superintendence, and whose pilgrims they were privileged to supply with food and water. Their riches were gained and multiplied by a diligent participation in the mercantile enterprises of the leading Meccan houses; and the regular trading expeditions to foreign lands which they assiduously used widened the circle of their knowledge and raised the scope of their aspirations.

All these more or less favourable circumstances could not but have a very decided effect and produce a certain ineffaceable impress upon any Meccan citizen of a susceptible nature and a calculating turn of mind. Now of such a nature and of such a bent of mind was Mohammed. Viewing the Arabian Prophet from the standpoint of family and kinship, we cannot but be struck with the thought that the religious aims and worldly projects which he mixed up in his mind and resolutely pursued by means as unscrupulous as they proved successful, were in full accord with his birth and education, and, in fact, the natural outcome of his antecedents. Belonging to a family of lordly merchants, the self-constituted guardians of the national temple, and inheriting alike their mercantile enterprise and their religious enthusiasm, he did not shrink from present self-denial and privation in order to secure the rich prize he saw glittering in the distance. As a merchant in a higher sphere and on a grander scale, he risked much and gained more. His later successes did credit to the mercantile family amongst which he had obtained his early schooling. But manifold and powerful as were the influences acting upon Mohammed from without, their actual results were necessarily shaped in accordance with the physical and psychical constitution, and with the strongly marked personality, of the man himself.

IV. The Personal Factor.

Mohammed was the only child of his father Abd Allah, the son of Abdu-l-Mottaleb, and of his mother Amina, the daughter of Wahb, lord of the Beni Zuhra. Ibn Ishak calls Amina 'the noblest woman amongst the Koreish, both by descent and rank.' He also states that Abd Allah died before the birth of his son; and Amina when he was only

six years of age. From this early death of both his parents it may perhaps be inferred that they were not of a sound constitution and robust health, and that his own highly sensitive and delicate nature may have been inherited from them.

At all events, his mother must have been a nervous, visionary person, if the traditional accounts of her have any foundation in facts, and are not altogether gratuitous inventions. The following narrative is attributed to her: 'When six months of my pregnancy had passed, I once happened to be in a state between waking and sleeping, and some one said to me: " Knowest thou that thou art with child?" and on my replying in the negative, that person continued, "Verily thou art bearing the Lord and Prophet of this nation." As the time of parturition drew near, that person again appeared to me in a vision, and said, "Commit him to the protection of the One, against the harm of every envier; and call his name Mohammed." Then this speaker from the unseen world added, "The sign of the truth of my word is, that, together with that Mohammed, a light shall be born which will fill the palaces of Bosra." On another occasion, likewise before Mohammed's birth, I saw in reality that a light proceeded from me by which the whole world became illuminated. It was by a reflection from this light that previously the palaces of the land of Bosra had become visible to me, so that I clearly saw them in Mecca.

'In the night when labour-pain seized me, I heard a great voice by which I was terrified; and I saw, as it were, a white wing brush across my bosom, whereupon that terror left me. Then I saw a cup with a white beverage, placed before me, resembling milk; and as I was thirsty I drank it and became quite calm and composed. In the same night there also appeared in my house a peculiar kind of birds which filled the whole house. Their beaks were of emerald, and their wings of ruby. The Most High lifted the veil off my eye, so that I saw the eastern and the western portions of the earth, and I beheld them plant three banners: one in the east, one in the west, and one on the roof of the Kaaba. At the birth there issued forth from me, together with the child, a light by which I saw the palaces of Bosra in Syria. When Mohammed was born, a white cloud from heaven enveloped