However fiercely the contest may be waged around the origin of the Zend Avesta, there is no question among scholars in relation to the authorship of its successor. The individual portions of the Korān were not always written down immediately, as Mohammed often repeated them several times, sometimes forgetting the original statement, and sometimes changing it; he says, however: “Whatever verse we may annul or cause thee to forget, we will bring a better one than it or one like it.”[206] It is seriously questioned among the Arabs whether he could read or write—one party claiming that he could and the other maintaining that he could not. On some occasions he certainly employed an amanuensis, and tradition claims that he would frequently direct in which sūrah the passage dictated should be placed. The arrangement of the Korān, however, was left to those who came after him. The exact date of Mohammed’s birth is uncertain,[207] but he began life in the shadow of poverty; all that he inherited from his father being five camels and a slave girl. The boy having lost his mother when he was only six years old was obliged, in his youth, to attend the sheep and goats of the Meccans in order to obtain a livelihood, and this position is still considered by the Bedawīn to be very degrading to any one except a woman. At the age of twenty-four he married a rich widow, who was fifteen years his senior, and it is said that this marriage was eminently a happy one. Three years after her death he married Āyesha, who was in the habit of saying that she never was jealous of any of his wives except the first. Six children were born of this marriage, two of whom were sons, but they died at an early age. FIRST REVELATIONS.