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How to cite this thesis Surname, Initial(s). (2012) Title of the thesis or dissertation. PhD. (Chemistry)/ M.Sc. (Physics)/ M.A. (Philosophy)/M.Com. (Finance) etc. [Unpublished]: University of Johannesburg. Retrieved from: https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Index?site_name=Research%20Output (Accessed: Date). A Critical Evaluation of a Modern Biography

William Muir’s The Life of Mohammad – From Original Sources and its Utilisation of Qur’anic Sources

ABOO BAKAR KAROLIA

MA DISSERTATION

Submitted in fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree

MASTER OF ARTS

SEMITIC LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

in the

FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

at the

UNIVERSITY of JOHANNESBURG

SUPERVISOR: PROFESSOR FARID ESACK

CO-SUPERVISOR: DR SHAHID MATHEE

Acknowledgements

This study would not have been successful without the support and advice of a number of people. First, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my family. Foremost amongst them is my dear wife, Raihana, who appreciated and supported my efforts during the course of my study.

I would also like to thank my supervisor, Professor Farid Esack, for his unstinting support and encouragement.

I am deeply indebted to Dr Shahid Mathee, who largely directed my work, provided critical guidance and was supportive throughout my studies. I am also very grateful to Professor Hans Van Rensburg, who assisted in the direction of my work at its early stages, as well as Munir Hassan and Mohamed Ismail for their constructive suggestions and intellectual exchanges.

Many thanks to the members and fellow students at the Department of Religion, without whom this study would not have been as interesting as it was. I trust that the academy will achieve greater heights of intellectual endeavour, which will benefit the greater good of humanity.

Johannesburg, South Africa. 31st January, 2017.

A Note of Conventions

Transliteration

Arabic words are transliterated according to a simplified version of the ‘International Journal of Middle East Studies’ system (no special characters, diacritics signs, or long vowels). Arabic words in unabridged English dictionaries are not italicised. Other Arabic words are italicised only in the first instance.

Names

Arabic names transcribed according to the preceding system unless a different transcription is dominant in English-language texts (e.g., Husayn not Hussein; `Abd Allah not Abdullah).

iii

Abstract

This study is a critical evaluation of William Muir’s biography Life of Mohammad – From Original Sources (1923). Muir (d. 1905) was an Oriental scholar and an evangelical Christian from Scotland whose vocation in India as a civil servant of the British and experience with the people of India, Muslims in particular, induced him to write a biography of Muhammad. He was one of the first modern scholars to categorise the source materials from the traditional pioneering biographies to write a modern biography on the life of Muhammad. In so doing, he combined post-Enlightenment methodology with Christian Romantic sensibilities and evangelical missionary purposes to construct his biography. Muir’s biographical work contributed significantly to a genre of European literature that makes exclusive use of the original Muslim sources. This study will critically evaluate how Muir used the Qur’an as the primary source for his biography. It will also provide a brief overview of Western biographies of Muhammad that appeared after Muir’s work, highlighting the changes in the methodologies, approaches and tools Western biographies of Muhammad used after Muir.

Table of Contents

Affidavit i Acknowledgements ii A Note of Conventions iii Abstract iv Table of Contents v

INTRODUCTION

1 The Quest of the Historical Muhammad 1 2 Western Writings on Muhammad 2 3 General (Non-Biographical) Writings 3 3.1 Earliest Writings 3 3.2 The End of the Renaissance Era 3 3.3 The Post-Renaissance Era 4 4 Modern Western Biography of Muhammad 5 4.1 The Western Biographical Tradition 5 5 The Sīra Literature 6 5.1 Source Materials of the Pioneering Sīra 8 6 Western Acquaintance with the Original Muslim Sīra Literature 10 7 The Earliest Western Biographers Using Original Muslim Sources 11 8 William Muir 14 9 Review of Literature on Muir’s Biography of Muhammad 15 10 This Dissertation’s Contribution 17 11 The Research Methodology and Approach to the Study 17 12 Chapter Outline 18

Chapter One WESTERN NOTIONS AND REPRESENTATIONS OF MUHAMMAD

1.0 Introduction 20 1.1 Christian Europe – The West 21 1.2 The Shift from a Hostile Reception of Muhammad 23 v

1.3 The Emergence of Western Biography of Muhammad 25 1.4 Nineteenth Century Western Writings on the Life of Muhammad 28 1.5 Orientalism Study of Islam and Muhammad 29 1.6 Twentieth Century Western Writings on Muhammad 31 1.7 Conclusion 32

Chapter Two THE GENEALOGY OF BIOGRAPHICAL WORKS ON MUHAMMAD – LOCATING WILLIAM MUIR HISTORICALLY

2.0 Introduction 35 2.1 Muhammad in the Qur’an 36 2.2 The Problem of Sources 36 2.3 Hadith – The Beginning of Historical Writing 38 2.3.1 The Emergence of Maghāzī and Sīra Genre 39 2.3.2 Transition from Hadith to History: the Sīra & Maghāzī Literature 40 2.4 Sīra 41 2.4.1 Precursors 41 2.5 The Earliest Modern Western Biographies of Muhammad Using Primary Muslim Sources 47 2.6 Conclusion 51

Chapter Three WILLIAM MUIR’S WORLDVIEW, SCHOLARLY ACHIEVEMENTS AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH FOR HIS BIOGRAPHY OF MUHAMMAD

3.0 Introduction 53 3.1 Muir’s Early Life 53 3.1.1 Education 54 3.1.2 India 55 3.1.3 Muir’s Apprenticeship as Civil Servant 55 3.1.4 Muir’s Educational Activities 56 3.1.5 The Sepoy Mutiny 56

3.1.6 Muir’s Tenure in the British Raj 59 3.2 Muir’s Mission in India 61 3.3 Muir’s Study of Islam 63 3.4 Preparing for His Biography of Muhammad 65 3.4.1 Influencing Factors 67 3.5 Muir’s Approach and Methodology 68 3.5.1 Muir’s View of Qur’an as a Source for Muhammad’s Biography 69 3.5.2 Hadith 70 3.5.3 Arab Poetry 71 3.6 Conclusion 72

Chapter Four MUIR’S APPROACH TO AND UTILISATION OF QUR’ANIC VERSES

4.0 Introduction 73 4.1 Explanatory Model 75 4.2 The Qur’anic Verses 77 4.2.1 Jewish and Christian Scholarly Influence on the Young Muhammad 77 4.2.2 Muhammad’s Confusion and Mental state 85 4.2.2.1 Qur’an: Sūrahs 103, 100 85 4.2.3 Muhammad Cries for Release from Mental Agitation ` 86 4.2.3.1 Qur’an:1, Sūrah al-Fātihah 86 4.2.4 Muhammad’s Claim to Prophethood – Announced to a Selected Few 87 4.2.4.1 Qur’an: 80:1-10, Sūrah al-`Alaq 87 4.2.5 Muhammad Making the Mission Public 92 4.2.6 Muhammad’s Supposed Political Expediency 96 4.2.7 Muhammad’s Memory Lapses and Contradictions in the Revelation 99 4.2.8 Damage Control in the Wake of “Satanic Verses” 104 4.3 Conclusion 107 Chapter Five POST-MUIR WESTERN BIOGRAPHIES OF MUHAMMAD

vii

5.1 Post-Muir Western Biographies of Muhammad 110 5.2 Maxime Rodinson 120 5.3 Fred Donner 123 5.4 Conclusion 127

CONCLUSION 128 Bibliography 134

viii

INTRODUCTION

1 The Quest of the Historical Muhammad

The twentieth century witnessed the emergence of a genre of literature concerned with historical and foundational religious figures such as Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. For example, in 1906 Albert Schweitzer published Von Reimarus Zu Wrede: Eine Geschichte Der Leben-Jesu-Forschung in German, which “was translated into English by William Montgomery under the title The Quest of the Historical Jesus” (1914) (Jeffrey, 1926:327). Schweitzer’s work was a “survey of the various types of ‘Lives of Christ’, which has been produced by various schools of theological thought in Europe, ranging from the pious to the orthodox, uncritical type, to the wildest excesses of eschatological and even mythical interpretation” (ibid.). “His aim was to survey the various attempts that had been made to interpret the life of” Jesus, critically investigate the position of scholarship and assess the value of research over the years (ibid.).

In 1926, Arthur Jeffrey (d. 1959) “suggested that the time was ripe for a similar survey on the life” of Muhammad, taking into account the newer intellectual as well as historical insights of his time (ibid.). Jeffrey believed that modern Western scholarship should “take stock of the work that had been done and gather up the assured results and note the trends of critical scholarship […] indicating the lines of investigation that the future will have to follow” (1926:327). For historian Fred Donner, a sketch of the life of Muhammad is plausible but presents a problem for the historian because the traditional Muslim sources of Muhammad’s life and career were compiled many years after Muhammad’s demise (2010:50). According to sociologist, Irving M. Zeitlin, modern Western scholars were nevertheless intent on catching a glimpse of the birth of Islam and the role played by “its founder” from the various Muslim sources in order to probe the historicity of Muhammad as represented in various genres of Islamic literature (2007:1-3).

These scholars took into account the historical, social and cultural context in which the Prophet is said to have lived. Initially, modern Western scholars accepted the account of the Prophet’s life found in original Muslim sources, provided that these sources underwent critical scrutiny and evaluation (Zeitlin, 2007:3). This movement was a “decisive advance in historical method over the anti-Islamic polemic that dominated Western writing about Islam 1

from the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century, […] which had ignored the Muslim sources” (ibid.). According to Zeitlin, these modern “Western scholars began to try to be more objective” (ibid.) and worked within “three main assumptions” (ibid.) about the Muslim sources:

1) that the text of the Qur’an contained documentary value for the life and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad; 2) that the akhbār or copious reports making up the narratives about the Islamic origins found in Muslim chronicles were reliable for reconstructing what actually happened; and 3) that the many hadiths [prophetic sayings] attributed to the Prophet were a religious literature distinct from the akhbār and, therefore, not directly related to the task of historical construction of the early Islamic period (2007:3).

