A classic, secular history of the prophet Muhammad that vividly recreates the fascinating time in which Islam was born. Maxime Rodinson, both a maverick Marxist and a distinguished professor at the Sorbonne, first published his biography of Muhammad in 1960, and in the last half century the book has been widely read and established as a classic in its field. Rodinson, deeply familiar with the historical record and scholarly research into the Prophet's life, did not seek to add to it here but to introduce Muhammad, first of all, as 'a man of flesh and blood' who led a life of extraordinary drama and shaped history as few others have. Equally, he sought to lay out an understanding of Muhammad's legacy and Islam as what he called an ideological movement, similar to the universalist religions of Christianity and Buddhism as well as the secular movement of Marxism, but possessing a singular commitment to 'the deeply ingrained idea that Islam offers not only a path to salvation but (for