The next year (A.H. 6), Mohammed made a truce with the Meccans (the truce of Hodaibiyah), whereby he secured for his followers the right of performing the pilgrimage in the following year. The performance of the pilgrimage (A.H. 7), not only won important converts in the persons of Khalid and the no less able (Amr b. al-`As, but in general impressed the population with the idea that Mohammed was winning. An excuse was easily found for invading Mecca itself in the following year and the city surrendered with little resistance. The Medinese, however, prevailed upon the Prophet to maintain their city as his political capital, while making Mecca the religious centre of his system. In the following year all Arabs who were not yet converted were given four months' grace before force was to be brought to bear upon them. In the succeeding year Mohammed himself con ducted the pilgrimage, and delivered the important proclama tion wherein he declared that God had completed their religion. The principle insisted upon was the brotherhood of Islam ; but there is difficulty in enucleating the original sermon from later additions.
It would seem that at first Mohammed thought of himself as sent to his fellow-citizens only, but at the battle of Badr he appears to have formulated the rule that no one might fight on his side who had not embraced Islam ; and when once he had won fame as a successful campaigner, those who wished to share his adventures had to pass the Islamic test. After the taking of Mecca, paganism in general was conscious of being attacked ; and the city had scarcely been brought under the new regime before the Prophet had to face a confederation of tribes called Hawazin and Thaqif. The battle which ensued, known as the Day of Honain, was a narrow victory for Islam. Emissaries were now sent out to destroy idols, and only Taif appears to have made any considerable resistance; against this place the Prophet first made use of siege artillery, and afterwards took it by capitulation. Although the central portions of the peninsula were practically independent, large portions of the north-west and south-east were provinces of the Byzantine and Persian empires respectively, whence any scheme for the conquest of Arabia would necessarily involve war with these great powers. In the year A.H. 7, on the eve of the taking of Mecca, the Prophet sent missives to all known sovereigns and potentates, promising them safety if they embraced Islam. The text of these letters, which only varied in the name of the person addressed, is preserved (doubtless faith fully) by the Muslim Oral Tradition. At the time of his death he
was organizing an expedition against Syria.
The Jewish and Christian Communities.—The Prophet claimed throughout that his revelation confirmed the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, and on neither the truth of the Biblical his tory and miracles nor the validity of the Mosaic legislation does he appear to have cast any doubt. He even allows that Israel was the chosen people. The Gospel was known to him chiefly through apocryphal and heretical sources, which cannot certainly be identified; but he accepted the doctrine of the Virgin-birth, the miracles of healing the sick and raising the dead, and the ascension ; the crucifixion and resurrection were clearly denied by the sect from whom he had received his information, and rejected by him, though certainly not because of any miracle which the latter involved. His quarrel with the Jews at Medina appears to have been by no means of his own seeking, but to have arisen unavoidably, owing to his particular view of his office being such as they could not accept. When he discovered their military incompetence he appears to have been unable to resist the temptation to appropriate their goods; and his attack on the flourishing Jewish settlement of Khaibar appears to have been designed to satisfy his discontented adherents by an accession of plunder. Yet the consciousness that his process was economi cally wasteful suggested to him an idea which Islamic States are only now abandoning, viz., that of a tolerated caste who should till the soil and provide sustenance for the Believers who were to be the fighting caste. Whereas then his former plan in dealing with Israelites had been to banish or massacre, he now left the former owners of Khaibar (who had survived the capture of the place) in full possession of the soil, of whose produce they were to pay a fixed proportion to the Islamic State.
Disputes with Christians occur somewhat later in the Prophet's career than those with the Jews. Mohammed's manifesto to the world, about the time of the taking of Khaibar, appears to repre sent his definite breach with Christianity; and when in the "year of the embassies" the Christians of Najran sent a deputation to him, they found that the breach between the two systems was not to be healed. Of the three alternatives open to them— conversion, internecine war, and tribute—they chose the last, and the Prophet's attitude towards them became less hostile than towards the Jews.