ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Principles of the Shi’ite Creed Lesson 16: The First Infallible Figure, The Great was born on Rabi’al-Awwal 17, in the year when the story of the elephants and the destruction of the army of Abrahih[^1] took place. His father passed away prior to his birth and his grandfather ‘Abd al-Muttallib adopted him. At the age of six, his mother Aminah died and two years later, he lost his grandfather, ‘Abd al-Muttallib*,* and then his uncle Abutalib adopted him.

He married Khadijah when he was twenty five years old. He lived among people with so much honesty, trustworthiness, and magnanimity that everyone called him the trustworthy Muhammad and they had so much confidence in him that on great social occasions and whenever a dispute took place, they sought his judgment, during these forty years (prior to his appointment), he had no preoccupation except worshiping God and serving people.

Every year, he spent some time in a cave called Hira’ and there he worshipped God with reflection upon His signs. The Commander of the Faithful in his book Nahj al-Balaghah observes, “God had commanded one of His greatest angels to wait on the great Prophet who kept him company day and night and guided him in the virtues and good deeds.” At the age of forty, he was appointed to the prophetic mission.

The first man to accept his invitation was ‘Ali and the first woman to do so was his wife Khadijah and for a long time only these two individuals said prayers along with the Prophet. Saudi Arabia, at that time, was bereft of science, culture, and civilization and bloodshed, indecency, atrocity, and pillage were ubiquitous. The great Prophet set out to guide and lead people toward God in such a bleak environment and suffered so much in this cause that we could never imagine.

For example, we read in history that following the demise of the revered Abutalib, the great Prophet set out on a journey to Ta’if to guide the dwellers of that city. There, the respected citizens did not accept his invitation and besides that, they abused him and the thugs of the city, having realized that he was not respected by the senior members of the city, lined up on both sides of his path and pelted so many stones at his legs that they were covered with blood and were severely injured.