Again the fates decreed, that Mohammad should be deprived of gentle love: Abdul Muttalib died at the age of ninety-five, unanimously regretted by his fellow-citizens. The unlucky orphan boy was received into the house of his uncle Abu Talib, who had been chosen for this kind succour by his grandsire, for the reason that, alone among his uncles, he was the brother of both the mother and father of Abdullah, Mohammad's father. [Sidenote: MOHAMMAD'S FIRST JOURNEY IN SYRIA (_A.D. 582_)] Having a large family and not being very well off, although the management of the Ka'bah had been bequeathed to him, Abu Talib was obliged to do business with the lands of Yaman and Syria. Shortly after sheltering his nephew under his roof, he undertook the task of organising a caravan of Quraish men, and he was to lead them back to their tents. All was in readiness; the loads were shared and divided, corded and balanced on the pack-saddles of the kneeling camels, grunting according to their habit. Their drivers began, by dint of blows and shouts, to force them to rise to their feet and direct their swaying stride in a northerly direction. This sight caused Mohammad to remember his beloved Badya, where caravans resembling this one about to depart passed to and fro continually. Fresh separation, this time from his beloved uncle, was about to plunge him into the sadness of solitude. He stood still, gloomy and silent. At last, heartbroken, he threw himself into Abu Talib's embrace, casting his young arms round him, and hiding his face in the folds of his uncle's mantle, to conceal his tears brought on by longing and despair. Greatly moved by this spontaneous manifestation of affection, and guessing how ardent was his nephew's wish to accompany him, Abu Talib declared: 'By Allah! we'll take him with us; he'll not leave me and I'll not leave him.' Mohammad dried his tears and, jumping for joy, he busied himself in hastening the final preparations for the journey. At a sign from his uncle, he perched himself on the female camel, getting up behind him. When the caravan began to pass along the tracks made by the Bedouin tribes, Mohammad's lungs, contracted by breathing the vitiated air of houses and streets, were deliciously dilated, revelling in liberally gulping down the life-giving air of the Badya to which he was accustomed. Being used to a nomadic existence from childhood, the young traveller was able to support most valiantly the exhausting privations and terrible fatigue of such an interminable journey in the midst of the Hijaz deserts. For more than a year, the countries he passed through were so much alike in their sands and rocks, that the caravan seemed as if marking time. In the pitiless desert there was no other sign of life, except the presence of Him who is everywhere, eternally existant, but not to be seen by mortal eyes. [Sidenote: HOW MOHAMMAD MET THE MONK BAHIRA]