The message was sent mainly in the hope of intimidating the Muslim, but Mahomet was probably as well informed of the Kureisch movements as they were themselves, and knew that no real attack was possible.  He therefore determined to show both friends and enemies that he was ready to meet his foes.  The Muslim were not very agreeable, knowing what fate had decreed at their last encounter with the Meccans, but Mahomet’s stern determination prevailed.  He declared that he would go to Bedr even if he went alone, and so collected by sheer force of will 1500 men.  He marched to Bedr, held camp there for eight days, during which, of course, no demonstration was made, and the whole expedition was turned into a peaceable mercantile undertaking.  When all their goods had been profitably sold or exchanged, Mahomet broke up the camp and returned in triumph to Medina.  His prestige had certainly been much increased by this unmolested sortie.  It was therefore in a glad and confident mood that he returned to his native city and prepared to enjoy his success.

He took thereupon two wives, Zeinab and Omm Salma, of whom very little is known, except that Zeinab was the widow of Mahomet’s cousin killed at Bedr.  The incident of his marriage with Zeinab finds allusion in the Kuran in the briefest of passages.  She was probably taken as much out of a desire to protect as a desire to possess, and she quickly became one of the many with whom Mahomet was content to pass a few days and nights.  There are also signs in the Kuran at this time of disagreements between the different members of his household, and of their extravagant demands upon Mahomet.

It was evidently not so easy to rule his wives as to acquire them.  Moreover, he was beginning to feel the sting of jealousy towards every other man of the Muslim.

Here really begins the insistence upon restrictive regulations for women which has been ever since the bane of Islam.  Mahomet could not allow his wives to go abroad freely, decked in the ornaments he himself had bestowed, to become a mark for every envious gazer.  They were not as other women, and his imperious nature regarded them as peculiarly inviolate, so that he fenced in their actions and secluded their lives.  As early as his marriage with Zeinab he imposed restrictions upon women’s dress abroad.  They are not to traverse the streets in jewels or beautiful robes, but are to cover themselves closely with a long sober garment.  Whereas his former sura regarding women had been confined to codifying and rendering fairer divorce and property laws, now the personal note sounds strongly, and continues throughout the whole of his later pronouncements, regarding Muslim women.  The next few months were to see dangers and disturbances in his domestic life which were to fix the position of women in Islam throughout the coming centuries, but before he had long completed his latest marriage he was called away upon another necessary expedition.