Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources

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The thing with the Muslims writer in general is that when they start writing about the life and deeds of the Prophet they are so much in awe of the personality that they can barely portray him as a normal human being. They somehow always end up creating an image which is so close to the divinity. It uses anachronistic English quoting people of the period; thee, thou and the smiting of thine foes abound Ketika saya sedang mengendarai motor, Fathurrahman sahabat saya di DPPAI menelepon untuk membuat resensi buku “Muhammad” karya Martin Lings. Namun, ketika berpikir tentang Muhammad s.a.w., tiba-tiba yang terlintas dalam benak saya adalah puisi Garuda yang ditulis Emha Ainun Nadjib dan dilantunkan dalam teater tafsir “Tikungan Iblis”, Agustus 2008 silam. Puisi Garuda ini dalam perasaan saya berbicara tentang kesunyian hati. Mungkin ini sekelumit gambaran perasaan Muhammad ketika mendapati generasinya justru lebih paham kisah hidup penyanyi yang ngetop gara-gara Youtube, heroisme Clark Kent dan Naruto Uzumaki, serta “pahlawan” imajiner yang lain dibanding kemuliaan sejarah kerasulannya. Muhammad, sosok yang dicinta oleh umatnya. Namun, tidak sedikit generasi yang tumbuh di tengah ingar-bingar industrialisme ini hanya tahu namanya saja. Perjalanan hidupnya? Rahasia kenabiannya? Atmosfir kesejukannya? Suci karakternya? Beban perjuangannya? Hampir tak ada waktu bagi generasi ini untuk menyelami, apalagi meneladaninya. Kesunyian yang barangkali dialami oleh sekian banyak tokoh, karakter, pribadi masa lampau yang hanya diingat namanya saja, namun cenderung tidak digubris ajarannya.:

In 1939, Lings went to Cairo, Egypt, to visit a friend who was an assistant of René Guénon. Soon after arriving in Cairo, his friend died and Lings began studying Arabic. Cairo became his home for over a decade; he became an English language teacher at the University of Cairo and produced Shakespeare plays annually. [5] Lings married Lesley Smalley in 1944 and lived with her in a village near the pyramids. [6] Despite having settled comfortably in Egypt, Lings was forced to leave in 1952 after anti-British disturbances. [7] Lings in 1948. Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources is a 1983 biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad by Martin Lings. The Eleventh Hour: the Spiritual Crisis of the Modern World in the Light of Tradition and Prophecy (2002), Archetype, ISBN 1-901383-01-6 Membaca buku ini kita dapat merasa lebih dekat dengan Nabi Muhammad SAW, menyegarkan kita untuk mengingat sejarah dan perjuangan beliau. Raiding caravans. God makes exception for the sacred month and Muhammad takes fifth of the spoils. (p 135)

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It is exciting and rendered in its unadulterated original form; angels fight alongside the believers in their battles with infidels In this context, Martin Lings has been extraordinary. He not only describes the Prophet as the way he was, but do so most elegantly. That feeling of being in awe of the person is completely missing, and all for good. He tells the stories and the incidences in such beautiful manner that you hardly feel it is being said about a prophet. Even the miracles performed by the Prophet has been written in such simplicity that those seems to be the normal thing! Intolerance is the hallmark of organized Islam in the present world. Contrary to what some of its apologists say, this was so even during the prophet’s lifetime, as seen in this book. The believers abused others at will, but the reverse of it was not permitted. Labid, who was a great Arabian poet of the time, recited a poem, Best book I've ever read in English about the life of the Beloved Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. Based in the earliest classical sources, yet written in beautiful and fluid English.

