Muhammad and the Conquests to Islam

‘Muhammad and the Conquests of Islam’ Francesco Gabrielli
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The grasping of the history and the idealization of religious leaders has been a complicated undertaking for scholars. Various arguments emerge as scholars try to merge the births, life and achievements of the three leaders that led to the emergence of the three major religions in the world; Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism. Nevertheless, Muhammad, the prophet and leader of the Islam religion is the hardest to describe and corroborate the way he lived and the idealized and magnified status he has had centuries after he led the Arabs in the greatest conquests across the Middle East. Gabrielli argues that while it is difficult to deal with the roles and the idealization and understanding of current beliefs on Buddha and Jesus, understanding Prophet Muhammad of Islam is more difficult. He argues that during his tenure on earth, Muhammad was a mortal being, was prone to human weaknesses, fetishes, and wrongs, which he accepted but he later on paradoxically intertwined his name with that of Allah so that he could achieve the celebrated status he has today.
Summary
The book is a great source of Arabic history especially during the time before Prophet Muhammad was born, when he became an Arab leader and led to the dramatic conquests, after his death and the process of the attainment not only as an Islam leader but as a way to get to Allah. It helps elucidate the role that Muhammad played in the creation of Islam religion and how the conquests and the state of the Arab countries during the time helped him become prominent and subsequently build up to his idealization.

Moreover, the book recognizes that Muhammad in an esteemed leader of the Islam religion but seeks to corroborate facts to show how it came to be so. In fact, the book tends to scrutinize each event in the prophets life, both positive and negative, the state of the Arab regions, and the neighboring nations that interacted with the Arabs at that period to determine the role that He played to rightfully deserve his veneration by Islam followers. The role of the prophet in his major conquests including the Medina triumph, Iraq, Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Armenia, Egypt and North Africa and their effects on the spread of Islam is particularly emphasized.
Further, the book takes into context the arguments help by the Christians in the medieval period and the scholars from different periods on the role that Muhammad played. It determines that the prophet has not had the perfect image among the scholars and critiques as that held by the followers of the religion he started. In fact, the book discusses the various arguments and skepticism on the power held by the prophet among the Arabs and what the modern Islam say about him. Nevertheless, the book does not appear offensive to the followers of Islam as it tries to balance the skepticism, the facts and the perceptions and beliefs that the members of the Islam religion have on their Prophet, who is the only way to Allah. In fact, the book is not trying to disapprove Prophet Muhammad as a mighty miracle worker sent by Allah to redeem the Arabs. Instead, it focuses on drawing the perfect image of the prophet and justifying why he achieved his current position in the religion. It seeks to use the known facts and speculate of the unknown to understand the mighty prophet of Allah.
Interpretation
The book is an excellent attempt at trying to explain Muhammad’s prominence and his rise to overcome mortality and live in the hearts of the followers of the religion he started. It book states from the onset that constructing a vividly understandable description of Prophet Muhammad is a hard thing to do. In fact, one part of the book says that ‘and in the case of Muhammad this is double, a tradition of exaltation and one of denigration.’ The statement remarks on the interposition of the prophet both in the history and the current society. In the East, where the Islam culture is mostly practiced, the prophet has undergone the full process of idealization. Nevertheless, the West, starting with the historical medieval Christians who argued that the prophet was repudiating his Christian links and stumbled upon Islam have always cast doubt on the miracle working power of Muhammad. Later on, various scholars advanced their arguments with some citing the crystallization of the Arabs as a favorable condition for the invention and spread of Islam, and others pointing to the lack of a hero among the Arabs a reason why the Prophet was accepted and acknowledged as the true prophet of Allah.
Prophet Muhammad, in the book, is portrayed as an interesting character to study. He was human and acknowledged this before his people. During the various interactions with people and the leadership role as the people prepared and engaged in wars. The book builds upon the character of the prophet since his childhood, his roots, his rise to fame, the sojourn in Mecca, Medina triumph and the subsequent conquests he made as he advanced both his interests and those of the Arabs. The build-up culminates in the birth of Islam and its subsequent spread across the world. Once the prophet conceptualized the ideal religion for the Arabs, most of whom were pagans and others mixed up between Judaism and Christianity, he is bent on ensuring that the faith spreads as fast as it can. The book slowly maps out the situation that made the Prophet a divine being. The miracles, for instance, the incidence where a cow knelt before him or a dove flew to his ear and gave him a message from Allah are used as pointers to his miracle working ability.
The book particularly uses the conquests to show the important role that the prophet played in the Arab world and which contributed to his ultimate idealization by the Islam faithful. Nevertheless, it is categorical that the prophet role and position were only that of a normal but heroic human in the course of the income and the idealization only came after his death. In fact, he felt that Allah had sent his final revelation, The Quran, to him as a faithful communicator. As he prospered in his mission and the numerous conquests, he was convinced by those around him and the circumstances that he was Allah’s prophet and the greatest of all. However, the book is careful to note that in his life, Muhammad never at any one time declared that he was divine and was a saint as compared to those people that he interacted with. However, later on in his life, simple life events in the life of Muhammad were transformed to folklore which was seen as extraordinary. They painted him as a miracle worker, ‘Veneration for the prophet developed to the furthest possible degree, found in the Quran itself or more often drawn from pious legend..’. Moreover, the Muslim faithful started perceiving Muhammad as the epitome of human perfectness and believed that he would come to them in dreams and bless them. Ultimately, the book is highly informative of the activities around Allah’s prophet Muhammad. Even then, it still shows that while the Muslim faithful believe that the prophet was a miracle worker and a saint, such information cannot be proved sufficiently and thus, his idealization will remain a mystery for many years to come.

Bibliography
BIBLIOGRAPHY Gabrielli, Francesco. Muhammad and the Conquests of Islam. 1969.