the battle of Badr some of his followers celebrated the occasion too well. Amongst them was the Prophet's uncle Hamza, the Lion of Islam. By ill-luck 'Ali, the Prophet's cousin and later his son-in-law, who had got two old camels from the spoil of Badr, and thought to make some money by trading with them, brought them round and couched them in the street near the house in which Hamza was making merry. The latter, having his attention drawn to the animals by a singing-girl, rushed out in a state of intoxication and mutilated and killed them. When the Prophet, to whom 'Ali complained, came on the scene to remonstrate, he was received with less than courtesy, and thought it politic to withdraw. The Qur'an itself (iv. v. 46) contains an admonition not to come to prayers in a state of intoxication, from which we may infer that such conduct had occurred. Things like these may have moved Muhammad, who had at one time acknowledged that while there was harm in the use of wine there were also advantages, finally to forbid its use altogether.

The ceremonies of the Pilgrimage were adopted from pre-Islamic Arab custom, with, of course, such changes as were necessary to free them superficially at least from idolatry. The question of outside influence hardly arises in regard to them. The mass of other legal enactments which the Qur'an contains form far too large a subject to be dealt with here.¹ A great many of them were evidently suggested by Jewish practice, but

as most of them took shape in Medina, the principle that his community was to be a "middle people" no doubt played a part in causing variations from that. From this digression we must now return to the development of the Prophet's political attitude towards Christians.

During the whole of the Meccan period of his activity Muhammad's attitude towards the people of the Book, which must be taken as including both Jews and Christians so far as known to him, was consistently friendly. Even in Medina, when he had adopted a more independent attitude, he seems at first merely to have thought of establishing his own community on an equal footing with them. "O People of the Book, come to a word fair between us and you, that we worship God only and associate nothing with him, and do not take each other as lords to the exclusion of God" (iii. v. 57). This is probably addressed specially to the Jews, but there is nothing to indicate that Christians would have been excluded from the invitation had they been in the Prophet's mind. The declaration offers an apparently equal alliance. It is to be noticed, however, that God is to be alone Lord, and Muhammad would probably, in case of dispute, have claimed that he was the mouthpiece of God upon earth.

When his references to distinct Christian communities do begin to occur they are friendly. Thus in ii. v. 59 we find a declaration which is detached from the context, and which occurs elsewhere in the same detached way, as if it were a loose deliverance the exact position of which was not known: "Those who have believed, the