“This,” says the historian, “was the first booty that Mahomet obtained, the first captives they seized, and the first life they took.”  The significance of the event was vividly felt throughout Islam, and Abdallah, its hero, received at Mahomet’s hands the title of “Amir-al-Momirim,” Commander of the Faithful—­a title which recalls inseparably the cruelty and magnificence, the glamour and rapacity, of Arabian Bagdad under Haroun-al-Raschid.  The valorous enterprise had now been achieved, the Kureisch caravan was despoiled, and the Kureisch themselves wrought into fury against the Prophet’s insolence; but more than all, the channel of Mahomet’s policy of warfare became thereby so deeply carved that he could not have effaced it had he desired.  Henceforth his creative genius limited itself to the deepening of its course and the direction of its outlet.

The Jews had not rested content with murmuring against Mahomet’s rule, they sought to embarrass him by active sedition.  One of their first attempts against Mahomet’s regime was to stir up strife between the Refugees and Helpers.  In this they would have been successful but for Mahomet’s efficient system of espionage, a method upon which he relied throughout his life.  Failing to foment a rebellion in secret they proceeded to open hostilities, and the Muslim, jealous for their faith, retaliated by contempt and estrangement.  During the winter of 623 personal attack was made by the mob upon Mahomet.  The people were hounded on by their leaders to stone the Prophet, but he was warned in time and escaped their assaults.

The popular fury was merely the reflex of a fundamental division of thought between the opposing parties.  The Jewish and Muslim systems could never coalesce, for each claimed the dominance and ignored all compromise.  The age-long, hallowed traditions of the Jews which supported a theocracy as unyielding as any conception of Divine sovereignty preached by Mahomet, found themselves faced with a new creative force rapidly evolving its own legends, and strong enough in its enthusiasm to overwhelm their own.  The Rabbis felt that Mahomet and his warrior heroes—­Ali, Omar, Othman, and the rest—­would in time dislodge from their high places their own peculiar saints, just as they saw Mahomet with Abu Bekr and his personnel of administrators and informers already overriding their own councillors in the civil and military departments of their state.  The old regime could not amalgamate with the new, for that would mean absorption by its more vigorous neighbour, and the Jewish spirit is exclusive in essence and separatist perforce.  Mahomet took no pains to conciliate his allies; they had made a treaty with him in the days of his insecurity and he was grateful, but now his position in Medina was beyond assailment, and he was indifferent to their goodwill.  As their aggression increased he deliberately withdrew his participation in their religious life, and severed his connection with their rites and ordinances.