of his Lord. Muhammad returned in "trepidation of heart" (برجف فوادِةِ), came in where Khadijah was, and cried out to her and her attendants, "Wrap me up, wrap me up." They covered him up with wrappings until he recovered. He must have fallen into either a swoon or a fit of some kind, for they sprinkled him with water to bring him to himself. ¹ In order to be certain that the spirit whom Muhammad assured her he saw in the apartment was not Satan, Khadijah used a test which the biographers of Muhammad tell us about. As a result of this, she was convinced. But Muhammad himself had many doubts, and was much distressed. Of his own state of mind about that time he says, according to tradition, "I was ² minded to throw myself from a cliff." After this came an interval, about the length of which the Traditions differ. Az Zuhri says: "The Inspiration ³ ceased from the Apostle of God for a space: therefore he grieved very much, and began to go early in the morning to the tops of the mountains, that he might fall from them. And whenever he reached a mountain peak, Gabriel appeared to him." Al Bukhari's account is very similar, "The ⁴ prophet often sorrowed so much in the morning that he might fall down from the tops of the mountain peaks: therefore, whenever he reached the summit of a mountain that he might cast himself down from it, Gabriel appeared to him."

In later times, too, whenever he fell into a state similar to that in which he thought that inspiration had first come to him, certain bodily symptoms made those near him expect to hear from him some new verses of the Qur'an 'Ayishah ⁵ tells us that, when Muhammad was asked how inspiration came to him, he said: "Sometimes there comes to me as it were the ringing of a bell, and it is very violent upon me. It leaves me,

and I recollect what it said. And some lines the angel appears to me like a man and converse with me, and I remember what he says." 'Ayishah herself adds: "Indeed I have seen him when the inspiration descends upon him on a very cold day and departs from him: and verily his forehead streams with perspiration." Muslim ¹ relates the following Tradition: "Whenever Inspiration was sent down upon him, the Prophet grew troubled thereat, and his countenance changed."

Ibn Ishaq says ² that, before the revelation first began to descend upon him, Muhammad's friends feared that he was suffering from the evil eye: ,and that, when it came upon him, almost the same illness attacked him again. What this particular malady was we can perhaps infer from the statements of the Traditionists. 'Ali Halabi, in his Turkish work entitled Insanu'l Uyun, informs us that many people declared that Aminah, Muhammad's mother, used a spell in order to recover him from the influence of the evil eye. On the authority of 'Amr ibn Sharhabil it is stated that Muhammad said to Khadijah, "When I was alone I heard a cry: 'O Muhammad, O Muhammad."' In tradition (رواية) it is stated that he said, "I fear lest I should become a magician, lest one should proclaim me a follower of the Jinn"; and again: "I fear lest there should be madness" (or demoniac possession جنون) "in me". After an accession of shivering and shutting his eyes, there used to come over him what resembled a swoon, his face would foam, and he would roar like a young camel: Abu Hurairah say's: "As for the Apostle of God, when inspiration descended on him, no one could raise his glance to him until the inspiration came to an end." In Tradition it is stated that "He was troubled thereat, and his face foamed, and he closed his eyes, and perchance roared like the