Coordinates	6°05′0″N116°12′0″N
Name	Nur Muhammad Tarakiنور محمد ترکۍ
Order	Chairman of the Revolutionary Council
Primeminister	Hafizullah Amin
Term start	30 April 1978
Term end	14 September 1979
Predecessor	Abdul Qadir Dagarwal
Successor	Hafizullah Amin
Order2	Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan
Term start2	1 May 1978
Term end2	27 March 1979
Predecessor2	Mohammad Musa Shafiq
Successor2	Hafizullah Amin
Order3	General Secretary of the Central Committee of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
Term start3	1 January 1965
Term end3	14 September 1979
Predecessor3	Post established
Successor3	Hafizullah Amin
Birth date	July 15, 1917
Birth place	Ghazni, Afghanistan
Death date	September 14, 1979
Death place	Kabul, Afghanistan
Party	People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
Religion	''None'' (Atheist) }}

Nur Muhammad Taraki (15 July 1917, or 1913 – 14 September 1979) was an Afghan politician and statesman during the Cold War. Taraki was born near Kabul and educated at Kabul University, after which he started his political career as a journalist. He later became one of the founding members of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) and was elected as the party's General Secretary at its first congress. He ran as a candidate in the 1965 Afghan parliamentary election but failed to secure himself a seat. In 1966 he published the first issue of ''Khalq'', a party newspaper, but it was closed down shortly afterwards by the Afghan Government. The assassination of Mir Akbar Khyber led Taraki, along with Hafizullah Amin and Babrak Karmal, to initiate the Saur Revolution and establish the communist Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

The presidency of Taraki, albeit short-lived, was marked by controversies from beginning to end. Taraki launched a land reform on 1 January 1978 which proved to be highly unpopular and, along with his government's other reforms, led to a popular backlash which initiated the Afghan civil war. Despite repeated attempts throughout his reign, Taraki proved unable to persuade the Soviet Union to intervene in support of the restoration of civil order.

At the beginning of his rule, the Government was divided between two PDPA factions: Khalqs (which Taraki was the leader of), the majority, and the Parchams, the minority. In 1978, shortly after his rule began, Taraki started a purge of the government and party which led to several high-ranking Parcham members being sent into de-facto exile by being assigned to serve overseas as ambassadors. His reign was marked by a cult of personality centered around himself that had been cultivated by Amin. His relationship with Amin turned sour during his rule, ultimately resulting in Taraki's murder on 14 September 1979, upon Amin's orders.

Early life and career

Taraki was born to a rural Ghilzai Pashtun peasant family in Naawa district, Ghazni Provence on 15 July 1917 or 1913. He was the oldest of three children and attended a village school in Nawa before leaving in 1932, at the age of 15, to work in the port city of Bombay, India. There he met a Kandahari merchant family who employed him as a clerk for the Pashtun Trading Company. Taraki's first encounter with communism was during his night courses, were he met several Communist Party of India members who impressed him with their discussions on social justice and communist values. Another important event was his encounter with Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, a Pashtun nationalist and leader of the Red Shirt Movement in neighboring India, who was an admirer of the works of Vladimir Lenin.

In 1937 he started working for Abdul Majid Zabuli, the Minister of Economics, who introduced Taraki to several Russians. Later Taraki became Deputy Head of the Bakhtrar News Agency and became known throughout the country as an author and poet. His best known book, the ''De Bang Mosaferi'', highlights the socio-economic difficulties facing Afghan workers and peasants. His works were translated into Russian; in the Soviet Union, where his work was viewed as embodying scientific socialist themes, Taraki was hailed by the government as "Afghanistan's Maxim Gorky". During a visit to the Soviet Union Taraki was greeted by Boris Ponomarev, the Head of the International Department of the Central Committee, and other Communist Party of the Soviet Union members. Under Mohammad Daoud Khan's prime ministership, suppression of radicals was common. However, because of his language skills, Taraki was sent to the Afghan embassy in the United States in 1952. Within several months Taraki began denouncing the Afghan regime and accused it of being autocratic and dictatorial. His denunciation of the Afghan Government earned him much publicity in the United States. It also attracted unfavorable attention from authorities back home, who relieved him of his post and ordered him repatriated but stopped short of placing him under arrest. After a short period of unemployment Taraki started working for the United States Overseas Mission in Kabul as a translator. He quit his job in 1958 and established his own translation company, the Noor Translation Bureau. Four years later. Taraki started working for the American Embassy in Kabul, but quit in 1963 to focus on the establishment of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), a communist political party.

At the founding congress of the PDPA, held in Taraki's own home, Taraki won a competitive election against Babrak Karmal to the post of general secretary on 1 January 1965. Karmal became second secretary. Taraki ran as a candidate for the PDPA during the September 1965 parliamentary election but did not win a seat. Shortly after the election, Taraki launched ''Khalq'', the first major left-wing newspaper in Afghanistan. The paper was banned within one month of its first printing. In 1967, less than two years after its founding, the PDPA split into several factions. The largest of these included Khalq () led by Taraki, and Parcham () led by Karmal. The main differences between the factions were ideological, with Taraki supporting the creation of a Leninist-like state, while Karmal wanted to establish a "broad democratic front".

On 19 April 1978 a prominent leftist named Mir Akbar Khyber was assassinated and the murder was blamed on Mohammed Daoud Khan's Government. His death served as a rallying point for the Afghan communists. Fearing a communist coup d'etat, Daoud ordered the arrest of certain PDPA leaders, including Taraki and Karmal, while placing others such as Hafizullah Amin under house arrest. On 27 April 1978 the Saur Revolution was initiated, reportedly by Amin while still under house arrest. Khan was killed the next day along with most of his family. The PDPA rapidly gained control and on 1 May Taraki became Chairman of the Revolutionary Council, a role which subsumed the responsibilities of both president and prime minister. The country was then renamed the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), installing a regime that would last until April 1992.

Presidency

Establishment and purge

Taraki was appointed Revolutionary Council chairman and prime minister of Afghanistan, while he retained his post as general secretary of the PDPA. Taraki initially formed a government which consisted of both Khalqists and Parchamists; Karmal became deputy prime minister of Afghanistan while Amin became both deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs. Internal problems soon arose and several prominent Khalqists accused the Parcham faction of conspiring against the Taraki government. A Khalqi purge of the Parcham then began with the faction's most prominent members being sent out of the country: Karmal became the Afghan ambassador to Czechoslovakia and Mohammad Najibullah became the Afghan ambassador to Iran. Internal struggle was not only to be found between the Khalqist and Parchamists; tense rivalry between Taraki and Amin had begun in the Khalq faction with both vying for control.

Karmal was recalled from Czechoslovakia but rather than return to Afghanistan he went into hiding with Anahita Ratebzad, his friend and former Afghan ambassador to Yugoslavia, as he feared execution if he returned. Muhammad Najibullah followed them. Taraki consequently stripped them of all official titles and political authority.

Socio-economic changes

Land reform

Taraki's Government initiated a land reform on 1 January 1979 which attempted to limit the amount of land a family could own. Those whose landholdings exceeded the limit saw their property requisitioned by the government without compensation. The Afghan leadership believed the reform would meet with popular approval among the rural population while weakening the power of the bourgeoisie. The reform was declared complete in mid-1979 and the government proclaimed that 665,000 hectares (approximately 1,632,500 acres) had been redistributed. The government also declared that only 40,000 families, or 4 percent of the population, had been negatively affected by the land reform.

Contrary to government expectations the reform was neither popular nor productive. Agricultural harvests plummeted and the reform itself led to rising discontent amongst Afghans. When Taraki realized the degree of popular dissatisfaction with the reform he quickly abandoned the policy. However, the land reform was gradually implemented under the later Karmal administration, although the proportion of land area impacted by the reform is unclear.

Other reforms

In the months following the coup, Taraki and other party leaders initiated other radical Marxist policies that challenged both traditional Afghan values and well-established traditional power structures in rural areas. Taraki introduced women to political life and legislated an end to forced marriage. However, Taraki ruled over a nation with a deep Islamic religious culture and a long history of resistance to any type of strong centralized governmental control, and consequently many of these reforms were not actually implemented nationwide. Popular resentment of Taraki's drastic policy changes triggered surging unrest throughout the country, reducing government control to only a limited area. The strength of this anti-reform backlash would ultimately lead to the Afghan civil war.

Under the previous administration of Mohammad Daoud Khan, a literacy program created by UNESCO had been launched with the objective of eliminating illiteracy within 20 years. The government of Taraki attempted to reduce this time frame from 20 to four years, an unrealistic goal in light of the shortage of teachers and limited government capacity to oversee such an initiative. The duration of the project was later lengthened to seven years by the Soviets in the aftermath of the Soviet intervention. The cultural focus of the UNESCO programme was declared "rubbish" by Taraki, who instead chose to introduce a political orientation by utilizing PDPA leaflets and left-wing pamphlets as basic reading material.

Soviet–Afghan relations

|}} Taraki signed a Twenty-Year Treaty of Friendship with the Soviet Union on 5 December 1978 which greatly expanded Soviet aid to his regime. Following the Herat uprising, Taraki contacted Alexei Kosygin, chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, and asked for "practical and technical assistance with men and armament". Kosygin was unfavorable to the proposal on the basis of the negative political repercussions such an action would have for his country, and he rejected all further attempts by Taraki to solicit Soviet military aid in Afghanistan. Following Kosygin's rejection Taraki requested aid from Leonid Brezhnev, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Soviet head of state, who warned Taraki that full Soviet intervention "would only play into the hands of our enemies – both yours and ours". Brezhnev also advised Taraki to ease up on the drastic social reforms and to seek broader support for his regime.

In 1979, Taraki attended a conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, Cuba. On his way back he stopped in Moscow on 20 March and met with Brezhnev, foreign minister Andrei Gromyko and other Soviet officials. It was rumoured that Karmal was present at the meeting in an attempt to reconcile Taraki's Khalq faction and the Parcham against Amin and his followers. At the meeting, Taraki was successful in negotiating some Soviet support, including the redeployment of two Soviet armed divisions at the Soviet-Afghan border, the sending of 500 military and civilian advisers and specialists and the immediate delivery of Soviet armed equipment sold at 25 percent below the original price. However the Soviets were not pleased about the developments in Afghanistan and Brezhnev impressed upon Taraki the need for party unity. Despite reaching this agreement with Taraki, the Soviets continued to be reluctant to intervene further in Afghanistan and repeatedly refused Soviet military intervention within Afghan borders during Taraki's rule as well as later during Amin's short rule.

Taraki–Amin break

In the first months after the revolution, Hafizullah Amin and Nur Muhammad Taraki had a very close relationship. Taraki reportedly remarked, "Amin and I are like nail and flesh, not separable". Amin set about constructing a personality cult centered on Taraki. In party and government meetings Amin always referred to Taraki as "The Great Leader", "The Star of the East" or "The Great Thinker" among other titles, while Amin was given such titles as "The True Disciple and Student". Amin would later come to realize he had created a monster when the Kim Il Sung-like personality cult he had created inspired Taraki to become overly confident in his own brilliance. Taraki began discounting Amin's suggestions, fostering in Amin a deep sense of resentment. As their relationship turned increasingly sour, a power struggle developed between them for control over the Afghan Army. Their relations came to a head later that year when Taraki accused Amin of nepotism after Amin had appointed several family members to high-ranking positions.

Taraki could count on the support of four prominent army officers in his struggle against Amin: Aslam Watanjar, Sayed Muhammad Gulabzoy, Sherjan Mazdoryar and Assadullah Sarwari. These men had joined the PDPA not because of ideological reasons, but instead due to their lofty political ambitions. They also had developed a close relationship with Alexander Puzanov, the Soviet ambassador in Afghanistan, who was eager to use them against Amin. After the Herat city uprising on 17 March 1979, the PDPA Politburo and the Revolutionary Council established the Homeland Higher Defence Council, to which Taraki was elected its chairman while Amin became its deputy. At around the same time, Taraki left his post as prime minister and Amin was elected his successor. Amin's new position offered him little real influence, however; as prime minister, Amin had the power to elect every member of the cabinet, but all of them had to be approved by the head of state, Taraki. In reality, through this maneuver Taraki had effectively reduced Amin's power base by forcing him to relinquish his hold on the Afghan army in order to take on the supposedly heavy responsibilities of his new but ultimately powerless post.

During Taraki's foreign visit to the non-aligned conference in Havana, his Gang of Four had received an intelligence report that Amin was planning to arrest or kill them. This report, it turned out, was incorrect. Nonetheless, the Gang of Four were ordered to assassinate Amin, its leader Sarwari selecting his nephew Aziz Akbari to conduct the assassination. However, Akbari was not informed that he was the chosen assassin or that it was a secret mission, and he confided the information to contacts in the Soviet embassy. The Soviet embassy responded by warning Amin of the assassination attempt, thereby saving him from certain death.

Fall from power

Taraki was greeted by Amin at the airport on his return to Kabul. The flight was scheduled to land at 2:30 but Amin forced the delay of the landing by an hour as a demonstration to Taraki of his control over the government. Shortly afterward, Taraki sought to neutralize Amin's power and influence by requesting that he serve overseas as an ambassador. Amin turned down the proposal, shouting "You are the one who should quit! Because of drink and old age you have taken leave of your senses." The following day Taraki invited Amin to the presidential palace for lunch with him and the Gang of Four. Amin turned down the offer, stating he would rather prefer their resignation than lunching with them. Soviet ambassador Puzanov managed to persuade Amin to make the visit to the Presidential Palace along with Sayed Daoud Tarun, the Chief of Police and Nawab Ali (an intelligence officer). Upon arriving at the palace, unknown individuals within the building opened fire on the visitors. Tarun was killed, while Ali sustained an injury and escaped with an unharmed Amin. Shortly afterward, Amin returned to the palace with a contigent of Army officers and placed Taraki under arrest. The Gang of Four, however, had "disappeared" and their whereabouts would remain unknown for the duration of Amin's 104-day rule.

After Taraki's arrest, Amin reportedly discussed the incident with Leonid Brezhnev in which he said, "Taraki is still around. What should I do with him?" Brezhnev replied that it was his choice. Amin, who now believed he had the full support of the Soviets, ordered the death of Taraki. Taraki was subsequently suffocated with pillows. The Afghan media would report that the ailing Taraki had died, omitting any mention of his murder.

References

External links

History of the brief period of Communist-controlled Government in Afghanistan

Biography of President Taraki at Afghanland.com

Telephone Conversation Between Kosygin and Taraki

Category:1917 births Category:1979 deaths Category:People from Kabul Province Category:Afghan communists Category:Pashtun people Category:Heads of state of Afghanistan Category:Leaders who took power by coup Category:People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan politicians Category:Prime Ministers of Afghanistan

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Coordinates	6°05′0″N116°12′0″N
honorific prefix	Prophet
name	Muhammad
honorific suffix	Prophet, Messenger, Apostle, Witness, Bearer of Good Tidings, Warner, Reminder, Caller, Announcer
birth name	Muḥammad ibn `Abd Allāh
birth date	c. April 26, 570
birth place	Makkah, Arabia (present day Mecca, Makkah Province, Saudi Arabia)
death date	June 08, 632
death place	Yathrib, Arabia (present day Medina, Hejaz, Saudi Arabia)
death cause	Illness (high fever)
resting place	Tomb under the Green Dome of Al-Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina, Hejaz, Saudi Arabia
other names	See ''Names of Muhammad''
ethnicity	Arab
religion	Islam
spouse	Wives: Khadijah bint Khuwaylid (595-619)Sawda bint Zamʿa (619-632)Aisha bint Abi Bakr (619-632)Hafsa bint Umar (624-632)Zaynab bint Khuzayma (625-627)Hind bint Abi Umayya (629-632)Zaynab bint Jahsh (627-632)Juwayriya bint al-Harith (628-632)Ramlah bint Abi Sufyan (628-632)Rayhana bint Zayd (629-631)Safiyya bint Huyayy (629-632)Maymuna bint al-Harith (630-632)Maria al-Qibtiyya (630-632)
parents	Father: `Abd Allah ibn `Abd al-MuttalibMother: Aminah bint Wahb
children	Sons: al-Qasim, `Abd-Allah, IbrahimDaughters: Zainab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthoom, Fatimah Zahra
relatives	Ahl al-Bayt }}

Muhammad ( or ; , '''' ; 26 April 570 – 8 June 632; Monday, 12th Rabi' al-Awwal, Year 11 A.H.; also transliterated Mohammed or ), sometimes called Muhammad ibn Abdullah, was the founder of the religion of Islam, and is considered by Muslims to be a messenger and prophet of God, the last law-bearer in a series of Islamic prophets, and, by most Muslims, the last prophet of God as taught by the Quran. Muslims thus consider him the restorer of an uncorrupted original monotheistic faith (''islām'') of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus and other prophets. He was also active as a social reformer, diplomat, merchant, philosopher, orator, legislator, military leader, humanitarian and philanthropist.

Born in 570 in the Arabian city of Mecca, he was orphaned at an early age and brought up under the care of his uncle Abu Talib. He later worked mostly as a merchant, as well as a shepherd, and was first married by age 25. Discontented with life in Mecca, he retreated to a cave in the surrounding mountains for meditation and reflection. According to Islamic beliefs it was here, at age 40, in the month of Ramadan, where he received his first revelation from God. Three years after this event Muhammad started preaching these revelations publicly, proclaiming that "God is One", that complete "surrender" to Him (lit. ''islām'') is the only way (''dīn'') acceptable to God, and that he himself was a prophet and messenger of God, in the same vein as other Islamic prophets.

Muhammad gained few followers early on, and was met with hostility from some Meccan tribes; he and his followers were treated harshly. To escape persecution, Muhammad sent some of his followers to Abyssinia before he and his remaining followers in Mecca migrated to Medina (then known as Yathrib) in the year 622. This event, the Hijra, marks the beginning of the Islamic calendar, which is also known as the Hijri Calendar. In Medina, Muhammad united the conflicting tribes, and after eight years of fighting with the Meccan tribes, his followers, who by then had grown to 10,000, conquered Mecca. In 632, a few months after returning to Medina from his Farewell pilgrimage, Muhammad fell ill and died. By the time of his death, most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam, and he had united the tribes of Arabia into a single Muslim religious polity.

