{"id":4621,"date":"2023-06-14T16:46:48","date_gmt":"2023-06-14T16:46:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ibrahimsheme.com\/?p=4621"},"modified":"2023-10-07T22:25:17","modified_gmt":"2023-10-07T22:25:17","slug":"martin-lings-biography-of-prophet-muhammad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ibrahimsheme.net\/?p=4621","title":{"rendered":"Martin Lings’ biography of Prophet Muhammad"},"content":{"rendered":"
A prized book has just got into my hands, Martin Lings’ celebrated “Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources”. I was just about to ask a friend who is currently visiting America to try and buy a copy for me – an addition to similar demands that I have already made on her.<\/p>\n
This is the definitive biography of the holy Prophet (s.a.w.), written by an Englishman who converted to Islam and became one of the most respected Islamic scholars and Orientalists.<\/p>\n
My interest in this book got whetted when someone recommended, in a social media group, that we should read it, during a debate on the western-oriented question: Why did Abraham consider Isaac his first-born son when he had already had a son named Ishmael by Hagar? (The Arabic names for these personalities are: Abraham – Prophet Ibrahim; Isaac – Prophet Is’haq; Ishmael – Prophet Isma’il; and Hagar – Hajar or Hajara.)<\/p>\n
So captivating was the narrative that I started reading the book within minutes of getting it, and quickly finished the first chapter.<\/p>\n
The author:<\/h4>\n
According to Wikipedia, Martin Lings (24 January 1909 \u2013 12 May 2005), also known as Ab\u016b Bakr Sir\u0101j ad-D\u012bn, was an English writer, Islamic scholar, and philosopher. A student of the Swiss metaphysician Frithjof Schuon and an authority on the work of William Shakespeare, he is best known as the author of “Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources”, first published in 1983 and still in print.<\/p>\n
Below is what the Islamic Texts Society said of the book:<\/p>\n
“Acclaimed worldwide as the definitive biography of the Prophet Muhammad in the English language, Martin Lings\u2019 Muhammad: His Life Based on 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, it 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.<\/p>\n
“Martin Lings has an unusual gift for narrative. He has adopted a style which is at once extremely readable and reflects both the simplicity and grandeur of the story. The result is a book which will be read with equal enjoyment by those already familiar with Muhammad\u2019s life and those coming to it for the first time.<\/p>\n
“Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources was given an award by the government of Pakistan, and selected as the best biography of the Prophet in English at the National Seerat Conference in Islamabad in 1983.<\/p>\n
“The late Dr Martin Lings, formerly Keeper of Oriental Manuscript in the British Museum and the British Library, is the author of three works on Islamic mysticism: A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century, What is Sufism? (and) The Book of Certainty, all published by the Islamic Texts Society.”<\/p>\n
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Also below are some of the endorsements of the book:<\/p>\n
\u2018Despite the vastness of the subject, this biography makes an easy and absorbing reading for anyone interested in religion as such. For those interested in Islam one way or another it is mesmerising.\u2019 \n– S.H. Nasr, George Washington University<\/p>\n
\u2018An enthralling story that combines impeccable scholarship with a rare sense of the sacred worthy of his subject.\u2019 \n– The Spectator<\/p>\n
\u2018Before the appearance of this book, Western languages lacked almost entirely a comprehensive and authentic account of the life of the Prophet Muhammad\u2026 Lings has produced a superb narrative that in its sobriety and dignity of style, and its scrupulous and exhaustive fidelity to authentic and reliable sources, constitutes a major addition to Islamic literature in English. Highly recommended.\u2019 \n– Hamid Alhar, Religious Studies Review<\/p>\n
\u2018Muhammad is a true work of art, as enthralling and engrossing as the best of novels with the difference that this is no fiction but fact. With the magic of his pen, the author makes all the historical personalities of his book come alive\u2026 The skill of narration is enhanced throughout the book with the most regal and dignified English, inspiring the sense of majestic grandeur essential for any literary work dealing with Divine and Eternal Truths.\u2019 \n– The Islamic Quarterly<\/p>\n
\u2018This great book is a classic.\u2019 \n– Frithjof Schuon<\/p>\n
\u2018There is a freshness, clarity and gripping suspense throughout the book\u2026 As a text in the how and the why and the when of various revelations\u2014both Koranic and Prophetic traditions\u2014it is enlightening and authoritative\u2026 Our author\u2019s familiarity with all the complicated inter-family links of tribal Arabia gives us the certainty that he knows his material thoroughly\u2026 This work should be translated into Arabic so that the whole Arab world may drink from it.\u2019 \n– Muslim World (Cape Town)<\/p>\n
\u2018An excellent introduction to the subject and very well written.\u2019 \n– Annemarie Schimmel.<\/p>\n
\u2018I read it straight through, then re-read it, almost in its entirety, fascinated.\u2019 \n– Titus Burckhardt<\/p>\n
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