26 THE MECCAN PERIOD

wishes to the full. Muhammad after Khadija's death was, according to the Raudatu' l-Ahbab,1 very much dejected when a friend said, 'Why do you not marry again?' he replied, ' Who is there that I could take?' ' If thou wishest for a virgin, there is 'Ayisha, the daughter of thy friend Abu Bakr; and if thou wishest for a woman, there is Sauda who believes in thee.' He solved the dilemma by saying, ' Then ask them both for me.' Two months after the death of Khadija he was married to Sauda and betrothed to 'Ayisha, then a girl of six years of age, whom three years after he married. Still it may be said, how is it that in the later Suras these vivid descriptions of the carnal joys of Paradise are not given?2 One reason sometimes assigned is that his followers in Madina, no longer being a persecuted people, did not need this encouragement; but there is also another explanation which has been given.

The more probable cause, assuredly, is satiety. The pleasures which appeared so intense when out of reach, that Muhammad could think of no reward so fitting for the believer in Paradise, palled as soon as they were enjoyed without restriction.'3
1 Quoted by Koelle, Mohammed and Mohammedanism, p. 79.
2 In the Madina Suras, extending over a period of ten years after the Hijra, or flight from Mecca, women are only twice referred to as forming one of the joys of heaven and then as wives, not as concubines :—

Therein shall they have wives of purity. Sura Al-Baqarah (ii) 23.
Therein they shall have wives of stainless purity. Sura An-Nisa' (iv) 60.

Either closer contact with Jewish morality in Madina repressed the sense of the sensual Paradise, the representation of which was used at Mecca with so much force, or it was not necessary now to thus encourage the Muslims, by holding out to them those prospects of enjoyment in Paradise which they could on earth enjoy to the full.
3 Osborn, Islam under the Arabs, p. 36.

HELL 27

In the second part of the Meccan period we have vivid descriptions of hell and its punishments. The inhabitants of hell are constantly tortured ; they are dragged by the scalp and flung into the fire where boiling water will be forced down their throats and garments of fire fitted on to them; they will be beaten with iron maces and each time they try to escape they will be dragged back again, with the words :

How wretched shall be the people of the left hand !
Amid scorching blasts and in scalding water,
And in the shadow of a black smoke
Not cool and horrid to behold. Sura Al-Waqi'ah (lvi) 41-3.

In the third period of the Meccan ministry the same fierce denunciations are carried on, showing that up to its close this was the attitude of the Prophet towards his opponents:—

They hasten forward in fear; their heads upraised in supplication ; their looks riveted 1 and their hearts a blank. Warn men, therefore, of the day when the punishment shall overtake them, and when the evil doers shall say, 'O our Lord! respite us a little while ;'
And thou shalt see the wicked on that day linked together in chains ;
Their garments of pitch, and fire shall enwrap their faces. Sura Ibrahim (xiv) 44-50.
Those who treat 'the Book' 2 and the message with which we have sent our apostles, as a lie, shall know the truth hereafter,
1 Osborn, Islam under the Arabs, p. 39
2 The Qur'an and books of preceding prophets.