Historiography

Relevant Qur’anic Verses

We will recount to you the best of narratives in what We have revealed to you of this Qur'an, and indeed prior to it you were among those who are unaware [of it]. 12:3

Whatever We relate to you of the accounts of the apostles are those by which We strengthen your heart, and there has come to you in this] sourah truth and an advice and admonition for the faithful. (11:120)

Thus do We relate to you some accounts of what is past. Certainly We have given you a Reminder from Ourselves. (20:99)

Excerpts

The Arabs in History

p32: In an essay on Muhammad and the origins of Islam Ernest Renan remarks that, unlike other religions, which were cradled in mystery, Islam was born in the full light of history. 'Its roots are at surface level, the life of its founder is as well known to us as those of the Reformers of the sixteenth century,' In making this remark, Renan was referring to the copious biographical material provided by the Sira, the traditional Muslim life of the Prophet. When the problems of governing a vast empire brought the Arabs face to face with all kinds of difficulties which had never arisen during the lifetime of the Prophet, the principle was established that not only the Qur'an itself, the word of God, was authoritative as a guide to conduct, but also the entire practice and utterances of the Prophet throughout his lifetime. The records of these practices and utterances are preserved in the form of Traditions (Arabic: Hadith), each individual Hadith being attested by a chain of authorities in the form 'I heard from ... who heard from ... who heard from ... who heard the Prophet say'. Within a few generations of the Prophet's death a vast corpus of Hadith grew up, covering every aspect of his life and thought

Brill Encyclopedia of Islam (Entry: Muhammad-7:378)

Correct information about Muhammad's life obviously originated ultimately from genuine Islamic sources. But it was spread in Europe by non-Muslim transmitters, who had lived in the Islamic environment for a longer period of time or permanently (and almost without exception were versed in Arabic). However, as non-Muslims under Islamic domination or in Islamic surroundings, they were, as a rule, not concerned with the diffusion of an objective, let alone a positive, image of Muhammad. Consequently, in both the selection and the transmission of "true" elements of Muhammad's biography their emphasis is distant if not polemical.

Already coloured in a mildly negative way, the correct assertions about the life of the Islamic Prophet then reached the studies of Christian authors, who were not only complete outsiders to Islam but also intent on using their pens to completely disqualify Islam and thus the Prophet in the first place. With this, these assertions were used selectively and mainly in so far as they were suitable for polemics, which went as far as scornful malignity. Occasionally, these assertions were also changed accordingly, but they were above all interwoven with fictitious elements in such a way that they were often divested completely of their historical value. The most different mixtacomposita of this kind became for a long period the basis of the image of Muhammad in Christian Europe.

The most important motives and groups of motives which decisively marked the image of Muhammad in the European Middle Ages and fixed it afterwards for a long time (with offshoots until today):

With very few exceptions, the concept of the mediaeval biography of the Islamic Prophet was dominated by a single tendency, namely to prove that Muhammad, in the way he had lived and acted, could not have been a prophet, that his alleged divine revelations consequently were man's work and that Islam at the very most is an abstruse heresy of Christianity. Made subservient to this basic concept, there appear in the mediaeval Muhammad biography four kinds of motives, which may perhaps be characterised as follows:

1. Authentic accounts which—hardly or not at all changed—were, according to the mediaeval Christian concept, already as such sufficient to disqualify Muhammad as a Prophet. 2. Authentic accounts which by a little shift of emphasis and/or by inserting them into a false context of history or argumentation, unmasked Muhammad as a pseudo-prophet. 3. Motives which ultimately are based on authentic material but which hardly permit one to recognise this connection because they have been garbled by being shortened, enlarged or contextually placed so as to serve a polemic argumentation (these manipulations can also be found in various combinations or all together). 4. Pure fiction (not very often found).