Mahomet. He was the darling of his grandfather's last years of life; for,
perhaps having pity on his defencelessness, perhaps divining with that
prescience which often marks old age, something of the revelation this
child was to be to his countrymen, he protected him from the harshness of
his uncles. A rug used to be placed in the shadow of the Kaaba, and there
the aged ruler rested during the heat of the day, and his sons sat around
him at respectful distance, listening to his words. But the child
Mahomet, who loved his grandfather, ran fearlessly up, and would have
seated himself by Abd al Muttalib's side. Then the sons sought to
punish him for his lack of reverence, but their father prevented them:

"Leave the child in peace. By the God of my fathers, I swear he will one
day be a mighty prophet."

So Mahomet remained in close attendance upon the old man, until he died
in the eighth year after the Year of the Elephant, and there was mourning
for him in the houses of his sons.

When Abd al Muttalib knew his end was near he sent for his daughters, and
bade them make lamentation over him. We possess traditional accounts of
these funeral songs; they are representative of the wild rhetorical
eloquence of the poetry of the day. They lose immensely in translation,
and even in reading with the eye instead of hearing, for they were never
meant to find immortality in the written words, but in the speech of men.

"When in the night season a voice of loud lament proclaimed the sorrowful
tidings I wept, so that the tears ran down my face like pearls. I wept
for a noble man, greater than all others, for Sheibar, the generous,
endowed with virtues; for my beloved father, the inheritor of all good
things, for the man faithful in his own house, who never shrank from