with the Byzantine and Persian empires. It would have been contrary to Mohammed's usual methods if this had led him to form a general definition of his attitude towards the world outside Arabia.
As little as Mohammed, when he invoked the Meccans in wild poetic inspirations to array themselves behind him to seek the blessedness of future life, had dreamt of the possibility that twenty years later the whole of Arabia would acknowledge his authority in this world, as little, nay, much less, could he at the close of his life have had the faintest premonition of the fabulous development which his state would reach half a century later. The subjugation of the mighty Persia and of some of the richest provinces of the Byzantine Empire, only to mention these, was never a part of his program, although legend has it that he sent out written challenges to the six princes of the world best known to him. Yet we may say that Mohammed's successors in the guidance of his community, by continuing their expansion towards the north, after the suppression of the apostasy that followed his death, remained in Mohammed's line of action. There is even more evident continuity in the development of the empire of the Omayyads out of the state of Mohammed, than in the series of events by which we see the dreaded Prince-Prophet of Medina grow out of the "possessed one" of
