Climbing the Mountain : The Scientific Biography of Julian Schwinger

Climbing the Mountain : The Scientific Biography of Julian Schwinger - Schwinger died on 16 July 1994, and enough time has elapsed to begin to appreciate the full impact of his gentle genius. We believe that we are uniquely privileged and qualified to bring a scientific and human perspective to his life and work. This project began with an extensive series of interviews by one of us (J.M.) with Julian and his wife Clarice in 1988, just after his 70th  birthday celebration in Los Angeles, with the goal of writing his biography, which Schwinger had fully authorized. J.M. had known Schwinger personally since spring 1959 when, as a young man, he attended Schwinger's invited lectures at UCLA; they found much in common in their respective acquaintances with Paul Dirac and Wolfgang Pauli (who had recently died), and their contacts and encounters grew over the years. At the time of his interviews with Julian and Clarice, J.M. was writing The beat of a different drum: the life and science of Richard Feynman (Oxford, 1994), a full-length biography of Feynman, who had died the previous moth, which would also provide the background for a  complementary point of view of Schwinger's lifework. The second author (K.A.M.) was one of Schwinger's last students at Harvard, and accompanied him on his move to UCLA in 1971, staying on there as his 'assistant' and collaborator until 1979, and as his trustedfriend throughout. Due to this close association, he gained an intimate perspective on the life and work of Schwinger, and, some time after Julian's death, J.M. invited K.A.M. to collaborate with him, which he was happy to do, and Clarice gave him her gracious authorization to join in the task of writing her husband's biography. Thus we bring to the project direct knowledge of Schwinger and his career over a long period. Because the last third of Schwinger's life seems more puzzling compared with the easy triumphs of the early period until 1950, beginning in nuclear physics and culminating in the construction of renormalized quantum electrodynamics, we believe this perspective offers the possibility ofunderstanding this extremely complex and extraordinarily private man.

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The Obamas : The Untold Story of an African Family

The Obamas : The Untold Story of an African Family - THE EVENING was drawing  in, dark clouds  rolled overhead, and ominous specks of rain were making themselves felt in the hot, sticky, tropical twilight.  It  was  not  the  ideal  start  to  the  evening;  ,ve  hundred relatives  and  friends  had  gathered  in  the  Obama  ancestral  home  to watch  the  inauguration  of  their most  famous  son  as  president  of  the United  States.  We  were  all  sitting  in  the  courtyard  of  the  family compound  in  K’obama,  a  remote  village  in  western  Kenya,  and  the heavens looked as if they were about to open. Some of the people had walked several miles to get here, and many of them were related to the president-elect  either  through  birth  or  by marriage. We  had  less  than two hours  to go before Barack Obama  took his historic oath of o1ce, but the inclement weather and encroaching darkness were not the worst of  our  problems. We  still  had  no  television,  the  only  generator  to  be found had no  fuel or oil, and  there was no aerial set up  to receive  the broadcast.

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Its not About the Bike : My Journey Back to Life

Its not About the Bike : My Journey Back to Life - I've spent my life racing my bike, from the back roads of Austin, Texas to the Champs-Elysees, and I always figured if I died an untimely death, it would be because some rancher in his Dodge 4x4 ran me headfirst into a ditch. Believe me, it could happen. Cyclists fight an ongoing war with guys in big trucks, and so many vehicles have hit me, so many times, in so many countries, I've lost count. I've learned how to take out my own stitches: all you need is a pair of fingernail clippers and a strong stomach. If you saw my body underneath my racing jersey, you'd know what I'm talking about. I've got marbled scars on both arms and discolored marks up and down my legs, which I keep clean-shaven. Maybe that's why trucks are always trying to run me over; they see my sissy-boy calves and decide not to brake. But cyclists have to shave, because when the gravel gets into your skin, it's easier to clean and bandage if you have no hair.

