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MUHAMMAD: Life Of The Prophet

Role Of The Prophet In Muslim Thought And Practice

The Prophet of Islam was a religious, political, and social reformer who gave rise to one of the great civilizations of the world. From a modern, historical perspective, Muḥammad was the founder of Islam. From the perspective of the Islamic faith, he was Allah ’s Messenger (rasūl Allāh), called to be a “warner,” first to the Arabs and then to all humankind.

Reconstructing the life of “the historical Muḥammad” is one of the most difficult and disputed topics in the modern study of Islam. The most valuable source for modern biographers of Muḥammad is the Qurʿān, the Islamic scripture which is a record of what he recited as revelation during the last two decades or so of his life. The Qurʿān responds continually and candidly to Muḥammad ’s historical situation; however, it is not in chronological order, and most sūrahs (chapters) contain recitations from different parts of his life, making it difficult for nonspecialists to interpret as a historical source. Muḥammad in the Qurʿān is a real person whose fears, anxieties, hopes, and eventual power show forth with clarity to the critical reader.

The fullest accounts of his life, however, are in the traditional biographies called collectively the sīrah. The most influential works in this genre are by Ibn Isḥāq (d. 768 AD), al-Wāqidī (d. 822 AD), and Ibn Hishām (d. 834 AD). The sīrah is often supplemented by the ḥadīth collections, which contain thousands of accounts of what Muḥammad is reported to have said and done, allegedly going back to the “Companions of the Prophet,” a technical expression that refers to those who were Muslims during Muḥammad ’s lifetime, and thus were trustworthy eyewitnesses. The most respected ḥadīth collections, which have a canonical status second only to the Qurʿān, are by al-Bukhārī (d. 870 AD) and Muslim (d. 875 AD). Similar accounts appear in the general histories by Ibn Saʿd (d. 845 AD) and al-Ṭabarī (d. 923 AD). These four types of writings — the Qurʿān, the sīrah, the ḥadīth accounts, and general histories — provide the source material for modern biographers and also for traditional views of Muḥammad.

The nature of the sīrah accounts changes dramatically over three main stages of Muḥammad ’s life. (1) For the period before the earliest passages in the Qurʿān, legends predominate; they probably arose after Muḥammad ’s death and have little historical value for the modern biographer. (2) For the period from the earliest Qurʿānic passages up to the hijrah, the migration of Muḥammad and his followers from his native Mecca to Medina in 622 AD, exegetical stories based on ambiguous or cryptic passages in the Qurʿān are the most distinctive literary type. (3) It is only for the Medinan period, from the hijrah to the Prophet ’s death in 632 AD, that the life of the “historical Muḥammad” can be reconstructed with moderate certainty.

Early Meccan Period

The sīrah and ḥadīth literature contain stories regarding Muḥammad that begin even before his birth. It is said that his father, ʿAbd Allāh, was on his way to the home of Āmīnah to marry her when a woman standing in her doorway begged him to come into her house and make love. He refused, continued to Āmīnah ’s house, and consummated the marriage. Later, he passed by the house of the first woman, who this time said nothing to him. He turned back and asked why she had not invited him in again, and she said, “When you walked by before, a light shone from your face and I knew you were going to be the father of a prophet. Now, the light has disappeared from your face and I no longer desire to have you” (Ibn Isḥāq, Ibn Saʿd).

Several stories say that throughout Āmīnah ’s pregnancy and until the time of Muḥammad ’s birth, a bright light shone and lit up the city of Busra (Bostra) in Syria (Ibn Isḥāq). When Muḥammad was a young boy taking care of flocks of sheep and goats, a cloud formed over him and created a cool area that protected him from the heat of the sun. When he was twelve years old (Ibn Saʿd), or nine (Ṭabarī), he traveled with his uncle Abū Ṭālib on a caravan journey to Syria. When they arrived at Busra, a monk named Baḥīrā provided a meal for everyone and then announced that Muḥammad was going to be a prophet (Ibn Isḥāq, Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabarī). In another version, it was on the way north to Syria, before reaching Busra, that the caravan stopped at a resting place, and the monk Baḥīrā saw certain physical signs on Muḥammad ’s back and proclaimed that he was going to be a prophet. He warned Abū Ṭālib not to take the boy to the land of the Byzantines (that is, Syria), because they would kill him (Ṭabarī). Another story says an unnamed monk made the same prediction but warned that Jews in Syria would kill the boy if they knew who he was (Ibn Saʿd). It is said that when Muḥammad was twenty-five years old, a well-to-do widow named Khadījah hired him to be in charge of her goods on a caravan to Syria. When the caravan arrived in Busra, Muḥammad sat beneath a tree to rest, and a monk named Naṣtūr came out of a nearby monastery and said, “No one has ever sat beneath this tree before except prophets.” He asked Khadījah ’s servant some questions about Muḥammad and then announced that he was going to be a prophet (Ibn Isḥāq, Ibn Saʿd, Ṭabarī).

When Muḥammad was thirty-five, the Kaʿbah was repaired by men of the leading tribes in Mecca. When they got to the final task, lifting the Black Stone and replacing it in one corner of the Kaʿbah, the men quarreled over which tribe would have the privilege. After a while they agreed that the next person to enter the sanctuary would decide. The next one to enter was Muḥammad, who listened to each tribe ’s claim and then said that the stone should be placed on a blanket and that one person from each tribe should assist as they lifted it and set it in place together (Ibn Isḥāq, Ṭabarī).

These are representative sīrah and ḥadīth stories set in the period before Muḥammad ’s first vision or revelation. The stories usually stand alone, without any connecting narrative. Occasionally, narrative accounts or simple biographical statements appear between stories, for instance reporting the deaths of Muḥammad ’s mother and grandfather. Some of the narrative accounts and biographical reports are no doubt historical, but most are impossible to date, and differing details of the same event are often given.

Among the reports that can be accepted as historical are the following:

That Muḥammad grew up as an orphan (sūrah93:6) in the clan of Hāshim;

That an uncle, Abū Ṭālib, was his guardian;

That he had other uncles named Ḥamzah, al-ʿAbbās, and ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā (nicknamed Abū Lahab); and,

That he married a well-to-do widow named Khadījah who bore him four daughters that grew to adulthood—Zaynab, Ruqayyah, Umm Kulthūm, and Fāṭimah.

Questions remain, however, regarding most of the alleged events of this early period of his life characterize the sīrah for this part of Muḥammad ’s life. To conclude that they are legends in their present form does not preclude the possibility that historical events might lie behind some of them.

It was during this period of his public mission in Mecca that major historical events in the life of Muḥammad took place: the emigration of Muḥammad ’s followers to Abyssinia (Ethiopia), the boycott of his clan of Hāshim, the deaths of his wife Khadījah and his uncle and protector Abū Ṭālib, the loss of protection from his clan, his visit to al-Ṭāʿif to seek refuge there, and most importantly, the hijrah to Medina.Certain facts about Muḥammad ’s life and situation in Mecca are known from the Qurʿān. He proclaimed himself to be a “warner” (nadhīr) to the Arabs, called by the Allah of the Jews and the Christians to recite in “a clear Arabic recitation” (qurʿān) the same revelation that was brought by earlier messengers (rusul). The similarity in form of his early recitations to the messages of the soothsayers caused the Meccans to accuse him of being inspired by spirits called jinn rather than by Allah. Preaching against the wealthy for not sharing with the poor brought severe persecution, especially to his followers. Valuable insights into Muḥammad ’s character and personality can be seen in the section that follows.

