_The study of innovations introduced in this way into the Prophet's history has caused us to note that they were often prompted by feelings inimical to Islam which were not only out of place in scientific research, but were also unworthy of our epoch. As displayed by their authors, they generally denoted strange ignorance of Arab customs, notwithstanding that these commentaries were accompanied by considerable erudition, although too bookish. In order to refute such new-fangled assertions, it was enough to check each in turn. Being so contradictory, one killed the other. Their extreme improbabilities, from the standpoint of Oriental psychology, only served to enhance with still greater clarity the perfect likelihood of those traditions sanctioned in the world of Islam._ _We have been guided by them. We have been satisfied to choose those that seemed most characteristic, setting each in its proper place, thanks to information gleaned in long interviews with pilgrims visiting the Holy Cities of the Hijaz, while reviewing these episodes in the light of our experience of Moslem life, in the Great Desert of Sahara, where one of us two had lived from birth and the other for the last thirty years and more._ _In strict agreement with the Qur'an, the only indisputable book according to the Moslem Doctors of the earliest times and those imbued with the modern liberal spirit, such as the celebrated Shaikh Abdu, we have put aside all the posthumous miracles attributed to the Arab Prophet and which only serve to blur his true physiognomy._ _Among all the Prophets founders of religions, Mohammad is the only one who, relying solely on the evidence shown by his Mission and the divine eloquence of the Qur'an, was able to do without the assistance of miracles, thus performing the greatest of all--the one which Ernest Renan, forgetting his example, declared to be utterly impossible. "The greatest miracle," said he, speaking of Jesus Christ, "would have been if he had wrought not any. Never would the laws of history and popular psychology have been more violently infringed."_ _On the other hand, we have taken care not to turn a deaf ear to tales in legendary shape. A legend, and above all, an Oriental legend, is an incomparable means of expression. It serves to paint mere facts in lasting colours and make them stand out in bold relief, far removed from the icy and so-called impartial account of an up-to-date reporter._ _Our readers, enlightened by the foregoing warning, must therefore not let themselves be the victims of the numerous errors committed by Hellenism, Latinism and Scholasticism, when interpreting "literally" the sacred books of the East, while beneath seeming magic allegories scattered here and there in this narrative, will easily be discerned realities, poetically transposed, but not at all disfigured by the imagination of the Arabs._