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Mohammed
Hz. Muhammed'in ve Islam'in dogusunun oykusu hic boyle anlatilmadi.Hz. Muhammed her firsatta kendisinin de "diger insanlar gibi bir insan" oldugunu soylemis. Allah da peygamberinin bir insan oldugunu gostermek icin O'nun, insana ozgu gunahlardan her birini bir kez islemesini saglamis. Ilk baskisini Almanya'da 1932 yilinda yapmis Hz. Muhammed kitabi da son buyuk dinin peygamberini "gunahlariyla, sevaplariyla" anlatiyor.Boylece okur, kitleleri pesinden suruklemis, buyuk bir imparatorlugun temelini atmis bir buyuk Insanin oykusuyle birlikte bir yeni dinin dogusuna tanik oluyor.Dinler arasi diyalog mu?Yeni bir icat oldugunu sananlar yaniliyor. Dinler arasi diyalog, dinlerin dogusu kadar eskiye dayaniyor.Esad Bey, bir kez daha, Muhammed'in kibleyi, Kabe'den once. Kudus olarak kabul ettigini; Nevruz Bayrami'nin Hicret'te Muhammed'e yardimci olan Yahudi Naurus'tan geldigini; Medine'de Yahudi kavmiyle ve daha sonralari Hiristiyanlarca iktidar savasimina girmeden Once oruc ve bayram gunlerinin onemli bir kisminin, Yahudiler'in ve Hiristiyanlarin oruc ve bayram gunleriyle ayni oldugunu hatirlatiyor. Dogu sevdalisi bir Musluman'in, Batili okurlar icin kaleme aldigi Hz. Muhammed, son buyuk dinin ve onun peygamberinin oykusunu "gunahlariyla, sevaplariyla" ama her zaman buyuk bir askla anlatiyor.
336 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1932
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July 23, 2015I love Thomas Sugrue's review of this book. It was printed in the Herald-Tribune in the 1930s and is fully quoted in Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich:
THE LAST GREAT PROPHET, Reviewed by Thomas Sugrue
"Mohammed was a prophet, but he never performed a miracle. He was not a mystic; he had no formal schooling; he did not begin his mission until he was forty. When he announced that he was the Messenger of God, bringing word of the true religion, he was ridiculed and labeled a lunatic. Children tripped him and women threw filth upon him. He was banished from his native city, Mecca, and his followers were stripped of their worldly goods and sent into the desert after him. When he had been preaching ten years he had nothing to show for it but banishment, poverty and ridicule. Yet before another ten years had passed, he was dictator of all Arabia, ruler of Mecca, and the head of a New World religion which was to sweep to the Danube and the Pyrenees before exhausting the impetus he gave it. That impetus was three-fold: the power of words, the efficacy of prayer and man's kinship with God.
His career never made sense. Mohammed was born to impoverished members of a leading family of Mecca. Because Mecca, the crossroads of the world, home of the magic stone called the Caaba, great city of trade and the center of trade routes, was unsanitary, its children were sent to be raised in the desert by Bedouins. Mohammed was thus nurtured, drawing strength and health from the milk of nomad, vicarious mothers. He tended sheep and soon hired out to a rich widow as leader of her caravans. He traveled to all parts of the Eastern World, talked with many men of diverse beliefs and observed the decline of Christianity into warring sects. When he was twenty-eight, Khadija, the widow, looked upon him with favor, and married him. Her father would have objected to such a marriage, so she got him drunk and held him up while he gave the paternal blessing. For the next twelve years Mohammed lived as a rich and respected and very shrewd trader. Then he took to wandering in the desert, and one day he returned with the first verse of the Koran and told Khadija that the archangel Gabriel had appeared to him and said that he was to be the Messenger of God.
"The Koran, the revealed word of God, was the closest thing to a miracle in Mohammed's life. He had not been a poet; he had no gift of words. Yet the verses of the Koran, as he received them and recited them to the faithful, were better than any verses which the professional poets of the tribes could produce. This, to the Arabs, was a miracle. To them the gift of words was the greatest gift, the poet was all-powerful. In addition the Koran said that all men were equal before God, that the world should be a democratic state Islam. It was this political heresy, plus Mohammed's desire to destroy all the 360 idols in the courtyard of the Caaba, which brought about his banishment. The idols brought the desert tribes to Mecca, and that meant trade. So the business men of Mecca, the capitalists, of which he had been one, set upon Mohammed. Then he retreated to the desert and demanded sovereignty over the world.
