Two years later Abd Al-Muttalib went to join Abdallah and Amina, and Mohammed, weeping bitterly at the loss of his kind-hearted protector, was consigned to the care of his uncle Abu Talib, the second of Abd Al-Muttalib’s five surviving sons. Az-Zubeir, the eldest, inherited the official duties of his deceased father; but he soon passed that honor on to the fourth son, Al-Abbas, a money-lender, owner of Zemzem, rich, but unfortunately weak in character. Abu Lahab, the third son, was destined to be a life-long foe of the Prophet; but the youngest, Hamza the hunter, was from the beginning one of his staunchest supporters. Abu Talib, a dealer in cloths and perfumes, was a poor man, yet he faithfully cared for his nephew, whom he almost never let out of his sight. When Mohammed was twelve, he accompanied Abu Talib on a mercantile journey to Syria; and various writers have mused at length on the probable effects of this strange, wild expedition on his highly susceptible mind. It may be, as some believe, that the seeds of his heavenly mission were sown in his mind during this experience. Whatever else he was, however, Mohammed was not a youthful prodigy, and perhaps, as most lads of his age would have done, he merely had a good time. III While Mohammed’s life glided from youth into manhood without many remarkable changes, certain events occurred that indelibly fixed the channels of his future. The death of Abd Al-Muttalib had left the ancient house of Hashim without a strong leader, and so it happened that another branch of the Koreish came into power--a circumstance that marked the beginning of the deadly struggle between the Prophet and many of his kin that attended his whole career. For some years, it is true, this hostility was latent. During a decade--from Mohammed’s tenth to his twentieth year--all the Koreish were banded together against the hostile tribe of the Beni Hawazin in the Sacrilegious War: a struggle that grew out of a violation of the taboo on fighting during the sacred months. When Mohammed was nearly twenty, he accompanied his uncles during one of the many frays that marked this civil strife; but his activities seem to have been confined to picking up the arrows of the enemy and turning them over for the use of his uncles. Many years later he remarked: “I remember being present with my uncles in the Sacrilegious War; I discharged arrows at the enemy, and I do not regret it.” But the Prophet of divinity was always very human, and it seems almost certain that the enormous prestige of his station induced him occasionally to indulge in a verbal license pardonable in prophets if not in lesser men. With a wisdom that has characterized certain other heroes of divinity, Mohammed wisely confined his originality and his daring strictly to his mental activities, and fought only when self-preservation necessitated it.