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Si bien la existencia del profeta islámico Mahoma está establecida por registros históricos contemporáneos o casi contemporáneos, [1] [2] los intentos de distinguir entre los elementos históricos y los elementos ahistóricos de muchos de los informes de Mahoma no han tenido mucho éxito. De ahí que se debata la historicidad de Mahoma , además de su existencia. Se discute cuánta historia confiable hay sobre Mahoma, y ​​algunas fuentes musulmanas sostienen que "todo lo que hizo y dijo fue registrado", [3] mientras que otras fuentes académicas afirman que casi toda la información disponible sobre la vida de Mahoma, aparte del hecho de su existencia, no es históricamente creíble. [4]

La primera fuente musulmana de información sobre la vida de Mahoma, el Corán , ofrece muy poca información personal y se debate su historicidad . [5] [6] La biografía profética , conocida como sira , junto con los registros de las palabras, acciones y la aprobación silenciosa de Mahoma, conocida como hadiz , sobreviven en las obras históricas de escritores de los siglos III y IV de la era musulmana. (c. 800-1000 d. C.), [7] [8]y dar una gran cantidad de información sobre Mahoma, pero la confiabilidad de esta información es muy debatida. Además, hay un número relativamente pequeño de fuentes no musulmanas contemporáneas o casi contemporáneas que confirman la existencia de Mahoma y son valiosas tanto en sí mismas como para compararlas con las fuentes musulmanas. [6]

Fuentes islámicas [ editar ]

Página del folio del Corán persa del siglo XI en escritura cúfica

La principal fuente islámica sobre la vida de Mahoma son el Corán y los relatos de la vida de Mahoma basados ​​en tradiciones orales conocidas como sīra y hadith . La mayoría de los musulmanes creen que Dios ha prometido "proteger y preservar el Corán" del error,

No es posible que un musulmán albergue dudas sobre la inmutabilidad del Corán, porque Allah ha garantizado la preservación del Corán. Allah dice (interpretación del significado): “En verdad, Nosotros, somos Nosotros los que hemos enviado el Dhikr (es decir, el Corán) y seguramente lo guardaremos (de la corrupción)” ( Corán  15: 9 ) [9 ]

y que la Sunnah (o hadiz) - "que son las palabras, hechos y aprobación que se atribuyen al Profeta" [10] Muhammad - es, como el Corán, "Revelación divina" ( wahy ). [10] (Los historiadores no musulmanes no han compartido esta reverencia).

Corán [ editar ]

Según la erudición islámica tradicional, todo el Corán fue escrito por los compañeros de Mahoma mientras estaba vivo (durante el período 610-632 d.C.), pero era principalmente un documento relacionado oralmente. Después de la muerte de Mahoma, el Corán dejó de ser revelado y los compañeros que habían memorizado el Corán comenzaron a morir (particularmente después de la Batalla de Yamama en 633). [11] Preocupado de que partes del Corán pudieran perderse irremediablemente, el compañero principal Umar instó al califa Abu Bakr a ordenar la colección de los pedazos del Corán que hasta ese momento habían estado esparcidos entre "tallos de hojas de palmera, delgadas piedras blancas, ... [y] hombres que se lo sabían de memoria, ... " [12] júntelos. [11] [13] Bajo el Califa Uthman , un comité de cinco copió los fragmentos en un solo volumen, "monitoreando el texto a medida que avanzaban", resolviendo desacuerdos sobre los versos, rastreando un versículo perdido. [14] Este muṣḥaf , que se conoció como el "códice utmánico", se terminó alrededor del año 650 EC, [15] [16] después de lo cual Uthman emitió una orden para todas las demás copias y dialectos personales e individuales existentes del Corán (conocido como Ahruf ) para ser quemado. [17] [18]

Los eruditos modernos difieren en su evaluación del Corán como fuente histórica sobre la vida de Mahoma.

