4TH CHAPTER OF

ANNEMARIE SCHIMMEL’S
AND MUHAMMAD IS HIS MESSENGER

LEGENDS &MIRACLES

PRESENTED BY: SABITH P.K

According to tradition
the Prophet himself
refused the claim that he
had produced
or would produce any
miracle to attest the truth
of his message, with the one
exception of the Koran,
which was given to him
by his Lord.
Even so, the Holy Book
itself contains allusions
not only to Muhammad’s
noble qualities and
actions but also to
some mysterious events
in his life that
point to his special
status among men.
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 Najmuddin Daya Razi
therefore states rightly that:

“The miracle of each prophet is confined to his own age; but

the special property of the religion of Muhammad is that one
of his miracles, namely the Koran, has survived him and will
remain until the end of the world.”

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Prophetic miracles are called
mu jizāt, “deeds that render
others unable to match them.”
They are different from the
miracles performed by saints,
which are termed karāmāt,
“charismata.”
In later times, especially in non
Arab environments, miraculous
actions performed by the Prophet,
his Companions, family members,
and great saints also came to be
known by the general term
manāqib, “heroic deeds.”
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1.
Opening of the Breast
a central feature of all biographies on Prophet…

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◈ Among the legends connected with Muhammad’s career
the Opening of the Breast became a central feature of all
biographies. Sura 94 begins with the Divine address to
the Prophet: “Did We not open [or, expand] your
breast?” This was interpreted to mean God’s special
cleansing of Muhammad’s breast endowed the Prophet
with a unique degree of purity, so that he could convey
the divine message without defect.

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 The story presents a typical initiation rite in which the
young boy is being prepared to receive divine revelation.
For this reason the biographers sometimes place the event
not in Muhammad’s childhood but rather before his
heavenly journey.

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2.
The Splitting of the Moon

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 Another favorite miracle of later generations is
seen as proof of his truthfulness, This is the
Splitting of the Moon, shaqq al-qamar, which
is derived from the beginning of Sura 54: “The
hour approached, and the moon was split’’.
 This sentence is explained not as an
eschatological sign but rather as pertaining to a
miracle performed by the Prophet in order to
convince the doubting Quraish of the truth of his
message: he split the moon into two halves,
between which Mount Hira could be seen.

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Qadi lyad argues that: It has not been said of
any people on earth that the moon was
observed that night such that it could be
stated that it was not split.

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Living in Ceuta, Qadi lyad of course did not know the
Indian tradition. He would have been delighted to
learn that it is told in that part of the world that one
King Chakrawati Farmas in southern India had
indeed watched the Splitting of the Moon, and when
he learned from reliable witnesses what had happened
in Mecca on that very night, he embraced Islam.
This story must have been rather well known
in southern India. It is interesting to note that
even as late as the mid-nineteenth century a
miniature painted at the Rajput (Hindu) court
of Kotah shows the Splitting of the Moon
with all its details.

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Muhammad is equated in poetical language
with the sun or the morning light,
“the sun should split the moon in two,”
as Sana’i expressed it in the early twelfth
century.

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 More rationalistic thinkers had,
understandably, some difficulties when it
came to explaining the Splitting of the Moon,
and they sometimes tried to de-mythologize
that event and other preternatural
phenomena.

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 Shah Waliullah of Delhi wrote in the mid-
eighteenth century that the Splitting of the Moon
may have been a kind of hallucination, or was
perhaps caused “by a smoke, by the swooping
down of a star, a cloud, or an eclipse of the sun or
the moon which might have given the impression
that the moon was actually split in two.
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To be split by the Prophet’s finger
is indeed the greatest bliss the
lowly moon can hope for.

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 Jami, who plays with the shapes and
numerical values of the Arabic letters, The
full moon, resembling a circular m( ‫ )م‬with
the numerical value 40, was split by the
Prophet so that it became like two crescent
shaped ( ‫)ن ن‬, whose numerical value is 50
each.
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 The astronomer who believes in this miracle
should laugh at his own profession as well as at sun and moon,
As everyone who has attended the school of Ahmad the ummī
may ridicule knowledge and art.

In this verse, Maulana Rumi combines two miraculous

aspects of the Prophet: the Splitting of the Moon, which
shows the futility of man’s scientific approach to nature,
and the fact that the Prophet was ummī, “illiterate.”