The list of unanswered questions regarding this period in Muḥammad ’s life is long, and only a few examples can be given. Muḥammad ’s age at the time of his first vision or revelation is variously given, usually as forty or forty-three. This difference cannot be resolved by the alleged fatrah or “gap” in the revelations, usually said to have lasted three years, since this concept was most likely an invention of later biographers who used it to reconcile the different accounts. Also unknown are the causes of the first hijrah to Abyssinia; more than simple persecution must have been involved. Several unanswered questions also surround the boycott of the Hāshim clan, about which the traditional accounts differ in several significant aspects. Finally, Muḥammad ’s activities during his last two years in Mecca before the hijrah are largely unknown.

Contrary to the images of Muḥammad that dominate the sīrah and ḥadīth literatures, the glimpses of Muḥammad in the Meccan parts of the Qurʿān consistently portray him as fully human with no supernatural powers. His opponents frequently challenged him to perform miracles: “We will not believe you until you make a spring gush forth from the ground” (17:90); the Qurʿān responds by commanding Muḥammad to say, “I am only a human being (bashar) like you” (18:110 and 41:6). He also had no supernatural knowledge. When his opponents challenged him to reveal things of the invisible world, the Qurʿān instructs him to say, “I do not know the Unseen (al-ghayb)” (6:50); and when they asked him when the end of time would come, the Qurʿān responds, “Say: Only my Lord has knowledge of it and He will not reveal it until its proper time” (7:187).

His humanness is seen clearly when he is frequently comforted in times of persecution or disappointment — “Your Lord has not forsaken you [Muḥammad] nor does He hate you” (93:3); in times of grief — “We know indeed that the things they say grieve you” (6:33); and in times of doubt — “By your Lord ’s blessing you are not a soothsayer, nor are you possessed by jinn” (52:29). He suffered periods of uncertainty and impatience in Mecca, when his message was met with rebuke and the people taunted him with accusations he could not refute; this is shown by the many passages that urge him to be steadfast and patient: “So be patient . . . and do not let those who do not have sure faith make you unsteady” (30:60); “So be patient, for indeed Allah ’s promise is true” (40:55). According to the Qurʿān, Muḥammad ’s primary role in Mecca was simply that of “warner,” usually nadhīr but sometimes mundhir: “He [Muḥammad] is a warner (nadhīr) of the warners of old” (53:56); “Now they marvel that a warner (mundhir) has come to them from among them” (38:4). This role appears frequently in the rhyme phrase, “I am/He is a clear warner (nadhīr mubīn)” for instance in 7:184 and 29:50.

Medinan Period

The life of Muḥammad in the Medinan period can be reconstructed with much more certainty. In addition to a wealth of biographical data in the Qurʿān, we have extensive reports of maghāzī (military expeditions) that Muḥammad led or organized and sent out. After the Qurʿān and some of the poetry preserved in the sīrah, modern historians regard the maghāzī works as the oldest sources on the life of Muḥammad and the foundation of the Medinan portions of the sīrah, which are fuller and more trustworthy than the Meccan portions. Also, the Qurʿān and the sīrah frequently corroborate each other for the Medinan period.

Narrative Form Of The Medinan Sīrah

For the period after the hijrah, Ibn Isḥāq includes a detailed “chronological frame narrative” that gives the dates for Muḥammad ’s military expeditions and for the time he spent in Medina. This narrative form is seen in the following example that covers the one-year period from the end of the battle of Badr until the beginning of the battle of Uḥud:

The Messenger left Badr at the end of Ramaḍān or in Shawwāl. He stayed only seven nights in Medina before he led a raid against the Banū Sulaym. He got as far as their watering place called al-Kudr and stayed there three nights, returning to Medina without fighting. He stayed there for the rest of Shawwāl and Dhū al-Qaʿda. Abū Sufyān made the raid of Sawīq [barley meal] in Dhū al-Ḥijja. When the Messenger returned from the raid of al-Sawīq he stayed in Medina for the rest of Dhū al-Ḥijja, or nearly all of it. Then [in Muḥarram] he raided the Najd, making for [the tribe of] Ghatafān. This is the raid of Dhū Amarr. He stayed in the Najd through the month of Ṣafar, or nearly all of it, and then returned to Medina without fighting. There he remained for the month of Rabīʿ I or a day or two less. Then he made a raid on Quraysh as far as Baḥrān, a mine in the Hijāz. He stayed there for the next two months and then returned to Medina without fighting. After his arrival from Baḥrān the Messenger stopped [in Medina] for the months of the Jumādā II, Rajab, Shaʿbān, and Ramaḍān. Quraysh made the raid of Uḥud in Shawwāl.

The precise dates that are given in Watt ’s Muhammad: Prophet and Statesman (1961) are taken from al-Wāqidī rather than Ibn Isḥāq. The two dating systems differ in detail but agree in assuming that the later Islamic calendar was projected back to the time of the hijrah.

Muhammad ’s Difficulties With The Meccans

Soon after his arrival in Medina, Muḥammad, following the Arabian custom at that time, began to send out razīʿahs or raiding parties against Meccan caravans. A wronged party was expected to take goods by force from an oppressor tribe. Muḥammad and his followers believed that the Meccans had forced them out of their homes and businesses and thus owed them redress. When a group of Muḥammad ’s men captured a Meccan caravan at Nakhlah in late 623 or early 624 AD, this gave warning to the Meccans. Thus on their next trip north, in the spring of 624 AD, the Meccans stayed together in Syria until everyone was ready to return home in one great caravan led by Abū Sufyān, a wealthy and powerful leader of Mecca. Muḥammad led about three hundred men to intercept this caravan, and the Meccans sent a force three times as large to protect it. Abū Sufyān evaded Muḥam-mad and arrived safely back in Mecca, while Muḥammad ’s men and the Meccan force encountered each other by chance at Badr, where caravans stopped for water. The two forces engaged in battle and Muḥammad ’s men defeated the much larger polytheist army, killing about seventy Meccans. The Muslim victory at Badr (mentioned by name in sūrah3:123) was taken by many as a sign that Allah was on Muḥammad ’s side, and this led to a large number of converts.

A year later, in the spring of 625 AD, Abū Sufyān led another Meccan army north to Medina for revenge. The two forces met on the hill of Uḥud, just north of the Medinan settlement, and Muḥammad and his men suffered a near disaster. After a fatal mistake by a detachment of his archers, Muḥammad was injured but able to rally his forces. Abū Sufyān, seeing that about seventy Muslims and their allies had been killed, declared a victory and returned to Mecca (sūrah3:121–179 addresses the battle of Uḥud). Two years later, in the spring of 627 AD, the Meccans, again under the command of Abū Sufyān, made their last attempt to stop Muḥammad by force. This time the Muslims dug a trench across exposed areas into the settlement; this was sufficient to deter the Meccans and their allies, who withdrew after about two weeks (33:9–25). By this time Muḥammad was in complete control of Medina, and Bedouin tribes in the surrounding area were making alliances with him and becoming Muslims.

