Historicity of Muhammad

, believed to be descendants of Ishmael, lived in the regions Arabia Petrae and Arabia Deserta in the north. According to some sources, Muhammad is not a name but a title. There are a relatively small number of contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous non-Muslim sources which attest to the existence of Muhammad and are valuable both in themselves and for comparison with Muslim sources. As in the case of Mecca, these sources cannot be said to support the traditional Islamic narrative; where there is a lack of pre-Islamic sources that mention it as a pilgrimage center in historical sources before 741 here the author places the region in "midway between Ur and Harran" rather than the Hejaz- and lacks pre-Islamic archaeological data. Modern scholarship on Mecca Little is known about the early history of Mecca due to a lack of clear sources. The city lies in the hinterland of the middle part of western Arabia of which there are sparse textual or archaeological sources available. This lack of knowledge is in contrast to both the northern and southern areas of western Arabia, specifically the Syro-Palestinian frontier and Yemen, where historians have various sources available such as physical remains of shrines, inscriptions, observations by Greco-Roman authors, and information collected by church historians. The area of Hejaz that surrounds Mecca was characterized by its remote, rocky, and inhospitable nature, supporting only meagre settled populations in scattered oases and occasional stretches of fertile land. The Red Sea coast offered no easily accessible ports and the oasis dwellers and the Bedouins of the region were illiterate. Claims have been made this could be a reference to the Ka'bah in Mecca. However, the geographic location Diodorus describes is located in northwest Arabia, around the area of Leuke Kome, within the former Nabataean Kingdom and the Roman province of Arabia Petraea. Ptolemy lists the names of 50 cities in Arabia, one going by the name of Macoraba. There has been speculation since 1646 that this could be a reference to Mecca. Historically, there has been a general consensus in scholarship that Macoraba mentioned by Ptolemy in the 2nd century CE is indeed Mecca, but more recently, this has been questioned. Bowersock favors the identity of the former, with his theory being that "Macoraba" is the word "Makkah" followed by the aggrandizing Aramaic adjective rabb (great). The Roman 4th-century historian Ammianus Marcellinus also enumerated many cities of Western Arabia, most of which can be identified. According to Bowersock, he did mention Mecca as "Geapolis" or "Hierapolis", the latter one meaning "holy city" potentially referring to the sanctuary of the Kaaba. Procopius' 6th century statement that the Ma'add tribe possessed the coast of western Arabia between the Ghassanids and the Himyarites of the south supports the Arabic sources tradition that associates Quraysh as a branch of the Ma'add and Muhammad as a direct descendant of Ma'add ibn Adnan. ==Islamic sources ==

