The end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh centuries stood for an epoch of disintegration -- national, social, moral, spiritual and religious; its phenomena were such as have always involved a fresh form of positive faith, to recall all wandering forces to the inevitable track of spiritual evolution towards the integration of personal worship. They all pointed to the necessity of a more organic revelation of Divine Government. The holy flames kindled by Zoroaster, Moses, and Jesus had unfortunately been distorted and quenched in the blood of man. Under the over-powering influence of the sickly imaginations, the sublime and glorious moral teachings of Gautama had been almost hid form view. Mrs. Rhyse Davies very rightly points out: "Theories grew and flourished, each new step, each new hypothesis demanded another, until the whole sky was filled with forgeries of the brain and the nobler and the simpler lessons of the founder of the religion were smothered beneath the glittering masses of metaphysical subtleties."

Some of the happiest portions of the globe into a veritable Aceldama. Incessant war for supremacy, perpetual internecine strife, combined with the ceaseless wrangling of creeds and sects, had sucked the life-blood out of the hearts of nations, and the people of the earth, trodden under the iron heels of a lifeless sacerdolatism, were crying to God from the misdeeds of their masters. Never in the history of the world was the need so great, the time so ripe, for the appearance of a deliverer.

The annals of history testify eloquently to the fact that the Voice of God, though unheard, has always sounded the call to truth. In hours of crises, the servants of the Great Unknown, the "Messengers of Heaven," inevitably rose to proclaim the duties of man to himself and to his creator. They came among their people as the children of their time, they represented the burning aspirations of the human soul for truth, purity and justice. Each was an embodiment of the spiritual necessities of his age; each came to purify, to reform, to elevate a degraded race, a corrupted commonwealth. Some came as teachers of a smaller culture, to influence a smaller sphere; others came with a wider horizon of thought and action, a world-wide message -- message not confined to one race or nation, not confined to any particular country or continent, but intended for all humanity. Such indeed was Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) whose Mission was not to the Arabs alone. The Most Gracious and the Most Merciful Alalh, in His infinite Mercy, sent Muhammad (pbuh) as Rahmatul-lil-Alameen -- mercy not only for the entire humanity but also for each and every creation in every nook and corner of the infinite universe.

The Holy Prophet (pbuh) with his amazing soberness and incomparable self-control, with which he entertained his all-absorbing visions, rose to the occasion with all the sincerity, conviction and determination under the sun. The challenge was dreadful, the task stupendous. "Many a less sincere man, many a real hero," says Major Arthur Glyn Leonard in Islam -- Her Moral and Spiritual Value, "would have shrunk from and succumbed before an ordeal so terrific, a contest so supremely titanic. But Mohammed was made of sterner stuff, of the spirit gods are made of. Failure was a word that he did not recognise. With God at his back success was an absolute certainty -- a foregone conclusion."

It was indeed a unique success! Even a devout Christian like Rev. Bosworth-Smith unhesitatingly admits in Mohammed and Mohammedanism: "Islam is the most complete, the most sudden and the most extraordinary revolution that has ever come over any nation on earth." Thomas Carlyle analyses this success beautifully in On heroes, Hero-worship and the heroic in History: The Hero as Prophet, "A poor shepherd people roaming unnoticed in its deserts since the creation of the world. A Hero Prophet was sent down to them with a word they could believe. See, the unnoticed becomes world noticeable, the small has grown world-great; within one century afterwards, Arabia is at Granada on this, and Delhi on that; glancing with valour and splendour and the light of genius, Arabia shines through long ages over a great section of the world." Philip K. Hitti also acknowledges in History of the Arabs: "The sterile Arabia seems to have been converted as if by magic into a nursery of heroes the like of whom both in number and quality is hard to find anywhere."

The teachings of Muhammad (pbuh) had indeed wrought a marvellous and mighty work.

There must be something so fascinating, so arresting in the personality of this great Arabian who without any standing army, without any palace, without any huge resources to fall back upon, without the slenderest human backing and against the heaviest material odds could so effectively revolutionise the social, political, moral and spiritual outlook of the wild hordes, the barbarous savages of Arabia, creating a new orientation, developing a new phase of action, a new angle of vision, giving a new direction to human thought, a new bond to world civilisation, a new interpretation of human life and destiny.

There must be something so chivalrous about this giant among men that alone among the great teachers of mankind he conferred the first legal status of honour and responsibility upon women making them Sui-Juris, ensuring their economic independence and providing them opportunity in all spheres of human activity, guaranteeing their rights in the properties of the deceased parents, of the dead husband and children -- rights and privileges which could not be conceived of before the enactment of Married Women's Property Act in England by the middle of the 19th century, rights which are being conceded to them by the civilised nations of Europe and America even in the twenty-first century.

There must be something so generous and magnanimous about this Seer of Arabia that alone among the Prophets of God he sympathised with slaves in their deep distress and did not merely liberate thousands of slaves after the Battle of Hunain and inspire his companions to emulate his noble example, but also laid down principles with proper religious sanctions with a view to emancipating them for good.

There was something so noble and human in this orphan child of the desert, bereft in infancy of the father's care and the mother's affection, that he responded so readily to the cry of distress from orphans, soothed their troubled hearts, enjoining upon his followers genuine sympathy and punctilious regards for their just right, giving strict orders against encroachment upon their rights and properties in any shape or form, creating the noblest urge for the establishment of orphanages all over the world.

There was something so constructive and creative in the amazing genius of this great man of vision and imagination that he reconciled the divergent claims and conflicting interests of all classes and conditions of people, combining various aspects of human life.

There was something so rational, so dynamic, so material, nay so original, in his magnificent conception of God and His relation with man and the system of universes that he could with his simple humanity, with his democratic conception of the Divine Great, with his unarraying appeal to reason and the ethical faculty of mankind, lay the foundation of the modern world, establishing both in theory and practice liberty, equality and fraternity at least 12 hundred years before the French Revolution.

No wonder, it is not the Muslims alone who claim that the holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) was the greatest and most influential among the salt of the earth in the annals of civilisation. Even the non-Muslim saints and seers unhesitatingly admit that there was none greater than the Prophet of Arabia. Michael Hart, a devout Christian and a renowned astronomer, has chosen the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) as the most influential person in the history of mankind. In his world-renowned The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, he has marked out the Prophet of Islam as the number one whereas Jesus occupies the third position. In his own words: "My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world's most influential persons may surpirse some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels."

John William Draper, who claims that Renaissance owes its birth to Islam, shares the same view and acknowledges in A History of the Intellectual Development of Europe: "Four years after the death of Justinian, in AD. 569, was born at Mecca, in Arabia, the man (Muhammad) who, of all men, has excercised the greatest influence upon the human race."

Alfred de Lamartine sums up the great virtues and the excellent qualities of the Last and the Greatest Prophet (pbuh) in Historie de la turquie when he claims: "If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astounding results are the three criteria of human genius, who coule dare to compare any great man in modern history with Muhammad?.... Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, of a cult without images; the founder of twenty terrestial empires and of one spiritual empire, that is Muhammad."

Syed Ashraf Ali is former Director General, Islamic Foundation Bangladesh