Donner argues that this approach has resulted in most Western surveys of Islamic history and the life of Muhammad being broadly in line with the traditional Muslim sources1 (ibid.).

In general, modern Western scholars recognised the value of Muslim sources in their attempt to study the life of Muhammad. Thus, from primary Muslim sources, modern Western scholars began to sketch an outline of the life of Muhammad (Bennett, 1998:83/90).

2 Western Writings on Muhammad

Western writings on Muhammad may chronologically be categorised along the following three lines: a.) The earliest Christian pre-Renaissance writings (beginning from between 634- 6402 C.E. to around the beginning of the seventeenth century C.E.) During this period Muslim sources were not used. There were, of course, no collated written Muslim sources on the life of Muhammad in the first century following his demise in 632 C.E.

1 Donner cites the works of William Muir (d. 1905), Phillip K. Hitti (d. 1978) and the recent works of G. E. von Grunebaum (d. 1972), M. G. S Hodgson (d. 1968), Hugh Kennedy (d. 1936), Albert Hourani (d. 1993) and many others who have relied on these traditional Muslim sources (Zeitlin, 2007:2-3). 2 After Muhammad’s death in 632 C.E., the Teachings of Jacob (Doctrina Jacobi Nuper Baptizati) was written in Palestine sometime between 634 and 640 C.E. 2

b.) Post 1600s C.E. Western writings,3 which began to utilise various secondary Muslim sources in the post Renaissance era. The works produced continued in large measure to be hostile, prejudiced and generally polemical. c.) The early nineteenth century C.E. It is in this epoch that saw the use of original Muslim sources for the production of biographies of Muhammad.

3 General (Non-Biographical) Writings 3.1 Earliest Writings

The earliest non-Muslims had already begun writing about Muhammad in the seventh century C.E. The first writers were from the East living under Byzantine rule. Thus, the Doctrina Jacobi Nuper Baptizati (634-640 C.E.) was written in Palestine shortly after Muhammad's death sometime around 632 C.E. Another early Christian historical record is the Chronicle of Sebeos, which was written around 660 C.E. by Sebeos, the Armenian Bishop of Bagratunis. 4 According to Sebeos, Muhammad “was an Ishmaelite, who claimed to be a Prophet and taught his countrymen to return to the religion of Abraham” (Jeffrey, 1926:330). Most of these early writings considered Muhammad as a heretic, a false prophet and prone to violence (Jeffrey, 1926:331). These writings maligned him in light of the rapid expansion of Islam and the conquests of lands under the Christian Byzantine rule in the Near East, which included Syria, Egypt and Palestine (Donner, 2010:4).

Following the Crusader wars that began in 1095 C.E., scholars from Western Europe started writing about Muhammad – and Islam. These writers used Byzantine sources and personal accounts of Europeans who had been to the Near East during the Crusades (Jeffrey, 1926:331). In the thirteenth century C.E. many ecclesiastical writers of Muhammad looked upon him as the arch heretic (Jeffrey, 1926:331). According to Jeffrey, with some notable exceptions, most of these writings on Muhammad were prejudiced and polemical – a pattern of scholarship that continued until the Renaissance era (ibid.).

3 One of the earliest works using various secondary Muslim sources to write a biography of Muhammad was Henry Stubbe’s (d. 1675) biographical work Originall & Progress of Mahometanism (Matar, 2013:2). 4 Sebeos’ historical records contain detailed descriptions from the period of Sassanid supremacy in Armenia up to the Islamic conquest in 661 C.E. This work was published for the first time in 1851 in Istanbul (Hacikyan, 2002:81). 3

3.2 The End of the Renaissance Era

Generally in Europe, until the sixteenth century, Muhammad was still received with enormous prejudice. However, the Renaissance marked the increasing questioning of the authority of the Catholic Church by Western scholars as a result of the revolution within a single generation of European scholarship (Tarnas, 1991:224). Thus, with the final expression of the Renaissance, a few European scholars such as French linguist and scholar of Semitic languages, Guillaume Postel (d. 1581) “affirmed that Muhammad was a bona fide Prophet and should be recognised as such by Christians” (Tolan, 2010:247). By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a romantic curiosity towards Islam had arisen in Western Europe (Oruçoğlu, 2012:117). An outcome of these developments was that modern Western scholars began to write about Muhammad using various Muslim sources.

3.3 The Post-Renaissance Era

In the seventeenth century C.E., modern Western scholars began investigating the origin of Islam and the life of Muhammad from the various available Muslim sources (Jeffrey, 1926:332), attempting to answer questions such as “Who was Muhammad?”, “Where was he from?” and “What was his message?”. Walter Raleigh’s Life of Mahomet, published in 1637, and Humphrey Prideaux’s Vie de Mahomet, ou l’on Découvre Amplement la Verité de l’Impostur (The True Nature of Imposture Fully Display’d in the Life of Mahomet), which appeared in 1698, were based upon the Arabic material then “being made available in Latin translation” (Jeffrey, 1926:332). European world expansion through travel, trade and conquest created greater urgency and possibilities for Western scholarship to research the life of Muhammad as a historical figure (Hoyland, 2007:532).

By the eighteenth century, research on Islam and Muhammad had become popular, as is had manifested in the “establishment of chairs in Arabic in Leiden (1613), Cambridge (1632), and Oxford (1634)”. Arabic dictionaries and grammarian works were compiled as numerous historical texts5 from the Middle East became available (Hoyland, 2007:532). “Most of this

5 Modern Western scholars such as John Gagnier (d. 1740) and Johan Jakob Reiske (d. 1774) also worked on translations. Gagnier in 1723 produced an Arabic edition of the fourteenth century Syrian scholar Abū al-Fidāˋ’s life of Muhammad with a Latin translation and notes. He also drew upon Abū al-Fidāˋ’s (d. 1331) work for his own Vie de Mahomet (Life of Muhammad), which appeared in 1732 (Bennett, 1998:93). Abū al-Fidāˋ’s (d. 1331) Sīra work faithfully narrates many fundamental Muslim 4 early work was bitterly hostile and prejudiced” against Islam and Muhammad, though a few, such as Adriaan Reland’s work De Religione Mahommedica libri duo (Two Books About Religion Mahommedica) (1705), endeavoured to give a more impartial view (Jeffrey, 1926:332).

4 Modern Western Biography of Muhammad

Western biographical writings on Muhammad began sometime in the early 1670s with Henry Stubbe’s (d. 1676) work, Originall & Progress of Mahometanism6 (Matar, 2013:2). According to Matar, until then, there was nothing like Stubbe’s treatise in English or Continental writing because most Western writings on Muhammad were uniformly negative (Matar, 2010:2). Stubbe challenged the prevalent misrepresentation of Muhammad by moving the lens for the study of Islam away from European to Arabic sources.

Before this dissertation delves into modern Western biographical works on Muhammad as the Prophet of Islam, it will briefly trace the emergence of biography in Europe as a literary genre. Secondly, it will touch in some detail on the Sīra literature.

4.1 The Western Biographical Tradition

According to Catherine N. Parke, “The word biography and biographer in English and their related forms in modern European languages […] do not appear until the mid-seventeenth century” (2002:1), yet actual writings on people’s lives have dated back several thousand years (ibid.). In ancient Egypt, for instance, the formulaic accounts of Pharaoh’s lives praised the continuity of dynastic power, and “this practice continued in Babylonia and later in Assyria, where it took the form of chronicles” (ibid.). The biographical tradition developed in Classical Greece and Rome, and portraits of eminent statesmen and generals appeared in the

beliefs about Muhammad (Bennett, 1998:93). According to Tarif Khalidi, Abū al-Fidāˋ’s work Mukhtasar Ta’rikh al-Bashar (Concise History of Humankind) contains Sīra and devotes 13,000 words or so to the life of the Prophet (1994:30-31; Bennett, 1998:30). He mentions that this work was among the first Muslim accounts of the Prophet’s biography to be rendered into European languages. Abū al-Fidāˋ’s work was not a pioneering Muslim source on Muhammad’s life, but it did refer to and support such sources. 6 According to Matar, Stubbe’s work presented the first modern Western annotated biography of Muhammad (2013:2). However, Stubbe’s treatise remained in manuscript form for some time (Matar, 2013:21) and was only published in 1911. 5

historical writings of Herodotus (d. 425 B.C.E.), Xenophon (d. 354 B.C.E.), Tacitus (d. 117 C.E.) and Dio Cassius (d. 235 C.E.) among others (Parke, 2002:2).

Biography7 in the Western tradition began to be distinguished from general history as a separate rhetorical form in the fourth century B.C.E. (Parke, 2002:2). In this regard, Wendell V. Harris points to the usefulness of “literary history that looks primarily to the historical succession of developments within a genre or type of literature” because “literary texts are in part cultural artifacts” (1994: 443). He argues that the emphasis on cultural context produces an externally orientated literary history and it is for this reason that “for most part the history of literature is a mixture of bibliography, biography, cultural analysis, literary change, and critical commentary” (1994:443). According to Nigel Hamilton, biography is about the life of an individual in society (2007:10). He states that the “curiosity in Western civilisation about individuals as individuals, rather than as nameless members of a society […] suggests another clue to biography fascination” (2007:10). This curiosity has fuelled biographical interest in the West of past figures because of its ability to offer insights into human character, experience of life and human emotions that can be used as guides towards self-understanding as individuals (2007:10).

