Of the members of this harem the only prominent one is Ayesha, married to the Prophet shortly after the Flight, when she had scarcely passed the period of infancy, but who appears to have been gifted with astuteness and ambition that were quite beyond her years, and who maintained her ascendancy over the Prophet in spite of the fact that many carping criticisms of his revelations are attributed to her. Some of this may have been due to the obligations (including pecuniary obligations) under which her father had laid Mahomet; but her reputation seems to have been greatly enhanced by the sending down of a revelation to exonerate her (A.H. 6), for which she thanked God and not the Prophet. Each accession to the harem rendered the building of a house or room necessary for the newcomer's accommodation; a fact in which Robertson Smith perhaps rightly saw a relic of the older system whereby the tent was the property of women. The trouble noticed above seems to have arisen from the want of a similar arrangement in the case of slave girls, with whom Mahomet's system permits cohabitation. When Mahomet, whether in consequence of the fatigue incurred by the "Farewell Pilgrimage," or, as others thought, by the working of some poison put into his food some years before by a Jewess of Khaibar, was attacked by the illness which proved fatal, it was to the house of Ayesha that he was transferred (from that of another wife) to be nursed; and he apparently died in the arms of the favourite, on whose statements we have to rely for what we know of his last hours. General Characteristics. The traditional description of Mahomet is "of middle height, greyish, with hair that was neither straight nor curly; with a large head, large eyes, heavy eyelashes, reddish tint in the eyes, thick-bearded, broad-shouldered, with thick hands and feet"; he was in the habit of giving violent expression to the emotions of anger and mirth. The supposition that he at any time suffered from physical weakness seems absolutely refuted by his career as a leader of difficult, dangerous and wearisome expeditions, from his migration to Medina until his death; indeed, during his last years he exhibited a capacity for both physical and intellectual activity which implies a high degree of both health and strength; and without these the previous struggle at Mecca could scarcely have been carried on. The supposition that he was liable to fits (epileptic or cataleptic) was intended to account for certain of the phenomena supposed to accompany the delivery of revelations; some of these however rest on very questionable authority: and the greater number of the revelations give evidence of careful preparation rather than spontaneity.