agree as to the fact that at this period he spent much time in fastings and solitary vigils, a practice which was probably suggested to him by the example of Christian ascetics. He appears to have been naturally of a nervous temperament, with a tendency to hysteria; whether he suffered from epilepsy, as several European writers have believed, may be doubted.[1] In any case he was subject to paroxysms which presented the appearance of a violent fever; these seizures were regarded, both by himself and by his followers, as symptoms of divine inspiration. It is therefore evident that we are here dealing with a psychological problem which no information would enable us to solve.
The Koran (chap. lxxxvii. 6, 7) admits that Mahomet forgot some of the communications made to him by God, and it is possible that even the oldest passages now extant were produced some time after he had become conscious of his divine vocation. One point seems quite clear, namely that during the first few years of his mission he did not come forward as a public preacher but carried on a secret propaganda within the circle of his more intimate companions. Among the earliest converts were his wife Khadīja, his cousin Ali (properly 'Alī), son of Abū Ṭālib, and Abū Bakr, who did not belong to the Prophet's clan but remained to the last his most trusted friend. The passages of the Koran which can with any probability be assigned to this more private period are few in number and invariably very short. Those which belong to the earlier part of his public career are much more numerous. They deal mainly with three subjects, (1) the unity and attributes of God, (2) the moral duties of mankind, and (3) the coming retribution. Mahomet's monotheism, like that of the later Hebrew prophets, necessarily involves the condemnation of idolatry, but it is to be noted that he nowhere describes the religion of his pagan fellow-countrymen as something wholly false. Though he identifies the one true God with the God of the Jews[2] and the Christians, he at the same time assumes that the heathen have some knowledge of God[3] and even that God is, in some special sense, the God of Mecca. In a very early passage of the Koran (chap. cvi) the Ḳuraish are
- ↑ The hypothesis of epilepsy is decidedly rejected by De Goeje, "Die Berufung Mohammed's" in Orientalische Studien (Nöldeke-Festschrift), Giessen, 1906, I. pp. 1-5.
- ↑ The term Raḥmāan, "the Merciful," which is often used in the Koran as synonymous with "God," was unknown to the heathen Meccans and seems to have been borrowed from the Jews. It may be mentioned, however, that this word appears as an epithet of the Deity not only in Jewish literature but also in the inscriptions of the heathen Syrians.
- ↑ The ancient poets of pagan Arabia frequently speak of "God" (Allāh) in a manner which seems to imply that they recognised Him as the supreme Being. How they conceived the relation between this "God" and the various local deities it is impossible to say with any precision. According to the Koran (chap. XVI. 59 ff.) the heathen regarded certain of their goddesses as the "daughters" of Allāh, but it would be unsafe to assume that the heathen themselves used this phrase in a literal sense, since, "daughters of God" may mean (as with the Gnostics) nothing more than "female divine beings."
