reference to a prophet at this stage he does not omit to mention that the Prophet, and those who had responded to his appeal, were saved out of the destruction which overtook the others. It is into that circle of ideas in his mind that the word purqana, the Christian word for salvation, falls. Remembering the meaning of the Arabic root it is easy to see how he associated it with the separation of the believers from the unbelievers when the Catastrophe fell. Furqan is deliverance from the judgement.

Now recall that the great story in his mind at this time is that of Moses. The Law was given to Moses at the time of the deliverance. There we have at once the furqan brought into connection with the revelation of the Book; and, still with the sense of the word in Arabic affecting his idea of it, we can see how in course of time he came to associate the distinction between believers and unbelievers with the Book or Law which was given for their guidance, and then again, the idea of the Last Judgement persisting, and perhaps some clearer conception of what Christians meant by the word coming in, we can see how he associated furqan with forgiveness, as in one of the later passages (viii. v. 29) he does. But we have still the crux of the difficulty to meet. What connection had the furqan with the Battle of Badr? Go back to the story of Moses and the Exodus of the Children of Israel and imagine it working in Muhammad's mind. Moses was the great prophet, the founder of this great monotheistic religion which was all around Arabia, practically world-wide — for by this time Muham-

mad is in contact with Jews, but has not realised that there is any distinction between them and Christians. I doubt if Muhammad at first realised that the story of Pharaoh and his hosts, who were overwhelmed in the Red Sea, was part of the story of Moses. These things came to him disconnectedly. Moses then was a prophet who proclaimed the true religion. Some rejected him, but some believed. The believers he led out from among the unbelieving people. The Book was given to him; "We gave Moses the Book and the Furqan". This community which had followed Moses becomes a conquering people and destroys the unbelieving inhabitants of the land. It is not to under-estimate Muhammad's knowledge to suggest that he may have assumed that it was the same unbelievers who had rejected Moses who were thus punished. There, in my opinion, is the suggestion of the Hijra — the exodus from Mecca — and the organisation of a fighting community of believers in Medina, who were to be the means by whose hands the Calamity, which Muhammad had so long proclaimed, was to be brought upon the unbelieving Meccans. Scarcely has Muhammad settled in Medina when, as we see from the Qur'an, the religious dynamo begins to work at full power for the generation of war. This new orientation came as a surprise to his own followers, but there are hints of it in his versions of the story of Moses prior to the Hijra. Then in less than two years came the great event. The two parties met at Badr. All accounts agree in giving the impression that Muhammad felt the meeting to be of fateful