Muhammad’s legacy consisted primarily in knitting the clans and tribes together into a homogeneous society. In 1990, after the book had attracted the attention of Azhar University, Lings received a decoration from Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Those rivals included Hind, a woman who was a stern critic of Islam and who had eaten the liver of a dead companion of Muhammad. My experience with books on Seerah in English is that, for all the benefit they provide and the importance they may have, they are sometimes hard to follow and cumbersome to read.His contribution to Shakespeare scholarship was to point out the deeper esoteric meanings found in Shakespeare's plays, and the spirituality of Shakespeare himself. Once they had realized this, however, some of their leading men went in a body to Abu Talib, to insist that he should restrain his nephew's activities.

The archaic language puts some readers off, but the structure of the book is logical and impartial, to a great extent. 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.I can remind you of more and more things: how he had an Egyptian enslaved girl whom he would visit everyday and for whom he had a Quranic revelation saying that it was okay for him to have sexual intercourse with her. In case you have forgotten the instances, remember when he wept while embracing a child of his dead companion, who had recently died?

If you are told by someone that Muhammad was a peaceful man, consult this review or book immediately.

Also Ibn Sa’ad (the references are to John Leyden's edition of Kitab al-Tabaqat al Kabir by Muhammad ibn Sa’d).