replied, "What harm would it be to thee, if thou wert to leave this world before me, for then I would lay thee out, wrap thee in a winding-sheet, and say the prayers over thee." Being roused, I thus retorted on him: "This is exactly what thou wishest for; and I believe that on the same day thou buriest me, thou wouldest be bridegroom and bride with a new wife in my very room." His Excellency smiled.'

Khadija's superior mind and good manners were so highly appreciated by Mohammed that long after her decease he frequently praised her virtues; and it is reported of Aisha that the lavish praise bestowed upon her, though dead, raised feelings of jealousy in her own bosom, she being annoyed by his 'constantly holding up that toothless old woman as the pattern of a wife.' Before her death, which happened when she was 65 years old, her husband comforted her by saying, 'I have been commanded to announce to Khadija that in Paradise she will receive a house excavated out of one pearl to which neither noise nor illness can penetrate.'

Next in order to Khadija, Ali is mentioned as a convert to Islam: the first from amongst males. He was then only a little boy ten years of age; and his conversion can therefore not have been the result of mature conviction at all, but merely of that gratitude and affection which tied him to Mohammed as his benefactor and foster-father. Young and dependent as he was, he naturally accepted as true, without examination, whatever the prophet and the prophet's wife told him.

Their mutual relation can be gathered from the following account by Ibn Ishak: 'The first male person who believed in Mohammed, prayed with him and credited his revelations, was the ten-year-old Ali. It was a work of Divine favour and grace towards Ali, that once the Koreish were visited by a great scarcity. For then, as Abu Talib had a numerous family, Mohammed said to his uncle Abbas, who was the richest among the Beni Hashim, "Thou knowest that thy brother Abu Talib has a numerous family, and that all the people are suffering during this year of scarcity: let us go to him and lighten his burden by each of us taking one of his sons off his hands." Abbas consenting, they went together to Abu Talib, and made their offer. Then Mohammed took

Ali, pressing him to himself, and Abbas did the same with Jafar. Thus Ali remained with Mohammed till he received his prophetic mission, when he followed him, believed in him, and acknowledged him to be true.'

The same biographer also narrates, on the authority of 'some scholars,' that when the time for saying the prayers arrived, Mohammed went to the valleys of Mecca; and that Ali, without the cognisance of his father and uncles, accompanied him to pray with him there. One day Abu Talib surprised them in the act; and being requested by Mohammed likewise to embrace Islam and become his helper, he replied, 'Dear nephew, I cannot forsake the faith of my fathers, but, by Allah, so long as I live, no harm shall be done to thee.' Thus it appears that Abu Talib protected the new prophet, without accepting his revelations, simply because he was his nephew and the generous benefactor of his son Ali; and that, therefore, the fate of Islam, from its earliest infancy, did not depend solely on its religious merits, but was very largely shaped by the earthly interests of family and clanship.

Some time later, Ali became Mohammed's son-in-law and a valiant combatant in the cause of Islam; but Aisha's spite against him greatly marred his fortune, and at last issued in an open rupture and the sanguinary 'battle of the camel.'

Zeid, Ibn Haritha, is Mohammed's third convert, likewise from his own household. How he became one of its members is thus told by Ibn Hisham: 'Hakim had arrived from Syria with a batch of slaves, amongst whom was Zeid,¹ Ibn Haritha, a lad just passing out of boyhood. When his aunt Khadija,