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My Life and Work

My Life and Work - On May 31, 1921, the Ford Motor Company turned out Car No. 5,000,000. It is out in my museum along with the gasoline buggy that I began work on thirty years before and which first ran satisfactorily along in the spring of 1893. I was running it when the bobolinks came to Dearborn and they always come on April 2nd. There is all the difference in the world in the appearance of the two vehicles and almost as much difference in construction and materials, but in fundamentals the two are curiously alike--except that the old buggy has on it a few wrinkles that we have not yet quite adopted in our modern car. For that first car or buggy, even though it had but two cylinders, would make twenty miles an hour and run sixty miles on the three gallons of gas the little tank held and is as good to-day as the day it was built. The development in methods of manufacture and in materials has been greater than the development in basic design. The whole design has been refined; the present Ford car, which is the "Model T," has four cylinders and a self starter--it is in every way a more convenient and an easier riding car. It is simpler than the first car. But almost every point in it may be found also in the first car. The changes have been brought about through experience in the making and not through any change in the basic principle--which I take to be an important fact demonstrating that, given a good idea to start with, it is better to concentrate on perfecting it than to hunt around for a new idea. One idea at a time is about as much as any one can handle.

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The Crossing

The Crossing - I was born under the Blue Ridge, and under that side which is blue in the evening light, in a wild land of game and forest and rushing waters. There, on the borders of a creek that runs into the Yadkin River, in a cabin that was chinked with red mud, I came into the world a subject of King George the Third, in that part of his realm known as the province of North Carolina. The cabin reeked of corn-pone and bacon, and the odor of pelts. It had two shakedowns, on one of which I slept under a bearskin. A rough stone chimney was reared outside, and the fireplace was as long as my father was tall. There was a crane in it, and a bake kettle; and over it great buckhorns held my father's rifle when it was not in use. On other horns hung jerked bear's meat and venison hams, and gourds for drinking cups, and bags of seed, and my father's best hunting shirt; also, in a neglected corner, several articles of woman's attire from pegs. These once belonged to my mother. Among them was a gown of silk, of a fine, faded pattern, over which I was wont to speculate. The women at the Cross-Roads, twelve miles away, were dressed in coarse butternut wool and huge sunbonnets. But when I questioned my father on these matters he would give me no answers.

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Barack Obama a Biography

Barack Obama a Biography - In 1988, before moving to Boston to attend Harvard Law School, Barack made an important trip to Kenya. He felt he needed a break from his two and a half years as a community organizer in Chicago; and, as he later answered his half brother Bernard when asked why he had finally come home, he said that he wasn’t sure why, but something had told him it was time. What he found in Africa was more than just a simple connection to family. Rather, it was a pilgrimage for this young man who grew up conflicted by his mixed race and by his father’s absence that came so early in his life.

After traveling through Europe for three weeks, intending to see places he’d always heard about but had never seen, he realized he’d made a mistake in touring there first. Europe wasn’t a part of his heritage, and he felt he was living as if he were someone else, lending an incompleteness to his own history. He also thought spending time in Europe before his trip to Africa might be an attempt to delay coming to terms with his father. When Barack was two, his father returned to Africa, leaving him and his mother in Hawaii. He hadn’t seen his father since he was 10 years old.

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Story of My Life

Story of My Life - It is with a kind of fear that I begin to write the history of my life. I have, as it were, a superstitious hesitation in lifting the veil that clings about my childhood like a golden mist. The task of writing an autobiography is a difficult one. When I try to classify my earliest impressions, I find that fact and fancy look alike across the years that link the past with the present. The woman paints the child's experiences in her own fantasy. A few impressions stand out vividly from the first years of my life; but "the shadows of the prison-house are on the rest." Besides, many of the joys and sorrows of childhood have lost their poignancy; and many incidents of vital importance in my early education have been forgotten in the excitement of great discoveries. In order, therefore, not to be tedious I shall try to present in a series of sketches only the episodes that seem to me to be the most interesting and important. I was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, a little town of northernAlabama . The family on my father's side is descended from Caspar Keller, a native ofSwitzerland , who settled inMaryland . One of my Swiss ancestors was the first teacher of the deaf in Zurich and wrote a book on the subject of their education--rather a singular coincidence; though it is true that there is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his. My grandfather, Caspar Keller's son, "entered" large tracts of land inAlabama and finally settled there. I have been told that once a year he went from Tuscumbia to Philadelphia on horseback to purchase supplies for the plantation, and my aunt has in her possession many of the letters to his family, which give charming and vivid accounts of these trips.

