Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - Mohammedanism (1916).djvu/32

 Rh for Weil and Caussin de Perceval, each of these three scholars gave in his own way an account of the origin of Islâm. Nöldeke was much sharper and more cautious in his historical criticism than Muir or Sprenger. While the biographies written by these two men have now only historical value, Nöldeke's History of the Qorân is still an indispensable instrument of study more than half a century after its first appearance.

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 misled by the Devil, an 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, that prologue to a perplexing historical drama.

The principal source from which all biographers started and to which they always returned, was the Qorân, 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