Hamilton argues that as a result of Christianity, biography became a culture of veneration (2007: 57). The Christian Church maintained cohesion and religious dominance in Europe and constrained the once rich tradition of Roman biography (Hamilton, 2007:57). Beginning with the Renaissance, Western man began to demonstrate a curiosity about himself and about others (Hamilton, 2007: 60-61). It was thus during this era that “historians and artists switched their attention from hagiographic portraits of saints and began depicting secular individuals on a scale” that was “reminiscent of the classical” times (Hamilton, 2007:61). Biography in the modern world was therefore designed to sketch a person’s life, to study and depict the lives of real individuals. Biography has since crossed a hundred borders – borders of politics, gender, genre and the lives of religious and historical figures (Hamilton, 2007:5).

5 The Sīra8 Literature

7 Among the earliest accounts of an individual life is Evagoras (ca. 365 B.C.E.), which was a discourse on the King of Cyprus (411-374 B.C.E.) written by the Attic orator and teacher Isocrates (d. 338 B.C.E.) (Parke, 1996:3). 8 Chapter Two will discuss the formalisation and genealogy of Sīra literature in more detail. 6

Through the advent of Islam many Arabs realised that they had experienced and played a specific role in the world. According to Mahmood ul-Hasan, the political achievements that the Arabs gained in terms of military conquests substantiated this realisation, which provided the incentive for the development of Arab historiography (2005:8). Moreover, it was thus the development of Arab historiography that was the foundation for the origin of Sīra literature. According to Wim Raven, the biography of Muhammad is primarily discussed in the Arabic literary genre known as the Sīra, which forms the earliest salvation history of Islam.9 Sīra is the Arabic term used for the various Muslim biographies of Muhammad from which most historical information about his life and the early period of Islam is derived. It focuses on “God’s action towards his Prophet Muhammad” and “the revelation of the Qur’an” through him and the foundation and establishment “of an Islamic community” (Raven, 2006:29). These pioneering Sīra works – viewed by modern Western scholars as the major source of Muhammad’s life and career – began to be compiled about one hundred and fifty years after Muhammad’s death, during the early eight century C.E. (Ul-Hasan, 2005:9).

After the death of Muhammad, two trends representing separate intellectual currents emerged (Ul-Hasan, 2005:9; Khalidi, 1994:93). One was when Muslim scholars began to collect written records of Muhammad’s utterances, commands, directives, messages and advice in what became known as the Hadith, and the other was in the collection of documentation of his wars and military campaign, which became known as Maghāzī literature (Ul-Hasan, 2005:9). The study of Maghāzī developed independently from Hadith to produce a distinct body of literature (2005:10). However, the earliest writers on Maghāzī were also interested in Hadith literature; thus, they applied the same method to determine the authenticity of Maghāzī traditions.

The history of Muhammad was essentially fixed by the pioneering biographies of Muhammad ibn Ishāq (d. 767), Abū Muhammad Àbd al-Malik ibn Hishām (d. 833), Abū Àbd Allah Muhammad ibn Ùmar al-Wāqidī al- Aslamī (d. 822), Muhammad ibn Sa`d ibn Manī` al-Baghdādī (d. 845), Àhmad ibn Yahyā al-Balādhurī (d. 892) and Abū Ja`far

9 The word “salvation” here denotes how a religious tradition, including its literature sources, protects the faith from harm, i.e., “the revelation of the Qur’an and the foundation of an Islamic community”. (Raven, 2006:29). The Arabic term Sīra can also denote works belonging to that literature (ibid.). Salvation history is different from contemporary history in that it is an attempt by historians to examine and analyse a sequence of past events that seeks to understand redemptive activity of God (Yarbrough, 2004:297). Contemporary history is a subset of modern history, which describes the historical period from an age that has been generally forgotten to modernity (Smith, 1808:480). 7

Muhammad ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī (d. 923) (Khalidi, 2009:58). Although later Sīra works added “many important details and adopted very different perspectives”, they “did not alter the basic structure first put in place by the founding fathers” (Khalidi, 2009:58). According to historian Tarif Khalidi, “biography in almost all [Muslim] literary traditions has been seen as the most vivid form of history that one can write” (2009:3). This clarity is probably owing to the fact that the Muslim community would expect the details of Muhammad’s life to be scrupulously recorded.

5.1 Source Materials of the Pioneering Sīra

The Sīra literature includes a variety of heterogeneous materials that support the narrative of the life of Muhammad, and the pioneering authors of the Sīra developed sophisticated methods that formed the basis for writing about the life of Muhammad.

The genre used several important source materials such as the Qur’an, and the Hadith to construct the life of Muhammad (Raven, 2006:40-45; Khalidi, 2009:21-56). Although not a biographical work by any account, the Qur’an had a significant impact on the Sīra. It is the earliest source of information for the life of Muhammad in an historical context and, according to Raven, is part of the subject matter of the Sīra (Raven, 2006:36). Sīra text elaborates on qur’anic passages, “historicising them through episodes of the life of Muhammad” (Raven, 2006:36). In this way, the Qur’an responds to Muhammad’s changing historical circumstances and contains a wealth of facts that are relevant to the historical Muhammad. These passages from the Qur’an were thus necessary for historical authentication of the pioneering biographer’s depiction of Muhammad (Khalidi, 2009:103).

Khalidi shows that “there are hundreds of references” in the Qur’an to Muhammad as a “Messenger/Prophet (rasul or nabīyy)10 and hundreds of other allusions to an unnamed person who most probably is Muhammad” (2009:24). However, he states that Muhammad’s portrait is metaphorically painted in four principal colours: “visionary, narrative, homiletic/legal and situative: (2009: 24). Nonetheless, he argues that “the personality of Muhammad” in the Qur’an “takes second place to his role as a Prophet of God” (2009:24). In

10 Both the terms rasul and nabīyy signify “prophet” and sometimes appear interchangeably in the Qur’an. One classical explanation of these terms is that the rasul is a scriptuary prophet, i.e., one who bears revelation, and the nabī is a warner prophet without a book (Townsend and Vidas, 2011:284). 8 their use of the Qur’an to construct the Prophet’s biography, the authors of the Sīra also used exegetical tools such as asbāb al-nuzūl11 (the occasion of revelation) and nāskh12 (abrogation), as well as Hadith literature.

The Hadith13 literature is another essential source that is used to support and construct the biography of Muhammad. Biographers have utilised ahādīth14 to construct the biography of Muhammad because it contains many biographical fragments (Khalidi, 2009:40). Khalidi states that “books of qur’anic exegesis, history, genealogy, and folklore often included reports from Muhammad or describe his actions” (2009:4). While the biographers used the ahādīth to support their narrative of Muhammad’s life, they did not use it to decide on any legal edict, because this task was left to the jurists. In other words, the ahādīth was collected by the Hadith experts and applied/used by the jurists of Islam, while the Sīra was compiled by the biographers and historians (akhbārīs).15 These works were the primary sources for the biography of Muhammad, and included hadith as well as other extra-hadith material.

11 Asbāb al-nuzūl, meaning occasions or circumstances of revelation, refers to the historical context in which qur’anic verses were revealed. It is a secondary genre of qur’anic exegesis (Rippin, 2003:569). 12 Nāskh is an Arabic word usually translated as "abrogation". According to John Burton, it shares the same root as the words appearing in the phrase Al-nāsikh wal mansūkh, the abrogating and abrogated verses. It is a term used in Islamic legal exegesis for seemingly contradictory material within or between the two primary sources of Islamic law: the Qur’an and the Sunnah (Burton, 1990:1-8). Several qur’anic verses state that some revelations have been abrogated and superseded by later revelations, such as Q, 2:106 and 16:101, which are understood by most Muslim scholars as pertaining to the verses of the Qur’an itself. However, this interpretation is not universally agreed upon, and some modern Muslim scholars such as “Syed Ahmad Khan (d. 1898) and Ismai`il al-Faruqi (d. 1986) and others have rejected nāskh altogether, both arguing that the revelations that came earlier in certain circumstances and were modified or improved later were not actually abrogated, rather earlier verse should be regarded as valid and therefore can be” implemented should conditions be similar to those in which they were revealed” (Jackson, 2007:65). 13 According to Jonathan A. C. Brown, the defining characteristics of Hadith literature as it emerged in the eighth century C.E. was that it consisted of reports attributed to Muhammad, and transmitted by full chain of narrators (isnād) from him (2009:4). “The tools that Muslim scholars developed to help ensure the authenticity of hadiths was the isnād (Arabic, support), or the chain of transmitters through which a scholar traced the matn, or text, of a hadith back to Muhammad” (ibid.). “The Prophet’s words” “have always been a “type of proof used in discussion of Islamic law and dogma” (ibid.). 14 The Arabic term “Hadith” for our purposes refers to the collected reports of Muhammad; in the singular, common form, “hadith”, it refers to a “report” “account”, or “narrative” and its Arabic plural is “ahādīth”. 15 Akhbārī is an Arabic term used for scholars researching medieval Islam that has been used by most Muslim historians. These historiographers by and large wrote on genres that reconstructed the past. According to Chase F. Robinson by the end of the ninth century C.E., Islamic historiography (ta’rikh), had generated three principle ways of organising historical narrative, called ta’rikh, sīra and tabaqat (Islamic biographical literature of notable individuals such as scholars, poets etc.) (2003:55). 9

The pioneering biographers also depended on pre-Islamic history such as the Ayyām al-Arab (Annals of the Arabs), which were stories about battles and fights interspersed with poetry (Raven, 2006:35). There were also the written, political treaties, such as the Charter of Medina and the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah,16 Muhammad’s letters to the rulers of empires and viceroys17and Maghāzī that were accounts of military campaigns, raids, etc. (Raven, 2006:43- 45).

According to Raven, “story-tellers had combined prose with poetry in their stories, and the Sīra narrators continued this tradition” (2006:43). Such poetry served the function of illustrating a change of literary mode which served to captivate an audience’s attention emphasising a dramatic point. Poetry had a function to captivate an audience’s attention emphasising a dramatic point. In Sīra literature, poetry was used to praise or vituperate the hero. Sīra also contain speeches and sermons by Muhammad, such as his first sermon in Medina and his speech at the door of the Ka’ba after the conquest of Mecca (Raven, 2006:44). As Raven indicates, speeches have a similar function to poetry, or can in some cases serve as documents, as they capture attention and emphasise the importance of a dramatic moment in history (2006:44).

