creditable to the culture of the Arab tribes, was not sufficient for
the purposes of Islam. The Kaaba, which had been a rude heathen temple,
was raised to the dignity of a shrine of the true God, or rather it was
restored, for it was said to have been built by Adam after a divine
pattern. The story was this: At the time of the Fall, Adam and Eve had
somehow become separated. Adam had wandered away to Ceylon, where a
mountain peak still bears his name. But having been divinely summoned to
Mecca to erect this first of earthly temples, he unexpectedly found Eve
residing upon a hill near the city, and thenceforward the Valley of
Mecca became their paradise regained. At the time of the Deluge the
Kaaba was buried in mud, and for centuries afterward it was overgrown
with trees.

When Hagar and her son Ishmael were driven out from the household of
Abraham, they wandered by chance to this very spot, desolate and
forsaken. While Hagar was diligently searching for water, more anxious
to save the life of her son than her own, Ishmael, boy-like, sat poking
the sand with his heel; when, behold, a spring of water bubbled up in
his footprint. And this was none other than the sacred well Zemzem,
whose brackish waters are still eagerly sought by every Moslem pilgrim.
As Ishmael grew to manhood and established his home in the sacred city,
Abraham was summoned to join him, that they together might rebuild the
Kaaba. But in the succeeding generations apostacy again brought ruin
upon the place, although the heathen Koreish still performed sacred
rites there--especially that of sevenfold processions around the sacred
stone. This blackened object, supposed to be an aerolite which fell
ages ago, is still regarded as sacred, and the sevenfold circuits of
Mohammedan pilgrims take the place of the ancient heathen rites.

Laying aside these crude legends, and confining our attention to
probable history, I can only hope, in the compass of a single lecture,
to barely touch upon a series of prominent points without any very
careful regard to logical order. This will perhaps insure the greatest
clearness as well as the best economy of time. And first, we will glance
at the personal history of Mohammed--a history, it should be remembered,
which was not committed to writing till two hundred years after the
prophet's death, and which depends wholly on the enthusiastic traditions
of his followers. Born in the year 561 A.D., of a recently widowed
mother,