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Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery

Christopher Columbus and the New World of His Discovery - A man standing on the sea-shore is perhaps as ancient and as primitive a symbol of wonder as the mind can conceive. Beneath his feet are the stones and grasses of an element that is his own, natural to him, in some degree belonging to him, at any rate accepted by him. He has place and condition there. Above him arches a world of immense void, fleecy sailing clouds, infinite clear blueness, shapes that change and dissolve; his day comes out of it, his source of light and warmth marches across it, night falls from it; showers and dews also, and the quiet influence of stars. Strange that impalpable element must be, and for ever unattainable by him; yet with its gifts of sun and shower, its furniture of winged life that inhabits also on the friendly soil, it has links and partnerships with life as he knows it and is a complement of earthly conditions. But at his feet there lies the fringe of another element, another condition, of a vaster and more simple unity than earth or air, which the primitive man of our picture knows to be not his at all. It is fluent and unstable, yet to be touched and felt; it rises and falls, moves and frets about his very feet, as though it had a life and entity of its own, and was engaged upon some mysterious business. Unlike the silent earth and the dreaming clouds it has a voice that fills his world and, now low, now loud, echoes throughout his waking and sleeping life. Earth with her sprouting fruits behind and beneath him; sky, and larks singing, above him; before him, an eternal alien, the sea: he stands there upon the shore, arrested, wondering. He lives,—this man of our figure; he proceeds, as all must proceed, with the task and burden of life. One by one its miracles are unfolded to him; miracles of fire and cold, and pain and pleasure; the seizure of love, the terrible magic of reproduction, the sad miracle of death. He fights and lusts and endures; and, no more troubled by any wonder, sleeps at last. But throughout the days of his life, in the very act of his rude existence, this great tumultuous presence of the sea troubles and overbears him. Sometimes in its bellowing rage it terrifies him, sometimes in its tranquillity it allures him; but whatever he is doing, grubbing for roots, chipping experimentally with bones and stones, he has an eye upon it; and in his passage by the shore he pauses, looks, and wonders. His eye is led from the crumbling snow at his feet, past the clear green of the shallows, beyond the furrows of the nearer waves, to the calm blue of the distance; and in his glance there shines again that wonder, as in his breast stirs the vague longing and unrest that is the life-force of the world.

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The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882

The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882 - After having spent two sessions in Edinburgh, my father perceived, or he heard from my sisters, that I did not like the thought of being a physician, so he proposed that I should become a clergyman. He was very properly vehement against my turning into an idle sporting man, which then seemed my probable destination. I asked for some time to consider, as from what little I had heard or thought on the subject I had scruples about declaring my belief in all the dogmas of the Church of England; though otherwise I liked the thought of being a country clergyman. Accordingly I read with care 'Pearson on the Creed,' and a few other books on divinity; and as I did not then in the least doubt the strict and literal truth of every word in the Bible, I soon persuaded myself that our Creed must be fully accepted.

Considering how fiercely I have been attacked by the orthodox, it seems ludicrous that I once intended to be a clergyman. Nor was this intention and my father's wish ever formerly given up, but died a natural death when, on leaving Cambridge, I joined the "Beagle" as naturalist. If the phrenologists are to be trusted, I was well fitted in one respect to be a clergyman. A few years ago the secretaries of a German psychological society asked me earnestly by letter for a photograph of myself; and some time afterwards I received the proceedings of one of the meetings, in which it seemed that the shape of my head had been the subject of a public discussion, and one of the speakers declared that I had the bump of reverence developed enough for ten priests.

