المقدمة ٢_a .. كتاب المائة الأوائل

the introduction

This book (a study in the top 100) is a study, introduction, summary and criticism of Dr. Michael Hart's book, which was published in 1978 in the United States of America and caused a stir there. It soon spread to many parts of the world, and then reached the Arab world. The first person to refer to the book was Mr. Ahmed Bahaa El-Din, Editor-in-Chief of Al-Arabi magazine, in the issue of Al-Arabi issued in December 1978, and it happened that the mentioned issue arrived in Syria at the end of December and before my travel to the United States of America. There I was keen to search for the book and found it in the library of the metro station in New York. The honorable Professor Khaled Issa agreed to present a study of the book that included a sufficient translation of the research. It is true that it is incomplete, but it is healing. We have omitted the translation of some scientific matters that do not concern our ordinary reader and do not serve the specialist. We have preserved the spirit of the book in our study and the translation of the full text of the research of our master Muhammad, may God bless him and grant him peace, and Omar Ibn Al-Khattab, may God be pleased with him.

We offer this study to the Arab reader; We remind him that the author, Dr. Michael Hart, has made this list of the most important hundred personalities in human history - his opinion, information, studies, and knowledge.

Despite this, his effort is commendable; And its arrangement follows his opinion directly without any comment or preference from us. It seems that the author set the criteria according to which weighting was made, then sorted and studied the nominated names, and finally put the order according to the hundred.

And he says, explaining the difficulty of his work: “Out of the tens of billions of people on this earth, the names of less than one in a million are mentioned in biological dictionaries. Of the 20,000 people whose names are mentioned in the dictionaries, about half a percent are mentioned in this list.”

And he clarifies the importance and honor of those mentioned among the chosen one hundred, and he says: After all that has been mentioned in relation to the first hundred on the number of the world's population in different ages (every person on this list, in my opinion, is one of those truly pioneering personalities in history).

Finally, we preferred to take the naming that Professor Ahmad Bahaa al-Din used, because he succeeded in this choice, and perhaps the author surpassed him in naming, as the word “hundred” does not give the meaning that the author wanted, while naming the first hundred clearly gives the intended meaning.

Introducing the book

The book consists of (572) pages of large size. It contains an introduction and a study of the hundred chosen according to the order in which the selection was made. It includes a study of each of the hundred personalities about his life and the background of his era when appropriate, then a presentation of his achievements, works, or theories that he presented, and his appreciation by his contemporaries or History, explaining the reasons that made the author put the studied character in its specific order .

After presenting the 100, the author made a list of the names of those who missed entering the list and they are candidates to be included in it. Then the author put a conclusion containing his comments, then followed it with the following tables:

100 Table No. A includes a distribution on countries and continents. Table No. B - Distribution of the cent on the date of their appearance. Table No. C - includes the fields of their influence and work.

The author admits that his interest in men was more than his interest in women, because the world and history mentioned men more, and that his interest focused primarily on the founders of religions and scholars, so the conquerors were less interested in writers.

Introducing the author:

Dr. Michael Hart is an American by birth and nationality. He received a BA in Mathematics from Cornell University in 1952.

And a BA in Law from New York University in 1958.
And a master's degree in science from Adelphi University in 1969.
Then he obtained a doctorate in astronomy. From Princeton University in 1972 • Worked at the Space Research Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. And in the largest astronomical observatory in California, in Bamadenia, at the Hill Observatory. He is one of the accredited scientists in applied physics.
Member of the Astronomical Society and its branches in Planetary Sciences. He is married and has two children.

Criteria taken by the author:

From the review of the hundred characters! Presented by the author and their chosen arrangement, we can extrapolate two types of criteria, criteria related to the extent of the influence of personalities on history, and criteria related to the position of the character in their order of one hundred.

A- Criteria related to the extent of impact on history:

A - The first importance of people who have influenced history in a permanent or wide influence, whether in that famous or unknown personality, benevolent or evil, humble or arrogant.

2 - Considering the real personality and moving away from the mythical personality such as Homer, Aisop and others.

3- Excluding persons whose names are not known, such as the inventor of the wheel and the inventor of writing.

4 - Not caring about fame or noble origin and limiting attention to -
extent of influence.

5- Relying on political personalities on the personalities that influenced the global level and not taking into account the personalities that affected the local level, such as Peter the Great of Russia.

6- Neglecting the people who have affected humanity at the present time,