Según la Enciclopedia del Islam , "el Corán responde constante y frecuentemente con franqueza a las cambiantes circunstancias históricas de Mahoma y contiene una gran cantidad de datos ocultos que son relevantes para la tarea de la búsqueda del Mahoma histórico". [5] En contraste, Solomon A. Nigosian escribe que el Corán nos dice muy poco sobre la vida de Mahoma. [6] A diferencia de las narraciones bíblicas de la vida de Moisés o Jesús , Michael Cook señala que

mientras que el Corán cuenta muchas historias a su manera, la de Mahoma no se encuentra entre ellas. Hay referencias a hechos de su vida, pero son solo referencias, no narrativas. Además, el libro no se da a mencionar nombres en el contexto de su propio tiempo. El mismo Muhammad es nombrado cuatro veces, y un par de sus contemporáneos una vez cada uno ... y por esta razón es casi imposible relacionar la escritura con su vida sin salir de ella. [19]

(En cuanto a la historicidad del Corán en sí, los eruditos también están en desacuerdo. Algunos argumentan que "el Corán es convincentemente las palabras de Muhammad" ( FE Peters ), [20] con el pergamino de una copia temprana del Corán, el manuscrito de Birmingham , cuyo texto difiere solo ligeramente de las versiones modernas, ya que está fechado aproximadamente alrededor de la vida de Mahoma. [21] Algunos eruditos occidentales, [22] sin embargo, cuestionan la exactitud de algunos de los relatos históricos del Corán y si el libro sagrado existía en alguna forma antes de la última década del siglo VII "( Patricia Crone y Michael Cook ); [23]y / o argumentan que es un "cóctel de textos", algunos de los cuales pueden haber existido cien años antes de Mahoma, que evolucionó ( Gerd R. Puin ), [23] [24] [25] o fue redactado (J. Wansbrough), [26] [27] para formar el Corán).

El Corán cúfico de Samarcanda data de principios del siglo IX. Es un supuesto original del siglo VII de la edición del tercer califa Uthman. Este Corán se encuentra en la pequeña mezquita Telyashayakh en Tashkent .

Tradiciones [ editar ]

A diferencia del Corán , el hadiz y la sira están dedicados a Mahoma, su vida, sus palabras, hechos, aprobación y ejemplo para los musulmanes en general.

Biografía profética ( sīra ) [ editar ]

Al menos en el Islam popular, existe una creencia generalizada de que la gente de hoy en día sabe mucho sobre Mahoma gracias a la literatura de Sira :

La vida de Mahoma se conoce como Sira y se vivió a la luz de la historia. Todo lo que hizo y dijo fue grabado. Debido a que no sabía leer ni escribir por sí mismo, fue atendido constantemente por un grupo de 45 escribas que escribieron sus dichos, instrucciones y sus actividades. El propio Mahoma insistió en documentar sus importantes decisiones. Casi trescientos de sus documentos nos han llegado, incluidos tratados políticos, alistamientos militares, asignaciones de funcionarios y correspondencia estatal escrita en cuero curtido. Conocemos así su vida hasta el más mínimo detalle: cómo hablaba, se sentaba, dormía (sic), vestía, caminaba; su comportamiento como esposo, padre, sobrino; sus actitudes hacia las mujeres, los niños, los animales; sus transacciones comerciales y su postura hacia los pobres y los oprimidos ... [28][3] [29]

En la literatura sīra , la biografía existente más importante son las dos recensiones de Ibn Ishaq (m. 768), ahora conocido como Sīrat Rasūl Allah ("Biografía / Vida del Mensajero / Apóstol de Allah"), que sobreviven en el obras de sus editores, más notablemente Ibn Hisham (m. 834) y Yunus b. Bukayr (muerto en 814-815), aunque no en su forma original. [5] Según Ibn Hisham, Ibn Ishaq escribió su biografía entre 120 y 130 años después de la muerte de Mahoma. Muchos, pero no todos, los estudiosos aceptan la exactitud de estas biografías, aunque su exactitud es inconcebible. [6]

Después de Ibn Ishaq, hay varios relatos más breves (algunos de los cuales son anteriores a Ibn Ishaq) registrados en diferentes formas (ver Lista de los primeros escritores de sīra ). Otras biografías de Mahoma incluyen la de al-Waqidi (m. 822) y luego la de Ibn Sa'd (m. 844-45). Al-Waqidi a menudo es criticado por los primeros historiadores musulmanes que afirman que el autor no es confiable. [5] Estas no son "biografías" en el sentido moderno de la palabra, sino más bien relatos de las expediciones militares de Mahoma, sus dichos, las razones y las interpretaciones de los versículos del Corán. [5]

Los historiadores seculares han sido mucho más críticos con Sira.