"The rise of Islam began. Out of the desert came a flame which would not be extinguished--a democratic army fighting as a unit and prepared to die without wincing. Mohammed had invited the Jews and Christians to join him; for he was not building a new religion. He was calling all who believed in one God to join in a single faith. If the Jews and Christians had accepted his invitation Islam would have conquered the world. They didn't. They would not even accept Mohammed's innovation of humane warfare. When the armies of the prophet entered Jerusalem not a single person was killed because of his faith. When the crusaders entered the city, centuries later, not a Moslem man, woman, or child was spared. But the Christians did accept one Moslem idea--the place of learning, the university."
THE LAST GREAT PROPHET, Reviewed by Thomas Sugrue
"Mohammed was a prophet, but he never performed a miracle. He was not a mystic; he had no formal schooling; he did not begin his mission until he was forty. When he announced that he was the Messenger of God, bringing word of the true religion, he was ridiculed and labeled a lunatic. Children tripped him and women threw filth upon him. He was banished from his native city, Mecca, and his followers were stripped of their worldly goods and sent into the desert after him. When he had been preaching ten years he had nothing to show for it but banishment, poverty and ridicule. Yet before another ten years had passed, he was dictator of all Arabia, ruler of Mecca, and the head of a New World religion which was to sweep to the Danube and the Pyrenees before exhausting the impetus he gave it. That impetus was three-fold: the power of words, the efficacy of prayer and man's kinship with God.
His career never made sense. Mohammed was born to impoverished members of a leading family of Mecca. Because Mecca, the crossroads of the world, home of the magic stone called the Caaba, great city of trade and the center of trade routes, was unsanitary, its children were sent to be raised in the desert by Bedouins. Mohammed was thus nurtured, drawing strength and health from the milk of nomad, vicarious mothers. He tended sheep and soon hired out to a rich widow as leader of her caravans. He traveled to all parts of the Eastern World, talked with many men of diverse beliefs and observed the decline of Christianity into warring sects. When he was twenty-eight, Khadija, the widow, looked upon him with favor, and married him. Her father would have objected to such a marriage, so she got him drunk and held him up while he gave the paternal blessing. For the next twelve years Mohammed lived as a rich and respected and very shrewd trader. Then he took to wandering in the desert, and one day he returned with the first verse of the Koran and told Khadija that the archangel Gabriel had appeared to him and said that he was to be the Messenger of God.
"The Koran, the revealed word of God, was the closest thing to a miracle in Mohammed's life. He had not been a poet; he had no gift of words. Yet the verses of the Koran, as he received them and recited them to the faithful, were better than any verses which the professional poets of the tribes could produce. This, to the Arabs, was a miracle. To them the gift of words was the greatest gift, the poet was all-powerful. In addition the Koran said that all men were equal before God, that the world should be a democratic state Islam. It was this political heresy, plus Mohammed's desire to destroy all the 360 idols in the courtyard of the Caaba, which brought about his banishment. The idols brought the desert tribes to Mecca, and that meant trade. So the business men of Mecca, the capitalists, of which he had been one, set upon Mohammed. Then he retreated to the desert and demanded sovereignty over the world.
"The rise of Islam began. Out of the desert came a flame which would not be extinguished--a democratic army fighting as a unit and prepared to die without wincing. Mohammed had invited the Jews and Christians to join him; for he was not building a new religion. He was calling all who believed in one God to join in a single faith. If the Jews and Christians had accepted his invitation Islam would have conquered the world. They didn't. They would not even accept Mohammed's innovation of humane warfare. When the armies of the prophet entered Jerusalem not a single person was killed because of his faith. When the crusaders entered the city, centuries later, not a Moslem man, woman, or child was spared. But the Christians did accept one Moslem idea--the place of learning, the university."
May 17, 2020
I wouldn't have been able to reach such an amazing book myself..