Muhammad ’s Difficulties With The Jews

It is clear from the Qurʿān, seen especially in sūrah 2, that Muḥammad expected the three main Jewish clans in Medina to accept him as a prophet sent by their Allah (2:40–41). Since Islamic beliefs and practices were just being formulated in the Qurʿān, flexibility within the nascent community allowed for the adoption of certain Jewish practices; some became permanent in Islam, while others were temporary. The Jewish fast on the Day of Atonement, called in Arabic the ʿĀshūrāʿ fast, was adopted during the first year in Medina (Bukhārī and Muslim say Muḥammad followed the example of the Jews in adopting this fast), along with food restrictions that are similar to those of the Jews (sūrah2:172–173). The Muslims even adopted the Jewish qiblah, or direction one faces when performing the daily prayer rituals, facing north toward Jerusalem. About a year and a half after Muḥammad arrived in Medina, it became clear that the Jews there were not going to accept him as a prophet. The so-called “break with the Jews” thus occurred, marked dramatically by a “change of the qiblah,” when the Muslims began to face south from Medina toward the Kaʿbah in Mecca instead of toward Jerusalem (2:142–150).

After each of the three battles mentioned above, one of the main Jewish clans was expelled from Medina. The primary justification was their failure to support Muḥammad, marked by their collaboration with his enemies in Medina and their possible conspiracy with the Meccans. After the battle of Badr, the clan of Qaynuqāʿ was forced to leave Medina, and some of the emigrants (muhājirūn), Muḥammad ’s followers from Mecca who had made the hijrah, took over their marketplaces and soon controlled trade within the settlement. The clan of al-Naḍīr was expelled after the battle of Uḥud; they owned rich groves of palm trees that were distributed among Muḥammad ’s poor emigrant followers and others (sūrah 59:2–10). The treatment of the third and last Jewish clan, the Qurayẓah, was much harsher because of evidence of a conspiracy during the battle of the trench in which they made plans to attack Muḥammad ’s forces from the rear. If this fifth-column plot had been carried out, it could have ended his career. After a siege of their strongholds, they surrendered and Muḥammad put them on trial, appointing a judge from an Arab tribe that was allied to them. The verdict was that all the men of the clan were to be executed and the women and children were to be sold as slaves (sūrah 33:26–27). In this one action of his career, Muḥammad followed the customs and expectations of his day rather than his usual magnanimous treatment of his foes after battles and intrigues.

Muhammad ’s Last Years And His Death

In the spring of 628 AD, guided by a dream or vision, Muḥammad led a huge group of Muslims on the 270-mile journey from Medina to Mecca to perform the pilgrimage ceremonies. They camped at al-Ḥudaybīyah on the edge of the ḥaram, the sacred territory that surrounds Mecca. There Muḥammad negotiated a treaty in which he agreed not to press his claim to complete the pilgrimage ceremonies that season, while the Meccan leaders promised to open the city to the Muslims the following year. They also agreed to a ten-year truce during which neither side would attack the other. In the spring of 629 AD, Muḥammad led the first Muslim pilgrimage, an ʿumrah or “lesser pilgrimage” to Mecca. Later that year, a clan allied to the Meccans attacked a clan allied to Muḥammad, thus breaking the treaty. Abū Sufyān and other Meccan leaders rushed to Medina to dissuade Muḥammad from attacking their city, and they apparently agreed to surrender Mecca to him peacefully. Late in 629 AD Muḥammad and his forces set out for Mecca, and early in 630 AD his native city surrendered to him without a fight.

Just weeks after the surrender of Mecca, with Muḥammad now in command of all of west-central Arabia, a large confederation of tribes from south and east of Mecca made one last attempt to stop him by force. Muḥammad ’s 12,000 men fought an army twice that size at Ḥunayn (mentioned by name in the Qurʿān, 9:25), and once again the Muslims and their allies defeated a much larger force of polytheists. After dividing up the spoils, Muḥammad and his followers from Medina returned home, where he consolidated his position. In the spring, a son named Ibrāhīm (Abraham) was born to Muḥammad by his Christian concubine, Māriyah the Copt, who was said to have been a gift to him from an Egyptian ruler.

In late 630 AD, he undertook his largest and last military expedition, with a force said to number 30,000 men, to Tabūk, near the Gulf of Aqaba. Muḥammad encountered no army, but this show of force demonstrated his intention to challenge the Byzantines for control of the northern part of the caravan route from Mecca to Syria. Ibn Isḥāq and al-Wāqidī record twenty-seven expeditions, including pilgrimages to Mecca and the expulsions of the three Jewish clans, that Muḥammad led himself, but they say he actually fought in only nine. In addition to these, he organized and sent out more than fifty other expeditions.

The following year, 631 AD, is called the “Year of Deputations.” Envoys from tribes all over Arabia traveled to Muḥammad ’s headquarters in Medina and surrendered to him. Some tribes may have seen these treaties as normal Arabian tribal alliances, but Muḥammad regarded them as including acceptance of Islam. The year 632 AD began on a sad note for Muḥammad with the death of his young son Ibrāhīm. Later that spring the Prophet led to Mecca the largest number of Muslim pilgrims ever assembled during his lifetime on what came to be called his “Farewell Pilgrimage.” On the return trip to Medina, Muḥammad contracted a fatal illness and knew his days were numbered. He appointed his longtime friend, Abū Bakr, to lead the daily prayers and the weekly worship service. Then he asked permission of his wives to be relieved of his duty of nightly rotation so he could spend his last days in the apartment of his youngest wife, ʿĀʿishah, the daughter of Abū Bakr. It was there that he died, at about age sixty, in June 632 AD.

Glimpses Of Muhammad In Medinan

Parts Of The Qurʿān

Muḥammad is portrayed in personal and candid terms in Medinan passages of the Qurʿān, just as he is in the Meccan verses cited above. The Qurʿān continues to stress his completely human nature and limitations. Even after his victories over the Meccans and his success in winning converts among the tribes of the Hejaz, Muḥammad still agonized over those who did not believe: “O Messenger, let them not grieve you who vie with one another in unbelief” (5:41). A significant Medinan theme that is stated explicitly in several passages is Muḥammad ’s need to seek forgiveness for his sins: “[Muḥammad], ask forgiveness (ghafr) for your sin (dhanb), and for [those of] the believers, men, and women” (47:19); and “Surely We have given you [Muḥammad] a manifest victory that Allah may forgive you your former and your latter sins and complete His blessing on you” (48:1–2). The later Islamic doctrine of Muḥammad ’s sinlessness has no foundation in the Qurʿān. His humanness is also seen in passages on his mortality: “You [Muḥammad] are mortal (mayyit) and they are mortal. Then, on the Day of Resurrection before your Lord you will dispute” (39:30–31). The candidness of the Qurʿān is striking in a number of Medinan passages on another aspect of Muḥammad ’s humanness, his attraction
/“; to the good things of this life, including women, wealth, and children: “Thereafter women are not lawful for you [Muḥammad], neither for you to take other wives in exchange for them, though their beauty please you, except what your right hand owns [female slaves, who may be taken as concubines]” (33:52); and “Do not let their wealth and their children please you [or cause you to desire to have them]” (9:85).