Tom Holland señala que Ibn Hisham da crédito a los ángeles por ayudar a los musulmanes a la victoria en la batalla de Badr , y se pregunta por qué debería ser considerado una fuente histórica confiable más que Homero (quien retrató a los dioses como influyentes en las batallas en su poema épico La Ilíada ). [30]

Según Wim Raven, a menudo se observa que no se puede formar una imagen coherente de Mahoma a partir de la literatura de sīra, cuya autenticidad y valor fáctico han sido cuestionados por varios motivos diferentes. [31] Enumera los siguientes argumentos contra la autenticidad de sīra, seguidos aquí de contraargumentos:

  1. Casi ningún trabajo de sīra se compiló durante el primer siglo del Islam. Fred Donner señala que los primeros escritos históricos sobre los orígenes del Islam surgieron por primera vez en el 60-70 AH, dentro del primer siglo de la Hégira (ver también la Lista de biografías de Mahoma ). Además, las fuentes ahora existentes, que datan de los siglos II, III y IV d. C., son, según Donner, en su mayoría compilaciones de material derivado de fuentes anteriores. [7]
  2. Las muchas discrepancias exhibidas en diferentes narraciones que se encuentran en las obras de sīra. Sin embargo, a pesar de la falta de una única ortodoxia en el Islam, todavía existe un marcado acuerdo sobre las características más generales de la historia tradicional de los orígenes. [32]
  3. Fuentes posteriores que afirman saber más sobre la época de Mahoma que las anteriores (para agregar adornos y exageraciones comunes a una tradición de narración oral). [33]
  4. Discrepancias en comparación con fuentes no musulmanas. Pero también hay similitudes y acuerdos tanto en la información específica de Mahoma, [34] como en relación con la tradición musulmana en general. [35]
  5. Algunas partes o géneros de sīra, a saber, las que tratan de milagros, no son adecuadas como fuentes de información historiográfica científica sobre Mahoma, excepto para mostrar las creencias y doctrinas de su comunidad.

Sin embargo, los historiadores musulmanes y no musulmanes generalmente consideran que otros contenidos de sīra, como la Constitución de Medina , son auténticos. [31]

Henri Lammens se queja de las contradicciones en las Tradiciones sobre la vida de Mahoma, incluido el número de sus hijos y esposas. Algunos relatos dicen que tuvo un hijo, otros dos, y otro afirmó que tenía doce hijos, incluidos ocho varones. [36] [Nota 1] Si bien la mayoría de los relatos afirman que tuvo nueve esposas, "algunos pasajes del sira hablan de veintitrés esposas". [36] Se cree que Mahoma vivió entre 60 y 65 años según la tradición. [40]

Hadith [ editar ]

Las colecciones de hadices incluyen relatos hagiográficos tradicionales de las tradiciones verbales y físicas de Mahoma y, a menudo, explican a qué se refiere un versículo del Corán con respecto a Mahoma. [41]

Los primeros eruditos musulmanes estaban preocupados de que algunos hadices (e informes de sīra) fueran fabricados y, por lo tanto, desarrollaron una ciencia de crítica de hadices (ver estudios de hadices ) para distinguir entre dichos genuinos y aquellos que fueron falsificados, registrados con diferentes palabras o atribuidos erróneamente. a Mahoma.

