The Tobba Judaized.  Taking four hundred of the priests with him, he departed from Al-Madinah, performed pilgrimage to the Ka’abah of Meccah, which he invested with a splendid covering[FN#19]; and, after erecting a house

[p.351]for the expected Prophet, he returned to his capital in Al-Yaman, where he abolished idolatry by the ordeal of fire.  He treated his priestly guests with particular attention, and on his death-bed he wrote the following tetrastich:-

“I testify of Ahmad that he of a truth
“Is a prophet from Allah, the Maker of souls. 
Be my age extended into his age,
I would be to him a Wazir and a cousin.”

Then sealing the paper he committed it to the charge of the High Priest, with a solemn injunction to deliver the letter, should an opportunity offer, into the hands of the great Prophet; and that, if the day be distant, the missive should be handed down from generation to generation till it reached the person to whom it was addressed.  The house founded by him at Al-Madinah was committed to a priest of whose descendants was Abu Ayyub the Ansari, the first person over whose threshold the Apostle passed when he ended the Flight.  Abu Ayyub had also charge of the Tobba’s letter, so that after three or four centuries, it arrived at its destination.

Al-Madinah was ever well inclined to Mohammed.  In[FN#20]

[p.352]the early part of his career, the emissaries of a tribe called the Benu Abd al-Ashhal came from that town to Meccah, in order to make a treaty with the Kuraysh, and the Apostle seized the opportunity of preaching Al-Islam to them.  His words were seconded by Ayyas bin Ma’az, a youth of the tribe, and opposed by the chiefs of the embassy; who, however, returned home without pledging themselves to either party.[FN#21] Shortly afterwards a body of the Aus and the Khazraj came to the pilgrimage of Meccah:  when Mohammed began preaching to them, they recognised the person so long expected by the Jews, and swore to him an oath which is called in Moslem history the “First Fealty of the Steep.[FN#22]”

After the six individuals who had thus pledged themselves returned to their native city, the event being duly bruited abroad caused such an effect that, when the next pilgrimage season came, twelve, or according to others forty persons, led by As’ad bin Zara[r]ah, accompanied the original converts, and in the same place swore the “Second Fealty of the Steep.”  The Prophet dismissed them in company with one Musab bin Umayr, a Meccan, charged to teach them the Koran and their religious duties, which in those times consisted only of prayer and the Profession of Unity.  They arrived at Al-Madinah on a Friday, and this was the first day on which the city witnessed the public devotions of the Moslems.

After some persecutions, Musab had the fortune to convert a cousin of As’ad bin Zararah, a chief of the Aus, Sa’ad bin Ma’az, whose opposition had been of the fiercest.  He persuaded his tribe, the Benu Abd al-Ashhal, to break