The most prominent difference between the Meccan Muḥammad and the Medinan Muḥammad involves his roles within the two communities and the explicit Medinan references to his considerable power and authority. One indication of this change in Muḥammad ’s circumstances is seen in his titles, especially where he is mentioned along with Allah. Contrary to popular belief, Muḥammad is never explicitly called a “prophet” (nabī) or “the Messenger of Allah” (rasūl Allāh) anywhere in the Meccan passages of the Qurʿān. The Qurʿānic usage of Muḥammad ’s various titles and other evidence shows his humility in that he is only gradually, and explicitly only after the hijrah, portrayed as a “Messenger of Allah” equal to the great prophets of the past. Sometime after the battle of Badr a primary Medinan motif began to appear, for instance in 4:13: “Whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger will be admitted to gardens in which rivers flow [Paradise], therein dwelling forever”; this is coupled with a threat in verse 14, “But whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger and transgresses His bounds will be admitted to a Fire, therein dwelling forever.” An even stronger statement of this motif occurs in 4:80: “Whoever obeys the Messenger thereby obeys Allah.” A frequently occurring variation on this theme occurs in 4:136: “O believers, believe in Allah and His Messenger and the Book He has sent down [revealed],” stated more strongly in 48:13: “We have prepared a Blaze [hellfire] for whoever does not believe in Allah and His Messenger.” The height of Muḥammad ’s power is portrayed nowhere more clearly than in several passages where he is told to be harsh in his treatment of those who oppose him, as in sūrahs 9:73 and 66:9, where the same statement occurs verbatim: “O Prophet, struggle with the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be harsh with them. Their refuge is Gehenna [Hell], an evil homecoming!”

Even in the context of this new power and authority, Muḥammad ’s humility and even shyness continue to be portrayed vividly. As is often the case, it is the Qurʿān that instructs the believers on personal matters pertaining to Muḥammad, as in 49:2: “O believers, raise not your voices above the Prophet ’s voice, and be not loud in your speech to him as you are loud to one another”; and one of the most fascinating verses in the Qurʿān on Muḥammad ’s character is found in 33:53: “O believers, do not enter the apartments of the Prophet, unless you are given permission for a meal, and wait for the proper time. But when you are invited, then enter, and when you have finished your meal, then leave. Do not linger for idle talk, for that would be an annoyance to the Prophet, and he would be shy to ask you [to leave].” What a graphic picture of the personality of the most powerful ruler in Arabia!

Biographies

The “Life” of Muḥammad (c.570–632 AD) has been one of the most important genres in the Islamic literary tradition from the earliest periods of Islam to the present. Numerous biographies exist in all Islamic languages in prose, poetry, and recently on film. Muḥammad’s companions began collecting information about him while he was still alive, particularly about his military exploits (maghāzī) after the Hijrah (622). This material consisted of short prose accounts (ḥadīth, khabar) centered on one theme and sometimes accompanied by the name of a witness. The reports were anecdotal and modeled on the heroic genre of the pre-Islamic ayyām al-ʿArab ([battle] days of the Arabs), although there was little poetry in the early collections. Very little about Muḥammad’s childhood and early life can be found in the first biographies. No formal editions were made of this material until much later, and there is no evidence that any of it was put in chronological order before the middle of the first Islamic century.u

Early Writings

The death of Muḥammad in 632 AD, the crises of succession, and the expansion of Islam beyond Arabia had a profound impact on the biographies of Muḥammad. In the social and religious turmoil of the first Islamic century, when Islam expanded to present-day France in the West and India in the East, many groups began to collect and organize real and fictitious traditions about Muḥammad to serve their religious, political, and social needs. Genealogical closeness to the Prophet or to his family played an important role for many groups, not the least of whom were the Shīʿīs. To this day, claiming to be a descendant of Muḥammad’s tribe or family carries political or religious prestige in many parts of the Islamic world. By the end of the first Islamic century, claims to political power were being made not only on the basis of membership in the Prophet’s family, clan, or tribe, but also on contending views that Muḥammad had designated ʿAlī, his closest male relative, or Abū Bakr, his father-in-law and close adviser, as his successor (khalīfah, caliph).

Intergroup accusations of falsification of traditions and the need to establish a solid basis for religious and political claims promoted an increase in the collection of stories about Muḥammad, his wives, and his companions. Muslims interested in establishing a basis for proper conduct and understanding of the Qurʿān insisted on making citations about Muḥammad more exact and scholarly. By the beginning of the second Islamic century and the ʿAbbāsid revolution, all traditions were expected to have a sound chain of attribution (isnād) reaching back through recognized and reliable transmitters. This requirement led to the collection of biographical data about the companions and subsequent transmitters of traditions as well as the writing of heresiographical (the history of religion, heresiology is the study of heresy, and heresiographies are writings about the topic).

Heresiographical works were common in both medieval Christianity and Islam. Treatises in which the reliability of individuals and groups was judged by their adherence to one religious norm or another. Because Sunnī and Shīʿī doctrines were only forming during this early period, many collections reflect attitudes that were later rejected.

In spite of increased scholarly attention, or perhaps because of it, traditions of dubious authenticity entered the major collections. This fact, coupled with the inevitable loss of historical material over time, has presented problems for both classical and modern scholars in reconstructing a picture of the historical Muḥammad. Some Western scholars are so skeptical as to deny the possibility of knowing anything about Muḥammad’s biography. These problems were also faced by the early collectors of traditions: for example, the collector al-Bukhārī (d. 870) is said to have chosen only about 7,275 traditions as reliable from more than 600,000. Issues of the reliability of traditions and the veracity of transmitters remain a central issue in Muslim legal discussions and in inter-communal disputes between Sunnī and Shīʿī.

Sīrah And Sunnah

Toward the end of the first Islamic century, biographical materials about Muḥammad began to be grouped into two distinct types of collections—one historical, discursive, and narrative, called sīrah, and the other discrete, anecdotal, and ahistoric, called sunnah. The two terms had been used interchangeably but now came to designate separate functions for the sacred biography within the Islamic communities. Sīrah came to be used exclusively for narrative histories of Muḥammad and other prophets with whom he was compared. As a result it became the basis for the Muslim views of history. The sīrah written by Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq (d. 767) was an apology for the ʿAbbāsid revolution and a model for subsequent universal histories, such as that by the famous al-Ṭabarī (d. 923). It started with the creation and chronicled the history of the world up to Muḥammad, demonstrating how Muḥammad’s life was the fulfillment of the divine mission. In this form, it matched Jewish and Christian hagiographic and apocalyptic works with which it shared many features.

Muḥammad’s life was compared to previous prophets and holy men in the Jewish and Christian traditions, in keeping with the Muslim view that Islam is the culmination of divine revelation. The comparisons served to aid Muslim missionary activities but also led to accusations among Christians that Muḥammad’s similarity to Jesus meant that he was the Antichrist. A shorter form, edited by Ibn Hishām (d. ca. 827), rapidly became the standard biography in the Islamic world and the basis for most subsequent works.