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Edison : His Life and Inventions

Edison : His Life and Inventions - THE year 1847 marked a period of great territorial acquisition by the American people, with incalculable additions to their actual and potential wealth. By the rational compromise with England in the dispute over the Oregon region, President Polk had secured during 1846, for undisturbed settlement, three hundred thousand square miles of forest, fertile land, and fisheries, including the whole fair Columbia Valley. Our active "policy of the Pacific" dated from that hour. With swift and clinching succession came the melodramatic Mexican War, and February, 1848, saw another vast territory south of Oregon and west of the Rocky Mountains added by treaty to the United States. Thus in about eighteen months there had been pieced into the national domain for quick development and exploitation a region as large as the entire Union of Thirteen States at the close of the War of Independence. Moreover, within its boundaries was embraced all the great American gold-field, just on the eve of discovery, for Marshall had detected the shining particles in the mill-race at the foot of the Sierra Nevada nine days before Mexico signed away her rights in California and in all the vague, remote hinterland facing Cathayward.

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Kennedy

Kennedy - Across  the  muddy  Potomac  from  the  Lincoln  Memorial  a  green  and  gentle  slope rises  gradually  to what was once  the home of Robert E.  Lee. From halfway up  that hill one can see on a clear autumn day most of  the majesty  that  is Washington. The three marble monuments and memorials—to  the men who  forged  in  the Presidency an  instrument of power and  compassion—remind a grateful nation  that  it has been blessed  in  its gravest  trials with  its greatest  leaders.  In  the distance  the dome of  the Capitol  covers  a  milieu  of  wisdom  and  folly,  Presidential  ambitions  and antagonisms,  political  ideals  and  ideologies.  To  the  right  is  the  stark  and labyrinthian  Pentagon,  guiding  under  Presidential  command  the  massive  armed might  on  which  hinge  our  security  and  survival.  On  the  grassy  slope  itself, reminding  us  that  “since  this  country  was  founded,  each  generation  of  Americans has  been  summoned  to  give  testimony  to  its  national  loyalty ”  are  marked  with simple  stones  “the  graves  of  young  Americans  who  answered  the  call  to  service.” And away  to  the  left,  its white sandstone hidden behind a screen of greenery,  is  the seat  of  executive  power,  the  scene  of more  heroic  dramas,  comedies  and  tragedies than any stage in the world.

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Thomas Alva Edison - Inventing The Electric Age

Thomas Alva Edison - Inventing The Electric Age - On the evening of December 31, 1879, the tiny village of Menlo Park, New Jersey, became the site of a New Year’s party unlike any the world had ever seen. People were arriving by the trainload to gaze in awe at the latest wonder to emerge from the laboratory of the inventor Thomas Alva Edison. Just two years before, Edison had astounded the world with the phonograph—a machine that talked. To the crowds that were swarming to Menlo Park that evening, he had promised something even more amazing. It was an electric light that could be used in homes, offices, and schools—a remarkable technical innovation that promised to make gas lighting and oil lamps obsolete. The product of months of intensive labor, the invention was now ready for display to the general public.

As the visitors arrived at the little Menlo Park station, they were greeted with a series of glowing glass bulbs mounted on posts along the street leading toward Edison’s laboratory. Bulbs burned as well in six nearby houses. Two lights shone above the gate at the entrance to the laboratory grounds, while several more illuminated the yard surrounding the lab.

