The Prophet Muhammad taught the word of God to the Arabs. Within a generation of his death, his followers
- as vivid a cast of heroic individuals as history has known
- had exploded out of Arabia to confront the two great superpowers of the seventh-century & establish Islam & a new civilization. That the protagonists originated from the small oasis communities of central Arabia gives their adventures, their rivalries, their loves & their achievements an additional vivacity & intimacy. So that on one h&, THE HEIRS OF THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD is a swaggering saga of ambition, immense achievement, self-sacrificing nobility & blood rivalry, while on the other it allows us to understand some of the complexities of our modern world. For within this fifty-year span of conquest & empire-building, Barnaby Rogerson also identifies the seeds of discord that destroyed the unity of Islam, & traces the roots of the schism between Sunni & Shia Muslims to the rivalry of the two individuals who best knew & loved the Prophet: his cousin & son-in-law Ali & his wife Aisha.