st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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14 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
CHAPTER III.
THE MAHOMETAN RULE IN
SYRIA.
IT has been often remarked that the fire of Mahometanism
was long in kindling, but, when once alight,
it
spread a conflagration around with unexampled
rapidity. The Prophet himself had reached the age
of forty before he announced his mission. For eleven
years more, from 611 till his flight from Mecca in 622,
he appeared to make little or no way with his fellowtribesmen,
the Kuraish ;
to be dashing himself vainly
against a rock to be
; growing old, with the bitter
consciousness of failure. His abandoning Mecca
of defeat. And yet, as
was itself an acknowledgment
the event showed, it was a step towards victory.
germs of future success," says a military critic, 1
been planted in the midst of seeming discom
fiture.
He departed, carrying away with him the flower
of the Kuraish. Abou Bakr, Omar, AH, Talha,
Zobair, and the other companions of Muhammad,
left none equal to themselves, when they shook the
dust of their ancestral city from off the soles of their
feet. . . . The
seventy men who followed the
Prophet to Medina, not merely drew away the heart s
blood from the Kuraish they planted in the city
which gave them shelter an imperium in imperio,
1
Major Osborn :
"
Islam Under the Arabs," 1876, p. 21.