I'm not sure. I mean he was offered power by the Arab tribes but only under one condition. If he gave up Islam, they would give him whatever he wanted. But he rejected it and just preached on. Who knows what really happened.
Muhammad was born into a place which before him had complete freedom of religion & many religions, only they protested against hate speech, which is perfectly reasonable, even many Western nations having full religious freedom today put hate speech in a different category.
Remember, Muhammad discussed Abrahamic religions with his wife's cousin Waraqa, a convert to Christianity, also we know of Jewish leaders like Kaab ibn al Ashraf, son of a Jewish mother, Arab father who was brought up Jewish, according to halacha wherein religion is determined matrilineally.
So both conversions to another religion & interfaith marriage was acceptable to the Arabs then, also unlike the anti Semitism after Islam, Jewesses could marry Arab men
& raise their kids Jewish.
Also, Arabs
didn't object to Muhammad preaching a new religion, only when he started uttering rampant hate speech that they felt the need to oppose him.
When the apostle openly displayed Islam as Allah ordered him, his people did not withdraw or turn against him, so far as I have heard,
until he spoke disparagingly of their gods. When he did that, they took great offence and resolved unanimously to treat him as an enemy. (Ibn Ishaq 167)
Although asked to stop, Muhammad continued to stir up trouble by ?condemning? the local religion, causing the Meccans great anxiety:
[The Meccans] said they had never known anything like the trouble they had endured from this fellow. He
had declared their mode of life foolish, insulted their forefathers, reviled their religion, divided the community and cursed their gods (Ibn Ishaq 183).
Muhammad
was offered power, but what sort of power?He could probably at most have become their 361st God, so an idol of him would be put beside the others in the kaaba, or he could've ruled that little place. Also, we don't know how far Arabs would've given him power once he gave up his hate speech & threats, they might've reneged on the deal & even his followers would've abandoned him once they saw that he'd stopped preaching, so he'd be left with no followers. Muhammad ultimately snatched power forcibly, when he ordered the Banu Quraiza massacre & destroyed the idolators idols-declaring that only Islam is the truth. By giving up Islam, he couldn't have the same kind of all encompassing power.
Declaring himself last Abrahamic Prophet gave him real power, power to destroy all the Meccan idols, power to cleanse the Arabian peninsula of Jews & Christians & letting only his faith remain, power to be remembered with the One God-Allah in the Shahada.
Thats' real power.
Topic: Was Mohamed rich?