excitement
led in him to inner catastrophes which, whether they are classed
under epilepsy or hysteria, caused him to see visions and to believe
that certain words had been addressed to him by heavenly visitants.
The new religious movement in Arabia had secured an adherent in whom
its teachings would be felt with tremendous intensity, and would
possibly break forth with irresistible force.

The Revelations.--Mahomet was forty years of age when the thoughts
which had long been working within him burst into open expression.
This took place by means of a vision. An angel appeared to him as he
slept on Mount Hira on one of his nightly wanderings, and held a
scroll before him which he bade him read. He had not learned to read,
but the angel insisted, and so he read; and what he read was the
earliest revealed piece of the Koran (sura 96):--

Read,[3] in the name of thy Lord who created, created man from a
drop. Read, for thy Lord is the Most High, who hath taught by the
pen, hath taught to man what he knew not. Nay, truly man walketh in
delusion when he deemeth that he sufficeth for himself; to thy Lord
they must all return.

All men, _i.e._, however they may think, as the Arabs were given
to think, that they need no help but that of their own right arm,
must come before Allah's judgment and render an account to him:
this is the doctrine by which Mahomet first appealed to his
fellow-countrymen. It is a revelation. Allah teaches it by sending
down a copy of what is written in the Book in heaven, the "mother of
the Book" from which all revelations, Jewish, Christian, or Mahomet's
own, are alike derived. Mahomet has thus begun to prophesy. The first
outburst of revelation threw him into great agitation; he thought he
was possessed by a jinn; and it tended to his further distress that
an interval of two or three years elapsed before another vision took
place. Then the vision came again. "Rise up and warn!" it said to
him; "and thy Lord magnify, and thy garments purify, and abomination
shun, and grant not favours to gain increase; and wait for thy Lord."
The revelations now began to come in rapid succession, and Mahomet
now believed in his own inspiration. In this conviction he never
wavered afterwards; and there can be no doubt that the earlier
revelations were felt by him as if they came from without and were
dictated by a power he could not resist. His fellow-countrymen
naturally took another view; like other pro