But neither his mysticism nor his poetic feeling entirely desert him.  They flash out at rare moments in the later suras of the Kuran, and are apparent in his actions and the traditional accounts of his sayings, while his creed remained steadfast and unassailable with a strength that neither defeat nor disaffection could shake.  With all the incompleteness and often contradiction of his administration, he nevertheless was able to satisfy his followers as to its efficacy mainly by his exhaustless belief in himself and his work.

In military development his contribution was unique.  He gathered together all the war-loving propensities of the Faithful, and wove them into a solidarity of aim.  His personal courage was not great, but his strategy and above all his invincible confidence, which refused to admit defeat, were beyond question.  Every leader he sent upon plundering or admonitory expeditions bore witness to his efficiency and his zeal.  He subjected the Muslim to a discipline that brought out their best qualities of tenacity and daring.  He would not allow his soldiery to become individual plunderers, but insisted that the booty should be equally divided.  In the beginning he possessed few horsemen, but he rapidly produced a squadron of cavalry as soon as he became convinced of their usefulness.  His readiness to accept advice as to the defence of Medina proved the salvation of the city.  Under him the military prowess of Islam had ample scope, for he gave his leaders complete freedom of action; the result was visible in the supreme fighting quality of Ali, Omar, and Hamza, while the chances of achieving glory under his banner were the moving motives of the conversion of Khalid and Abbas.  He subdued internecine warfare, and by a bold stroke united the warrior instincts of Arabia against external foes, laying upon them the sanction of religion and the promise of eternal happiness.

Though unskilled in the mechanism of knowledge—­he could neither read nor write—­he has left his mark upon the literature of his age and the years succeeding him.  The Kuran was the sum of his inspiration, the expression in poetic and visionary language of his beliefs and ideals.  He found the medium prepared.  The Arabs had long previously evolved a poetry of their own which lived not in written words, but in their traditional songs.  Mahomet’s first flush of inspiration, which waned before the heaviness of his later tasks, is the cumulation of that wild and fervid art with the breath of the desert urgent within it.

The Kuran was never written down during his lifetime, but was collected into a jumble of fragments, “gathered together from date-leaves and tablets of white stone, and from the breasts of men,” by Zeid in the first troublous years of the Caliphate.  We have inevitably lost much of its original fire, and its effect is weakened by any translation into the unsuitable medium of modern speech.  But that it is a valuable contribution to the literature of its country cannot be doubted, especially in the earlier portions, before Mahomet’s love of harangue and the necessity of some vehicle by which to make his political dictates known had transformed its style into the bald reiterative medley of its later pages.