Note 20 — Chapter I

Here, again, historians have sent Mohammed on a great many journeys through Syria, Irak-Arabi, and to the adjoining provinces of Persia and the Eastern Empire. They make him visit the courts, the camps, and the temples of the East, and hold converse with princes, bishops, and priests, more particularly with the Christian monks Bahira, Sergius, and Nestor. An attentive study of the historic sources at our command, and a careful examination of the life and writings of Mohammed, tend to negative altogether the truth of these pretended journeys and visits, which look very much like fictions got up by imaginative historians to supply some plausible explanation of the origin of Mohammed’s pretended mission—an explanation which may be found much nearer home, as I shall endeavour to show in the text. Here I will simply add that Mohammed, with all his talent, genius, and eloquence, was, like the immense majority of his fellow-citizens, an illiterate barbarian, who had not even been taught to read and write, and was totally unacquainted with any but his native tongue, and not likely, therefore, to profit much from converse with other nations.