The revelations (or ''Ayah'', lit. "Signs of God")—which Muhammad reported receiving until his death—form the verses of the Quran, regarded by Muslims as the “Word of God” and around which the religion is based. Besides the Qur'an, Muhammad’s life (''sira'') and traditions (''sunnah'') are also upheld by Muslims. They discuss Muhammad and other prophets of Islam with reverence, adding the phrase ''peace be upon him'' whenever their names are mentioned. While conceptions of Muhammad in medieval Christendom and premodern times were largely negative, appraisals in modern history have been far less so. His life and deeds have been debated and criticized by followers and opponents over the centuries.

Names and appellations in the Quran

The name ''Muhammad'' means "Praiseworthy" and occurs four times in the Quran. The Quran addresses Muhammad in the second person not by his name but by the appellations prophet, messenger, servant of God ('''abd''), announcer (''bashir''), witness (''shahid''), bearer of good tidings (''mubashshir''), warner (''nathir''), reminder (''mudhakkir''), one who calls [unto God] (''dā‘ī''), light personified (''noor''), and the light-giving lamp (''siraj munir''). Muhammad is sometimes addressed by designations deriving from his state at the time of the address: thus he is referred to as the enwrapped (''al-muzzammil'') in Qur'an and the shrouded (''al-muddaththir'') in Qur'an . In the Qur'an, believers are not to distinguish between the messengers of God and are to believe in all of them (Sura Al-Baqara ). God has caused some messengers to excel above others and in Sura Al-Ahzab He singles out Muhammad as the "Seal of the Prophets". The Qur'an also refers to Muhammad as ''Aḥmad'' "more praiseworthy" (, Sura As-Saff ).

Sources for Muhammad's life

Being a highly influential historical figure, Muhammad's life, deeds, and thoughts have been debated by followers and opponents over the centuries, which makes a biography of him difficult to write.

Quran

The Quran is the primary source of information for Islam. It is the central religious text of Islam and Muslims believe it represents the words of God revealed to Muhammad through Gabriel. Although it mentions Muhammad directly only four times, verses can be interpreted as allusions to Muhammad's life.

Early biographies

Next in importance are historical works by writers of the 3rd and 4th centuries of the Muslim era. These include the traditional Muslim biographies of Muhammad (the ''sira'' literature), which provide further information on Muhammad's life.

The earliest surviving written ''sira'' (biographies of Muhammad and quotes attributed to him) is Ibn Ishaq's ''Life of God's Messenger'' written ca. 767 (150 AH). The work is lost, but was used verbatim at great length by Ibn Hisham and Al-Tabari. Another early source is the history of Muhammad's campaigns by al-Waqidi (death 207 of Muslim era), and the work of his secretary Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi (death 230 of Muslim era).

Many scholars accept the accuracy of the earliest biographies, though their accuracy is unascertainable. Recent studies have led scholars to distinguish between the traditions touching legal matters and the purely historical ones. In the former sphere, traditions could have been subject to invention while in the latter sphere, aside from exceptional cases, the material may have been only subject to "tendential shaping".

Hadith

In addition, the hadith collections are accounts of the verbal and physical traditions of Muhammad that date from several generations after his death. Hadith compilations are records of the traditions or sayings of Muhammad. They might be defined as the biography of Muhammad perpetuated by the long memory of his community for their exemplification and obedience.

Western academics view the hadith collections with caution as accurate historical sources. Although usually discounted by historians, oral tradition plays a major role in the Islamic understanding of Muhammad.

Non-Arabic sources

The earliest documented Christian knowledge of Muhammad stems from Byzantine sources. They indicate that both Jews and Christians saw Muhammad as a deceiving prophet, or at least certain circles did. In the ''Doctrina Jacobi nuper baptizati'' of 634, Muhammad is portrayed as being "deceiving[,] for do prophets come with sword and chariot?, [...] you will discover nothing true from the said prophet except human bloodshed." Another Greek source for Muhammad is the 9th-century writer Theophanes. The earliest Syriac source is the 7th-century writer John bar Penkaye.

Pre-Islamic Arabia

The Arabian Peninsula was largely arid and volcanic, making agriculture difficult except near oases or springs. The landscape was thus dotted with towns and cities, two prominent ones being Mecca and Medina. Medina was a large flourishing agricultural settlement, while Mecca was an important financial center for many surrounding tribes. Communal life was essential for survival in the desert conditions, as people needed support against the harsh environment and lifestyle. Tribal grouping was encouraged by the need to act as a unit, this unity being based on the bond of kinship by blood. Indigenous Arabs were either nomadic or sedentary, the former constantly travelling from one place to another seeking water and pasture for their flocks, while the latter settled and focused on trade and agriculture. Nomadic survival was also dependent on raiding caravans or oases, the nomads not viewing this as a crime.

In pre-Islamic Arabia, gods or goddesses were viewed as protectors of individual tribes, their spirits being associated with sacred trees, stones, springs and wells. As well as being the site of an annual pilgrimage, the Kaaba shrine in Mecca housed 360 idol statues of tribal patron deities. Aside from these gods, the Arabs shared a common belief in a supreme deity called Allah (literally "the god"), who was remote from their everyday concerns and thus not the object of cult or ritual. Three goddesses were associated with Allah as his daughters: Allāt, Manāt and al-‘Uzzá. Monotheistic communities existed in Arabia, including Christians and Jews. Hanifs – native pre-Islamic Arab monotheists – are also sometimes listed alongside Jews and Christians in pre-Islamic Arabia, although their historicity is disputed amongst scholars. According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad himself was a Hanif and one of the descendants of Ishmael, son of Abraham.

Life

Life in Mecca

Muhammad was born and lived in Mecca for the first 52 years of his life (570–622) which was divided into two phases, that is before and after declaring the prophecy.

Childhood and early life

Muhammad was born in the month of Rabi' al-awwal in 570. He belonged to the Banu Hashim, one of the prominent families of Mecca, although it seems not to have been prosperous during Muhammad's early lifetime. Tradition places the year of Muhammad's birth as corresponding with the Year of the Elephant, which is named after the failed destruction of Mecca that year by the Aksumite king Abraha who had in his army a number of elephants. Recent scholarship has suggested alternative dates for this event, such as 568 or 569.

Muhammad's father, Abdullah, died almost six months before he was born. According to the tradition, soon after Muhammad's birth he was sent to live with a Bedouin family in the desert, as the desert-life was considered healthier for infants. Muhammad stayed with his foster-mother, Halimah bint Abi Dhuayb, and her husband until he was two years old. Some western scholars of Islam have rejected the historicity of this tradition. At the age of six Muhammad lost his mother Amina to illness and he became fully orphaned. He was subsequently brought up for two years under the guardianship of his paternal grandfather Abd al-Muttalib, of the Banu Hashim clan of the Quraysh tribe. When Muhammad was eight, his grandfather also died. He now came under the care of his uncle Abu Talib, the new leader of Banu Hashim. According to Watt, because of the general disregard of the guardians in taking care of weak members of the tribes in Mecca in the 6th century, "Muhammad's guardians saw that he did not starve to death, but it was hard for them to do more for him, especially as the fortunes of the clan of Hashim seem to have been declining at that time."

While still in his teens, Muhammad accompanied his uncle on trading journeys to Syria gaining experience in the commercial trade, the only career open to Muhammad as an orphan. According to tradition, when Muhammad was either nine or twelve while accompanying the Meccans' caravan to Syria, he met a Christian monk or hermit named Bahira who is said to have foreseen Muhammed's career as a prophet of God.

Little is known of Muhammad during his later youth, and from the fragmentary information that is available, it is hard to separate history from legend. It is known that he became a merchant and "was involved in trade between the Indian ocean and the Mediterranean Sea." Due to his upright character he acquired the nickname "al-Amin" (Arabic: الامين), meaning "faithful, trustworthy" and "al-Sadiq" meaning "truthful" and was sought out as an impartial arbitrator. His reputation attracted a proposal from Khadijah, a forty-year-old widow in 595. Muhammad consented to the marriage, which by all accounts was a happy one.

According to a narration collected by Ibn Ishaq, Muhammad set the Black Stone in place in the wall of the Kaaba in 605 C.E. The Black Stone had been removed to facilitate renovations to the Kaaba. The leaders of Mecca could not agree on which clan should have the honour of setting the Black Stone back in its place. They agreed to wait for the next man to come through the gate and ask him to choose. That man was the 35-year-old Muhammad, five years before his first revelation. He asked for a cloth and put the Black Stone in its centre. The clan leaders held the corners of the cloth and carried the Black Stone to the right spot, then Muhammad set the stone in place, satisfying the honour of all.

Beginnings of the Quran

At some point Muhammad adopted the practice of meditating alone for several weeks every year in a cave on Mount Hira near Mecca. Islamic tradition holds that during one of his visits to Mount Hira, the angel Gabriel appeared to him in the year 610 and commanded Muhammad to recite the following verses: }} After returning home, Muhammad was consoled and reassured by Khadijah and her Christian cousin, Waraqah ibn Nawfal. Upon receiving his first revelations, he was deeply distressed and resolved to commit suicide. He also feared that others would dismiss his claims as being possessed. Shi'a tradition maintains that Muhammad was neither surprised nor frightened at the appearance of Gabriel but rather welcomed him as if he had been expecting him. The initial revelation was followed by a pause of three years during which Muhammad further gave himself to prayers and spiritual practices. When the revelations resumed he was reassured and commanded to begin preaching: "Thy Guardian-Lord hath not forsaken thee, nor is He displeased.".

Sahih Bukhari narrates Muhammad describing the revelations as, "Sometimes it is (revealed) like the ringing of a bell" and Aisha reported, "I saw the Prophet being inspired Divinely on a very cold day and noticed the sweat dropping from his forehead (as the Inspiration was over)". According to Welch these revelations were accompanied by mysterious seizures, and the reports are unlikely to have been forged by later Muslims. Muhammad was confident that he could distinguish his own thoughts from these messages. According to the Quran, one of the main roles of Muhammad is to warn the unbelievers of their eschatological punishment (Quran , Quran ). Sometimes the Quran does not explicitly refer to the Judgment day but provides examples from the history of some extinct communities and warns Muhammad's contemporaries of similar calamities (Quran ). Muhammad is not only a warner to those who reject God's revelation, but also a bearer of good news for those who abandon evil, listen to the divine word and serve God. Muhammad's mission also involves preaching monotheism: The Quran demands Muhammad to proclaim and praise the name of his Lord and instructs him not to worship idols or associate other deities with God.

The key themes of the early Quranic verses included the responsibility of man towards his creator; the resurrection of dead, God's final judgment followed by vivid descriptions of the tortures in hell and pleasures in Paradise; and the signs of God in all aspects of life. Religious duties required of the believers at this time were few: belief in God, asking for forgiveness of sins, offering frequent prayers, assisting others particularly those in need, rejecting cheating and the love of wealth (considered to be significant in the commercial life of Mecca), being chaste and not to kill newborn girls.

Opposition

According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad's wife Khadija was the first to believe he was a prophet. She was soon followed by Muhammad's ten-year-old cousin Ali ibn Abi Talib, close friend Abu Bakr, and adopted son Zaid. Around 613, Muhammad began his public preaching (Qur'an ). Most Meccans ignored him and mocked him, while a few others became his followers. There were three main groups of early converts to Islam: younger brothers and sons of great merchants; people who had fallen out of the first rank in their tribe or failed to attain it; and the weak, mostly unprotected foreigners.

According to Ibn Sad, the opposition in Mecca started when Muhammad delivered verses that condemned idol worship and the Meccan forefathers who engaged in polytheism. However, the Qur'anic exegesis maintains that it began as soon as Muhammad started public preaching. As the number of followers increased, he became a threat to the local tribes and the rulers of the city, whose wealth rested upon the Kaaba, the focal point of Meccan religious life, which Muhammad threatened to overthrow. Muhammad’s denunciation of the Meccan traditional religion was especially offensive to his own tribe, the Quraysh, as they were the guardians of the Ka'aba. The powerful merchants tried to convince Muhammad to abandon his preaching by offering him admission into the inner circle of merchants, and establishing his position therein by an advantageous marriage. However, he refused.

Tradition records at great length the persecution and ill-treatment of Muhammad and his followers. Sumayyah bint Khabbab, a slave of a prominent Meccan leader Abu Jahl, is famous as the first martyr of Islam, having been killed with a spear by her master when she refused to give up her faith. Bilal, another Muslim slave, was tortured by Umayyah ibn Khalaf who placed a heavy rock on his chest to force his conversion. Apart from insults, Muhammad was protected from physical harm as he belonged to the Banu Hashim clan.

In 615, some of Muhammad's followers emigrated to the Ethiopian Aksumite Empire and founded a small colony there under the protection of the Christian Ethiopian emperor Aṣḥama ibn Abjar.

An early hadith known as "The Story of the Cranes" (translation: قصة الغرانيق, transliteration: Qissat al Gharaneeq) was propagated by two Islamic scholars, Ibn Kathir al Dimashqi and Ibn Hijir al Masri, where the former has strengthened it and the latter called it fabricated (see Science of hadith). The hadith describes Muhammad's involvement at the time of migration in an episode which historian William Muir called the "Satanic Verses". The account holds that Muhammad pronounced a verse acknowledging the existence of three Meccan goddesses considered to be the daughters of Allah, praising them, and appealing for their intercession. According to this account, Muhammad later retracted the verses at the behest of Gabriel, claiming that the verses were whispered by the devil himself. Islamic scholars have weakened the hadith and have denied the historicity of the incident as early as the tenth century. In any event, relations between the Muslims and their pagan fellow-tribesmen were already deteriorated and worsening.

In 617, the leaders of Makhzum and Banu Abd-Shams, two important Quraysh clans, declared a public boycott against Banu Hashim, their commercial rival, to pressurize it into withdrawing its protection of Muhammad. The boycott lasted three years but eventually collapsed as it failed in its objective. During this, Muhammad was only able to preach during the holy pilgrimage months in which all hostilities between Arabs were suspended.

Isra and Mi'raj

Islamic tradition relates that in 620, Muhammad experienced the ''Isra and Mi'raj'', a miraculous journey said to have occurred with the angel Gabriel in one night. In the first part of the journey, the ''Isra'', he is said to have travelled from Mecca on a winged horse to "the farthest mosque" (in Arabic: ''masjid al-aqsa''), which Muslims usually identify with the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. In the second part, the ''Mi'raj'', Muhammad is said to have toured heaven and hell, and spoken with earlier prophets, such as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Ibn Ishaq, author of the first biography of Muhammad, presents this event as a spiritual experience whereas later historians like Al-Tabari and Ibn Kathir present it as a physical journey.

When he was transported to Heaven, he reported seeing an angel with "''70,000 heads, each head having 70,000 mouths, each mouth having 70,000 tongues, each tongue speaking 70,000 languages; and every one involved in singing God's (Allah's) praises.''" After calculation this would mean the angel spoke 24 quintillion (2.401 × 10¹⁹) languages for the praise of Allah. This description is similar word for word to the description of an angel seen by Moses in "The Revelation of Moses".

Some western scholars of Islam hold that the oldest Muslim tradition identified the journey as one traveled through the heavens from the sacred enclosure at Mecca to the celestial ''al-Baytu l-Maʿmur'' (heavenly prototype of the Kaaba); but later tradition identified Muhammad's journey from Mecca to Jerusalem.

Last years in Mecca before Hijra

Muhammad's wife Khadijah and his uncle Abu Talib both died in 619, the year thus being known as the "year of sorrow". With the death of Abu Talib, the leadership of the Banu Hashim clan was passed to Abu Lahab, an inveterate enemy of Muhammad. Soon afterwards, Abu Lahab withdrew the clan's protection from Muhammad. This placed Muhammad in danger of death since the withdrawal of clan protection implied that the blood revenge for his killing would not be exacted. Muhammad then visited Ta'if, another important city in Arabia, and tried to find a protector for himself there, but his effort failed and further brought him into physical danger. Muhammad was forced to return to Mecca. A Meccan man named Mut'im b. Adi (and the protection of the tribe of Banu Nawfal) made it possible for him safely to re-enter his native city.

Many people were visiting Mecca on business or as pilgrims to the Kaaba. Muhammad took this opportunity to look for a new home for himself and his followers. After several unsuccessful negotiations, he found hope with some men from Yathrib (later called Medina). The Arab population of Yathrib were familiar with monotheism and prepared for the appearance of a prophet because a Jewish community existed there. They also hoped by the means of Muhammad and the new faith to gain supremacy over Mecca, as they were jealous of its importance as the place of pilgrimage. Converts to Islam came from nearly all Arab tribes in Medina, such that by June of the subsequent year there were seventy-five Muslims coming to Mecca for pilgrimage and to meet Muhammad. Meeting him secretly by night, the group made what was known as the "''Second Pledge of al-`Aqaba''", or the "''Pledge of War''" Following the pledges at Aqabah, Muhammad encouraged his followers to emigrate to Yathrib. As with the migration to Abyssinia, the Quraysh attempted to stop the emigration. However, almost all Muslims managed to leave.

Hijra

The Hijra is the migration of Muhammad and his followers from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE. In September 622, warned of a plot to assassinate him, Muhammad secretly slipped out of Mecca, moving with his followers to Medina, 320 kilometres (200 mi) north of Mecca. The Hijra is celebrated annually on the first day of the Muslim year.

Migration to Medina

A delegation consisting of the representatives of the twelve important clans of Medina, invited Muhammad as a neutral outsider to Medina to serve as chief arbitrator for the entire community. There was fighting in Yathrib mainly involving its Arab and Jewish inhabitants for around a hundred years before 620. The recurring slaughters and disagreements over the resulting claims, especially after the Battle of Bu'ath in which all clans were involved, made it obvious to them that the tribal conceptions of blood-feud and an eye for an eye were no longer workable unless there was one man with authority to adjudicate in disputed cases. The delegation from Medina pledged themselves and their fellow-citizens to accept Muhammad into their community and physically protect him as one of themselves.