Before you read more about Muhammad though, I want you to remember some things that I'm thinking about this book as I write this review. I have already read couple of books on Islam and Muhammad and have a better understand of it than I had had about two years ago—that pivotal time of my life when I left this faith. But most of those works were from nonbelievers. So I could not get rid of the idea that I haven't read works from the Islamic perspective. You, dear future me, then read this book, which was positively reviewed by Muslims. Also remember that the author, Martin Lings, had converted to Islam while writing this book. From his writing, you could easily discern why he had done so. You were sure therefore, that this writing by a converted Muslim would make you better understand the faith and its prophet. Made you better understand, it did. But made you think of it in a positive light, it did not. It can be a delicate matter reviewing books that involve sacred texts and holy people. Let me be clear: this is a review of Muhammad the biography. It is not a review of Muhammad the Prophet. You liked this book from the very beginning, when it started with the story of Abraham going to Mecca. The book was written as if it was an elaborate prose. However, the flaws readily caught your eyes. Abraham is cited as creating the Kabah, the center of Islamic worship located in Mecca. The source for this information that the author cites is the Quran and some Bible verses. As you already know, the Bible is hardly ever reliable and not a lot of scholars think that those verses meant Abraham traveled to Arabia. And the Quran as the source of this crucial information is not credible at all. You should also remember the various other incredible acts described by the author, where he cited Islamic sources or barely cited anything at all. The reliability of sources remain a thorny question in Islam, where even the Quran is not perfectly preserved as Muslims and Allah claim. You also noticed how the incident of the satanic verses was altogether omitted, as if it was not a significant event in Islam's history. Nevertheless, you kept on reading while generally taking the information to be true, unless something supernatural or some extraordinary acts were described, for which you thought the sources were not enough to be taken as evidences.Splendors of Qur'an Calligraphy And Illumination (2005), Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation, Thames & Hudson, ISBN 0-500-97648-1 The late Martin Lings’ (also known as Abu Bakr Siraj al-Din) Muhammad ﷺ: His Life Based On The Earliest Sources is among the seerah books written in English that have received widespread acclaim. Originally published in 1983, the book continues to be among highly-ranked seerah literature in the English language and read by scholars and laypeople alike. The book stands out from the rest as Lings (d. 2005), a Shakespearean scholar, spares no rhetorical device in his prose. For example, Shaykh Hamza Yusuf has said of his work, Acclaimed worldwide as the definitive biography of the Prophet Muhammad in the English language, Martin Lings'"Muhammad: His Life Based to the Earliest Sources" is unlike any other. Based on Arabic sources of the eighth and ninth centuries, of which some important passages are translated here for the first time, "Muhammad: His Life Based to the Earliest Sources" owes the freshness and directness of its approach to the words of men and women who heard Muhammad speak and witnessed the events of his life.---Martin Lings' gift for narrative, and his adoption of a style which is extremely readable, allows both the simplicity and grandeur of the story to shine through. The result is a book which will be read with equal enjoyment by those already familiar with Muhammad's life and those coming to it for the first time. "Muhammad: His Life Based to the Earliest Sources" was selected as the best biography of the Prophet in English at the National Seerat Conference in Islamabad in 1983. With the coming of Ramadan, I decided to put it upon myself to read another book on the Biography of Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم. Like a country that revisits the nation's history during independence day, I revisit his life to learn and to strengthen my connection with him. It's a reminder of the sacrifices made by Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم and his companions, and most of all to be in constant gratitude for the gift that Allah has bestowed on the Ummah.

Hernandez, Aaminah (14 July 2005). "Best Biographies of the Prophet Muhammad". OnIslam . Retrieved 1 July 2013. This is how GOD is defined in the Holy Quran, Surat al-Ikhlas,the Chapter of Sincerity, which is placed at the end of the Quran (say Koran), the third last as mentioned in the book.

