boast, 'she would not marry any man who did not leave her the liberty of quitting him again as soon as she liked.' She bore a son to Hashim; but when her husband returned to Mecca, she did not accompany him and also retained her infant son Sheiba with her. After a time, Hashim died at Gaza, during a mercantile journey, and his privileges passed to his younger brother El Mottaleb, who discharged his duties with such liberality in his new position that the Koreish surnamed him 'the Bountiful' (El Feiz). When Sheiba had grown up to man's estate, his uncle El Mottaleb went to Medina to fetch him. But Salma being unwilling to part with her son, he had to use great firmness, declaring, 'I shall not depart without him. My nephew is grown up. We are an honoured family amongst our people and enjoy many privileges. It is better for him to go home to his own family and his own tribe, than to live here amongst strangers.' At last Salma gave her consent, and El Mottaleb placed his nephew behind him on his magnificent she-camel and returned with him to Mecca. On their arrival, the Koreishites, taking the young man for a newly acquired slave, called him 'Abdu-l-Mottaleb,' (i.e. the slave of El Mottaleb); and by this surname he was known ever afterwards. But El Mottaleb said, 'Do not call him my slave: he is my brother Hashim's son whom I have fetched from Medina.'

Abdu-l-Mottaleb, therefore, is a native of Medina, where he grew up to man's estate, and where his mother and all his maternal relatives lived. What more natural than that he should always preserve a certain partiality for, and keep up a connection with, his native city? That the kinship was remembered and cultivated in his family is established by historical facts. His favourite son, Abd Allah, being taken ill on a mercantile journey to Gaza, remained with his relatives in Medina and died there. Abd Allah's widow, Fatima, with her little son Mohammed, likewise paid them a visit and stayed amongst them for a month, in the very house where her husband had died; she herself also dying on her homeward journey. This Abdu-l-Mottaleb is Mohammed's grandfather, under whose protection and as whose special favourite the lad grew up, after the premature death of his father Abd Allah. Thus we see that the way for the

famous Flight to Medina had been prepared, not merely by the conversion of a number of Medinites to Islam, but obviously also by the previously existing family ties and influences. This is nothing but what naturally resulted from the clannish character of Arab society in those days, and from the mutual jealousies of those two rival cities, Mecca and Medina.

After El Mottaleb's death, the right and honour of providing for the pilgrims reverted to the line of his elder brother and thus passed to Abdu-l-Mottaleb, his nephew from Medina. Abdu-l-Mottaleb was a rich man, as heir of his father Hashim's property. He had the wisdom and discretion to abstain from introducing novelties which might have given offence. Ibn Hisham, the historian, says of him: 'He retained everything which his fathers had introduced, and acquired an esteem beyond any of his predecessors, being loved and honoured by his entire people.' Ibn Ishak records that Abdu-l-Mottaleb, guided by a dream, rediscovered the celebrated well Zemzem, near the temple, which the Jorhomides had formerly covered over and obliterated, and that he successfully asserted his right over the well against the claims of the other Koreishites. The good quality and great, abundance of the water of Zemzem soon brought the other wells into disuse; and so valuable was the discovery considered, that poets celebrated it in song and extolled the Hashimites as thereby surpassing all other Koreishites and all the rest of the Arabs in fame.

That Mohammed did not spring from an obscure family, but that his grandfather Abdu-l-Mottaleb was the most influential and powerful man of the aristocratic city of Mecca, will also appear from the following historical incident narrated by Ibn Ishak in his account of the unsuccessful expedition of Abraha against the idolatrous shrine of Mecca. He says: 'When Abraha was encamped at Mogammas, he sent his general, El Aswad, with a body of cavalry to plunder the neighbourhood of Mecca. Amongst the spoil which he collected, there were 200 camels, the property of Abdu-l-Mottaleb who was then the chief and lord of the Koreish. Abraha despatched the Himyarite Hunata to Mecca with this injunction: "Inquire after the chief and lord of the city,