In the Muslim imaginary, both in the popular version and the learned genre, the Prophet Muhammad is remembered as the paragon of virtue. Panegyrics and praise poetry, theological treatises, and cosmological theories assign to him the eternal status of prophethood. As a famous prophetic report (hadith) puts it: ‘I was already a prophet when Adam was between water and clay.’ In other words, for Muslims, the Prophet Muhammad had a cosmic existence that preceded Adam’s actuality in the world.
Yet, few can dispute that Muḥammad, the son of ʿAbdullāh, the messenger of God whose hands shaped a world-making people among the Arabs in the seventh century, led by example and character. Only a person of character whose determination was steeled by a divinely inspired proclamation could manage to successfully will the transformation of his society from polytheism to monotheism, from injustice to justice, and from an inward-looking people to an umma who set their eyes on the world beyond their region. Only a leader who could inspire people by example could initiate an impulse, followed by continuous momentum whose effects were felt far beyond its rugged borders. Within a century the Umayyad dynasty vied with pre-existing civilisations and empires for worldly pre-eminence as well as salvation in the hereafter. The Prophet Muhammad’s transformative impulse was at the time felt in cultures near and far, and with the passing of fourteen centuries, no continent is left untouched by the presence of Islam. The Prophet Muhammad’s open secret was his embodiment of virtue. In the words of the Qur’an the Prophet Muhammad is a moral archetype, ‘an excellent exemplar’ (uswa ḥasana) (33:21) and the bearer of a ‘a strong character’ (khuluq ʿaẓīm) (91:4). Āʿisha, his wife, when asked about his character, famously and promptly said, ‘his character was the embodiment of the Qur’an.’
Specialised writings on the Prophet’s virtues constitute a genre of literature that is hard to summarise and difficult to quantify. But they amount in the tens of thousands and in every conceivable language Muslims use.
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