The population generally was indeed willing to let him come amongst them, but it was by no means agreed on his claims as a divinely commissioned apostle and prophet. Especially the most powerful tribe of the city, the Awsites, amongst whom Christianity seems already to have gained an entrance, were very incredulous on that point. This did not prevent him from entering Medina with some degree of ostentation; and it would seem that he already looked forward in imagination to the time of the realisation of his far-reaching plan.

With prudent forethought, and masterly appreciation of Arab proclivities, he, from the first day of his arrival, managed to secure for himself that independence of position and freedom of action which he deemed indispensable for the success he afterwards achieved. Had he chosen openly to accept the exclusive hospitality of any one clan, and formally placed himself under its special protection, his own liberty would have been restricted, and he would have excited jealousies in so clannish a town as Medina, which might have fatally interfered with the accomplishment of his ambitious designs. But he cautiously evaded this danger. When, on entering the city, the chief men of the Beni Salem invited him to take up his quarters with them, saying, 'We are numerous, and well able to protect thee;' and when the heads of several other clans, amongst them that of his great-grandmother Salma, urged the same request on similar grounds, he oracularly informed them that the camel on which he was mounted had received Divine direction to halt on the spot where it was ordained his headquarters should be. The camel proceeded till it reached a large neglected and seemingly ownerless place, partly fenced in, where it stopped and knelt down, as a sign for the rider to dismount, stretching out its neck upon the ground, and uttering the well-known sounds of relief common to its kind. In this manner Mohammed had reached his destination, not by his own human choice, but by a Divine decree, manifested through the action of a brute.

The place happened to be situated in the quarter of the Beni Najjar, of which clan the Beni Adi, that is, the family of Mohammed's great-grandmother, formed part; and

it belonged to two orphan children whose guardian, Asad Ibn Zorara, the chief of the Beni Najjar, was one of the first six converts of Medina. He had erected some sort of sheltered enclosure upon it for Moslem worship, when Mohammed was still in Mecca. Now he hastened to offer it to his spiritual chief, as the most suitable spot for his headquarters; and Mohammed requested Abu Bekr to pay him its value of ten dinars, in compensation for the rights of the two orphans.

The acquired site was cleared without delay, in preparation for building upon it a substantial mosque and several private dwellings, to meet the Prophet's requirements. As all the converts helped together, it did not take many months before the buildings were finished. Till then, Mohammed lived close by, in the house of Abu Eyub, one of his converts, who felt honoured by having him for his guest.

Mohammed needed no house specially for himself, because the mosque served both as a place of religious worship and as an office for business transactions. When he desired retirement, he withdrew to the apartment of one of his wives, each of whom had a little cottage to herself. At first only two such private dwellings had to be erected one joining the mosque, for Aisha, his favourite spouse, then only nine or ten years of age; and one by its side for Sewda, whom he had married as a widow a few weeks after his first wife's death. Afterwards more cottages were added, as the inmates of the Prophet's harem multiplied.

The mosque with its surroundings was the proper centre of Islam, the court and official residence of its founder. Thence proceeded the military and political orders, the pretended Divine revelations and inspirations which transformed all Arabia into one commonwealth, and laid the foundation for the world-wide empire of Islam. The Prophet's pretence about the supernatural guidance of his camel had marvellously succeeded. Though a refugee and guest, he, without wounding the jealous sensitiveness of Yathrebite clanship, had at the outset secured for himself, in the very midst of a tribe to which he was related by descent, a position of relative independence, a home of his