6 Western Acquaintance with the Original Muslim Sīra Literature

Sīra literature was seen by certain nineteenth century Western scholars as the major source of information on Muhammad’s life and career. This acknowledgement was “a decisive advance in historical method over the anti-Islamic polemic that dominated Western writing about Islam” and it’s Prophet “from the Middle Ages until the eighteenth century, which had ignored the Muslim sources” (Zeitland, 207:3). These scholars began to accept that the massive body of traditional Muslim material may be rooted in historical fact (Donner, 2010:52-53). They began to revisit and reconsider the life of Muhammad by critically

16 The Charter of Medina was drafted by Muhammad in 622 C.E. and constituted a formal agreement between him and all of the significant tribes and families of Yathrib (later known as Medina), including Muslims, Jews and pagans (Ibn Ishāq, 1990:231). The Treaty of Hudaybiyyah was a pivotal treaty between Muhammad, representing the state of Medina, and the Quraysh tribe of Mecca (628 C.E.) (Ibn Ishāq, 1990:504). 17 Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantine (Eastern Roman Empire), Chosroe II (Emperor of Persian Empire), Negus, King of Abyssinia, Harith Gassani, Governor of Syria and Al-Mundhir ibn Sāwā, ruler of Bahrain.

examining the extensive original corpus of available Sīra literature. They sought historical facts from traditional Muslim sources and in particular recognised the pioneering Muslim biographies as collectively forming a basis for studying the life of Muhammad. The available Muslim biographies of the Prophet were closely examined and from these works Western scholars determined the various source materials necessary for the study of Islam and the life of Muhammad. Thus, the quest for the original Muslim sources saw modern Western scholars beginning to learn about the origin of Islam and the historical Muhammad.

Indeed, modern Western scholars, beginning with Gustav Weil (d. 1889) and continuing with Aloys Sprenger, William Muir, Ignaz Goldziher18 (d. 1921), Joseph Franz Schacht19 (d. 1969), John Wansbrough20 (d. 2002), Patricia Crone, Michael Cook,21 F. E. Peters (1991), Clinton Bennett (1998), Fred Donner (2010) and Irving M. Zeitlin (2007), among others posed critical historical questions about Islam and Muhammad. They concluded that the works of the earliest Muslim biographers of Muhammad such as Ibn Ishāq, Ibn Hishām, Al- Wāqidī and others reflected their own Weltanschauung, beliefs and schismatic allegiances, and that theses authors wrote for the people of their time and space.

7 The Earliest Western Biographers Using Original Muslim Sources

The first modern Western biography on the life of Muhammad was Weil’s Mohammed der Prophet: Sein Leben und Seine Lehre, (Muhammad the Prophet: His Life and his Doctrine), which was published in 1843 (Jeffrey, 1926:333). According to Kecia Ali, his work “ushered in an entirely new era in Islamic studies in Europe” because he used the original Muslim sources (2014:45). It was this awaking to make available the original Arabic manuscripts that made it possible to learn more about Islam and its Prophet. According to Jeffrey, Weil “may not have got very far in his investigation, for his resources were still limited” (ibid.).

18 Goldziher, Ignaz. 1889-1890. Muhammedanische Studien (Muslim Studies). 2 vols. Halle: Max Niemeyer. 19 Schacht, Joseph. 1950. The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 20 Wansbrough, John. 1977. Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 21 Patricia Crone and Michael Cook’s Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977) is on the early history of Islam, drawing on archaeological evidence and documents in Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin and Syriac. This book depicts an early Islam that is very different from the traditionally accepted version derived from Muslim historical accounts. In perhaps the most radical of these efforts, Crone and Cook completely exclude the Arabic literary sources. 11

However, he applied the historical-critical method22 in his second work Leben Mohammed's nach Muhammed ibn Isḥaḳ, Bearbeitet von Abd el-Malik ibn Hischâm (Muhammad’s Life by Muhammad ibn Ishāq, Edited by Abd al-Malik ibn Hishām), which appeared in two volumes in 1864, thereby making further advances in the study of Muhammad’s life (Jeffery, 1926: 333). Weil depended greatly on Ibn Hishām’s work Sīrat ibn Hishām. Then, as more primary sources gradually became available, Alfred von Kremer (d. 1889) in 1851 published the first third of Kitāb al-Maghāzī (one leaf is now missing) in Arabic. Much more important, however, were the works of Sprenger23 (d. 1893) and Muir (d. 1905), because these authors began to categorise the various source materials from the available pioneering Sīra literature to write about the life of Muhammad. Muir’s biography (d. 1905) The Life of Mohammad: From Original Sources (1858-1861) was the largest nineteenth century Western contribution to the subject in English. He had access to the best available original Muslim source material to construct the life of Muhammad and used his post-Enlightenment education to critically evaluate the life of Muhammad, and thus his work was an immense contribution to Oriental studies.

Other works by Western authors using the original Muslim sources followed, and those relevant to this study are very briefly noted here. First is David Samuel Margoliouth’s (d. 1940) Muhammad and the Rise of Islam, which was published in 1905. Although it employed more original Muslim sources than Muir’s, it followed an approach and style characterised by Christian prejudices.24

It was later in 1953 and 1956 respectively that William Montgomery Watt (d. 2006) published Muhammad at Mecca (1953) and Muhammad at Medina (1956), using original Muslim sources and demonstrating a methodological shift towards objective critical study and evaluation of Muhammad’s life. His biographies figuratively shut the door in the face of the old Christendom attitude and the narrow approach to the new methods of the post-modern era (Buaben, 1995:209-211). After Watt, modern Western biographies categorically now began to take new turns as varied perspectives and themes emerged. Maxime Rodinson (d.

22 This method “is a collection of procedures and exegetical techniques usually applied to biblical texts to determine their literal sense” (Poor, 2001:9). According to Joseph G. Poor, “the roots of the historical-critical method are found in the medieval exegesis. However, it was not until the Renaissance that the technique began to be collated into systematic approaches” (2001:9). 23 The Life of Mohammad - From Original Sources (1851). 24 Post-Muir Western Biographies of Muhammad will be discussed more in detail in Chapter Five. 12

2004) uses a different approach in his work Muhammad, published in 1960, using a Marxist framework to explain Muhammad’s life. His biography is an attempt to situate Muhammad in his era in order to explain the economic and social origins of Islam. He distinguishes between the Muhammad of history and the Muhammad of faith, and in this way tries to write about what actually happened rather than what traditional thinking would have us believe. Watt and Rodinson’s methodological shift to objective critical study and evaluation of Muhammad’s life allowed many scholars to write about him from various themes and contexts. However, methodologies used by these Western biographers of Muhammad encompassed different hypotheses, employing distinctive principles of various data selection methods that were directed towards specific objectives, which resulted in different conclusions.

For example, in 1983 Martin Lings (d. 2005) wrote his biography, Muhammad – His Life Based on the Earliest Sources as a Muslim of the English West. His academic career as an English student and teacher as well as his Shakespearean scholarship echoes throughout his writing. Lings’ biography is sprinkled with great detail and his literary style embraces the earliest pioneering Arabic sources. Other works examines Muhammad’s place in religion, such as Annemarie Schimmel’s (d. 2003) work And Muhammad is His Messenger (1985), which explains the central place of Muhammad in Muslim life, mystical thought and poetry. She sees the veneration of Muhammad as having many parallels in other major religions. Similarly, scholars such as Kenneth Cragg, who wrote Muhammad in the Qur’an: The Task and the Text (2001) and other similar works (1988; 1999; 2002), provides Christian-Muslim inter-faith irenic readings. Gordon Darnell Newby’s The Making of the Last Prophet – A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad (1989) is a reconstruction of the first half of a lost eight century text of Ibn Ishāq’s Sirāt Rasūl Allah. This work is also essentially a history of previous prophets and can be joined with the work of Guillaume’s translation of Ibn Hishām’s recensionary work of Ibn Ishāq’s The Life of Muhammad (1955). Karen Armstrong’s Muhammad – A Biography of the Prophet (1992) and Muhammad – Prophet of Our Time (2006) are contemporary irenic contributions that attempt to dispel negative stereotypical views of Muhammad in the West and present his life as a dialogue with monotheistic faiths. Tariq Ramadan’s The Messenger - The Meaning of the Life of Muhammad (2007) is a discourse that entertains broader issues such as the treatment of the poor, the role of women, Islamic criminal punishments, war, racism and relations with other religions. Similarly, Omid Safi’s Memories of Muhammad (2009) is a contemporary work through the eyes of the believer that portrays the historical Muhammad by exploring 13

questions such as holy war, Wahhabi Islam, the significance of Jerusalem, terrorism, the status of women and the contested legacy of Muhammad. Lastly, Tarif Khalidi’s Images of Muhammad (2009) and Uri Rubin’s Muhammad’s Message in Mecca: Warning, Signs and Miracles (2010) and his other works (1993; 1995; 2006; 2003) attempt at presenting a picture of Muhammad through an analysis of select verses of the Qur’an.

In Chapter Five, the dissertation will discuss more in detail and highlight the methodological shifts and different approaches that Western biographers have used to learn about the historical Muhammad.

8 William Muir

This study, however, focuses on William Muir’s biography of Muhammad. It is a critical reading of his The Life of Mohammad: From Original Sources, the edition published posthumously in 1923 and revised and edited by a scholar of Arabic, Thomas Hunter Weir (d. 1928). Muir, as many other modern Western scholars employed the original Muslim sources to write about Muhammad.

