Muhammad: Islam’s First Great General (Volume 11)

Campaigns and Commanders #11

by Richard A. Gabriel

That Muhammad succeeded as a prophet is undeniable; a prominent military historian now suggests that he might not have done so had he not also been a great soldier. Best known as the founder of a major religion, Muhammad was also Islam’s first great general. While there have been numerous accounts of Muhammad the Prophet, this is the first military biography of the man. In Islam’s First Great General , Richard A. Gabriel shows us a warrior never before seen in antiquity—a leader of an all-new religious movement who in a single decade fought eight major battles, led eighteen raids, and planned thirty-eight other military operations. Gabriel’s study portrays Muhammad as a revolutionary who introduced military innovations that transformed armies and warfare throughout the Arab world. Gabriel analyzes the environment in which Muhammad lived and the religion he inspired as they relate to his military achievements. Gabriel explains how Muhammad changed the social composition of Arab armies by replacing traditional ways of fighting with a new command structure. Muhammad’s transformation of Arab warfare enabled his successors to establish the core of the Islamic empire—an accomplishment that, Gabriel argues, would have been militarily impossible without Muhammad’s innovations. Richard A. Gabriel challenges existing scholarship on Muhammad’s place in history and offers a viewpoint not previously attempted.

Genres: History, Islam, Middle East, Nonfiction, Biography, Military History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published September 14, 2007

Reviews

[Maarij · Rating 1 out of 5]

A large number of books have been written about the life and message of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) yet very few of those deal with the martial aspects of his life. The Prophet (SAW) commanded the armies of Islam in a number of important engagements against its opponents and was almost universally successful. He led dozens of raids, battles, sieges and far-flung expeditions that had the cumulative effect of expanding the fledgling state of Medina.

In this book Richard Gabriel sheds new light on these multifarious campaigns and analyses them from a purely military point-of-view, discussing the tactics and manoeuvres executed by Prophet Muhammad (SAW) and attempting to illuminate his military genius. Apart from being an excellent narrative guide to the early battles of Islam, this volume also explores how Prophet Muhammad (SAW) implemented sweeping structural reforms that completely revolutionised warfare in the Arabian Peninsula.

In the Introduction Gabriel lays down the foundations for his argument that Prophet Muhammad (SAW) led the ‘first genuine national insurgency’ in history. He identifies 11 characteristics of an insurgency and demonstrates how Prophet Muhammad (SAW)’s military activities fulfilled each of those. In the succeeding chapters he describes the social, political and geographic setting of Arabia, the geo-political relationship of the Arab tribes with the Byzantine and Sassanian empires and the way of war of the Arabs. All these serve to ground the Prophet Muhammad (SAW)’s career in the setting of 7th century Arabia but the last point is especially important since, to my knowledge, this is the most in-depth coverage of the weaponry, tactics and military doctrine of the Jahilliya and early Islamic period.

Gabriel further builds his argument here by introducing his central thesis that Prophet Muhammad (SAW) changed the moral basis of war. Where previously the social rules of the blood feud had limited bloodshed to an eye in exchange for an eye, the new concept of the ummah meant that warfare became more violent. There is complex reasoning behind this thesis and I haven’t been able to present it very well here but personally I found it to be rather convoluted and somewhat flawed.

More well-developed is the next stage of Gabriel’s argument: that Prophet Muhammad (SAW) implemented 8 distinct reforms that completely revolutionised Arab warfare. Where previously a battle involved small disorganised mobs of undisciplined warriors engaging in back and forth combat with light casualties, now it featured structured and organised armies capable of executing complex manoeuvres fighting in the pursuit of strategic goals. This is the most important takeaway from the book and it also helps the reader understand the success of Muslim armies against their opponents.

The remaining chapters form the bulk of the book and present a detailed chronological account of the all the raids, battles and sieges of Prophet Muhammad (SAW). This is also very important since the military career of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) isn’t something most of us are knowledgeable about. For example, we know how the Quran mentions the assistance of 1,000 angels at Badr but it is also important to know how Prophet Muhammad (SAW) took the initiative and adopted a superior position that deprived the Makkan forces of water, compelled them to traverse tough broken ground and forced them to fight with the sun in their faces, thereby defeating them despite their superior numbers. Complementing the detailed battle analyses are maps of high quality that help in visualising the manoeuvres.

Overall Gabriel’s work is of high quality but it routinely presents Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as an anti-Semite and claims that he used means such as assassination and genocide (i.e. massacre of the Banu Qurayza) to instill terror in his opponents. I am not well informed on this particular subject so I cannot judge the veracity of these claims but I will advise the reader to treat them with caution and try to make a well-informed judgment on the matter through study of other scholars.

Despite this Gabriel’s analysis of the campaigns are of very high value and should be consulted to gain further insight regarding the life and practices of Prophet Muhammad (SAW). According to the author:

“To think of Muhammad as a military man will come as something of a new experience to many. And yet Muhammad was truly a great general. In the space of a single decade he fought eight major battles, led eighteen raids, and planned thirty-eight other military operations where others were in command but operating under his orders and strategic direction. He was wounded twice, suffered defeats, and twice had his positions overrun by superior forces before rallying his troops to victory. But Muhammad was more than a great field general and tactician. He was a military theorist, organizational reformer, strategic thinker, operational level combat commander, political and military leader, heroic soldier, revolutionary, and inventor of the theory of insurgency and history’s first successful practitioner. Like some other great commanders in history—Moses, Subotai, and Vo Nguyen Giap—Muhammad had no military training before actually commanding an army in the field. As an orphan he had no opportunity to learn military skills at the hands of an Arab father, the usual means of acquiring military training among the Arabs in his day. His only early exposure to warfare came at the age of fourteen when he witnessed a skirmish between two clans in which he retrieved arrows for his uncle. Yet, Muhammad became an excellent field commander and tactician and an even more astute political and military strategist.”

p. xviii - xix.

