MOST INFLUENTIAL PERSON IN HISTORY

Michael H. Hart, The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential
Persons in History

My choice of Muhammad to lead the world's most influential persons
may surprise 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. . .

. . . it may initially seem strange that Muhammad has been ranked
higher than Jesus. There are two principal reasons for that
decision. First, Muhammad played a far more important role to the
development of Islam than Jesus did in the development of
Christianity. Although Jesus was responsible for the main ethical
and moral precepts of Christianity (insofar as these differed from
Judaism), St. Paul was the main developer of Christian theology,
its principal proselytizer, and the author of a large portion of
the New Testament.

Muhammad, however, was responsible for both the theology of Islam
and its main ethical and moral principles. In addition he played a
key role in proselytizing the new faith, and in establishing the
religious practices of Islam. Moreover, he is the author of the
Moslem holy scriptures, the Koran. . .

Furthermore, Muhammad (unlike Jesus) was a secular leader as well
as a religious leader. In fact as the driving force behind the
Arab conquests, he may well rank as the most influential political
leader of all time. . . [When Muhammad died in 632, he was the
effective leader of all of southern Arabia. By 711, Arab armies
had swept completely across North Africa to the Atlantic Ocean. In
a scant century of fighting, the Bedouin tribesmen, inspired by
the word of the Prophet, had carved out an empire stretching from
the borders of India to the Atlantic Ocean -- the largest empire
that the world had yet seen.]

. . the Arab conquests of the seventh century have continued to
play an important role in human history, down to the present day.
It is this unparalleled combination of secular and religious
influence which I feel entitles Muhammad to be considered the most
influential single figure in human history.

Alphonse de Lamartine, Histoire de la Turquie

Never has a man set for himself, voluntarily or involuntarily, a
more sublime aim, since this aim was superhuman: to subvert
superstitions which had been interposed between man and his
creator, to render God unto man and man unto God; to restore the
rational and sacred idea of divinity amidst the chaos of the
material and disfigured gods of idolatry, then existing. Never has
a man undertaken a work so far beyond human power with so feeble
means, for he (Muhammad) had in the conception as well as in the
execution of such a great design no other instrument than himself,
and no other aid, except a handful of men living in a corner of
the desert. Finally, never has a man accomplished such a huge and
lasting revolution in the world, because in less than two
centuries after its appearance, Islam, in faith and in arms,
reigned over the whole of Arabia, and conquered, in God's name,
Persia, Khorasan, Transoxania, Western India, Syria, Egypt,
Abyssinia, all the known continent of Northern Africa, numerous
islands of the Mediterranean, Spain, and a part of Gaul.

If greatness of purpose, smallness of means, and astounding
results are the true criteria of human genius, who could dare to
compare any great man in modern history with Muhammad? 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,
legislations, empires, peoples and dynasties, but millions of men
in one-third of the inhabited world; and more than that, he moved
the altars, the gods, the religions, the ideas, the beliefs and
the souls.

On the basis of a Book, every letter of which has become law, he
created a spiritual nationality which blended together peoples of
every tongue and of every race. He has left us as the indelible
characteristic of this Muslim nationality the hatred of false gods
and the passion for the One and Immaterial God. This avenging
patriotism against the profanation of Heaven formed the virtue of
the followers of Muhammad; the conquest of one-third of the earth
to his dogma was his miracle; or rather it was not the miracle of
a man but that of reason.

The idea of the Unity of God, proclaimed amidst the exhaustion of
fabulous theogonies, was in itself such a miracle that upon its
utterance from his lips it destroyed all the ancient temples of
idols and set on fire one-third of the world. His life, his
meditations, his heroic revilings against the superstitions of his
country, and his boldness in defying the furies of idolatry, his
firmness in enduring them for fifteen years at Mecca, his
acceptance of the role of public scorn and almost of being a
victim of his fellow countrymen: all these and, finally, his
flight, his incessant preaching, his wars against odds, his faith
in his success and his superhuman security in misfortune, 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
affirm conviction which gave him the power to restore a dogma.
This dogma was twofold, the unity of God and the immateriality of
God: the former telling what God is, the latter telling what God
is not; the one overthrowing false gods with the sword, the other
starting an idea with the words.

Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of
ideas, restorer of rational dogmas, 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? -- Paris 1854, Vol. II, pp. 276- 277