Muhammad: Seal of the Prophets — Page 89
MUHAMMAD : SEAL OF THE PROPHETS 89 no important result. The time of pilgrimage alone afforded the Holy Prophet a wide field. That interval of universal amnesty was turned, as it had been before, to careful account in visiting and exhorting the various tribes that flocked to Mecca and the ad jacent fairs. Thus the Holy Prophet visited the great assemblages at Okaz and other places, as well as the pilgrim encampments at Mecca and Mina. On these occasions he warned his countrymen against idolatry, invited them to worship and service of the One T rue God, and promised them prosperity and divine bounties here and hereafter if they would believe. No one responded to his call. Abu Lahab would dog his steps, proclaiming, ‘Believe him not, he is a lying renegade. ’ When the period of confinement had lengthened to nearly three years, the Holy Prophet said one day to Abu Talib that God had revealed to him that the agreement to which Quraish had subscribed against them had been so severely damaged by ants that of the wr iting only the name of Allah had remained legible. Thereupon Abu Talib went to the Ka’aba, where several Quraish were in conclave, and addressed them as follows: ‘How long will you continue to conform to the conditions of your brutal agreement? My nephew h as told me that God has wiped out the whole of the agreement except His own name. Let us examine the agreement to discover whether what my nephew has said is correct. ’ Some of those present endorsed what he had said and the original of the agreement was fe tched and on examination it was found that with the exception of the name of God with which it began, the rest of the writing had become undecipherable. In consequence of this significant discovery, some of the chiefs of