Introduction to the First Edition

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the Worlds, and blessings and peace be upon the leader of the Messengers and the Seal of the Prophets, Muhammad, and upon all his family and Companions, and upon those who follow them in excellence until the Day of Judgement.

To proceed: the Sīrah of the Prophet, upon him be blessings and peace, was the first school in which the author of this book was taught. He entered it at an early age, at which children do not ordinarily enter such a school. The credit for this goes, first, to the atmosphere that prevailed in his home and family, where the Sīrah was an essential part of the learning that the sons of the family and the children of the house received; then to a small and simple library of verse and prose that passed from hand to hand; and then to the upbringing and wise guidance of his elder brother, Dr Sayyid Abd al-Ali al-Hasani. In his boyhood he read the finest works written on the Sīrah in Urdu, the language of the Muslims of India, which, after Arabic, is the richest language of the Muslim world in the literature of the Sīrah, and which contains the most powerful and most beautiful writing on it in recent times.¹

Later, when he had begun to gain a command of Arabic, he devoted himself to the books written on the Sīrah, foremost among them the Sīrah of Ibn Hisham and Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah’s Zad al-Ma‘ad fi Hady Khayr al-‘Ibad. He did not merely study them as a scholar; he lived in them for a long time, tasting through them the sweetness of faith, and nourishing his love and tenderness with the stories and reports they contained. It is well established that, after the Qur’an, the Sīrah is the most powerful of all means of moral and spiritual training, and the one that most deeply moves the soul and the mind. He then read whatever books on the Sīrah came into his hands, old and new, and in various languages. The Sīrah became the first source on which he drew in his writings and lectures: from it he took power of expression, influence over minds and hearts, strong proofs and eloquent examples for whatever he wished to establish. It was the Sīrah that kindled his thought and fired his talents, as it still does, and there is no writing of his of any value that does not bear some touch of its beauty and owe something to its study and contemplation. What he wrote on the various aspects of the Sīrah and on the greatness of the Prophet’s mission, together with the lectures and talks he gave on it, he gathered in a book he named al-Tariq ila al-Madinah (The Road to Madinah).²

Through all these long years, in which he wrote dozens of books, the author never thought of devoting a book of his own to the Sīrah, although he keenly felt the need for one written in a modern, scholarly style. Such a book would draw on the best of what had been written in the past and in the present; it would be founded on the earliest and most authentic sources of the Sīrah, and agree with what is found in the Qur’an and the authentic Sunnah. It would not be written in the encyclopaedic manner that heaps up information without criticism or sifting, the manner adopted by most of the middle and later authors and by a few of the early ones, and which has given rise to many questions from which Allah has kept the noble Sīrah free and which Muslims have no need of. It would be revised and verified, without imitating modern trends or yielding to the writings of the Orientalists and the claims of the sceptics. It would keep to the religious principles in whose light the revealed scriptures, the lives of the Prophets, miracles and reports of the Unseen are understood, and it would rest on the principle that this is the life of a Prophet, sent by Allah and supported by Him, and not the biography of a great man or a leader. It should be fit to be placed before every educated and fair-minded reader, Muslim or non-Muslim, without reservation or exception and without any need to explain things away. In it the author would rely on the events and facts, on the very material of the Sīrah, letting it speak for itself and find its own way to hearts and minds, more than on his own interpretation of events, his explanations of reports and his long and elaborate introductions. For the Sīrah of the Prophet is rich in its beauty and splendour and in the spell it casts over souls and minds, and it wins their acceptance without needing the intercession of an advocate, the arguments of a sage or the artistry of a man of letters. All that an author really needs is fine presentation, good arrangement and skilful summary.

