It is related that Mohammed’s father died before his son’s birth and his mother six years later.  Thus Mohammed was left to the care of his grandfather, the virtual chief of Mecca.  The venerable chief lived but two years and Mohammed, who was a great favorite with his grandfather, became the special charge of his uncle, Aboo-Talib, whose devotion never wavered, even during the trying later years, when Mohammed’s persecutions caused the uncle untold hardships and trials.

At an early age Mohammed took up the life of a sheep herder, caring for the herds of his kinsmen.  This step became necessary because the once princely fortune of his noble ancestors had dwindled to almost the extreme of poverty, but although the occupation of sheep herder was despised by the tribes, it is said that Mohammed himself in later life often alluded to his early calling as the time when “God called him.”

At the age of twenty-five he took up the more desirable post of camel driver, and was taken into the employ of a wealthy kinswoman, Khadeejeh, whom he afterwards married, although she was fifteen years his senior—­a disparity in age which means far more in the East, where physical charm and beauty are the only requisites for a wife, than it does in the West where men look more to the mental endowments of a wife than to the fleeting charm of youth.

It is also to Mohammed’s credit that his devotion to his first wife never wavered to the day of her death and, indeed, as long as he himself lived he spoke with reverence and deep affection of Khadeejeh.

We learn that the next fifteen years were lived in the usual manner of a man of his station.  Khadeejeh brought him wealth and this gave him the necessary time and ease in which to meditate, and the never-varying devotion and trust of his faithful wife brought him repose and the power to aid his impoverished uncle, and to be regarded among the tribes as a man of influence.

His simple, unostentatious, and even ascetic life during these years was noted.  He was known as a man of extremely refined tastes and sensitive though not querulous nature.  A commentator says of him: 

“His constitution was extremely delicate.  He was nervously afraid of bodily pain; he would sob and roar under it.  Eminently unpractical in the common things of life, he was gifted with mighty powers of imagination, elevation of mind, delicacy and refinement of feeling.

“He is more modest than a virgin behind her curtain,” it has been said of him.

“He was most indulgent to his inferiors and would not allow his awkward little page to be scolded, whatever he did.  He was most affectionate toward his family.  He was very fond of children, and would stop them in the streets and pat their little cheeks.  He never struck anyone in his life.  The worst expression he ever made use of in conversation was:  ’What has come to him—­may his forehead be darkened with mud.’