In the sixth year of his mission, he had the pleasure of seeing his party strengthened by the conversion of his uncle Hamza, a man of distin guished valour, and of Omar, a person of equal note in Mecca, who had formerly made himself conspicuous by his virulent opposition to the prophet and his claims. This new accession to the rising sect exasperated the Koreish afresh, and incited them to measures of still more active persecution against the proselytes. But as persecution usually advances the cause which it labours to destroy, so in the present case Islamism made more rapid progress than ever, till the Koreish, maddened with malice, entered into a solemn league or covenant against the Hashemites, and especially the family of the Motalleb, many of whom upheld the impostor, engaging to contract no marriages with them, nor to hold any farther connexion or commerce of any kind ; and, to give it the greater sanction, the compact was reduced to writing and laid up in the Caaba. Upon this the tribe became divided into two factions; the family of Hashem, except one of Mohammed's uncles, putting themselves under Abu Taleb as their head, and the other party ranging themselves under the standard of Abu Sophyan. This league, however, was of no avail during the lifetime of Abu Taleb. The power of the uncle, who presided in the government of Mecca, defended the nephew against the designs of his enemies. At length, about the close of the seventh year of the mission, Abu Taleb died; and, a few days after his death, Mo

hammed was left a widower, by the decease of Cadijah, whose memory has been canonized by the saying of the prophet; "That among men there had been many perfect, but of women, four only had attained to perfection, viz. Cadijah, his wife; Fatima, his daughter; Asia, the wife of Pharaoh; and Mary (Miriam), the daughter of Imran and sister of Moses." As to Abu Taleb, though the prophet ever cherished a most grateful sense of the kindness of his early benefactor, yet if the following passage from the Koran has reference, as some of the commentators say, to his uncle, it shows that the dictates of nature in the nephew's breast were thoroughly brought into subjection to the stern precepts of his religion. "It is not allowed unto the prophet, nor those who are true believers, that they pray for idolaters, although they be of kin, after it is become known unto them that they are inhabitants of hell.” * This passage, it is said by some, was revealed on account of Abu Taleb, who, upon his death-bed, being pressed by his nephew to speak a word which might enable him to plead his cause before God, that is, to profess Islam, absolutely refused. Mohammed, however, told him that he would not cease to pray for him till he should be forbidden by God; such a prohibition, he affirmed, was given him in the words here cited. Others suppose the occasion to have been the prophet's visiting his mother Amina's sepulchre, who also was an infidel, soon after the capture of Mecca. Here, while standing at the

* Koran, ch. ix.

tomb of his parent, he is reported to have burst into tears, and said, "I asked leave of God to visit my mother's tomb, and he granted it me; but when I asked leave to pray for her, it was denied me." This twofold affliction of the prophet, in the loss of his uncle and his wife on the same year, induced him ever after to call this "The Year of Mourning.".

The unprotected apostle was now left completely exposed to the attacks of his enemies, and they failed not to improve their advantage. They redoubled their efforts to crush the pestilent heresy, with its author and abettors, and some of his followers and friends, seeing the symptoms of a fiercer storm of persecution gathering, forsook the standard of their leader. In this extremity Mohammed perceived, that his only chance of safety was in a temporary retreat from the scene of conflict. He accordingly withdrew to Tayef, a village situated sixty miles to the East of Mecca, where he had an uncle named Abbas, whose hospitality afforded him a seasonable shelter. Here, however, his stay was short, and his prophetic labours unavailing. He returned to Mecca, and boldly taking his stand in the precincts of the Caaba, among the crowds of pilgrims who resorted annually to this ancient shrine, he preached the gospel of Islam to the multitudinous assemblies. New proselytes again rewarded his labours; and, among the accessions now made to his party from these pilgrim hordes, were six of the inhabitants of Medina, then called Yatreb, who, on their return

home began at once to relate to their fellow-citizens the story of their conversion, and to extol, in no measured terms, their new religion and its apostle. This circumstance gave eclat to Mohammed in the city of Medina, and paved the way to a train of events which tended more than any thing else to promote his final success in Arabia. In the mean time, in order to strengthen his interest in Mecca, he married Ayesha, the daughter of Abubeker, and shortly after Sawda, the daughter of Zama. By thus becoming the son-in-law of two of the principal men of his party he secured their patronage to his person and his cause.

CHAPTER VII.

The Prophet pretends to have had a night-journey through the Seven Heavens-Description of the memorable Night by an Arabic writerAccount of the Journey-His probable Motives in feigning such an extravagant fiction.

Ir was in the twelfth year of the pretended mission that Mohammed was favoured, according to his own account, with his celebrated night-journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, and from thence to the seventh heaven, under the conduct of the angel Gabriel. In allusion to this the seventeenth chapter of the Koran commences thus:-"Praise be unto him who transported his servant by night from the sacred temple of Mecca to the farther temple of Jerusalem, the circuit of which we have blessed, that we might show some of our signs; for God is he who heareth and seeth." This idle and extravagant tale, which is not related in the Koran, but handed down by tradition, was probably devised by the impostor in order to raise his reputation as a saint, and to put himself more nearly upon a level with Moses, with whom God conversed, face to face, in the holy mount. The story, however, is devoutly believed by the Mussulmans, and one of their writers has given the following highly-wrought description of the memorable night in which it occurred. "In the