Muhammad instructed his followers to emigrate to Medina until virtually all his followers left Mecca. Being alarmed at the departure of Muslims, according to the tradition, the Meccans plotted to assassinate Muhammad. With the help of Ali, Muhammad fooled the Meccans who were watching him, and secretly slipped away from the town with Abu Bakr. By 622, Muhammad emigrated to Medina, a large agricultural oasis. Those who migrated from Mecca along with Muhammad became known as ''muhajirun'' (emigrants).

Establishment of a new polity

Among the first things Muhammad did in order to settle down the longstanding grievances among the tribes of Medina was drafting a document known as the Constitution of Medina, "establishing a kind of alliance or federation" among the eight Medinan tribes and Muslim emigrants from Mecca, which specified the rights and duties of all citizens and the relationship of the different communities in Medina (including that of the Muslim community to other communities, specifically the Jews and other "Peoples of the Book"). The community defined in the Constitution of Medina, ''Ummah'', had a religious outlook but was also shaped by practical considerations and substantially preserved the legal forms of the old Arab tribes. It effectively established the first Islamic state.

Several ordinances were proclaimed in order to win over the numerous and wealthy Jewish population. But these were soon rescinded as the Jews insisted on preserving the entire Mosaic law, and did not recognize him as a prophet because he was not of the race of David.

The first group of pagan converts to Islam in Medina were the clans who had not produced great leaders for themselves but had suffered from warlike leaders from other clans. This was followed by the general acceptance of Islam by the pagan population of Medina, apart from some exceptions. According to Ibn Ishaq, this was influenced by the conversion of Sa'd ibn Mu'adh (a prominent Medinan leader) to Islam. Those Medinans who converted to Islam and helped the Muslim emigrants find shelter became known as the ''ansar'' (supporters). Then Muhammad instituted brotherhood between the emigrants and the supporters and he chose Ali as his own brother.

Beginning of armed conflict

Following the emigration, the Meccans seized the properties of the Muslim emigrants in Mecca. Economically uprooted and with no available profession, the Muslim migrants turned to raiding Meccan caravans as an act of war, deliberately initiating armed conflict between the Muslims and Mecca. Muhammad delivered Qur'anic verses permitting the Muslims to fight the Meccans (see sura Al-Hajj, Qur'an ). These attacks pressured Mecca by interfering with trade, and allowed the Muslims to acquire wealth, power and prestige while working towards their ultimate goal of inducing Mecca's submission to the new faith.

In March of 624, Muhammad led some three hundred warriors in a raid on a Meccan merchant caravan. The Muslims set an ambush for them at Badr. Aware of the plan, the Meccan caravan eluded the Muslims. Meanwhile, a force from Mecca was sent to protect the caravan, continuing forward to confront the Muslims upon hearing that the caravan was safe. The Battle of Badr began in March of 624. Though outnumbered more than three to one, the Muslims won the battle, killing at least forty-five Meccans with only fourteen Muslims dead. They also succeeded in killing many Meccan leaders, including Abu Jahl. Seventy prisoners had been acquired, many of whom were soon ransomed in return for wealth or freed. Muhammad and his followers saw in the victory a confirmation of their faith as Muhammad ascribed the victory to the assistance of an invisible host of angels. The Qur'anic verses of this period, unlike the Meccan ones, dealt with practical problems of government and issues like the distribution of spoils.

The victory strengthened Muhammad's position in Medina and dispelled earlier doubts among his followers. As a result the opposition to him became less vocal. Pagans who had not yet converted were very bitter about the advance of Islam. Two pagans, Asma bint Marwan and Abu 'Afak, had composed verses taunting and insulting the Muslims. They were killed by people belonging to their own or related clans, and no blood-feud followed.

Muhammad expelled from Medina the Banu Qaynuqa, one of three main Jewish tribes. Although Muhammad wanted them executed, Abd-Allah ibn Ubaiy chief of the Khazraj tribe did not agree and they were expelled to Syria but without their property. Following the Battle of Badr, Muhammad also made mutual-aid alliances with a number of Bedouin tribes to protect his community from attacks from the northern part of Hijaz.

Conflict with Mecca

The attack at Badr committed Muhammad to total war with Meccans, who were now anxious to avenge their defeat. To maintain their economic prosperity, the Meccans needed to restore their prestige, which had been lost at Badr. In the ensuing months, Muhammad led expeditions on tribes allied with Mecca and sent out a raid on a Meccan caravan. Abu Sufyan subsequently gathered an army of three thousand men and set out for an attack on Medina.

A scout alerted Muhammad of the Meccan army's presence and numbers a day later. The next morning, at the Muslim conference of war, there was dispute over how best to repel the Meccans. Muhammad and many senior figures suggested that it would be safer to fight within Medina and take advantage of its heavily fortified strongholds. Younger Muslims argued that the Meccans were destroying their crops, and that huddling in the strongholds would destroy Muslim prestige. Muhammad eventually conceded to the wishes of the latter, and readied the Muslim force for battle. Thus, Muhammad led his force outside to the mountain of Uhud (where the Meccans had camped) and fought the Battle of Uhud on March 23. Although the Muslim army had the best of the early encounters, indiscipline on the part of strategically placed archers led to a Muslim defeat, with 75 Muslims killed including Hamza, Muhammad's uncle and one of the best known martyrs in the Muslim tradition. The Meccans did not pursue the Muslims further, but marched back to Mecca declaring victory. This is probably because Muhammad was wounded and thought to be dead. When they knew this on their way back, they did not return back because of false information about new forces coming to his aid. They were not entirely successful, however, as they had failed to achieve their aim of completely destroying the Muslims. The Muslims buried the dead, and returned to Medina that evening. Questions accumulated as to the reasons for the loss, and Muhammad subsequently delivered Qur'anic verses which indicated that their defeat was partly a punishment for disobedience and partly a test for steadfastness.

Abu Sufyan now directed his efforts towards another attack on Medina. He attracted the support of nomadic tribes to the north and east of Medina, using propaganda about Muhammad's weakness, promises of booty, memories of the prestige of the Quraysh and use of bribes. Muhammad's policy was now to prevent alliances against him as much as he could. Whenever alliances of tribesmen against Medina were formed, he sent out an expedition to break them up. When Muhammad heard of men massing with hostile intentions against Medina, he reacted with severity. One example is the assassination of Ka'b ibn al-Ashraf, a chieftain of the Jewish tribe of Banu Nadir who had gone to Mecca and written poems that helped rouse the Meccans' grief, anger and desire for revenge after the Battle of Badr. Around a year later, Muhammad expelled the Banu Nadir from Medina to Syria allowing them to take some of their possessions because he was unable to subdue them in their strongholds. The rest of their property was claimed by Muhammad in the name of God because it was not gained with bloodshed. Muhammad surprised various Arab tribes, one by one, with overwhelming force which caused his enemies to unite in order to annihilate him. Muhammad's attempts to prevent formation of a confederation against him were unsuccessful, though he was able to increase his own forces and stop many potential tribes from joining his enemies.

Siege of Medina

With the help of the exiled Banu Nadir, the Quraysh military leader Abu Sufyan had mustered a force of 10,000 men. Muhammad prepared a force of about 3000 men and adopted a new form of defense unknown in Arabia at that time: the Muslims dug a trench wherever Medina lay open to cavalry attack. The idea is credited to a Persian convert to Islam, Salman the Persian. The siege of Medina began on March 31 627 and lasted for two weeks. Abu Sufyan's troops were unprepared for the fortifications they were confronted with, and after an ineffectual siege lasting several weeks, the coalition decided to go home. The Qur'an discusses this battle in sura Al-Ahzab, ayat (verses) 9-27, . During the battle, the Jewish tribe of Banu Qurayza, located at the south of Medina, had entered into negotiations with Meccan forces to revolt against Muhammad. Although they were swayed by suggestions that Muhammad was sure to be overwhelmed, they desired reassurance in case the confederacy was unable to destroy him. No agreement was reached after the prolonged negotiations, in part due to sabotage attempts by Muhammad's scouts. After the coalition's retreat, the Muslims accused the Banu Qurayza of treachery and besieged them in their forts for 25 days. The Banu Qurayza eventually surrendered and all the men, apart from a few who converted to Islam, were beheaded, while the women and children were enslaved. Walid N. Arafat and Barakat Ahmad have disputed that the Banu Qurayza were killed on quite such a large scale. Arafat disputes large-scale killings and argued that Ibn Ishaq gathered information from descendants of the Qurayza Jews, who embellished or manufactured the details of the incident. Arafat relates the testimony of Ibn Hajar, who denounced this and other accounts as "odd tales" and quoted Malik ibn Anas, a contemporary of Ibn Ishaq, whom he rejected as a "liar", an "impostor" and for seeking out the Jewish descendants for gathering information about Muhammad's campaign with their forefathers. Ahmad argues that only some of the tribe were killed, while some of the fighters were merely enslaved. Watt finds Arafat's arguments "not entirely convincing", while Meir J. Kister has contradicted the arguments of Arafat and Ahmad.

In the siege of Medina, the Meccans exerted their utmost strength towards the destruction of the Muslim community. Their failure resulted in a significant loss of prestige; their trade with Syria was gone. Following the Battle of the Trench, due to the disgrace Muhammad brought upon himself by seeking protection behind a ditch instead of the his sword and the help of God, he made two expeditions to the north which ended without any fighting. While returning from one of these (or some years earlier according to other early accounts), an accusation of adultery was made against Aisha, Muhammad's wife. Aisha was exonerated from the accusations when Muhammad announced that he had received a revelation confirming Aisha's innocence and directing that charges of adultery be supported by four eyewitnesses.

Truce of Hudaybiyyah

Although Muhammad had already delivered Qur'anic verses commanding the Hajj, the Muslims had not performed it due to the enmity of the Quraysh. In the month of Shawwal 628, Muhammad ordered his followers to obtain sacrificial animals and to make preparations for a pilgrimage (''umrah'') to Mecca, saying that God had promised him the fulfillment of this goal in a vision where he was shaving his head after the completion of the Hajj. Upon hearing of the approaching 1,400 Muslims, the Quraysh sent out a force of 200 cavalry to halt them. Muhammad evaded them by taking a more difficult route, thereby reaching al-Hudaybiyya, just outside of Mecca. According to Watt, although Muhammad's decision to make the pilgrimage was based on his dream, he was at the same time demonstrating to the pagan Meccans that Islam does not threaten the prestige of their sanctuary, and that Islam was an Arabian religion.

Negotiations commenced with emissaries going to and from Mecca. While these continued, rumors spread that one of the Muslim negotiators, Uthman bin al-Affan, had been killed by the Quraysh. Muhammad responded by calling upon the pilgrims to make a pledge not to flee (or to stick with Muhammad, whatever decision he made) if the situation descended into war with Mecca. This pledge became known as the "Pledge of Acceptance" () or the "Pledge under the Tree". News of Uthman's safety, however, allowed for negotiations to continue, and a treaty scheduled to last ten years was eventually signed between the Muslims and Quraysh. The main points of the treaty included the cessation of hostilities; the deferral of Muhammad's pilgrimage to the following year; and an agreement to send back any Meccan who had gone to Medina without the permission of their protector.

Many Muslims were not satisfied with the terms of the treaty. However, the Qur'anic sura "Al-Fath" (The Victory) (Qur'an ) assured the Muslims that the expedition from which they were now returning must be considered a victorious one. It was only later that Muhammad's followers would realise the benefit behind this treaty. These benefits included the inducing of the Meccans to recognise Muhammad as an equal; a cessation of military activity posing well for the future; and gaining the admiration of Meccans who were impressed by the incorporation of the pilgrimage rituals.

After signing the truce, Muhammad made an expedition against the Jewish oasis of Khaybar, known as the Battle of Khaybar. This was possibly due to it housing the Banu Nadir, who were inciting hostilities against Muhammad, or to regain some prestige to deflect from what appeared to some Muslims as the inconclusive result of the truce of Hudaybiyya. According to Muslim tradition, Muhammad also sent letters to many rulers of the world, asking them to convert to Islam (the exact date is given variously in the sources). Hence he sent messengers (with letters) to Heraclius of the Byzantine Empire (the eastern Roman Empire), Khosrau of Persia, the chief of Yemen and to some others. In the years following the truce of Hudaybiyya, Muhammad sent his forces against the Arabs on Transjordanian Byzantine soil in the Battle of Mu'tah, in which the Muslims were defeated.

Final years

Conquest of Mecca

The truce of Hudaybiyyah had been enforced for two years. The tribe of Banu Khuza'a had good relations with Muhammad, whereas their enemies, the Banu Bakr, had an alliance with the Meccans. A clan of the Bakr made a night raid against the Khuza'a, killing a few of them. The Meccans helped the Banu Bakr with weapons and, according to some sources, a few Meccans also took part in the fighting. After this event, Muhammad sent a message to Mecca with three conditions, asking them to accept one of them. These were that either the Meccans paid blood money for those slain among the Khuza'ah tribe; or, that they should disavow themselves of the Banu Bakr; or, that they should declare the truce of Hudaybiyyah null.

The Meccans replied that they would accept only the last condition. However, soon they realized their mistake and sent Abu Sufyan to renew the Hudaybiyyah treaty, but now his request was declined by Muhammad.

Muhammad began to prepare for a campaign. In 630, Muhammad marched on Mecca with an enormous force, said to number more than ten thousand men. With minimal casualties, Muhammad took control of Mecca. He declared an amnesty for past offences, except for ten men and women who had mocked and ridiculed him in songs and verses. Some of these were later pardoned. Most Meccans converted to Islam and Muhammad subsequently destroyed all the statues of Arabian gods in and around the Kaaba. The Qur'an discusses the conquest of Mecca.

Conquest of Arabia

Soon after the conquest of Mecca, Muhammad was alarmed by a military threat from the confederate tribes of Hawazin who were collecting an army twice the size of Muhammad's. The Banu Hawazin were old enemies of the Meccans. They were joined by the Banu Thaqif (inhabiting the city of Ta'if) who adopted an anti-Meccan policy due to the decline of the prestige of Meccans. Muhammad defeated the Hawazin and Thaqif tribes in the Battle of Hunayn.

In the same year, Muhammad made the expedition of Tabuk against northern Arabia because of their previous defeat at the Battle of Mu'tah as well as reports of the hostile attitude adopted against Muslims. With the greatest difficulty he collected thirty thousand men, half of whom, however, on the second day after their departure from Mecca, returned with Abd-Allah ibn Ubayy, untroubled by the damning verses which Muhammad hurled at them. Although Muhammad did not make contact with hostile forces at Tabuk, he received the submission of some local chiefs of the region.

A year after the Battle of Tabuk, the Banu Thaqif sent emissaries to Medina to surrender to Muhammad and adopt Islam. Many bedouins submitted to Muhammad in order to be safe against his attacks and to benefit from the booties of the wars. However, the bedouins were alien to the system of Islam and wanted to maintain their independence, their established code of virtue and their ancestral traditions. Muhammad thus required of them a military and political agreement according to which they "acknowledge the suzerainty of Medina, to refrain from attack on the Muslims and their allies, and to pay the Zakat, the Muslim religious levy."

Farewell pilgrimage and death

At the end of the tenth year after the migration to Medina, Muhammad carried through his first truly Islamic pilgrimage, thereby teaching his followers the rites of the annual Great Pilgrimage (Hajj). After completing the pilgrimage, Muhammad delivered a famous speech known as The Farewell Sermon. In this sermon, Muhammad advised his followers not to follow certain pre-Islamic customs such as adding intercalary months to align the lunar calendar with the solar calendar. Muhammad abolished all old blood feuds and disputes based on the former tribal system and asked for all old pledges to be returned as implications of the creation of the new Islamic community. Commenting on the vulnerability of women in his society, Muhammed asked his male followers to “Be good to women; for they are powerless captives (awan) in your households. You took them in God’s trust, and legitimated your sexual relations with the Word of God, so come to your senses people, and hear my words ...”. He also told them that they were entitled to discipline their wives but should do so with kindness. Muhammad also addressed the issue of inheritance by forbidding false claims of paternity or of a client relationship to the deceased and also forbidding his followers to leave their wealth to a testamentary heir. He also upheld the sacredness of four lunar months in each year. According to Sunni tafsir, the following Qur'anic verse was delivered in this incident: “Today I have perfected your religion, and completed my favours for you and chosen Islam as a religion for you.”(Qur'an 5:3) According to Shia tafsir, it refers to appointment of Ali ibn Abi Talib at the pond of Khumm as Muhammad's successor, this occurring a few days later when Muslims were returning from Mecca to Medina.

A few months after the farewell pilgrimage, Muhammad fell ill and suffered for several days with a fever, head pain and weakness. He died on Monday, June 8, 632, in Medina, at the age of 63. With his head resting on Aisha's lap he murmured his final words soon after asking her to dispose of his last worldly goods, which were seven coins: He is buried where he died, which was in Aisha's house and is now housed within the Mosque of the Prophet in the city of Medina. Next to Muhammad's tomb, there is another empty tomb that Muslims believe awaits Jesus.

Aftermath

Muhammad united the tribes of Arabia into a single Arab Muslim religious polity in the last years of his life. With Muhammad's death, disagreement broke out over who would succeed him as leader of the Muslim community. Umar ibn al-Khattab, a prominent companion of Muhammad, nominated Abu Bakr, Muhammad's friend and collaborator. Others added their support and Abu Bakr was made the first caliph. This choice was disputed by some of Muhammad's companions, who held that Ali ibn Abi Talib, his cousin and son-in-law, had been designated the successor by Muhammad at Ghadir Khumm. Abu Bakr's immediate task was to make an expedition against the Byzantine (or Eastern Roman Empire) forces because of the previous defeat, although he first had to put down a rebellion by Arab tribes in an episode referred to by later Muslim historians as the Ridda wars, or "Wars of Apostasy".

The pre-Islamic Middle East was dominated by the Byzantine and Sassanian empires. The Roman-Persian Wars between the two had devastated the region, making the empires unpopular amongst local tribes. Furthermore, in the lands that would be conquered by Muslims many Christians (Nestorians, Monophysites, Jacobites and Copts) were disaffected from the Christian Orthodoxy which deemed them heretics. Within only a decade, Muslims conquered Mesopotamia and Persia, Roman Syria and Roman Egypt. and established the Rashidun empire.