Sunnah developed as the basis for Islamic law (sharīʿa) in which Muḥammad became the paradigm for proper behavior. In this genre, Muḥammad is represented a-historically as explaining or acting out some aspect of correct behavior. Even in those traditions that can be dated to some part of Muḥammad’s life, the emphasis is more on the universality of the action rather than on the historical specificity of the event. The Islamic use of sacred biography as a model goes beyond that found in Christianity or Judaism. For example, it’s known that Muḥammad’s favorite foods were honey and nuts. It’s known that he would not wear silk or gold, and it’s known when and how he performed oral hygiene. Many Muslims today will eat sweets made from honey, consciously aware that Muḥammad did so, and Muslim men will not wear silk and will cleanse their teeth as religious acts. Through sunnah (or more properly, through ḥadīth) it is possible to reconstruct a detailed picture of Muḥammad’s life, but not a historical picture.

Biography And The Qurʿān

Biographies of Muḥammad continue to be one of the most popular forms of literary expression among Muslims. They provide spiritual models for the individual Muslim and paradigms for community formation among emerging Islamic republics. Interest in the West has increased to include popular as well as scholarly biographies. Attempts to portray Muḥammad in film have been discouraged by opposition within Muslim communities, although a 1976 Lebanese film, “The Messenger,” starring Anthony Quinn, was widely distributed. Probably its most noted feature was the fact that no image of Muḥammad was shown, in keeping with an Islamic aniconic tradition. If past trends and current increases in the number of Muslims throughout the world are any indication, one can expect the popular and resilient genre of Muḥammad’s biographies to incorporate most modern literary forms.

Role Of The Prophet In Muslim Thought And Practice

During the first three centuries of Islamic thought, Muslims viewed the prophet Muḥammad in terms of key religious images. For the scholars of Islamic law, the Prophet was the legislator-jurist who defined the limits and possibilities of ritual observance; for the mystic, he was the ideal seeker on a journey to spiritual perfection; and for the philosopher and the statesman, he was the role model of a resolute conqueror and a just ruler. For most ordinary Muslims, the Prophet was a beautiful model, a source of Allah’s grace and salvation.

These various images for the Prophet have since been repeated and refined in a continuing “biographical process.” Scholars have continuously refashioned the Prophet in extensive biographies, of which the earliest extant work is that of Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq (d. 767 AD) edited by Muḥammad Hishām (d. 833 AD). Most ordinary Muslims, however, have learned about the Prophet as a part of religious observances rather than through scholarly writings.

Modern Images Of Muhammad

In the modern period, the image of Muḥammad has undergone changes in direct response to the rise of the West and a corresponding decline in the material fortunes of Muslim society. From being the supreme symbol of a powerful and dominant civilization, Muḥammad has had to adapt to a community embattled on all sides.

Muslim conceptions of the Prophet have also been challenged by the rise of historical and critical scholarship in the West. The search for the historical Muḥammad redeemed him from the vilified stereotype of Christian theology. At the same time, however, he is now viewed from an array of critical, often reductionist, perspectives; instead of being a Christian impostor, he became a psychopath or a mere product of the material forces of seventh-century Arabia. These developments in modern scholarship have influenced the new images constructed within the Muslim community by Muslims at the crossroads between the West and traditional Islam. There are at least three identifiable images in modern Islamic thought: the universalization of the Prophet as a unique model of civilization in Muslim apologetic; the Prophet as a model of sociopolitical ideologies; and the de-emphasis of the Prophet as the supreme spiritual font and presence.

Muhammad As A Model For Civilization

The “universalization” of the prophet Muḥammad begins with the modernist reformers at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The works of Syed Ameer Ali and Muḥammad Haykal are representative examples of modernist castings of the Prophet in response to both the Christian theological images of the Prophet and the historicocritical theories of Western scholars. In their hands, he becomes the ideal personality manifesting the values of modern civilization. They used the prophet Muḥammad to claim the values they admired in the powerful West. Although not all Muslims have felt the need to rebut the European image of the Prophet, there has been a general caution in approaching traditional Muslim sources.

Muhammad As A Sociopolitical Model

This universalistic view was incorporated in the second image of the Prophet as a model for sociopolitical development which received greater attention by Muslims during the period of nation-building, ranging from the struggles for independence to the call for an Islamic state. This image de-emphasizes the apologetic of the early modernists, but results in a dispute over which particular ideology the Prophet championed.

Islamic modernism focused on the comprehensiveness of Islam and its validity as a complete life system that contains the components of progress and its compatibility with reason, science, and modernity. It called as well for the return to the authentic fundamentals of religion (the Qurʿān and sunnah), for the adoption of ljtihad, and for the abandonment of traditionalism. The modernist Islamic thinkers, like Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī (1838–1897), Muḥammad ʿAbdu (1849–1905), and Rashīd Riḍā (1865–1935), were greatly affected by the Wahhābī call.

The discourses of Islamic renaissance tried to distinguish between two methods, one divine and another human. This was an attempt to free the Qurʿānic text and prophetic traditions from modern epistemological, social, and political frameworks. The renaissance ideologues thought that the reading of Islamic heritage from a liberal perspective would lead to the rise of a democratic national revolution under the umbrella of Islam itself.

The Arab renaissance, for instance, grounded its most important doctrines in natural reason. Islamism, or Islamic fundamentalism, on the other hand, ultimately grounds the doctrines of an Islamic renaissance in novel interpretations of Islamic fundamental texts, the Qurʿān and the prophetic traditions. `Thus the modernist Islamic thinkers adopt and adapt into Islam the principles of Western Enlightenment, including the distinction between state and society; the need for civil government; the necessity of a social contract that can be dissolved; the centrality of civil society; popular will; standing law or constitution; a limited government; and political representation.

Muhammad Iqbal rejected the idea of nationalism within the particular Islamic notions of commitment and universality in Muḥammad’s teachings. At the same time, however, he speaks of the ummah (Muslim community) inheriting the function and responsibility of the Prophet. This then becomes the basis of a special “Islamic nationalism” witnessed in, for example, the Islamic state of Pakistan. Later, under the impact of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s socialist experiment in Egypt, the prophet Muḥammad was seen as a socialist revolutionary. This sociopolitical image reached its climax in the work of Zakaria Bashier.

De-Emphasis Of Muhammad’s Spiritual Significance

The universal and sociopolitical images of the Prophet are accompanied by the suppression of his spiritual significance. Under the modern reformulations the Prophet loses his central spiritual station. Earlier modernists did in fact emphasize a hazy moral and spiritual legacy of the Prophet in the service of their secularist project. Under these conditions, however, the Prophet is granted spirituality on condition that he depart from the center stage of history.

In spite of the numerous biographies by Muslims in the twentieth century, then, there lurks a deep question about the religious presence of the Prophet. It is not surprising that the rise of the Aḥmadīyah (Qādiānīs), who accepted Mirzā Ghulām Aḥmad (1835–1908) as a new prophet, accompanied strong modernist inclinations. Iqbal, for example, spoke of the Prophet as supreme doubter; he even suggested that the belief in the finality of the prophet Muḥammad carries the seed of its “own abolition.” The Egyptian playwright Naguib Mahfouz also addressed the issue in Awlād ḥāratinā (The People of Our Quarter, 1959), an allegorical account of religion and the end of religion, including Islam, in modern times.