It was mentioned by Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich
Alas it was removed in the latest revised version of 21st century
Listening to its audio book from YouTube was an amazing experience
https://youtu.be/DCNb6lopYZw
It was mentioned by Napoleon Hill in his book Think and Grow Rich
Alas it was removed in the latest revised version of 21st century
Listening to its audio book from YouTube was an amazing experience
https://youtu.be/DCNb6lopYZw
March 27, 2019
Nice concise book about the life of Mohamed. He was born in about 570 and died in 632. He began having revelations that he attributed to God at about age 40 in 610 and had them for the next 23 years. Most of what we know about Mohamed’s life was set down by four historians 30 years after his death. These men tried to write an accurate historical record of Mohamed’s life and included conflicting accounts of the same stories as well as things that we would now consider to be mystical.
Mohamed received messages from God that commented on things that he was dealing with in the present time. These were memorized or written down by his followers and the first collected work was published in 650, the first Koran.
Mohamed did not preach a religion of war and hatred. He did not even preach much about religion per se. He was not much interested in religious orthodoxy. He was interested in changing the way people thought. To understand Mohamed, you have to understand the terrible violent time in which he lived.
The Bedouin once lived in nomadic life with a code of fierce loyalty to the tribe. It was very difficult to get enough wealth to be able to settle down. In the sixth century a new type of saddle for a camel was invented which allowed caravans to cross the Arabian Peninsula caring goods to and from Syria and Byzantium. Previously trade routes had gone by mule around the desert. Mecca became a huge trading center and one tribe, the Quraysh, gained prominence there and built the first buildings around the prehistoric black square building the of the Kaaba.
Camel caravans made a counter clockwise circular tour of the Arab region ending with a grand finale and Mecca where the devotional technique of making seven counterclockwise circles around the Kaaba mimicked these circular caravan movements and provided a melding of the spiritual and economic rituals. The Kaaba is made of a black stone of meteorite origin which must’ve fallen from the sky in a blaze. The Kaaba contained many stone carvings from each of the wandering Arab tribes. Arabs believed that Abraham and Ishmael builgt the Kaaba together and that it was not an exclusive religious place but what is for all religions.
Persia and Byzantium, the two dominant powers of the time had no interest in the wasteland of Arabia. They were locked in a debilitating war leaving both empires weaken.
Unlike the sharing and equality in the nomadic tribal world, the business in mecca allowed individuals to gain wealth and resulted in a stratified competitive resource hoarding. This resulted in society with great wealth and power living beside great poverty.
The Arabs had various God’s. They acknowledged that Allah created the world and quickened babies in the womb but he was more like a negligent father who then abandoned people to their fate. In an emergency people might pray to him but when the emergency past he was forgotten about. There were other gods and goddesses in the Arab pantheon.
Christians and Jews lived in the area often as nomadic who spoke Arabic and practiced Arabic customs. Arabs did not see Christians and Jews as a separate people but as different tribes. The Arabs believed that the Kaaba was built by Adam after his expulsion, rebuilt by Noah after the flood and then re-built again by Abraham. They believed they were descendants of Ishmael and thus circumcised their children just as Jews did. In fact, Jewish and Christian Arabs did the pilgrimage to Mecca and walked around the Kaaba seven times like all other Arabs.
Mohamed was apparently a very engaging child and was a favorite of his uncle who adopted him after his parents died. He was handsome, bright eyed, straightforward, and honest. It was a time of great spiritual upheaval in Mecca. Muhammad married a capable widow, Khadijah, who admired his leadership ability. They took yearly pilgrimage is into the mountains and distributed gifts to poor people a tradition possibly started by Mohamed‘s uncle. On one of these trips Mohamed had some revelations that he thought were from a jinn, a mischievous spirit. He was upset and frightened and as these revelations kept coming his wife told him that they were probably from a god and not from jinn. Mohamed was very reluctant to tell people about these revelations as they were strange and odd. Then the revelations stopped for two long years.
They began again this time with instructions to spread the word. The revelations involved providing help and support for the orphaned and the dispossessed, generosity to others, and thankfulness to Allah. Mohamed began sharing these ideas to a small group of friends who were excited as they thought that perhaps Mohamed was the long-awaited Arab profit.
Most of the people that gathered to listen to Mohamed‘s revelations initially were poor people. He wondered why he would be chosen to be a messenger of God when he was not of high birth not an important person like Moses or Abraham.