Early reforms under Islam

According to William Montgomery Watt, for Muhammad, religion was not a private and individual matter but rather “the total response of his personality to the total situation in which he found himself. He was responding [not only]… to the religious and intellectual aspects of the situation but also to the economic, social, and political pressures to which contemporary Mecca was subject." Bernard Lewis says that there are two important political traditions in Islam – one that views Muhammad as a statesman in Medina, and another that views him as a rebel in Mecca. He sees Islam itself as a type of revolution that greatly changed the societies into which the new religion was brought.

Historians generally agree that Islamic social reforms in areas such as social security, family structure, slavery and the rights of women and children improved on the status quo of Arab society. For example, according to Lewis, Islam "from the first denounced aristocratic privilege, rejected hierarchy, and adopted a formula of the career open to the talents". Muhammad's message transformed the society and moral order of life in the Arabian Peninsula through reorientation of society as regards to identity, world view, and the hierarchy of values. Economic reforms addressed the plight of the poor, which was becoming an issue in pre-Islamic Mecca. The Qur'an requires payment of an alms tax (zakat) for the benefit of the poor, and as Muhammad's position grew in power he demanded that those tribes who wanted to ally with him implement the zakat in particular.

Appearance

Ali gave the following description of Muhammad's physical appearance:

The "seal of prophecy" between the Prophet's shoulders is generally described as having been a type of raised mole the size of a pigeon's egg. Another description of Muhammad was provided by Umm Ma'bad, a woman he met on his journey to Medina:

Descriptions like these were often reproduced in calligraphic panels (''hilya'' or, in Turkish, ''hilye''), which in the 17th century developed into an art form of their own in the Ottoman Empire.

Wives and children

Muhammad's life is traditionally defined into two periods: pre-hijra (emigration) in Mecca (from 570 to 622), and post-hijra in Medina (from 622 until 632). Muhammad is said to have had thirteen wives or concubines. (There are differing accounts on the status of some of them as wife or concubine.) All but two of his marriages were contracted after the migration to Medina.

At the age of 25, Muhammad married the wealthy Khadijah bint Khuwaylid who was 40 years old at that time. The marriage lasted for 25 years and was a happy one. Muhammad relied upon Khadija in many ways and did not enter into marriage with another woman during this marriage. After the death of Khadija, it was suggested to Muhammad by Khawla bint Hakim that he should marry Sawda bint Zama, a Muslim widow, or Aisha, daughter of Um Ruman and Abu Bakr of Mecca. Muhammad is said to have asked her to arrange for him to marry both.

Traditional sources dictate that Aisha was six or seven years old when betrothed to Muhammad, but the marriage was not consummated until she was nine or ten years old. While the majority of traditional sources indicate Aisha was 9 (and therefore a virgin) at the time of marriage, a small number of more recent writers have variously estimated her age at 15 to 24.

After migration to Medina, Muhammad (who was now in his fifties) married several women. These marriages were contracted mostly for political or humanitarian reasons. The women were either widows of Muslims who had been killed in battle and had been left without a protector, or belonging to important families or clans whom it was necessary to honor and strengthen alliances with.

Muhammad did his own household chores and helped with housework, such as preparing food, sewing clothes and repairing shoes. He is also said to have had accustomed his wives to dialogue; he listened to their advice, and the wives debated and even argued with him.

Khadijah is said to have borne Muhammad four daughters—(Ruqayyah bint Muhammad, Umm Kulthum bint Muhammad, Zainab bint Muhammad, Fatimah Zahra)—and two sons—(Abd-Allah ibn Muhammad and Qasim ibn Muhammad)—who both died in childhood. All except two of his daughters, Fatimah and Zainab, died before him. Some Shi'a scholars contend that Fatimah was Muhammad's only daughter. Maria al-Qibtiyya bore him a son named Ibrahim ibn Muhammad, but the child died when he was two years old.

Nine of Muhammad's wives survived him. Aisha, who became known as Muhammad's favourite wife in Sunni tradition, survived him by many decades and was instrumental in helping bring together the scattered sayings of Muhammad that would form the Hadith literature for the Sunni branch of Islam.

Muhammad's descendants through Fatimah are known as ''sharifs'', ''syeds'' or ''sayyids''. These are honorific titles in Arabic, ''sharif'' meaning 'noble' and ''sayed'' or ''sayyid'' meaning 'lord' or 'sir'. As Muhammad's only descendants, they are respected by both Sunni and Shi'a, though the Shi'as place much more emphasis and value on their distinction.

Islamic depictions of Muhammad

No depictions of the Prophet dating from his lifetime survive, and the earliest extant images come from Ilkhanid Persian miniatures of around 1300, early in the history of that tradition. Later images were produced in Ottoman Turkey and elsewhere, but mosques and copies of the Quran were never decorated with images of Muhammad. Muslims generally avoid depictions of Muhammad, a feeling that today is much stronger in Sunni Islam (85%–90% of Muslims) than among Shias (10%–15%). Islamic depictions of Muhammad have until recently mostly been limited to the private and elite medium of the miniature, and since about 1500 most show Muhammad with his face veiled, or symbolically represent him as a flame. Today images are also found in popular Shia iconography.

Slaves

The Qur'an considers emancipation of a slave to be a highly meritorious deed, or as a condition of repentance for many sins. Therefore Muhammad was the owner of slaves, whom he bought usually to free, including concubines (although this claim is disputed), a wetnurse, and one slave he bought, freed and adopted as his son (Zayd).

Legacy

Muslim views

Following the attestation to the oneness of God, the belief in Muhammad's prophethood is the main aspect of the Islamic faith. Every Muslim proclaims in the ''Shahadah'' that "I testify that there is none worthy of worship except God, and I testify that Muhammad is a Messenger of God". The Shahadah is the basic creed or tenet of Islam. Ideally, it is the first words a newborn will hear, and children are taught as soon as they are able to understand it and it will be recited when they die. Muslims must repeat the shahadah in the call to prayer (''adhan'') and the prayer itself. Non-Muslims wishing to convert to Islam are required to recite the creed.

According to the Qur'an, Muhammad is only the last of a series of Prophets sent by God for the benefit of mankind, and commands Muslims to make no distinction between them. states that "...it (the Qur'an) is a confirmation of (revelations) that went before it, and a fuller explanation of the Book - wherein there is no doubt - from The Lord of the Worlds.". Similarly states "...And before this was the book of Moses, as a guide and a mercy. And this Book confirms (it)...", while commands the believers of Islam to "Say: we believe in God and that which is revealed unto us, and that which was revealed unto Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac and Jacob and the tribes, and that which Moses and Jesus received, and which the prophets received from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and unto Him we have surrendered."

Historian Denis Gril believes that the Qur'an does not overtly describe Muhammad performing miracles, and the supreme miracle of Muhammad is finally identified with the Qur'an itself. However, Muslim tradition credits Muhammad with several miracles or supernatural events. For example, many Muslim commentators and some Western scholars have interpreted the Surah as referring to Muhammad splitting the Moon in view of the Quraysh when they began persecuting his followers.

The Sunnah represents the actions and sayings of Muhammad (preserved in reports known as Hadith), and covers a broad array of activities and beliefs ranging from religious rituals, personal hygiene, burial of the dead to the mystical questions involving the love between humans and God. The Sunnah is considered a model of emulation for pious Muslims and has to a great degree influenced the Muslim culture. The greeting that Muhammad taught Muslims to offer each other, “may peace be upon you” (Arabic: ''as-salamu `alaykum'') is used by Muslims throughout the world. Many details of major Islamic rituals such as daily prayers, the fasting and the annual pilgrimage are only found in the Sunnah and not the Qur'an.

The Sunnah also played a major role in the development of the Islamic sciences. It contributed much to the development of Islamic law, particularly from the end of the first Islamic century. Muslim mystics, known as sufis, who were seeking for the inner meaning of the Qur'an and the inner nature of Muhammad, viewed the prophet of Islam not only as a prophet but also as a perfect saint. Sufi orders trace their chain of spiritual descent back to Muhammad.

Muslims have traditionally expressed love and veneration for Muhammad. Stories of Muhammad's life, his intercession and of his miracles (particularly "Splitting of the moon") have permeated popular Muslim thought and poetry. The Qur'an refers to Muhammad as "a mercy (''rahmat'') to the worlds" (Qur'an ). The association of rain with mercy in Oriental countries has led to imagining Muhammad as a rain cloud dispensing blessings and stretching over lands, reviving the dead hearts, just as rain revives the seemingly dead earth (see, for example, the Sindhi poem of Shah ʿAbd al-Latif). Muhammad's birthday is celebrated as a major feast throughout the Islamic world, excluding Wahhabi-dominated Saudi Arabia where these public celebrations are discouraged. When Muslims say or write the name of Muhammad or any other prophet in Islam, they usually follow it with ''Peace be upon him'' (Arabic: ''sallAllahu `alayhi wa sallam'') like "Muhammad (Peace be upon him)". In printed matter, a calligraphic symbol is frequently used instead of printing the phrase.

Other views

Non-Muslim views regarding Muhammad have ranged across a large spectrum of responses and beliefs, many of which have changed over time.

Non-western views

Mahatma Gandhi stated: "I wanted to know the best of the life of one who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind.... I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. When I closed the second volume (of the Prophet's biography), I was sorry there was not more for me to read of that great life".

European and Western views

A few learned circles of Middle Ages Europe—primarily Latin-literate scholars—had access to fairly extensive biographical material about Muhammad. They interpreted that information through a Christian religious filter that viewed Muhammad as a charlatan driven by ambition and eagerness for power, and who seduced the Saracens into his submission under a religious guise. Popular European literature of the time portrayed Muhammad as though he were worshipped by Muslims in the manner of an idol or a heathen god. Some medieval Christians believed he died in 666, alluding to the number of the beast, instead of his actual death date in 632; others changed his name from Muhammad to Mahound, the "devil incarnate". Bernard Lewis writes "The development of the concept of Mahound started with considering Muhammad as a kind of demon or false god worshipped with Apollyon and Termagant in an unholy trinity." A later medieval work, ''Livre dou Tresor'' represents Muhammad as a former monk and cardinal. Dante's ''Divine Comedy'' (Canto XXVIII), puts Muhammad, together with Ali, in Hell "among the sowers of discord and the schismatics, being lacerated by devils again and again." Cultural critic and author Edward Said wrote in ''Orientalism'' regarding Dante's depiction of Muhammad:

Empirical data about the Orient...count for very little; ... What ... Dante tried to do in the ''Inferno'', is ... to characterize the Orient as alien and to incorporate it schematically on a theatrical stage whose audience, manager, and actors are ... only for Europe. Hence the vacillation between the familiar and the alien; Mohammed is always the imposter (familiar, because he pretends to be like the Jesus we know) and always the Oriental (alien, because although he is in some ways "like" Jesus, he is after all not like him).

After the reformation, Muhammad was no longer viewed by Christians as a god or idol, but as a cunning, ambitious, and self-seeking impostor. Guillaume Postel was among the first to present a more positive view of Muhammad. Boulainvilliers described Muhammad as a gifted political leader and a just lawmaker. Gottfried Leibniz praised Muhammad because "he did not deviate from the natural religion". Thomas Carlyle in his book ''Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History'' (1840) defines Muhammed as "A silent great soul, one of that who cannot but be earnest". Edward Gibbon in his book ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'' observes that "the good sense of Mohammad despised the pomp of royalty." Friedrich Martin von Bodenstedt (1851) described Muhammad as "an ominous destroyer and a prophet of murder." Many of the later Western works, from the 18th century onward, distanced themselves from the polemical histories of earlier Christian authors. These more historically oriented treatments, which generally reject the prophethood of Muhammad, are coloured by the Western philosophical and theological framework of their authors. Many of these studies reflect much historical research, and most pay more attention to human, social, economic, and political factors than to religious, theological, and spiritual matters.

Simon Ockley wrote in his book ''The History of the Saracen Empires'' (1718);

The greatest success of Mohammad’s life was effected by sheer moral force...It is not the propagation but the permanency of his religion that deserves our wonder, the same pure and perfect impression which he engraved at Mecca and Medina is preserved, after the revolutions of twelve centuries by the Indian, the African and the Turkish proselytes of the Koran. . . The Mahometans have uniformly withstood the temptation of reducing the object of their faith and devotion to a level with the senses and imagination of man. 'I believe in One God and Mahomet the Apostle of God' is the simple and invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible idol; the honours of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human virtue, and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion.

Reverend Benjamin Bosworth Smith in his book ''Muhammad and Muhammadanism'' (1874) commented that;

...if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by the right divine, it was Mohammed, for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports. He cared not for the dressings of power. The simplicity of his private life was in keeping with his public life...In Mohammadanism every thing is different here. Instead of the shadowy and the mysterious, we have history….We know of the external history of Muhammad….while for his internal history after his mission had been proclaimed, we have a book absolutely unique in its origin, in its preservation….on the Substantial authority of which no one has ever been able to cast a serious doubt.

Alphonse de Lamartine quoted in Histoire de la Turquie (1854) on Muhammad;

If greatness of purpose, smallness of means and outstanding results are the three criteria of human genius, who could dare compare any great man in modern history with Muhammad.

Never has a man proposed for himself, voluntarily or involuntarily, a goal more sublime, since this goal was beyond measure: undermine the superstitions placed between the creature and the Creator, give back God to man and man to God, reinstate the rational and saintly idea of divinity in the midst of this prevailing chaos of material and disfigured gods of idolatry.... The most famous have only moved weapons, laws, empires; they founded, when they founded anything, only material powers, often crumbling before them. This one not only moved armies, legislations, empires, peoples, dynasties, millions of men over a third of the inhabited globe; but he also moved ideas, beliefs, souls. He founded upon a book, of which each letter has become a law, a spiritual nationality embracing people of all languages and races; and made an indelible imprint upon this Muslim world, for the hatred of false gods and the passion for the God, One and Immaterial....Philosopher, orator, apostle, legislator, warrior, conqueror of ideas, restorer of a rational dogma for a cult without imagery, founder of twenty earthly empires and of a spiritual empire, this is Muhammad.

It was not until the latter part of the 20th century that Western authors combined rigorous scholarship as understood in the modern West with empathy toward the subject at hand and, especially, awareness of the religious and spiritual realities involved in the study of the life of the founder of a major world religion.

Annie Besant in ''The Life and Teachings of Muhammad'' (1932) wrote

It is impossible for anyone who studies the life and character of the great Prophet of Arabia, who knows how he taught and how he lived, to feel anything but reverence for that mighty Prophet, one of the great messengers of the Supreme...

According to William Montgomery Watt and Richard Bell, recent writers have generally dismissed the idea that Muhammad deliberately deceived his followers, arguing that Muhammad "was absolutely sincere and acted in complete good faith" and that Muhammad’s readiness to endure hardship for his cause when there seemed to be no rational basis for hope shows his sincerity. Watt says that sincerity does not directly imply correctness: In contemporary terms, Muhammad might have mistaken his own subconscious for divine revelation. Watt and Bernard Lewis argue that viewing Muhammad as a self-seeking impostor makes it impossible to understand the development of Islam. Alford T. Welch holds that Muhammad was able to be so influential and successful because of his firm belief in his vocation. Michael H. Hart in his first book ''The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History'' (1978), a ranking of the 100 people who most influenced human history, chose Muhammad as the first person on his list, attributing this to the fact that Muhammad was "supremely successful" in both the religious and secular realms. He also credits the authorship of the Qur'an to Muhammad, making his role in the development of Islam an unparalleled combination of secular and religious influence which entitles Muhammad to be considered the most influential single figure in human history.

Other religious traditions

Bahá'ís venerate Muhammad as one of a number of prophets or "Manifestations of God", but consider his teachings to have been superseded by those of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahai faith.

Muhammad is regarded as one of the Saints of Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints neither regards Muhammad as a prophet nor accepts the Qur'an as a book of scripture. However, it does respect Muhammad as one who taught moral truths which can enlighten nations and bring a higher level of understanding to individuals. Guru Nanak, a founder of Sikhism, viewed Muhammad as an agent of the Hindu Brahman.

Criticism

Muslims consider Muhammad to be the final prophet, the messenger of the final revelation that was called the Qur'an. Non-Muslims have viewed him with less favor. Criticism of Muhammad has existed since the 7th century, for his marriages, military expeditions and the laws he established, such as those concerning slavery.

Internal links

Achtiname of Muhammad

Arabian tribes that interacted with Muhammad

Depictions of Muhammad

List of films about Muhammad

Military career of Muhammad

''Mohammad, Messenger of God'' (''aka'' The Message)

''Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet'' (documentary)

Diplomatic career of Muhammad

See also

Glossary of Islamic terms in Arabic

List of founders of religious traditions

Muhammad in Islam

Paraclete in Islam

Relics of Muhammad

Early social changes under Islam

Prophets of Islam

Islamic philosophy

Sharia

Islamic economics in the world

Notes

References

Bibliography

Al-Hibri, Azizah Y. (2003). "An Islamic Perspective on Domestic Violence". ''27 Fordham International Law Journal'' 195.

