A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'

[Footnote 58: The Bani Abd-ul-Kays are a Moaddite tribe, the descendants of Rabia. They inhabited Bahrein on the Persian Gulf.]

[Footnote 59: The Bani Tamim were branch of Tabikha, a tribe of the Moaddite stock of Mecca and a sister tribe of Mozeina. They are famous in the history of Najd, a province north-east of Medina, from the confines of Syria to Yemen. Some of these branches were with Mohammad at the expeditions to Mecca and Honain. All the branches of the tribes that had not yet embraced Islam were now converted.]

[Footnote 60: The Bani Asad ibn Khozeima were a powerful tribe residing near the hill of Katan in Najd. They were of the Moaddite tribe of the Meccan stock. Tuleiba, their chief, had assembled a force of cavalry and rapid camel-drivers to make a raid upon Medina in A.H. 4. They were dispersed by the Moslems. In the next year they joined the Koreish in the siege of Medina.]

[Sidenote: Surrender of Mecca. A.H., 8.]

27. The position of Islam at Mecca was greatly strengthened since the truce in A.H. 6, by increase in the number of Moslems, influential and leading, as well as of persons of minor note and importance there, consequently the advocates of Islam, peace and compromise were growing in number and confidence. Among the idolatrous Koreish there were no chiefs of marked ability or commanding influence left at Mecca; almost all of them had gone over to the cause of Islam. In the meantime the infraction of the terms of the truce by the Bani Bakr and Koreish caused the surrender of Mecca without bloodshed.

[Sidenote: The Meccans not compelled to believe.]

28. Though Mecca had surrendered, all its inhabitants had not already become converts to Islam. Mohammad did not take any compulsory means to convert the people: "Although the city had cheerfully accepted his supremacy," writes Sir W. Muir, "all its inhabitants had not yet embraced the new religion, or formally acknowledged his prophetical claim. Perhaps he intended to follow the course he had pursued at Medina and leave the conversion of the people to be gradually accomplished without compulsion."[61]

[Footnote 61: The Life of Mahomet, by Sir W. Muir, Vol. IV, page 136. Those who had newly joined the Moslem Camp at Mecca to repel the threatening gathering of Hawazin, and those of them who preferred submission to the authority of Mohammad, are called by Sir W. Muir "his new converts." (IV., 149). But in fact they were not called believers. They are called simply Muallafa Qolubohum in the Koran (IX., 60) which means whose hearts are to be won over.]

[Sidenote: The wholesale conversion of the remaining tribes in A.H., 9 & 10.]