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Near Medina was a castle of Jews, against whom Muhammad was already incensed because of their disrespect or his theology. They had shown a disposition to side with the probable victor in this last struggle, and Muhammad now fell upon- them, slew all the men, nine hundred of them, and enslaved the women and children. Possibly many of their late allies were among the bidders for these slaves. Never again after this quaint failure did Mecca make an effective rally against Muhammad, and one by one its leading men came over to his side.
Thereafter his power extended, there were battles, treacheries, massacres; but on the whole he prevailed, until he was master of all Arabia; and when he was master of all Arabia in 632, at the age of sixty-two, he died.
Throughout the concluding eleven years of his life after the Hegira, there is little to distinguish the general conduct of Muhammad from that of any other welder of peoples into a monarchy. The chief difference is his use of a religion of his own creation as his cement. He was diplomatic, treacherous, ruthless, or compromising as the occasion required and as any other Arab king might have been in his place; and there was singularly little spirituality in his kingship. Nor was his domestic life power and freedom one of exceptional edification. Until the death of Kadija, when he was fifty, he seems to have been the honest husband of one wife; but then, as many men do in their declining years, he developed a disagreeably strong interest in women.
These are salient facts in these last eleven years of Muhammad's career. Because he, too, founded a great religion, there are those who write of this evidently lustful and rather shifty leader as though he were a man to put beside Jesus of Nazareth or Gautama or Mani. But it is surely manifest that he was a being of a commoner clay; he was vain egotistical, tyrannous, and a self-deceiver; and it would throw all our history out of proportion if, out of an insincere deference to the possible Moslem reader, we were to present him in any other light.
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The Crusades were a series of military conflicts fought between European Christians and Arab Muslims to regain the Holy Land. Most often, the term "Crusades" refers to the campaigns in the Holy Land against Muslim forces sponsored by the Papacy, of which there were four. There were other crusades in the Holy Land lead by private royal armies, as well as crusades against Islamic forces in southern Spain, southern Italy, and Sicily. Furthermore, the campaigns of Teutonic knights against pagan strongholds in Eastern Europe are also sometimes called crusades. Lastly, military action within Christendom lead against heretical and schismatic groups is also sometimes called a crusade. The four papal-sponsored crusades aimed at securing the Holy Land occurred between A. D. 1097 and 1204.