Prophet Muhammad

My choice of Muhammad (Peace be upon him) 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 (Peace be upon him) 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 (Peace be upon him),   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, and believed in many gods. There  were, however, in Mecca, a small number  of Jews  and Christians;  it was from them,  most probably, that  Muhammad (Peace be upon him)  first learned  of a single, omnipotent  God who ruled  the entire  universe. When  he was forty years old, Muhammad (Peace be upon him)  became  convinced  that this one true  God (Allah) was speaking to him (through  the Arch­ angel Gabriel)  and had chosen him to spread  the  true  faith.

For three years, Muhammad (Peace be upon him) 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 (Peace be upon him) migrated 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 virtually  an absolute  ruler. During the next few years, while Muhammad’s (Peace be upon him) following grew rapidly, a series of battles were fought between Medina and Mecca. This war ended in 630 with Muhammad's (Peace be upon him) 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 (Peace be upon him) died, in 632, he was the effective ruler of all of southern Arabia.

The Bedouin tribes-men 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 (Peace be upon him)  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 Sassanid’s; to the northwest lays the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman Empire, centered in Constantinople.   Numerically, the Arabs were no match for their opponents.  On the field of battle, though, it was far different, and 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 (Peace be upon him) 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 Visigoth 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   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 (Peace be upon him) 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 (Peace be upon him)    has been  ranked  higher  than  Jesus.  There are two principal   reasons for that decision.  First, Muhammad (Peace be upon him) 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),  it was St. Paul who was the main developer  of Christian  theology, its principal proselytizer, and the  author  of a large portion  of the  New Testament.

Muhammad (Peace be upon him), 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  Qur’an, a collection of Muhammad's (Peace be upon him) statements   that  he  believed  had  been   divinely  inspired. Most of these utterances were copied more or less faithfully during Muhammad’s (Peace be upon him) lifetime and were collected together in authoritative form not long after his death.  The  Qur’an, therefore,  closely represents  Muhammad's  (Peace be upon him)  ideas  and  teachings  and,  to  a  considerable extent,  his exact words. No such detailed compilation of the teachings of Christ has survived.  Since the Qur’an is at least as important to Moslems as the Bible is to Christians, the influence of Muhammad (Peace be upon him) through the medium of the Qur’an has been enormous. It is probable  that  the  relative  influence  of Muhammad (Peace be upon him)  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 (Peace be upon him)   has been as influential in human history as Jesus.

Furthermore, Muhammad (Peace be upon him) (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 (Peace be upon him), 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 Qur’an 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 (Peace be upon him) to be considered the most influential single figure in human history.