In such a book, reason and feeling would stand side by side. Scholarly research and critical analysis would not come at the expense of feeling, love and faith, which are indispensable for appreciating the Sīrah, benefiting from it and understanding its questions, rulings and events; for a book stripped of feeling, love and faith is wooden and contrived, with no life in it. Equally, the element of feeling and belief must not come at the expense of the sound demands of reason, which this very element has especially nurtured, nor of the sound logic from which no age has ever been free. Otherwise it would be merely a book of creed and received tradition, which no one could bear to read or accept except those strong in faith and firmly rooted in Islam, who had grown up in a purely religious environment untouched by the outside world and by modern culture. Such an upbringing is indeed a gift from Allah; yet the life of a Prophet who was sent to all mankind, and sent as a mercy to the worlds, must not be confined to this fortunate class of believers and withheld from those whose circumstances did not allow them to grow up in such a believing Muslim environment: those whom the wisdom of Allah willed to be born in non-Muslim surroundings, and who are then reached by divine grace and touched by a breath of this fragrant Sīrah, so that by its power and attraction they pass into the fold of faith and the camp of Islam. Those who are not Muslims have no lesser right to this Sīrah, and no smaller share in it, than the Muslims who grew up in the shade of faith and Islam. Medicine is needed more by the sick than by the healthy, and a bridge is needed more by those who live across the river than by those who live on this side of it.

Nor can a writer on the Sīrah disregard the environment in which it came into being and took shape, or the age in which it dawned and rose. He must describe the worldwide Jahiliyyah that had pitched its tents over the whole earth in the sixth century of the Christian era: the depths of corruption and decline, of unrest and turmoil, that this age had reached; its moral, social, economic and political condition; and all the forces of corruption, misguidance, destruction and ruin that had combined in it, from tyrannical governments and distorted religions to extreme philosophies and destructive movements. When the author wished to write a detailed and extensive chapter on the age of Jahiliyyah to open his book Madha Khasira al-‘Alam bi-Inhitat al-Muslimin (What the World Lost through the Decline of the Muslims), he met a difficulty he has not forgotten to this day. He had to gather information from foreign sources, from books written in European languages on the history of the lands, nations and states contemporary with the rise of Islam, picking it out from between their pages as one picks fine grains of sugar from the mouths of ants (as the Urdu proverb has it). The result was that extensive chapter,³ which lights the way for anyone who reads the books of the Sīrah and seeks to grasp the greatness of the Prophet’s mission, the immensity of the task it took on, and the great and momentous results it produced. Every book on the Sīrah written in modern times deserves this kind of research and this manner of inquiry: strong, scholarly light thrown on the age of Jahiliyyah, and a precise and faithful portrayal of the corruption and turmoil, the collapse and self-destruction, that seethed within it.

The same holds for the environment in which the mission came and Islam appeared, and for the land in which this call arose, where the bearer of the message, upon him be blessings and peace, was born and spent fifty-three years of his life, and where the call lived for thirteen years. The student of the Sīrah must know the level of thought, awareness and civilisation it had reached; its social and political standing; its religious condition and beliefs; its economic and political situation; and its military strength, so that he may understand the nature of this land, the mentality of its people, and the obstacles that stood in the way of the spread of Islam and its advance.

The same, and more, must be said of the city of Yathrib, to which Islam moved and the Messenger and his Companions emigrated, and which Allah willed to be the first centre of Islam. No one can appreciate the true worth of what Islam achieved there, its power to train people and to bring about a new birth, to resolve hard problems and to unite conflicting elements, nor the greatness of the Prophet’s achievement and its miraculous success in joining hearts and training souls, unless he knows the situation of this strange and complex environment that the Messenger and the Muslims faced. Many of the events and rulings that the reader meets in the books of Sīrah and Hadith cannot be understood unless he knows the social, economic and political condition of Madinah, the nature of its land, the geography of the city and its surroundings, the human and regional elements of which it was made up, how the parts of its settlement were related to one another, and the customs and dealings current there before the Hijrah and the spread of Islam. A reader ignorant of all this who sets out on his journey through the books of the Sīrah will feel as though he is walking through a tunnel, unable to see what is around him, without a clear grasp of the matter.

The same may be said of the governments of the time and the neighbouring lands. The reader cannot see how daring a venture the call of Islam undertook, and how bold its enterprise was, unless he knows the size of the empires that stood around it, which Islam addressed and which the Messenger, upon him be blessings and peace, invited to believe in his message and accept the rule of Islam: the civilisation and culture, the military power, prosperity and development they had attained, and the might, majesty and dominion their kings enjoyed. Modern scholarship has thrown light on the history of these governments and of the lands and societies within them, and has lifted the veil from much that was unknown, obscure or confused in earlier times. A modern writer on the Sīrah ought therefore to draw on all of this, and to make use of the most recent works of history and geography and of comparative study.

