God Arises
Affirmation of Prophethood
~ 276 ~
In Madinah, the Prophet was the ruler of a state and
had such a faithful band of followers as would be
hard to find again in the whole history of mankind.
But events show that right to the very last moments
of his life, his daily existence was humble in the
extreme.
Umar, one of his close companions, narrates how
one day he went to see the Prophet at his home.
“When I entered his room, I saw that he was resting
on a mat of date palms and had no shirt on. The
marks of the mat were visible on his back. Besides
the mat, his only possessions were three skins, some
bark placed in a corner and small quantity of barley.
On seeing this, I could not help but weep. ‘What
makes you weep? the Prophet asked. “The Roman
and Persian emperors enjoy all worldly comforts,
yet you—the messenger of God—are suffering so
much’, I replied. On hearing these words, the
Prophet sat up and said, ‘Umar, what on earth do
you mean? Don’t you want those people to have the
world and we to have the Hereafter?”
Often, month after month would pass without a fire
being lit in the Prophet’s kitchen. When Urwah, one
