uncle 'Abbās and probably also Ṭalḥa and Zubair (two of the earliest converts to Islām) allied themselves with him. Ali was a good swordsman but not a man of cautious action or quick resolve. He and those nearest to him appear to have had no other object in view than to gather around the corpse of the prophet while the fight for the succession was raging without. The news of Abū Bakr's election however roused them at last from their lethargy, and thereupon ensued an act of revenge, shrouded certainly in mystery by Muslim tradition, but which cannot be obliterated; the body of the prophet was secretly buried during the same night below the floor of his death-chamber. It was the custom, after pronouncing the benediction over the coffin, to carry the dead in solemn procession through the town to the cemetery. As however this procession would have simultaneously formed the triumphal entry of the new ruler, the body was disposed of as quickly as possible without the knowledge of Abū Bakr or the other leading companions. Tradition, which represents the old companions as working together in pure friendship and unanimity, has endeavoured with much care to picture these remarkable occurrences as legal. For instance Mahomet is said to have stated previously that prophets should always be buried at the spot where they died. To the modern historian however this episode unveils the strong passions and deep antipathies which divided, not only the Meccans and the Medina faction, but also the nearest companions of the prophet. Abū Bakr's rule was but feebly established, and a dissolution of the young realm would have been inevitable had not the pure instinct of self-preservation forced the opposing parties into unity.
The news of the death appeared to let loose all the centrifugal forces of the new State. According to Muslim accounts all Arabia was already subjected and converted to Islām; and as soon as the news of Mahomet's death was known, many of the tribes seceded from Islām and had to be again subjected in bloody wars and reconverted. This apostasy is termed Ridda, a change of belief, a well-known term of the later law of Islām. In reality Mahomet, at the time of his death, had by no means united Arabia, much less had he converted all the country to Islām. Not quite all of what to-day forms the Turkish province of Ḥijāz, that is the central portion of the west coast of Arabia with its corresponding back-country, was in reality politically joined with Medina and Mecca as a united power, and even this was held together more by interest than by religious brotherhood. The tribes of Central Arabia, e.g. the Ghaṭafān, Bāhila, Ṭayyi', Asad, etc., were in a state of somewhat lax dependence on Mahomet and had probably also partially accepted the doctrine of Islām, whilst in the Christian district to the north and in Yamāma, which had its own prophet, and in the south and east of the peninsula Mahomet either had no connexions whatever or had made treaties with single or isolated tribes, i.e. with a
