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Muhammad

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he always employed force in the service of political goals. — location: 148 ^ref-59108

It was Muhammad who forged the military instrument of the Arab conquests that began within two years of his death by bringing into being a completely new kind of army not seen before in Arabia. As a military innovator Muhammad introduced no fewer than eight major military reforms that transformed the armies and conduct of war in Arabia. Just as Philip of Macedon transformed the armies of Greece so that his successor, Alexander, could employ them as instruments of conquest and empire, so Muhammad transformed the armies of Arabia so his successors could use them to defeat the armies of the Persian and Byzantine Empires and establish the core of the Empire of Islam. — location: 156 ^ref-60618

Modern insurgents like Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Jomo Kenyatta, Fidel Castro, and perhaps, George Washington would easily have recognized Muhammad’s strategy and methods in their own revolutionary struggles. — location: 181 ^ref-60914

Muhammad understood that the conflict was between the existing social order and its manifest injustices and his vision of the future, and he surpassed his adversaries in spreading his vision to win the struggle for the loyalty and support of the Arab population. — location: 274 ^ref-18951

Of great significance is that Muhammad was the inventor of the methodology of insurgency and that he was its first successful practitioner. — location: 366 ^ref-42570

There was no organized religious opposition from anywhere in Arabia to Muhammad’s new creed. — location: 587 ^ref-34130

One of Muhammad’s greatest legacies was a large, trained, and well-led military force motivated by religious zeal and ready to exploit the only source of pillage and loot available to Arabs whose new religion forbade attacks on one another. — location: 612 ^ref-23583

Muhammad preached the need for a new community, the ummah, at a time in Arabian history when the system of tribal obligations and protection was breaking down. — location: 648 ^ref-3189

The ultimate compliment to be paid to the successful revolutionary is that he was able to recognize the tide of history building to its crest and ride that wave until it carried him and his cause to victory. — location: 654 ^ref-15984

This code of military prowess in defense of a warrior’s honor was passed to the West during the Arab wars with the Franks and later became part of the chivalric code of the medieval knight. — location: 680 ^ref-44755

Muhammad’s objective was to destroy the old Arab social order based on clan and kin and replace it with a new type of society, the ummah, made up of a community of believers. — location: 738 ^ref-50301

Muhammad redefined moral killing as a life taken for political purposes. — location: 743 ^ref-21742

If he was to achieve his end of creating a new society governed by new ethical precepts, then a new military mechanism was required, one that served his strategic ends by expanding its repertoire of military capabilities. This required a complete change in the traditional values that had governed Arab warfare. — location: 764 ^ref-14568

It did not become a cavalry mount, however, until the Assyrians first used it in this manner in the seventh century B.C.E. — location: 962 ^ref-2135

It was culture, the association of the horse with military power and conquest over more than two thousand years, rather than the military capabilities of the animal itself that prompted armies to continue using the horse when their own experience with it should have prompted its replacement by the mule. — location: 986 ^ref-16066

Muhammad was the first commander of an Arab army to join successfully both combat arms into a national Arab army and to use them in concert in battle. — location: 1056 ^ref-61154

The change in the social composition of Arab armies under Muhammad was preceded by a change in the social composition of Arab society. — location: 1060 ^ref-36924

The fact that the old commanders could be replaced and the troops, tribes, and clans under them would obey Meccan commanders who, after all, had been their former enemies, is testimony to Muhammad’s success in establishing unity of command as a major institutional reform in Arab armies. — location: 1082 ^ref-22546

Under these arrangements Muhammad’s soldiers were actually paid better than Persian or Byzantine soldiers. — location: 1101 ^ref-9024

no army before Muhammad ever placed religion at the center of military motivation and defined the soldier primarily as an instrument of God’s will on earth. — location: 1105 ^ref-52129

the use of force was seen not as an end in itself but as a tactical means to the achievement of strategic objectives. — location: 1121 ^ref-20312

Muhammad always selected his military commanders on the basis of their proven experience and ability, and never for their asceticism or religious devotion. — location: 1139 ^ref-34123

as an organizer of large caravans he gained experience as both an administrator and logistician. — location: 1245 ^ref-54187

In only a few instances did the revelation come upon him when he was riding or at a public gathering. — location: 1278 ^ref-49563

The symptoms recorded as accompanying Muhammad’s revelations seem strongly similar to those associated with recurrent malaria, — location: 1279 ^ref-40756

Muhammad’s own descriptions of his revelations suggest they were accompanied by symptoms usually associated with malaria. — location: 1298 ^ref-19506

Over his feelings he had firm control. . . . His time was carefully apportioned according to the various demands on him. — location: 1377 ^ref-36005

dealings with people he was above all tactful. — location: 1378 ^ref-31479

he remained psychologically balanced. He always knew the difference between his own thoughts and those he had received from his revelations. — location: 1384 ^ref-32052

To attack an armed man who is openly your enemy with your bare hands requires a degree of fearlessness that most do not possess. But Muhammad was an Arab chief and courage was a required trait, especially in a warrior of God. — location: 1401 ^ref-25624

poets and singers who were the primary spreaders of political propaganda and unkind portrayals of the enemies of the people who had hired them. — location: 1407 ^ref-44343