Muhammad And Islamic Reform Movements

The growing influence of religion in politics and culture around the world is one of the most remarkable developments of the twentieth century. Identifying an authentically Islamic perspective is part of the Islamists’ challenge in presenting Islam9 as an alternative vision of Western modernity, an “Islamic modernity,” constitutional rule, freedom of religion, pluralism, and individuals’ rights became the model for an Islamic political framework. After his migration to Medina, Muḥammad set forth the first constitutional document in Islam (al-Ṣaḥīfa), establishing the first multi-religious, pluralistic, political entity for the Muslims. This act confirmed Muḥammad as the leader, ruler, and judge of the community, in addition, of course, to his status as Allah’s messenger.

The significance of this constitution for the development and reinterpretation of modern Islamic political thought is immense. First of all, it sanctioned the coexistence of many groups and recognized collective identities, with no attempt to convert non-Muslims to Islam. Second, instead of employing purely Qurʿānic or Islamic justifications, general human principles of solidarity, mutual responsibility, and defense of the community against aggression became the frame of reference. Thirdly, it accepted minorities and recognized their rights to administer their own affairs according to their religious and tribal laws. More importantly, the drawing of this constitution and its acceptance by non-Muslims signaled the Prophet’s contractual legitimacy as the community’s elder statesman and judge.

The majority of modern Muslim thinkers agree that the Prophet did not specify a particular form of government but, instead, provided guidelines based on justice, freedom, shūrā in public affairs, and enjoining the good and forbidding evil. Fundamental guidelines include protecting religion, administering justice, defending the state, applying Islamic law and the laws of other groups, collecting and dispensing state revenues, appointing state administration, and addressing all matters of concern to the state and the community.

During the twentieth century, along with Abū al-Aʿlā al-Mawdūdī, Ḥasan Nadwī, Ḥasan al-Bannā), Sayyid Quṭb and others, it was possible to speak of Islamic movements based on a reconstructed model of culture and civilization drawing their authority from divine sources—the Qurʿān, the sunnah, and the period of the Rightly Guided Caliphs. Although they continue to depend on the inspired personality to varying degrees, the general attitude of the modern Islamic movements is to focus on the centrality of the text and the return to the Qurʿān and the sunnah.

The solution for al-Mawdūdī and al-Bannā, the real founders of Islamism, was that the Muslim nation would not succeed except by following what Muḥammad and the earlier Muslims did: setpting up the Muslim nation first and then the Islamic state. This occurs when a nucleus of Muslims who believe in the Islamic call unites people around it and persists in maintaining its Qurʿān and sunnah without compromise until the ideal of Islam takes hold.

The revival of the Prophet model in modern times serves as a way of deconstructing traditionalism and reconstructing Islamic thought, whether moderate or radical, modernist or Islamist. This model is central to any attempt to rethink Islam in terms of m;.he truth of Muḥammad’s message—a conviction that hinges hopes for the success of future Muslim expansion on true belief and righteous conduct.

Traditional biographical sources contain little information about Muḥammad’s childhood. It is reported that his father died before he was born and he lost his mother at the age of six. Raised first by his grandfather ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib and then by his uncle Abū Ṭālib, the leaders of the Hāshimī clan of the Quraysh tribe, Muḥammad grew up in a relatively influential family. Nonetheless, as an orphan he remained vulnerable, a condition that may have helped shape his concern for the less fortunate, which was to become a central feature of his prophetic call. In his youth, Muḥammad came to be known as “the trustworthy” (al-Amīn) on account of his forthrightness and honesty. As a young man, he joined hands in a pact (ḥilf al-fuḍūl) with other members of his tribe in defense of foreigners who were being exploited and had no legal recourse in the prevailing social order of Mecca. It is reported that later in his career, Muḥammad reaffirmed his commitment to the pact, which became a significant precedent for Muslims to enter into pacts with non-Muslims for the purpose of upholding virtue and justice.

Call To Prophethood

At the age of forty, in the year 610 AD, Muḥammad confided to his family that he had received revelations from Allah. His wife Khadījah, close friend Abū Bakr, and cousin ʿAlī were among the first to accept his claim without reservation. For the first three years of prophethood (nubūwah), Muḥammad preached to a small group of family and friends before announcing his role as Allah’s messenger (rasūl) to the rest of his tribe. This sequence of closed preaching to trusted confidants followed by open call (daʿwah) is seen as an initial phase that is necessary for spiritual development (tazkīyahand tarbīyah ), a program that has been incorporated into the methodology of some Islamic movements today.

Muḥammad’s call was rejected by the majority of influential individuals of Mecca, among them ʿAmr b. Hishām (remembered as Abū Jahl, “the father of ignorance”), an influential member of the Makhzūm clan, and his uncle ʿAbd al-ʿUzzā (referred to as Abū Lahab, “the father of flame”). As Muḥammad’s mission picked up steam, opposition also increased. Two of Muḥammad’s daughters, who were married to two of Abū Lahab’s sons, were humiliatingly divorced on account of his prophetic activity. In the face of mounting ridicule and insult, Muḥammad is reported to have preached tolerance and even kindness, a spirit that is embodied in the Qurʾān (41:34).

As opposition turned to outright persecution, the weaker contingent among Muḥammad’s followers migrated to Abyssinia to seek protection under the authority of a just Christian kingdom. Asylum was duly granted to these early emigrants, serving as an example for the permissibility of Muslims seeking refuge among non-Muslims when necessary. Even Muḥammad continued to live under the protection of his uncle Abū Ṭālib, a non-Muslim who never embraced the prophetic call. For this, the entire Hāshimī clan, along with the rest of the followers of Muḥammad, were eventually boycotted. Muḥammad continued to preach patience in the face of adversity, but also sought help from outside Mecca in the neighboring township of Ṭāʾif, which was rebuffed violently by its inhabitants. In the same year, 620 AD, about a decade after his call to prophethood, Muḥammad lost his wife and comforter, Khadījah, as well as his uncle and protector, Abū Ṭālib. Remembered as “the year of sorrow” (ʿām al-ḥuzn), this year marks the climax of Allah’s process of testing the prophet and the community of believers in Mecca. Islamist activists—patterning the trajectory of their struggle on the life of the Prophet—anticipate similar trials in their faith-based efforts to transform the world. It is this period in Mecca that also serves as a model for advocates of nonviolence as a means of social and political change in Islam. In particular, Muḥammad’s response to the angel who offered to crush Ṭāʾif after its people had violently rejected him has been noted as mirroring the response of Jesus when he was on the cross.

Muḥammad’s central religious teachings in this period were the belief in one Allah (tawḥīd), the institution of prophethood (risālah), and the life hereafter (ākhirah). Muḥammad’s teachings had strong social and economic implications. He taught that women and men were both equally Allah’s creation and accountable before Allah as individuals (33:35); that people must give charity and shun usury (2:261–281); the less fortunate are to be cared for (107); people should not deal in fraud (83:1–3), hoard wealth, or renege on their debts and promises (2:177, 23:8); and that Allah and Allah’s messengers were to be obeyed (64:12 and passim), even though worldly leaders commonly remain heedless because of their love for wealth and power (7:60–127 and passim).