script The main Islamic source on Muhammad's life are the Quran and accounts of Muhammad's life based on oral traditions known as sīra and hadith. Historicity of the Quran Islamic narrative , dated to the early 9th century. It is alleged to be a 7th-century original of the edition of the third caliph, Uthman. It is located in the small Telyashayakh mosque in Tashkent. According to traditional Islamic scholarship, all of the Quran was written down by Muhammad's companions while he was alive (during CE 610–632), but it was primarily an orally related document. Following the death of Muhammad the Quran ceased to be revealed, and companions who had memorized the Quran began to die off (particularly after the Battle of Yamama in 633). Worried that parts of the Quran might be irretrievably lost, senior companion Umar urged Caliph Abu Bakr to order the collection of the pieces of the Quran which had hitherto been scattered among "palm-leaf stalks, thin white stones, ... [and] men who knew it by heart, ..." and put them together. Under Caliph Uthman, a committee of five copied the scraps into a single volume, "monitoring the text as they went", resolving disagreements about verses, tracking down a lost verse. This muṣḥaf – that became known as the "Uthmanic codex" – was finished around 650 CE, whereupon Uthman issued an order for all other existing personal and individual copies and dialects of the Quran (known as Ahruf) to be burnt. Modern scholarship on the Quran As to the historicity of the Quran itself, some scholars also disagree. Some argue "the Quran is convincingly the words of Muhammad" (F.E. Peters), with the parchment of an early copy of Quran – the Birmingham manuscript, whose text differs only slightly to modern versions – being dated to roughly around the lifetime of Muhammad. Some Western scholars, however, question the accuracy of some of the Quran's historical accounts and whether the holy book existed in any form before the last decade of the seventh century (Patricia Crone and Michael Cook); and/or argue it is a "cocktail of texts", some of which may have been existent a hundred years before Muhammad, that evolved (Gerd R. Puin), or was redacted (J. Wansbrough), to form the Quran. A group of researchers explores the irregularities and repetitions in the Quranic text in a way that refutes the traditional claim that it was preserved by memorization alongside writing. According to them, an oral period shaped the Quran as a text and order, and the repetitions and irregularities mentioned were remnants of this period. It is also possible that the content of the Quran itself may provide data regarding the date and probably nearby geography of writing of the text. Sources based on some archaeological data give the construction date of Masjid al-Haram, an architectural work mentioned 16 times in the Quran, as 78 AH an additional finding that sheds light on the evolutionary history of the Quranic texts mentioned, which is known to continue even during the time of Hajjaj, in a similar situation that can be seen with al-Aksa, though different suggestions have been put forward to explain. These structures, -expected to be somewhere near Muhammad- which were placed in cities like Mecca and Jerusalem, which are thousands of kilometers apart today, with interpretations based on narrations and miracles, were only a night walk away according to the outward and literal meaning of the verse. Muhammad in the Quran The Quran primarily addresses a single "Messenger of God," Muhammad. Unlike the hundreds of references in the Quran to the stories of prophets such as Moses and Jesus, provides very little information about Muhammad himself, his companions, Modern scholars differ in their assessment of the Quran as a historical source about Muhammad's life. According to the Encyclopedia of Islam, the "Qur'an responds constantly and often candidly to Muhammad's changing historical circumstances and contains a wealth of hidden data that are relevant to the task of the quest for the historical Muhammad." Traditions . The "subtexts" revealed using UV light are very different from today's Qur'an. Gerd R. Puin believed this to mean an evolving text. A similar phrase is used by Lawrence Conrad for biography of Muhammad. Because, according to his studies, Islamic scientific view on the date of birth of the Prophet until the second century A.H. had exhibited a diversity of 85 years. In the sīra literature, the most important extant biography are the two recensions of Ibn Ishaq's (d. 768), now known as Sīrat Rasūl Allah ("Biography/Life of the Messenger/Apostle of Allah"), which survive in the works of his editors, most notably Ibn Hisham (d. 834) and Yunus b. Bukayr (d.814–815), although not in its original form. Henri Lammens complains of contradictions in the Traditions about Muhammad's life, including on the number of his children and wives. Some accounts have him having one child, others two, and still another claimed he had twelve children, including eight boys. While most accounts state he had nine wives, "some passages of the sira speak of twenty three wives." According to Wim Raven, it is often noted that a coherent image of Muhammad cannot be formed from the literature of sīra, whose authenticity and factual value have been questioned on a number of different grounds. He lists the following arguments against the authenticity of sīra, followed here by counter-arguments: • Hardly any sīra work was compiled during the first century of Islam. Fred Donner points out that the earliest historical writings about the origins of Islam first emerged in 60-70 AH, well within the first century of Hijra (see also List of biographies of Muhammad). Furthermore, the sources now extant, dating from the second, third, and fourth centuries AH, are according to Donner mostly compilations of material derived from earlier sources. • The many discrepancies exhibited in different narrations found in sīra works. Yet, despite the lack of a single orthodoxy in Islam, there is still a marked agreement on the most general features of the traditional origins story. • Later sources claiming to know more about the time of Muhammad than earlier ones (to add embellishments and exaggeration common to an oral storytelling tradition). • Discrepancies compared to non-Muslim sources. But there are also similarities and agreements both in information specific to Muhammad, and concerning Muslim tradition at large. • Some parts or genres of sīra, namely those dealing with miracles, are not fit as sources for scientific historiographical information about Muhammad, except for showing the beliefs and doctrines of his community. Nevertheless, other content of sīra, like the Constitution of Medina, is generally considered to be authentic by both Muslim and non-Muslim historians. Unlike the Quran, hadiths are not universally accepted by Muslims. Early Muslim scholars were concerned that some hadiths (and sīra reports) were fabricated, and thus they developed a science of hadith criticism (see Hadith studies) to distinguish between genuine sayings and those that were forged, recorded using different words, or were wrongly ascribed to Muhammad. In general, the majority of western academics view the hadith collections with considerable caution. Bernard Lewis states that "The collection and recording of Hadith did not take place until several generations after the death of the Prophet. During that period the opportunities and motives for falsification were almost unlimited." In addition to fabrication, the meaning of a hadith may have substantially drifted from its original telling by the time it was written down. due to the potential for isnads, like hadith, to be fabricated. 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." ==Non-Muslim sources==

'', 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. 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. According to Nevo and Koren, no Byzantine or Syriac sources provide any detail on "Muhammad's early career[...] which predate the Muslim literature on the subject". According to Syriac and Byzantine sources studied by historian S.P. Brock, "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". There is a reference recording the Arab conquest of Syria (known as Fragment on the Arab Conquests), that mentions Muhammad. This very faded note is preserved on folio 1 of BL Add. 14,461, a codex containing the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Mark. This note appears to have been penned soon after the battle of Gabitha (636 CE) at which the Arabs effected a 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", a view which was also endorsed by Nöldeke. 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: 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). 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. In relation to Arabs of Mohammed, there are two important dates mentioned in this manuscript. 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. According to Hoyland, "its precise dating inspires confidence that it ultimately derives from first-hand knowledge". 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. Sebeos is the first non-Muslim author to present a theory for the rise of Islam that pays attention to what the Muslims themselves thought they were doing. 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. ==General considerations for historicity ==

Though the Quran contains few and rudimentary details of the prophet's life, most of the biographical information about Muhammad comes from the sirah (biographical literature), especially the work of Ibn Ishaq (d. 768). These sources normally provide a historical trail of names that lead, in some cases, to an eyewitness and sometimes converge with other earlier sources near the time of the prophet. According to F. E. Peters, despite any difficulties with the biographical sources, scholars generally see valuable historical information about Muhammad therein and suggest that what is needed are methods to be able to sort out the likely from the unlikely. 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). "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." Overall, 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. 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". While Crone argues that Muhammad was a person whose existence is supported by various sources, 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. 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". 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. 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 argue that the original Arab invaders were not all Muslims. Those who see Muhammad as a mythological figure Some historians have posited the belief that Muhammad may be mythical. 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 Negev desert 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" by David Cook of Rice University, but also compared to Holocaust denial by historian Colin Wells, who suggests that the authors deal with some of the evidence illogically. In 2007, Karl-Heinz Ohlig suggested 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. In 2008, Sven Kalisch, a former Muslim convert and Germany's first professor of Islamic theology, also questioned whether the prophet Muhammad existed. In 2011, Hans Jansen, a Dutch scholar, expressed similar views. Popular writer, blogger, and critic of Islam, Robert Spencer, has argued that Muhammad did not exist and proposes that he was made up by Arab leaders. He defended his ideas in his book titled Did Muhammad Exist. ==See also==