t was much more like the religion of
Christ than the worship of idols or the belief of the Romans and Greeks
in gods and goddesses, or the worship of fire or the stars. Mohammed
preached that there was one God only, and that this God was greater
than all things. If you died and had led a righteous life you went to
Paradise; if you had been wicked you went to the lower regions to
undergo eternal punishment. And there were a great many things in
Mohammed's religion that any one would do well to follow, for he
preached that God was merciful and his people on earth must be merciful
also, that cleanliness was next to Godliness and that all his followers
must wash themselves before they prayed.

In many ways, however, the Mohammedan faith was not so pure as the
Christian faith, for the Heaven that Mohammed believed in was a place
of feasting and merriment, but little else, and Mohammed also believed
that it was right to teach his religion by the sword. In this, however,
Mohammed's followers became more zealous than he had ever thought of
being, and we must remember also that Christians of those days did not
hesitate to use the sword, themselves.

To spread the faith Mohammed set about preparing a great book which was
to be the bible of those who believed in his religion. This book was
called the Koran. Because Mohammed could not write and still produced
this marvelous book, which contained the word of Allah, he claimed that
he was divinely inspired. It is thought, however, that he was helped in
preparing the Koran by one of his disciples who could read and write.

When Mohammed prepared the Koran there was no paper, and writing
materials were far removed from the Arabs who made little use of them.
So Mohammed was compelled, as we are told, to write the Koran on any
material that came to hand. He wrote it on pieces of stone and strips
of leather, and on dried palm leaves,--and some of the verses were even
written on the bleached shoulder blades of sheep. Anything that could
hold a mark was used by him as writing material, and the verses were
later collected and made into a book by his disciples.

When Mohammed commenced to preach before the people, the citizens of
Mecca looked on him as a madman. They did not molest him, however,
because they held him to be a worthless dreamer who could do no harm to
anybody. But as weeks went by, and the number of those who became
converted to his faith grew larger, the wise men who still