My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world's most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels. Of humble origins, Muhammad founded and promulgated one of the world's great religions, and became an immensely effective political leader. Today, thirteen centuries after his death, his influence is still powerful and pervasive. The majority of the persons in this book had the advantage of being born and raised in centers of civilization, highly cultured or politically pivotal nations. Muhammad, however, was born in the year 570, in the city of Mecca, in southern Arabia, at that time a backward area of the world, far from the centers of trade, art, and learning. Orphaned at age six, he was reared in modest surroundings. Islamic tradition tells us that he was illiterate. His economic position improved when, at age twenty-five, he married a wealthy widow. Nevertheless, as he approached forty, there was little outward indication that he was a remarkable person. Most Arabs at that time were pagans, who believed in many gods. There were, however, in Mecca, a small number of Jews and Christians; it was from them no doubt that Muhammad first learned of a single, omnipotent God who ruled the entire universe. When he was forty years old, Muhammad became convinced that this one true God (Allah) was speaking to him, and had chosen him to spread the true faith. For three years, Muhammad preached only to close friends and associates. Then, about 613, he began preaching in public. As he slowly gained converts, the Meccan authorities came to consider him a dangerous nuisance. In 622, fearing for his safety, Muhammad fled to Medina (a city some 200 miles north of Mecca), where he had been offered a position of considerable political power. This flight, called the Hegira, was the turning point of the Prophet's life. In Mecca, he had had few followers. In Medina, he had many more, and he soon acquired an influence that made him a virtual dictator. During the next few years, while Muhammad s following grew rapidly, a series of battles were fought between Medina and Mecca. This was ended in 630 with Muhammad's triumphant return to Mecca as conqueror. The remaining two and one-half years of his life witnessed the rapid conversion of the Arab tribes to the new religion. When Muhammad died, in 632, he was the effective ruler of all of southern Arabia. The Bedouin tribesmen of Arabia had a reputation as fierce warriors. But their number was small; and plagued by disunity and internecine warfare, they had been no match for the larger armies of the kingdoms in the settled agricultural areas to the north. However, unified by Muhammad for the first time in history, and inspired by their fervent belief in the one true God, these small Arab armies now embarked upon one of the most astonishing series of conquests in human history. To the northeast of Arabia lay the large Neo-Persian Empire of the Sassanids; to the northwest lay the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople. Numerically, the Arabs were no match for their opponents. On the field of battle, though, the inspired Arabs rapidly conquered all of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine. By 642, Egypt had been wrested from the Byzantine Empire, while the Persian armies had been crushed at the key battles of Qadisiya in 637, and Nehavend in 642.
But even these enormous conquests-which
were made under the leadership of Muhammad's close friends and immediate
successors, Abu Bakr and 'Umar ibn al-Khattab -did not mark the end of
the Arab advance. By 711, the Arab armies had swept completely across North
Africa to the Atlantic Ocean There they turned north and, crossing the
Strait of Gibraltar, overwhelmed the Visigothic kingdom in Spain. For a
while, it must have seemed that the Moslems would overwhelm all of Christian
Europe. However, in 732, at the famous Battle of Tours, a Moslem army,
which had advanced into the center of France, was at last defeated by the
Franks. Nevertheless, in a scant century of fighting, these Bedouin tribesmen,
inspired by the word of the Prophet, had carved out an empire stretching
from the borders of India to the Atlantic Ocean-the largest empire that
the world had yet seen. And everywhere that the armies conquered, large-scale
conversion to the new faith eventually followed. Now, not all of these
conquests proved permanent. The Persians, though they have remained faithful
to the religion of the Prophet, have since regained their independence
from the Arabs. And in Spain, more than seven centuries of warfare 5 finally
resulted in the Christians reconquering the entire peninsula. However,
Mesopotamia and Egypt, the two cradles of ancient civilization, have remained
Arab, as has the entire coast of North Africa. The new religion, of course,
continued to spread, in the intervening centuries, far beyond the borders
of the original Moslem conquests. Currently it has tens of millions of
adherents in Africa and Central Asia and even more in Pakistan and northern
India, and in Indonesia. In Indonesia, the new faith has been a unifying
factor. In the Indian subcontinent, however, the conflict between Moslems
and Hindus is still a major obstacle to unity. How, then, is one to assess
the overall impact of Muhammad on human history? Like all religions, Islam
exerts an enormous influence upon the lives of its followers. It is for
this reason that the founders of the world's great religions all figure
prominently in this book . Since there are roughly twice as many Christians
as Moslems in the world, it may initially seem strange that Muhammad has
been ranked higher than Jesus. There are two principal reasons for that
decision. First, Muhammad played a far more important role in the development
of Islam than Jesus did in the development of Christianity. Although Jesus
was responsible for the main ethical and moral precepts of Christianity
(insofar as these differed from Judaism), St. Paul was the main developer
of Christian theology, its principal proselytizer, and the author of a
large portion of the New Testament. Muhammad, however, was responsible
for both the theology of Islam and its main ethical and moral principles.
