Hind—Mahound enmity

Hind and Mahound’s enmity is a contest over religious authority that survives Mahound’s conquest of Jahilia and becomes, in Gibreel Farishta’s dream, a private act of revenge. The city’s political defeat does not end Hind’s opposition: she withdraws from the new order, returns seemingly unchanged, and greets news of Mahound’s fatal illness as satisfaction at last. The narrative leaves open whether this revenge is human, divine, or inseparable from the dream in which it appears.

A conflict over belief and power

Before Mahound takes Jahilia, his conflict with its established order is already bound up with compromise. Abu Simbel offers recognition for the worship of Lat, Uzza, and Manat, along with a place for Mahound on the city council. Salman the Persian warns that accepting would make Mahound appear false and undermine the creed his followers have recited. Mahound, however, describes revelation as a form of listening that also involves asking: Gibreel Farishta seems to him to come from the deepest part of his own self. That uncertainty places the dispute between Hind’s religious world and Mahound’s new faith inside the question of who can speak with divine authority.

Mahound’s remembered signs have not persuaded Jahilia to abandon its idols. In his anguish, he recalls miracles witnessed by the city and his Night Journey, yet sees people continue to worship Lat and turn to Manat and Uzza. His question is not simply how to defeat Hind’s side, but what he can recite when signs have failed to convince. The conflict therefore joins political opposition to a deeper crisis: the limits of persuasion, the uncertain source of revelation, and the possibility that a religious compromise would purchase power at the cost of belief.

Hind after the conquest

After Abu Simbel hands Jahilia to Mahound, Hind outwardly submits. She recites the new creed and retreats to a high tower in her palace after hearing that the Al-Lat temple at Taif and the known statues of the goddess have been destroyed. Her withdrawal is also a refusal to inhabit the transformed city. For two years and two months, she studies old books in scripts no one else in Jahilia can decipher, sees no one, and asks only that food be left and her chamberpot emptied. The former opponent of Mahound has become inaccessible, preserving her resistance in private rather than confronting the victors in public.

When Hind finally enters Abu Simbel’s bedroom at dawn, she is dressed in her finery and jeweled from wrists to throat. Abu Simbel sees no sign that she has aged during her isolation; she appears younger. Rumors attribute this to witchcraft that has made time run backward within the tower, but the account does not establish that explanation as fact. Hind does not claim to have reversed history. Instead, she announces that revenge remains possible even when the old city cannot be restored. Her return converts the tower’s apparent escape from time into a preparation for a reckoning with Mahound.

Revenge and Mahound’s death

The reckoning begins when news arrives that Mahound has fallen fatally ill in Ayesha’s bed. Hind calmly prepares a banquet and sends invitations throughout the city, although no one comes. She eats couscous alone amid an abundance of untouched dishes. Abu Simbel condemns the meal as an obscenity, linking it to Hind’s earlier consumption of the heart of Mahound’s uncle and accusing her of now wanting Mahound’s heart as well. Hind laughs at him, dismisses servants who begin to weep, and continues her solitary celebration. The scene makes her revenge deliberate and intimate, but it does not show her causing the illness.

Gibreel Farishta’s dream of Mahound’s death gives that revenge a supernatural voice. In the darkened room, Mahound asks whether Al-Lat has brought on his sickness. The female voice answers that the illness is her revenge and that she is satisfied. Because Hind’s return and banquet have just framed the dream, the voice strongly associates her with the goddess whose worship Mahound’s new order displaced. Yet the scene does not settle whether Hind herself speaks, whether Al-Lat acts through her, or whether the dream fuses the two. Mahound responds with thanks for the gift; not long afterward, he dies, while Ayesha, his other wives, and his disciples lament.

The shape of the enmity

Hind and Mahound’s opposition changes form as power changes hands. During Mahound’s rise, the conflict is public and collective: it concerns the gods recognized in Jahilia, the authority to recite revelation, and the terms on which the city might accept a new faith. After his victory, Hind’s resistance becomes secluded, then reappears as a banquet staged for an absent audience. The city has changed allegiance, but her personal hostility has not disappeared with its former institutions.

The narrative also holds political history and apparent timelessness against each other. Mahound’s conquest replaces Jahilia’s former greatness with a new order; Hind cannot undo that history, but the story grants her an uncanny suspension of ordinary aging and lets her revenge coincide with the Prophet’s fatal sickness. The dream frame prevents this coincidence from becoming a settled explanation. Hind’s enmity thus ends not in a clear victory over Mahound, but in an unresolved convergence of political defeat, private revenge, religious imagery, and dream.