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Yahya, Khalid A. "Review of Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources, by M. Lings". Middle East Studies Association Bulletin. 19 (1): 68-69. In the desert a man was conscious of being the lord of space, and in virtue of that lordship he escaped in a sense from the domination of time. By striking camp he sloughed off his yesterdays; and tomorrow seemed less of a fatality if its where as well as its when had yet to come. But the townsman was a prisoner; and to be fixed in one place, yesterday, today, tomorrow – was to be a target for time, the ruiner of all things. Towns were places of corruption. Sloth and slovenliness lurked in the shadow of their walls, ready to take the edge off a man’s alertness and vigilance. Everything decayed there, even language, one of man’s most precious possessions. Few of the Arabs could read, but beauty of speech was a virtue which all Arab parents desired for their children. A man’s worth was largely assessed by his eloquence, and the crown of eloquence was poetry. To have a great poet in the family was indeed something to be proud of; and the best poets were nearly always from one or another of the desert tribes, for it was in the desert that the spoken language was nearest to poetry. So the bond with the desert had to be renewed in every generation – fresh air for the breast, pure Arabic for the tongue, freedom for the soul; and many of the sons of Quraysh were kept as long as eight years in the desert, so that it might make a lasting impression upon them, though a lesser number of years was enough for that. [3] Word of Caution Khalid Yahya writes that Lings' book brings early Islamic accounts, many of which are scattered, into a single narrative according to Ibn Ishaq's chronological scheme. According to Yahya, Lings successfully presents what most Muslims believe, and have believed throughout history, about Muhammad. [10] W. Montgomery Watt agrees that Lings' book gives an idea of how Muhammad is seen by Muslims. He points out that the book was based on the earliest Islamic sources, and where there is a difference of opinion in those sources, the book takes the most widely accepted view; and that Lings simply accepts the early Islamic sources without discussing their value. [11] In this book, Martin Lings talks about the life,childhood, adulthood, prophethood,difficulties in the early stages of Islam, forgiveness, love, kindness,generosity, conquests, respect, leadership, journey to heavens,journey to Madina, intellect, companions (generally known as Sahabas), followers, enemies and almost everything about the Holy Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). The only person whose life history is too much persevered. He (PBUH) is the most influential person who has ever walked on Earth and has the second largest number of followers throughout the world till date. This number is increasing continuously. You may be more knowledgeable and say, "No no, it happened, it is in the Sira, the biography of Muhammad". That would be to then overlook the massive amount of false recordings of Muhammad that emerged during and after his death. In fact, this is perhaps the greatest problem of Islam in modern times. False teachings, false recordings, have becoming so intermingled with the core teachings of Islam, that separating the two has become near impossible. Past the Qur'an, it is difficult to ascertain the accuracy of any document. Yet, Martin Ling goes to vividly into details of "miracles" that occurred.

Abu Bakr Siraj Ad-Din (Martin Lings) was a Muslim convert. Therefore, it must be understood that his rendering of the Prophet's (PBUH) narrative was a work of piety, and not necessarily one of historical scholarship. Muhammad ﷺ : His Life Based On The Earliest Sources by Martin Lings is a beautiful place to further personal engagement with the seerah, but one should also keep in mind Shaykh Abdul Nasir’s advice: “Independent reading is important, but soul-to-soul transmission of authentic and academically sound information is of utmost importance.”[2] A Sufi saint of the twentieth century: Shaikh Ahmad al-°Alawi, his spiritual heritage and legacy ( Islamic Texts Society, 1993) ISBN 0-946621-50-0 Lings was born in Burnage, Manchester, in 1909 to a Protestant family. [2] The young Lings gained an introduction to travelling at a young age, spending significant time in the United States because of his father's employment. Lings attended Clifton College [3] and went on to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he gained a BA in English Language and Literature. At Magdalen, he was a student and then a close friend of C. S. Lewis. After graduating from Oxford Lings went to Vytautas Magnus University, in Lithuania, where he taught Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. [2] A distinctive element of the biography is the vivid, approachable narrative style, [5] which is fast moving and flows fluently. [3] The book reads more like a novel [6] and was written in a style, which is easily readable, [2] comprehensible and it uses language, which reflects both simplicity and grandeur. [4]In 1990, after the book had attracted the attention of Azhar University, Lings received a decoration from Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. [14] See also [ edit ] The author Martin Lings was a Muslim convert and Arabic speaker who spent formative years in Cairo and earned a Ph.D. on Sufism at SOAS University of London in 1959. He had a brief career overseeing eastern manuscripts at the British Museum and Library. This biography of Muhammad was written in 1983 and received prizes from governments in Pakistan and Egypt, as well as international acclaim from Muslims and non-Muslims alike.