every one was to give what he had to him that wanted it.  They were to avoid swearing, yet whatever they said was to be firmer than an oath.  They were to be ministers of peace, and if any man did them violence they were never to resist him.  Nevertheless they were not to lack for courage, but to laugh to scorn the enemies that tormented them, and smile in their pains and shed no tear.  And as for death, if it was for their glory they were to esteem it more than life, because their bodies only were corruptible, but their souls were immortal, and would mount upwards when released from the bondage of the flesh.  Not dissenters from the Koran, but stricter conformers to it; not Nazarenes and not Jews, yet followers of Jesus in their customs and of Moses in their doctrines.

And Moors and Berbers, Arabs and Negroes, Muslimeen and Jews, heard the cry of Mohammed of Mequinez, and he received them all.  From the streets, from the market-places, from the doors of the prisons, from the service of hard masters, and from the ragged army itself, they arose in hundreds and trooped after him.  They needed no badge but the badge of poverty, and no voice of pleading but the voice of misery.  Most of them brought nothing with them in their hands, and some brought little on their backs save the stripes of their tormentors.  A few had flocks and herds, which they drove before them.  A few had tents, which they shared with their fellows; and a few had guns, with which they shot the wild boar for their food and the hyena for their safety.  Thus, possessing little and desiring nothing, having neither houses nor lands, and only considering themselves secure from their rulers in having no money, this company of battered human wrecks, life-broken and crime-logged and stranded, passed with their leader from place to place of the waste country about Mequinez.  And he, being as poor as they were, though he might have been so rich, cheered them always, even when they murmured against him, as Absalam had cheered his little fellowship at Tetuan:  “God will feed us as He feeds the birds of the air, and clothe our little ones as He clothes the fields.”

Such was the man whom Israel went out to seek.  But Israel knew his people too well to make known his errand.  His besetting difficulties were enough already.  The year was young, but the days were hot; a palpitating haze floated always in the air, and the grass and the broom had the dusty and tired look of autumn.  It was also the month of the fast of Ramadhan, and Israel’s men were Muslims.  So, to save himself the double vexation of oppressive days and the constant bickerings of his famished people, Israel found it necessary at length to travel in the night.  In this way his journey was the shorter for the absence of some obstacles, but his time was long.