188 THE MADINA PERIOD

system, then effectually and for ever blocks the road to greater and more permanent reform. In all this Muhammad showed his ignorance, for it can hardly be supposed that he knew anything of the government or laws of the great Roman Empire; and he certainly knew nothing of the real teaching of Jesus Christ. Had he known these things he would have seen how superior was the great legal system he sought to supersede, how much higher the Christian morality he endeavoured to set aside. A great historian remarks thus: 'A man, himself sincere and righteous, the greatest of reformers and benefactors to his own people, a preacher and legislator of truth and civilization, has eventually done more than any other mortal man to hinder the progress alike of truth and of civilization. The religious reformer has checked the advance of Christianity; the political reformer has checked the advance of freedom and indeed of organized government in any shape; the moral reformer has set his seal to the fearful evils of polygamy and slavery.' 1

It has been well said, 'He who at Mecca is the admonisher and persuader, at Madina is the legislator and warrior, who dictates obedience and uses other weapons than the pen of the poet and the scribe. When business pressed as at Madina, poetry made way for prose, and although touches of the poetical element occasionally break forth, and he has to defend himself up to a very late period against the charge of being merely a poet,2 yet this
1 Freeman, History and Conquests of the Saracens, p. 59.
  2 Sura Ya-Sin (xxxvi) 69.
GOD AND HIS APOSTLE 189

is rarely the case in the Madina Suras: and we are startled by finding obedience to God and the Apostle, God's gifts and the Apostle's, God's pleasure and the Apostle's spoken of in the same breath, and epithets and attributes, elsewhere applied to Allah, openly applied to himself.' 1

The phrase 'God and His Apostle' is a very common one in the Madina Suras and is peculiar to them.2 The Prophet had now passed from the position of a preacher and a warner to that of a ruler of a theocratic State, and his orders are now given, in regard to a great variety of matters, with all the force of a divine sanction. The infidels are described as those who believe not and who turn their backs on God's revelation; but to the faithful it is said:—

Believe then in God and His Apostle, and in the light which we have sent down. Sura At-Taghabun (lxiv) 8.3
1 Rodwell, Qur'an, Introduction, p. 10. 
2 There is one apparent exception to this, for the phrase occurs in Sura Al-A'raf (vii) 158.
This is a late Meccan Sura but the verses 156-8 are evidently an interpolation from a later revelation. Their Madina origin seems quite clear from the use of the term النبى الامى 'unlettered prophet.' This is a peculiar Madina phrase. The allusion to the 'Law and the Gospel' also shows a late origin. Then there is a reference to those who 'strengthen and aid' عزروة ونصروة This is a clear allusion to the Ansar, for Husain (vol. i, p. 222) says نصروة means يارى دادند اورا بر دشمنان 'those who helped him against enemies;' and 'Abdu'llah ibn 'Abbas says that they helped with the sword. This appears to settle the question of the later date of these verses; a fact which suits the context, and which is more consistent than an earlier date would be with the use of the words. 'God and His Apostle.' See Nöldeke, Geschichte des Qorans, p. 118.
3 Husain says that the 'light' is the Qur'an which is so called, 'because it is miraculous in its nature and the place where the truths concerning the orders of things lawful and unlawful are seen.' Tafsir-i-Husaini, vol. ii, p. 406.