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ISAAC NEWTON - LIVES AND LEGACIES

ISAAC NEWTON - LIVES AND LEGACIES - AT A LITTLE BEFORE TEN O’CLOCK THE DRUM ROLL BEGAN, FIRST distant and then ever louder as the thousands gathering to see the king die wound their way through London’s choked streets to the palace of Whitehall. It was January 30, 1649. The weather was exceedingly cold, the sky gray with scattered patches of sunshine, the frost so sharp that great chunks of ice clogged the arches of London Bridge spanning the river Thames. The previous day fifty-nine judges had signed the death warrant of King Charles I, many of them badgered and bullied by the rebel leader Oliver Cromwell, who was about to assume the title of Lord Protector and rule as a king in everything but name. It was Cromwell and his Roundheads, who cut their hair short in defiance of the wigged nobility and practiced the Puritan religion, who most wanted the king’s head. They had fought Charles and his supporters, many of whom were sympathetic to the outlawed Catholic religion, ever since 1642, when civil war erupted in the north of England and spread ross the land like a great plague. Now the leader of the defeated forces had to pay.

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The Agassi Story

The Agassi Story - I am happy in this house.Really,I am.
Nestled in the crook ofthe curve where Andre Drive pours into Agassi Court (I petitioned the city to rename our streets),it’s a big, beautiful home,about  5,000 square feet,bright,airy,open,and filled with a lifetime ofthings that my wife,my kids,and I have accumulated.Unkempt rows offamily photos — the smiling faces of my four children and ofmy four grandchildren — perch on the mantle.A riot oftrophies occupies the foyer.The kitchen boasts two refrigerators,which,together,store enough food to feed a Division I football team.There are — drum roll,please —  five bathrooms. (You’ll understand their significance in a moment.) Out back is a beautiful enclosed tennis court,one ofthe finest in town. Moving here was a big decision for me.When my youngest son, Andre,told me he’d bought four lots on the western outskirts of town,that he was going to build a tennis court,a health spa,and two houses there,and that one ofthose houses was meant for me and Betty,I said thanks,but no thanks.

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Bhutto a Political Biography

Bhutto a Political Biography - Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was a political phenomenon. In a country where the majority of politicians have been indistinguishable, grey and quick to compromise, he stalked among them as a Titan. He has been called ‘blackmailer’, ‘opportunist’, ‘Bhutto Khan’ (an undisguised comparison with Pakistan’s military dictators Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan) and ‘His Imperial Majesty the Shahinshah of Pakistan’ by his enemies. Time magazine referred to him as a ‘whiz kid’ on his coming to power in 1971. His supporters called him Takhare Asia’ (The Pride of Asia) and Anthony Howard, writing of him in the New Statesman, London, said ‘arguably the most intelligent and plausibly the best read of the world’s rulers’. Peter Gill wrote of him in the Daily Telegraph, London: ‘At 47, he has become one of the third world’s most accomplished rulers.’ And then later, after a change of heart and Bhutto’s fall from power, he described him as ‘one of nature’s bounders’. Senator McGovern called him ‘a man of peace’. The spectrum of epithets is wide, as indeed the man was complex.

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John Lennon Biography

John Lennon Biography - John Lennon was born with a gift for music and comedy that would carry him further from his roots than he ever dreamed possible. As a young man, he was lured away from the British Isles by the seemingly boundless glamour and opportunity to be found across the Atlantic. He achieved that rare feat for a British performer of taking American music to the Americans and playing it as convincingly as any homegrown practitioner, or even more so. For several years, his group toured the country, delighting audiences in city after city with their garish suits, funny hair, and contagiously happy grins.

This, of course, was not Beatle John Lennon but his namesake paternal grandfather, more commonly known as Jack, born in 1855. Lennon is an Irish surname—from O’Leannain or O’Lonain and Jack habitually gave his birthplace as Dublin, though there is evidence that his family had already crossed the Irish Sea to become part of Liverpool’s extensive Hibernian community some time previously. He began his working life as a clerk, but in the 1880s followed a common impulse among his compatriots and emigrated to New York. Whereas the city turned other immigrant Irishmen into laborers or police officers, Jack wound up as a member of Andrew Roberton’s Colored Operatic Kentucky Minstrels.

