Mahomet was handsome and strong: he had looked after sheep on the edge of the desert, taken part in tribal fights, and from the age of twelve wandered with caravans as far as the sea-coast. What distinguished him from his companions was not his education, nor any special skill as a warrior, but his quickness of observation, his tenacious memory, and his gift for bending others to his will. Unable to read, he could only gain knowledge by word of mouth, and wherever he went, amongst the colonies of the Jews who were the chief manufacturers in the towns, or lying beside the camp fires of the caravans at night, he would keep his ears open and store up in his mind all the tales that he heard. In this way he learned of the Jewish religion and a garbled version of Christianity. Soon he knew the stories of Joseph and of Abraham and some of the sayings of Christ, and the more he thought over them the more he grew to hate the idol worship of the Arabs round him. When he was twenty-five Mahomet married a rich widow, Khadijah, whose caravan he had successfully steered across the desert; and in this way he became a man of independent means, possessing camels and horses of his own. Khadijah was some years older than Mahomet, but she was a very good wife to him, and brought him not only a fortune but a trust and belief in his mission that he was to need sorely in the coming years. To her he confided his hatred of idol-worship, and also to Abu Bakr, the wealthy son of a cloth merchant of Mecca, who had fallen under his influence. Mahomet declared that God, and later the Angel Gabriel, had appeared to him in visions and had given him messages condemning the superstitions of the Arabs. ‘There is but one God, Allah ... and Mahomet is His Prophet.’ This was the chief message, received at first with contempt but destined to be carried triumphant in the centuries to come right to the Pyrenees and the gates of Vienna. The visions, or trances, during which Mahomet received his messages, afterwards collected in the sacred book, the Koran, are thought by many to have been epileptic fits. His face would turn livid and he would cover himself with a blanket, emerging at last exhausted to deliver some command or exhortation. Later it would seem that he could produce this state of insensibility at will and without much effort, whenever questions were asked, indeed, in answering which he required divine guidance. Much of the teaching in the Koran was based, like Judaism or Christianity, on far higher ideals than the fetish worship of the Arabs: it emphasized such things as the duty of almsgiving, the discipline that comes of fasting, the necessity of personal cleanliness, while it forbade the use of wine, declaring drunkenness a crime.