MUHAMMAD, No. 1 The 100, a Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History by MichaelH. Hart My choiceof Muhammad toleadthe list of the worlds most influentialpersons may surprise somereaders and may be questionedby others, but he was the only man in history who was supremelysuccessful onboth the religious and secularlevels. Of humbleorigins, Muhammad foundedand promulgatedone of the worlds great religions,and becamean immensely effective politicalleader.Today, thirteen centuriesafter his death, his influenceis still powerfuland pervasive. The majority of the persons in this book had the advantage of being born and raised in centersof civilization, highly culturedor politicallypivotal nations. Muhammad, however, was born in the year 570, in the city of Mecca, in southernArabia, at that time a backward area of the world, far from the centersof trade, art, and learning. Orphaned at age six, he was reared in modestsurroundings. Islamictraditiontells us thathe was illiterate. His economic positionimproved when, at age twenty-five, he marrieda wealthy widow. Nevertheless, as he approachedforty, there was little outward indicationthat he was a remarkableperson. Most Arabs at that time were pagans, who believed inmany gods. There were, however, in Mecca, a smallnumber of Jews and Christians;it was from themno doubt that Muhammad firstlearned of a single, omnipotentGodwho ruledthe entireuniverse. When he was forty years old, Muhammad became convinced that thisone true God (Allah) was speaking to him, and had chosenhimto spreadthe true faith. For three years, Muhammadpreachedonly to closefriendsand associates. Then, about 613, he began preachingin public. As he slowlygained converts, the Meccanauthoritiescame to considerhima dangerousnuisance.In 622, fearing for his safety, Muhammadfled to Medina(a city some200 miles north of Mecca), wherehe hadbeenoffered a positionof considerablepoliticalpower. This flight, called the Hegira, was the turningpointof the Prophets life. In Mecca, he had had few followers. In Medina, he had many more, and he soon acquiredan influencethat made hima virtual dictator. During the next few years, while Muhammads followinggrew rapidly, a series of battles were foughtbetweenMedinaand Mecca. Thiswas ended in630 with Muhammads triumphantreturnto Mecca as conqueror.The remaining two and one-half years of his life witnessedthe rapid conversionof the Arab tribes to the new religion. When Muhammad died, in 632, he was the effective ruler ofall of southernArabia. The Bedouintribesmenof Arabia had a reputationas fierce warriors. But theirnumber was small; and plagued by disunityand internecine warfare, they had beenno match for the larger armies of the kingdomsin the settledagriculturalareas to the north. However, unified byMuhammad for the first time inhistory, and inspiredby their fervent belief in the one true God, these small Arab armiesnow embarkeduponone of the most astonishingseries of conquestsin human history. To the northeastof Arabia lay the large Neo-Persian Empireof the Sassanids; to the northwestlay the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman Empire, centeredin Constantinople. Numerically, the Arabs were no match for theiropponents. On the field of battle, though, the inspiredArabs rapidlyconquered allof Mesopotamia, Syria, and Palestine. By 642, Egypt had beenwrestedfrom the Byzantine Empire, while the Persian armies had been crushedat the key battles of Qadisiya in 637, and Nehavendin 642. But even these enormousconquests,which were made under the leadershipof Muhammadsclosefriendsand immediatesuccessors, Ali, Abu Bakr and Umar ibnal-Khattab, didnot mark the end of the Arab advance. By 711, the Arab armieshad swept completelyacross North Africa to the Atlantic Ocean There they turned northand, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar, overwhelmedthe Visigothic kingdomin Spain. For a while, it must have seemed that the Moslemswould overwhelmall of Christian Europe. However, in 732, at the famous Battle of Tours, a Moslem army, which had advanced into the centerof France, was at last defeated by the Franks. Nevertheless, in a scant century of fighting, these Bedouin tribesmen,inspiredby the word of the Prophet, had carved out an empirestretchingfrom the bordersof Indiato the AtlanticOcean-the largestempire thatthe world had yet seen. And everywherethat the armiesconquered,large-scale conversion tothe new faith eventuallyfollowed. Now, not all of these conquestsprovedpermanent.The Persians, thoughthey have remainedfaithfulto the religionof the Prophet, have sinceregained theirindependencefrom the Arabs. And in Spain, morethan seven centuriesof warfare, finally resultedin the Christiansreconqueringthe entirepeninsula. However, Mesopotamiaand Egypt, the two cradlesof ancient civilization, have remainedMoslem, as has the entirecoast of North Africa. The new religion, of course, continuedto spread, in the interveningcenturies, far beyond the