The hearts of thousands till they moved as one."
§ 3. Early Life of Mohammed, to the Hegira.
But it was not as a soldier or ambitious conqueror that Mohammed began his career. The first forty years of his life were passed in the quiet pursuits of trade, or taking care of the property of Khadîjah. Serious, thoughtful, devout, he made friends of all about him. His youth was unstained by vice, and his honorable character early obtained for him the title, given him by common consent, of Al Amîn, "the faithful." At one time he tended sheep and goats on the hills near Mecca. At Medina, after he became distinguished he referred to this, saying, "Pick me the blackest of those berries; they are such as I used to gather when I fed the flocks at Mecca. Verily, no prophet has been raised up who has not performed the work of a shepherd." When twenty-five years of age, he entered into the service of Khadîjah, a rich widow, as her agent, to take charge of her merchandise and to sell it at Damascus. When the caravan returned, and his adventure had proved successful, Khadîjah, then forty years old, became interested in the young man; she was wise, virtuous, and attractive; they were married, and, till her death, Mohammed was a kind and loving husband. Khadîjah sympathized with her husband in his religious tendencies, and was his first convert. His habit was to retire to a cave on Mount Hira to pray and to meditate. Sadness came over him in view of the evils in the world. One of the Suras of the Koran, supposed to belong to this period, is as follows:—
Sura 103.
"By the declining day I swear!
Verily, man is in the way of ruin;
Excepting such as possess faith,
And do the things which be right,
And stir up one another to truth and steadfastness."
About this time he began to have his visions of angels, especially of Gabriel. He saw a light, and heard a voice, and had sentences like the above put into his mind. These communications were accompanied by strong convulsions (epilepsy, says Weil), in which he would fall to the ground and foam at the mouth. Sprenger considers it to have been a form of hysteria, with a mental origin, perhaps accompanied with catalepsy. The prophet himself said: "Inspiration descends on me in two ways. Sometimes Gabriel cometh and communicateth the revelation, as one man to another. This is easy. But sometimes it is as the ringing of a bell, which rends me in pieces, and grievously afflicts me." One day, when Abu Bakr and Omar sat in the Mosque at Medina, Mohammed came suddenly upon them, lifting up his beard and looking at it; and Abu Bakr said, "Ah thou, for whom I would sacrifice father and mother; white hairs are hastening upon thee!" "Yes," said the prophet, "Hûd" (Sura 11) "and its sisters have hastened my white hairs." "And who," asked Abu Bakr, "are its sisters?" "The Inevitable" (Sura 56) "and the Striking" (Sura 101), replied Mohammed. These three are called the "terrific Suras."