My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the worlds most infleuntial person may surprise many readers, and maybe questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was successful on both religious and secular level. Of humble orgins, Muhammad founded and promulgated one of the worlds great religion. And thirteen centuries after his death, his infleunce still remains powerful. Muhammad was born in the year 570, in Mecca in Southern Arabia, at that time when it was a backward area of the world, far from the centres of trade, art and learning. At the age of 6, he was orphaned, and was reared in modest surroundings. In his early life he had been a nomadic shepard, and his economic position didn't improve till he was twenty-five, when he married a wealthy widow. In Mecca that time, there was a small number of people who were Jews and Christians, and it was probably there that Muhammad convinced himself about the single God who had ruled the entire universe. At the age of forty, Muhammad convinced himself that he was talking to the single God (Allah) through the archangel Gabriel, and he was told to spread the new religion to the people of Mecca. Despite a small number of people who had been Jews and Christians, the majority of the population of Meccans were paigons, and had believed in many Gods. For three years Muhammad preached with his friends and collegues, and in the year 613, he began to preach in public, and had won many converts. He was latee seen by the Meccan authorities as a dangerous nuisance, and in the year 622, fearing for his life, Muhammad and his friends left Mecca, and settled in the city of Medina (a city 200 miles north of Mecca), this had been the turning point of the prophets life, and the flight had been known as the heigra. In Medina, he had many followers there, then he had in Mecca, and while there he had written and dictated the Holy book of the Muslims, the Quran. In Medina he was offered a consideral political position, and then he became a leader. A thew years later, a war had broken out between Mecca and Medina, and it ended in 630, with Muhammads triumphant return to Mecca as a conqueror. The next two years of Muhammads life had saw the large converstion of the people of Mecca, to the new religion, and Muhammad had unified Arabia, for the first time in it's history. By the time of his death in 632, he had been the effective ruler of all of Arabia. Now these Bedouin tribesman who had been converted to the new religion, and now were inspired by the prophets words, and were now going to spread the new religion far beyond it's borders. In the North-East of Arabia was the Neo-Persian empire of the Sassanids, and in the North-West was the Byzantine Empire or Eastern Roman Empire, centred in Constantinople. Now these Bedouin tribesmen were going to build one of the largest empires in history, and began with the conquest of Mesopatamia, Syria, Palestine and Egypt. And in the year 642, the Arabs defeated the Persians and conquered the entire region. These conquests were made by Muhammads close friends and successors, Abu Bakr and Umar Al-Khattab. Even after these to men had died, the Arab advance didn't stop, and continued, and the Arabs later conquered North Africa and in the year 711, they went through Gibraltor and defeated the Vandals in Spain. And by 732, the Arabs had advanced to the center of France, and were defeated in the famous Battle of Tours by the Franks. For a moment it looked that the Arabs were going to overwhelm Christian Europe. A century after Muhammad's death , the Arabs carved up an empire streching from India to the Atlantic Ocean, the biggest the empire the world had yet seen. But not all of these conquests were permanent. In Spain, seven centuries of warfare resulted in the entire peninsuala being re-conquered by the Christians, Persia recently won it's independence from the Arabs, but it was still inspired by the prophets words, and Mesotopatamia and Egypt, the two cradles of Ancient civillasation remained within Arabic control. North Africa remained Arabic, and had one of the largest adherents of the prophet, but the Islamic religion would spread far beyond it's own borders. In Pakistan and India there was a large number of adherents of the prophet, and the largest of them all was in Indonessia. In the present world there are twice as Christans as there is Muslims, but the Muslim conquest still has an effect in the present world. The Arab conquest is a simalar parerlel to the Mongol conquest of Genghis Khan in the 13th century, but what can be said is that the South American colonies would have won there independence even without Simon Bolivar, but it can't be said with the Arab conquest, simply because Muhammad was the driving force to these conquest. Today there is more adherents of the Prophet in the Indian-Sub continent and Indonessia then there is in the Arabic region of the world. Most middle-eastern countries like Iraq and Egypt have remained Arabic, and the Arabic language is seen as the national language and heritage, in that part of the world, and most Arab nations have become oil-producing countries like Iraq, , and despite winning it's independence from the Arabs, Iran has become an oil-producing country, and has remained Muslim. By the 1970's the Arab world became the worlds leadind oil-producing powers, and near the end of the twentieth century the Arab world has been hit with terrible wars, but the Islamic religion at certain times in the Middle-East is a feeling of Arabic nationalism. In Indonessia, the Muslim religion is a unifying factor, and in the Indian-Sub continent, there has been bloody wars and serious tensions between Muslims and Hindus. It may seem surprising to many readers that I have instead chosen Muhammad instead of Jesus to lead the list, but as there is twice as Christians as there is Muslims, the entire theology of Islam, was a work of a single-man. The Christian theology wasn't all dominated by Jesus, but Jesus and St Paul played the early rise of Christianity, but many scholars argue that St Paul was the founder of Christianity. The Bible is divided by the Jewish Old testaments and the Christian New testaments, and most of the prophets from the Old testaments are recognised in the Quran, and Muhammad was infleunced by them to the belief of a single God. Muhammad also recognised Jesus as a prophet, to the Muslims he is considered a prophet. But Muhammad is seen as the last of the great prophets to the Muslims, but he does not appear in the Bible,neither in the Old or New Testaments. I also see Muhammad as well as a great infleuntial religious leader, I also see him as the most infleuntial political leader there has ever been, and mainly because he was the driving force to the Arab conquest. I think Muhammad is the most infleuntial and greatest single person in history.