Writing the Biography of the Prophet Muhammad: Problems and Solutions (original) (raw)
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Writing the Biography of Muhammad
This article looks at the different approaches that medieval and modern, Muslim and Western scholars have adopted when attempting to write on the life of Muhammad. It considers the sources for his life and the different methodologies that have been devised for assessing their authenticity. It examines the degree to which Muhammad and the ingredients of the religion that he started were a part of the Late Antique world that he lived in and the way in which religious trends of that era might have impacted upon the formation of Islam. Finally, some suggestions are given for how one might take the study of the biography of Muhammad in different directions in the future.
The making of the last prophet : a reconstruction of the earliest biography of Muhammad
1989
The sacred biography of Muhammad has shaped Muslims' perceptions of the place of Islam in the religious history of the world and located the Islamic founder and prophet as the last of God's messengers. As Muslims established political control over ancient Jewish and Christian communities, they also claimed hegemony over the panorama of biblical prophets and holy men. In the eighth century, the author of the first complete biography of Muhammad set out a plan for a history of the world that culminated with the advent of Muhammad and the religion of Islam. The biography not only gave the details of Muhammad's life but also retold the stories of past prophets from an Islamic perspective. The Making of the Last Prophet is an examination of the reshaping and retelling of the biblical past to form the image of Muhammad as the "Seal" of the prophets of God. Through a translation of the reconstructed Arabic text, the sources, the form, and uses of the eighth-century bi...
History of Religions, 1992
has provided us with a rich compilation of early Islamic material that is of interest both to Islamicists and to students of religion interested in hagiography, prophetology, and the development of sacred tradition. From the standpoint of the study of early Islamic thought and history, this is a doubly laudable work: first, because of its reconstruction from later sources of an otherwise "lost" eighth-century C.E. text, the first half of the Sirat Rassl Allah of Ibn Ishaq (d. 767); and, second, because of its rendering of the extant fragments as a continuous text presented in reliable, yet idiomatic and accessible, English translation. The work is also welcome on other grounds. It is essentially a history of previous prophets, and when joined to its well-known and previously translated "other half," the "biography of Muhammad" (already translated by A. Guillaume), it is our earliest major example of the important Islamic literary genre of "universal history," exemplified later by the famous Meadows of Gold of al-MasCfidi (d. 956), and the History of Apostles and Kings of at-Tabari (d. 923). Second, because of its focus on figures well known in Jewish, Christian, and other pre-Islamic traditions, it is a useful additional source to place alongside other texts that testify to the shared religious heritage of Islamic, Christian, Jewish, and other religious and cultural traditions in the early period of Islamic history (e.g., the Kitdb at-Tijdn [Book of crowns] of Ibn Hisham and the Qisas al-Anbiydt [Tales of the prophets], the major collections of which are by ath-ThaClabi [d. 1036] and al-KisaDi [d. after 1200?]). Newby offers us a careful, if necessarily still hypothetical, reconstruction of Ibn Ishaq's narrative of the period from the creation down to the time of Muhammad's immediate forebears, namely, that portion of as-Sirah ([Muhammad's] Life) known as al-Mubtada', "The Beginning," as opposed to the extant portions known as al-Maghazi ([Muhammad's] Campaigns) and (its preamble) al-Mab'ath ([Muhammad's] Sending/Advent). He has painstakingly gathered the materials ascribed to Ibn Ishaq in the often lengthy citations of several later writers-above all at-Tabari in his History and his Qur'anic Commentary, but also authors such as Abfil-Walid al-Azraqi (d. ca. 865), Ibn Tahir al-Maqdisi
The Religio-Political Biography of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH): Philosophy, Ethics and Lessons
International Journal of Law and Society, 2023
This essay aims to understand the nature of prophetic life as a prophet. It discusses the role of the prophet in various capacities not restricted to a spiritual or religious reformer. It considers the role of the prophet mainly religio-political and establishes the link between Islamic religion and politics while providing detailed information on the essential features of political Islam. It also discusses ways in which the prophetic biography can be emulated today. It looks at how the prophet initiated a spiritual call completing it into a political, social, and economic paradigm. The writer demonstrates that prophetic biography was not only personal Islam but also political Islam, that is when there are enough able sincere Islam adhering Muslims suitable to form a polity then political Islam shall be the framework for this Muslim polity. The research has been analytically historical and sociological in nature referring to classical Islamic history books as there isn't much specific biographical data about the Islamic Prophet found in the Quran. Thus, the majority of prophet Muhammad's biography that the Islamic tradition maintains is found outside of the Quran in the literature referred to as seerah (Arabic for "biography"). The Kitab al-maghazi, or "Book of [the Prophet's] Military Expeditions," written by Muḥammad ibn Isḥaq (d. 767-768) is arguably the most influential work in the genre. But this work only survives in later reworkings and abridgments, the most well-known of which is Seerat Muḥammad rasul Allah (the "Life of Muhammad, the Messenger of God") by Abd al-Malik ibn Hisham (d. 833-834).
The Earliest Writings on the Life of Muḥammad: The 'Urwa Corpus and the non-Muslim Sources.
2024
The main part of this book consists of a compilation and evaluation of the corpus of traditions about the life of Muḥammad attributed to the early scholar ‘Urwa ibn al-Zubayr (c. 643-c. 712). ‘Urwa was the nephew of the Prophet's wife ‘Ā’iša, who was also his most important informant. The authenticity of a large part of these traditions is certain, since they were handed down independently from each other by two or more tradents of ‘Urwa. They are thus the oldest authentic Muslim reports about the Prophet. The authors argue that ‘Urwa's reports by and large correctly reflect the basic features of the historical events described. Somewhat older than ‘Urwa's traditions about Muḥammad is only a report in a non-Islamic Armenian source attributed to the chronicler Sebeos (wrote around 660). This and other external evidence partly agree with the Islamic sources, sometimes providing new perspectives on the life of the Prophet. But there are also contradictions. The authors can show that in such cases the ‘Urwa transmission is preferable. The crux of the much-discussed so-called Hagarism hypothesis, which proposes an alternative narrative of the origins of Islam (Muḥammad, after having established a community which comprised both Arabs and Jews, set off with these allies to conquer Palestine) is demonstrably based on a misreading of a Sebeos passage.
THE METHODOLOGY OF EARLY MUSLIM HISTORIANS
Dirasat Islamiyyah Journal , Department of Islamic Studies, BUK
This paper discusses the development of early Muslim historiography through a review of Ibn Hisham’s collection of the biography of the Prophet (Pbuh), commonly known as Siratu Ibn Hisham. The book is so far the oldest collection known to us concerning Islamic History and the biography of the Prophet (Pbuh). Other collections, especially on the biography of the Prophet (Pbuh), that were written during later periods, made extensive references to this book compiled by Ibn Hisham. The book has its distinctive style and methodology, which was most appropriate to the period in which it was written. It has also documented for us the essential sources of Islamic history and the principles of interpreting events that occurred in the early period of Muslim history. This paper is a contribution to the ongoing efforts by some contemporary Muslim scholars at redefining the methodology of documenting and analyzing Islamic history within the general framework of the principles established by early Muslim scholars.