however apparently plausible.

During the last few years the accessible sources of information have
considerably increased, the study of them has become much deeper and more
methodical, and the result is that we can tell much less about the teaching
and the life of Mohammed than could our predecessors half a century ago.
This apparent loss is of course in reality nothing but gain.

Those who do not take part in new discoveries, nevertheless, wish to know
now and then the results of the observations made with constantly improved
instruments. Let me endeavour, very briefly, to satisfy this curiosity.
That the report of the bookkeeping might make a somewhat different
impression if another accountant had examined it, goes without saying, and
sometimes I shall draw particular attention to my personal responsibility
in this respect.

Of Mohammed's life before his appearance as the messenger of God, we know
extremely little; compared to the legendary biography as treasured by the
Faithful, practically nothing. Not to mention his pre-existence as a Light,
which was with God, and for the sake of which God created the world, the
Light, which as the principle of revelation, lived in all prophets from
Adam onwards, and the final revelation of which in Mohammed was prophesied
in the Scriptures of the Jews and the Christians; not to mention the
wonderful and mysterious signs which announced the birth of the Seal of the
Prophets, and many other features which the later Sîrahs (biographies) and
Maulids (pious histories of his birth, most in rhymed prose or in poetic
metre) produce in imitation of the Gospels; even the elaborate discourses
of the older biographies on occurrences, which in themselves might quite
well come within the limits of sub-lunary possibility, do not belong to
history. Fiction plays such a great part in these stories, that we are