After his return to Madina, with a strong sense of his growing power in
Arabia, the vision of the Prophet took a wider range, which is shown in the
spirit of a passage in a late Madina Sura:
Say to them, O men, 'Verily I am God's Apostle to you all.' Sura Al-A'raf
(vii) 157.
This led him to send embassies, about the years A. D. 627-8, to various
Christian rulers, including Heraclius, the Emperor of Byzantium, to the King of
Persia and others.' Nöldeke says that in these letters, calling upon the
Christian sovereigns to embrace Islam and to acknowledge his suzerainty the
following passage was included:2
Say: 'O people of the Book! come ye to a just judgement between us and youthat
ye worship not aught but God and that we join no other gods with Him, and that
the one of us take not the other for lords, beside God.' Then, if they turn
their backs, say, 'Bear ye witness that we are Muslims.'
O people of the Book, why dispute about Abraham,3 when the Law and
the Gospel were not sent down till after him. Do ye not then understand?