(New edition 1974)

Encyclopedias

Further reading

Musa, A. Y. ''Hadith as Scripture: Discussions on The Authority Of Prophetic Traditions in Islam'', New York: Palgrave, 2008

External links

What Non-Muslims Say About Prophet Muhammad (Mohammed)

Non-Muslim biographies

Muhammad, article on ''Encyclopædia Britannica Online''

Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet — PBS Site

Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet — UPF (Producer's Site)

Muslim biographies

Ar-Raheeq Al-Makhtum

The Life of Muhammad by Muhammad Husayn Haykal

About the Prophet Muhammad (MSA West)

Category:570s births Category:632 deaths Category:7th-century rulers Category:Arab politicians Category:Founders of religions Category:Islam Category:People from Mecca Category:Quraish Category:Medina Category:Prophets of Islam

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{{Infobox Officeholder | name = Leonid BrezhnevЛеонид Брежнев | image = Brezhnev-color.jpg | caption = | citizenship = Soviet | nationality = Russian & Ukrainian | office = General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union(As First Secretary from 1964 to 1966) | president = Anastas Mikoyan (until 1965)Nikolai Podgorny (until 1977)Himself | premier = Alexei Kosygin (until 1980)Nikolai Tikhonov | term_start = 14 October 1964 | term_end = 10 November 1982 | predecessor = Nikita Khrushchev | successor = Yuri Andropov | office2 = Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union | term_start2 = 16 June 1977 | term_end2 = 10 November 1982 | predecessor2 = Nikolai Podgorny | successor2 = Vasili Kuznetsov (acting) | term_start3 = 7 May 1960 | term_end3 = 15 July 1964 | predecessor3 = Kliment Voroshilov | successor3 = Anastas Mikoyan | office4 = Chairman of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the Russian SFSR | term_start4 = 16 November 1964 | term_end4 = 8 April 1966 | predecessor4 = Nikita Khrushchev | successor4 = None—post abolished | 1blankname4 = Deputy | 1namedata4 = Andrei Kirilenko | birth_date = December 19, 1906 | birth_place = Kamenskoe, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire | death_date = November 10, 1982 | death_place = Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union | spouse = Viktoria Brezhneva | children = Galina BrezhnevaYuri Brezhnev | signature = Leonid Brezhnev Signature.svg | profession = Metallurgical Engineer, Civil servant | party = Communist Party of the Soviet Union | residence = Kutuzovsky Prospekt | allegiance = Soviet Union | branch = Red Army | serviceyears = 1941–1946 | rank = Major GeneralMarshal of the Soviet Union | commands = Soviet Armed Forces | battles = World War II | awards = | footnotes = This article is part of the series He was now a senior member of Khrushchev's entourage, and in June 1957, he backed Khrushchev in his struggle with the Stalinist old guard in the Party leadership, the so-called "Anti-Party Group". Following the defeat of the old guard, Brezhnev became a full member of the Politburo. Brezhnev became Second Secretary of the Central Committee in 1959, and in May 1960 was promoted to the post of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, making him nominal head of state although the real power resided with Khrushchev as Party Secretary. In 1962, Brezhnev became an honorary citizen of Belgrade.

Removal of Khrushchev

Until about 1962, Khrushchev's position as Party leader was secure; but as the leader aged, he grew more erratic and his performance undermined the confidence of his fellow leaders. The Soviet Union's mounting economic problems also increased the pressure on Khrushchev's leadership. Outwardly, Brezhnev remained loyal to Khrushchev, but he became involved in a 1963 plot to remove the leader from power, possibly playing a leading role. In 1963 also, Brezhnev succeeded Frol Kozlov, another Khrushchev protege, as Secretary of the Central Committee, positioning him as Khrushchev's likely successor. Khrushchev made him Second Secretary, literally deputy party leader, in 1964.

After returning from Scandinavia and Czechoslovakia, sensing nothing afoot, Khrushchev went on holiday in Pitsunda, near the Black Sea in October 1964. Upon his return, his Presidium officers congratulated him for his work in office. Anastas Mikoyan visited Khrushchev, hinting that he should not be too complacent about his present situation. Vladimir Semichastny, head of the KGB, was a crucial part of the conspiracy, as it was his duty to inform Khrushchev if anyone was plotting against his leadership. Nikolay Ignatov, who had been sacked by Khrushchev, discreetly requested the opinion of several Central Committee members. After some false starts, fellow conspirator Mikhail Suslov phoned Khrushchev on 12 October and requested that he return to Moscow to discuss the state of Soviet agriculture. Eventually Khrushchev understood what was happening, and said to Mikoyan, "If it's me who is the question, I will not make a fight of it". While a minority headed by Mikoyan wanted to remove Khrushchev from the office of First Secretary but retain him as the Chairman of the Council of Ministers, the majority headed by Brezhnev wanted to remove him from active politics.

Brezhnev and Nikolai Podgorny appealed to the Central Committee, blaming Khrushchev for economic failures, and accusing him of voluntarism and immodest behavior. Influenced by the Brezhnev allies, Politburo members voted to remove Khrushchev from office. In addition, some members of the Central Committee wanted him to undergo punishment of some kind. But Brezhnev, who had already been assured the office of the General Secretary, saw little reason to punish his old mentor further. Brezhnev was appointed First Secretary, but at the time was believed to be a transition leader of sorts, who would only "keep the shop" until another leader came in. Alexei Kosygin was appointed head of government, and Mikoyan became head of state. Brezhnev and his companions supported the general party line taken after Joseph Stalin's death, but felt the Khrushchev reforms had removed much of the Soviet Union's stability. One of the main reasons for Khrushchev's ousting was that he continuously overruled other party members. ''Pravda'', a newspaper in the Soviet Union, wrote of new enduring themes such as collective leadership, scientific planning, consultation with experts, organisational regularity and the ending of schemes. When Khrushchev left the public spot light, there was no popular commotion because most Soviet citizens, including the intelligentsia, anticipated a period of stabilisation, steady development of Soviet society and continuing economic growth in the years to come.

Leader (1964–82)

Consolidation of power

Early policy reforms were seen as predictable. In 1964, a plenum of the Central Committee forbade any single individual to hold the two most powerful posts of the country (the office of the General Secretary and the Premier). Former Chairman of the State Committee for State Security (KGB) Alexander Shelepin disliked the new collective leadership and its reforms. He made a bid for the supreme leadership in 1965 by calling for restoration of "obedience and order". Shelepin failed to gather support in the Presidium and Brezhnev's position was fairly secure; however, he was not able to remove Shelepin from office until 1967.

Khrushchev was removed mainly because of his disregard of many high-ranking organisations within the CPSU and the Soviet government. Throughout the Brezhnev era, the Soviet Union was controlled by a collective leadership (officially coined "Collectivity of leadership"), at least through the late 1960s and 1970s. The consensus within the party was that the collective leadership prevailed over the supreme leadership of one individual. T.H. Rigby argued that by the end of the 1960s, a stable oligarchic system had emerged in the Soviet Union, with most power vested around Brezhnev, Kosygin and Podgorny. While the assessment was true at the time, it coincided with Brezhnev's strengthening of power by means of an apparent clash with Central Committee Secretariat Mikhail Suslov. American Henry A. Kissinger, in the 1960s, mistakenly believed Kosygin to be the dominant leader of Soviet foreign policy in the Politburo. During this period, Brezhnev was gathering enough support to strengthen his position within Soviet politics. In the meantime, Kosygin was in charge of economic administration in his role as Chairman of the Council of Ministers. However Kosygin's position was weakened when he proposed an economic reform in 1965, which was widely referred to as the "Kosygin reform" within the Communist Party. The reform led to a backlash, and party Conservatives continued to oppose Kosygin after witnessing the results of reforms leading up to the Prague Spring. His opponents then flocked to Brezhnev, and they happily helped him in his task of strengthening his position within the Soviet system.

Brezhnev was adept at the politics within the Soviet power structure. He was a team player and never acted rashly or hastily; unlike Khrushchev, he did not make decisions without substantial consultation with his colleagues, and was always willing to hear their opinions. During the early 1970s, Brezhnev consolidated his domestic position. In 1977, he forced the retirement of Podgorny and became once again Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, making this position equivalent to that of an executive president. While Kosygin remained Premier until shortly before his death in 1980 (replaced by Nikolai Tikhonov as Premier), Brezhnev was the dominant driving force of the Soviet Union from the mid-1970s to his death in 1982.

Domestic policies

Repression

Brezhnev's stabilisation policy included ending the liberalising reforms of Khrushchev, and clamping down on cultural freedom. During the Khrushchev years Brezhnev had supported the leader's denunciations of Stalin's arbitrary rule, the rehabilitation of many of the victims of Stalin's purges, and the cautious liberalisation of Soviet intellectual and cultural policy. But as soon as he became leader, Brezhnev began to reverse this process, and developed an increasingly conservative and regressive attitude.

The trial of the writers Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky in 1966—the first such trials since Stalin's day—marked the reversion to a repressive cultural policy. Under Yuri Andropov the state security service (the KGB) regained much of the power it had enjoyed under Stalin, although there was no return to the purges of the 1930s and 1940s, and Stalin's legacy remained largely discredited among the Soviet intelligentsia. On 22 January 1969, a Soviet Army deserter, Viktor Ilyin, tried to assassinate Brezhnev and was diagnosed with mental illness and placed in solitary confinement in a psychiatric hospital. By the mid-1970s, there were an estimated 10,000 political and religious prisoners across the Soviet Union, living in grievous conditions and suffering from malnutrition; many of these prisoners were considered by the Soviet state to be mentally unfit and were hospitalised in mental asylums across the Soviet Union. The KGB infiltrated most if not all anti-government organisations under Brezhnev's rule, which ensured that there was little to no opposition against him or his power base. Brezhnev did however refrain from the all-out violence seen under the rule of Stalin.

Economics

Economic growth until 1973

! Period	GNP(according tothe CIA)	GNP(according toGrigorii Khanin)	GNP(according tothe USSR)
1960–1965	4.8	4.4	6.5
1965–1970	4.9	4.1	7.7
1970–1975	3.0	3.2	5.7
1975–1980	1.9	1.0	4.2
1980–1985	1.8	0.6	3.5

Between 1960 and 1970, Soviet agriculture output increased by 3% annually. Industry also improved, during the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1968–1970) the output of factories and mines increased by 138%, compared to 1960. While the Politburo became aggressively anti-reformist, Kosygin was able to convince both Brezhnev and the politburo to leave the reformist communist leader János Kádár of the People's Republic of Hungary alone because of an economic reform entitled New Economic Mechanism (NEM), which granted limited permission for the establishment of retail markets. In the People's Republic of Poland, another approach was taken in 1970 under the leadership of Edward Gierek, he believed that the government needed Western loans to facilitate the rapid growth of heavy industry. The Soviet leadership gave its approval for this, as the Soviet Union could not afford to maintain its massive subsidy for the Eastern Bloc in the form of cheap oil and gas exports. However, the Soviet Union did not accept all kinds of reforms, an example being the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 in response to Alexander Dubček's reforms. Under Brezhnev, the Politburo abandoned Khrushchev's decentralisation experiments. By 1966, two years after taking power, Brezhnev abolished the Regional Economic Councils, which were organised to manage the regional economies of the Soviet Union.

The Ninth Five-Year Plan delivered a change: for the first time industrial consumer products out-produced industrial capital goods. Consumer goods such as watches, furniture and radios were produced in abundance. However, the Plan still left the bulk of state's investment in industrial capital-goods production. This outcome was not seen as a positive sign for the future of the Soviet state by the majority of top party functionaries within the government; by 1975 consumer goods expanded 9% slower than industrial capital-goods. The policy continued despite Brezhnev's committement to make a rapid shift of investment which would satisfy Soviet consumers and lead to an even higher standard of living. This did not happen.

From 1928–1973, the Soviet Union was growing economically at a pace that would eventually catch up with the United States and Western Europe. This was true despite the advantage the United States had—the USSR was hampered by Joseph Stalin's bold policy of collectivisation and the effects of the Second World War which had left most of Western USSR in ruins. In 1973, the process of catching up with the rest of the West came to an abrupt end, with this year being seen by some scholars as the start of the Era of Stagnation. The beginning of the stagnation coincided with a financial crisis in Western Europe and the US. By the early 1970s, the Soviet Union had the world's second largest industrial capacity and produced more steel, oil, pig-iron, cement and tractors than any other country. Before 1973, the Soviet economy was expanding at a rate faster, by a small margin, than that of the United States. The USSR also kept a steady pace with the economies of Western Europe. Between 1964–1973, the Soviet economy stood at roughly half the output per head of Western Europe and a little more than one third that of the US.

Agricultural policy

Brezhnev's agricultural policy reinforced the conventional methods for organising the collective farms. The central imposition of quotas of output was maintained. Khrushchev's policy of amalgamating farms was continued by Brezhnev, because he shared the same belief as Khrushchev that bigger kolkhozes would increase productivity. Brezhnev pushed for an increase in state investments in farming, which mounted to an all-time high in the 1970s to 27% of all state investement – this figure did not include investments in farm equipment. In 1981 alone, 33,000 million American dollars (by contemporary exchange rate) was invested into agriculture.

Agricultural output in 1980 was much higher than the average production rate between 1966–1970; 21% higher than the average. Cereal crop output increased by 18%. However, these improved results are not encouraging. In the Soviet Union the criterion for assessing agricultural output was the grain harvest. The import of cereal, which begun under Khrushchev, had in fact become a normal phenomenon by Soviet standards. When Brezhnev had difficulties sealing commercial trade agreements with the United States, he went elsewhere, such as to Argentina. Trade was necessary because the Soviet Union's domestic production of fodder crops was severely deficient. Another sector which was meeting the wall was the sugar beet harvest which had declined by 2% in the 1970s. Brezhnev's way of resolving these issues was to increase state investment. Politburo member Gennady Voronov advocated for the division of each farm's work-force into what he called "links". These "links" would be entrusted with specific functions, such as to run a farm's dairy unit. His argument was that the larger the work force, the less responsible they felt. This program had been proposed to Joseph Stalin by Andrey Andreyev in the 1940s, and been opposed by Khrushchev before and after Stalin's death. Voronov was also unsuccessful; Brezhnev turned him down, and in 1973 he was removed from the Politburo.

Experimentation with "links" was not disallowed on a local basis, with Mikhail Gorbachev, the then First Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee, experimenting with links in his region. In the meantime, the Soviet government's involvement in agriculture was otherwise "unimaginative" and "incompetent". Facing mounting problems with agriculture, the Politburo issued a resolution entitled; "On the Further Development of Specialisation and Concentration of Agricultural Production on the Basis of Inter-Farm Co-operation and Agro-Industrial Integration". The resolution ordered kolkhozes close to each other to collaborate in their efforts to increase production. In the meantime, the state's subsidies to the food-and-agriculture sector did not prevent bankrupt farms from operating: rises in the price of produce were offset by rises in the cost of oil and other resources. By 1977, oil cost 84% more than it did in the late 1960s. The cost of other resources had also climbed by the late 1970s.

Brezhnev's answer to these problems was to issue two decrees, one in 1977 and one in 1981, which called for the expansion of all plots owned by the Soviet Union to half a hectare. These measures removed important obstacles for the expansion of agricultural output, but did not solve the problem. Under Brezhnev, private plots yielded 30% of the national agricultural production when they only cultivated four percent of Soviet agriculture. This was seen by some as proof that de-collectivisation was necessary to prevent Soviet agriculture from collapsing. On the other hand, leading Soviet politicians withheld from such drastic measures due to individual ideological and political interests. The underlying problems were the growing shortage of skilled labourers, a wrecked rural culture, the payment of workers in proportion to the quantity and not the quality of their work performance, too large farm machinery for the small collective farms and the roadless countryside. In the face of this, Brezhnev could only propose schemes such as large reclamation and irrigation projects, or of course, radical reform.

Economic stagnation

The Era of Stagnation, a term coined by Mikhail Gorbachev, was seen as the result of a compilation of factors, including the ongoing "arms race" between the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, the decision of the Soviet Union to participate in international trade (thus abandoning idea of economic isolation) while ignoring the changes occurring in Western societies, increasing harshness such as Soviet tanks rolling in to crush the Prague Spring in 1968, the intervention in Afghanistan, the stifling bureaucracy overseen by a cadre of increasingly elderly men running the country, the political corruption, supply bottlenecks, and other unaddressed structural problems with the economy under Brezhnev's rule. Social stagnation domestically was stimulated by the growing demands of unskilled workers, labour shortages and a decline in productivity and labour discipline. While Brezhnev, albeit "sporadically", attempted to reform the economy in the late 1960s and 1970s, he ultimately failed to produce any positive results. One of these reforms was the reorganisation of the Council of Ministries; this led to low unemployment at the price of low productivity and technological stagnation. The economic reform of 1965 was initiated by Alexei Kosygin, but its origin dates back to Nikita Khrushchev. The Central Committee was not willing to go through with the reform, while at the same time it admitted to economic problems. In 1973, the Soviet economy slowed down and started to lag behind that of the West because of enormous expenditure on the armed forces and too little spending on light industry and consumer goods. Soviet agriculture could not feed the urban population, let alone provide for the rising standard of living which the government promised as the fruits of "mature socialism", and on which industrial productivity depended. One of the most prominent critics of Brezhnev's economical policies was Mikhail Gorbachev who, when leader, called the economy under Brezhnev's rule "the lowest stage of socialism".

With the GNP growth of the Soviet economy drastically decreasing from the level it held in the 1950s and 1960s, the country began to lag behind Western Europe and the United States. The GNP's growth was slowing down to 1 to 2% each year, and with the technology falling farther and farther behind that of the West, the Soviet Union was facing economic stagnation by the early 1980s. During Brezhnev's last years of reign, the CIA monitored the Soviet Union's economic growth, and reported that the Soviet economy peaked in the 1970s, calculating that it had reached 57% of the American GNP. However, the development gap between the two nations widened, with the United States growing an average of one percent over the Soviet Union.

The last significant reform undertaken by the Kosygin government, and some believe the pre-''perestroika'' era, was a joint decision of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers named; "Improving planning and reinforcing the effects of the economic mechanism on raising the effectiveness in production and improving the quality of work", or more commonly known as the 1979 reform. The reform, in contrast to the 1965 reform, wanted to increase the central government's economic involvement by enhancing the duties and responsibilities of the ministries. Due to Kosygin's death in 1980, and due to his successor, Nikolai Tikhonov, conservative approach to economics, very little of the reform was actually carried out.

The Eleventh Five-Year Plan of the Soviet Union delivered a disappointing result: a change in growth from 4 to 5%. During the earlier Tenth Five-Year Plan, they had tried to meet the target of 6.1% of growth but failed. Brezhnev was able to defer the economic collapse by trading with Western Europe and the Arab World. However, the Soviet Union out-produced the United States in heavy industry during the Brezhnev era. One more galling result of Brezhnev's rule was that some of the Eastern Bloc economies were more advanced than the Soviet Union.

Soviet society

Early changes

Before 1973, the GDP per head in US dollars increased. Over the eighteen years Brezhnev ruled the Soviet Union, average income per head increased by half; however three-quarters of this growth came in the 1960s and early 1970s. There was one-quarter average income per head growth during the second half of Brezhnev's reign. In the first half of the Brezhnev period, income per head increased by 3.5% per annum; slightly less growth than what it had been the previous years. This can be explained by the reversion of most of Khrushchev's policies when Brezhnev came to power. The consumption per head rose by an estimate of 70% under Brezhnev, but with three-quarters of this growth happening before 1973 and only one-quarter in the second half of his reign. Most of the increase in consumer production in the early Brezhnev era can be attributed to the Kosygin reform.

