Other versions of the story are more explicit. The angels, it is said, drew forth Muḥammad's heart, cleansed it, and removed the black clot--_i.e_., the taint of original sin.[282] If these inventions have any basis at all beyond the desire to glorify the future Prophet, we must suppose that they refer to some kind of epileptic fit. At a later period he was subject to such attacks, which, according to the unanimous voice of Tradition, often coincided with the revelations sent down from heaven. [Sidenote: His meeting with the monk Baḥírá.] ‘Abdulláh had died before the birth of his son, and when, in his sixth year, Muḥammad lost his mother also, the charge of the orphan was undertaken first by his grandfather, the aged ‘Abdu ’l-Muṭṭalib, and then by his uncle, Abú Ṭálib, a poor but honourable man, who nobly fulfilled the duties of a guardian to the last hour of his life. Muḥammad's small patrimony was soon spent, and he was reduced to herding sheep--a despised employment which usually fell to the lot of women or slaves. In his twelfth year he accompanied Abú Ṭálib on a trading expedition to Syria, in the course of which he is said to have encountered a Christian monk called Baḥírá, who discovered the Seal of Prophecy between the boy's shoulders, and hailed him as the promised apostle. Such anticipations deserve no credit whatever. The truth is that until Muḥammad assumed the prophetic rôle he was merely an obscure Qurayshite; and scarcely anything related of him anterior to that event can be deemed historical except his marriage to Khadíja, an elderly widow of considerable fortune, which took place when he was about twenty-five years of age. [Sidenote: The Ḥanífs.]