Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/53

 A SHORT STUDY OF THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF MOHAMMED 45

A study of the married life of Mohammed certainly reveals a number of data which support this former hypothesis i. e. that the repression of every impulse towards sexual experience was due to the immensity of certain incestuous fixations. We may there- fore presume that to this and to no other cause may be attribu- ted the scrupulous chastity of Mohammed for the first twenty-five years of his life and later the selection a^ his first wife the elderly matron Khadijah, who at the time of her marriage with him was fifteen years older than he, and already twice a widow.

On these two accounts,, i. e. her age and her widowhood, Khadijah must have afforded Mohammed a very perfect replace- ment-figure for his own mother, for it was only as a widow that he had ever known his mother.

The degree of gratification which this marriage afforded his incestuous fixation can be best measured by the punctilious fide- lity Mohammed displayed to his wife for the twenty-five years of their married life and by the reverence he paid to her memory until the day of his death, so that "the pride or tenderness of the venerable matron was never insulted by the society of a rival", i

Khadijah bore Mohammed two sons and four daughters. Both sons died in infancy but the "daughters survived.

Many tpaditions are recorded of the sympathetic attachment of Mohammed and Khadijah, the one for the other, and all point to the deference Mohammed always paid to her and how he in- variably sought her advice and encouragement. At that great crisis of his life when he believed that he had received his first message from God by the mouth of the angel Gabriel, trembling and agitated, he tottered to Khadijah and told her of his vision and agony of mind. "Fear not", exclaimed Khadijah, "for joyful tidings dost thou bring. I will henceforth regard thee as the prophet of our nation. Rejoice, Allah will not suffer thee to fall to shame. Hast thou not been loving to thy kindfolk, kind to the neigh- bours, charitable to the poor, faithful to thy word, and ever a defender of the truth?"

"So Khadijah believed" (runs the simple tradition), "and attested the trudi of that which came to him from God. Thus was the Lord minded to lighten the burden of his prophet, for he heard nothing that grieved him touching his rejection by the people,

• Gibbon: Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chandos Library, Vol. Ill, p, 164.