AFFIRMATION OF PROPHETHOOD

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