What are the sources of our knowledge of the life of Muhammad and the early history of the Muslim community? Comment on their value.

AS and A Level Religious Studies & Philosophy

It has been recently estimated that there are 1.100 billion Muslims in the world and therefore the scope of a religion that represents about 22% of the world’s population must be greatly appreciated. However, the Prophet Muhammad exists not only as an integral part of the major world religion of Islam but also as a highly historical figure, whose character has been shaped by many Islamic sources. They are principally in the form of the hadiths, the traditions, which are biographical works dealing with Muhammad’s life. These in turn make up larger works, called suras. The suras and hadiths were written roughly 100 years after Muhammad's death, but accurate oral tradition, characteristic of the time, enabled such works to be reliable sources, and the oldest hadiths available are those written by Ibn Ishaq. The Qur`an also acts as a source on Muhammad’s life and his community, while little is known from other sources.

Ibn Ishaq, who died in 767 CE (135 years after the death of Muhammad), wrote the first biography of Muhammad that we have today, after editing a much longer work by Ibn Hisham. Therefore it is considered that the underlying threads of Ibn Ishaq’s Sura consist mainly of dogmas and biographical information already in existence, but assembled in a chronological order. The value of such a chronological document is, however, brought into question due to the lack of dates on the hadiths. However, I ask whether a lack of accurate chronology makes a difference to the message that Muhammad brought or to the ways of living that he displayed during his life – two absolutely fundamental parts of modern Muslim living. Some critical scholars would argue that chronological mistakes would indeed limit the value of such a work andthat the basic framework of Ishaq’s Sura, refered to by Watt as the maghazi-material, would be completely altered and reshaped if chronological interpretations had been incorrect.

However, the question of the reliability of even the basic framework Ishaq’s works can be questioned. The edition of Ishaq’s Sura by Ibn Hisham begins with a genealogy of Muhammed that traces all the way back to Adam. However, no sources are given as to the origins of the information used, and the unusual linearity of the genealogy seems to suggest that the work may not be reliable. Genealogical history was very important to Islamic culture as a strong sense of history was always present in their being, and it can therefore be suggested that the genealogy had been skewed to show what Hisham wanted: the apparent relation to Adam, and therefore a heightened religious authority. Historians, however, do regard the genealogies dating from the birth of Muhammad as mainly right, which is most important when considered the life of Muhammad and the development, as of then, of the Muslim community.

The inclusion of poetic works into Ishaq’s writings has, however, aided those wanting to affirm the work’s reliability, and do indeed give us a picture of inter-tribe relations of the time even if they don’t give us much insight into Muhammad’s life. It is suggested that as there seems to be a lack of bias with respect to tribal relations, this diversity in information adds to the reliability of the work – as unreliable sources would often unavoidably write with similar opinions and styles throughout their works. While poetry played a fairly small role in telling us about the life ...

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Anecdotes in Ishaq’s work are very different from anecdotes found within the main collection of hadiths (which Ishaq considered to mean ‘account’ or ‘story’), and seem to corroborate with the view that his work is of value to an understanding of Muhammad’s life. The main collection of Hadith are of little to no value to our understanding of Muhammad, and some stories and sayings of a theological nature are possibly pure fiction, while other areas display distortions and alterations when compared to real sayings. Ishaq’s anecdotes are of much more value. The majority are centred on Muhammad, and are chronologically arranged, which enables us to learn a great deal about Muhammad and his role in early Muslim society. It may well be, however, that Muhammad is the central figure in Ishaq’s work because the author was attempting to show the reader how essential Muhammad was to the Muslim community. This is true in the fact that Muhammad was a Prophet of God and transmitted God’s word. However, Islam and the Muslim community existed and exists as a very historical entity, and as such it must asked whether the hugely disproportionate inclusion of the Prophet in Ishaq’s work points towards a bias in the author. Scholars on Islam such as Watt also suggest that Ishaq included stories in which Muhammad tended to the eye wounds of a man called Qatada, in order to affirm a certain healing-type power in the Prophet. Watt explains that it may well be the case that the essentials of story are true, and while “Qatada may well have said later that he saw better with this eye,” any inference of a healing power leads us to think that Ishaq’s writings are biased. Nevertheless, Ishaq’s Sura offers a full and wide ranging biography of stories that are mostly centred on Muhammad, and are therefore invaluable to an understanding of Muhammad’s life. The oral tradition is also linked intrinsically with large areas of Ibn Ishaq’s work, and was a very important part of the Muslim community.

