ic fire is discernible in the suras immediately
following his call to the prophetic office, and from them much may be
gathered as to the depth and intensity of his faith. They are almost
strident with feeling; his sentences fall like blows upon an anvil, crude
in their emphasis, and so swiftly uttered forth from the flame of his
zeal, that they glow with reflected glory:

"Say, he is God alone,
God the Eternal,
He begetteth not and is not begotten,
There is none like to Him."

"Verily, we have caused It (the Kuran) to descend on the night of
power,
And who shall teach thee what the Night of Power is?
The Night of Power excelleth a thousand months,
Therein descend the angels and the spirit by permission of the Lord."

"By the snorting Chargers,
By those that breathe forth sparks of fire
And those that rush to the attack at morn!
And stir therein the dust aloft,
Cleaving their midmost passage through a host!
Truly man is to his Lord ungrateful,
And of this is himself a witness;
And truly he is covetous in love of this world's good.
Ah, knoweth he not, that when what lies in the grave shall be bared
And that brought forth that is in men's breasts,
Verily in that day shall the Lord be made wise concerning them?"

After the first fire of prophetic zeal had illuminated him, Mahomet
devoted himself to the conversion of his own household and family.
Khadijah was the first convert, as might have been expected from the
close interdependence of their minds. She had become initiated into his
prophetship almost equally with her husband, and it was her courage and
firm trust in his inspiration that had sustained him during the terrible
period of negation. Zeid, the Christian slave who had helped to mould
Mahomet's thought by his knowledge of Christian doctrine, was his next
convert, but both of these were eclipsed by the devotion to Mahomet's
gospel of Ali, the future warrior, son of Abu Talib, and one destined to
play a foremost part in the foundation of Islam.

Mahomet's gospel then penetrated beyond the confines of his household
with the conversion of his friend Abu Bekr, a successful merchant living
in the same quarter of the town as the Prophet. Abu Bekr, whose honesty
gained him the title of Al-Siddick (the true), and Ali were by far the
most important of Mahomet's "companions." They helped to rule Islam
during Mahomet's lifetime, and after his death took successive charge o