En general, la mayoría de los académicos occidentales ven las colecciones de hadices con considerable cautela. Bernard Lewis afirma que "La recopilación y el registro de Hadith no se llevaron a cabo hasta varias generaciones después de la muerte del Profeta. Durante ese período, las oportunidades y los motivos para la falsificación fueron casi ilimitados". [42]

La característica principal del hadiz es la de Isnad (cadenas de transmisión), que son la base para determinar la autenticidad de los informes en la erudición islámica tradicional. De acuerdo con Stephen Humphreys, mientras que un número de estudiosos modernos "muy capaces" defendió la autenticidad general de isnads , la mayoría de los estudiosos modernos consideran isnads con "profunda desconfianza". [43]

Jonathan A. C. Brown, a Sunni who follows the Hanbali school of Islamic jurisprudence,[44] asserts that the hadith tradition is a "common sense science" or a "common sense tradition" and is "one of the biggest accomplishments in human intellectual history ... in its breadth, in its depth, in its complexity and in its internal consistency."[45]

Non-Muslim sources[edit]

Muhammad in the Nuremberg Chronicle, late 15th century

Early Islamic history is also reflected in sources written in Greek, Syriac, Armenian, and Hebrew by Jewish and Christian communities, all of which are dated after 633 CE.[6] These sources contain some essential differences with regard to Muslim sources, in particular regarding the chronology and Muhammad's attitude towards the Jews and Palestine.[6] According to Neva and Koren, no Byzantine or Syriac sources provide any detail on "Muhammad's early career ... which predate the Muslim literature on the subject".[46]

According to Syriac and Byzantine sources studied by historian S.P. Brock,[47] "The title 'prophet'" applied to Muhammad "is not very common, 'apostle' even less so. Normally he is simply described as the first of the Arab kings, and it would be generally true to say that the Syriac sources of this period see the conquests primarily as Arab, and not Muslim".[48][49]

There is a reference recording the Arab conquest of Syria (known as Fragment on the Arab Conquests), that mentions Muhammed. This much faded note is preserved on folio 1 of BL Add. 14,461, a codex containing the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according to Mark. This note appears to have been penned soon after the battle of Gabitha (636 CE) at which the Arabs inflicted crushing defeat of the Byzantines. Wright was first to draw the attention to the fragment and suggested that "it seems to be a nearly contemporary notice",[50] a view which was also endorsed by Nöldeke.[51] The purpose of jotting this note in the book of Gospels appears to be commemorative as the author appears to have realized how momentous the events of his time were. The words "we saw" are positive evidence that the author was a contemporary. The author also talks about olive oil, cattle, ruined villages, suggesting that he belonged to peasant stock, i.e., parish priest or a monk who could read and write. It is worthwhile cautioning that the condition of the text is fragmentary and many of the readings unclear or disputable. The lacunae (gaps in the text) are supplied in square brackets:

Fragment on Arab Conquest

… and in January, they took the word for their lives (did) [the sons of] Emesa [i.e., ̣Hiṃs)], and many villages were ruined with killing by [the Arabs of] Mụhammad and a great number of people were killed and captives [were taken] from Galilee as far as Bēth [...] and those Arabs pitched camp beside [Damascus?] [...] and we saw everywhe[re...] and o[l]ive oil which they brought and them. And on the t[wenty six]th of May went S[ac[ella]rius]... cattle [...] [...] from the vicinity of Emesa and the Romans chased them [...] and on the tenth [of August] the Romans fled from the vicinity of Damascus [...] many [people] some 10,000. And at the turn [of the ye]ar the Romans came; and on the twentieth of August in the year n[ine hundred and forty-]seven there gathered in Gabitha [...] the Romans and great many people were ki[lled of] [the R]omans, [s]ome fifty thousand [...][52]

The 7th-century Chronicle of 640 was published by Wright who first brought to attention the mention of an early date of 947 AG (635–36 CE).[53] The contents of this manuscript has puzzled many scholars for their apparent lack of coherence as it contains an assembly of texts with diverse nature.[54] In relation to Arabs of Mohamed, there are two important dates mentioned in this manuscript.