bordersof the originalMoslem conquests. Currentlyit has tens of millionsof adherents in Africa and Central Asia and even morein Pakistan and northernIndia, and in Indonesia.In Indonesia,the new faith has been a unifying factor. In the Indiansubcontinent, however, the conflictbetweenMoslems and Hindusis stilla major obstacle to unity. How, then, is one to assessthe overall impact of Muhammadon humanhistory? Like all religions, Islam exerts an enormousinfluenceupon the livesof its followers.It is for this reasonthat the foundersof the worlds great religions allfigure prominentlyin this book. Since there are roughly twice as many Christiansas Moslemsin the world, it may initiallyseem strangethat Muhammadhas beenranked higherthan Jesus. There are two principalreasonsfor that decision. First, Muhammadplayeda far moreimportant role in the development ofIslam than Jesus did in the developmentof Christianity. Although Jesus was responsiblefor the main ethicaland moral precepts of Christianity(insofar as these differedfrom Judaism), St. Paul was the main developerof Christian theology,its principal proselytizer, and the author of a large portion of the New Testament. Muhammad, however, was responsiblefor both the theologyof Islam and its main ethicaland moral principles.In addition, he playedthe key role in proselytizingthe new faith, and in establishingthe religious practices of Islam. Moreover, he is the author of the Moslemholy scriptures, the Koran, a collection of certain ofMuhammadsinsightsthat he believedhad beendirectly revealedto himby Allah. Most of these utterances werecopied moreor lessfaithfully duringMuhammads lifetime and were collectedtogetherin authoritative form not long after his death. The Koran therefore, closely represents Muhammads ideas and teachingsand to a considerableextent his exact words. No such detailedcompilationof the teachingsof Christ has survived. Since the Koran is at least as important to Moslemsas the Bibleis to Christians, the influenceof Muhammad through the mediumof the Koranhas beenenormous.It is probable that therelativeinfluenceof Muhammadon Islam has been larger than the combinedinfluenceof JesusChrist and St. Paul on Christianity. On the purely religiouslevel, then, it seemslikely that Muhammad has beenas influentialin humanhistory as Jesus. Furthermore, Muhammad(unlikeJesus) was a secularas well as a religious leader.In fact, as the drivingforce behindthe Arab conquests,he may well rank as the most influentialpoliticalleaderof all time. Of many importanthistoricalevents, one mightsay that they were inevitableand wouldhave occurredeven without the particularpolitical leaderwho guidedthem. For example, the South American colonieswouldprobablyhave won theirindependencefrom Spain even if Simon Bolivar had never lived. But this cannotbe said of the Arab conquests.Nothing similarhad occurredbefore Muhammad, and there is no reasonto believethat the conquestswouldhave beenachievedwithout him. The only comparable conquestsin humanhistory are those of the Mongolsin the thirteenthcentury, which were primarilydue to the influenceof GenghisKhan. Theseconquests,however, thoughmore extensivethan thoseof the Arabs, didnot prove permanent, and today the only areas occupied by the Mongols arethosethat they held priorto the time of Genghis Khan.It is far different with the conquestsof the Arabs. From Iraq to Morocco, there extends a whole chainof Moslemnationsunitednot merely by their faith in Islam, but also by their Arabic language, history, and culture. The centrality ofthe Koranin the Moslem religionand the fact that it is written in Arabic have probablyprevented the Arab languagefrom breaking up into mutually unintelligibledialects, which mightotherwisehave occurredin the interveningthirteencenturies. Differencesand divisionsbetween these Arab states exist, of course, and they are considerable,but the partial disunity should notblind us to the important elementsof unity that have continuedto exist. For instance, neitherIran nor Indonesia, both oil-producingstates and both Islamicin religion joined in the oil embargoof the winter of 1973-74. It is no coincidencethat all of the Arab states, and only the Arab states, participatedin the embargo. We see, then, that the Arab conquestsof the seventh century have continuedto play an importantrole in human history, down to the present day. It is this unparalleledcombinationof secularand religious influencewhich I feelentitlesMuhammad tobe consideredthe most influentialsinglefigure in humanhistory. The followingis from MichaelHarts book and listsProphet Muhammad asthe most influential man in History. A CitadelPress Book, published by CarolPublishing Group Ranking, list of 100 most influentialpersons in history: 1. Prophet Muhammad 2. Isaac Newton 3. Jesus Christ 4. Buddha 5. Confucius 6. St. Paul 7. Tsai Lun 8. Johann Gutenberg 9. ChristopherColumbus 10. Albert Einstein 11. Karl Marx 12. LouisPasteur 13. GalileoGalilei 14. Aristotle 