23 Years: A Study of the Prophetic Career of Mohammad

This study of Mohammad’s prophetic career by a modern Iranian thinker will be of great value to everyone interested in Islam and the Moslem people. Through the use of the early sources together with psychological and sociological analysis, Ali Dashti brings out the reality of Mohammad’s greatness, dispels the fog of superstition which has been built up around him, and discusses problems which are too often left unmentioned.

Dashti will long be remembered for his penetrating studies of Persian classics. In books on Omar Khayyam, Khaqani, Mowlavi Rumi, Sa‘di, Hafez, and Sa’eb, he picks out the elements in the works of these classical poets which have enduring value. The studies of religious matters which he wrote in his later years show the same perspective; chief among these is Twenty-Three Years. After the revolution of 1979, he was imprisoned and beaten, suffering serious injury. He died in late 1981 or early 1982.