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Muhammad SAW Biography

Muhammad SAW Biography - Dengan nama yang begitu mulia, jutaan bibir setiap hari mengucapkannya, jutaan jantung setiap saat berdenyut, berulang kali. Bibir dan jantung yang bergerak dan berdenyut sejak seribu tiga ratus limapuluh tahun. Dengan nama yang begitu mulia, berjuta bibir akan terus mengucapkan, berjuta jantung akan terus berdenyut, sampai akhir zaman

Pada setiap hari di kala fajar menyingsing, lingkaran-lingkaran putih di ufuk sana mulai nampak hendak menghalau kegelapan malam, ketika itu seorang muazzin bangkit, berseru kepada setiap makhluk insani, bahwa bangun bersembahyang lebih baik daripada terus tidur. Ia mengajak mereka bersujud kepada Allah, membaca selawat buat Rasulullah.

Seruan ini disambut oleh ribuan, oleh jutaan umat manusia dari segenap penjuru bumi, menyemarakkannya dengan salat menyambut pahala dan rahmat Allah bersamaan dengan terbitnya hari baru. Dan bila hari siang, mataharipun berangkat pulang, kini muazzin bangkit menyerukan orang bersembahyang lohor, lalu salat asar, magrib, isya. Pada setiap kali dalam sembahyang ini mereka menyebut Muhammad, hamba Allah, Nabi dan RasulNya itu, dengan penuh permohonan, penuh kerendahan hati dan syahdu. Dan selama mereka dalam rangkaian sembahyang lima waktu itu, bergetar jantung mereka menyebut asma Allah dan menyebut nama Rasulullah. Begitulah mereka, dan akan begitu mereka, setelah Allah memperlihatkan agama yang sebenarnya ini dan melimpahkan nikmatNya kepada seluruh umat manusia.

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Utsman bin Affan Biography

Utsman bin Affan Biography - Nama beliau adalah Utsman bin 'Affan bin Abil 'Ash bin Umayyah bin Abdisy Syams bin Abdi Manaf bin Qusyai bin Kilab. Beliau menisbatkan dirinya kepada bani Umayyah, salah satu kabilah Quraisy.

Beliau dilahirkan di Mekah enam tahun setelah tahun gajah, menurut pendapat yang shahih. Beliau tumbuh diatas akhlak yang mulia dan perangai yang baik. Beliau sangat pemalu, bersih jiwa dan suci lisannya, sangat sopan santun, pendiam dan tidak pernah menyakiti orang lain. Beliau suka ketenangan dan tidak suka keramaian/kegaduhan, perselisihan, teriakan keras. Dan beliau rela mengorbankan nyawanya demi untuk menjauhi hal-hal tersebut. Dan karena kebaikan akhlak dan mu'amalahnya, beliau dicintai oleh Quraisy, hingga merekapun menjadikannya sebagai perumpamaan.

Dari sini Imam Asy-Sya'bi mengatakan : "Dahulu Utsman sangat dicintai oleh orang-orang Quraisy, mereka menjadikannya sebagai suri taudalan, mereka memuliakannya. Sampai-sampai para ibu dari kalangan orang-orang Arab, jika menghibur anaknya, dia mengatakan : Demi Allah yang Maha Penyayang, aku mencintaimu seperti kecintaan Quraisy kepada Utsman.

Utsman bin 'Affan Radhiyallahu ‘anhu hidup ditengah orang-orang musyrikin Quraisy yang menyembah berhala-berhala, namun beliau tidak menyukai kesyirikan, animisme/dinamisme serta adatistiadat yang kotor. Beliau menjauhi segala bentuk kotoron jahiliyah yang mereka lakukan, beliau tidak pernah berzina, membunuh, ataupun meminum khamer. Ketika Allah memerintahkan Rasul-Nya untuk berdakwah di jalan Allah, dan Abu Bakar sudah masuk Islam, beliaupun pergi mendatangi Utsman c mengajaknya masuk Islam. Utsman pun seketika itu langsung menerima ajakan untuk masuk Islam dan beliau mengucapkan dua kalimat syahadat. Hal ini dikarenakan, agama ini mengajak kepada tauhid, membasmi kesyirikan, didalamnya terdapat seruan untuk berakhlak yang mulia dan berperangai yang baik. Utsman akhirnya beriman kepada agama yang lurus ini dan beriman kepada Rasul-Nya Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa Sallam, karena beliau mengenal betul kejujuran, amanah, dan kemuliaan akhlak Nabi Shallallahu ‘alaihi wa Sallam.

