"Rasuldllah"
The Prophet.* The citizens of Mecca, about 610 A. D., were idly curious when Mohammed, a jovial but second-rate trader of their town, contracted the habit of repairing to a cave in the hills nearby, sometimes alone, sometimes with his elderly wife or a slave, to perform secret things for days at a time. Perhaps, it was thought, he was counterfeiting. But this Mohammed, a shambling wight of 40, was a standing, harmless joke. Epileptic as a boy, he had later acquitted himself with notable lack of distinction in the trading caravans. He was no fighter. A rich widow, years his senior, enamored of his stature and features, had taken him unto her, a slothful, pampered husband. If he were counterfeiting in his cave, he would probably do it badly and get caught.
But soon hopeless spinsters, Abyssinian slaves, beggars and poor cousins of Mohammed leaked it out that his vigils were to confer with the angel Gabriel, who was repeatedly confiding that of the sundry gods then worshiped in Arabia, Allah was the only god and he, Mohammed, was His rasul (prophet). The powerful Koreish clan in Mecca scowled. Mohammed's friends, now dubbed Moslems (traitors) found it best to keep his revelations secret. It was four years before their number was great enough for him to broach his mission openly in Mecca.
His intensely admired technique was this: with his stentorian auctioneer's voice he would bellow, snort and puff and a draw a crowd; well observed, he then swooped a blanket over his head, writhed, snored, groaned, popped forth drenched with sweat (even "on the coldest day") and cried out fresh news from Allah. Frantic scribes would hasten to scrawl his syllables, whether intelligible or not, upon palm leaves, leather, stones, bones, or the breasts of bystanders. Each utterance was a sura (verse); the collection became the Koran, a marvelous conglomeration of divine edicts, personal justifications of and promises to Mohammed, paraphrases of Jewish folklore and inscrutable foreign catchwords thrown in like sacred seasoning. Occasionally there came a flash of lofty poetry. Whether or not he was a fake medium, a paranoiac, epileptic, self-deluded, oversexed demagog, Mohammed was undoubtedly a grand and grotesque figure with a good memory and a shrewd pagan appraisal of Moses and Jesus as capable men who had founded religions by giving their subconscious selves free rein.
Islam. Allah, like his new servants, was nomadic and whimsical. Often as not He left Mohammed in the lurch, at first. The indignant Koreish drove the Moslems out of Mecca into the hills one winter. But soon Allah was well-behaved and sharp-eared again. He revealed a splendid opening for an up-and-coming prophet at ancient, paradisaic Medina up the Red Sea coast. There, Jews were noxious, Arabs uneasy. After cautious reconnoitering, Mohammed sent his band thither on the so-called Great Hegira. No harm ensuing, he followed later in holy triumph on his long-lived she-camel, Al-Kaswa, whom he permitted to choose the site of his new abode, a good browsing spot on the Medina town green. Up went the mosque on that spot. Bilal, a blackamoor, was first muezzin. Medina prayed seven times daily and reported for church on Fridays.