The period of 'stagnation'

When the USSR's economic growth stalled in the 1970s, the standard of living and housing quality improved significantly. Instead of paying more attention to the economy, the Soviet leadership under Brezhnev tried to improve the living standard in the Soviet Union by extending social benefits, which led to an increase, though minor, in public support. The standard of living in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) had fallen behind that of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (GSSR) and the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic (ESSR) under Brezhnev; this led many Russians to believe that the policies of the Soviet Government were hurting the Russian population. With the mounting economic problems, skilled workers were usually paid more than had been intended in the first place, while unskilled labourers were indulged in punctuality, conscientiousness and sobriety. The state usually moved workers from one job to another which ultimately became an ineradicable feature in Soviet industry; the Soviet Government had no effective counter-measure because of the country's lack of unemployment. Government industries such as factories, mines and offices were staffed by indisciplined personnel who put a great effort into not doing their jobs; this ultimately led to a "work-shy workforce" among Soviet workers and administrators.

While some areas improved during the Brezhnev era, the majority of civilian services deteriorated, with the physical environment for the common Soviet citizen falling apart rapidly. Diseases were on the rise because of the decaying healthcare system. The living space remained rather small by First World standards, with the common Soviet person living on 13.4 square metres. At the same time thousands of Moscow inhabitants were homeless, most of them living in shacks, doorways and parked trams. Nutrition ceased to improve in the late 1970s, while rationing of staple food products returned to Sverdlovsk for instance. The state provided daily recreation and annual holidays for hard-working citizens. Soviet trade unions rewarded hard-working members and their families with beach vacations in Crimea and Georgia.

Social "rigidification" became a common feature in Soviet society. During the Stalin era in the 1930s and 1940s, a common labourer could expect promotion to a white-collar job if they studied and obeyed Soviet authorities. In Brezhnev's Soviet Union this was not the case. Holders of attractive offices clung to them as long as possible; mere incompetence was not seen as a good reason to dismiss anyone. In this way, too, the Soviet society Brezhnev passed on had become "static".

Foreign and defence policies

Soviet–US relations

During his eighteen years as Leader of the USSR, Brezhnev's only major foreign policy innovation was the inclusion of détente. However, it did not differ much from the Khrushchev Thaw, a domestic and foreign policy started by Nikita Khrushchev. Historian Robert Service sees détente simply as a continuation of Khrushchev's foreign policy. Despite an increasing tension in East–West relations under Khrushchev, relations had generally improved, as evidenced by the Partial Test Ban Treaty, Helsinki Accords and the installation of the telephone line between the White House and the Kremlin. Brezhnev's détente policy differed from that of Khrushchev in two ways. The first was that it was more comprehensive and wide-ranging in its aims, and included signing agreements on arms control, crisis prevention, East–West trade, European security, and human rights. The second part of the policy built on the importance of equalising the military strength of the United States and the Soviet Union. Defence spending under Brezhnev between 1965–1970 increased by 40%, and annual increases continued thereafter. Fifteen percent of GNP was spent on the military by the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982. By the mid 1970s, it had become clear that Kissinger's policy of détente towards the Soviet Union had failed. The détente had rested on the assumption that a "linkage" of some type could be found between the two countries, with the US hoping that the signing of SALT I and a increase in Soviet–US trade would stop the aggressive growth of communism in the third world. This did not happen and the Soviet Union started funding the communist guerillas who fought actively against the US during the Vietnam War. The US lost the Vietnam War and at the same time lost many countries to communism in Asia. After Gerald Ford lost the presidential election to Jimmy Carter, American foreign policies became more hostile towards the Soviet Union and the communist world; while at the same time aiming to stop funding for some repressive anti-communist governments the United States supported. While at first standing for a decrease in all defence initiatives, the later years of Carter's presidency would increase spending on the US military.

In the 1970s, the Soviet Union reached the peak of its political and strategic power in relation to the United States. The first SALT Treaty effectively established parity in nuclear weapons between the two superpowers, the Helsinki Treaty legitimised Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe, and the United States defeat in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal weakened the prestige of the United States. The Soviet Union extended its diplomatic and political influence in the Middle East and Africa.

The Vietnam War

Nikita Khrushchev had initially supported North Vietnam out of "fraternal solidarity", but as the war escalated he had urged the North Vietnamese leadership to give up the quest of liberating South Vietnam. He continued by rejecting an offer of assistance made by the North Vietnamese government, and instead told them to enter negotiations in the United Nations Security Council. Brezhnev, after Khrushchev's ousting, started once again to aid the communist resistance in Vietnam. In February 1965 Kosygin travelled to Hanoi with a dusin of Soviet air force generals and economic experts. During the Soviet visit, President Lyndon B. Johnson had allowed US bombing raids on North Vietnamese soil in retaliation of a recent attack by the Viet Cong. Johnson privately suggested to Brezhnev that he would guarantee an end South Vietnamese hostility if Brezhnev would guarantee a North Vietnamese one. Brezhnev was interested in this offer initially; however, after being told by Andrei Gromyko that the North Vietnamese government was not interested in a diplomatic solution to the war, Brezhnev rejected the offer. The Johnson administration responded to this rejection by expanding American presence in Vietnam, but later invited the USSR to negotiate a treaty concerning arms control. The USSR simply did not respond, initially because Brezhnev and Kosygin were fighting over which of them had the right to represent the USSR abroad, but later because of the escalation of the "dirty war" in Vietnam. In early 1967 Johnson offered to make a deal with Ho Chi Minh, and said he was prepared to end bombing raids in North Vietnam if he ended his infiltration of South Vietnam. The US bombing raids halted for a few days. In the meantime, Kosygin publicly announced his support for this offer. The North Vietnamese government failed to respond however, and because of this, the US continued its raids in North Vietnam. The Brezhnev leadership concluded from this event that diplomatic solutions to the ongoing war in Vietnam were hopeless. Later in 1968, Johnson invited Kosygin to the United States to discuss ongoing problems in Vietnam and the arms race. The summit was marked with a friendly atmosphere, but there were no concrete breakthrough's by either side.

In the aftermath of the Sino–Soviet border conflict, the Chinese continued to aid the North Vietnamese regime, but with the death of Minh in 1969, China's strongest link to Vietnam had died. In the meantime, Richard Nixon had been elected President of the United States. While having been known for his anti-communist rhetoric, Nixon said in 1971 that the US "''must'' have relations with Communist China". His plan was for a slow withdrawal of US troops from Vietnam, and still retain the capitalist dictatorship of South Vietnam. The only way he thought possible was to improve relations with both Communist China and the USSR. He later made a visit to Moscow to negotiate a treaty on arms control and the Vietnam war, but on Vietnam nothing could be agreed. On his visit to Moscow, Nixon and Brezhnev signed the SALT I, marking the beginning of the "détente" era.

Sino–Soviet relations

With Soviet foreign relations with the People's Republic of China quickly deteriorating after Nikita Khrushchev's attempts to reach a ''rapprochement'' with more liberal Eastern European states such as Yugoslavia and the west. When Brezhnev consolidated his power base in the 1960s, China was descending into crisis because of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution which led to the decimination of the Communist Party of China and other ruling offices. Soviet reaction to the seemingly turned anarchy state of the country, exacerbated the Soviet reaction. The Brezhnev leadership who promoted the idea of "stabilisation", could not comprehend why Mao would start such a "self-destructive" drive to finish the socialist revolution, according to himself. At the same time, Brezhnev had problems of his own, the Czechoslovakiaan leadership were also deviating from the Soviet model. In the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet leadership proclaimed the Brezhnev doctrine, which said the USSR had the right to intervene in any fraternal communist state which did not follow the Soviet model. This doctrine increased tension not only with the Eastern Bloc, but also the Asian communist states. By 1969 relations with other communist countries had deteriorated to a level were Brezhnev was not even able to gather five of the fourteen ruling communist parties to attend an international conference in Moscow. In the aftermath of the failed conference, the Soviets concluded that there "were no leading center of the international communist movement".

Later in 1969, Chinese forces started the Sino–Soviet border conflict. The Sino–Soviet split had chagrined Premier Alexei Kosygin a great deal, and for a while refused to accept its irrevocability; he briefly visited Beijing in 1969 due to the increase of tension between the USSR and China. By the early 1980s, both the Chinese and the Soviets were issuing statements calling for a normalisation of relations between the two states. The conditions given to the Soviets by the Chinese were the reduction of Soviet military presence in the Sino–Soviet border and the withdrawal of Soviets troops in Afghanistan and Mongolia and to support for the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Brezhnev responded in his March 1982 speech in Tashkent were he called for the normalisation of relations. Full Sino–Soviet normalisations of relations would prove to take years, until the last Soviet ruler, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.

Intervention in Afghanistan

After the communist revolution in Afghanistan in 1978, the Afghan civil war started because of authoritarian actions forced upon the populace by the Communist regime; the popular backlash against the regime was led by the mujahideen. With a KGB report claiming that Afghanistan could be taken in a matter of weeks, Brezhnev and several top party officers agreed to a full intervention in Afghanistan in the worry that the Soviet Union was losing their influence in Central Asia. Parts of the Soviet military establishment were opposed to any sort of active Soviet military presence in the country, believing that the Soviet Union should leave Afghan politics alone. President Carter, following the advice of his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, denounced the intervention describing it as the "most serious danger to peace since 1945". The US stopped all grain export to the Soviet Union and boycotted the 1980 Summer Olympics held in Moscow. The Soviet Union responded by boycotting the 1984 Summer Olympics held in Los Angeles.

Eastern Europe

The first crisis for Brezhnev's regime came in 1968, with the attempt by the Communist leadership in Czechoslovakia, under Alexander Dubček, to liberalise the Communist system (Prague Spring). In July, Brezhnev publicly criticised the Czechoslovak leadership as "revisionist" and "anti-Soviet", and in August he orchestrated the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and Dubček's removal. The invasion led to public protests by dissidents in various Eastern Bloc countries. Brezhnev's assertion that the Soviet Union had the right to interfere in the internal affairs of its satellites to "safeguard socialism" became known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, although it was really a restatement of existing Soviet policy, as Khrushchev had shown in Hungary in 1956. In the aftermath of the invasion, Brezhnev reiterated it in a speech at the Fifth Congress of the Polish United Workers' Party on 13 November 1968:

Brezhnev was not the one pushing hardest for the use of military force when discussing the situation in Czechoslovakia with the Politburo. Brezhnev was aware of the dire situation he was in, and if he had abstained or voted against Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia he may have been faced with growing turmoil — domestically and in the Eastern Bloc. Archival evidence suggests that Brezhnev was one of the few who was looking for a temporary compromise with the reform-friendly Czechoslovak government when their relationship was at its brinking point. Significant voices in the Soviet leadership demanded the re-installation of a so-called 'revolutionary government'. After the military intervention in 1968, Brezhnev met with Czechoslovak reformer Bohumil Simon, then a member of the Politburo of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, and said; "If I had not voted for Soviet armed assistance to Czechoslovakia you would not be sitting here today, but quite possibly I wouldn't either".

In the early 1980s a political crisis emerged in Poland with the emergence of the Solidarity mass movement. By the end of October Solidarity had 3 million members, and by December 9 million. In a public opinion poll done by the Polish government, 89% of the respondents supported Solidarity. With the Polish leadership split on what to do, the majority of did not want to impose martial law, as suggested by Wojciech Jaruzelski. The Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc was unsure how to handle the situation, but Erich Honecker of East Germany pressed for military action. In a formal letter to Brezhnev Honecker proposed a joint military measure to control the escalating problems in Poland. A CIA report suggested the Soviet military were mobilising for an invasion.

In 1980 representatives from the Eastern Bloc nations met at the Kremlin to discuss the Polish situation. Brezhnev eventually concluded that it would be better to leave the domestic matters of Poland alone for the time being, re-assuring the Polish delegates that the USSR would intervene only if asked to. With domestic matters escalating out of control in Poland, Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed state of war, the Polish version of martial law, on 12 December 1981.

Personality cult

The last years of Brezhnev's rule were marked by a growing personality cult. He was well known for his love of medals (he received over 200), so in December 1966, for his 60th birthday, he was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union. Brezhnev received the award, which came with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star, three more times in celebration of his birthdays. On his 70th birthday he was awarded the Marshal of the Soviet Union – the highest military honour in the Soviet Union. After being awarded the medal, he attended the 18th Army Veterans dressed in a long coat and saying; "Attention, Marshal's coming!". His weakness for undeserved medals was proven with his poorly written memoir about his military service during World War II. Despite the apparent weaknesses of his memoirs, they were awarded the Lenin Prize for Literature and were met with critical acclaim by the Soviet press. The book was however followed by two other books, one on the Virgin Lands Campaign. Brezhnev's vanity made him the victim of many political jokes. Nikolai Podgorny warned him of this fact, but Brezhnev replied, "If they are poking fun at me, it means they like me". It is now believed by Western historians and political analysts that the books were written by some of his "court writers". The memoirs treated the little known and minor Battle of Novorossiysk as the decisive military theatre of World War II.

Brezhnev's personality cult was growing outrageously fast at a time when his health was in decline. His physical condition was deteriorating; he had become addicted to sleeping pills and began drinking an excessive amount of alcohol, smoked heavily and had over the years become overweight. From 1973 until his death Brezhnev's central nervous system underwent chronic deterioration and he had several minor strokes. When receiving the Order of Lenin, Brezhnev walked shakily and fumbled his words. The Chief of Fourth Directorate of the Ministry of Health Yevgeniy Chazov had to keep doctors by Brezhnev's side at all times, with Brezhnev being brought back from limbo on several occasions. At this time, most senior officers of the CPSU wanted to keep him alive, even if such men as Mikhail Suslov, Dmitriy Ustinov and Andrei Gromyko among others were growing increasingly frustrated with Brezhnev's policies. However they did not want to risk a new period of domestic turmoil caused by his death. It was about this time First World commentators started guessing Brezhnev's heirs apparent, the most notable competitors being Suslov and Andrei Kirilenko were both older than he was, while Fyodor Kulakov and Konstantin Chernenko were younger than Brezhnev; Kulakov died of natural causes in 1978.

Last years and death

Brezhnev's health worsened in the winter of 1981–82. In the meantime, the country was governed by Gromyko, Ustinov, Suslov and Yuri Andropov and crucial Politburo decisions were made in his absence. While the Politburo was pondering the question of who would succeed, all signs indicated that the ailing leader was dying. The choice of the successor would have been influenced by Suslov, but he died at the age of 79 in January 1982. Andropov took Suslov's seat in the Central Committee Secretariat; by May it became obvious that Andropov would try to make a bid for the office of the General Secretary. He, with the help of fellow KGB associates, started circulating rumours that political corruption had become worse during Brezhnev's tenure as leader in an attempt to create an environment hostile to Brezhnev in the Politburo. Andropov's actions showed that he was not afraid of Brezhnev's wrath.

Brezhnev rarely appeared in public during the spring, summer and the autumn of 1982. The official explanation by the Soviet government was that Brezhnev was not seriously ill, while at the same time doctors were surrounding him. He suffered a severe stroke in May 1982, but refused to relinquish office. Brezhnev died on 10 November 1982 after suffering a heart attack. He was honoured with a state funeral which was followed with a five-day period of nationwide mourning. He was buried in the Kremlin in Red Square. National and international statesmen from around the globe attended his funeral. His wife and family attended, with his daughter Galina Brezhneva outraging spectators by not showing up in a sombre garb. Brezhnev on the other hand was dressed for burial in his Marshal's uniform along with all his medals.

Legacy

Brezhnev presided over the Soviet Union for longer than any other person except Joseph Stalin. He is often criticised for the prolonged era of economic stagnation, the Era of Stagnation, in which fundamental economic problems were ignored and the Soviet political system was allowed to decline. During Mikhail Gorbachev's tenure as leader there was an increase in criticism of the Brezhnev years, such as claims that Brezhnev followed "a fierce neo-Stalinist line". The Gorbachevian discourse blamed Brezhnev for failing to modernise the country and to change with the times, although in a later statement Gorbachev made assurances that Brezhnev was not as bad as he was made out to be, saying, "Brezhnev was nothing like the cartoon figure that is made of him now". The intervention in Afghanistan, which was one of the major decisions of his career, also significantly undermined both the international standing and the internal strength of the Soviet Union. In Brezhnev's defence, it can be said that the Soviet Union reached unprecedented and never-repeated levels of power, prestige, and internal calm under his rule.

Brezhnev has fared well in opinion polls when compared to his successors and predecessors in Russia. However in the West he is most commonly remembered for starting the economic stagnation which triggered the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In an opinion poll by VTsIOM in 2007 the majority of Russians wanted to live during the Brezhnev's era rather than any other period of Soviet-Russian history during the 20th century.

Personality traits and family

Brezhnev's vanity became a problem during his reign. For instance, when Moscow City Party Secretary N. G. Yegorychev refused to sing his praises, he was shunned, forced out of local politics and earned only an obscure ambassadorship. Brezhnev had no problem with political corruption claiming that "Nobody lives just on their wages". His main passion was driving foreign cars given him by leaders of state from across the world. He usually drove these between his dacha and the Kremlin with flagrant disregard for public safety.

Brezhnev was well known for his passion for awards and decorations. He was Hero of Socialist Labour, four times Hero of the Soviet Union, three times Hero of Czech Republic, three times Hero of Republic of Bulgaria, etc. Having spent the Great Patriotic War as a political commissar and having never been a military commander, he, nevertheless, was promoted to the highest military rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Brezhnev's vanity undermined the authority of Soviet power and contributed to the general corruption of the regime. It was made fun of in numerous anecdotes.

Brezhnev lived at 26 Kutuzovsky Prospekt, Moscow. During vacations, he lived in his Gosdacha in Zavidovo. He was married to Viktoria Petrovna (1912–1995). During her final four years she lived virtually alone, abandoned by everybody. She had suffered for a long time from diabetes and was nearly blind in her last years. He had a daughter, Galina, and a son, Yuri. Galina in her later life became an alcoholic who together with a circus director started a gold-bullion fraud gang in the later years of the Soviet Union.

