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 'Umaribn 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.
Webmaster's note: Mr Hart writes, "he is the author of
the Moslem holy scriptures" which is INCORRECT. Prophet
Muhammad was the person to whom the Quran was revealed
by its Author - God.
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.
Webmaster's note: Phrases like "the influence of
Muhammed through the medium of the Koran" and
"Muhammad's triumphant return to Mecca as conqueror" are
very likely to misinform the readers because they
suggest that the Qur'an is but a tool of the Prophet and
that Islam was spread by the sword for no other reason
than to conquer lands for power.
