It must do that, and could do no other.
Mohammed answered so; and, they say, "burst into tears." Burst into
tears: he felt that Abu Thaleb was good to him; that the task he had got
was no soft, but a stern and great one.
He went on speaking to who would listen to him; publishing his Doctrine
among the pilgrims as they came to Mecca; gaining adherents in this
place and that. Continual contradiction, hatred, open or secret danger
attended him. His powerful relations protected Mohammed himself; but by
and by, on his own advice, all his adherents had to quit Mecca, and seek
refuge in Abyssinia over the sea. The Koreish grew ever angrier; laid
plots, and swore oaths among them, to put Mohammed to death with their
own hands. Abu Thaleb was dead, the good Kadijah was dead. Mohammed is
not solicitous of sympathy from us; but his outlook at this time was one
of the dismallest. He had to hide in caverns, escape in disguise; fly
hither and thither; homeless, in continual peril of his life. More than
once it seemed all-over with him; more than once it turned on a straw,
some rider's horse taking fright or the like, whether Mohammed and his
Doctrine had not ended there, and not been heard of at all. But it was
not to end so.
In the thirteenth year of his mission, finding his enemies all banded
against him, forty sworn men, one out of every tribe, waiting to take
his life, and no continuance possible at Mecca for him any longer,
Mohammed fled to the place then called Yathreb, where he had gained some
adherents; the place they now call Medina, or "_Medinat al Nabi_, the
City of the Prophet," from that circumstance.
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