es of sweet peppermint, with
blocks of nougat inches thick. And the joys of the feast seemed amply to
compensate for the fast.

Mohammed ordained many minor feasts and fasts. Ramadhan stands out chief
of the one: _Aid-el-Kebeer_ (Great Feast), falling two months and six
days afterwards, is chief of the other.

The three reforms which Mohammed instituted were temperance, cleanliness,
and monotheism, at a time when reform was badly needed. He was born in
Mecca five hundred and seventy years after Christ, an Arab of the tribe
of Beni Has`sim. Christianity was not unknown around him in his day.

Always somewhat of a visionary and introspective turn of mind, when he
was about forty years old he became deeply interested in the subject of
religion. Living in the imaginative East, in a hotbed of mysticism and
superstition, it was easy for him to conceive himself a chosen vessel of
the Almighty, and to assume by degrees the role of prophet, in the honest
belief that the words he uttered came direct from that God whose
mouthpiece he conceived himself to be. A small band of followers by
degrees collected round him, and in the ordinary course of events his end
would have been that of a saint with a tombstone white; but, added to the
saint's fanaticisms, Mohammed possessed the talents of a leader, and the
ambition which accompanies those talents.

Men and more men were attracted to him; he instituted among them a
ceremonial of prayer, feasts, and fasts, and built a mosque at Medina, in
which they worshipped. Persecution from their fellow-countrymen followed
as a matter of course, and Mohammed's disciples, who began to call
themselves Mohammedans, turned to him as their chief. The one "able man,"
he naturally assumed the position of a theocratic ruler, and led them
against their enemies; while the words he spoke were committed to memory,
constituting later on the Kor[=a]n.

As a general Mohammed was successful: battle after battle was fought and
won, reverses were amply compensated for, and men flocked to his
standard, while deputations from surrounding tribes poured in upon him,
acknowledging his supremacy, and asking for instruction in his creed.

That creed was admirably adapted to suit the manners, opinions, and vices
of the East: it was extraordinarily simple, it proposed but few truths in
which belief was necessary, and it laid no severe restraints upon the
natural desires of men; above all, its warlike tendencies captivat