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| | Mohammed & Mohammedanism by S.W. Koelle |
 | | the Calif could venture to divide the bulk of his military forces into smaller armies, and, placing them under efficient commanders, send them forth in every direction, wherever they were most needed at the moment. |
 | | This opening prospect of abundant plunder was, at the same time, also the best means for keeping together in one commonwealth the multitude of reluctant and inwardly disunited Arab tribes, by beckoning them to a common goal of self-interest, possessing irresistible attraction to the marauding instincts of the whole nation. |
 | | What wonder, then, that already in the second year of Abu Bekr's Califate, we find the hungry and fanatical hosts of Arab warriors leaping the northern boundaries of their Peninsula and casting themselves, almost simultaneously, on the already much-weakened empires of Rome and Persia. |
| www.muhammadanism.org /Koelle/mohammedanism/p240.htm (296 words) |
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