The True Jihad
Preface
~ 7 ~
treaty in which the Prophet accepted all the
conditions of the enemy. In the case of the conquest
of Makkah, he avoided a battle altogether by
making a rapid entry into the city with ten
thousand Muslims—a number large enough to awe
his enemies into submission.
In this way, on all occasions, the Prophet
endeavoured to achieve his objectives by peaceful
rather than by war-like means. It is, therefore,
unconscionable that in later biographical writing, all
the events of his life have been arranged under the
heading of ‘battles’ (
ghazawat
). How he managed to
avert the cataclysms of war has not been dealt with
in any of the works which purportedly depict his
life.
Ibn Khaldun, the celebrated 14th century historian,
was the first to lay down definite rules for the study
and writing of history and sociology. He followed
the revolutionary course of attempting to present
history as a chronicle of events centering on the
common man rather than on kings, their generals
and the battles they fought. But since war heroes
were already entrenched as the idols of society, the