Emigration (Hijrah) And The Formation Of A Community (Ummah)

The emigration from Mecca to Medina, or the hijrah, is a landmark event in the life of Muḥammad. It serves as a 90 shift in context that both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars draw on to provide a framework for his life and message. The second caliph, ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (r. 634–644), selected the hijrah as the starting point for the Muslim calendar, indicating that it is this event it that resulted in the formation of the Muslims as a distinct “community” or “nation” (ummah), an event that is echoed in revelations of the Qurʾān dated to roughly this period (2:143, 22:78). William Montgomery Watt has contrasted Muḥammad’s life in Mecca, “Muḥammad as Prophet” (610–622), with what was to follow, “Muḥammad as Statesman” (622–632), in Medina.

The hijrah was instigated by two rival tribes (Aws and Khazraj), who extended an invitation to Muḥammad to move to Medina to arbitrate disputes. In exchange, the tribes were invited to accept Muḥammad as Allah’s messenger, believe in his revelations, and support his cause. Among the residents of Medina were also Jewish tribes, with whom Muḥammad felt a natural affinity because of their common ancestor Abraham, as well as their common belief in One Allah and shared sacred history. After arriving in Medina, Muḥammad made two critical, one might say revolutionary, political moves. First, he joined each of the Meccan emigrants (pl. muhājirūn) in a relationship of brotherhood to a Medinan “Helper” (pl., Anṣār). In this way, a new “supertribe” ummah was born that had its moorings in faith rather than blood relations. Second, he drafted a “constitution” (mīthāq) that included the Jewish tribes, affirmed his role as the final arbiter of disputes, bound them all together as one community (ummah) for the defense of Medina, but nonetheless gave each tribe relative autonomy to manage its own affairs.

At the same time, Muḥammad began to marry again, a process that had already begun after the death of Khadījah, with whom he had remained monogamous during their twenty-six year marriage. Muḥammad is reported to have married up to about a dozen women before the end of his life, including the young ʿĀʾishah, who was a tender six years old at the time of the marriage and nine (according to most sources) when the marriage was consummated. Muḥammad’s marriages have been the subject of many polemics against Islam. They have, however, been explained in political terms, both in Muslim apologetics and by sympathetic Western scholars. His marriage to ʿĀʾishah was not atypical for its time but was of foundational significance for the Islamic tradition, because she lived a long life after Muḥammad’s death and transmitted intimate details about his life that would have otherwise been lost. Politically, she was the daughter of his best friend and companion, Abū Bakr, who eventually became the first caliph after Muḥammad’s death. Other marriages, such as the one to the daughter of Abū Sufyān, Muḥammad’s chief rival in Mecca, served as a means for reconciliation among enemies.

Battles And Raids

The Meccans were merchants, and their trade routes to the north ran past Medina. One of Muḥammad’s moves early on in Medina was to organize raids (ghazw) against his own tribe and its allies. It was unprecedented for a tribe to be raided00 by one of its own, and equally rare for the tribe of Quraysh to be raided at all, because they were custodians of gods at the Kaʿbah (a shrine built by Abraham) and hosts of the annual pilgrimage and trade in Mecca. Although the significance of the raids has been debated, with some designating them as mere Arab “sport,” other analysts of Muḥammad’s political strategy view them as part of a larger mission to liberate Mecca for the believers in order to establish the religion of the one true Allah. Muḥammad did not personally participate in all of the raids, and on one such occasion, at Nakhlah, his followers engaged in a skirmish, in spite of Muḥammad’s instruction to merely scout, which resulted in the shedding of Meccan blood at the hands of Muslims in one of the four “Sacred Months.” Although Muḥammad is said to have been aggrieved by the incident, the Qurʾān legitimized the action by stating that “oppression is worse than slaughter” (2:191). The Qurʾān further empowered Muḥammad and the believers to engage in armed conflict because “they had been wronged” (3:195, 22:39).

The botched raid at Nakhlah strengthened the hand of the “hawks” in Mecca to attack Muḥammad at his new base in Medina. The ensuing Battle of Badr, in which the two armies clashed head-on for the first time, resulted in the decapitation of the Meccan leadership and an overwhelming victory for Muḥammad. Muḥammad is reported to have defeated the Meccan army with a force that was vastly outnumbered. News of the success spread throughout the land. The Battle of Badr, which took place in the holy month of Ramaḍān, is remembered as “the distinguishing day” (yawm al-furqān). Badr also highlights a few qualities of Muḥammad as a political and military leader. He was a risk taker, willing to enter into an all-or-nothing military encounter out of conviction and deep faith in Allah. He led by persuasion, not by coercion, and adjusted his strategy on the battlefield based on advice from foot-soldiers to gain tactical advantage. He also initiated a propaganda campaign in a nearby village to compel the opposing force to engage him in battle or suffer moral defeat, thereby reducing their options while enhancing his own.

The prisoners of war that Muḥammad’s army captured were ransomed or released after they performed service for the Muslims, which reportedly included the option of providing instruction on how to read or write to the illiterate. The battle may have been won, but the war was still on. The efforts of Muḥammad developed into the doctrine of jihād fī sabīl Allāh, or an all-out “struggle in the path of Allah,” which involves every action of the believer to submit to the will of Allah, be it spiritual or military. Together with the Qurʾān and founding of a new ummah, the doctrine of jihād has been a cornerstone of Muḥammad’s legacy. The following year, the Meccans returned to avenge their humiliation and fallen leaders at Badr in the Battle of Uḥud. Once again, Muḥammad took the counsel of his followers but, against his better judgment, left the city to engage the enemy out in the open. A contingent of hypocrites abandoned Muḥammad at the eleventh hour, but the believers nonetheless managed to place themselves in a tactically superior position on the field and gain the upper hand. However, after an initial period of success, dissension among the ranks of Muḥammad’s army led to a reversal of fortunes. Muḥammad suffered personal injury that resulted in the momentary loss of consciousness. He retreated and managed to save himself and his army from annihilation.

Two years later, in the fifth year after the hijrah, the Meccans returned with an enormous force, together with their allies from Arabia, to finish the job. On the advice of a Persian companion, Salmān al-Farisī, Muḥammad chose to defend the city by building a trench around its most vulnerable points and relying on Jewish allies for defense from the rear. The strategy succeeded but involved deception on the part of Muḥammad to sow dissent among the ranks of the enemy. This behavior has been considered by Muslims as exceptional and specific to times of conflict and imminent danger. An example of this exceptionalism is when Muḥammad is reported to have given a special sword to one of his followers to create havoc among his enemy. The warrior, Abū Dujānah of the Khazraj, “strutted up and down between the ranks,” indicating his intent to inflict great slaughter, to which Muḥammad replied: “That is a gait which Allah detesteth, save at a time and place as this.”