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Abu Bakar As-Siddiq Biography

Abu Bakar As-Siddiq Biography - Semua peristiwa sejarah dunia Islam catatannya didasarkan pada hijrah Nabi dari Mekah ke Medinah. Rahasia diambilnya peristiwa besar ini sebagai permulaan sejarah Islam, karena waktu itulah permulaan Allah memberikan kemenangan kepada Rasul-Nya dalam menghadapi mereka yang mcmerangi risalahnya di  tanah suci itu.  Kemudian mereka me- lakukan perbuatan-perbuatan makar hendak membunuhnya. Dalam hijrah itu hanya Abu Bakr sendiri saja yang menemani Rasulullah. Dalam sakit- nya yang terakhir dan ketika sudah tidak kuat lagi mengimami salat, Rasulullah meminta Abu Bakr bertindak memimpin salat itu mengganti- kannya. la tidak ingin tempat ini dipegang oleh Umar bin Khattab.

Nabi memilih Abu Bakr dalam hijrah dan salat

Dipilihnya Abu Bakr menemaninya ketika hijrah dan mengimami salat menggantikannya, karena Abu Bakr Muslim pertama yang ber- iman kepada Allah dan kepada Rasulullah, dan demi imannya itu pula dialah yang paling banyak berkorban.  Sejak masuk Islam besar sekali hasratnya hendak membantu Nabi dalam berdakwah demi agama Allah dan membela kaum Muslimin. la lebih mencintai Rasulullah daripada dirinya sendiri, mendampinginya selalu dalam setiap peristiwa. Di sam- ping itu, di samping iman yang begitu teguh akhlaknya pun sudah men- dekati kesempurnaan, cintanya begitu besar kepada orang lain, paling dekat dan akrab kepada mereka.

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Umar bin Khattab Biography

Umar bin Khattab Biography - Beberapa  tahun  sebelum  kerasulan  Nabi,  apabila  sudah  tiba  bulan Zulhijah  orang-orang  Arab  dari  berbagai  penjuru  di  Semenanjung itu   seperti   biasa,   sebelum  musim   ziarah   setiap  tahun   datang   berbondong-bondong menuntun unta mereka untuk digelar di Pasar Ukaz. Pada saat semacam itu pasar memang ramai oleh kedatangan berbagai macam kabilah ke tempat tersebut, di antara mereka terdapat tidak sedikit dari penduduk Mekah. Orang-orang Arab itu memasang tenda-tenda besar di tengah-tengah hamparan padang pasir yang terbentang luas tempat pasar itu diadakan, dan sebagian dijadikan tempat bursa. Di depan tenda-tenda besar di bagian ini orang ramai menawarkan barang-barang dagangan mereka. Barang-barang buatan penduduk Hijaz sendiri tidak banyak. Sementara penduduk Mekah sudah datang, termasuk juga orang-orang yang kebanyakan dari Yaman dan Syam dalam perjalanan musim dingin dan musim panas. Mereka yang datang menuju tempat ini terdiri dari laki-laki dan perempuan. Mereka membeli barang-barang yang mereka sukai. Sebagian besar perempuan itu berada di tempat pedagang pakaian, membalik-balik barang-barang itu, kemudian pilihan pun jatuh pada barang-barang buatan Yaman atau Syam kesenangan mereka. Jika di antara mereka ada yang cantik, pemuda-pemuda pun datang ke tenda-tenda itu berpura-pura mau membeli barang. Mereka lebih ingin menikmati kecantikan perempuan-perempuan itu daripada berhubungan dengan segala macam barang untuk kemudian dibawa pulang.

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