Wisdom of the Prophet (eBook)

Translator'sIntroduction

Muhammadthe Prophet lived from 570 to 632 CE.Adirect descendant of Abraham, the 'Friend of God,' through his sonIshmael, the ancestor of the Arabic people, Muhammad was born to a family ofthe Quraish, the noblest tribe of Arabia. The Quraish were the hereditarycustodians of the Ka'ba, the ancient Cube shrine in Mecca believed to haveoriginally been built by Abraham himself.

Thelifetime of Muhammad was an era of momentous events throughout the ancientworld. China was unified for the first time in centuries, establishing thefoundation for the magnificent Tang dynasty. Under Tang Chinese tutelage, Koreawas also unified under the powerful Silla kingdom, the new nations of Tibet andNanchao were founded by ancient peoples in Central Asia, and the firstconstitution of Japan was promulgated. In India, the great Buddhist king Harshabriefly revived the Gupta empire, while to the west, the Persian empireextended its conquests all the way to Egypt and Asia Minor. Persia was thusalso embroiled in conflict with the Byzantine empire, which was itself wrenchedby internal unrest and revolt.

Eventhough Muhammad was born to a noble house, he was an orphan and grew up inpoverty. In his early years he worked as a shepherd, then later joined themerchant caravans to greater Syria. He was married at the age of twenty-five toa lady named Khadija. Muhammad had managed some commercial affairs for Khadija,and it was she who proposed marriage, through the appropriate social channels,because of her admiration for his honesty and noble character.

Muhammadhesitated to marry Khadija at first because of his own lack of material means.Eventually the union did take place, and Khadija remained Muhammad's only wifefor the rest of her life. She bore him a daughter, Fatima, who later married'Ali, the Lion of God, one of the Prophet's earliest and most valiant companions.

Muhammad'scall to prophecy did not come until he was forty years old, already a matureman with a distinguished reputation in the community. Popularly known by theepithets The True and The Trustworthy, Muhammad was not only an exemplarymember of society, but also a profoundly spiritual individual who regularlytook to contemplative retreat in a mountain cave outside the city.

Itwas during such a retreat that revelation first came to him, through thearchangel Gabriel, who embraced the Prophet in a powerful grip and told him,'Recite! Recite in the name of your Lord, Who created: Who createdhumankind from a clot of blood. Recite, for your Lord is most generous, Whotaught by the Pen, taught humankind what it did not know' (96:1–,5).

Farfrom becoming inflated by such an experience, Muhammad doubted himself. Rushingback to his wife, he told her he feared he was going mad, or else becoming apoet. She brought the Prophet to a cousin of hers, who was a Christian. Thisman confirmed that the revelation vouchsafed to Muhammad was from the samesource as the messages conveyed by Moses and Jesus. He also assured Muhammadthat as a prophet he would be opposed and ostracized when he made therevelation public, as had indeed happened to so many prophets in history.

Asrevelations progressed, the magnetism of the message drew people to the newreligion of al-Islam, 'Surrender to the Will of God.' While one ofthe subsequent historical effects of Islam was to reunite the long-isolatedArabic people with the rest of the world, the original Islamic communitysurrounding Muhammad already included people of African, Byzantine, and Persianorigins as well as native Arabs. The new community accepted people of allclasses, free or slave, uniting them in a...