Mohammed, the Apostle of God. Peace to thee. Then know, that I am thy equal in dominion: half of the land belongs to us and half to the Koreish, though they are evildoers.' Having read the letter, Mohammed asked the messengers, 'And what is your opinion?' They replied, 'We speak as he does.' Thereupon Mohammed said to the messengers, 'If ambassadors were not inviolable, I should have your heads cut off;' and he sent them back to Moseilama with the following letter: 'In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate! From Mohammed, the Apostle of God, to Moseilama, the liar. Peace to him who follows the guidance. Then know, the earth belongs to God, He gives it to the servant He pleases. The pious shall have a good end.' Notwithstanding this epistolary antagonism between the two rival prophets, the compact with the Beni Hanifa seems to have been silently admitted as still in force, inasmuch as we are not told of any open hostility or actual fighting between the two parties, till after Mohammed's death, when we find Moseilama a leading figure amongst those who made a desperate, though finally unavailing, effort to throw off and break the yoke of Mussulman domination.

If Moseilama of Yemama in the Nejd contented himself during Mohammed's lifetime with a war of correspondence, and a mere theoretical assertion of equal claims, another rival prophet who made his appearance further south, in Yemen, openly unfurled the banner of revolt, four months before Mohammed's death, and for a short time drew the whole southern portion of Arabia after him. This was Ayhala Ibn Kab, of the Beni Madhij, who is only known amongst the Mussulmans by the nickname of 'El Aswad' (i.e. 'the Black'). He also had for a time professed Islam. But when Mohammed made sundry arbitrary changes in the governorships of the south, substituting men of his own choice, often strangers, to the native chiefs whom he had at first confirmed in their office, and when he directed the tithes to be forwarded to Medina, instead of having them spent where they were raised, Aswad availed himself of the general discontent caused thereby, drove the Moslem tax-gatherers out of Najran, and in a few weeks made himself master of the fortified

town of Sana, whose governor, appointed by Mohammed, fell in its defence. Aswad, to make his triumph more telling, forthwith espoused the governor's widow. This proved his ruin. For she was actuated more by thoughts of revenge for her former, than by feelings of affection for her present, husband. Mohammed, through his unscrupulous agents, who were amply furnished with means, found the way to Aswad's generals and to Aswad's wife. She herself placed a lamp to direct the assassins to her husband's sleeping apartment, where they foully murdered him. This is stated to have happened only one day before Mohammed himself breathed his last in Medina.

Mohammed must have felt the rivalry and hostility of Moseilama and El Aswad all the more deeply, as they are both reported to have, for a time, made profession of Islam. Ibn Ishak records a tradition according to which he said one morning, 'To-night I dreamt that I saw two golden rings upon my arm; but, being displeased with them, I blew upon them, and they flew away. I interpret this of the two liars, the lords of Yemen and of Yemama.' With a reference to the same inconvenient rivals, he is also reported to have said on another occasion, 'The hour of the resurrection will not come before thirty Antichrists will have risen up, pretending to be prophets.' But who can help seeing that his rivals, and any impartial persons, could with equal justice regard Mohammed himself as one of the thirty? If he treated as false prophets those who put forth claims similar to his own, in what character must he appear, if it is considered that he claimed to be equal with Christ, yea, even superior to all the previous prophets, as being their 'seal'? Moseilama and Aswad only wished to restrict his dominion within certain limits and to prevent his encroachment upon other parts of Arabia; but he aimed at subjugating the Christian world, as is seen from the summonses he sent to the Christian rulers, and from the humiliating capitation tax he imposed on the Arab communities who made their retention of Christianity a stipulation in the treaties to which they had to submit. By his own practice he has justified being himself called an Antichrist.

In connection with 'The Year of Deputations,' two in-