Exemplary Conduct

hours and ponder over the mysteries of creation. Instead of socializing and trying to gain a position among the nobles of Makkah, he would wander in the hills and dales of the desert. Often he used to retire to the loneliness of a cave in Mount Hira’—three miles from Makkah—and stay there until his meagre supply of food and water was exhausted. He would return home to replenish his supplies and then go back to nature’s solitude for prayer and meditation. He would beseech the Maker of the heavens and the earth for answers to the questions surging in his mind. What is our true role in life? What does the Lord require of us as His servants? Whence do we come, and whither will we go after death? Unable to find answers to these questions in the centres of human activity, he betook himself to the stillness of the desert; perhaps, there, the answer would be forthcoming. The Romanian orientalist Konstan Virgil George (b. 1916) writes in his book, The Prophet of Islam: Until one has spent some time in the wilds of Arabia and the Middle East, one cannot begin to understand how the vastness and tranquillity of the desert expand the human intellect and fortifies the imagination. There is a remarkable difference between European and Arabian plants. No plant in the arid reaches of the desert does not exude a sweet fragrance; even the acacia trees of this land are aromatic. The desert stretches for 3,000,000 square kilometres. Here it is as though man comes into direct contact with God. Other