Page:The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (1930).pdf/14

 he heavenly messenger who came to Moses of old had come to Muhammad, and that he was chosen as the Prophet of his people.

To understand the reason of the Prophet's diffidence and his extreme distress of mind after the vision of Mt. Ḥîra, it must be remembered that the Ḥunafa, of whom he had been one, sought true religion in the natural and regarded with distrust the intercourse with spirits of which men "avid of the Unseen" sorcerers and soothsayers and even poets, boasted in those days. Moreover, he was a man of humble and devout intelligence, a lover of quiet and solitude, and the very thought of being chosen out of all mankind to face mankind, alone, with such a Message, appalled him at the first. Recognition of the Divine nature of the call he had received involved a change in his whole mental outlook sufficiently disturbing to a sensitive and honest mind, and also the forsaking of his quiet, honoured way of life. The early biographers tell how his wife Khadîjah "tried the spirit" which came to him and proved it to be good, and how, with the continuance of the revelations and the conviction that they brought, he at length accepted the tremendous task imposed on him, becoming filled with an enthusiasm of obedience which justifies his proudest title of "The Slave of Allah."

The words which came to him when in a state of trance are held sacred by the Muslims and are never confounded with those which he uttered when no physical change was apparent in him. The former are the Sacred Book; the latter the Ḥadîth or Sunnah of the Prophet. And because the angel on Mt. Ḥira bade him "Read!"&mdash;insisted on his "Reading" though he was illiterate&mdash;the Sacred Book is known as Al-Qur'ân, "The Reading," the Reading of the man who knew not how to read.

For the first three years, or rather less, of his Mission, the Prophet preached only to his family and his intimate friends, while the people of Mecca as a whole regarded him as one who had become a little mad. The first of all his converts was his wife Khadîjah, the second his first cousin Ali, whom he had adopted, the third his servant Zeyd, a former slave. His old friend Abû Bakr also was among those early converts with some of his slaves and dependents.