When Muhammad was a young boy being tormented by other boys, he had taken shelter in the house of Abu Sufyan. — location: 3223 ^ref-45465

a crowd had gathered shouting that Abu Sufyan should be killed where he stood for his treachery. — location: 3253 ^ref-52320

To compensate his troops, especially the bedouins, Muhammad took out large loans from the Meccan bankers and paid his men in cash. — location: 3276 ^ref-12459

The executions were a combination of settling old scores, as in the case of a man who had insulted Muhammad during his early years in Mecca eight years before; political necessity, when he ordered the execution of Ikrimah, the son of Abu Jahl, who had followed in his father’s footsteps and led the opposition to Muhammad in Mecca; ideological fervor, as when two men who had renounced Islam were killed; and the purely personal, as when Muhammad ordered that two professional singing girls be killed because they had once composed songs unflattering to him and had sung them in public. — location: 3291 ^ref-24910

the question of why he chose to mount such an expedition at this time of year when it is clear that a campaign against the Byzantines made no military sense. — location: 3520 ^ref-25743

But now Islam forbade raiding the towns and flocks of other Muslims, greatly increasing the poverty of many bedouins. — location: 3587 ^ref-29365

Islamic laws against usury had dried up much of the commercial activity relative to the risks involved in undertaking caravans. — location: 3590 ^ref-29120

some Muslims had constructed a mosque that they said was for the sick and needy. Muhammad somehow knew that the mosque had become a center for the opposition and ordered it burned. — location: 3641 ^ref-55611

The whole episode, while vague as to details, rings suspiciously like the public show trials of later revolutionary regimes. — location: 3649 ^ref-28059

In the circumstances attending the later Arab conquests, conversion by the sword was forbidden. — location: 3697 ^ref-27844

tradition says that until he died Muhammad complained bitterly that many Muslims were less than observant and some even outright hypocrites. — location: 3718 ^ref-17204

was this legacy, his military legacy, that provided his successors with the means to conquer the rest of pagan Arabia and impose Islam on it, reform the Arab social order along the lines of Islamic morality and law, and embark on the great Arab conquests that destroyed the Persian and Byzantine Empires and replaced them with the Empire of Islam. — location: 3762 ^ref-21576

The crux of the problem was the zakat, the annual tax that Muhammad had imposed. The zakat had been announced at the Meccan pilgrimage, but Muhammad died before the tax could be collected from all but the tribes nearest Medina and Mecca. Some of the allied tribes sent delegations to Medina to negotiate new agreements with Abu Bakr, who had been elected to succeed Muhammad, promising to remain Muslim and say the daily prayer in exchange for repeal of the tax. Abu Bakr refused saying, “By Allah, if they withhold a rope of a camel they use to give its due zakat to Allah’s Messenger, I will fight them for it.” — location: 3772 ^ref-23127

Perhaps to forestall the influence of others claiming to be prophets who had already arisen in Arabia during Muhammad’s lifetime, Abu Bakr declared Muhammad to be the last prophet that God would send. — location: 3788 ^ref-26987

Although these tenets were originally devised and introduced as part of Abu Bakr’s political strategy to isolate and destroy the enemies of the insurgency, over time they became important religious tenets of Islam. — location: 3790 ^ref-12041

Abu Bakr, while remaining in Medina, was able to coordinate the eleven major campaigns and to shift forces as needed from one front to another. — location: 3848 ^ref-52482

Muslim field commanders were never selected on the grounds of piety, but always on the basis of demonstrated competence in war. — location: 3858 ^ref-64056

Arab society during Muhammad’s day and for more than a century afterward never really developed a stable political order worthy of being called a state. — location: 3877 ^ref-45832

This system of indirect rule plagued the Muslim Empire until its end. Power ebbed and flowed from the center of authority, but no caliph ever was able to retain control of the tribal and regional armies for very long. Revolts and insurrections rooted in jealousy, political interests, religious apostasy, and blood feuds went on for centuries. — location: 3884 ^ref-57171

Instead of conquering, settling, and then ruling the new lands, the Arab conquerors stayed together as soldiers living in garrison cities (amsar), military districts (ajnad), and even military monasteries (ribat) whose members remained celibate. — location: 3891 ^ref-61033

Arab conquerors remained apart from the societies they conquered and showed little interest in governing the new lands, leaving the old systems, leaders, kings, and governmental officials—now converted to Islam—in place to continue to administer the conquered lands. — location: 3893 ^ref-27172

introduction of the iron stirrup (over the objections of Arab scholars who claimed the device would make soldiers effete by hindering their ability to mount and dismount rapidly in battle). — location: 3951 ^ref-29041

By the middle of the ninth century the old Arab empire had ceased to exist, and with it the Arab “army of God” that had swept over the ancient Mediterranean world wielding the sword of Allah also disappeared. — location: 3976 ^ref-30200

most Muslim scholars subscribe to what is called the classic evolutionary theory of holy war: that what Muhammad meant by jihad depended on the historical circumstances and needs at different times during his prophetic mission. — location: 3993 ^ref-21059

It was the puritan caliph Umar who, fearing that the Arabs would loose their fighting spirit and fall into sin if they mixed with the infidels, decided to segregate the Arabs by establishing military cantonments for them to live in. Glubb, Short History, 55. — location: 4454 ^ref-32064