15. Lenin 16. Moses 17. Charles Darwin 18. Shih Huang Ti 19. Augustus Caesar 20. Mao Tse-tung 21. GenghisKhan 22. Euclid 23. Martin Luther 24. NicolausCopernicus 25. James Watt 26. Constantinethe Great 27. George Washington 28. Michael Faraday 29. James ClerkMaxwell 30. OrvilleWrightand WilburWright 31. AntoineLaurent Lavoisier 32. Sigmund Freud 33. Alexander the Great 34. NapoleonBonaparte 35. Adolf Hitler 36. WilliamShakespeare 37. Adam Smith 38. ThomasEdison 39. Anthony van Leeuwenhoek 40. Plato 41. GuglielmoMarconi 42. Ludwigvan Beethoven 43. Werner Heisenberb 44. Alexander Graham Bell 45. Alexander Fleming 46. SimonBolivar 47. OliverCromwell 48. JohnLocke 49. Michelangelo 50. Pope Urban II 51. Umar ibnal-Khattab 52. Asoka 53. St. Augustine 54. Max Planck 55. JohnCalvin 56. WilliamT.G. Morton 57. WilliamHarvey 58. AntoineHenri Becquerel 59. Gregor Mendel 60. Joseph Lister 61. NikolausAugust Otto 62. LouisDaguerre 63. Joseph Stalin 64. Rene Descartes 65. Julius Caesar 66. FranciscoPizarro 67. Hernando Cortes 68. Queen IsabellaI 69. Williamthe Conqueror 70. ThomasJefferson 71. Jean-Jacques Rousseau 72. Edward Jenner 73. Wilhelm ConradRontgen 74. Hohann Sebastian Bach 75. Lao Tzu 76. EnricoFermi 77. ThomasMalthus 78. FrancisBacon 79. Voltaire 80. JohnF. Kennedy 81. Gregory Pincus 82. Sui WenTi 83. Mani 84. Vasco da Gama 85. Charlemagne 86. Cyprusthe Great 87. LeonhardEuler 88. NiccoloMachiavelli 89. Zoroaster 90. Menes 91. Peter the Great 92. Mencius 93. JohnDalton 94. Homer 95. Queen Elizabeth 96. JustinianI 97. fJohannes Kepler 98. Pablo Picasso 99. Mahavira 00. Niels Bohr HonorableMentions and InterestingMisses: St. Thomas Aquinas Archimedes Charles Babbage Cheops Marie Curie BenjaminFranklin Gandhi Abraham Lincoln FerdinandMagellan Leonardoda Vinci The non-Muslim verdict on Muhammad(PBUH) If a man like Muhamedwere to assume the dictatorshipof the modern world, he would succeedin solvingits problemsthat wouldbring it the much neededpeace and happiness. George Bernard Shaw People like Pasteur and Salk are leadersin the first sense. People like Gandhiand Confucius, on one hand, and Alexander, Caesar and Hitler on the other, are leadersin the secondand perhaps the third sense. Jesus and Buddha belongin the third category alone.Perhaps thegreatest leader of all timeswas Mohammed, who combinedall three functions. To a lesser degree, Moses did the same. Professor Jules Masserman Head of the State as well as the Church, he was Caesar and Pope in one; but, he was Pope without the Popes pretensions,and Caesar without the legionsof Caesar, without a standingarmy, without a bodyguard, without a policeforce, without a fixed revenue. If ever a man had the right to say that he ruled by a right divine, it was Muhummed, for he hadall the powers without theirsupports.He carednot for the dressingsof power. The simplicityof his private life was in keeping with his publiclife. Rev. R. Bosworth-Smith Muhammadwas the soulof kindness, and his influencewas felt and never forgottenby those aroundhim. Diwan Chand Sharma, The Prophetsof the East, Calcutta 1935, p. l 22. Four years after the death of Justinian, A.D. 569, was born at Mecca, in Arabia the man who, of all menexercisedthe greatestinfluenceupon the humanrace . . . Mohammed . . . JohnWilliamDraper, M.D., L.L.D., A History of the IntellectualDevelopmentof Europe, London 1875, Vol. 1, pp. 329-330 In littlemorethan a year he was actually the spiritual, nominaland temporal rule of Medina, with his handson the lever that was to shake the world. JohnAustin, Muhammad the Prophet of Allah, in T.P. s and Cassels Weekly for 24th September 1927. Philosopher, Orator, Apostle, Legislator, Warrior, Conquerorof ideas Restorer of rational beliefs, of a cult without images; the founder of twenty terrestrial empiresand of one spiritual empire, that is Muhammed. As regardsall standards by which human greatness may be measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he? Lamartine, Historie de la Turquie, Paris 1854, Vol. 11 pp. 276-2727 It is impossible foranyone who studiesthe life and character of the great prophet of Arabia, who knows how he taught and how helived, to feelanythingbut reverencefor that mighty Prophet, one of the great messengersof the Supreme. And althoughin what I put to you I shallsay many things which may be familiar to many, yet I myself feelwheneverI re-read them, a new way of admiration, a new of reverencefor that mighty Arabian teacher. AnnieBesant, The Life and Teachingsof Muhammad, Madras 1932, p. 4 Muhummedis the most successful ofall Prophetsand religiouspersonalities. EncyclopediaBritannica I have studied him- the wonderful man - and in my opinionfar from beingan anti-Christ he must be calledthe saviour of humanity. George Bernard Shaw in The Genuine Islam By a fortuneabsolutelyuniquein history, Mohammed is a threefoldfounder of a nation, of an empire, and of a religion. Rev. R. Bosworth-Smith i
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