Muhammad
Founder of Islam, c. 570–632 CE
Also known as: Mohammed, the Prophet, Muhammad ibn Abdullah
Muhammad (c. 570–632 CE) is the founder of Islam and the central figure of Quigley's chapters on Islamic Civilization in Weapons Systems and Political Stability. Quigley treats him as the founder of a successful new civilization — his case study of religious genesis as civilizational instrument.
Religious revelation as civilizational origin
Quigley dates the inception of Islamic Civilization to "the first religious revelation of Muhammad about A.D. 610" — the starting point of "an almost continuous process" extending "until its total conquest by the Ottoman Turks about 1560" (WS 711). He frames Muhammad's Arabia as historically complex rather than tribal-primitive: "Arabia is a relatively complex area and had a relatively complex history before Muhammad" (WS 715–716). Within Quigley's seven-stages model, the new monotheistic religion functions as the instrument of expansion for a civilization that emerged from the periphery of the older Mesopotamian and Hellenistic-Persian zones. The standard periodization Quigley reproduces runs: "The age of Muhammad, to 632; the first four Orthodox Caliphs, 632 to 661; the Omayyad Caliphate at Damascus, from 661 to 750; the Abbasid Caliphate from 750 to about 1100" (WS 712).
Routinization and political afterlife
Quigley's distinctive analytical move is to insist that Muhammad's actual teaching was rapidly compressed by his successors into ritual and political requirements: "In Islam where Muhammad's teachings were soon ignored, and the requirements of Islam became a few rituals, plus monotheism, and so far as Muhammad was concerned, belief that he was the Prophet of the One God" (WS 577). The parallel with the Christian case is deliberate and structural. Long after the founder, Muhammad's authority survives as a political symbol: in Tragedy and Hope Quigley notes that "the sultan was also caliph (and thus religious successor to Muhammad), and the religious belief that the government was under divine guidance and should be obeyed, however unjust and tyrannical, made all religious thinking on political or social questions take the form of justification of the status quo" (T&H 125).
Cited in
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 577 Quigley
In Islam where Muhammad's teachings were soon ignored, and the requirements of Islam became a few rituals, plus monotheism, and so far as Muhammad was concerned, belief that he was the Prophet of the One God.
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 711 Quigley
From its beginnings at the first religious revelation of Muhammad about A.D. 610 until its total conquest by the Ottoman Turks about 1560, any words we use to divide this almost continuous process into discrete stages will give a false impression.
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 712 Quigley
1. The age of Muhammad, to 632; 2. The first four Orthodox Caliphs, 632 to 661; 3. The Omayyad Caliphate at Damascus, from 661 to 750; 4. The Abbasid Caliphate from 750 to about 1100, chiefly at Baghdad and Samarra.
- weapons-systems-political-stability · p. 715 Quigley
Of what Arab tribalism was like in the seventh century when Muhammad began to preach a monotheistic religion to the polytheistic pagans of western Arabia.
- tragedy-and-hope · p. 125 Quigley
The sultan was also caliph (and thus religious successor to Muhammad), and the religious belief that the government was under divine guidance and should be obeyed, however unjust and tyrannical, made all religious thinking on political or social questions take the form of justification of the status quo.
- quigley-lectures · p. 4 Quigley
Eventually, he is one; that is what Muhammad insisted on. And then he is omnipotent, all-powerful.