In a time of extremely low literacy rates the oral tradition was, in most cases, the sole method of passing on traditions, stories and sayings. In a society consisting very much of insular tribes and societies, the role oral tradition played was heightened. Modern historical scholars and critics are sometimes quick to condemn the use of oral tradition in producing reliable historical documents. However, I believe that a tradition so primarily linked with early Muslim community should not be discounted, but instead heralded as an accurate transmission of information, even if it may not meet the requirements needed by modern historical criticism and investigation. Ibn Ishaq was writing at a time more than 130 years after the death of Muhammad and therefore the problems associated with oral tradition are applicable to his work. Oral tradition, however, dictates that those sayings and stories that were important to Ishaq’s and us were not cold and flat statements, but were themselves a fundamental part of the Muslim community and of the image of Muhammad as a historical figure. Consequently the source of the oral tradition, within Ibn Ishaq’s work, is of great value to our understanding of Muhammad and his life and community.

Conversely, the oral tradition stories and sayings that exist outside of Ishaq’s work are of less value. Divisions in Islam, political and social stand points have sometimes distorted the word of the Prophet and have therefore distorted how we understand his way of life. Islamic legal theory, for example, took on different ‘flavours’ as the Muslim community grew into different kingdoms and countries – the same could be said about stories and sayings; that they were in some way interpreted in different ways by different cultures, and therefore distorted. If one also considers the divisions in Islam due to the Kalam school of thought, it is easy to see how our view of the message that Muhammad brought could differ. The Kharijites, for example, believed that you must fight against those who do not follow their interpretation. Shi`ite Muslims are also historically important as the first major challengers of Islamic dogmas. One can see that the oral tradition could, in these two cases, have taken completely different routes of re-telling and interpretation. The name Kalam also comes from the term "kalamu Allah" (meaning logic or philosophy) which means that stories, traditions and sayings could be subject to re-interpretation through logic and reason which would limit the reliability of such sources. The value of the oral tradition outside of Ibn Ishaq’s writings is consequently limited, whereas many would argue that the scriptures and teachings in the Qur`an are of upmost importance in teaching about Muhammad and the Muslim community that he was a part of.

The Qur`an is a record of God’s word transmitted to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel, and as such all that is needed to live a good Muslim life is contained in it: it is a book sent down “to make everything clear” (Q16:89). The Qur`an, which was collected and assembled by Uthman at about 650 A.D, tells us relatively little about Muhammad himself, but gives us an insight into what it was to live in an early Muslim community, as well as the Prophet’s teachings. The book serves as a way of life by instilling values in communities - "If any do deeds of righteousness be they male or female and have faith they will enter heaven and not the least injustice will be done to them." Q4:124, while also confirming how Muslims should worship and pray to Allah. For example, Allah says in Q29:45 that solat (five daily prayers) is a form of remembrance of Him, also it is to prevent us from shameful deeds.

However, the collection and subsequent assembling of the Uthmanic text that we see today can also be scrutinised. Uthman was approached by one of Muhammad’s followers complaining of distortions and differences in interpretation amongst different Muslim tribes and communities. Thus Uthman sent for the writings held by Hafsa, one of Muhammad’s widows. The writings she sent Uthman were copied by five scribes, under Uthman’s watch, into one canonical version and sent to Muslim communities and tribes to be copied and the process continued. Thus Uthman’s text was establishing as the most widely spread and accepted text. However, scholars still believe that variant and hybrid versions of some passages were incorporated into later copies of the text, therefore changing and distorting the word of God. The Uthmanic text, however, remains as the most widely accepted Qur`an and few Muslims fail to be convinced that the text we have today is the teaching of Muhammad and thus the word of God. Although variations in some texts can be seen, the rapidly accepted Uthmanic text acts as a foundation to the belief of very many Muslims and is therefore of huge significance and value in a modern historical view, a knowledge and a fundamental understanding of Muhammad’s life through his teachings and of the dynamics of early Muslim communities.

The sources I have addressed are those that I believe to be most elemental to an understanding of Muhammad’s life and his community. Unfortunately, some distorted and hybrid texts are now firmly rooted within what is considered the word of God. However, in most cases these distortions have little to no affect on our understanding of Muhammad. It seems fairly easy to identify areas of text in which, for example, a biased author attempts to suggest healing powers in Muhammad. However, I think that one must accept that these qualities are more easily suggestible about a Prophet of God, and should not be seen as attempts to deliberately skew our knowledge of Muhammad, but rather to confirm his importance and essential significance to Muslim life and society.

Bibliography:

Watt, M. “The reliability of Ishaq’s sources” in Early Islam. Collected articles (1990), 13-23.
Peters, F. E., Muhammad and the Origins of Islam (1994). Appendix: “The quest of the historical Muhammad”
Cook, M. “The collection of the Koran” in The Koran: A very short introduction.