Martin Lings' Muhammad

This post is about Martin Lings' biography of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)

I've long had a bit of a will-they wont-they relationship with Martin Ling's book. The book chronicles the life and times of Muhammad (pbuh) and was written in English by a person who had an excellent command of literary English and knew how to use words. By all accounts it's right up there as one of the best English language biographies that there is and now that I've finally started reading it I have to agree.

I first came across the book when at university in 2006 where several of my fellow students in the Islamic Society talked about it with great enthusiasm and reverence and shared a copy amongst each other. From childhood to adulthood I'd read numerous Early Islamic history books covering the sahabah and their stories, the battles and wars that were fought and the life of the Prophet (pbuh) himself so felt I had a reasonable understanding of this time period. And since I was at university there was plenty that a person could get distracted by - whether with academic study or joining the college Rowing Club and learning the finer points of life on water. And distracted I was until the winter holidays of my final year when I remembered the book and having found it in my college library I borrowed it and took it home with me to read over the winter vacation.

It stayed in my luggage through the whole holiday and eventually when I returned to university in the autumn I discovered it had actually left my luggage and was in my sister's possession! Which was a real frustration as I soon received notice of an overdue book fine from the library. Luckily for me I was able to get to her house and pick up the book and still without having opened it I gave it back to the library.

Fast forward a few years to summer 2014 and I somehow came across the book on Amazon and decided to buy it. It arrived within a couple of days and I finally had my own copy to read and no excuse to not read. Yet I still did not read it and amidst my quarter-life crisis it got buried under a whole host of other books that I bought from various charity shops and I forgot about it again. Over the next year it moved with me to my next flat and then back with me to my family home where it ended up in my brother's possession. During this time I took up reading on the train commute to work and worked my way through several books on a variety of subjects.

All until yesterday when having recently come back from YMLP with a rekindled flame in my heart for all things religious and knowledgeable I decided to finally read the book. It took me a while to track it down as it had moved around the house and at last I found it in a little used cupboard in the little used spare room.

At long last I began to read and an hour later had made it through 35 pages. And what a book it is! The book is definitely well-written and evokes more than mere fact but it's more than the words on the page. The subject matter of the book is plainly Muhammad (pbuh) but for me the book connected me to a heritage that had faded from my mind. A shared heritage that I think has faded from a lot of muslim minds. Amidst all the scandal and negative news that the world hears about muslims on a daily basis the book shows the prime example that we should be following.

The book opens with a discussion of the Prophet's (pbuh) ancestry starting with Ibrahim (AS) which on the surface is fairly academic and dry but I drank it up as it highlighted to me what I had forgotten - the history of Islam is a long, storied and glorious one and we should be proud to humbly call ourselves Muslim. Islam has been going for a very long time and while it may feel like it's under sustained attack right now - it has ever been thus and yet by the grace of Allah truth has consistently prevailed. Muslims of old lived their Islam and favourably demonstrated their value to the wider society they lived in. And that is something that we can hold on to in our modern society.