Muhammad

: "Muhammad" is a common Muslim male name. For other prominent people called Muhammad, see Muhammad (disambiguation)

How do we know about Muhammad?

The sources available to us for information about Muhammad are the Qur'an, the sira biographies, and the hadith collections. While the Qur'an is not a biography of Muhammad, it does provide some information about his life. The earliest surviving biographies are the Life of the Apostle of God, by Ibn Ishaq (d. 768), edited by Ibn Hisham (d. 833); and al-Waqidi's (d. 822) biography of Muhammad. Ibn Ishaq wrote his biography some 120 to 130 years after Muhammad's death. The third source, the hadith collections, like the Qur'an, are not a biography per se. They are stories of the words and actions of Muhammad and his companions.

Related Topics:
Qur'an - Sira - Hadith - Ibn Ishaq - 768 - Ibn Hisham - 833 - Al-Waqidi - 822

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Some skeptical scholars (Wansbrough, Cook, Crone, and others) have raised doubts about the reliability of these sources, especially the hadith collections. They argue that by the time the oral traditions were being collected, the Muslim community had fractured into rival sects and schools of thought. Each sect and school had its own sometimes conflicting traditions of what Muhammad and his companions had done and said. Traditions multiplied, and Muslim scholars made a strenuous effort to weed out what they felt were spurious stories. Traditionalists rely on their efforts; the skeptics feel that the question must be revisited, using modern methods.

Related Topics:
Wansbrough - Crone - Sect

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Muslim and non-Muslim scholars alike agree that there are many inauthentic traditions concerning the life of Muhammad in the hadith collections. (Indeed, most of these traditions are acknowledged by Muslim clerical authorities to be weak; only a few hadith collections are considered sahih, or reliable.) A very small minority called the "Quran Alone Muslims" consider all hadith as unreliable.

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However, the historicity of the biographical material about Muhammad presented in the Summary above is not generally contested. Traditionalists, both Muslim and non-Muslim, paint a much more detailed picture of Muhammad's life, as described below.

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