The Prophet was despondent and sceptical of his power to persuade, though his belief in Allah’s might never wavered.  He had failed so far to produce any decisive impression upon the Meccan people, but might there not be another town in Arabia which would receive his message?  The little band of pilgrims seemed to him sent in answer to his self-distrust, and his failure at Taif as eclipsed by this sudden success.  The caravan returned to its native city, and there remained little for Mahomet to do except to wait for the arrival of next year’s pilgrims, and to keep shining and ambient the flame of his religious fervour.  He remained in Mecca virtually on sufferance, and rapidly recognised the uselessness of attempting any further conversions.  His hopes were now definitely set on Medina, and to this end he seems to devoted himself more than ever to the perusal and interpretation of the Jewish scriptures.

The portion of the Kuran written at this time contains little else than Bible stories told and retold to the point of weariness.  Lot, of course, is the characteristic figure; but we also have the life stories of Abraham, Moses, Jonah, Joseph, and many others.  The style has suffered a marked diminution in poetic qualities.  It has become reiterative and even laboured.  He continues his practice of alluding to current events, which at Medina he was to pursue to the extent of making the Kuran a kind of spasmodic history of his time, as well as an elementary text-book of law and morality.  In one of the suras—­“The Cow”—­Mahomet makes first mention of that comfortable doctrine of “cancelling,” by which later verses of the Kuran cancel all previous revelations dealing with the same subject if these prove contradictory:  “Whatever verses we cancel or cause thee to forget, we bring a better or its like; knowest thou not that God hath power over all things?”

There is not much record in the Kuran of the influence of Christian thought upon Islam.  We have a few stories of Elizabeth and Mary, and scattered allusions to the despised “Prophet of the Jews.”  But the great body of Christian thought, its central dogmas of Incarnation and Redemption, passed Mahomet entirely by, for his mind was practical and not speculative, and indeed to himself no less than to his followers the fundamentals of Christianity were of necessity too philosophic to be realised with any intensity of belief.  The Christian virtues of meekness and resignation, too, might be respected in the abstract—­passages in the Kuran and tradition assure us they were—­but they were so utterly antagonistic to the fierce, free nature of the Arab that they never entered into his religious life.  Mahomet revered the Founder of Christianity, and placed Him with John in the second Heaven of his Immortals, but though He is secure among the teachers of the world, He can never compete with the omnipotence and glory of the Prophet.