In addition, he played the key role in proselytizing the new faith, and
in establishing the religious practices of Islam. Moreover, he is the author
of the Moslem holy scriptures, the Koran, a collection of certain of Muhammad's
insights that he believed had been directly revealed to him by Allah. Most
of these utterances were copied more or less faithfully during Muhammad's
lifetime and were collected together in authoritative form not long after
his death. The Koran therefore, closely represents Muhammad's ideas and
teachings and to a considerable extent his exact words. No such detailed
compilation of the teachings of Christ has survived. Since the Koran is
at least as important to Moslems as the Bible is to Christians, the influence
of Muhammed through the medium of the Koran has been enormous It is probable
that the relative influence of Muhammad on Islam has been larger than the
combined influence of Jesus Christ and St. Paul on Christianity. On the
purely religious level, then, it seems likely that Muhammad has been as
influential in human history as Jesus. Furthermore, Muhammad (unlike Jesus)
was a secular as well as a religious leader. In fact, as the driving force
behind the Arab conquests, he may well rank as the most influential political
leader of all time. Of many important historical events, one might say
that they were inevitable and would have occurred even without the particular
political leader who guided them. For example, the South American colonies
would probably have won their independence from Spain even if Simon Bolivar
had never lived. But this cannot be said of the Arab conquests. Nothing
similar had occurred before Muhammad, and there is no reason to believe
that the conquests would have been achieved without him. The only comparable
conquests in human history are those of the Mongols in the thirteenth century,
which were primarily due to the influence of Genghis Khan. These conquests,
however, though more extensive than those of the Arabs, did not prove permanent,
and today the only areas occupied by the Mongols are those that they held
prior to the time of Genghis Khan. It is far different with the conquests
of the Arabs. From Iraq to Morocco, there extends a whole chain of Arab
nations united not merely by their faith in Islam, but also by their Arabic
language, history, and culture. The centrality of the Koran in the Moslem
religion and the fact that it is written in Arabic have probably prevented
the Arab language from breaking up into mutually unintelligible dialects,
which might otherwise have occurred in the intervening thirteen centuries.
Differences and divisions between these Arab states exist, of course, and
they are considerable, but the partial disunity should not blind us to
the important elements of unity that have continued to exist. For instance,
neither Iran nor Indonesia, both oil-producing states and both Islamic
in religion, joined in the oil embargo of the winter of 1973-74. It is
no coincidence that all of the Arab states, and only the Arab states, participated
in the embargo. We see, then, that the Arab conquests of the seventh century
have continued to play an important role in human history, down to the
present day. It is this unparalleled combination of secular and religious
influence which I feel entitles Muhammad to be considered the most influential
single figure in human history.
The Quran is the sacred book of the Muslims. It is the last book
of guidance from Allah, sent down to Muhammad, peace be upon him,
through the angel Jibraeel (Gabriel). Every word of it is the word
of Allah The Quran is unrivalled in its recording and prservation.
The astonishing
fact about this book of Allah is that it has remained unchanged
even to a dot over the past fourteen hundred years.