look at my fingers: He causes them to run like a fountain with five spigots. Look at the moon: by a gesture of my finger, He splits it in two. Look at that tree: to affirm me and to bear witness to me, it moves and comes near to me. Look at this food: although it is barely enough for two or three men, it satisfies two or three hundred.” He demonstrated too hundreds of similar miracles.
However, the evidences of this person’s veracity and the proofs of his prophethood are not restricted to his miracles. All his deeds and acts, his words and behaviour, his moral conduct and manners, his character and appearance prove to the attentive his truthfulness and seriousness. Indeed, many people such as ‘Abdullah b. Salam, the famous scholar of the Children of Israel, came to believe merely by seeing him, and said: “No lie can hide in this face, nor fraud be found in it!”1
Although many scholars who have researched the matter have concluded that the proofs of Muhammad’s (UWBP) prophethood and his miracles number about one thousand, there are thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of proofs of his prophethood. And hundreds of thousands of men with varying opinions have affirmed it in an equal number of ways. The Wise Qur’an alone demonstrates a thousand of the proofs of his prophethood, in addition to its own forty aspects of miraculousness.
Since prophethood is a phenomenon of humanity, and hundreds of thousands of persons who claimed prophethood and performed miracles have lived and passed away,2 of a certainty Muhammad’s (UWBP) prophethood is superior to all the others. For whatever evidences, qualities, and attributes made prophets such as Jesus and Moses (Upon whom be peace) be known as prophets and were the means of their messengership, they were all possessed in a more perfect and comprehensive fashion by Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace). And since the causes and means of prophetic authority were more perfectly present in the person of Muhammad (UWBP), this authority was to be found in him with more certainty than in all the others.
THIRD SIGN
The miracles of the Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) were extremely varied. Since his messengership was universal,
Tirmidhi, Qiyama, 42; Ibn Maja, Iqama, 174; Atima, 1; Darimi, Salat, 156; Isti’dhan, 4; Musnad, v, 451.
Musnad, v, 266; Waliyyuddin Tabrizi, Mishkat al-Masabih, iii, 122; Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawzi, Zad al-Ma’ad (Tahqiq: al-Arnavud), i, 43-44.