A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

acquired a reputation for healing the sick, so that it became a place of pilgrimage. A cube-shaped
house or temple was built over it, incorporating in one of its walls a black meteoric stone that was
regarded as sacred; tradition declared that this House of God, the Ka’ba, had been built by
Abraham; the historian Diodorus Siculus mentions that it already existed in 50 B.C. A town called
Mecca sprang up around the sacred well.
In the time of Justinian, the Arabs like most ancient peoples were pagans who worshipped many
gods. It is true that they regarded Allah as the creator of the universe, but they also believed that he
was surrounded by a host of minor gods and demons. Some five or six years after the death of
Justinian - around 570 A.D. - a boy was born into a poor household in Mecca. His father died
before his birth, and the baby was handed to a wet nurse from a nomadic desert tribe - which
suggests that his health was giving some concern. (Mecca was regarded as unhealthy.) His mother
died when he was six, and the child - whose name was Mahomet (or Muhammad) - fell to the
charge of his grandfather, a man who was a hundred years old and who seems to have doted on the
handsome and lively boy. But the grandfather died after only two years, and Mahomet was brought
up in the household of his senior uncle, Abu Talib, the head of the clan.
Little is known of Mahomet’s early years except that he probably worked as a shepherd. He also
accompanied his uncle on trading journeys, and on one of these journeys to Syria, when he was
fourteen, is said to have made the acquaintance of ‘Sergius, a Nestorian monk’, who told him
something of the Christian religion. He must have been already acquainted with the basic elements
of Christianity and Judaism; on the Ka’ba itself there was a portrait of Abraham carrying a bundle
of arrows (for divination), and on a column nearby, the Virgin Mary with the child Jesus.
As a young man, Mahomet became the agent and steward of a wealthy woman named Khadijah,
who was some fifteen years his senior; when he was twenty-five, he married her. Their married life
was a happy one, and it was to last for twenty-five years.
Both Mahomet and Khadijah were deeply religious. During the month of Ramadan, held sacred by
the Arabs, they moved into a cave on the edge of the desert and spent the time in prayer and
meditation. And when Mahomet was in his fortieth year, he entered a period of inner crisis. We
know little about it except that it was a ‘dark night of the soul’, during which he experienced
profound depression and believed himself to be possessed by a demon. He told his wife that he saw
lights and heard noises - there were sounds like bells and a humming like a swarm of bees. He
spent much time alone in a cave on Mount Hara, or wandering on the edge of the desert, calling
upon God for help; he was several times tempted to commit suicide by throwing himself from a
cliff. In this state, he must have wondered to which of the pagan gods he could turn for aid. And
finally, there crystallised out of his torment the conviction that there was only one God, the creator
of the universe - that same creator who was proclaimed by Abraham and by Jesus Christ. One day,
Mahomet had a vision of a majestic being - whom he later concluded to be the angel Gabriel - who
told him: ‘You are the messenger of God.’
He told his wife what he had seen and heard: she believed him. But the rest of his family found it
frankly incredible. Only his cousin Ali and his friend Abu Bekr were convinced. For the next three
years - from 610 until 613 - Mahomet discussed his beliefs in private. Few were interested, and he
made only thirty-nine converts, mostly from the young men of the town, who were impressed by
his total conviction and by the force of his personality. He continued to behave like a man in
torment. He would become depressed and fatigued, and begin to shiver. He would sweat like a man
in a fever. Then he would speak the words he felt rising in his heart, and they were written down by