Muir was an accomplished Oriental scholar specialising in the history of the milieu of Muhammad and the early caliphate.25 He was also an administrator in the British colonial apparatus in India as well as an Evangelical Christian. Powell mentions that Muir had set out for India with his brother, John, and both were shaped by their evangelical Christian home environment, their academy and university educations in Scotland, and their training for colonial service in India (2010:3). Muir went on to write on the Qur’an and was sufficiently fluent in the Arabic language, and his social, political and ideological locations26 then

25 Avril A. Powell’s work Scottish Orientalist and India – The Muir Brothers, Religion, Education and Empire (2010) is a core study of William and John Muir and it forms a detailed examination of their lives, achievements and works (Powell, 2010). 26 Muir’s faith in Christianity led to a strong sense of civilising by Christianising mission for the people. He thus associated himself with the Evangelical mission and its activities ((Bennett, 1992: 109, 111). According to Ali Usman Qasmi, Muir did not support “the idea of missionary activities as a government policy in India” but rather “favoured the idea of British officials observing and serving their religion in their personal, non-official capacity” (2012:61). Hence, Muir wrote his biography of Muhammad for missionary purposes. He went beyond the realm of biography but delved into questioning Islam’s genuineness as a divinely inspired religion. Furthermore, he based his biography on the authentic Muslim primary sources and scrutinised these with modern Western methods of critical historiography, to prove to Muslims that they were deceived by Muhammad, who was therefore not worthy of being followed (Qasmi, 2012:62). Moreover, at the time that Muir was 14 influenced him to write about Muhammad specifically. His effort was a useful contribution to the early development of modern Western scholarship and Oriental studies on the life of Muhammad.

9 Review of Literature on Muir’s Biography of Muhammad

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it was Muslim scholars that first chose to focus on Muir’s representation of Muhammad as being influenced by his own Christian faith. For instance, Syed Ahmad Khan (d. 1898) in his book A Series of Essays on the Life of Muhammad critically evaluates Muir’s biography of Muhammad – first published in 1870 – and argues that Muir constructed Muhammad’s story according to Christian prejudices. Nevertheless, Syed Ameer Ali (d. 1928) in A Critical Examination of His life and Teachings of Mohammed (1873) asserts that in spite of Muir’s harsh criticism of Muhammad, his biography of Muhammad will always occupy the position of a trustworthy and careful work (1873:ix).

It was in the beginning of the twentieth century that a Western scholar Margoliouth in his biography Mohammed and the Rise of Islam (1905), which essentially repeated Muir’s theories of Muhammad. He considered Muir’s biography a classical work (Buaben, 1995: 63). Similarly, Edward Sell’s (d. 1932) in his Life of Muhammad (1913) regards Muir an authority on the life of Muhammad and writes that his biography ranks as a standard on the subject (1913:35). Watt, however, was more objective, describing Muir’s biography of Muhammad as following “in detail the standard Muslim accounts, though not uncritically” (Bennett, 1998:112). Watt himself takes special care of the traditional sources and uses the Qur’an as a key source (Buaben, 1995:257). He examines the life of Muhammad by looking at the economic and socio-political factors that were operative during the period (ibid.). Moreover, Watt combines the Arabic and textual scholarship of Muir but avoids his Christian bias and assumptions that impacted his study of Muhammad (Bennett, 1998:130). In other

planning and researching his biography of Muhammad, his work seemed to have been affected by the polemical rhetoric and academic environment of North India (Moaddel, 2005:60). In the face of tense Christian-Muslim debate that reached its zenith in the Great Debate in Agra of 1854, it became desirable for Muir to undertake a new approach to Islamic studies. While Muir did not contribute during the debate, he took up the task of writing a biography of Muhammad that would serve missionary purposes (ibid.). Chapter Three will discuss more in detail the reasons for writing his biography of Muhammad. 15

words, his work, while accepting the traditional Muslim sources, applied critical scholarship to learn about him (Buaben, 1995:210).

Other Western scholars such as Bennett were more pragmatic and observed that Muir’s work is “a detailed life of Muhammad more complete than almost any other previous book, at least in English” (1998:111), noting that besides “placing the facts of Muhammad's life before both Muslim and Christian readers, Muir wanted to convince Muslims that Muhammad was not worthy of their allegiance” (ibid.). Here, Bennett essentially summarises his main critique of Muir’s work. Similarly, Phillip C. Arnold notes in Heretic and Hero: Muhammad and the Victorians (1989) that although Muir’s biography essentially followed a historical-critical method, there were theological aspects27 that were superimposed on Muir’s method. For example, Arnold opines when “Muir hints his belief that in some parts of his career Mahomet was the subject of what we may call a Satanic inspiration” (1989:9). For Arnold, Muir was putting forth a view that maintained a theological proposition but was treading on ground that historians would not accept (1989:9). As sociologist Irving M. Zeitland noted in his The Historical Muhammad (2007), the quest to locate “the historical Muhammad is beset with difficulties” (2007:2). Zeitland accepted the traditional picture of the Islamic origins of Muslim sources, but commented that it must withstand critical scrutiny (2007:3). Moreover, he critically examines Muir’s findings but agrees with him that the Muslim traditional views concerning Abraham were derived from Jewish sources (2007:43).

It is important to note at this point that modern Western scholars on Muhammad were not the only ones to use the historical-critical method in their work. Muhammad Husayn Haykal (d. 1956), for instance, used this method in his Arabic work Hayāt Muhammad (1933) to evaluate Muhammad’s life and his milieu, which was translated into English as the Life of Muhammad (1976) by Isma`īl Rāgī A. al-Fārūqī (d. 1986) in 1968. In this work, Haykal acknowledges Muir’s biography of Muhammad and uses it as a source, but differs with his conclusions, arguing that Muir was a proud Christian and a missionary and never missed an opportunity to criticise the Prophet (1976:lxiii). Later, contemporary Muslim scholar Jabal Muhammad Buaben in his work The Life of Muhammad (S.A.W.) in British Scholarship – A

27 For example, Arnold opines when “Muir hints his belief that in some parts of his career Mahomet was the subject of what we may call a Satanic inspiration” (1989:9). For Arnold, Muir was putting forth a view that maintained a theological proposition but was treading on ground that historians would not accept (1989:9). 16

Critique of Three Key Modern Biographies of the Prophet Muhammad (1995) also critically evaluated Muir’s work, regarding his biography of Muhammad as the sine qua non-source (1995:21).

The most recent relevant works by Western authors include Avril A. Powell’s Scottish Orientalist and India – The Muir Brothers, Religion, Education and Empire (2010), which extensively deals with Muir’s life and critically examines the reasons for writing his biography of Muhammad. Kecia Ali’s work The Lives of Muhammad (2014) mentions that Muir’s biography was a source-critical narrative history that fused polemic and scholarship (2014:51). She states that although Muslim writers have explicitly criticised Muir’s approach and conclusions, in constructing his biography of Muhammad, Muir “altered the enterprise of a pious biography”, combining post-Enlightenment scholarly methodology with Christian Romantic sensibilities and evangelical missionary purposes (2014:51). Furthermore, his biographical work shaped a genre of European literature that makes exclusive use of the primary/original Islamic sources.

10 This Dissertation’s Contribution

This dissertation contributes to the admittedly wide body of literature that discuss Muir’s role, approach and methodology to the biography of the Prophet by considering hitherto unexplored dimensions of how Muir utilised the qur’anic verses that deal with the Prophet28 to support and construct his biography on the life of Muhammad. Using the examples of these verses, the study will furthermore discuss Muir’s methodological approaches and hermeneutical tools, as well as how he understands and engages with the text of the Qur’an.

11 The Research Methodology and Approach to the Study.

This study is textual and therefore also philological. It will cover Muir’s use of pioneering biographers’ Arabic works on Muhammad in writing his own biography of the Prophet. The aim is to enunciate his evaluation of the text and language of the Qur’an and how he uses it to support his biography of the Prophet.

28 Cf., Chapter Four. 17

This work employs the socio-rhetorical interpretive method29 of Vernon K. Robbins as a framework to undertake a reading of Muir’s biography of Muhammad, focussing on how he utilises the Qur’an.30 Robbins’ method is “an approach to literature that focuses on values, convictions, and beliefs both in the text and in the world [in] which we live” (Robbins, 1996:1). This method enables the interpreter to create a rich environment for finding meaning by appreciating the multiple textures of a text as well as the subjective stances of the receivers of a text. It will look at Muir’s usage of qur’anic verses from four angles: inner texture, inter-texture, social and cultural texture and ideological texture, primarily focussing on the latter (Robbins, 1996).31 Furthermore, the study will compare Muir’s translation of the verses of the Qur’an used in his reconstruction of Muhammad’s life to the translation in Muhammad Asad’s work The Message of the Qur’an (1980)32 in order to juxtapose these translations for a broader reading of the relevant qur’anic verses.33 Finally, this study will also look at both traditional and modern views of scholarship to further evaluate Muir’s biography of Muhammad.

12 Chapter Outline

The dissertation consists of an introduction, five chapters and the conclusion. The introduction develops a context for evaluating Muir’s biography of Muhammad, while Chapter One discusses the Western Notions and Presentations of Muhammad as the background for Muir’s biography on the life of Muhammad. Chapter Two provides an early genealogy of biographical works on Muhammad. It also historically situates nineteenth century modern Western scholars such as Muir who used

29 Robins mentions that “the prefix “‘socio’ refers to the rich resources of modern anthropology and sociology that socio-rhetorical criticism brings to the interpretation of the text” (ibid.). He further notes that “social scientific approaches – which study social class, social systems, personal and community status, people on the margins and people in the position of power – have become more and more common and important in the last half of the twentieth century” (ibid.). He also states that “the term rhetorical refer to the way that language in a text is a means of communication among people” (ibid.). In other words, “rhetorical analysis and interpretation give special attention to the subjects and topics a text uses to present thought, speech, stories, and other arguments” (1996:1). 30 This study will employ Robbins’ method mainly in Chapter Four, but will support and reference his approach in the other chapters where necessary. 31 The study especially uses his book Exploring the Texture of Text (1996) for this purpose. 32 Asad’s translation and commentary of the Qur’an is based on authoritative classical and modern Arabic commentaries of the Qur’an. He also employs modern hermeneutical tools such as elements intrinsic to a process of understanding a text: the text itself and the author, the interpreter and the act of interpretation. In this work, he demonstrates profound knowledge of the Judeo-Christian tradition. 33 Other translations of the Qur’an by Majid Fakhry (1997) Abdulhaqq and Aisha Bewley (1999) and ˋAbdul Mājid Daryābadī (2001) are also briefly used in Chapter Four to support Asad’s work. 18 primary Muslim sources to construct their biographies of Muhammad. Then, Chapter Three explores the context of Muir’s Weltanschauung and his scholarly achievements. It will also deal with his methodology and approach in constructing his biography of Muhammad.