Mohamed found each of these messages from Allah disconcerting. He would often break out into a sweat or cover himself with a cloak when he was receiving them. He would then recite them to his followers Who would that memorize them and the literate among them would write them down. When the Koran was put together these messages were put in order of shortest to longest and thus the Koran does not read as an organized narrative and is not supposed to be read that way. Arabs believe the words were Gods word delivered via the angel Gabriel. This is different from the Christian tradition in which Jesus was considered God.
Mohamed could neither read nor write. The word Koran in Arabic means “recitation”. The surah’s, as these recitations were called, were very poetic in nature. This poetry does not come through in English translations of the Koran. The Koran was meant to be recite it out loud and Arabic. It has a calming and contemplative affect with the reader exhaling during long passages and then pausing to inhale between them resulting in the synchrony of breathing of the listeners.
All surahs begin with the phrase “in the name of Allah the merciful the compassionate.“ In Arabic. Allah is a masculine name but the “merciful” and “compassionate” are female names and in the Koran there are many references to the feminine side of the Almighty
The idea of the last supper and judgment day was central to Mohammed’s teachings. A man would be judged by his individual actions. Mohamed lived in a world in which he saw great wealth being accumulated by men who did not act correctly toward their fellow man. Those who had done small acts of generosity and kindness would be rewarded in paradise and those who had been selfish and self-centered would go to a place that was not like the Christian hell, a place of anguish and pain, but rather a sad place. People were not inherently evil they were simply forgetful and Mohamed was instructed to remind them to be mindful of their small actions in life. People needed to become more self-aware, more “mindful,” being continuously on guard against selfishness, greed, arrogance.
At the time poverty was a sign of weakness and the wealthy felt no obligation to those people just as they felt no obligation to people of other tribes. Mohamed wanted everyone in Mecca to develop the humble kindness that should be evident in every human being. Mohamed did not believe that simple social reform would be enough but that individual transformation was essential. He taught his followers the routines that would allow them to make this personal transformation. First there were prayer meetings. He taught his followers to bow down to Allah as a sign of humbleness but many of the Quraysh, the ruling tribe, found prostrating themselves detestable to their tribal beliefs.
Mohamed had increasing numbers of followers but also many enemies but also developed many enemies. At one point his clan was forced to live on one street in Mecca and no one was allowed to trade with them though some people did secretively. Many of his followers went to Abyssinia. His uncle who was his protector died as did Khadijah and Mohamed was lost. He searched for other people to support him and protect him and various elders did. It was a tenuous time for him. Then one night in 619 he was praying by the Kaaba and fell asleep the angels Gabriel and Michael came down and transported him to Jerusalem. During this trip met Jesus, Enoch, Adam, John the Baptist, Moses, Abraham and other of his brothers.
Night journeys were common theme in Arabic poetry but Mohamed‘s was different. In the typical night journey, a hero goes off in the night back to his tribe and sings their glories and power and their ability to vanquish their enemies. And his night journey Mohamed went far from his tribe and gathered together with the prophets of other religions who greeted him as a brother. Interestingly Mohamed didn’t meet God and ask him how many times believer should pray and God said 50 times. Each day. Moses kept sending Mohamed back to God because he thought this number was ridiculous and finally God said five times a day which Moses still found excessive.
Mohamed said that his followers should believe in all of the words of all of the previous profits, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob and their descendants. Mohamed said that truth faith required surrender to God and God had spoken through all of these previous profits. You could not be a Muslim unless you believed in all of these previous profits.
The author points out that one of the first sayings in the Koran is that only if a person submits to God referring to Islam which means surrender will he be able to have a good life in the in the afterlife. Many people point to this passage as proof that only Muslims will be allowed into paradise. But the author points out that Islam was not the name of the religion at the time they the verses were written but only describe surrender to God and the phrase meant exactly the opposite that as long as one surrendered to God they would be blessed. Since there was only one God who had spoken and had sent his messages through different prophets over the millennium.
Early on Mohamed had instructed his followers to pray facing Jerusalem where the people of the book the “people of the book,” that is Jews and Christians, had their temples. He also instructed his followers to fast on Passover along with the Jews as well as to adopt a similar version of the Jewish dietary rules.
Mohamed had made contacts and converts in an oasis outside of Mecca and he made arrangements for his followers from Mecca to go and live permanently with two tribes in this oasis. This was quite a stunning thing to do as he was leaving the protection of his clan and moving in with another tribe. He and they pledged their support for each other in peace and war.
