1st Print, September 1990, 100 000 copies
2nd Print, November 1990, 100 000 copies
Michael H Heart a Christian American, Astronomer, mathematician , Layer, chess master, and a Scientist, after extensive research published an incisive biography of the 100 most influential people of all times. The biography ranking's with explanations describes the careers of religious and political leaders, inventors, writers, philosophers, scientists, and artists.
The Research included illustrious personalities, such as: Jesus Christ,
Moses, Muhammad, Caesar, The Write brothers, Napoleon, Shakespeare,
Columbus, Michelangelo, Biliver, Pope Urban 11, Aristote, Peter the Great,
St Paul, Budda, Lenin, Jefferson, Cyrus, Vasco De Gama, Charlemagne, Newton,
Edison, and on
.
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.
In little more than a year he was actually the spiritual, nominal and temporal rule of Medina, with his hands on the lever that was to shake the world.
Philosopher, Orator, Apostle, Legislator, Warrior, Conqueror of ideas
Restorer of rational beliefs, of a cult without images; the founder of
twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual
empire, that is Muhammed. As regards all standards by which human greatness
may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he?
It is impossible for anyone who studies the life and character
of the great prophet of Arabia, who knows how he taught and how he lived,
to feel anything but reverence for that mighty
Prophet, one of the great messengers of the Supreme. And although in
what I put to you I shall say many things which may be familiar to many,
yet I myself feel whenever I re-read them,
a new way of admiration, a new of reverence for that mighty Arabian
teacher.
Muhummed is the most successful of all Prophets and religious personalities.
By a fortune absolutely unique in history, Mohammed is a threefold founder of a nation, of an empire, and of a religion.