Chapter Four will discuss how Muir hermeneutically utilises and approaches the Qur’an to support his biography of Muhammad, while Chapter Five will give a brief account of Western biographies of Muhammad after the publication of Muir’s biography. It will focus on methodological shifts and different approaches from Muir to write about Muhammad. It will also examine in greater detail two post-Muir Western biographies of Muhammad: Maxime Rodinson’s Muhammad (1960) and Fred Donner’s Muhammad and the Believers (2010).

Finally, the concluding chapter will briefly summarise Muir’s arguments, substantiations and various influences in his construction of a biography of Muhammad. It will briefly suggest areas for further exploration and development of this genre.

Chapter One WESTERN NOTIONS AND PRESENTATIONS OF MUHAMMAD

1.0 Introduction

Western scholarship has been interested in with Prophet Muhammad for a long time – since the ninth century C.E. to the present day. This interest culminated in writings on him by priests, men of letters and laity. They imagined and represented the person and message of the Arab Prophet in peculiar and instructive ways. This chapter looks at Western notions and presentations of Muhammad. With the term Western, we refer primarily to the geographical area known as Western Europe. It is no exaggeration that much of Western writings on Muhammad, especially the very first writings, are negative and hostile. This can arguably be explained by the fact that Europeans knew very little about Muhammad especially during the first centuries of Islam. Although, initially Europeans had no or very little access to Muslim sources, even after becoming acquainted with these sources, this attitude prevailed to varying degrees. Thus, for a long time the Western world was not concerned about the accuracy of its portrayal of Muhammad (Ali, 2014:27).

Furthermore, a certain anxiety characterised virtually all – including scholarly – approaches to Islam and Muhammad, mainly because by the seventh and eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered half of the Christian Byzantine Empire and the Iberian Peninsula, and Christian dominance in the Near East including Syria, Egypt, and Palestine had been terminated (Lawler, 1965:15). As Fred Donner points out, most of the biased views about Islam and its Prophet originated from this early and rapid expansion of Islam (2010:106). Rodinson notes that the Muslim world was a nuisance long before it became a threat to the West (1996:103, 324). Whichever preceded the other – nuisance or threat – the relationship between the two was not an amicable one.

With few exceptions, this anxiety and even antipathy towards Islam informed/motivated most of the Western writings on the Prophet, especially of the early medieval period. Muhammad was portrayed as a heretic, imposter, false prophet and founder of a religion that promotes violence. In the words of Minou Reeves “medieval scholars and churchmen preferred to give easy answers to the question of Islam: that it was the work of one man, Muhammad and that he was inspired by Satan. There was no need to answer awkward questions about the religion; 20

defame the founder and you could forget the rest” (2000:3). For instance, it was asserted that Muhammad was the Anti-Christ and his name was corrupted to “Mahound”, the “Devil incarnate” (Reeves, 2000:5). These Western notions of Muhammad were ideologically loaded with much cultural baggage, which will be addressed in this chapter.

The earliest Western writings on Muhammad are found in Byzantine sources written shortly after his death in 632 C.E.; for instance, The Teachings of Jacob (Doctrina Jacobi Nuper Baptizati) was written in Palestine sometime between 634 and 640 C.E. In this work, Muhammad was presented as a false prophet given to violence and the shedding of blood (Doctrina Jacobi 1991:V.16, 209. 57).

Another early work on Muhammad is that of John of Damascus (d. 749), a Syrian monk who wrote the Fountain of Knowledge.34 It was among the first Christian sources describing Muhammad using the phrases “false prophet” (Curtis, 2009:31) and “Antichrist.” (Sbaihat, 2014:24). These two works are in general hostile to Muhammad or misrepresent his person and message. This maligning of Muhammad continued in the eighth century C.E. These earliest accounts of Islam present a significantly different historiography to that of traditional Muslim sources such as the Sīra and Maghāzī literature (Crone and Cook, 1977:4). Moreover, while these early writers were from the Near East and not from the West, their writings exhibit the general tone of modern Western writings on Muhammad evident a few centuries later.

1.1 Christian Europe – The West

The earliest writing from what is known as the West proper, i.e., geographically Western Europe, is that of Alvarus of Cordoba (d. 861), a Christian theologian who lived in Southern Iberia in the ninth century C.E. At the time the Iberian Peninsula was under Muslim rule. In his work Indiculus Luminous35 (854) Alvarus36 writes that Muhammad was the precursor to the Antichrist37 (Setton, 1992: 11).

34 This book is divided into three parts. The second chapter, Concerning Heresy (Peri Haireseon) deals with the heresy of the Ishmaelites. It is one of the first Christian polemical writings against Islam and Muhammad, and the first one written by a Greek Orthodox Melkite (Sbaihat, 2014:24). 35 According to Ahlam Sbaihat, Alvarus’ work is a biography. However, this work does not concern this chapter. 21

In the twelfth century C.E., Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny (d. 1156) portrayed Muhammad as sexually self-indulgent and a murderer (Curtis, 2009:31). He called upon Robert of Ketton (d. 1160) to produce the first Latin translation of the Qur’an in 1143 C.E., titled Lex Mahumet Pseudoprophete,38 with the aim of collecting Muslim sources and making them available to Christian scholars in order to repudiate Islam (Setton, 1992:4-15, 48-49). The French poem, La Chanson de Roland39 portrays Muslims worshipping Muhammad (Varisco, 2007:74). According to Ali, of the Westerners who wrote about Muhammad, many were clergy and their writings reflect “current local theological and social concerns in Western Europe. They used Islam as a foil to responding to these theological and social developments” (2014:28). Thus, the twelfth century scholar Embrico of Mainz, author of the Vita Mahumeti (1149 C.E.) writes of Muhammad as a vile heretic “at a time when the clergy were worried about heretical ‘wandering preachers’” (Ali, 2014:28).

Guibert of Nogent’s (d. 1124) portrayal of Muhammad as someone “whose malignity exceeds whatever ill can be spoken” exhibited the persistence of such Western medieval attitudes regarding the Prophet Muhammad (Varisco, 2007:75). Indeed, Muhammad was called an adulterer, pagan, barbarian, false prophet, robber, murderer, necromancer, traitor, violent and wicked, and it was also claimed that he broke all the tenets of the Ten Commandments. During the Crusades (eleventh century C.E.), Muhammad was routinely labelled as either the “beast” or “false Prophet” (Varisco, 2007:75-75). During the thirteenth century C.E., the hatred of Islam in the Christian West was nurtured with “ridiculous legends relating to Mohammed”; Christian preachers were always willing to inform their listeners about the evil origin of Muhammad (Setton, 1992:1). Muhammad was depicted as an imposter prophet given to ambition and lust and it was claimed that he propagated religious

36 Sbaihat claims that Alvarus’ work is one of the many biographies of Muhammad that has been written in Latin since the ninth century. However, he does not give the titles and authors of the other ninth century writings on Muhammad (2014:27). 37 The Antichrist is a Christian concept based on interpretation of passages in the New Testament, in which the term “antichrist” occurs five times in 1 John and 2 John. It denotes the opposite to Christ. 38 Robert of Ketton's translation of the Qur’an for Peter the Venerable, Lex Mahumet Pseudoprophete (1143 C.E.) (roughly translated into English as The False Prophet Mohammed), was the first into a Western language (Latin) (Bloom and Blair, 2002:42). Alexander Ross offered the first English version in 1649, translated from the French L’Alcoran de Mahomet (1647), written by Andre du Ryer (d. 1660 or 1672) because he did not know Arabic (Bloom and Blair, 2002:42). The first printed Qur’an in Arabic is the edition by the Venetian printer Paganino de’ Paganini in 1537-38. All copies were thought to have perished in a fire until one remaining specimen was discovered in the 1980s in the library of the Frati Minori di San Michele ad Isola in Venice. 39 This poem is known as The Song of Roland in English and is dated around the mid-twelve century (Varisco, 2007:74). 22

teachings that he knew to be false. In his Divine Comedy,40 Dante Alighieri (d. 1321) shows Muhammad as being tortured by the demons of hell. In fact, many stories assured Christians that Muhammad was a corrupt, evil heretic who selected texts from the Old and New Testaments, which he perverted with deliberate intention to ensure that they were unclear and hard to understand. In this way, he was able to convince his people that he was a Prophet of God (Setton, 1992:1-4). This conception of Muhammad in Christendom resulted from fear of the unknown “other” and the challenge and the expansion of Islam into lands controlled by Byzantium Christian authority posed. This fear of Muslims by Western Christendom persisted for centuries and continues to the present day.

1.2 The Shift from a Hostile Reception of Muhammad

The first indication of a shift away from hostility towards Muhammad appeared in Robert de Boron’s Estoire Del Saint Grail (2016), which was published in the thirteenth century and attempted a more balanced presentation of Muhammad. He presents Muhammad as a Prophet who was to bring Christianity to the pagan tribes of Arabia (Lacy, 1992:Volumes 1-5). Yet he maintains that Muhammad was deceived by Satan into adulterating the original pure revelation of God (2016). Another relatively more balanced depiction of Islam and Muhammad first circulated around 1357 and 1371 in Anglo-Norman French was the Travels of Sir John Mandeville, which featured a close relationship between Islam and Christians (Mandeville, 2014:XV).

