At that epoch, it is certain that Mohammad had none of the intentions with which Orientalists have credited him. He had not even made a plan of any kind. In his "Khilwah" there was meditation, but no premeditation. Mohammad, at last, enjoyed luminous visions and heard mysterious calls, at the moment fixed by Providence to manifest His bounty by the intervention of the man He had chosen to be His Prophet. Mohammad has said: "For ten months before the first Revelation, my sleep was disturbed by dazzling dreams, like unto the rays of early dawn, and when I could no longer be seen from the houses, I heard voices calling: 'O Mohammad! O Mohammad!' I turned round and looked behind me, first to the right, then to the left, but I could only see shrubs and stones. It was then that I was overwhelmed with frightful anguish. Hating sorcerers and diviners, I feared lest I had become like them, unknowingly and against my will. These voices that seemed to spring from inanimate objects, might have been those of the Jinn in hiding--the Jinn that give informations to wizards and fortune-tellers concerning celestial matters and so help them to carry on their nefarious trade." [Sidenote: THE REVELATIONS (_A.D. 611_)] Hollowed out of a block of red granite on the Jabal An-Noor, or Mountain of Light, about three miles from Makkah, to the left of the Arafa road, is the grotto of Hira, chosen by Mohammad to seek seclusion there yearly for one whole month, living day and night in absolute retirement. He would take some provisions, consisting mainly of "Kaak" (a kind of biscuit cooked in oil and which possessed the advantage of remaining indefinitely in a good state of preservation), so as not to be forced to return to the town. If, by any chance, his stock of food became exhausted and he was obliged to go and fetch other eatables, he went back to his cave, for any interruption of his ecstatic meditations made him suffer greatly. He was now forty, and, for the last fifteen years, by dint of anxious Adoration, he tried to rid the Hanif religion, that is to say the monotheistic creed of his ancestor Abraham, of the vulgar modifications from which it had suffered at the hands of the citizens of Makkah, when one night, the twenty-fifth, twenty-seventh or twenty-ninth of the month of Ramadhan (January 15-17, or 19, A.D. 611), the unforgettable Event occurred by which the Merciful One proved His generosity to His creature, by sending His Revelation on earth in the first verses of the Qur'an, by the lips of His Messenger. The Prophet has said: "I had fallen asleep in the grotto of Hira, when the angel Jibra'il appeared to me, and unfolding before my eyes a long strip of silken stuff embroidered with written letters: 'Read!' said he.--'I am not one of those who read,' I replied. He caught hold of me at once, tightening the silken folds round my limbs, mouth and nostrils with such violence that I could not breathe. I thought the hour of my death had arrived.