Of certain facts, moreover, he was definitely aware. He may have had little or no formal education, but his memory was retentive and capacious, and his caravan journeys, together with the scores of conversations he had held at the yearly fairs, as well as at Mecca, with many cultivated strangers, had packed his mind with a mass of highly valuable if heterogeneous matter. In these ways he had learnt both the strength and the weakness of the Jews and Christians: their fanatical enthusiasms and despairs; their spasmodic attempts to proselytize as well as the widespread defections from their faiths; the loftiness of their moral and political codes—a loftiness that remained fruitless from their lack of cohesion and effectual leadership. Since his conception of religion was largely personal—for he looked upon Moses, Jesus and the rest merely as capable men who had founded and promulgated religions—and since Arabia had no preëminent ruler, why should he not seize the reins of power and carry on the great tradition of prophethood? What a magnificent opportunity beckoned, and how fortunate that he had been the first to recognize the call! By keeping only what was best in the Arabic faith—the Kaba and the Black Stone—and by a judicious selection of the most feasible ideas that lay imbedded in Jewish and Christian precepts, he might establish a code that would supersede all others, and might then dictate to all Arabs alike. What prophets had done, he would also do—and do better. Furthermore, he knew something else: he had a wealthy wife and four intimates who were already prepared to fight for him to the death.
Khadija rated first. From the beginning she had stood faithfully by his side, and whenever he was low-spirited and his heavenly visitations were temporarily suspended, she would tenderly comfort him—for the sad memories of her first marriage had made her determined that her second husband should succeed in whatever business he undertook. Her cousin, the learned mystic Waraka, readily abandoned his firm conviction that Christ was the only true prophet in favor of his cousin-in-law’s exclusive claim to the same honor; and it is probable that he, more than any other person, enlightened Mohammed’s many-sided ignorance of religious history. Mohammed had early adopted his youthful cousin Ali, son of Abu Talib, and the attachment between them had come to be mutually strong. He had also assumed control of Zeid, a Christian slave, who became so devoted to his master that, when he was offered his freedom, he replied: “I will not leave thee; thou art in the place to me of father and of mother.” This pleased Mohammed so much that he immediately escorted Zeid to the Black Stone and said: “Bear testimony, all ye that are present. Zeid is my son; I will be his heir, and he shall be mine.” In his thirty-ninth year Mohammed had become acquainted with Abu Bekr—commonly called either “the Sighing” or “the True”—a rich cloth merchant who was middle-aged and short, and who had deep-set eyes. Shrewd and penetrating in business concerns, mentally stable, and untroubled by too many disturbing ideas and emotions, he was just the sort of person Mohammed most needed: a devoted adherent who would serve as business agent for the new faith.
But in the beginning these were all. Some of his immediate relatives did not take him very seriously: Abu Lahab grimaced in his face, and even the charitable Abu Talib smiled rather derisively at his curious actions. We are told that Abu Talib, chancing to apprehend his son Ali and Mohammed contorting themselves according to the precepts of Islam, thereupon remarked that he would not care to twist himself so that his middle portion would be higher than his head—a flippancy that Ali cherished and chuckled over years after his father’s death. Meanwhile the great bulk of the Koreish were too contemptuously indifferent to pay any heed to Mohammed’s strange yarnings, though occasionally, as he passed cliques of them on the streets, they would lazily point him out as a harmless and but mildly amusing dunce.
III
Without applauding or deprecating this Koreishite behavior, we may at any rate impartially consider its origin. The hitherto mentally and emotionally normal trader, husband and father had found himself suddenly swept off his feet and carried irresistibly away on a mighty tide: the perverse, inexplicable desire to write poetry—a fantasy that could not fail to make him the laughing-stock of all right-minded Meccans. How curious, how odd, that he, a well-to-do merchant who had looked forward to nothing more exciting than a peaceful and prosperous future, should be summarily wrenched from his moorings and cast adrift upon such a strange, tempest-tossed sea! Surely, surely, there was some marvelous meaning in the business—if he could but find it. And so, stabbed by agonizing doubts or transported with rapturous ecstasies, he plunged blindly on, seeking relief from his vague imaginings in intermittent bursts of formless, rhapsodical verse. His perturbed spirit now soared to the heights of Heaven and now plunged into the chasms of Hell; moments of ethereal bliss would be followed by periods of the profoundest melancholy. In short, he was passing through the throes of an experience closely akin to religious conversion—an experience that can end in but one of three ways: in a relapse into sin, in suicide, or in a more or less enduring catharsis of the spirit. Though Mohammed was too strong a man to return to the fleshpots of Arabia—if, indeed, he had ever tasted them—it is almost certain, as the earliest fragments of the Koran hint, that he meditated self-destruction for a time; but Allah, the All-Compelling, the Mighty One, had other plans.
It is related that the angel Gabriel, who thus far had labored only in the field of Christian employment, was chosen by Allah as bearer of the divine revelation to Mohammed. One day, while the trader-poet was wrestling with his doubts among the foothills of Mount Hira, he saw a wondrous apparition floating downward on celestial wing. Coming within a distance of two bowshots—for the Arabs are very accurate about such things—the divine envoy exposed a tablet covered with heavenly hieroglyphs before Mohammed’s astonished eyes and exclaimed, “Read!” “I cannot read,” replied Mohammed; but again the unearthly voice uttered the word, “Read!” And then, impelled by an irresistible power, Mohammed fixed his entranced eyes upon the document and began to chant thus:
“Recite in the name of the Lord who created—
Created Man from nought but congealed blood;—
Recite! For thy Lord is beneficent....”
and so on, until the end. “Thou art God’s Prophet, and I am Gabriel,” announced the awe-inspiring guest before he departed to receive the blessing of Allah for having so successfully executed the heavenly command. Gabriel, in truth, was a very valuable ambassador, for, through the to and fro journeyings of this indefatigable messenger, Allah was able to remain at ease in Heaven, thus keeping up that appearance of intangible, majestic remoteness so necessary for dignified gods.