Mohammed

This biography of the Prophet Muhammad (570–632), founder of Islam, takes the reader back to the dramatic origins of a faith that would reshape the world. From the son of a merchant to the unifier of a people divided into tribes, clans, and families, Muhammad forged a new community and laid the foundations of a vast empire grounded in religious law. In a narrative both richly detailed and vividly told, the writer Essad Bey offers a nuanced portrait of Islam and its formative beginnings. His account illuminates not only the life of its founder, but also the enduring impact of this tradition on the course of world history. “But above all, Essad Bey was a brilliant, intoxicating stylist. His prose belongs to a kind now rarely found among contemporary non-fiction writers—and even less among specialists on Islam. It has rhythm and employs evocative imagery; it is rich in both semantic and syntactic variation. He commands the arc of narrative so masterfully that it occasionally carries him beyond established historical fact into the realm of the possible, though not always the provable. His biography of Mohammed may not belong in strictly academic libraries—but it is hard to imagine a more engaging portrayal, one that captures the spirit of early Islamic history more vividly than many a source-critical monograph.” Navid Kermani