Bennett points out that with the Renaissance, more serious Western scholarship on Islam and Muhammad started appearing. The Renaissance marks Western Europe’s re-discovery of the classical Greek philosophical tradition, which was largely transmitted by the Muslims of Spain (Bennett, 1998:93). During this period, divergent views of the traditional pillars of Western culture, Greco-Roman classicism and the traditional views of the Judaeo-Christian religion began to be challenged (Tarnas, 1991:371).

However, as Ali shows, up until the early seventeenth century the obsession with Muhammad as an imposter was still very much in vogue (2014:33). For example, William Bedwell’s 1615 work, Mohammedis Imposturae: That is, a discovery of the manifold forgeries, falsehoods,

40 Written somewhere between 1308 C.E. and Dante’s death in 1321 C.E. 23 and horrible impieties of the blasphemous seducer Mohammed, “levelled the charge of fraud” (Ali, 2014:33). Yet as the century wore on, a different attitude, one which opposed the open vitriol of an earlier age vis-à-vis the study of Islam and its Prophet, made a gradual emergence. “Historian Guy Stroumsa argues that prejudice against Islam changed in the seventeenth century, allowing” for the “gradual emergence of a new, more open attitude that was most significant for the birth of a modern study of Islam” (Ali, 2014:33). However, Barthélemy d’Herbelot’s (d. 1695) Bibliotheque Orientale still views Muhammad as a “famous” imposter and a founder of heresy and referring to Islam as Mahomedan (Ali, 2014:33). Other scholars such as Edward Pococke (d. 1691) also held Muhammad as a false Prophet, but Pococke nonetheless considers him a “remarkable man who brought moral reform to his people” (Ali, 2014:35).

This change in attitude demonstrated by Pococke towards Muhammad can be ascribed to the Enlightenment. With the Enlightenment, Western scholars challenge ideas grounded in Christian tradition and faith to advance knowledge through scientific enquiry and methods, which had a major impact on Western historiography, education and the natural sciences. This in turn had an impact on Western scholarship on Islam and Muhammad (Ali, 2014:33). According to Ali, “by the turn of the eighteenth century, three overlapping bodies of literature converged on the idea of the false prophet: Orientalist scholarship, Enlightenment thought, and Christian apologetic and polemics” (2014:33). It was from this new view that Western scholars began to study Islam and its Prophet, using Muslim sources. We will regard this period onwards as the modern period in the West. According to Jeffrey, it was in the seventeenth century that Western scholars began to write on the life of Muhammad using various Muslim Arabic materials translated into Latin (1926:332). According to Bennett,

[H]istorical texts that found their way into Europe were those by Abu 'l Fida (1273- 1331) and Ibn Athir (1160-1233), whilst Edward Pocock brought back to Oxford (from his time at Aleppo) Bar Hebraeus's Chronicle and other Arabic texts. He rendered these into Latin in his classic Specimen Historiae Arabum. Scholars such as John Gagnier (1670-1740) and Johan Jakob Reiske (1716-74) also worked on translations. Gagnier's Abu 'l Fida appeared in 1723. This offers a romantic and highly stylized portrait of Muhammad. He is depicted as the ‘last and greatest of the prophets’; all the details transmitted by Arab tradition about the life, acts, and sayings of the Prophet […] were all undoubtedly true (1998:93).

For example, we can turn to the works of Abū al-Fidāˋ Ismaìl ibn Àli (better known as Abū al-Fidāˋ) (d. 1331) and Ìzz al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥasan Abū al-Fidāˋ Ismaìl ibn Àli ibn al-Athīr

(d. 1233): both works on Islamic history of the Tā’rīkh genre. Abū al Fida'’s Tā’rīkh Abi al- Fidāˋ (History of Abū al-Fidāˋ) covers from the pre-Islamic era and Islamic era up to 1329 C.E. Ibn al-Athīr’s work Kāmil fit-Tā’rīkh (The Complete History) (1231 C.E.) precedes Abū al-Fidāˋ’s work. These secondary sources offered conventional style biographies of Muhammad. From these works, Western scholars of the Enlightenment era realised that they could learn more about Muhammad in a more scholarly manner. Works such as Raleigh’s Life and Death of Mohamet (1637) and Humphrey Prideaux’s (d. 1724) Vie de Mahomet, ou l’on découvre amplement la verité de l’imposture or The Life of Mahomet or Where One Abundantly Discovers the Truth of the Imposture (1698) were attempts to remedy the dearth of sufficient and reliable information about Muhammad (Jeffrey, 1926:332). Johann Heinrich Hottinger (d. 1667) provided an account of Muhammad’s teaching in his Historia Orientalis (1651), and Hippolyto Marraccio Lucensi’s (d. 1675) strictures that run through his Refutation (1698) were the beginning of Western scholars relying on various secondary Muslim sources. In general, however, most of these works retained a bias and prejudice, even hostility, in their accounts of Muhammad (Jeffrey, 1926:332). Put differently, their accounts of Muhammad, while eluding the description ‘objective’, and even ‘positive’ were certainly less hostile.

1.3 The Emergence of Western Biography of Muhammad

It was in the seventeenth century that Westerners showed interest in producing a biography of Muhammad. It was a rudimentary beginning. The earliest Western biography of Muhammad is Henry Stubbe’s (d. 1675) Originall & Progress of Mahometanism, which appeared in the early 1670s (Matar, 2013:2). Stubbe’s work was the first English work documenting Muhammad’s life positively using secondary Muslim sources. It remained in manuscript form until its publication in 1911 (Matar, 2013:21). His work is characteristic of a century when Arabic and Islamic manuscripts were becoming increasingly available to Western scholarship and making an impact on European thought. These materials were gradually being translated into Latin and published by academic institutions and universities such as Oxford, Leiden, Paris and Basel. According to Nabil Matar three Arabic historical works about early Islam was translated into Latin (2013:2). These accounts were by Jirgis ibn al- `Amid al-Makin (d. 1280),41 Sa`id ibn al-Batrīq (Eutychius) (d. 940)42 and Abū al-Faraj ibn

41 This Arab Christian historian was also known as ‘Ibn al-`Amid’. 25

al-Ìbri (Gregorius) (d. 1286),43 all of which relied on important Muslim historians such as Al-Tabarī (d. 945), Àbd Allah ibn Ùmar al-Baidawī (d. 1286), and Abū al-Fath Muhammad ibn Àbd al-Karīm al-Shahrastānī (d. 1153) and others (Matar, 2013:2).

Stubbe was a master of Greek and Latin and, by studying these translations closely, “realised how sources indigenous to Islamic civilisation could lead to a new understanding of contested history and a re-assessment of the most misrepresented man in early modern European religious thought: the Prophet Muhammad” (Matar, 2013:3). Stubbe’s work thus marked the move towards using Muslim and Arabic sources for the study of Islam.

For Stubbe, history was not “geographically or intellectually fragmented; rather it was a continuum from Judaism into Christianity and then Islam” (Matar, 2013:3). However, Stubbe’s work was of limited scope as he did not have access to the earliest Muslim sources (primary and pioneer literature) on Muhammad as they were not yet available to Western scholars. Nevertheless, the secondary Muslim sources he utilised to learn about Muhammad were the earliest European effort that moved beyond the Western Christian biased and prejudiced understandings and Euro-centric knowledge production about Islam and the life of Muhammad.

Following Stubbe, H. Reland’s (d. 1718) work Die Reliogione Mahomedica (1704), addressed the biased position of earlier Western traditional scholarship on Muhammad and strived “for a fair appreciation of his historical significance” (Jeffrey, 1926:332).

If ever any religion was perverted by adversary’s [sic] it was this religion. Too often, he said, writers had relied on the old authorities instead of listening to ‘Mahomet speak in his own tongue’ (Reland quoted in Bennett, 1998: 94).

Reland gave solicitous priority to Muslim sources (Bennett, 1998: 92). According to Jeffrey, Reland’s work was followed by Henri de Boulainvilliers’ (d. 1722) Vie de Mahomed, published in 1731, “which was a bombastic laudation of Muhammad, in the interests of belittling Christianity” (1926:332). Boulainvilliers also celebrated Muhammad’s human

42 This Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria was one of the first Christian Egyptian writers to use the Arabic language. His writings include his chronicle Nazm al-Jauhar (Row of Jewels), otherwise known by its Latin title, Eutychii Annales. 43 An Arab historian, he was noted for collecting and preserving ancient Arabic lyrics and poems in his major work, the Kitāb al-Aghānī (Sawa, 1985:68-82). 26

achievement and Islam’s contribution to European civilisation. He portrays “Muhammad as a great statesman and legislator, unequalled in the ancient world” and shows him as a rational man because he did not use miracles but persuaded his people with reason (Bennett, 1998: 95). However, he still regarded Muhammad as an imposter prophet primarily because he did not believe in Jesus who had died to cleanse humans from the “taint of original sin” (Bennett, 1998:95).

Indeed, according to Jeffrey, J. Gagnier wrote his Vie de Mahomet (Life of Muhammad) (1748) “in order to combat the distinctly wrong impression produced by Boulainvilliers’ work. It strove to take the middle course between Boulainvilliers’ work on the one hand and Prideaux’s on the other” (1926:332). Prideaux had accused Muhammad of deliberate fraud because he deluded his followers with a distorted version of Judaism, several Christian heresies of the East and the old Arabian pagan rites (Bennett, 1998:36). After Gagnier, Pococke published A Description of the East, and Some Other Countries. Volume 1 appeared in 1743 and Volume 2 in 1744. This work included a brief sketch of Muhammad’s life and it remained a seminal source for scholars well into the nineteenth century (Ali, 2014: 37). In his book, On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History44 (1841), Thomas Carlyle45 (d. 1881) then affirmed that Muhammad was sincere and portrayed him as a great leader who influenced the history of the world (Buaben, 1995:194). Carlyle was influenced by the German writer and poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (d. 1832) who praised Muhammad as the best of humankind (Buaben, 1995:194). Goethe expressed his interpretation of Islam and Muhammad in a poetic form (Bennett, 1998:109).