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3.
The concept of ummī “illiterate”

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As in Christian dogmatic Mary must be a virgin so
that she can immaculately bear the Divine Word to
its incarnation, thus Muhammad must be umml so
that the “inlibration,” the revelation of the Divine
Word in the Book, can happen without his own
intellectual activity, as an act of pure grace.

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Nizami poetically interpreted the term umml as
consisting of the a of Adam and the m of
masīḥ, “messiah,” and thus comprising all
previous prophets.

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 Jami: the Prophet was nourished by the grace
of the Umm al-kitāb, the Mother of the Book,
the primordial prototype of the Koran; hence he
was truly an ummī,
“belonging to the mother, umm.”

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 Rumi, who sings in his Mathnawī that:

A hundred thousand books full of poetry

Became ashamed before the ummī’s word

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 Fīhi māfīhi: Muhammad … is called
“unlettered” not because he was incapable of
writing and learning; he is called “unlettered”
because with him writing and learning and
wisdom were innate, not acquired.

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Says the Persian poet Sa di in the thirteenth century:

An orphan who never learned to read

Washed off [the texts in all] the libraries of many
lands

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 350 years later, Faizi writes in Moghul India:

With sharī a and Divine Book, a splendid light;

With sword and with tongue, a cutting proof;
From dust, and yet descending on the apex of the Throne,
Illiterate, but a library in his heart

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 around 1600, Naziri goes even farther:

In the library of mystery he knew by heart the Koran

on the day When the Universal Intellect could not yet
discern a and b in the alphabet

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 Indo-Persian poets play with the
terminology of Islamic calligraphy:

Without knowing [the calligraphic styles of]

naskh and ta’liq,
He drew the line of abrogation (khaṭṭ-i naskh) over
everything before him

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 Jami asks:

If perfection were in reading or writing,

Why then was the qibla of the universe
illiterate?

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Muhammad the umml
became the exemplar
of all those who, without
bookish learnedness,
have been inspired
solely by Divine grace,
For this reason many Sufis
have claimed to be
illiterate like the Prophet.
Umml has therefore been
used, among other things,
as a surname by a whole
group of
Turkish mystical folk poets
(Ümmi Kemal and Ummi
Sinan).
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This immediate knowledge of God, called
in the Koran ilm ladunī, “a knowledge
from Me” (Sura 18:65) enabled the
Prophet to know everything in the world,
even the future.

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 Qadi Iyad relates, on the authority of the Prophet’s companion
Hudhaifa, that:
“once the Prophet rose and talked, and on this occasion he did not
leave anything unmentioned that would happen to the Day of
Judgment. Those who kept it in their memory remember it; those
who forgot it, forgot it. My companions have known it. When
something happens [that he mentioned] I remember it as one
remembers the face of a person when he is absent so that one
recognizes him when one sees him again.”

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4.
Infuse life into dead matter
as Jesus did…

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 It is told in a popular Pashto ballad that when
the Prophet was asked to produce a bird from a
stone, indeed a bird with feet of agate, eyes of
lapis lazuli, a neck of crystal, and a golden beak
appeared to attest Muhammad’s veracity.

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Production of rain

Gush forth from between his fingers

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5.
Miracles connected with food

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The story of Umm Ma bad

This legend also seems to form the basis for

the descriptions of the Prophet’s looks, such
as one finds in the poetry of Hassan ibn
Thabit.

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A single sheep sufficed to feed a thousand
people, or small quantities of food proved
sufficient for a large crowd of unexpected
guests.

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 The story of the roast lamb that a Jewish
woman in Khaibar offered to the Prophet
really got up on its four legs and addressed
itself to the Prophet to warn him of the
danger.

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Animals often appear to attest the sincerity of
the Prophet.

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 Abu Nuaim and Baihaqi, for instance,
mention in their respective
Dalā’il annubuwwa how camels and wild
beasts prostrated themselves before him and
how the gazelle, the wolf, and the lizard
proclaimed that he was indeed the messenger
sent by God.
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Trees and stones also bear witness that
Muhammad is the Messenger of God, and
thus contribute to the conversion of infidels.

Pebbles that he held in his hand praised him

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 Jami many centuries later sings:

A little stone, smaller than a rosary’s bead

Recited in his hand with eloquent words the praise of God,
And those eloquent ones whose hearts were black as stone,
Were unison in silence.

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 Even the doors and walls of a house are said to
have given the “Amen” to his prayer, and when he
went out in scorching heat a cloud wandered with
him to protect him from the sun.