The author felt all this, while acknowledging the efforts of those who had written on the subject, the value of what their pens had produced in different periods and different languages, and their service to the call of Islam in endearing the Sīrah to readers and bringing it within reach of the young. He saw it as a happiness to write a new book on the Sīrah, and so to join the luminous line of authors on this beloved and sublime subject.

Yet he shrank from writing on it at length and in detail, because of his lack of time and his weak eyesight, and because he knew from experience that writing the life of any great man, let alone a Prophet, let alone the master of the first and the last and the noblest of the Messengers, is among the most difficult and delicate tasks an author can undertake. He had practised the writing of biographies of famous personalities and eminent Muslims of the past and present. From the time he came of age, took up the pen and learned to write, he had been occupied with the lives of great Muslim imams and leaders, reformers and godly scholars; he had written thousands of pages with his own pen on the lives of these great men, and had lived among biographies since childhood, reading many of them and writing many.

That is how he came to know the delicacy of this subject and the weight of this responsibility. Some authors are dominated by a particular tendency or outlook, and the person they portray is made to submit to it, knowingly or unknowingly, so that their writing becomes a picture of their own mind and feelings, representing the particular tendency that governed the author. Others set out to portray a great man and end up portraying themselves; they mean to look at him objectively, but begin to see him through their own inclinations, experiences and point of view, and to measure him by their own standards.

Anyone who has studied psychology and ethics, taken an interest in the study of contemporary personalities and lived with them for long, knows that to go down into the depths of a human soul, to take in its horizons and portray it accurately and fully, is among the most difficult and delicate forms of knowledge and of writing. No one can do it even passably, or have even some ability for it, unless he knows a great deal of the soul’s stirrings and thoughts, its hopes and its pains, its sorrows and longings, the burning of the spirit and the anguish of the heart; unless he has seen how this person spends his nights and his days, how he lives with his family and treats his companions, and has seen him in peace and in war, in contentment and in anger, in hardship and in ease, in weakness and in strength. And there are states, feelings and sensations of the human soul, and expressions of beauty and perfection, for which words have not yet been coined, and which no wealth of language, however vast and precise, can convey.

Among the lives of all human beings, prophets and others alike, the Sīrah of the Prophet Muhammad stands out for its precision and completeness, and for how fully it preserves the finest details, particulars and features of his life. This is owed to the science of Hadith, which has no parallel either in the history of the prophets or in the history of great men; to the books of Sīrah and Shama’il; to the Prophet’s supplications and words of remembrance that were gathered and preserved,⁴ and his intimate prayers to his Lord, blessings and peace be upon him, by night and by day; to the concise yet comprehensive sayings of his that were preserved and handed down; and to the descriptions of him transmitted by the gifted describers among his Companions and family, which are more precise, and more complete in capturing human features and fine traits of character, than any description preserved in the books of literature, history and genealogy.⁵ Writing the Sīrah of the Prophet has therefore not involved the difficulty and obscurity, the conjecture and inference, found in the lives of great heroes. His Sīrah, blessings and peace be upon him, is the most complete of all lives, as it is the most beautiful. It rests on texts of the Qur’an and on historical documents, on fine details of his appearance and character, and on particulars of his habits and worship, his conduct and his dealings, beyond which nothing more can be imagined; and it is as close to fact and reality as could ever be conceived or hoped for, even though so long a time has passed since this pure and noble life.

