No one could have foreseen the cruelty of which Mohammed, hitherto always a kind-hearted and affectionate man, was capable toward those who resisted his purpose.  This first showed itself in his treatment of the Jews.  He hoped to form an alliance with them, against the idolaters.  He had admitted the divine authority of their religion, and appealed to their Scriptures as evidence of the truth of his own mission.  He conformed to their ritual and customs, and made Jerusalem his Kibla, toward which he turned in prayer five times a day.  In return for this he expected them to receive him as a prophet; but this they refused to do.  So he departed by degrees from their customs, changed his Kibla to Mecca, and at last denounced the Jews as stiff-necked unbelievers.  The old quarrel between Esau and Jacob could not be appeased, nor an alliance formed between them.

M. Saint-Hilaire[396] does not think that the character of Mohammed changed when he became the founder of a state and head of a conquering party.  He thinks “that he only yielded to the political necessities of his position.”  Granted; but yielding to those necessities was the cause of this gradual change in his character.  The man who lies and murders from the necessity of his political position can hardly remain a saint.  Plunder, cold-blooded execution of prisoners, self-indulgence, became the habit of the prophet henceforth, as we shall presently see.

The first battle against the Koreish, that of Badr, took place in January, A.D. 624.  When Mohammed had drawn up his army, he prayed earnestly for the victory.  After a desperate struggle, the Koreish fled.  Mohammed claimed, by a special revelation, the fifth part of the booty.  As the bodies of his old opponents were cast into a pit, he spoke to them bitterly.  When the prisoners were brought before him he looked fiercely at one of them.  “There is death in that glance,” said the unhappy man, and presently the prophet ordered him to be beheaded.  Two days after, another was ordered for execution.  “Who will take care of my little girl?” said he.  “Hell-fire,” replied Mohammed, and ordered him to be cut down.  Shortly after the battle, a Jewess who had written verses against Mohammed, was assassinated by one of his followers; and the prophet praised him for the deed in the public mosque.  Another aged Jew, for the same offence, was murdered by his express command.  A quarrel between some Jews and Moslems brought on an attack by Mohammed upon the Jewish tribe.  They surrendered after a siege of fifteen days, and Mohammed ordered all the prisoners to be killed; but at last, at the urgent request of a powerful chief in Medina, allowed them to go into exile, cursing them and their intercessor.  Mr. Muir mentions other cases of assassination of the Jews by the command of the prophet.  All these facts are derived from contemporaneous Moslem historians, who glorify their prophet for this conduct.  The worst action perhaps of this kind was the deliberate