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Therefore, in estimating, if they did at all carefully, the forces matched against them, the Kureisch found themselves materially invincible, though they had not reckoned the spiritual factor of enthusiasm which transcended their own physical superiority. These events had taken over nine days, and meanwhile Mahomet had not been idle.
He was in part a guarantee to the Khazraj of Mahomet's good faith, in part an asset for him against the Kureisch, for his family were still influential in Mecca.
He declared upon the evidence of his friends that the Kureisch had helped the Beni Bekr in disguise and announced the swift enforcement of his vengeance. In alarm the Kureisch sent Abu Sofian to Medina to make their depositions as to the rights of the case and to beg for clemency. But their emissary met with no success.
Khadijah, a beautiful widow, daughter of an honoured house and the cousin of Mahomet, rich and much sought after by the Kureisch, desired someone to accompany her trading venture to Bostra, and hearing of the wisdom and faithfulness of Mahomet, sent for him, asking if he would travel for her into Syria and pursue her bargains in that northern city.
Still the conversions to Islam continued, and the persecution of its adherents, until there came to the Kureisch a sharp intimation that this new sect arisen in their midst was not an ephemeral affair of a few weeks, but a prolonged endeavour to pursue the ideal of a single God.
Mahomet was not yet convinced of the impossibility of compromise, neither was the powerful party among the Kureisch utterly indifferent to Mahomet's ancestry as a member of the house of Hashim, and his position as the husband of Khadijah. He had been respected among men for his uprightness before he affronted their prejudices by scorning their gods.
When the Kureisch heard of it, they set out in a body to the seashore and took away the wood of the ship to build a roof for the Kaaba. It is a significant fact that tradition puts a Greek carpenter in Mecca who was able to advise them as to the construction. The Meccans themselves were not sufficiently skilled in the art of building. But now a great difficulty awaited them.
"Is this true?" he asked the messenger; "has Mahomet verily slain these men? By the Lord, if he has done this, then is the innermost part of the earth better than the surface thereof!" He journeyed in haste to Mecca, and when he heard the dreadful news confirmed he did his utmost to stir up the Kureisch against the murderer.
Weeds grew in the deserted streets, and over all lay a fine film of dust, the almost impalpable effort of the desert to merge once more into itself the territory wrung from it by human will. The effect of this emigration upon the Kureisch can hardly be estimated.
They lay hidden among the hills, while the Kureisch worked their triumphant vengeance upon the corpses of their victims, which they mutilated before burying, after the barbarous fashion of the time, and the savage wrath of Hind found appeasement in her destruction of Hamza's body.
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