Offices held

Notes

Bibliography

External links

Annotated Bibliography for Leonid Brezhnev from the Alsos Digital Library for Nuclear Issues

''Our Course: Peace and Socialism'' Collection of Brezhnev's 1973 speeches

CCCP TV Videoprograms with L. Brezhnev on Soviet TV portal (in Russian)

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Coordinates	6°05′0″N116°12′0″N
name	Noor Muhammad
birth date	April 15, 1951
birth place	Abbottabad, Haripur District, North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan
death date	April 12, 2004
death place	Islamabad, Islamabad Capital Territory
residence	Islamabad, Pakistan
citizenship	Pakistan
nationality	Pakistani
fields	Mathematics
workplaces	Quaid-i-Azam University, PakistanUniversiti Brunei Darussalam, BruneiUniversity of Munster, GermanyInternational Centre for Theoretical Physics, Italy
alma mater	University of Peshawar, N.W.F.P.Quaid-i-Azam University, IslamabadMoscow State University, Russia.
doctoral advisor	Grigory Barenblatt
notable students	Dr. Muhammad Farooq
known for	his work on C*-algebra, Pseudo-differential operator, approximation theory, Topological Algebra, and Symmetric topology
influenced	Abdus Salam
awards	Gold Medal, Pakistan Mathematican Society
signature
footnotes	}}

Dr. Prof. Noor Muhammad (April 15, 1951 - April 12, 2004), was a notable Pakistani mathematician and mathematics writer who made an original contribution to the fields of C*-algebra, Symmetric topology and pure mathematics. He was the chairman of Department of Mathematics, in which he assumed this position in 2000 till 2002. He was a distinguished student of Russian mathematician dr. Grigory Barenblatt, and made significant efforts to the fields of topological algebras.

He was the co-author of ''Symmetric Topological Algebras and Applications'' which was published at Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, and since then, dr. Noor Muhammad has produced 20 M.Phil. students at the Quaid-i-Azam University since his PhD in 1983. His death is a loss to the mathematical community in Pakistan.

Life and Education

Muhammad was born in Abbottabad, Haripur District where he completed his high school from there. In 1971, Muhammad gained his Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from University of Peshawar, followed by his Master of Science in Mathematics in 1973 from Quaid-i-Azam University. With an scholarship awarded by the Quaid-i-Azam University, Muhammad traveled to Soviet Union in 1979, and completed his thesis in 1983 under the direction of dr. Grigory Barenblatt from Moscow State University. His doctoral thesis covered the Functional Analysis, namely C*-algebras. He taught mathematics at the Moscow State University till 1984 and subsequently moved to Trieste, Italy the same year.

International Centre for Theoretical Physics

Noor Muhammad joined International Centre for Theoretical Physics on the request of prominent theoretical physics and nobel laureate in Physics Dr. Prof. Abdus Salam. As a post-doctoral fellow, he also worked on P-Commutative Topological Algebras. From 1990 till 1995, he became a associate professor of mathematician at ICTP. Noor Mohammad, at ICTP, published more than 30 articles in refereed international journals during the course of his career.

Academic Career in Mathematics

He reluctantly returned to Pakistan where he joined Quaid-i-Azam University and became a chairperson of the Department of Mathematics. he produced a number of research papers on elliptic pseudo-differential operators over C*-Algebras for compact manifold. He had also published papers on topics in approximation theory, derivation on topological algebras and multipliers of topological algebra.

In mathematics, the Functional Analysis depends heavily upon topology, especially the branch of Functional Analysis that Dr. Noor Muhammad specialized in. His lectures notes on a first course on functional analysis, a copy of which is still available, are topological based. He was a close associate and college of dr. Qaiser Mushtaq, and had cordial relationship with him. In 2000, Dr. Noor Muhammad began to write college-level textbook on topology, however, after his death, the book is remained incompleted.

Death

In 2003, Dr. Noor Muhammad, was diagnosed with a heart ailment. Soon after, he had heart surgery, which he barely survived. His friends and colleague in the Department of Mathematics advised him to take at least a semester off. Dr. Qaiser Mushtaq, who became a new head of the department, managed to arrange a substitute professor Dr. Akbar Azam, who was then teaching at the Government College University.

After about a semester’s respite, Dr Noor Muhammad restarted lecturing in the department. He regularly attended the meetings. According to the Dr. Qaisar Mustaq's memoir, ''Dr. Noor Muhammad was very tense in the Ph.D Committee Meeting that he attended one day before he died. Dr Noor Muhammad could not take the pressure any more and asked for leave half way through''. Next morning, he was pronounced dead. He did not live to marry off his daughter, enjoy driving in his newly bought Toyota car, and publish his book on topology. His death has deprived the Mathematics Department, Quaid-i-Azam University, of its sole Functional Analyst.

Research Papers

An explicit projection method for a system of nonlinear variational inequalities with different (γ,r)-cocoercive mappings, by Noor Muhammad.

Double multipliers on topological algebras, L. A. Khan, N. Mohammad, and A. B. Thaheem, International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences. Volume 22 (1999), Issue 3, Pages 629-636.

A note on one-parameter groups of automorphisms, A. B. Thaheem and Noor Mohammad, International Journal of Mathematics and Mathematical Sciences

Best approximations in topological vector spaces‎ by Noor Mohammad, A. B. Thaheem - 1987

Bibliography

Symmetric Topological Algebras and Applications By Noor Muhammad and Maria Fragoulopoulou.

The Topological Algebra and Mathematics, by Noor Muhammad (Incompleted)

References

Category:1951 births Category:Pakistani academics Category:Pakistani mathematicians Category:Pakistani Muslims Category:Muslim scholars Category:Mathematics writers Category:Quaid-i-Azam University faculty Category:University of the Punjab alumni Category:Moscow State University alumni Category:Quaid-i-Azam University alumni Q Category:2004 deaths

Coordinates	6°05′0″N116°12′0″N
name	Mohammed Rafi
background	solo_singer
birth name	Mohammed Haji Ali Mohammed Rafi
born	24 December 1924 Kotla Sultan Singh, Punjab, British India
died	31 July 1980 (aged 55) Bombay, Maharashtra, India
origin	India
instrument	Vocalist
genre	Hindustani Classical Music, Indian classical, ghazal, playback singing, qawwali. thumri
occupation	Playback Singer, sang in Hindi, Punjabi, and various other regional languages, also recorded songs in English, Scottish, Spanish and French
years active	1941–1980 }}

Mohammad Rafi (}}; 24 December 1924 – 31 July 1980), was an Indian playback singer whose career spanned four decades. He won a National Award and 6 Filmfare Awards. In 1967, he was honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India.

Rafi claimed to have recorded 28,000 songs in 11 Indian languages between 1944 and April 1980; according to the available figures, Rafi has sung 4,516 Hindi film songs, 112 non-Hindi film songs, and 328 private (non-film) songs from 1945 to 1980. His singing career spanned about 40 years, and his songs ranged from classical numbers to patriotic songs, sad lamentations to highly romantic numbers, qawwalis to ghazals and bhajans, and from slow melancholic tunes to fast and melodious fun filled songs. He had a strong command of Hindi and Urdu and a powerful range that could accommodate this variety. Primarily noted for his Hindi-Urdu songs, he also sang in other Indian languages including Konkani, Bhojpuri, Oriya, Punjabi, Bengali, Marathi, Sindhi, Kannada, Gujarati, Telugu, Maghi, Maithili and Assamese. He also recorded a few English, Persian, Spanish and Dutch songs.

An article in ''Times of India'', published on 24 July 2010 sums up his voice as, "''If there are 101 ways of saying "I love you" in a song, Mohammed Rafi knew them all. The awkwardness of puppy love, the friskiness of teen romance, the philosophy of unrequited love and the anguish of heartbreak - he could explore every crevice of ardour. It wasn't just love, his voice could capture the navras of life - a failed poet's melancholy, a fiery unionist's vim, a debt-ridden farmer's despair, really anybody at all. Rafi, whose career spanned nearly four decades, was a singer for every season and every reason.''"

Early years and background

Mohammed Rafi was born the second youngest of six sons of Hajji Ali Mohammad at Kotla Sultan Singh, a village near Amritsar in Punjab (British India). Rafi, whose nickname was Pheeko, started singing by imitating chants of a fakir in his village. Rafi's father moved to Lahore in the Nineteen Twenties and owned a men's salon in Noor Mohalla in Bhatti Gate Lahore. It was his elder brother (Mohammad Deen's) friend Abdul Hameed who later became his brother in law, who spotted the talent in Rafi in Lahore and encouraged him to sing. Abdul Hameed later convinced the family elders to let him move to Bombay and he accompanied Mohammad Rafi to Bombay in 1944. Rafi learnt classical music from Ustad Bade Ghulam Ali Khan, Ustad Abdul Wahid Khan, Pandit Jiwanlal Matto and Firoze Nizami.

Rafi's first public performance came at the age of 13, when he was allowed to sing at a concert in Lahore featuring K. L. Saigal. In 1941, Rafi, under Shyam Sunder, made his debut in Lahore as a playback singer in the duet "Soniye nee, Heeriye nee" with Zeenat Begum in the Punjabi film ''Gul Baloch'' (the film was released in 1944). In that same year, Rafi was invited by All India Radio Lahore station to sing for them. He made his professional debut in the Shyam Sunder-directed 1941 film Gul Baloch and the Bombay film, Gaon Ki Gauri, the following year.

Advent in Bombay

In 1944, Rafi moved to Bombay (now Mumbai),The brother in laws to be took up a ten-by-ten-feet room in the crowded downtown Bhendi Bazar area. Here poet Tanvir Naqvi introduced him to some of film producers including Abdur Rashid Kardar, Mehboob Khan and actor-director Nazeer. Shyam Sunder was in Bombay and again provided an opportunity to Rafi – who got to sing a duet with GM Durrani, ‘Aji dil ho qaabu mein to dildar ki aisi taisi…’, for Gaon Ki Gori, which became Rafi’s first recorded song in a Hindi film. Many other songs followed. Rafi also did brief roles in movies like Laila-Majnu (1945) and Jugnu. In Laila-Majnu, he was seen singing ''Tera Jalwa'' as a part of the chorus.

In 1948, after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, the team of Husanlal Bhagatram-Rajendra Krishan-Rafi had overnight created the song ‘Suno suno ae duniyawalon, Bapuji ki amar kahani…’. He was invited by the Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, to sing at the latter's house. In 1948, Rafi received a silver medal from Nehru on the Indian Independence Day. In 1949, Rafi was given solo songs by music directors such as Naushad, (''Chandni Raat'', ''Dillagi'' and ''Dulari'') Shyam Sunder (''Bazaar'') and Husnalal Bhagatram (''Meena Bazaar'').

Rafi's first song with Naushad was "Hindustan ke hum hain" with Shyam Kumar, Alauddin and others, from A. R. Kardar's ''Pehle Aap'' (1944). Around the same time, Rafi recorded another song for the 1945 film ''Gaon ki Gori'', "Aji dil ho kaaboo mein". He considered this song his first Hindi language song.

Rafi also appeared in two movies. In 1945, Rafi appeared on the screen for the song "Tera Jalwa Jis Ne Dekha" in the film ''Laila Majnu''. He sang a number of songs for Naushad as part of the chorus, including "Mere sapnon ki rani, Roohi Roohi" with K. L. Saigal from the film ''Shahjahan'' (1946). Rafi sang "Tera Khilona Toota Balak" from Mehboob Khan's ''Anmol Ghadi'' (1946) and a duet with Noor Jehan in the 1947 film ''Jugnu'', "Yahan Badla Wafa Ka". Following the Partition of India, Rafi decided to stay in India and had his family flown to Bombay. Whereas Noor Jahan migrated to Pakistan and made a pair with playback singer Ahmed Rushdi.

Rafi was highly influence by the singers of that time like K. L Saigal, Talat Mehmood and, most notably, by G. M. Durrani - on whose style he based his singing. He sung with his idol in some of the songs such as "''Humko Hanste Dekh Zamana Jalta Hai'' (Hum Sab Chor Hain, 1956) and "''Khabar Kisi ko Nahiin, woh kidhar Dekhte'' (Beqasoor, 1950), etc.

Recording career

He associated with many music directors of his time, most notably Naushad. In the late 1950s and 1960s, Rafi worked with other composers of the era such as O. P. Nayyar, Shankar Jaikishan and S.D. Burman.

; Association with Naushad

As per Naushad, Rafi came to him with a letter of recommendation from Naushad's father. Rafi’s first song for Naushad was "Hindustan ke hum hain" ("We belong to Hindustan") for the film ''Pehle Aap'' in 1944. The first song for the duo was the soundtrack of the movie ''Anmol Ghadi'' (1946). Before Rafi, Naushad’s favorite singer was Talat Mahmood. Once Naushad found Talat smoking during a recording. He was annoyed and hired Rafi to sing all the songs of the movie ''Baiju Bawra''.

In 1949 when "Suhani Raat Dhal Chuki".

Rafi's association with Naushad helped the former establish himself as one of the most prominent playback singers in Hindi Cinema. Songs from ''Baiju Bawra'' (1952) like "O duniya ke rakhwale" and "Man tarpat Hari darshan ko aaj" furthered Rafi's credentials. Rafi ended up singing a total of 149 songs (81 of them solo) for Naushad.

In the 1960 film ''Mughal-E-Azam'', Mohammed Rafi sang the song "Ae Mohabbat Zindabad", composed by Naushad, with a chorus of 100 singers.

; Association with S D Burman S. D. Burman patronized Rafi as the singing voice of Dev Anand and Guru Dutt. Rafi worked with Burman in movies like ''Pyaasa'' (1957), ''Kaagaz Ke Phool'' (1959), ''Tere Ghar ke Saamne'' (1962), ''Guide'' (1965), ''Aradhana'' (1969), and ''Abhimaan'' (1973). S. D. Burman was also another music director besides Naushad who used Rafi prolifically to sing for most of his songs.

; Association with Shankar-Jaikishan

Rafi and Shankar Jaikishan was a partnership in the Hindi film industry. Under Shankar-Jaikishan, Rafi produced some of his songs for actors like Shammi Kapoor and Rajendra Kumar. Out of six Filmfare awards, Rafi won three for S-J songs, viz., "Teri pyari pyari soorat ko", "Baharon phool barsao", and "Dil ke jharokhe mein". The song "Yahoo! Chahe koi mujhe junglee kahe" was sung by Rafi, only to be matched a fast-paced orchestra and a composition by Shankar Jaikishan. S-J made Rafi give playback for Kishore Kumar in the film ''Shararat'' ("Ajab hai daastan teri yeh zindagi"). Rafi sang a total of 341 numbers (216 solo) for Shankar-Jaikishan. Among the films of this combination, are ''Basant Bahar'', ''Professor'', ''Junglee'', ''Suraj'', ''Brahmachari'', ''An Evening in Paris'', ''Dil Tera Deewana'', ''Yakeen'', ''Prince'', ''Love in Tokyo'', ''Beti Bete'', ''Dil Ek Mandir'', ''Dil Apna Aur Preet Parai'', ''Gaban'' and ''Jab Pyar Kisi Se Hota Hai''.

; Association with Ravi

Rafi got his first Filmfare Award for the title song of ''Chaudhvin Ka Chand'' (1960), composed by Ravi. He got National Award for the song "Babul Ki Duaen Leti Ja" from the film ''Neel Kamal'' (1968), also composed by Ravi. Rafi actually wept during the recording of this song. He, himself, admitted this in his interview to BBC in 1977.

Ravi and Rafi produced several other songs, in the films ''China Town'' (1962), ''Kaajal'' (1965), and ''Do Badan'' (1966).

; Association with Madan Mohan

Madan Mohan was another composer whose favorite singer was Rafi. Rafi's first solo with Madan Mohan in ''Ankhen'' (1950), "Hum ishq mein barbad hain barbad rahenge". They teamed up to produce many songs including "Teri Aankhon ke Siva", "Yeh Duniya Yeh Mehfil" and "Tum Jo Mil Gaye Ho".

; Association with O. P. Nayyar

Rafi and O. P. Nayyar created music in the 1950s and 1960s. O. P. Nayyar was once quoted as saying "If there had been no Mohd. Rafi, there would have been no O. P. Nayyar". He and Rafi created many songs together including "Yeh hai Bombay meri jaan". He got Rafi to sing for singer-actor Kishore Kumar – "Man mora baawara" for the movie ''Raagini''. Later, Rafi sang for Kishore Kumar in movies such as ''Baaghi'', ''Shehzaada'' and ''Shararat''. O. P. Nayyar used Rafi and Asha Bhosle for most of his songs. The team created many songs in early 1950s and 1960s for movies such as ''Naya Daur'' (1957), ''Tumsa Nahin Dekha'' (1957), and ''Kashmir Ki Kali'' (1964). Rafi sang a total of 197 numbers (56 solo) for Nayyar. The song "Jawaaniyan yeh mast mast" and the title song "Yun to humne lakh hansee dekhe hain, tumsa nahin dekha" of the film ''Tumsa Nahin Dekha''. They were followed by songs like "Taareef karoon kya uski jisne tumhe banaya" from ''Kashmir ki Kali''.

Rafi and OP had a fallout during the recording for movie "Sawan ki Ghata", as disclosed by OP during one of his interviews. In the interview, he says, "Throughout my career, I have been famous for my punctuality. Rafi had given me a time for recording a song from Saawan Ki Ghata. The musicians were all set. Rafi came late for that recording and said, “Sorry, I was stuck up in Shankar- Jaikishan’s recording.” I said, “You had given me the time by your choice. So I gather, you have time for Shankar- Jaikishan and not for O.P. Nayyar. Now onwards, O.P.Nayyar will not have time for Rafi.” I cancelled the recording in front of shell shocked musicians and told the accountant to charge the expenses for the cancelled session to my account! After three years, Rafi came to my house crying like a baby. I also broke down. Both of us touched each other’s feet. I said, “Rafi, by coming here today you proved that you are much greater than O.P. You could overcome your ego. I could not!” He often used to sing – Yuun To Humne Laakh Sangeetkaar Dekhe Hai, O.P.Nayyar Sa Nahi Dekha! (I have seen many a composer but never one like O.P.Nayyar!) He also used to tell me, “Your music could turn a eunuch into a he-man!”