After each of the three major battles mentioned above, Muḥammad took action against the three major Jewish tribes, one by one, for undermining his position in Medina or for all-out treason. He expelled two of them from the city, but executed the entire population of adult males of the third (Banū Qurayẓah), taking their women, children, and possessions as spoils of war for the community of believers. Muslim tradition maintains that the actions were retaliatory, in accordance with accepted norms of the time, and consistent with Jewish laws for treason, instead of universal examples of ad hoc savagery. Some scholars have seen in these episodes more sinister traits. They argue that Muḥammad desired to eliminate the Jewish tribes because they did not accept him as Allah’s messenger and undermined his legitimacy as a messenger of Allah in Medina. However, such negative interpretations of Muḥammad’s character and motives are extraneous to the traditional sources, which have embedded within their narratives specific acts of betrayal that prompted each incident. These episodes were not taken as precedents for carte-blanche aggression against Jews in the Sharīʿa, but they are periodically accentuated by fringe elements to invoke hatred in times of religious tension and conflict.

Truce (Ṣulḥ) And Conquest (Fatḥ)

In year six of the hijrah, Muḥammad led a large number of his followers (said to be approximately 1,400) in a peaceful pilgrimage to Mecca after having a religious vision or dream (ruʾyah). This was not the first time that Muḥammad had based a major act on a dream, a pattern that Muslim religious and political leaders were to follow throughout Islamic history. Muḥammad and his companions went, inspired, unarmed into the bosom of the enemy. The venture could have ended in disaster, but it turned out to be a brilliant strategic move. Viewed theologically, Muḥammad entrusted himself into the care of Allah and merely followed instructions given to him in a dream. Viewed from the lens of secular history, Muḥammad gambled that the slaughter of unarmed pilgrims would simply not take place because it would result in an unacceptable loss of prestige for the tribe of Quraysh. As custodians of the Kaʿbah and of the pilgrimage, the Quraysh were obligated to serve as hosts to any party seeking to visit the holy shrine without hostile intentions. Representatives of the Quraysh met Muḥammad outside Mecca in a settlement known as the Ḥudaybīyah. The two parties entered into a ten-year truce whose terms appeared to be heavily in favor of the Meccans. In spite of the reluctance of his companions, albeit with the wholehearted support of one of his wives, Umm Salamah (of the Makhzūm clan, whose leader, Abū Jahl, had been slain at Badr), Muḥammad ratified the treaty. For one, the Meccans were forced to recognize him as an equal to be negotiated with. Further, the truce allowed Muḥammad to stabilize his place in Medina, forge new alliances, and neutralize threats that had developed on other fronts.

In this manner, within a period of two years after the truce of Ḥudaybīyah and in the eighth year after the hijrah, Muḥammad was able to return to Mecca victorious. The last two years of his life involved “mopping-up” operations in strongholds of the peninsula, such as Ṭāʾif, and in reconciling various constituencies to his leadership, such as the Christians of Najrān. Before his death, Muḥammad had commissioned an army to march northward toward Syria. The army departed, but only after his death, a symbol of his mission to the rest of humanity, which was to be carried on by those who came after him. In one ḥadīth, Muḥammad is reported to have said: “I am the messenger of Allah to the Arabs specifically, and to the rest of humanity generally.” This report, and others like it, have served the missionary ambitions of Muslims to take Allah’s message to the entire world.

The Qurʾān calls Muḥammad “an excellent example” for the believers (33:21). Devout Muslims seek to follow his way, or sunnah, in all aspects of their lives: appearance and dress, manners and behavior, ritual and worship, leadership and politics. Muḥammad’s legacy encompasses these various dimensions, and has been appropriated in diverse ways to suit individual persuasions and historical contexts. In the modern world, Muḥammad serves as a model for both individual virtue and social reform. Advocates of Islamic revolution tend to pattern their movements in stages to mirror Muḥammad’s life narrative. Others see the paradigm of socialism in his life of symbolic poverty, or conversely, identify the roots of democracy in Muḥammad’s practice of consultation (shūrā) with his companions. For the Shīʿa, Muḥammad’s role as a religious and political leader rightfully belongs to his descendants, unlike Sunnīs, who see authority as vested in the body of Muslims (particularly the scholars or ʿulamāʾ) collectively. For Sunnī traditionalists, Muḥammad is a “universal model” to be emulated in all aspects of life, mediated by an unbroken chain of interpretation through history that maintained a balance of power with political authority whose objective was to safeguard the Sharīʿa. Muslim tradition as a whole, considers Muḥammad’s forgiving nature as paramount. He is reported to have said, “If you have mercy on those on earth, the One who is in heaven will have mercy on you.” The Qurʾān calls Muḥammad “a mercy to the worlds” (Q. 21:107), and it is primarily through this lens that Muslims of all persuasions remain anchored to the one they call their beloved, and the beloved of Allah (ḥabīb Allāh).

Concluding Comments

The verses quoted above as “glimpses” of Muḥammad in the Qur’ān represent only a small sample of the hundreds that provide insight into his life and character. Throughout these verses the single characteristic of his personality that predominates from the beginning to the end is his sincerity. Through periods of persecution and doubt, then reassurance, and finally complete confidence in his mission, there is no hint of deceit or dishonesty. Yet Muḥammad is often criticized by modern writers; the two accusations most often made against him involve his Medinan militarism and his alleged lasciviousness.

Regarding the first, it must be remembered that Muḥammad was a man of his time. The razzia or raiding party was a characteristic feature of life in Arabia in Muḥammad’s time, so that his attempt to stop the Meccan caravan that resulted in the battle of Badr was accepted by all as customary and within his rights. Most other major battles in which he fought were initiated by the enemy, and the majority of the other expeditions he led did not make contact with any enemy tribe but were largely demonstrations of his growing power to the neighboring bedouin tribes. It is best to see Muhammad as using the customs of his day to mold a new social community. The idea of founding a new religion or being solely a religious leader would have been totally foreign to him. He was administrator, legislator, judge, and commander in chief as well as teacher, preacher, and prayer leader.

As for the second criticism, it must be remembered that Muḥammad had only one wife, Khadījah, until her death when he was about fifty years old. Shortly thereafter he married Sawdah, the widow of a Muslim who died in Abyssinia. It was only natural that he remarry after Khadījah’s death, since he had a large household, with children, servants, and many duties that were usually assumed by the wife. These two were his only wives in Mecca before the Hijrah. In Medina most of his marriages fall into two categories: those with political significance, as when they established bonds between the Prophet and important tribes and clans; and those that resulted from his responsibilities as head of the Muslim community, as when he married widows of Muslim men who died in battle. He is usually said to have had fourteen wives in the proper sense, of whom nine survived him. Māriyah the Copt, as the mother of Ibrāhīm, had a special place in Muḥammad’s life but was not regarded as a wife.

The quest for “the historical Muḥammad” is a modern task that is still in its infancy. Volumes on “the traditional Muḥammad,” the exemplar for Islamic faith and practice, who was created in the process of the establishment of Islamic orthodoxy and orthopraxis, are as old as Islam itself. The Muslim world also knows many “popular Muḥammads,” who vary from culture to culture and combine features of the traditional Muḥammad of Muslim faith and those of the ideal man or the shaman or priest of the various cultural areas. This Muḥammad is often a miracle‐worker or a fortuneteller who can communicate with and control the spirits, and can call upon supernatural powers to heal or otherwise aid the believers. The glimpses of Muḥammad in the Qur’ān cited above make it clear that such beliefs, while worthy of study as part of popular Islam, are inconsistent with the teachings of Islamic scripture, which happens also to be the ultimate source in the quest for the historical Muḥammad.

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