The story of Mohammad's marriage with Sofia after her being given to and purchased from Dihya, emanates from Anas, who cannot be relied upon. Anas had very recently been associated with Mohammad. He entered Mohammad's service only the other day when he started for the expedition of Khyber, and was but a boy only a dozen-years old at that time. It is related by Bokhari from Anas himself, who said that the Prophet had asked Abu Tulhah to get him a boy to serve him during the Khyber expedition. So he took me to him, and I was a boy close to maturity (_Bokhari-Kitabul Jihad_). Anas has given two contradictory accounts about Sofia; in one he says, "Dihya asked Mohammad's permission for a captive girl, and took Sofia. When Mohammad heard about Sofia, he asked Dihya to take another one; and having liberated Sofia married her, and her freedom was her dower." In another tradition, Anas relates that "Sofia fell to the lot of Dihya, and Mohammad purchased her from him for seven camels." He says:--"The people did not know whether he had married her, or had made her a concubine-slave, but when she rode on a camel, and Mohammad put veil round her, the people knew from this that she was his wife." Both these traditions are narrated from Anas by Moslem in his _Saheeh_ (Book on Marriage). The idea that Mohammad married Sofia under the circumstances noted above is not satisfactorily established. It was only the fancy of the people, or was a conjecture of Anas. Yet Sir W. Muir has the effrontery to remark against Mohammad that: "Indeed, he is not free from the suspicion of being influenced in the destruction of Kinana by the desire of obtaining his wife." (The Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV, page 68, _footnote_.) Kinana was executed for killing Mahmood bin Muslama, and Sofia was neither enslaved nor married by Mohammad. Even if it be shown that Mohammad married her afterwards under some other circumstances, it (Sir W. Muir's presumption) is an idle guess unwarranted by any reasonable argument. The traditionists, Anas and others, have probably confounded Sofia, the aunt of Mohammad, who was with him during the expedition of Khyber (_vide_ Muir's Life of Mahomet, Vol. IV, page 66, _footnote_), with Kinana's widow of the same name, whom they fancied Mohammad might have married and carried with him on the same camel. The lady for whom Mohammad lowered his knee to help her to ascend the camel (_ibid_, page 70) was most probably Sofia, his aunt.] [Footnote 347: Vol. III, pp. 278-279.] [Footnote 348: _Vide_ The Biographical Dictionary of Persons who knew Mohammad, by Ibn Hajar. In _Biblotheca Indica_. A collection of oriental Series, published by the Asiatic Society, Bengal, No. 215, Vol. IV. Fasciculus 7, Calcutta, 1866; Art. Rehana, No. 444.] [Footnote 349: The Life of Mahomet, Vol. III, page 278.] [Footnote 350: "The days of Ignorance, that is, the period preceding Islam."] [Footnote 351: "Two such are named by Tabari, I, page 248."