There have been few great actors upon the stage of the world the events of whose lives have been so carefully preserved as those of Mohammed, although no native contemporaneous writer has recorded his history. And yet there is no man whose talents raised him to extraordinary eminence whose deeds and whose character are so unfamiliar to Christian readers as his. Few know him but as a successful impostor. Many believe him to have been an idolater. Almost all attribute to him indulgence in the most degrading of vices,--cruelty, avarice, licentiousness. Even Christian viceroys who have lived long in Mohammedan countries know nothing of the doctrines and the career of one of the most renowned of reformers and legislators. His personal appearance, his occupations, his tastes, his weaknesses even--a strong proof of the honesty and credibility of the Mussulman narrators--have been related by the latter with scrupulous minuteness. His sayings and the opinions attributed to him, embodied in the Sunnah, are considered by devout Moslems as second only in sanctity to the verses of the Koran, and have given rise to the amazing number of six hundred thousand traditions, which laborious commentators have seen proper, upon doubtful evidence, to reduce to four thousand that may be relied upon as genuine. The study of the Koran, however, affords a better insight into the character of the Prophet than the uncertain and suspicious testimony of the Sunnah. It is the mirror in which are reflected the sincere convictions, the lofty aims, the political experiments, the domestic troubles, the hopes and apprehensions which, through many trials and perplexities, influenced the mind and directed the movements of the author in his career, from the position of a simple citizen of Mecca to the exalted dignity of sole ruler of Arabia. The estimate of Mohammed in the Sunnah, which has been transmitted by his early associates, who knew him well and daily observed his conduct in the time of his obscurity, is nevertheless entitled to far more credit than any opinion that may have been formed without the assistance of tradition by the most capable scholar after the lapse of even a single century. But unfortunately, in many instances, their accounts have been so corrupted by the fabulous embellishments of subsequent commentators as to detract much from their undoubted historical value.