AG 945, indiction VII: On Friday, 4 February, [i.e., 634 CE / Dhul Qa‘dah 12 AH] at the ninth hour, there was a battle between the Romans and the Arabs of Mụhammad [Syr. tayyāyē d-Ṃhmt] in Palestine twelve miles east of Gaza. The Romans fled, leaving behind the patrician YRDN (Syr. BRYRDN), whom the Arabs killed. Some 4000 poor villagers of Palestine were killed there, Christians, Jews and Samaritans. The Arabs ravaged the whole region. AG 947, indiction IX: The Arabs invaded the whole of Syria and went down to Persia and conquered it; the Arabs climbed mountain of Mardin and killed many monks there in [the monasteries of] Kedar and Benōthō. There died the blessed man Simon, doorkeeper of Qedar, brother of Thomas the priest.[55]

It is the first date above which is of great importance as it provides the first explicit reference to Muhammad in a non-Muslim source. The account is usually identified with the battle of Dathin.[56] According to Hoyland, "its precise dating inspires confidence that it ultimately derives from first-hand knowledge".[57]

Another account of the early seventh century comes from Sebeos who was an Armenian bishop of the House of Bagratuni. His account indicates he was writing at a time when memories of sudden eruption of the Arabs were fresh. He knows Muhammad's name, that he was a merchant by profession, and hints that his life was suddenly changed by a divinely inspired revelation.[58] Sebeos is the first non-Muslim author to present us with a theory for the rise of Islam that pays attention to what the Muslims themselves thought they were doing.[59]

At that time a certain man from along those same sons of Ismael, whose name was Mahmet [i.e., Mụhammad], a merchant, as if by God's command appeared to them as a preacher [and] the path of truth. He taught them to recognize the God of Abraham, especially because he was learnt and informed in the history of Moses. Now because the command was from on high, at a single order they all came together in unity of religion. Abandoning their vain cults, they turned to the living God who had appeared to their father Abraham. So, Mahmet legislated for them: not to eat carrion, not to drink wine, not to speak falsely, and not to engage in fornication. He said: 'With an oath God promised this land to Abraham and his seed after him for ever. And he brought about as he promised during that time while he loved Israel. But now you are the sons of Abraham and God is accomplishing his promise to Abraham and his seed for you. Love sincerely only the God of Abraham, and go and seize the land which God gave to your father Abraham. No one will be able to resist you in battle, because God is with you.[60]

From this chronicle, there are indications that he lived through many of the events he relates. He maintains that the account of Arab conquests derives from the fugitives who had been eyewitnesses thereof. He concludes with Mu‘awiya's ascendancy in the Arab civil war (656–661 CE), which suggests that he was writing soon after this date.

Views of secular historians[edit]

Attempts to distinguish between the historical elements and the unhistorical elements of many of the reports of Muhammad have not been very successful.[61]

Very little biographical information

In the 1970s the Revisionist School of Islamic Studies raised fundamental doubts about the reliability of traditional Islamic sources and applied the historical-critical methods to the early Islamic period, including the veracity of the conventional account of Muhammad. A major source of difficulty in the quest for the historical Muhammad is the modern lack of knowledge about pre-Islamic Arabia.[20] According to Harald Motzki, "On the one hand, it is not possible to write a historical biography of the Prophet without being accused of using the sources uncritically, while on the other hand, when using the sources critically, it is simply not possible to write such a biography."[6]

In 1952 French Arabist Régis Blachère, author of a critical biography of Muhammad that took "fully into account the skeptical conclusions" of Ignác Goldziher and Henri Lammens, i.e that Islamic hadith had been corrupted and could not be considered reliable sources of information, wrote

we no longer have any sources that would allow us to write a detailed history of Muhammad with a rigorous and continuous chronology. To resign oneself to a partial or total ignorance is necessary, above all for everything that concerns the period prior to Muhammad's divine call [ca. 610 CE]. All a truly scientific biography can achieve is to lay out the successive problems engendered by this preapostolate period, sketch out the general background atmosphere in which Muhammad received his divine call, to give in broad brush strokes the development of is apostleship at Mecca, to try with a greater chance of success to put in order the known facts, and finally to put back into the penumbra all that remains uncertain. To want to go further is to fall into hagiography or romanticization.[62]

