اَلْحَمْدُ ِللهِ رَبِّ الْعَالَمِينَ وَالصَّلاَةُ وَالسَّلاَمُ عَلَى رَسُولِناَ مُحَمَّدٍ وَعَلَى آلِهِ وَصَحْبِهِ أَجْمَعِينَ
Endless praises are due to Allah the Almighty for giving Islam to His servants, for disciplining and appointing Muhammad Mustafa as His Messenger.
Peace and blessings be upon Muhammad Mustafa the Messenger and beloved servant of Allah the Almighty, who taught us the distinguished religion of Islam.
The believers’ most important duty is to convey the message of Islam to the entire humanity; because the majority of people are in profound spiritual hunger and discontentment. And many others who could not find peace in any false religions and ideologies are either under the effects of negative indoctrination about Islam or totally unaware of its existence. If these people are not introduced to Islam, all believers who do not fulfill their task of conveying the message of Islam will be held responsible.
On the other hand it is not enough to take Islam to people and help them in their conversion. It is also very important to instruct the believers in the best way possible in order for our religion to give life to humanity. It is impossible to reach an advanced and prosperous society and to realize important achievements without a qualified education. In this context, Allah the Almighty presents our beloved Prophet (pbuh) to us as the excellent Exemplar –Uswatun Hasanah.
Early Muslim generations, which comprehended the true place of the Messenger of Allah in religion, tried to learn, copy, and live according to Prophet’s words and actions. They were so exacting in this regard that they even recorded such information about the Prophet (pbuh) that might be considered very personal, e.g. how he walked, ate, drank, sat, had relations with his family, etc. For instance when Umar (r.a.) heard the Prophet’s saying that “If anyone of you asks permission to enter thrice, and permission is not given, then he should return.” he stated his regret for not hearing it in person “I must have been so busy with trade that I was deprived of this saying.” (Bukhari, Buyu’, 9)
By this approach, some prophetic sayings, such as “even if it is a single verse from me convey it to the people” (Bukhari, Anbiya, 50) and “May Allah lighten the faces of those who hear something from us and transmit it to the people as it is” (Tirmidhi, Ilm, 7) played an encouraging role. Consequently, the sources about the life of the Prophet (pbuh) have been based upon safe and sound foundations since the earliest days of Islam.
It is of great joy for Muslims that every aspect of the Prophet’s life has been recorded, because the possibility to obtain detailed and reliable information about the rest of the prophets (peace and blessings be upon them) is very small, if at all.
On the other hand believers of all ages have written many books about the life of the Prophet (pbuh). All efforts have aimed to know and understand him and to introduce him to other people, since it would be impossible to take someone as an example, if nothing is known about him.
We, too, began this work with that aim in mind. We thought about how we could tell people our about Prophet and whether we could make a contribution in this regard. Last year we dealt with some aspects of the Prophet’s life under the title of “An Excellent Exemplar (In Servitude, In Morals, and In Manners)” and presented it to our readers through Altinoluk magazine. However conveying many more aspects of the Prophet’s life requires writing many more books. We wrote the present book with the intention of contributing to help fill this gap. In this book we will examine the Prophet’s way of conveying his message; his methods of teaching, training, and spiritually purification, his relations with others beginning with his family and his treatment of creation including other subjects which shall enlighten our way today.
We would like to thank everybody who supported and encouraged us in the writing of this book. We also would like to thank the executives of ILAM and academicians who helped to read and edit the present work.
We request from our Lord the Almighty to make this humble work benefitial for humanity and turn the efforts of those who have contributed in the preparation of this book into continuous charity (sadaqa jariyah).
Amin!
Wa min Allah i al-tawfiq
Prof. Ömer Çelik
Assist. Prof. Mustafa Öztürk
Dr. Murat Kaya