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Mahomet's power had increased sufficiently to awe the tribes of the interior into submission and to gain at least a hearing from lands beyond his immediate vicinity. Slowly and surely he was building up the fabric of his dominion. With a watchfulness and sense of organisation irresistible in its efficiency he made his presence known.

The sand of the desert, Seti's breath and the tail of his yelek made the coat of Bashi-Bazouk like silk. It was the joy of the regiment, and the regiment knew that Seti had added a new chapter to the Koran concerning horses, in keeping with Mahomet's own famous passage

The adventurous fortunes of Islam satisfied his warrior-spirit, and under Mahomet's guidance he helped to control and direct its military zeal, until it had perforce established its religion through the sword. Mahomet's personal magnetism had drawn him irresistibly to the religion he upheld so steadfastly, and in the face of revilement and danger.

Whether the Jews were overbold because of Mahomet's frequent absences, or whether they now became conscious of the trend of Mahomet's policy towards the absorption of the Jewish element within the city into Islam, will never be made clear, beyond the fact that the Jewish tribes were not enthusiastic in their union with the Muslim, and that their national character precluded them from accepting an alliance that threatened the autonomy of their religion.

The meaner the convent cell the richer the convent chapel. Out of poverty and solitude, inanition and cold, your honest friar may rise at his will into a Mahomet's Paradise of luxurious analogies. There are further various dusky subterranean oratories where a number of bad pictures contend faintly with the friendly gloom. Two or three of these funereal vaults, however, deserve mention.

And upon that maxim he legislates.... The keenness of Mahomet's insight into human nature, a wide knowledge of its temptations, persuasives, influences under which it acts, a vast immense capacity of forbearance for it, half grave half genial, half sympathy half scorn, issue in a somewhat Horatian model, the character of the man of experience who despairs of any change in man, and lays down the maxim that we must take him as we find him.

The Jews themselves, taken almost unawares by the suddenness of Mahomet's entry into their civic life, agreed to the treaty he proposed, and acquiesced unconsciously in his subtle attempts to merge the two faiths into a whole wherein Islam would be the dominant factor.

We quickly pitched the tents, grubbed up the root and stem of a decayed mimosa, and lighted a fire, by the side of which our people sat in a circle. Hardly had the pile begun to blaze, when a cry from Mahomet's new relative, Achmet, informed us that he had been bitten by a scorpion.

This was a piece of Mahomet's garment, but what portion he could not say. The pilgrim had paid largely for this blessed relic, and it was passed round our circle from hand to hand, after having first been kissed by the proprietor, who raised it to the crown of his head, which he touched with the cloth, and then wiped both his eyes.

The miracle-mongers improve this story, by making the shoulder of mutton speak to him; but if it did, it spoke too late, for he had already swallowed some of it; and of the effects of that morsel he complained in his last illness, of which he died three years after. In this year, Jannabi mentions Mahomet's being bewitched by the Jews.