Sīrah
Al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya, commonly shortened to Sīrah and translated as prophetic biography, are the traditional biographies of the Islamic prophet Muhammad written by Muslim historians, from which, in addition to the Qurʾān and ḥadīth literature, most historical information about his life and the early history of Islam is derived.
The main feature of the information that formed the basis of early historiography in Islam was that this information emerged as the irregular products of storytellers -they were quite prestigious then- without details. At the same time the study of the earliest periods in Islamic history is made difficult by a lack of sources. While the narratives were initially in the form of a kind of heroic epics called magāzī,The earliest sources we have on the life of Muḥammad are the maghāzī, but they are far from being a consistent literary genre because they encompass a mix of different types of texts: lists of martyrs, poetry, Qurʾānic explanations, anecdotes resembling those found in the Bible, and of course accounts of military expeditions.https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004466739_005 details were added later, edited and transformed into sirah compilations. From the very beginning, the process of creating the image of the Prophet as a warrior hero supported by divine help is seen as fitting the ideal hero typology and current needs during the military collapses experienced by the Umayyads. Muhammad's position gradually rose from his military stature to that of the sole and central figure in narratives who received divine assistance, in parallel with the rise in the value of the hadiths attributed to Muhammad in Islamic lawmaking although it wasn't like that in the beginning.
The stories were written in the form of “founding conquest stories” based on nostalgia for the golden age then. Humphrey, quoted by Antoine Borrut, explains that the stories related to this period were created according to a pact-betrayal-redemption principle. Western historians describe the purpose of these early biographies as largely to convey a message, rather than to strictly and accurately record history. Lawrence Conrad examines the early sirah books and sees that the dates of Muhammad's birth span a period of up to 85 years. Conrad defines this as "the fluidity continued even in the written period."
Terminology
In the Arabic language the word sīrah or sīrat comes from the verb sāra, which means "to travel" or "to be on a journey". A person's sīrah is that person's journey through life, or biography, encompassing their birth, events in their life, manners and characteristics, and their death. In modern usage it may also refer to a person's resume. It is sometimes written as "seerah", "sirah" or "sirat", all meaning "life" or "journey". In Islamic literature, the plural form, siyar, could also refer to the rules of war and dealing with non-Muslims.The phrase, or, refers to the study of the life of Muhammad. The term sīrah was first linked to the biography of Muhammad by Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri, and later popularized by the work of Ibn Hisham. In the first two centuries of Islamic history, was more commonly known as , which is now considered to be only a subset of —one that concerns the military campaigns of Muhammad.
Early works of sīrah consist of multiple historical reports, or, and each report is called a. Sometimes the word tradition or hadith is used instead.
Authenticity
For centuries, Muslim scholars have recognized the problem of authenticity of hadith. Thus they have developed sophisticated methods of evaluating isnāds. This was done in order to classify each hadith into "sound" for authentic reports, as opposed to "weak" for ones that are probably fabricated, in addition to other categories. Since many sīrah reports also contain isnād information and some of the sīrah compilers were themselves practicing jurists and hadīth transmitters, it was possible to apply the same methods of hadīth criticism to the sīrah reports. However, some sīrah reports were written using an imprecise form of isnād, or what modern historians call the "collective isnād" or "combined reports". The use of collective isnād meant that a report may be related on the authority of multiple persons without distinguishing the words of one person from another. This lack of precision led some hadith scholars to take any report that used a collective isnād to be lacking in authenticity.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 sīrah work was compiled during the first century of Islam. However, Fred Donner points out that the earliest historical writings about the origins of Islam first emerged in AH 60–70, well within the first century of Hijra. Furthermore, the sources now extant, dating from the second, third, and fourth centuries AH, are mostly compilations of material derived from earlier sources.
- The many discrepancies exhibited in different narrations found in sīrah 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.File:First Umayyad gold dinar, Caliph Abd al-Malik, 695 CE.jpg|thumb|Gold dinar minted by the Umayyads in 695, which likely depicts Abd al-Malik. The historian Robert Hoyland, however, argues that this may be a near-contemporary depiction of the prophet Muhammad.
- Later sources claiming to know more about the time of Muhammad than earlier ones. Scholar Patricia Crone found a pattern, where the farther a commentary was removed in time from the life of Muhammad and the events in the Quran, the more information it provided, despite the fact it depended on the earlier sources for its content. Crone attributed this phenomenon to storytellers' embellishment.
If one storyteller should happen to mention a raid, the next storyteller would know the date of this raid, while the third would know everything that an audience might wish to hear about.
In the case of Ibn Ishaq, there are no earlier sources we can consult to see if and how much embroidering was done by him and other earlier transmitters, but, Crone argues, "it is hard to avoid the conclusion that in the three generations between the Prophet and Ibn Ishaq" fictitious details were not also added. - 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, do not qualify as sources for scientific historiographical information about Muhammad, except for showing the beliefs and doctrines of his community.
Content
The sīrah literature includes a variety of heterogeneous materials, containing mainly narratives of military expeditions undertaken by Muhammad and his companions. These stories are intended as historical accounts and are used for veneration. The sīrah also includes a number of written documents, such as political treaties, military enlistments, assignments of officials, letters to foreign rulers, and so forth. It also records some of the speeches and sermons made by Muhammad, like his speech at the Farewell Pilgrimage. Some of the sīrah accounts include verses of poetry commemorating certain events and battles.At later periods, certain type of stories included in sīrah developed into their own separate genres. One genre is concerned with stories of prophetic miracles, called aʿlām al-nubuwa. Another genre, called faḍāʾil wa mathālib — tales that show the merits and faults of individual companions, enemies, and other notable contemporaries of Muhammad. Some works of sīrah also positioned the story of Muhammad as part of a narrative that includes stories of earlier prophets, Persian Kings, pre-Islamic Arab tribes, and the Rashidun.
Parts of sīrah were inspired by, or elaborate upon, events mentioned in the Qur'an. These parts were often used by writers of tafsir and asbab al-nuzul to provide background information for events mentioned in certain ayat.
Comparison to hadith
In terms of structure, a hadith and a historical report are very similar; they both contain isnads. The main difference between a hadith and a khabar is that a hadith is not concerned with an event as such, and normally does not specify a time or place. Rather the purpose of hadith is to record a religious doctrine as an authoritative source of Islamic law. By contrast, while a khabar may carry some legal or theological implications, its main aim is to convey information about a certain event.Starting from the 8th and 9th century, many scholars have devoted their efforts to both kinds of texts equally. Some historians consider the sīrah and maghāzī literature to be a subset of Hadith.
Reception
During the early centuries of Islam, the sīrah literature was taken less seriously compared to the hadiths.Today, although the orthodox Islamic approach frequently uses sirah material in its sermons, Qur'anism and the academic community approach this material with suspicion. While Yaşar Nuri Öztürk notes that the hadiths, which have now reached millions, were initially limited to a few hundred, Mehmet Özdemir draws attention to the almost non-existent number of miracles in the first records and the hundreds of additions made in later periods.
Many Western scholars suspect that there was widespread fabrication of hadith in the early centuries of Islam to support certain theological and legal positions. In addition to fabrication, it is possible for the meaning of a hadith to have greatly drifted from its original telling through the different interpretations and biases of its varying transmitters, even if the chain of transmission is authentic. While some hadith may genuinely originate from firsthand observation of Muhammad, Western scholars suggest that it is extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to determine which hadith accurately reflect the historical Muhammad.
More recently, western historical criticism and debate concerning sīrah have elicited a defensive attitude from some Muslims who wrote apologetic literature defending its content.