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He marshalled his army and put a great white banner at their head, gave the leadership to Hamza, and so marched forth to attack the rebellious Kainukaa. For fifteen days the tribe was besieged in its strongholds, until at last, beaten and discouraged, faced by scarcity of supplies, and the certainty of disease, it surrendered at discretion.
Then was shown in all its fullness the implacable despotism conceived by Mahomet as the only possible method of government, which indeed for those times and with that nation it certainly was. The order went forth for the slaying and despoiling of the Kainukaa, and the grim work began by the seizure of their armour, precious stones, gold, and goldsmith's tools.
For twenty-five days it was besieged by Islam, says the chronicler, until God put terror into the hearts of the Jews, and they were reduced to sore straits. Then they offered to depart as the Kainukaa had departed, empty-handed, with neither gold nor cattle, into a strange land.
Neither the murder of their singers, nor the expulsion of the Kainukaa could silence the voice of Jewish discontent, which found its most effective mouthpiece in the poet Ka'b al' Ashraf, son of a Jewess of the tribe of the Beni Nadhir. This man had been righteously indignant at the slaughter of the Kureischite champions at Bedr. The story seemed to him so monstrous that he could not believe it.
But it was not enough for Mahomet to have silenced disaffection. He aimed at nothing less than the complete union of all Medina under his leadership and in one religious belief. There he summoned their chief men in the bazaar, and exhorted them fervently to become converted to Islam. But the Kainukaa were firm in their faith and refused him with contemptuous coldness.
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