by the Law of Moses (Deut. xx. 19). He gave orders to cut down and burn the trees of their fine palm-fields, their chief wealth, so as to drive them to despair, and to force them to yield. They gave vent to their indignation, by calling out, 'Oh Mohammed! didst thou not forbid to cause devastation, and blame him who does it? How canst thou let these date-trees be cut down and burnt?' But seeing him determined to destroy the future means of their livelihood, and having no longer any hope of military succour from Arab sympathisers and former allies, not even from their fellow Jews, the Beni Koreiza, they at last, after a siege of two or three weeks, capitulated.

Through the intercession of old friends amongst the professed Moslems, their lives were spared, and they were allowed a camel-load of their substance, with the exception of arms and suits of armour; but their emigration from the country, within a few days, was rigidly insisted upon. According to some tradition, each three men were only allowed one camel and one sword; and in several instances the camel's load had to be completed by the ornamented door-posts of their houses. They are reported to have left with their wives, and children, and substance, amidst the sounds of music, some singing songs, others playing cymbals and flutes. If this is true, they must have been strongly impressed with the peril, in which they had been, of losing not only their possessions, but also their lives, and of having their wives and children reduced to a state of abject slavery. A portion of them joined their brethren in Khaibar, and the rest, with greater prudence and foresight, went on to Syria. Only two of the number consented to save their property, by embracing Islam.

The spoil falling into the hands of the Moslems was considerable; and as there had been no regular fighting, Mohammed claimed the right of freely disposing of it. He saw his opportunity for compensating his fellow-refugees from Mecca, by making them rich landowners in Medina. The whole booty was distributed amongst them, and only two of the Moslem natives, who were poor, also received a share. This happened in summer 625. Mohammed's highhanded disposal of the spoil, the barbarous destruction of

date-trees, and his whole conduct towards the Beni Nadhir, naturally caused much unpleasant talk amongst the disaffected. But he knew how to silence every objection. A revelation from heaven justified him in every particular, and can still be read in the 59th Sura of the Koran.

Two years later, as we have already seen, the great army of Meccans and Bedouins laid siege to Medina, and threatened to involve it in a catastrophe. Fugitives of the Beni Nadhir, smarting under a sense of their wrongs, helped to incite the Koreish to this vast effort of revenge; and, during the siege, attempts were made to induce the Beni Koreiza, the only Jewish tribe still left in Medina, openly to break with Mohammed, and to join the side of the besiegers. Though it does not appear that those attempts convinced the cautious foresight of the Jews, and proved successful with them, yet they sufficed to show Mohammed that the continuance of a Jewish tribe in Medina might, under certain circumstances, endanger the town. Accustomed, as he already was, to regard as right whatever seemed to advance his interests, he did not scruple to make this last remaining tribe of Jews a holocaust to his selfishness. The cruel project was to be carried out forthwith; and the Jews were to be taken by surprise.

But the Mussulman historians, as is their wont, represent that the sanguinary measure was only taken in obedience to a direct injunction from heaven. Ibn Ishak's narrative is this: 'On the following morning, after the withdrawal of the confederate army from Medina, Mohammed, with the faithful, left the rampart and returned into the city to lay down their arms. But about noon the angel Gabriel, wearing a turban of silk, and mounted on a mule, in trappings of damask, came to Mohammed and asked him, "Hast thou already laid down thy arms?" He answered "Yes." Gabriel continued, "But the angels have not yet laid down their arms; and I am come to summon the people to war; for God commands thee to march against the Beni Koreiza, and I myself am going thither to shake their towers." Mohammed at once ordered a proclamation to be made that no man was to say the afternoon prayer anywhere but in the Koreiza quarter. He sent Ali with a