[Jalaluddin Abdullah · Rating 3 out of 5]

When reading Chapter 1, I became aware that the words were very familiar to me. I pulled Philip K. Hitti's History of the Arabs (Palgrave, 2002) and within two minutes found the sections that Gabriel had paraphrased. I discovered that his sections of paraphrasing were both lengthy and close, and his citations to Hitti were inadequate.

So let me start by saying I found the book useful as a military analysis of the Prophetic wars of Islam. The Author, Mr.Gabriel is an ex-military officer, and his experience in this field shows as he highlights key Military points throughout his historical review of the Life of the Prophet. Furthermore, Mr.Gabriel is not scared to tread on sacred religious grounds and call a spade a spade. That was enlightening, as most Islamic Biographies of the Prophet shy away from critically examining specific aspects of his life (And that is not a criticism of those books, as they are religious texts whose goal differs from a critical analysis of The Prophet's Life.)

If the Author had limited his analysis to these key areas, the book may have been useful and worth the read. Unfortunately, Mr.Gabriel did not confine himself to his area of expertise, and mixed in various polemics and orientalist attacks against Islam.

It became obvious to me that this book was not a simple military analysis as I had to skip over page after page of various negative commentary on Islamic life, the Prophetic lifestyle, and the religion of Islam. Case in Point, Mr.Gabriel decided to analyze Prophetic Revelation and spent 2 pages trying to prove how Prophetic Revelation was only Malaria-induced hallucination and seizure. That type of stuff is best left for anti-Islamic books and not a military analysis of the Prophet's Life. It became tedious as every key point in the Prophet's life was twisted in a negative light.

Secondly, the book purports to be a serious scholarly analysis but falls far short. The author admits that he only researched English texts on this subject. Unfortunately, the vast majority of English texts (especially those listed in the Bibliography) are limited in what they offer after translation, and almost all are biased against Islam.

In addition, I found Mr.Gabriel's analysis somewhat up and down. In some commentary, he had interesting things to say, and in others, he threw out weak and historically incorrect analysis. It was obvious that his research in the Prophetic biography was limited. His only one Arabic (translated to English) is Ibn Ishaq's "The Life of Muhammad: A Translation of Ibn Ishaq's Life of Muhammad. Translated by Alfred Guillaume."

Overall, I was not impressed. I would not recommend this book to anyone seriously researching the Prophet's life. Even for those interested in debating Muslims would find their time better spent elsewhere. These weak arguments against the Prophet have been answered ad nauseam elsewhere.

[Rjyan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book starts with 4-5 chapters of background that are written so blandly that I almost bailed. But after that Gabriel gets into the actual story of The Prophet's conquest of Medina and Mecca and the Hejaz and I couldn't put the book down. It's as taut and exciting as any story about a prophet, or a insurgent, or a new religion could possibly be, though ofc it's not concerned with many details that don't touch of the military decisions Muhammad made. The Prophet does come off as such an ambitious schemer that I feel obligated to read another biography ASAP-- I kinda need to know if this represents a particularly critical/Western/etc view of the birth of Islam, or how exactly people with other perspectives interpret the more vicious episodes in the Islamic conquest of Arabia. Which is to say-- if you're looking for an enlightened or au currant or representative source of information, I have no idea where this book stands, but I do know I (eventually) had a lot of fun reading it.

[Kim Hoag · Rating 3 out of 5]

A military war historian, Gabriel's perspective is incisive and comprehensive. His book on Alexander made “the Great” extremely human and inevitably ill-starred while his father shone with true genius. In the cold light of facts, I could not look at Alexander in the same way again. I had a harder time with this one because it changed my views of Muhammad so radically. I mean no disrespect to any Muslims, but it became obvious he was politically motivated and because of that, his word could never be trusted. He even introduced the art of assassination in order to achieve his aims. Gabriel had obvious admiration for Muhammad's growing skills as a revolutionary leader and innovator that created an army out of traditionally tribal units. The process was fascinating, but, to me in my naiveté , also appalling.

[Nadeem · Rating 1 out of 5]

Before reading this book, I thought it would be a military analysis of various strategies used by Prophet Muhammad. It was interesting to see where the author analysed how Arab Warfare was reformed but this book is not a military biography. It is simply at best an attempt that too with poor researched materials. All quotes are cherry picked in a desperate attempt to suit the narrative of the book.

[Ben Ricketts · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not even a big fan of military history. However, this is a fascinating look into the truly revolutionary nature of Muhammad’s tactics and the legacy of his military genius. A few typographical errors plague the final pages, but it’s nothing too troublesome.

This is very readable, incredibly interesting work.

[Adil · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book, getting into the military warfare and historical details around it. Portrays a picture of how the Prophet (pbuh) changed military strategy, politics and governance for the people of Arabia for generations to come.

[Said Abuzeineh · Rating 4 out of 5]

السيرة المشرفة بمنظار عسكري تكتيكي، رسول الله باعتباره قائد تمرد سياسي عسكري ناجح على الجاهلية ونظمها .

أقرأه وسترى جانباً من السيرة ربما فاتك إذا كنت مكتفياً بالسيرة مرويّة بأسلوب وعظي، والمؤلف عيال في هذا الكتاب على سيرة ابن اسحق، لكن الفرق أنه جنرال يطالع السيرة بعينه العسكرية.