has been made for its numberless contradictions and repetitions, it still
remains the best means of tracing Mahomet's mental development, as well
as the course of his religious and political dominance. Although the
original document was compiled regardless of chronology, expert
scholarship has succeeded in determining the order of most of it
contents, and if we cannot say the precise sequence of every sura, at
least we can classify each as belonging to one of the two great periods,
the Meccan and Medinan, and may even distinguish with comparative
accuracy three divisions within the former.

After Mahomet's mandate to preach and warn his fellow-men of their peril,
the suras continue intermittently throughout his life. Those of the first
period, when his mission was hardly accepted outside his family, bear
upon them the stamp of a fiery nature, obsessed with its one idea; but
behind the wild words lies a store of energy as yet undiscovered, which
will find no fulfilment but in action. That zeal for an idea which caused
the Kuran to be, expressed itself at first in words alone, but later was
translated into political action, and it is the emptying of this vitality
from his words into his works that is responsible for the contrasting
prose of the later suras.

But no lack of poetic fire is discernible in the suras immediately
following his call to the prophetic office, and from them much may be
gathered as to the depth and intensity of his faith. They are almost
strident with feeling; his sentences fall like blows upon an anvil, crude
in their emphasis, and so swiftly uttered forth from the flame of his
zeal, that they glow with reflected glory:

"Say, he is God alone,
God the Eternal,