3 - Glimpses of Muḥammad’s Medinan decade

Summary

Over the centuries, Muslims have compiled a large number of biographies about the Prophet Muḥammad, including both mainstream biographies and less well-known or almost-forgotten ones. However, no meaningful study of Muḥammad's life can be carried out on the basis of biographies alone, because valuable evidence is often found in other sources such as Qur'ān exegesis and collections of poetry. From the very beginning, the story of Muḥammad's life has been a battlefield of competing claims. The huge literary output about him is made up of thousands of conflicting accounts originating with the Companions of Muḥammad and their offspring, who were eager to secure for themselves and their fathers a place in history. We do not know why a certain account was accepted in the mainstream literature while other accounts were pushed aside. Conflicts and contradictions also abound because early Islamic society was divided along tribal, political, ideological, and regional lines, and hence cannot be expected to have adopted a unified version regarding Muḥammad's life. Members of northern and southern tribes (according to Arabian genealogical theory), Umayyads, 'Abbāsids, Shī'īs, Khārijīs, Syrians, Medinans, and Iraqis had their own versions regarding events in Muḥammad's life, not to mention legal and exegetical prejudices that were also at work.