Two years later Abd Al-Muttalib went to join Abdallah and Amina, and Mohammed, weeping bitterly at the loss of his kind-hearted protector, was consigned to the care of his uncle Abu Talib, the second of Abd Al-Muttalib’s five surviving sons. Az-Zubeir, the eldest, inherited the official duties of his deceased father; but he soon passed that honor on to the fourth son, Al-Abbas, a money-lender, owner of Zemzem, rich, but unfortunately weak in character. Abu Lahab, the third son, was destined to be a life-long foe of the Prophet; but the youngest, Hamza the hunter, was from the beginning one of his staunchest supporters. Abu Talib, a dealer in cloths and perfumes, was a poor man, yet he faithfully cared for his nephew, whom he almost never let out of his sight. When Mohammed was twelve, he accompanied Abu Talib on a mercantile journey to Syria; and various writers have mused at length on the probable effects of this strange, wild expedition on his highly susceptible mind. It may be, as some believe, that the seeds of his heavenly mission were sown in his mind during this experience. Whatever else he was, however, Mohammed was not a youthful prodigy, and perhaps, as most lads of his age would have done, he merely had a good time.
III
While Mohammed’s life glided from youth into manhood without many remarkable changes, certain events occurred that indelibly fixed the channels of his future. The death of Abd Al-Muttalib had left the ancient house of Hashim without a strong leader, and so it happened that another branch of the Koreish came into power—a circumstance that marked the beginning of the deadly struggle between the Prophet and many of his kin that attended his whole career. For some years, it is true, this hostility was latent. During a decade—from Mohammed’s tenth to his twentieth year—all the Koreish were banded together against the hostile tribe of the Beni Hawazin in the Sacrilegious War: a struggle that grew out of a violation of the taboo on fighting during the sacred months. When Mohammed was nearly twenty, he accompanied his uncles during one of the many frays that marked this civil strife; but his activities seem to have been confined to picking up the arrows of the enemy and turning them over for the use of his uncles. Many years later he remarked: “I remember being present with my uncles in the Sacrilegious War; I discharged arrows at the enemy, and I do not regret it.” But the Prophet of divinity was always very human, and it seems almost certain that the enormous prestige of his station induced him occasionally to indulge in a verbal license pardonable in prophets if not in lesser men. With a wisdom that has characterized certain other heroes of divinity, Mohammed wisely confined his originality and his daring strictly to his mental activities, and fought only when self-preservation necessitated it.
The war finally ended in an unsatisfactory truce: neither side had won, and no dominant personality had yet emerged from the Koreish. Factionalism soon grew to be so rife that the descendants of Hashim, and families of germane origin, formed a confederacy to punish wrongdoing and secure justice among the different branches of the Koreish. Mohammed himself was an interested spectator of the initial ceremonies of this brotherhood. “I would not exchange for the choicest camel in all Arabia,” he exclaimed on a later day, “the remembrance of being present at the oath which we took in the house of Abdallah when the Beni Hashim, Zuhra ibn Kilab, and Teim ibn Murra swore that they would stand by the oppressed.” Thus, by slow degrees, the breach widened between Mohammed and the majority of the Koreish.
His early manhood was spent in caring for flocks, in attending caravan expeditions, and in certain avocations which, all things considered, indicated that he was more estimable than the common run of youthful Arabs. As a shepherd of sheep and goats on the hills around Mecca, he both conferred benefit upon his penurious uncle, Abu Talib, and engaged in an occupation that, as he was careful to point out on a future occasion, was particularly appropriate for his rank. After commenting on the similarity between himself and Moses, David, Jesus, and other seers, he concluded thus: “Verily there hath been no prophet raised up, who performed not the work of a shepherd.” He often accompanied caravans, traveling possibly as far as Egypt and the Dead Sea. In addition to the money thus earned, he picked up a mass of miscellaneous information that he used both to his advantage and disadvantage in the Koran; for its pages reek with foreign phrases, now beautiful and now outrageously grotesque, which even his most intimate friends failed to comprehend. All writers, including strangely enough those of the Christian faith, coincide in stating that his early manhood was marked by an excess of modesty and a minimum of vice rare, not merely in young Arabs, but in the young men of any nation. It has been maintained, with a cogency no less admirable than indemonstrable, that his virtue was miraculously kept immaculate. Mohammed himself, with forgivable modesty, appears to have believed this. “I was engaged one night feeding the flocks in company with a lad of Koreish,” he once narrated, “and I said to him, ‘If thou wilt look after my flock, I will go into Mecca and divert myself there, even as youths are wont by night to divert themselves.’” But the sequel, though divinely ordained, was rather tame. As he neared the outskirts of the city, a marriage feast attracted so much of his time that he fell safely asleep. Another evening, as he approached the city bent upon a similar enterprise, strains of celestially somnolent music made him fall into a second scatheless slumber. “After this I sought no more after vice,” he affirmed; but he thought it wise to add the cryptic phrase, “even until I had attained unto the prophetic office.”
