Numbers of more or less successful efforts to make Mohammed’s life understood by the nineteenth century intellect have followed these without much permanent gain.  Mohammed, who was represented to the public in turn as deceiver, as a genius mislead by the Devil, as epileptic, as hysteric, and as prophet, was obliged later on even to submit to playing on the one hand the part of socialist and, on the other hand, that of a defender of capitalism.  These points of view were principally characteristic of the temperament of the scholars who held them; they did not really advance our understanding of the events that took place at Mecca and Medina between 610 and 632 A.D., that prologue to a perplexing historical drama.

The principal source from which all biographers started and to which they always returned, was the Qoran, the collection of words of Allah spoken by Mohammed in those twenty-two years.  Hardly anyone, amongst the “faithful” and the “unfaithful,” doubts the generally authentic character of its contents except the Parisian professor Casanova.[1] He tried to prove a little while ago that Mohammed’s revelations originally contained the announcement that the HOUR, the final catastrophe, the Last judgment would come during his life.  When his death had therefore falsified this prophecy, according to Casanova, the leaders of the young community found themselves obliged to submit the revelations preserved in writing or memory to a thorough revision, to add some which announced the mortality even of the last prophet, and, finally to console the disappointed faithful with the hope of Mohammed’s return before the end of the world.  This doctrine of the return, mentioned neither in the Qoran nor in the eschatological tradition of later times, according to Casanova was afterwards changed again into the expectation of the Mahdi, the last of Mohammed’s deputies, “a Guided of God,” who shall be descended from Mohammed, bear his name, resemble him in appearance, and who shall fill the world once more before its end with justice, as it is now filled with injustice and tyranny.

[Footnote 1:  Paul Casanova, Mohammed et la fin du monde, Paris, 1911.  His hypotheses are founded upon Weil’s doubts of the authenticity of a few verses of the Qoran (iii., 138; xxxix., 31, etc.), which doubts were sufficiently refuted half a century ago by Noldeke in his Geschichte des Qorans, 1st edition, p. 197, etc.]

In our sceptical times there is very little that is above criticism, and one day or other we may expect to hear that Mohammed never existed.  The arguments for this can hardly be weaker than those of Casanova against the authenticity of the Qoran.  Here we may acknowledge the great power of what has been believed in all times, in all places, by all the members of the community ("quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditum est").  For, after the death of Mohammed there immediately arose a division which