllers of his own destiny to whom he owed worship.