The gentle widow Kadija, one of the wealthiest women in the land, whose caravans Mohammed had safely conducted to Syria, offered her hand to the handsome young and eccentric whose blazing black eyes and tense face strangely fascinated. Mohammed never regretted the union, though Kadija was many years older than he was. She not only restored him to the station of his ancestors and released him from further cares about a livelihood, but she made him an excellent wife.

During the years of his maturity, Mohammad became strangely concerned with religious problems and brooded over them continually. The religion of his fathers seemed hollow and empty. He hated the Idolatry that disgraced Arabia, the blood feuds the degraded, wasted lives. Was it not possible to unite all Arabs and perhaps all godly men by a simple faith in the one God who ruled all creation and whose spirit could regenerate the life of the desert? The more Mohammad thought, the more the conviction grew upon him that he was divinely ordained to bring a new message to his people. He was broad enough to recognize the genius of the religious of the past who had helped to elevate the human spirit —Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and all of the other Biblical