This oasis was called Yathrib but after the Muslims from Mecca move there the Koran calls it the Jewish name of Medina, the city of the prophet.
Mohamed bought some land there and built the first mosque which was a large building to accommodate people in prayer surrounded by the huts of his different wives. Men, women, Jews, and Christians were welcome to pray there as Mohammad believe they all prayed to the same God. People came at all different times of day to pray and Mohamed considered using a Rams Horn to call people to prayer as did the Jews. However, someone suggested that an Abyssinian slave with a very loud deep voice climb on a rooftop at the appointed time and call people to prayer by saying God is great.
At the end of January 624 Mohamed received a vision and instructed his followers to turn and face toward Mecca with their prayers.
The Muslim immigrants to the oasis where Medina was had difficulty supporting themselves and Mohamed organized raids on caravans. Such rates were actually a common feature in the Arab peninsula of the time and were regarded as a legitimate way to obtain wealth. Around this time Mohamed received revelations that developed a “just war.“ The revelation said that if the people had been thrown out of their land simply because of their believe in God they could defend themselves. The revelation said that if this idea of just war did not exist then all synagogues churches and other houses of warship would be trampled.
At one point Mohamed organized a very large number of Muslims to attack a rich caravan. The Quraysh got word and sent 1000 soldiers out to face Mohammed‘s 300. Mohamed soldiers were much better trained an organized than those from Mecca and defeated them in battle. As the as the Muslims prepared to strike to kill their captives or torture mutilate them Mohamed stopped them saying that you should spare people who had surrendered to you and not to fight a war of vengeance. This was new territory for Arabs.
Mohamed talked about the lesser jihad, war and greater jihad, the struggle to reform one its own society.
The Quraysh amassed an army of 3000 men and attacked Medina the next year. They outnumbered Mohammed and his followers 3 to 1 and forced from the field leaving 65 dead who are then mutilated by the Meccans. Mohamed was knocked unconscious but was brought from the field and recovered.
The dead left many wives and sisters without protectors. After the battle of vision came to Mohamed that Muslims could take 4 wives as long as they could care for them and protect them. In establishing polygamy Mohamed addressed a social problem of the Arabs. Previously both men and women could marry as many of the other sexes they wanted but the women usually stayed with their families. Thus, this was an organized form of prostitution. And men usually kept their wives impoverished and totally dependent on them.
The book continues in a similar vein. I have not read enough of Mohamed’s story to know what way this version is slanted.
Mohamed received messages from God that commented on things that he was dealing with in the present time. These were memorized or written down by his followers and the first collected work was published in 650, the first Koran.
Mohamed did not preach a religion of war and hatred. He did not even preach much about religion per se. He was not much interested in religious orthodoxy. He was interested in changing the way people thought. To understand Mohamed, you have to understand the terrible violent time in which he lived.
The Bedouin once lived in nomadic life with a code of fierce loyalty to the tribe. It was very difficult to get enough wealth to be able to settle down. In the sixth century a new type of saddle for a camel was invented which allowed caravans to cross the Arabian Peninsula caring goods to and from Syria and Byzantium. Previously trade routes had gone by mule around the desert. Mecca became a huge trading center and one tribe, the Quraysh, gained prominence there and built the first buildings around the prehistoric black square building the of the Kaaba.
Camel caravans made a counter clockwise circular tour of the Arab region ending with a grand finale and Mecca where the devotional technique of making seven counterclockwise circles around the Kaaba mimicked these circular caravan movements and provided a melding of the spiritual and economic rituals. The Kaaba is made of a black stone of meteorite origin which must’ve fallen from the sky in a blaze. The Kaaba contained many stone carvings from each of the wandering Arab tribes. Arabs believed that Abraham and Ishmael builgt the Kaaba together and that it was not an exclusive religious place but what is for all religions.
Persia and Byzantium, the two dominant powers of the time had no interest in the wasteland of Arabia. They were locked in a debilitating war leaving both empires weaken.
Unlike the sharing and equality in the nomadic tribal world, the business in mecca allowed individuals to gain wealth and resulted in a stratified competitive resource hoarding. This resulted in society with great wealth and power living beside great poverty.