Historian John Burton states

In judging the content, the only resort of the scholar is to the yardstick of probability, and on this basis, it must be repeated, virtually nothing of use to the historian emerges from the sparse record of the early life of the founder of the latest of the great world religions ... so, however far back in the Muslim tradition one now attempts to reach, one simply cannot recover a scrap of information of real use in constructing the human history of Muhammad, beyond the bare fact that he once existed.[4]

Michael Cook laments that comparing Ibn Ishaq with the later commentator Al-Waqid — who based his writing on Ibn Ishaq but added much colorful but made-up detail — reveals how oral history can be contaminated by the fiction of storytellers (qussa).[63] "We have seen what half a century of story-telling could achieve between Ibn Ishaq and al-Waqidi, at a time when we know that much material had already been committed to writing. What the same processes may have brought about in the century before Ibn Ishaq is something we can only guess at."[64]

Cook's fellow revisionist Patricia Crone complains that Sīrat is written "not by a grandchild, but a great grandchild of the Prophet's generation", that it is written from the point of view of the ulama and Abbasid, so that "we shall never know ... how the Umayyad caliphs remembered their prophet".[65]

Concerning the dates of Muhammad's life, Lawrence Conrad writes that "well into the second century A.H. [Islamic] scholarly opinion on the birth date of the Prophet displayed a range of variance of 85 years. On the assumption that chronology is crucial to the stabilization of any tradition of historical narrative, whether transmitted orally or in writing, one can see in this state of affairs a clear indication that sīra studies in the second century were still in a state of flux".[66] Since second century A.H. scholarly opinion is the earliest scholarly opinion, and assuming the closer scholars were to the actual event the more likely their sources are to be accurate, this suggests a surprising lack of information among Islamic scholars about basic information on Muhammad.[67]

Robert Hoyland suggests his historical importance may have been exaggerated by his followers, writing that "other" Arab leaders "in other locations" had preceded Muhammad in attacking the weakened Byzantine and Persian empires, but these had been "airbrushed out of history by later Muslim writers". (Hoyland and other historians arguing that the original Arab invaders were not all Muslims.)[68]

Minority view of mythical figure

Currently however, only a minority of historians of early Islam doubt that Muhammad existed.[69][70][71][72][73] Patricia Crone states, "there is no doubt that Mohammed existed, occasional attempts to deny it notwithstanding," and notes Byzantine sources that mentioned an Arab prophet.[73] Michael Cook takes the view that evidence independent of Islamic tradition "precludes any doubts as to whether Muhammad was a real person" and clearly shows that he became the central figure of a new religion in the decades following his death. He reports, though, that this evidence conflicts with the Islamic view in some aspects, associating Muhammad with Israel rather than Inner Arabia, complicating the question of his sole authorship or transmission of the Quran, and suggesting that there were Jews as well as Arabs among his followers.[74] For Crone, a single Greek text written at around the time of Muhammad's death provides "irrefutable proof" that he was a historical figure. There is also, she says, "exceptionally good" evidence that Muhammad was an Arab political leader and prophet. She says we can be "reasonably sure" in attributing all or most of the Quran to him. She takes a view that Muhammad's traditional association with the Arabian Peninsula may be "doctrinally inspired", and is put in doubt by the Quran itself, which describes agricultural activity that could not have taken place there, as well as making a reference to the site of Sodom which appears to place Muhammad's community close to the Dead Sea.[73]

Some historians however, do believe Muhammad may be a mythical figure. As early as 1930, the question for the existence of Muhammad was raised by Soviet orientalist Klimovich, yet his thesis found no resonance in Islamic Studies.

In their 2003 book Crossroads to Islam, Yehuda D. Nevo and Judith Koren advanced a thesis, based on an extensive examination of archaeological evidence from the early Islamic period, that Muhammad may never have existed, with monotheistic Islam only coming into existence some time after he is supposed to have lived. This has been described as "plausible or at least arguable" and employing a "very rigorous historical methodology" by David Cook of Rice University, but has also been compared to Holocaust denial by historian Colin Wells, who suggests that the authors deal with some of the evidence illogically.[75]