Yet despite this great difference between his Sīrah, blessings and peace be upon him, and the lives of great men, and indeed the lives of the prophets, and despite a precision that none can surpass and a completeness that none can exceed, it must be admitted that to portray his life and character fully is almost impossible: to take in the miracles contained in his life and his call, in his private and public life, and in his dealings with Allah and with people; the signs of beauty and goodness in his form and his character, in his love and compassion, in his supplication and humble entreaty, in his grief for humanity and its fate, in his speech and wisdom, and in his comprehensiveness and perfection. What is found in the books of Sīrah and Shama’il, for all its beauty and splendour, is only part, not the whole, of the beauty of life and the perfection of form and character with which Allah distinguished him. At most, they are attempts and efforts for which their authors deserve thanks and reward. They are a common and everlasting treasure in which every person, every generation of mankind and every class of people finds its share of guidance and light, of following and emulation:

For all these reasons I was in awe of writing on the Sīrah of the Prophet; I thought the task too great, and myself too small for it. A number of distinguished scholars and noble friends⁶ urged me to write a book on the Sīrah in Arabic that would take into account the mentality of the new generation, its taste, its level of understanding and its psychology, and the new demands and needs, literary style and scholarly method that have arisen. For every age has its own style and language, and its own measures and prescriptions in medicines and foods. All this, as I said earlier, was to be done without subjecting the Sīrah to whims and agendas, to scientific theories that change morning and evening, or to the doubts and objections prompted by religious prejudice, scholarly ignorance or political motive.

At last Allah opened my heart to this work. I devoted myself to the subject and lived in it, reading the books of Sīrah and Hadith and everything, old and new, that could help me in it. I began to write, relying on the most authentic works composed on the subject, drawing on what had been written on it in earlier and recent times, and on foreign sources that shed much light on the Sīrah and on the history of that age, and illuminate the governments and societies of the time.⁷ I tried to make the book combine the scholarly with the educative and the eloquent, so that neither overwhelms the other, and to include as many as possible of those passages that pulse and overflow with life and power, that captivate hearts and souls, and whose like is not found in the life of any other human being, nor in the history of any individual or generation, any call or religion. All of this I tried to do without embellishment or colouring, ornament or adornment; for the beauty of nature and of truth needs no outward embellishment or artificial decoration.

This book was my chief occupation from Shawwal 1395 AH to Shawwal 1396 AH (October 1975 to October 1976). I did not turn to any other work except out of necessity, apart from a few periods of illness and long journeys to the East and the West, until Allah made it easy to complete at the very beginning of Shawwal 1396 AH. Here it now is, in the hands of its readers.

I consider it my duty to thank two distinguished friends from whom I received great help in writing this book. The first is Shaykh Burhan al-Din al-Sanbhali, teacher of Hadith and Tafsir at Dar al-Ulum Nadwat al-Ulama, who helped me in tracing and checking the hadiths and in verifying some of what is reported in the books of Sīrah; may Allah give him the best of rewards. The second is Ustadh Mohiuddin Ahmad,⁸ who gave me valuable help in studying foreign sources and in gathering useful information from books on the history of nations and lands and from foreign encyclopaedias; the author is grateful for his kindness, and acknowledges his efforts and his sincerity. Since the whole of this book was dictated, the author being unable to write it himself, he was helped in writing it down by several brothers, foremost among them the dear Muhammad Mu‘adh al-Induri al-Nadwi and Ali Ahmad al-Gujrati al-Nadwi; Ustadh Nur Alam al-Amini al-Nadwi also contributed.

Ustadh Muhammad Hasan al-Ansari deserves credit for drawing the historical and geographical maps that adorn the book and add to its scholarly value; as do the eminent Professor Dr Muhammad Shafi, Head of the Department of Geography at Aligarh Muslim University and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University, and the University’s Department of Geography, for improving and completing them. The author is grateful to all these brothers.

I ask Allah to make this book of benefit, to accept it with a goodly acceptance, and to make it a provision for the Hereafter and a means of studying this pure Sīrah, of seeking more of it and benefiting from it. It is thanks enough for the author, and value enough for the book, if it stirs the love and faith that lie hidden in a believer’s soul, or draws the heart of someone who is not a Muslim towards this pure and fragrant life, and moves them to study and understand Islam. He alone grants success.

Abul Hasan Ali al-Hasani al-NadwiRaebareli, IndiaFriday, 5 Dhu al-Qa‘dah 1396 AH / 29 October 1976

Translated from the original Arabic.