The Biography of Muḥammad: The Issue of the Sources (Islamic History and Civilization, 32) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9004115137 ISBN 13: 9789004115132

Publisher: Brill, 2000

Synopsis

This book deals with the controversial value of the sources on which the biography of Muhammad, the founder of Islam, is based. Discussions on this topic have been going on for more than a century but it has become especially debated during the last two decades.
This volume contains ten articles which are the outcome of an international colloquium on the issue. Part one of the book examines the development of the Muslim tradition concerning the life of Muhammad while the other part focuses on the historical reliability of the source material.
The volume reflects not only the most recent methodological developments in the study of the life of Muhammad but also the improvement of its material-basis due to sources which have only recently become available or which have been neglected.

About this title

About the Author

Harald Motzki, Ph.D. (1978) in Islamic Studies, University of Bonn, habilitation (1989), University of Hamburg, is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands). He has published extensively on Islamic social, legal and religious history.

Reviews

No manuscript sources exist at all for the first two centuries of Islam. The first Muslim historians, writing in the third century after the hijra (the emigration of the Muslims to Medina), derived their information from the hadith, oral reports and sayings about the activities of the Prophet and the early community transmitted through the generations. Even these first historians realized that the hadith existed in varying degrees of "soundness"--that they could be and often were false--but they had nothing else to rely upon. Modern historians find themselves in an identical quandary. Some have argued not only that the sources are too faulty for a biography of Muhammed but that their very weaknesses may indicate that no such person ever existed. This collection of 10 essays seeks a way out of the impasse--and succeeds admirably in showing the possibilities of how to deal intelligently with the hadith without forfeiting all hope of finding historical reality. The authors, including editor Motzki of the University of Nijmegen, are well-known in the field of early Islamic history, and the book's format permits each contributor to utilize whatever historical method proved most promising. As a whole, the anthology displays the highest scholarly standards and should be included in any serious library of Islamic history. (Apr.)

Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Brill
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9004115137
• ISBN 13: 9789004115132
• Binding: Leather Bound
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 330
• Editor: Motzki Harald