Mahomet Founder of Islam

t the feet of mo

his foster-mother Hailima. She was a woman of the tribe of Beni Sa'ad, who for generations had roamed the desert, tent-dwellers,

ld give them money and blessings if they could but get their little ones taken away from that unhealthy place. Among these was Hailima, who, according to tradition, has left behind her the narrative of that dreadful journey across the desert with her husband and

hese children. Those of rich parents were eagerly spoken for, but no one would care for the little fatherless child. And it happened that Hailima also was

t go back to my companions without f

hee to do this, and if thou takest him it

hbours besought her to allow them to pasture their cattle with hers. But, adds the chronicler naively, in spite of this their cattle returned to them thin and yielding little, while Hailima's waxed fat and fruitful. These legends are the translation into

ca for her only son. So Hailima returned with him and brought him up as one of her children until he was five, when the first signs of his nervous, highly-strung nature showed themselves in a kind of epileptic fit. The Arabians, unskilled as

its dwelling-place, gazing wide-eyed upon the limitless desert under the blaze of sun or below the velvet dark, with swift, half-conscious questionings uttering the universal why and how [31] of childhood. Legend regards even this early time as one of preparation for his mission, and there are stories of the coming of two men clothed in white and shining garments, who ripped open his body, took out h

unharmed and unfrightened by his adventure. The legend-it is quite a late accretion-is interesting, as showing an acquaintance with, and a parallelism to, the story of the losing of Jesus among the Passover crowds, and the search for Him by His kindred. Mahomet was at last lodged with his mother, who indignantly explained to Hailima the real mean

s tomb faded altogether from his mind. But on the homeward journey a calamity overtook him which he remembered all his life. Amina, weakened by journeying and much sorrow, and per

e woman herself as upon her child's devotion and affectionate memory of the mother he lost almost before he knew her. His grief for her w

tted me to visit it.... I called my mother to remembran

s of the long journey and of the catastrophe which lay at the end of it. The uncertainty of his future, and the joys of gaining at last a foster-father

that prescience which often marks old age, something of the revelation this child was to be to his countrymen, he protected him from the harshness of his uncles. A rug used to be placed in the shadow of the Kaaba, and there the aged ruler rested during the heat of the day, and his son

e God of my fathers, I swear he

til he died in the eighth year after the Year of the Elephan

f these funeral songs; they are representative of the wild rhetorical eloquence of the poetry of the day. They lose immensely in translation, an

generous, endowed with virtues; for my beloved father, the inheritor of all good things, for the man faithful in his own house, who never shrank from combat, who stood fast and needed not a prop, mighty,

d with his death the greatness of the house of Hashim diminished, until it gave place to the Omeyya branch, with Harb at its head. The offices at Mecca were seized by the Omeyya, and to the descendants of Abd al Muttalib there remained but the privilege of caring for the well Zemzem, and of giving its water for the refreshment of pilgrims. Only two of his sons, except Abu Tali

nds of Abu Lahab;

his gains shall

he be with th

ll be laden

a rope of

ng faith in the Prophet of his son, the mighty warrior Ali, of whom it is written, "Mahomet is the City of Knowledge, and Ali is the Gate thereof." But although Abu Talib was sufficiently strong to withstand the popular fury of the Kureisch against Mahomet, and to protect him for a time on the grounds of kinship, he never finally decided upon which side he would take his stand. Had he be

against the Hawazin, a desert tribe that engaged the Kureisch for some time. In Abu Talib's house there was none of the ease that had surrounded

al journey through the desert, so glorious yet awesome to an imaginative child, Bostra was the principal city of exchange for merchandise circulating between Yemen, Northern Arabia, and the cities of Upper Palestine, and Mahomet must thus have travelled on the caravan route through the heart of Syria, past Jerash, Ammon, and the site of the fated Ci

saw him. On the homeward journey the monk Bahirah is fabled to have met the party and to have bidden them to a feast. When he saw the child was not among them he was wroth, and commanded

he said to Bahirah, "a

little more than a child, but although few thoughts of God or of human destiny can have crossed his mind, he retained a vivid impression of the storied places through which he passed-Jerash, Ammon, the valley of Hejr, and saw in imagination the mighty stream of the Tigris, the ruinous cities, and Palmyra with its golden pillars fronting the sun. The tribes which the carava

nd his noonda

when she f

it reveale

when it ens

en and Him

and Him who s

and Him who

its good, yea,

lot is cast a

o believe and

ach other steadfa