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6.
The application of his saliva

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 It is natural that Muhammad’s companions
should have used his washing water as
medicine, as is common in the veneration of a
powerful leader, for everything that touches
his body participates in his baraka.

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In later days, Abdul Qadir Gilani was
blessed by a vision of the Prophet’s putting
some of his saliva onto his tongue to enable
him to preach successfully.

Not only human beings but also animals—for

instance, a weak camel—were cured by the
Prophet’s hand.
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Venerations of Poets in Prophet’s Miracles

◈ Not all miracles enumerated in Abu

Nuaim’s and Baihaqi’s works are equally
popular, and other legends not found in their
lists have quite often incited the imagination
of theologians and, even more, of poets.

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◈ American-educated Muslim editor of the Sindhi Folklore
Series, Dr. N. A. Baloch, rightly reminds modernists who
regard such miraculous stories as outdated leftovers from
primitive societies that:
“it is a psychological truth that it is natural to exaggerate
in the description of the beloved because [such an
exaggeration] comes from the heart’’.

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 Ahmad al-Arusi, a Spanish-Arabic poet of the late
Middle Ages:

Is it not you who has been sent as mercy to mankind?

Is it not you whom the pebbles praised
And whom the lizard in the desert addressed, and the wolf too?
Is it not you for whom the full moon in the sky was split?
The tale of the hannāna, the sighing palm trunk

Rumi asks:

Should we then be lower than the sighing palm trunk?”

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The story of a gazelle that had been caught by
a cruel huntsman thus one of the thirteen
Sindhi poets who have elaborated this story
tells in simple rhymes:

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Her call was heard by the And the gazelle ran swiftly Either you’ll produce the
Prince— away gazelle,
Ahmad came close to her. to where her kids were or give an answer to me!”
He said: “Why do you call for waiting. The Messenger rose before
help— Then came the stupid hunter the man,
What happened to you, O back the lord of patience full:
gazelle?” and asked the Messenger: “Muhammad Amin, the
She said: “Lord, I have left “Look, I have done this faithful, I’m called—
hungry cruelty That is my proper name.
my two kids in the desert. because I’ve fun in hunting— The gazelle promised me to
Help me, poor me, please, Why did you tear apart the return
be my bailsman, O Ahmad! snare? and to offer herself to you,
I’ll go, I’ll come back very Why did you send off the But I am in any case for you
soon, gazelle? her bailsman here in her
Just give them a little milk!” Who are you, where do you place,
The excellent lord, with his come from, And when the gazelle does
noble hands and what is your name? Tell not return
opened quickly the snare, me that! I shall be her substitute …” 54
Eagle that snatches the Prophet’s slipper

Abu Huraira’s cat saves the Prophet from a snake

The kerchief with which Muhammad has wiped his

face does not get burnt when it is cast in the fire.

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The Benefits of Reciting These Miracles

◈ Even the greatest classical poets in the Arabic and Persianate

tradition, like Busiri in his Hamziyya and Jami in his lyrical
and his epic verse, describe in lively words all the miracles
of the Prophet, because of the firm popular conviction that
these stories carry in themselves a baraka, a blessing power,
that extends to both the teller and the listener.

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◈ Thus a Sindhi poet promises endless
recompense on the Day of Resurrection to
everyone who recites his poem about the
Miracle with the Snake in the night before a
Friday.
◈ South Indian poets have made similar promises
when reciting poetical legends or encomia.
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◈ The faithful believe that by composing or
listening to such traditional legends one is able
to establish a very personal relationship with the
Prophet.
◈ The Tijaniyya order has made this almost part
of their fundamental belief.
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 Blessings for the Prophet and the loving
repetition of legends connected with him
may also grant the faithful Muslim the
greatest boon one can hope for in this life,
the vision of the Prophet in a dream.
 al-Suyuti:
One night I fulfilled the number of blessings of the Prophet and I fell
asleep. I was dwelling in a room and, lo, the Prophet had come to me in
through the door, and the whole room was lighted up by him. Then he
moved towards me and said: “Give me the mouth that has blessed me so
often that I may kiss it.” And my modesty would not let him kiss my
mouth; so I turned away my face, and he kissed my cheek. Then I woke
trembling from my sleep and my wife who was by my side awoke, and lo,
the house was odorous of musk from the scent of him, and the scent of
musk from his kiss remained on my cheek about eight days. My wife
noticed the scent every day.
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A Turkish calligrapher was told in a dream
by the Prophet to spend the rest of his life in
writing the Dalā’il al-Khairāt.

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