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And when you think of the leagues of blighted, blasted, sandy, rocky, sun-burnt, ugly, dreary, infamous country you have ridden over to get here, you think it is the most beautiful, beautiful picture that ever human eyes rested upon in all the broad universe! If I were to go to Damascus again, I would camp on Mahomet's hill about a week, and then go away. There is no need to go inside the walls.
He was in part a guarantee to the Khazraj of Mahomet's good faith, in part an asset for him against the Kureisch, for his family were still influential in Mecca.
Mahomet's religious ordinances were strengthened and confirmed, while his faith received that homage paid to success which had raised its founder from the commander of a small hand of religionists to the chief of a prosperous city, the leader of an efficient army, the head of a community which held within itself the future dominion of Arabia, of western Asia, southern Europe, in fact, the greater part of the middle world.
Reason, the God of his idolatry, might, with an archangel's ken, have prophesied some Mahomet's career: and, so far from such being in the nature of any objection to Faith, the idea thus thrown out, well-mused upon, will be seen to lend Faith an aid in the way of previous likelihood. "There is one God, and Mahomet is his prophet!"
It may be, I fancy, that I have seen more of the ways of this world's Maker than you, for I have sought his laws, in my way, all my life, while you, I understand, have been collecting butterflies. And I tell you, pleasure and pain have nothing to do with heaven or hell. Pleasure and pain bah! What is your theologian's ecstasy but Mahomet's houri in the dark?
We will understand that destruction of old forms is not destruction of everlasting substances; that Scepticism, as sorrowful and hateful as we see it, is not an end but a beginning. The other day speaking, without prior purpose that way, of Bentham's theory of man and man's life, I chanced to call it a more beggarly one than Mahomet's.
These hundred and eighty millions were made by God as well as we. A greater number of God's creatures believe in Mahomet's word at this hour, than in any other word whatever. Are we to suppose that it was a miserable piece of spiritual legerdemain, this which so many creatures of the Almighty have lived by and died by? I, for my part, cannot form any such supposition.
This done, the moon is said to have descended from the Kaaba, to have entered the right sleeve of Mahomet's mantle, and made its exit by the left. After having traversed every part of his flowing robe, the planet separated into two parts, as it mounted to the air. Then these parts reunited in one round and luminous orb as before."
He came of the race of Hashim, whose privilege it was to give service to the pilgrims coming to worship at the Kaaba. The Hashim were renowned for generosity, and Mahomet's grandfather, Abd al Muttalib, was revered by the Kureisch, inhabitants of Mecca, as a just and honourable man, who had greatly increased their prosperity by his rediscovery of the holy well.
It was therefore in a glad and confident mood that he returned to his native city and prepared to enjoy his success. He took thereupon two wives, Zeinab and Omm Salma, of whom very little is known, except that Zeinab was the widow of Mahomet's cousin killed at Bedr. The incident of his marriage with Zeinab finds allusion in the Kuran in the briefest of passages.
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