Mecca was an interesting town to live in, for once a year pilgrims from all parts of Arabia came to the great idol temple, and little Muhammad would see all there was to be seen, for his grandfather kept the keys and superintended everything. When his grandfather died he went to live with his uncle, who used to take him on business journeys, going through the wide deserts to distant towns with long strings of camels loaded with goods to sell. So the boy grew up a good man of business and saw much of foreign countries and something of foreign religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Parsiism, and he grew discontented with his own country and his own religion. All the great peoples round worshipped one God. Surely Arabia would be a better and greater country if it did the same. All the great religions had a prophet and a book. The Christians had Jesus Christ and the Gospel, the Jews had Moses and the Law, even the Parsees had Zoroaster and his book the Zend Avesta. Surely what the Arabs needed was a prophet and a book. Muhammad was not the only person who thought this. There was a group of people, several of whom were relations of him or of his wife, who shared this view. Some of them thought that Moses and the Law would be best for Arabia; but many of them saw that Jesus Christ and the Gospel were what they needed, and most of these in the end became Christians. If Muhammad had joined them, the history of the world from then to now might have been very different. But Muhammad had set his heart on an Arabian prophet and an Arabian book, and the more he thought of it the more sure he felt that this was the real way to unity and greatness for Arabia. He himself belonged to the family which took the lead in religious matters in Arabia, he had always been made much of, and told he would be a great man; he used to have fits which seemed to him and to others to mark him out as something out of the common; so it is not surprising that he at last came to believe that he was to be the new Arabian prophet who seemed to him to be so badly wanted. His fits began to take the form of visions, and he believed that the words of the longed for book were being revealed to him. But it was a long time before he came forward publicly, and when he did he was a good deal laughed at, and only a few became his followers. Then he got an invitation to the town of Medina, where he had a number of cousins. The people of Medina were very jealous of Mecca, and all, whether they believed in him or not, joined in giving Muhammad a great welcome. It was in Medina that Muhammad really founded his religion, and there he became a very great man. But sad to say, as his religion developed all its bad points came out, and Muhammad became a very cruel tyrant and very self-indulgent, excusing himself by saying that God allowed him, because he was a prophet, to do things which were sinful when other people did them.