The Arabs had various God’s. They acknowledged that Allah created the world and quickened babies in the womb but he was more like a negligent father who then abandoned people to their fate. In an emergency people might pray to him but when the emergency past he was forgotten about. There were other gods and goddesses in the Arab pantheon.
Christians and Jews lived in the area often as nomadic who spoke Arabic and practiced Arabic customs. Arabs did not see Christians and Jews as a separate people but as different tribes. The Arabs believed that the Kaaba was built by Adam after his expulsion, rebuilt by Noah after the flood and then re-built again by Abraham. They believed they were descendants of Ishmael and thus circumcised their children just as Jews did. In fact, Jewish and Christian Arabs did the pilgrimage to Mecca and walked around the Kaaba seven times like all other Arabs.
Mohamed was apparently a very engaging child and was a favorite of his uncle who adopted him after his parents died. He was handsome, bright eyed, straightforward, and honest. It was a time of great spiritual upheaval in Mecca. Muhammad married a capable widow, Khadijah, who admired his leadership ability. They took yearly pilgrimage is into the mountains and distributed gifts to poor people a tradition possibly started by Mohamed‘s uncle. On one of these trips Mohamed had some revelations that he thought were from a jinn, a mischievous spirit. He was upset and frightened and as these revelations kept coming his wife told him that they were probably from a god and not from jinn. Mohamed was very reluctant to tell people about these revelations as they were strange and odd. Then the revelations stopped for two long years.
They began again this time with instructions to spread the word. The revelations involved providing help and support for the orphaned and the dispossessed, generosity to others, and thankfulness to Allah. Mohamed began sharing these ideas to a small group of friends who were excited as they thought that perhaps Mohamed was the long-awaited Arab profit.
Most of the people that gathered to listen to Mohamed‘s revelations initially were poor people. He wondered why he would be chosen to be a messenger of God when he was not of high birth not an important person like Moses or Abraham.
Mohamed found each of these messages from Allah disconcerting. He would often break out into a sweat or cover himself with a cloak when he was receiving them. He would then recite them to his followers Who would that memorize them and the literate among them would write them down. When the Koran was put together these messages were put in order of shortest to longest and thus the Koran does not read as an organized narrative and is not supposed to be read that way. Arabs believe the words were Gods word delivered via the angel Gabriel. This is different from the Christian tradition in which Jesus was considered God.
Mohamed could neither read nor write. The word Koran in Arabic means “recitation”. The surah’s, as these recitations were called, were very poetic in nature. This poetry does not come through in English translations of the Koran. The Koran was meant to be recite it out loud and Arabic. It has a calming and contemplative affect with the reader exhaling during long passages and then pausing to inhale between them resulting in the synchrony of breathing of the listeners.
All surahs begin with the phrase “in the name of Allah the merciful the compassionate.“ In Arabic. Allah is a masculine name but the “merciful” and “compassionate” are female names and in the Koran there are many references to the feminine side of the Almighty
The idea of the last supper and judgment day was central to Mohammed’s teachings. A man would be judged by his individual actions. Mohamed lived in a world in which he saw great wealth being accumulated by men who did not act correctly toward their fellow man. Those who had done small acts of generosity and kindness would be rewarded in paradise and those who had been selfish and self-centered would go to a place that was not like the Christian hell, a place of anguish and pain, but rather a sad place. People were not inherently evil they were simply forgetful and Mohamed was instructed to remind them to be mindful of their small actions in life. People needed to become more self-aware, more “mindful,” being continuously on guard against selfishness, greed, arrogance.
At the time poverty was a sign of weakness and the wealthy felt no obligation to those people just as they felt no obligation to people of other tribes. Mohamed wanted everyone in Mecca to develop the humble kindness that should be evident in every human being. Mohamed did not believe that simple social reform would be enough but that individual transformation was essential. He taught his followers the routines that would allow them to make this personal transformation. First there were prayer meetings. He taught his followers to bow down to Allah as a sign of humbleness but many of the Quraysh, the ruling tribe, found prostrating themselves detestable to their tribal beliefs.
Mohamed had increasing numbers of followers but also many enemies but also developed many enemies. At one point his clan was forced to live on one street in Mecca and no one was allowed to trade with them though some people did secretively. Many of his followers went to Abyssinia. His uncle who was his protector died as did Khadijah and Mohamed was lost. He searched for other people to support him and protect him and various elders did. It was a tenuous time for him. Then one night in 619 he was praying by the Kaaba and fell asleep the angels Gabriel and Michael came down and transported him to Jerusalem. During this trip met Jesus, Enoch, Adam, John the Baptist, Moses, Abraham and other of his brothers.