; Association with Laxmikant-Pyarelal

The composer duo Laxmikant-Pyarelal (L-P) also patronized Rafi as one of their singers, right from their very first film, ''Parasmani'' (1963). Both Rafi and L-P won the Filmfare Awards for the song "Chahoonga main tujhe saanjh savere" from ''Dosti'' (1964). Rafi rendered the maximum number of songs for the music director duo Laxmikant-Pyarelal: a total of 369 numbers (186 solo) for L-P.

Once, when composer Nisar Bazmi (who had migrated to Pakistan) didn’t have enough money to pay him, Rafi charged a fee of one rupee and sang for him. He also helped producers financially. As Laxmikant (of the Laxmikant-Pyarelal duo) once observed – “He always gave without thinking of the returns”.

Between 1950 and 1970, Rafi was the most sought after singer in Bollywood. He sang for many male stars in Hindi films. In 1965, he was honoured by the Government of India with the Padma Sri award. Rafi recorded two Hindi songs in English on 7" release in 1968. He also sang a song in Creole while on his visit to Mauritius in the late 1960s. Rafi recorded two English albums as well. One of them is ''Pop Hits''. In Bollywood, yodeling is generally associated with Kishore Kumar but Rafi introduced yodeling in Indian film as playback singing. Rafi yodeled in some of his old songs, such as "Hello sweety seventeen" (duet with Asha Bhosle), "O Chale ho kaha", "Dilke Aine main", and "Unse Rippy Tippy Ho gayee" (duet with Geeta Dutt).

; Association with his Contemporary Singers

Rafi associated with several of his contemporaries, singing duets with them and sometimes for them (as in case of Kishore Kumar who was also an actor).

Rafi sang the maximum number of duets with Asha Bhonsle (female), Manna Dey (male) and Lata Mangeshkar (female).

For the song “Man mora bawra” in the film ''Ragini'', Kishore Kumar requested Rafi to sing this song for him because this song was a semi classical and Kishore Kumar said that "Rafi Sahab can sing this song better than me". Rafi sang the song. The song “Ajab hay dastan teri aey zindagi” was first given to Kishore Kumar to sing and he sung the first half of ''antara'' but in the second half, he faced some trouble and after many retakes, he was unable to give the effect that Shankar Jaikishan wanted, and finally the song was given to Rafi to sing.

In the song "Humko Tumse Ho Gaya Hai Pyaar Kya Karein" (Amar, Akbar, Anthony), Mohd Rafi sang with Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar and Mukesh - all in one song. This was probably the only time that all of them rendered their voices for one song.

Controversies

Royalty issue

In 1962-1963, the popular female playback singer Lata Mangeshkar raised the issue of playback singers' share in the royalties. Recognizing Rafi's position as the leading male playback singer, she wanted him to back her in demanding a half-share from the 5 percent song royalty that the film's producer conceded to select composers. Lata's contention was that, there was no way producers and music directors could deny this singing duo, one-half share in that 5 percent song royalty to the composer. Rafi's stated that his claim on the film's maker ended with his being paid his agreed fee for the song. After that, if the film proved a hit, good luck to the movie's maker, he was welcome to keep the Gramco (HMV) royalty he earned from it.

Lata viewed his stand as a stumbling block on the royalty issue and this subsequently led to differences between the two. During the recording of "Tasveer Teri Dil Mein" (''Maya'', 1961), Lata argued with Rafi over a certain passage of the song. Rafi felt belittled, as music director Salil Chowdhury sided with Lata. The situation worsened when Lata Mangeshkar declared that she would no longer sing with Rafi. Rafi stated that he was only so keen to sing with Lata as she was with him. Later, at the insistence of S. D. Burman, the two decided to reconcile and sing duets.

Guiness World Records

During his last years, Rafi was involved in a controversy over Lata Mangeshkar's introduction in to the Guinness Book of World Records. In a letter dated June 11, 1977 to the Guinness Book of World Records, Rafi had challenged the claim that Lata Mangeshkar has recorded the maximum number of songs ("not less than 25,000" according to Guinness). After receiving a reply from Guinness, in a letter dated November 20, 1979, he wrote: "I am disappointed that my request for a reassessment vis-a-vis Ms Mangeshkar's reported world record has gone unheeded.".

In an interview to BBC recorded in Nov 1977, Rafi claimed to have sung 25,000 to 26,000 songs till then. After Rafi's death, in its 1984 edition, the ''Guinness Book of Word Records'' gave Lata Mangeshkar's name for the "Most Recordings" but also stated: "Mohammad Rafi (d 1 Aug 1980) claimed to have recorded 28,000 songs in 11 Indian languages between 1944 and April 1980.". According to the available figures, Rafi has sung 4,516 Hindi film songs, 112 non-Hindi film songs, and 328 private (non-film) songs from 1945 to 1980. The Guinness Book entries for both Rafi and Lata were later removed in 1991.

Early 1970s

In early 1970s, Rafi recorded fewer songs due his ill health and Hajj pilgrimage. At the same period Kishore Kumar's popularity increased due to the songs he sang for the film ''Aradhana''. The music for ''Aradhana'' was composed by S. D. Burman, and he had used Rafi as the male playback voice for the first two recorded duets, "Baaghon Mein Bahaar Hai" and "Gunguna Rahen Hain Bhanwre". After these two recordings, S. D. Burman fell ill and his son and assistant, R. D. Burman, took over the recordings. R. D. Burman got Kishore Kumar to sing the solos "Roop Tera Mastana" and "Mere Sapnon Ki Rani".

During 1971-1973, Rafi's musical output decreased; however, he did sing several songs. Some of Rafi's songs of the early 1970s were with music directors like Laxmikant Pyarelal, Madan Mohan, R. D. Burman and S. D. Burman. These include "Tum mujhe Yun Bhula na Paoge" (a signature song of Rafi in 1971) from Pagla Kahin Ka, "Yeh Duniya Yeh Mehfil" from ''Heer Ranjha'' (1970), "Jhilmil Sitaron ka" from ''Jeevan Mrityu'' (a duet with Lata Mangeshkar, 1970), "Gulabi Aankhen" from ''The Train'' (1970), "Yeh Jo Chilman Hain" and "Itna to Yaad Hain Mujhe" from ''Mehboob Ki Mehndi'' (1971), "Mera mann tera pyasa" Gambler, "Chalo Dildar Chalo" from 1972 released Pakeezah, "Chura Liya Hain Tumne" from ''Yaadon Ki Baarat'' (a duet with Asha Bhosle, 1973), "Na tu Zameen Ke liye" from 1973 released Dilip Kumar movie Dastan, "Tum Jo Mil Gaye Ho" from Hanste Zakhm (1973), "teri bindiya re", from Abhimaan(1973) and "Aaj mausam bada beimaan hai" from Loafer (1973).

Later years

Rafi made an comeback as a top leading singer in the mid-1970s. In 1974, he won the Film World magazine Best Singer Award for the song "Teree Galiyon Mein Na Rakhenge Qadam Aaj Ke Baad" (Hawas, 1974) composed by Usha Khanna.

In 1977, he won both Filmfare Award and the National Award for the song "Kya Hua Tera Wada" from the movie ''Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin'', composed by R. D. Burman. Rafi sang for Rishi Kapoor in films like ''Amar Akbar Anthony'' (1977), ''Sargam'' (1979) and ''Karz'' (1980). The qawwali "Pardah Hai Pardah" from Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) was a superhit. Rafi's notable renderings in the late 1970s and early 80s include ''Laila Majnu'' (1976), ''Apnapan'' (1978), ''Qurbani'', ''Dostana'' (1980), ''The Burning Train'' (1980), ''Naseeb'' (1981), ''Abdullah'' (1980), ''Shaan'' (1980), ''Asha'' (1980), ''Aap To Aise Na The'' (1980), ''Zamane Ko Dikhana Hai'' (1982).

Death

On Thursday, 31 July 1980, Rafi died at 10:50 p.m., following a heart attack. His last song was "Shaam phir kyun udaas hai dost" (''Aas Paas''), which he had recorded with Laxmikant-Pyarelal few hours before his death.

Rafi was buried at the Juhu Muslim cemetery. It was one of the biggest funeral processions Mumbai had ever witnessed, with over 10,000 people attending.

In 2010, his tomb was demolished to make space for new burials. Fans of Mohammed Rafi who arrive twice a year at his tomb, on 24 December and 31 July, to mark his birth and death anniversary, use the coconut tree nearest to his grave as a marker.

The Government of India announced a two-day public holiday on his death, honouring him.

Legacy

Rafi's song from the film ''Gumnaam'' (1965), "Jaan Pehechan Ho", was used on the soundtrack of ''Ghost World'' (2001). The film opens with the lead character dancing around in her bedroom to a video of ''Gumnaam''.

His "Aaj Mausam Bada Beiman Hai" is featured in the 2001 film ''Monsoon Wedding''. His song "Mera Man Tera Pyasa" (''Gambler'', 1970) has been used as one of the soundtracks in the Jim Carrey-Kate Winslet starrer ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' (2004). This song is played in the background in Kate Winslet's character's home while the lead pair are having a drink - ''at approx 00.11.14 runtime''.

Several of Rafi's unreleased songs will be used for an upcoming film titled ''Sorry Madam''.

A documentary about Rafi’s life is under production by The Films Division of India.

In the summer of 2008, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra released a double CD entitled ''Rafi Resurrected'' comprising 16 songs by Rafi. Bollywood playback singer Sonu Nigam provided the vocals for this project and toured with the CBSO in July 2008 at venues including the English National Opera in London, Manchester's Apollo Theatre and Symphony Hall, Birmingham.

The Padma Shri Mohammed Rafi Chowk in the Bandra suburb of Mumbai and Pune (extending MG Road) is named after Rafi.

In June 2010, Rafi was voted the most popular playback singer in the OUTLOOK Music Poll, conducted by Outlook Magazine, along with Lata Mangeshkar. The same Poll voted "Man re, tu kahe na Dheer Dhare" (''Chitralekha'', 1964), sung by Rafi as the #1 song. Three songs tied up for the #2 place and two of them were sung by Rafi. The songs were "Tere Mere Sapne Ab Ek Rang Hain" (''Guide'', 1965) and "Din Dhal Jaye, hai raat na jaye" (''Guide'', 1965). This poll was published in Outlook Magazine, the jury of which included many people in the Indian music industry; Abhijeet, Adesh Srivastava, Alisha Chinai, Anu Malik, Ehsaan, Gulzar, Hariharan, Himesh Reshammiya, Jatin, Javed Akhtar, Kailash Kher, Kavita Krishnamurthy, Khayyam, Kumar Sanu, Lalit, Loy, Mahalaxmi Iyer, Mahendra Kapoor, Manna Dey, Prasoon Joshi, Rajesh Roshan, Sadhna Sargam, Sameer, Sandesh Shandilya, Shaan, Shankar, Shantanu Moitra, Shreya Ghoshal, Sonu Nigam and Talat Aziz.

In an article in ''Times of India'', Rafi is described as "a versatile singer, who could render classical, rock and roll, indeed any kind of song with ease, he was Hindi film's favourite male voice through the 1950s and 1960s". Music director Rajesh Roshan, who composed some of the songs with Rafi, remembers him as "a warm-hearted simple person with no ego".

There has been appeals to the Government of India to honour the singer, posthumously, with Bharat Ratna (India's Highest Civilian Award)

Classical and playback singer Manna Dey, who was also a contemporary of Rafi, credits Rafi as "the best singer of them all". He said, "Rafi and I could sing everything, and he was such a gentleman. He was a better singer than me, and I will say this - that no one came even close to him! He deserved everything he got! We had a great understanding and it was never about one-upmanship".

There were reports that a man, sentenced to be hanged, was asked what his last wish was. The man asks that he be allowed to listen to “''O duniya ke rakhwale, sun dard bare mere naale; jeewan apna wapas lele, jeewan dene wale''“ - a song sung by Rafi.

Veteran actor Shammi Kapoor said, "I am incomplete without Mohammad Rafi. I used to often go for the recoding of my song, which was sung by Mohammad Rafi, only because I used to like telling him how I would perform on this song on screen so that he can sing it that way. Even he liked my involvement".

On 22 September 2007, a shrine to Rafi designed by artist Tasawar Bashir was unveiled on Fazeley Street, Birmingham, UK. Bashir is hoping that Rafi will attain sainthood as a result.

Singers like Shabbir Kumar, Mohammed Aziz, and more recently, Sonu Nigam, who made a name by adopting his style, perhaps owe their entire careers to Rafi.

After his death, seven Hindi movies were dedicated to Mohd Rafi; ''Allah Rakha'', ''Mard'', ''Coolie'', ''Desh-Premee'', ''Naseeb'', ''Aas-Paas'' and ''Heeralal-Pannalal''.

As per newspaper reports, over 9000 musical tributes were organized in July 2011 commemorating the singer's 31st death anniversary.

List of Songs

See List of Songs by Mohammed Rafi

Personal life

Rafi and Abdul Hameed married two sisters in Bombay in late forties. Rafi had an earlier marriage with her cousin that took place in his ancestral village that could not be continued due to the migration of his in laws and wife to Lahore Pakistan after partition. Rafi had one son from his earlier marriage and three sons and three daughters from his second marriage with Bilquis in Bombay. He was a teetotaller, a religious and humble person. He was very much a family man, following a recording-room to home to recording-room itenerary. He never attended filmy parties, did not smoke or drink. He used to perform his riyaz (musical practise) from 3 AM to 7 AM without fail. His only indulgences were playing carom and badminton and flying kites.

Awards

; Honorary 1948 - Rafi received a silver medal from the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, on the first anniversary of the Indian Independence Day.

1967 - Honoured with the Padma Shri by the Government of India.

1974 - Film World magazine Best Singer Award for the song "Teree Galiyon Mein Na Rakhenge Qadam Aaj Ke Baad" (Hawas, 1974).

2001 - Rafi was honored with the "best singer of the millennium" by Hero Honda and ''Stardust'' magazine in Mumbai on Jan 7, 2001. Rafi won with 70% of the votes.

Rafi has a record number of Filmfare Award nominations (23). In the earlier years, Filmare used to have only one Best Singer Award (no distinction between a male or female singer). Rafi won it six times.

; National Film Awards Winner:

! Year	! Song	! Film	! Music director	! Lyricist
1968	"Baabul Ki Duayein Leti Jaa"	''Neel Kamal''	Ravi Sharma	Sahir Ludhyanvi
1977	"Kya Hua Tera Wada"	''Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin''	Rahul Dev Burman	Majrooh Sultanpuri

; Filmfare Awards Winner:

! Year	! Song	! Film	! Music director	! Lyricist
1960	"Chaudhvin Ka Chand Ho"	''Chaudhvin Ka Chand''	Bombay Ravi	Shakeel Badayuni
1961	"Teri Pyaari Pyaari Surat Ko"		Shankar Jaikishan	Shailendra
1964	"Chahunga Main Tujhe"	''Dosti''	Laxmikant-Pyarelal	Majrooh Sultanpuri
1966	"Baharo Phool Barsao"	''Suraj''	Shankar Jaikishan	Shailendra
1968	"Dil Ke Jharoke Mein"		Shankar Jaikishan	Shailendra
1977	"Kya Hua Tera Wada"	''Hum Kisi Se Kum Nahin''	Rahul Dev Burman	Majrooh Sultanpuri

Nominated:

! Year	! Song	! Film	! Music director	! Lyricist
1961	"Husnwale Tera Jawab Nahin"		Bombay Ravi	Shakeel Badayuni
1962	"Aye Gulbadan Aye Gulbadan"		Shankar Jaikishan	Shailendra
1963	"Mere Mehboob Tujhe"	''Mere Mehboob''	Naushad	Shakeel Badayuni
1965	"Chhoo Lene Do Nazuk Hothon Ko"	''Kaajal''	Bombay Ravi	Sahir Ludhianvi
1968	"Mein Gaaon Tum Sojaao"		Shankar Jaikishan	Shailendra
1969	"Badi Mastani Hai"	''Jeene Ki Raah''	Laxmikant-Pyarelal	Anand Bakshi
1970	"Khilona Jaan Kar"	''Khilona''	Laxmikant-Pyarelal	Anand Bakshi
1973	"Hum Ko To Jaan Se Pyaari"	''Naina''	Shankar Jaikishan	Hasrat Jaipuri
1974	"Achha Hi Huva Dil Toot Gaya"	''Maa Bahen Aur Biwi''	Sharda	Qamar Jalalabadi, Vedpal Varma
1977	"Pardah Hai Pardah"	''Amar Akbar Anthony''	Laxmikant-Pyarelal	Anand Bakshi
1978	"Aadmi Musaafir Hai"	''Apnapan''	Laxmikant-Pyarelal	Anand Bakshi
1979	"Chalo Re Doli Uthao Kahaar"	''Jaani Dushman''	Laxmikant-Pyarelal	Varma Malik
1980	"Mere Dost Kissa Yeh"		Laxmikant-Pyarelal	Anand Bakshi
1980	"Dard-e-dil Dard-e-jigar"		Laxmikant-Pyarelal	Anand Bakshi
1980	"Maine Poocha Chand Se"	''Abdullah''	Rahul Dev Burman	Anand Bakshi

;Bengal Film Journalists' Association Awards

Winner

! Year	! Film	! Music director	! Lyricist
1957		O. P. Nayyar	Majrooh Sultanpuri
1965	''Dosti''	Laxmikant Pyarelal	Majrooh Sultanpuri
1966		Shankar Jaikishan	Hasrat Jaipuri

;Sur Sringar Award

Winner

! Year	! Film	! Music director	! Lyricist
1964			Sahir Ludhyanvi

References

External links

Mohammad Rafi at the Internet Movie Database

Category:1924 births Category:1980 deaths Category:Bollywood playback singers Category:Indian film singers Category:Indian Muslims Category:People from Amritsar Category:Indian male singers Category:Filmfare Awards winners Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Recipients of the Padma Shri Category:Punjabi people Category:Indian musicians Category:Indian singers Category:People from Mumbai Category:Konkani-language singers Category:Marathi-language singers

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