A Critical Exposition of the Popular 'Jihád'

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

29. Now it was more than twenty years that the Koran had been constantly preached to the surrounding tribes of Arabs at Mecca at the time of fairs[62] and at the annual pilgrimage gatherings,[63] by Mohammad, and by special missionaries of Islam from Medina, and through the reports of the travellers and merchants coming and going from Mecca and Medina to all parts of Arabia. The numbers of different distant tribes, clans and branches had spread the tidings of Islam. There were individual converts in most of the tribes. Those tribes already not brought over to Islam were ready to embrace it under the foregoing circumstances. Idolatry, simple and loathsome, had no power against the attacks of reason displayed in the doctrines of the Koran. But the idolatrous Koreish opposed and attacked Islam with persecution and the sword, and strengthened idolatry with earthly weapons. The distant pagan tribes on the side of the Koreish, geographically or genealogically, were prevented by them from embracing the new faith. As soon as the hostilities of the Koreish were suspended at the truce of Hodeibia, the Arabs commenced to embrace Islam as already described, and no sooner they surrendered and Kaaba[64] stripped of its idols--and the struggle of spiritual supremacy between idolatry and Islam was practically decided--all the remaining tribes on the south and east who had not hitherto adhered to Islam hastened to embrace it hosts after hosts during the 9th and 10th year of the Hegira.

[Footnote 62: Okaz between Tayif and Nakhla. Mujanna in the vicinity of Marr-al Zahran, and Zul-Majaz behind Arafat, both near Mecca.]

[Footnote 63: "From time immemorial, tradition represents Mecca as the scene of a yearly pilgrimage from all quarters of Arabia:--from Yemen, Hadhramaut and the shores of the Persian Gulph, from the deserts of Syria, and from the distant environs of Hira and Mesopotamia."--Muir, I, ccxi.]