Night journeys were common theme in Arabic poetry but Mohamed‘s was different. In the typical night journey, a hero goes off in the night back to his tribe and sings their glories and power and their ability to vanquish their enemies. And his night journey Mohamed went far from his tribe and gathered together with the prophets of other religions who greeted him as a brother. Interestingly Mohamed didn’t meet God and ask him how many times believer should pray and God said 50 times. Each day. Moses kept sending Mohamed back to God because he thought this number was ridiculous and finally God said five times a day which Moses still found excessive.
Mohamed said that his followers should believe in all of the words of all of the previous profits, Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, Jacob and their descendants. Mohamed said that truth faith required surrender to God and God had spoken through all of these previous profits. You could not be a Muslim unless you believed in all of these previous profits.
The author points out that one of the first sayings in the Koran is that only if a person submits to God referring to Islam which means surrender will he be able to have a good life in the in the afterlife. Many people point to this passage as proof that only Muslims will be allowed into paradise. But the author points out that Islam was not the name of the religion at the time they the verses were written but only describe surrender to God and the phrase meant exactly the opposite that as long as one surrendered to God they would be blessed. Since there was only one God who had spoken and had sent his messages through different prophets over the millennium.
Early on Mohamed had instructed his followers to pray facing Jerusalem where the people of the book the “people of the book,” that is Jews and Christians, had their temples. He also instructed his followers to fast on Passover along with the Jews as well as to adopt a similar version of the Jewish dietary rules.
Mohamed had made contacts and converts in an oasis outside of Mecca and he made arrangements for his followers from Mecca to go and live permanently with two tribes in this oasis. This was quite a stunning thing to do as he was leaving the protection of his clan and moving in with another tribe. He and they pledged their support for each other in peace and war.
This oasis was called Yathrib but after the Muslims from Mecca move there the Koran calls it the Jewish name of Medina, the city of the prophet.
Mohamed bought some land there and built the first mosque which was a large building to accommodate people in prayer surrounded by the huts of his different wives. Men, women, Jews, and Christians were welcome to pray there as Mohammad believe they all prayed to the same God. People came at all different times of day to pray and Mohamed considered using a Rams Horn to call people to prayer as did the Jews. However, someone suggested that an Abyssinian slave with a very loud deep voice climb on a rooftop at the appointed time and call people to prayer by saying God is great.
At the end of January 624 Mohamed received a vision and instructed his followers to turn and face toward Mecca with their prayers.
The Muslim immigrants to the oasis where Medina was had difficulty supporting themselves and Mohamed organized raids on caravans. Such rates were actually a common feature in the Arab peninsula of the time and were regarded as a legitimate way to obtain wealth. Around this time Mohamed received revelations that developed a “just war.“ The revelation said that if the people had been thrown out of their land simply because of their believe in God they could defend themselves. The revelation said that if this idea of just war did not exist then all synagogues churches and other houses of warship would be trampled.
At one point Mohamed organized a very large number of Muslims to attack a rich caravan. The Quraysh got word and sent 1000 soldiers out to face Mohammed‘s 300. Mohamed soldiers were much better trained an organized than those from Mecca and defeated them in battle. As the as the Muslims prepared to strike to kill their captives or torture mutilate them Mohamed stopped them saying that you should spare people who had surrendered to you and not to fight a war of vengeance. This was new territory for Arabs.
Mohamed talked about the lesser jihad, war and greater jihad, the struggle to reform one its own society.
The Quraysh amassed an army of 3000 men and attacked Medina the next year. They outnumbered Mohammed and his followers 3 to 1 and forced from the field leaving 65 dead who are then mutilated by the Meccans. Mohamed was knocked unconscious but was brought from the field and recovered.
The dead left many wives and sisters without protectors. After the battle of vision came to Mohamed that Muslims could take 4 wives as long as they could care for them and protect them. In establishing polygamy Mohamed addressed a social problem of the Arabs. Previously both men and women could marry as many of the other sexes they wanted but the women usually stayed with their families. Thus, this was an organized form of prostitution. And men usually kept their wives impoverished and totally dependent on them.
