foldiers, who, he afferted, were always purified by the blood which they fpilt, but whofe fins were ftill the cause of his failure. He owed to this perfuafion, and especially to the weakness and divifions of the Arabians, the rapid conquefts, which he made in less than ten years in Arabia. The neighbouring princes, who had formed little fovereignties from the ruins of the Roman empire, and were mostly Christians, either submitted to his authority, or sought his alliance. He put a perfonal tax on each of their fubjects who did not embrace the Mahometan faith. This custom ftill fubfifts among all the fovereigns who acknowledge the Alcoran. Every reputed Infidel pays the prince a poll-tax, over and above the other impofts, which he fupports as the rest of the fubjects, and lives in other refpects according to his religion and civil laws, which don't extend far on account of their defectiveness.

In the course of his conquefts, the impoftor was like to lose his life by an accident that should have unmasked him to all his followers. In one of those towns which he had lately conquered, a young girl, whofe brother Mahomet had caused to be put to death, undertook his revenge; fhe served up to the prophet a fhoulder of mutton impregnated with a fubtle poifon. Being warned, not by any divine fcience, but by the bad taste of the meat placed before him, Mahomet threw up what he had taken of it; but he could not pre

vent all the effects of the poifon, which had mixed with his blood, and gave him violent convulfions. The girl confefsed the truth, saying, that she had refolved to know if Mahomet were a prophet, or only an impoftor. She was delivered to the parents of a young man, who, having eaten more of the meat than Mahomet, had died immediately. They avenged, in the blood of the homicide, the loss of their son. But the prophet never thoroughly recovered from this pretended proof; he languished three years, without relaxing his ambition, without being lefs vigilant, lefs intrepid, lefs a hypocrite, or lefs voluptuous.

During the truce, the Mecchefe attempted to fuccour a town befieged by Mahomet's foldiers. The prophet armed in hafte against them, looking on the truce as broken. His forces, by the hope of booty, by perfuafion, or by fear, augmented every day. He became in 630, the eighth year of the hegira, the defpotic fovereign of his native city, from which he had been driven fome years before. Being now mafter of this famous temple, fo venerated by his profelytes, he broke in pieces the numerous idols there, and pretended to reftore to the temple of one fole God all its purity, by caufing all the reveries of the Alcoran, and the abfurd figns of his miffion, to be faid in it.

Mahomet would foon have been fovereign of all Arabia, if his example had not produced two other impoftors, prophets, warriors, and legislators, like

himself,

himself, who thought to take advantage of the weakness of the Arabians and of their love of novelty. Molozeima and Alafvaad, both Muffulmen, attempted at the fame time in diftant provinces to fubdue the people in their own name, and to give them new laws. These enterprizes, made by two brave and learned men, imbittered Mahomet's latter days, and fhook his throne.

The impreffion of the poifon, which he had not been able to eradicate, after three years made rapid progrefs. He fent his lieutenants against these formidable rivals, and, before his death, had the fatisfaction to fee himself rid of one of them. Alafvaad, betrayed by his wife and relations, who fold him to Mahomet, was affaffinated in his own houfe. But the fall of the more redoubtable Molozeima, who had already conquered fome Arabian towns, was reserved for the prophet's first fucceffor.

At length this fortunate impoftor died, in the 11th year of the hegira, the 633d of Jesus Christ, at Medina, which he had made his capital, aged upwards of 63 folar years, after having deceived, fought, and reigned, twenty-three years in almost every part of Arabia, Mahomet's hiftorians, in publishing his impoftures, have particularly extolled his genius. Circumftances contributed much to his glory; without doubt he was indebted a great deal to his audacity, to his pa

tience in his proceedings, and to-his warlike talents; but if he was the founder of the powerful empire of the caliphs, and of an extended religion, thofe, who placed the Alcoran in his mouth, and arms in his hands, who combined how far the credulity of the Arabians might be counted on, and who fhewed them fome truths to gain credit to a thousand falfities, contributed more to exalt the glory of Mahomet, than his ignorance, incontinency, and severity, could hurt him. The greatest fuccefs of Mahometanism was not 'till after the death of the prophet. He had fought to poffefs himself of fome cities; his fucceffors enflaved provinces and kingdoms, and the Muffulman law was much more respected, because its author no longer difplayed to the eyes of the people a fcandalous conduct, which it had been often neceffary to justify.

Mahomet was no more, and his most zealous difciples would not allow that he had paid the debt to nature. As foon as the prophet had breathed his laft, Omar, whofe daughter he had married, in order to deceive the people, made use of the most convincing argument that Mahomet had ever employed during his life; he drew his fword, and fwore, that he would exterminate all those who should dare advance that the prophet was dead. The multitude, who feared and respected Omar, were inclined to believe what he faid; when Abubeker, another of

the

the prophet's fathers-in-law, exclaimed: Do you then worship Mahomet, or the God of Mahomet, who alone is infinite and immortal? If it is true that our prophet was but a man like us, why fhould he have been exempted from the universal law? And he proved by the Alcoran that Mahomet had often repeated himself that he should die. This difcourfe convinced Omar and all the Muffulmen, whom the fight of the dead body had not been able to undeceive. Mahomet was interred with much folemnity in the very fame place where he died. The vifit to his tomb is ftill the most celebrated pilgrimage among the Muffulmen, after that of Mecca.

The fceptre feemed to belong to Ali, the prophet's nearest relation, his only fon-in-law, and his oldest difciple, he who had the first exposed his life for the preservation of his master's. But Aiefa, the daughter of Abubeker, Mahomet's most beloved wife, though the whom he had had most reason to complain of, always remembered, that at the time when the Angel Gabriel had brought from Heaven a chapter of the Alcoran to wash her of the crime of adultery, Ali had raised difficulties in the mind of Mahomet, and had expofed his cherished wife to a thousand domeftic chagrins, and to the anger of an irritated hufband, when at the fame time the air was refounding with the conviction and proof of her innocence. Aiefa feized this occafion to be revenged. In

the