and his companions have desecrated the holy month by shedding blood, seizing
goods and making captives in it;' but this violation of the sacred months lost
him no followers, for the actors in it retained four-fifths of the plunder for
themselves.
These small warlike expeditions provided the booty which was so necessary,
for the Muslims were then very poor.1 They also prepared the way for
greater efforts, and in the revelations of this period a distinct advance is
made in inculcating the spirit of retaliation and in stirring up a feeling of
military ardour. Sura Ar-Ra'd (xiii) is the latest Meccan one, but the
forty-first verse belongs to the Madina period and must have been inserted in
this Sura afterwards either by Muhammad himself, or by compilers of the Qur'an.
It refers to the encroachments of the Muslims over the territories of the pagan
Arabs:
See they not that we come into their land and cut short its borders? God
pronounceth a doom, and there is none to reverse this doom. Sura Ar Ra'd (xiii)
41.
Sura Al-Hajj (xxii) is most probably a Meccan one, but some verses are
clearly of a later date and belong to Madina, such as:
A sanction is given to those who because they have suffered outrages have
taken up arms, and verily God is well able to succour them.
Those who have been driven from their homes wrongfully only because they say,
'Our Lord is the God.' 40-1.