The most famous men created arms, laws and empires only. They founded, if anything at all, no more than material powers which often crumbled away before their eyes. This man moved not only armies, legislation, empires, peoples and dynasties, but millions of men in one-third of the then inhabited world; and more than that, he moved the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and souls... his forbearance in victory, his ambition, which was entirely devoted to one idea and in no manner striving for an empire; his endless prayers, his mystic conversations with God, his death and his triumph after death; all these attest not to an imposture but to a firm conviction which gave him the power to restore the dogma. Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror
of ideas, restorer of rational beliefs, of a cult without images; the
founder of twenty terrestrial empires and of one spiritual empire, that
is Muhammad. As regards all standards by which human greatness may be
measured, we may well ask, is there any man greater than he?
- Alphonse de Lamartine (1854) -
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