118 Notice of a copy of the fourth volume [No. 2. 



of me, I will certainly rather go to the top of a hill and throw myself 

 down and kill myself and have rest. (It appears from numerous 

 passages of the Qoran that the Qorayshites did really accuse him of 

 being merely a poet or a soothsayer or mad ;) I went away with the in- 

 tention of destroying myself (what follows is in Ibn Hisham's castigated 

 edition of Ibn Ishaq). When I was in the middle of the mountain 

 I heard a voice, &c." The angel appears to him and tells him that 

 he is the prophet of God. This apparition of the angel is twice 

 alluded to in the Qoran. When he comes home he again expresses 

 his fear of being mad, and says to Khadyjah, He who is the last person 

 on earth of whom such a thing was to be expected is certainly a poet 

 or he is a madman. This passage is again omitted by Ibn Hisham. 

 It runs in the original uy>s: y0 J&3I j*\$J Awllltyl l«J «-^Ji. And now 

 Khadyjah went to Waraqah, and it was on this occasion that the con- 

 versation took place mentioned by Bokhary. 



As in Bokhary' s version of the tradition of 'A'yishah, thus in 

 this account of Ibn Ishaq only the beginning, that is to say, the story 

 in which Mohammad is ordered to read, is exact ; in the other details 

 the facts are not correctly put together. And this observation applies 

 generally to most traditions in which more than one fact is recorded. 



It is admitted by all authors that Waraqah was dead when Mo- 

 hammad assumed his office, and it will appear from what follows that 

 Mohammad assumed his office immediately after the angel had detained 

 him from committing suicide ; the visit to Waraqah must therefore 

 have taken place before this apparition. As Mohammad resided in 

 the quarter of Makkah, inhabited by the Asadites, and as Waraqah the 

 cousin of his wife was an Asadite, he was probably his neighbour ; 

 such visits may therefore have been frequently repeated, and it is 

 apparently for this reason, that the accounts of the interview with 

 Waraqah differ so much from each other : they refer to different visits. 

 Bokhary says that Khadyjah went with her husband to Waraqah, after 

 the fit in which he was ordered to read. Ibn Ishaq says, that she 

 went by herself and that Mahommed subsequently met Waraqah at 

 the Ka'bah, and in another tradition of Ibn Ishaq it is said, that she 

 sent Abu Bakr to Waraqah. The latter tradition is so interesting 

 that I make no apology for transcribing it here from the Oyun alathr : 

 " The prophet said to Khadyjah, When I was alone I heard a call (or 



