Of Mohammed’s life before his appearance as the messenger of God, we know extremely little; compared to the legendary biography as treasured by the Faithful, practically nothing.  Not to mention his pre-existence as a Light, which was with God, and for the sake of which God created the world, the Light, which as the principle of revelation, lived in all prophets from Adam onwards, and the final revelation of which in Mohammed was prophesied in the Scriptures of the Jews and the Christians; not to mention the wonderful and mysterious signs which announced the birth of the Seal of the Prophets, and many other features which the later Sirahs (biographies) and Maulids (pious histories of his birth, most in rhymed prose or in poetic metre) produce in imitation of the Gospels; even the elaborate discourses of the older biographies on occurrences, which in themselves might quite well come within the limits of sub-lunary possibility, do not belong to history.  Fiction plays such a great part in these stories, that we are never sure of being on historical ground unless the Qoran gives us a firm footing.

The question, whether the family to which Mohammed belonged, was regarded as noble amongst the Qoraishites, the ruling tribe in Mecca, is answered in the affirmative by many; but by others this answer is questioned not without good grounds.  The matter is not of prime importance, as there is no doubt that Mohammed grew up as a poor orphan and belonged to the needy and the neglected.  Even a long time after his first appearance the unbelievers reproached him, according to the Qoran, with his insignificant worldly position, which fitted ill with a heavenly message; the same scornful reproach according to the Qoran was hurled at Mohammed’s predecessors by sceptics of earlier generations; and it is well known that the stories of older times in the Qoran are principally reflections of what Mohammed himself experienced.  The legends of Mohammed’s relations to various members of his family are too closely connected with the pretensions of their descendants to have any value for biographic purposes.  He married late an elderly woman, who, it is said, was able to lighten his material cares; she gave him the only daughter by whom he had descendants; descendants, who, from the Arabian point of view, do not count as such, as according to their genealogical theories the line of descent cannot pass through a woman.  They have made an exception for the Prophet, as male offspring, the only blessing of marriage appreciated by Arabs, was withheld from him.

In the materialistic commercial town of Mecca, where lust of gain and usury reigned supreme, where women, wine, and gambling filled up the leisure time, where might was right, and widows, orphans, and the feeble were treated as superfluous ballast, an unfortunate being like Mohammed, if his constitution were sensitive, must have experienced most painful emotions.  In the intellectual advantages that the place offered