By the time Mohammed was twenty-five, Abu Talib, whose waxing family was constantly restricting his already limited means, decided that it was high time for his dependent nephew to shift for himself. “I am, as thou knowest, a man of small substance,” he remarked one day to Mohammed, “and truly the times deal hardly with me. Now here is a caravan of thine own tribe about to start for Syria, and Khadija, daughter of Khuweilid, needeth men of our tribe to send forth with her merchandise. If thou wert to offer thyself, she would readily accept thy services.” The double-edged nature of the conclusion presumably escaped both men; but the complaisant Mohammed acceded and was soon off on the journey, accompanied by Meisara, the servant of Khadija. Mohammed had thus far had little business experience, but he always showed a many-sided talent for barter and compromise, and he therefore returned with a credit that did him high honor. As the caravan approached Mecca, Meisara induced him to carry the good news to Khadija in person. That lady, a wealthy widow of about forty and the mother of three children, was highly elated at Mohammed’s story; and, as she listened to the proof of his business ability and fondly scanned his large, nobly formed head, his curling, coal-black hair, his dark, piercing eyes, and his comely form, it naturally occurred to her that this vigorous and handsome young fellow would make an excellent successor to her deceased husband. She had turned down the proposals of many vehement Koreishite suitors; but here was one for whom, if necessary, she herself was prepared to do the wooing—for Arab ladies rarely entertained any foolish feminine scruples about such matters.
It was necessary; but she moved with discretion. She sent an envoy, probably Meisara, to find out why Mohammed was so timid about matrimony; for most Arabs married at about eighteen and lived in poverty ever after. “What is it, O Mohammed, that hindereth thee from marriage?” queried the messenger. “I have nothing in my hands wherewithal I might marry,” he replied; for he still retained painful memories of a proposal refused by one of his cousins, on the sensible grounds that he had not the proper means to support her. “But if haply that difficulty were removed,” he was asked, “and thou wert invited to espouse a beautiful and wealthy lady of noble birth, who would place thee in affluence, wouldst thou not desire to have her?” “But who might it be?” he quickly inquired. “It is Khadija.” “But how can I attain unto her?” “Let that be my care,” he was told, and he immediately responded, “I am ready.”
Khadija was overjoyed at this news; but, according to custom, she still had to win the consent of her father despite her age and her manifold attainments. So she prepared a feast and made him drunk; she then commanded that a cow should be killed, and, drenching her intoxicated parent in perfumes, she clothed him in the requisite matrimonial robes. Under such circumstances the old man unconsciously performed the ceremony, but when he recovered he looked with amazement on all the numerous signs of a wedding, and stupidly inquired what it all meant. Upon learning the facts, and upon being misinformed to the effect that “the nuptial dress was put upon thee by Mohammed, thy son-in-law,” he staggered up in high wrath and swore that his daughter, whose hand had been sought by the most eminent Koreishites, should never be the bride of such a shiftless ne’er-do-well as Mohammed. Even after the story had been corrected he still refused to relent, and a tribal war might have followed had he not shortly calmed down and decided to make the best of a bad job. During the next fifteen years Mohammed led a tranquil life. His future was provided for; he had plenty of leisure to occupy himself as he chose, for Khadija insisted upon running her own business affairs; and, notwithstanding her seasoned maturity, there seems to be little reasonable doubt that he became the father of four daughters and an indeterminate number of sons.
Not wishing to remain entirely idle, however, he acquired a partner and established a general barter and trade business in Mecca—a fact that doubtless explains the frequent depiction of Allah as a divine bookkeeper in the Koran: “God is good at accounts,” and so on. Years later, in the heyday of his fame at Medina, he still bought goods wholesale and retailed them at an excellent profit, and he also employed his stentorian voice as an auctioneer. All his children turned out to be sickly. His son, or sons, died in infancy, and his oldest daughter lived less than forty years; hence historians who possess a flair for matters pertaining to medicine have made the deduction that perhaps, after all, his youthful zest was not guarded by Heaven, but was expended in most deplorable channels. During these years Mohammed and his wife continued to be conventional idolators who performed nightly rites in honor of various gods and goddesses—among whom Allah and his female consoler Al-Lat ranked fairly high—and who gave Pagan names to their children. And so, by the year 610, Mohammed at forty was nothing more than a respectable but unknown tradesman who had experienced no extraordinary crisis, whose few extant sayings were flat and insipid, and whose life seemed destined to remain as insignificant and unsung as that of any other Arab.