Karl-Heinz Ohlig comes to the conclusion that the person of Muhammed was not central to early Islam at all, and that at this very early stage Islam was in fact an Arabic Christian sect which had objections to the concept of the trinity, and that the later hadith and biographies are in large part legends, instrumental in severing Islam from its Christian roots and building a full-blown new religion.[76][page needed]

Volker Popp (2004, 2005) proposed that both Muḥammad ("the blessed one") and ʿAlī ("the elevated one") originated not as given names but as titles. Titles given to Jesus Christ by Syriac Christians in the Sassanid Empire, with muḥammad being the equivalent of the benedictus, ευλογηµένος of the New Testament. In a numismatic study, Popp identified coins dated to AH 16 inscribed with mḥmd (Muḥammad sans vowels which are normally excluded in written Arabic) but lacking the rasūl allāh that later became common. Popp adduced Arabo-Sassanid and Syrian coins inscribed with MHMT in Pahlavi script, and also partly with mḥmd in Arabic script, in some cases combined with Christian symbolism.[77]

Heger (2008) argues that Muḥammad "the blessed one" being a title of Christ does not necessarily preclude the historicity of the prophet of Islam. It rather opens up a scale of possibilities summarised in three alternatives to the default assumption of the historicity of a Muhammad recognizably similar to the hadith accounts:

  1. The Islamic tradition on the life of Muhammad is entirely legendary.
  2. Muhammad is historical, but was active roughly a century later than suggested by Islamic tradition.
  3. There were two distinct people, both given the epithet Muhammad or "blessed", one active in the early 7th century, and author of the Meccan suras, and the other the Mamed of Johannes Damascenus, author of the Medinian suras.[78]

Also in 2008, Sven Kalisch, a former Muslim convert and Germany's first professor of Islamic theology, expressed the view that the prophet Muhammad probably never existed.[79] In 2011, Hans Jansen, a Dutch scholar, expressed similar views.[80]

See also[edit]

  • Ashtiname of Muhammad
  • Reliability of the Quran
  • Historiography of early Islam
  • Islam: The Untold Story
  • Muhammad's letters to the heads of state
  • Relics of Muhammad
  • Soviet Orientalist studies in Islam
  • Seeing Islam as Others Saw It

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ At least many contemporary sources state that Muhammad had three sons,[37][38] or only two.[39]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ W. Wright, Catalogue Of Syriac Manuscripts In The British Museum Acquired Since The Year 1838, 1872, Part III, Printed by order of the Trustees: London, No. DCCCCXIII, pp. 1040-1041
  2. ^ A. Palmer (with contributions from S. P. Brock and R. G. Hoyland), The Seventh Century In The West-Syrian Chronicles Including Two Seventh-Century Syriac Apocalyptic Texts, 1993, op. cit., pp. 5-6; R. G. Hoyland, Seeing Islam As Others Saw It: A Survey And Evaluation Of Christian, Jewish And Zoroastrian Writings On Early Islam, 1997, op. cit., pp. 118-119
  3. ^ a b Sardar, Ziauddin (1994). Introducing Islam: A Graphic Guide. Icon Books Ltd. ISBN 9781848317741. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  4. ^ a b John Burton: Bulletin of the Society of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 53 (1990), p. 328, cited in Ibn Warraq, ed. (2000). "2. Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources". The Quest for the Historical Muhammad. Prometheus. pp. 91.
  5. ^ a b c d e Encyclopaedia of Islam, Muhammad
  6. ^ a b c d e f g Nigosian 2004, p. 6.
  7. ^ a b Donner 1998, p. 125.
  8. ^ William Montgomery Watt, Muhammad in Mecca, 1953, Oxford University Press, p.xi
  9. ^ "Claims that the Qur'aan has been distorted. Question #23487". Islam Question and Answer. 5 June 2002. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  10. ^ a b "The saheeh Sunnah is wahy (Revelation) from Allaah. Question #77243". Islam Question and Answer. 15 February 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2020.
  11. ^ a b "Hadith - Book of Judgments (Ahkaam) - Sahih al-Bukhari - Sunnah.com - Sayings and Teachings of Prophet Muhammad (صلى الله عليه و سلم)". Sunnah.com. 2012-04-26. Retrieved 2015-07-24.
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