The book continues in a similar vein. I have not read enough of Mohamed’s story to know what way this version is slanted.
March 12, 2018
Kitabın müəllifi, "Əsəd bəy" təxəllüslü Lev Nussimbaum haqda fikirlərin birmənalı olmadığı, onun hətta fırıldaqçı olduğu barədə müəyyən məlumatım var idi. Bu kitabını oxuduqdan sonra bu məlumatın doğruluğuna məndə şübhə yeri qalmadı. Kitabın əvvəlki hissələri və sonu ideya, müəllif sözü baxımından bir-birindən fərqlənir. Sadə şəkildə desək, kitabın ilk hissələri İslam əleyhdarı yəhudi düşüncələri havasında, sondan bir az əvvəlki hissələri nisbətən islam düşüncəsində, sonları isə vəhhabi propaqandası üslubunda yazılıb. Eyni bir yazıçı bu qədər fərqli ideyaları necə dəstəkləyə bilər bir əsərdə? "Əli və Nino" barəsində deyirlər ki, əsəri azərbaycanlı yazıçı Yusif Vəzir Çəmənzəminli yazıb, lakin maliyyə qıtlığı ucbatından çap etdirə bilməyib və Qurban Səid təxəllüslü Lev Nussimbaumdan yardım istəyib. Son nəticə olaraq Nussimbaum Qurban Səid təxəllüsü ilə əsəri öz adına çıxıb və indi də bu əsərin müəllifi kimi tanınır. Ola bilər ki, bu kitabın da bəzi hissələrini özü yazıb və ya dəyişdirsə də qalan hissələrini başqalarının yazdıqlarından köçürüb. Ümumilikdə isə bu əsəri o qədər də bəyənmədim və bunu oxuyanlara kitabı anti-islam düşüncəli avropalı bir yəhudinin İslam peyğəmbəri haqda yazdıqları kimi qəbul etməyi məsləhət görürəm.
September 24, 2016
Ozellikle ilk kisimlari ilginc, degisik bir kitap. Insan yonunden zamani anlatiyor, detayli betimlemeleri ve akici diliyle hizla okunuyor. Son kisimlari biraz vahabi propagandasi tadinda olmus, tabii 30larda yazildigi dusunulurse bu da bir nebze anlasilabilir.
December 3, 2020
Great book, very interesting findings for me, and another proof of Islam being a religion of peace, not the aggression how some representatives present it. P.S. But the book needs good editorial work, it could be the translation wasn't done very well.
September 7, 2014
I need this book be translated to Vietnamese, Please !
May 8, 2016
Great things have humble beginnings. Islam was not the exception. Great read about the importance of persistence.
July 6, 2017
How something as trivial, as a well dug ditch, can change the fate of mankind
August 26, 2024
Essad Bey's Mohammed originally has appeared in German, in the Germany of 1932. It's an outstanding narration, a great work of poetry, while it will certainly only interest people enthusiastic about Mohammed or Islam. It includes depictions of the geographic setting, grandiosely embedded in depictions of how the geography had been perceived by people, while taking over such alleged views too unreflectedly for the one wanting a serious characterization on a modern level of thinking. The book largely merges fiction and religious enthusiasm with history. The style is consciously simple, the one of a book for younger teenagers. Given that Bey's work is not itself really an old myth, all of this largely will have the work appear as aiming at a poorly educated audience.
January 22, 2017
Ho iniziato a leggere questo libro affascinato dal breve riassunto di Thomas Sugrue pubblicato e riproposto nel libro Think and Grow Rich di Napoleon Hill.
Vi ho trovato un racconto stupefacente, la biografica di un uomo che si è guadagnato la stima e il rispetto eterno; un condottiero che dal nulla ed in età avanzata è stato capace di scrivere il destino del popolo dei deserti
Vi ho trovato un racconto stupefacente, la biografica di un uomo che si è guadagnato la stima e il rispetto eterno; un condottiero che dal nulla ed in età avanzata è stato capace di scrivere il destino del popolo dei deserti
January 29, 2016
Bu kitabın iyi bir editöre ihtiyacı varmış.
October 6, 2024
The book is readable with some questionable events that need more external resources to be validate
April 1, 2017
I enjoyed this book. I am not sure of the accuracy, but like I said...I enjoyed it.
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