44 The British philosopher, Carlyle in his work On Heroes, Hero-Worship and The Heroic in History (1841), writes about the Qur’an: “We can also read the Koran [...] I must say it is as toilsome reading as I ever undertook. A wearisome confused jumble, crude, incondite; - insupportable stupidity, in short! [...] with every allowance, one feels it difficult to see how any mortal ever could consider this Koran as a book written in Heaven, too good for the Earth; as a well written book, or indeed as a book at all; and not a bewildering rhapsody; written, so far as writing goes, as badly as almost any book ever was”. He then went on to say “in [it] there is a merit quite other than the literary one. If a book comes from the heart, it will contrive to reach other hearts; all art and author-craft are of small account to that […]. It [the Koran] is the confused torment of a great rude human soul…fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in words […]. The panting breathless haste and vehemence of a man struggling in the thick of battle for life and salvation; this is the mood he is in!” (1841:233-234). 45 See Carlyle on Muhammad in The Hibbert Journal (HI) Vol. LII, (Oct. 1954 - July 1955), pp. 247- 254 (Buaben, 1995:194). 27

According to John V. Tolan, historian and philosopher, François-Marie Arouet, known by his nom de plume Voltaire (d. 1778) vilifies the Prophet as a sublime charlatan in his play Le Fanatisme ou Mahomet le Prophète (Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet) (1741) (2010:241). Yet in later years, in his work Voltaire, Essais sur les Mœurs (Voltaire, Essays on Customs) (1756), came to regard him as a sage and tolerant legislator, “in sharp contrast to the intolerance that produced the wars of religion in Christian Europe” (ibid.).

In Enlightenment France, Muhammad is increasingly seen as a sage, lawgiver and brilliant leader. For example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (d. 1778) in his The Social Contract, or Principles of Political Law (1762), “brushing aside hostile legends of Muhammad as trickster and imposter, presents him as a sage legislator who wisely fused religious and political powers (2010:242).

According to Ali, by the eighteenth century the growth of scholarly interest in Arabs and Islam was a shift from fear to “fascination, a sort of cultural and historical tourism” (2014: 38). She states that this fascination was not limited to universities.

The Romantic Era, which spanned the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, radiated out of Britain to affect much of Europe and “saw a crucial transition between Enlightenment world view and the values of a modern, industrial society.” Romanticism was “a literary movement, and profound shift in sensibility”. Early modern thinkers tried to unmask the imposter; Romantic thinkers instead aimed to reveal the genius. Concern with inner and outer, which had been focused on revealing the true hidden beneath the false, shifted to individuals’ interior lives, not outward forms (Ali, 2014:39).

1.4 Nineteenth Century Western Writings on the Life of Muhammad

Because of the growing availability of original and primary Muslim sources, particularly in the nineteenth century, modern Western scholars could now study the life of Muhammad in more objective ways. They could now approach Muhammad as an historical figure who had played a part in history and not as a diabolical deceiver driven by lust and ambition for power. According to Ursula Wokoeck, there were other reasons for changing approaches in Western scholarship to the study of Islam and its Prophet. One, in particular, was an internal

28 criticism of the Western tradition, where scholars such as Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (d. 1900) detected a “crisis within modernity” with regard to identity and culture46 (2009:175).

Furthermore, biography, rather than just writing in general, was pursued by these nineteenth- century Western scholars writing on the life of Muhammad. Gustav Weil, Aloys Sprenger, William Muir and Ferdinand Wüstenfeld were among the earliest Westerners to write a biography of Muhammad using primary Muslim sources. As Ali shows “Muhammad’s biographers aimed to convey something of his ‘personality,’ as biographers did more generally” (2014:39). “The Victorian [age] penchant for great men coupled with the Western fascination for an exotic east engendered a sympathetic environment for the rehabilitation of Muhammad and Islam” (ibid.). A detailed study of these nineteen century Western scholars will be presented in the next chapter.

A major phenomenon of the West’s study of the life of Muhammad (and the Islamic religious-intellectual tradition in general during the nineteenth century (although it started before the nineteenth century) was that of Orientalism, a seminal intellectual trend. We thus now briefly look at Orientalist writings on Muhammad starting from the nineteenth century and exploring the twentieth century writings.

1.5 Orientalism and the Study of Islam and Muhammad

Orientalism is a Western academic study of Islam that became prominent during the nineteenth century with the consolidation of European colonial conquest and rule of much of the Muslim world. Indeed, Edward Said (d. 2003), Wael Hallaq and others have shown the inextricable link between modern European scholarship of the non-European other and colonial rule.47 Furthermore, Orientalism emerged as “Rivalry Studies” (Gegnerforschung) of the “other” (Görgün, 2013). A fundamental aim of Orientalism, as stated by the Prussian

46 On this challenge to Western traditional methodology, Bertrand Russell (d. 1970) speaks about a “profound revolt both philosophical and political took place in this century against traditional systems in thought, in politics and economics, which gave rise to attacks upon many traditional beliefs and institutions” (1984:479-482). In the nineteenth century, the Enlightenment’s secular progressions of the modern Western mind and disengagement from traditional Christian religious scholarship gave rise to new critical methodological approaches and disciplines in academic endeavour (Tarnas, 1991:224). 47 William Muir, the focus of this study, as we will show was a product of and contributor to the Orientalist tradition. According to Khalidi, Muir constructed a biography of Muhammad in a historical narrative that was written under the shadow of European colonial expansion (2009:251). 29

statesman Otto von Bismarck48 (d. 1898) on opening the Department of Orientalische Sprachen in 1887, was the “helping the friends and harming the enemies” (Görgün, 2013). However, the origins of Orientalism as an academic discipline was preceded by the founding of the institute, Ecole Speciale des Langues Orientales49 in France by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1795 (before his Egyptian campaign). In Germany, the Deutsche Morgenlaendische Gesellschaft was established in 1845 and other institutions were set up later in Europe (Görgün, 2013).

As Said shows in his seminal work Orientalism, “without examining Orientalism as a discourse”, it is not possible to “understand the enormously systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage – and even produce the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically and scientifically and imaginatively during the post- Enlightenment period” (Said, 1995:3). Employing the Foucauldian notion of knowledge as power, Said emphasised that Orientalism is “based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and the ‘Occident’, which is the Western domination and restructuring of the Orient” (Said, 1995:2). Said also linked Orientalism to European colonialism because of its Western style of domination and restructuring of the Orient (1995:2-4). Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam was the other, arguably the “other” par excellence. Similarly, David Kopf shows the symbiotic relationship between British Orientalists and British rule in the period from 1772 to 1830 (1969:4). From the eighteenth century, European states such as Britain began officialising civil procedures, documenting, codifying, controlling and representing the past in the colonies. Interestingly, it was the

48 “Otto von Bismarck was a conservative Prussian statesman who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s until 1890. In the 1860s he engineered a series of wars that unified the German states” (Hobsbawm, 1987:312) (excluding Austria) “into a powerful German Empire under Prussian leadership (ibid.). He first rejected colonialism but due to the strengthening of the national unification of Germany he changed his mind. He was concerned that inaction on the part of Germany would have adverse effects and economic consequences due to the international competition over the access of these markets (Blue, 2002:252). He organised The Berlin Conference of 1884/85 and regulated European colonisation and trade in Africa during the New Imperialism period. Its outcome, the General Act of the Berlin Conference, is often seen as the formalisation of the “Scramble for Africa” (Adekunle, 1983:177-189). 49 The Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) (National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilizations) is located in Paris, France. The institute was founded after the French Revolution in 1795, by decree of the Convention Nationale as the École spéciale des Langues Orientales, for Oriental studies, with a mission to teach living Oriental languages “of recognized utility for politics and commerce”. In English, this institution is known as the German Oriental Society and it is an organisation dedicated to studies of Asia and the broader Orient. 30

universities and public schools in Victorian Great Britain that provided some of the models that assisted this discipline (Cohn, 1996:4).

In short, the West sought to dominate the Orient not only through its military superiority but also culturally with the help of its scholars (Powell, 2010:58, 70; Bennett, 1992:112). Hence the knowledge investigations of modern Western scholars of Eastern societies were inextricably linked with the desire for power over the Orient, and the project was in pursuit – or the retention – of that power. As a trend within the academy, Orientalism played a seminal role in this endeavour. “It has created an essentialist, ontological, epistemologically insensitive distinction between a materially developed and self-assured ‘West’ with a superior civilisation, and an inferior, backward and pre-modern ‘Orient’” (Curtis, 2009:8). The Muslim world was at the centre of the Orientalist’s intellectual-cultural tradition.

A caveat is in order here. Our, justifiable, critique of Orientalism should not be taken to mean that all Western scholarship on the Prophet of Islam served the colonial order or that that all Orientalists produced unbalanced scholarship on Islam. Indeed, while some Orientalists produced unbalanced scholarship on Islam and its Prophet, others produced well studied and exceptionally scholarly accounts. What we do argue is that most Orientalists’ point of departure was that of the superiority of Western epistemology and thought. This attitude had a profound effect on how these scholars studied Islam – and indeed all non-European civilisations and knowledge traditions.

1.6 Twentieth Century Western Writings on Muhammad

In the twentieth century, Western writings on Muhammad continued proliferating in different literary genres. Two separate streams, “one hagiographical and the other polemical, had converged in a single contentious body of literature” (Ali, 2014:231). The early twentieth century Western scholars who were familiar with the various Arabic sources and got closest to an understanding of the life and era of Muhammad were David Samuel Margoliouth (d. 1940), Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (d. 1936), Henri Lammens (d. 1937) and Leone Caetani (d. 1935), who continued in the polemical stream. Chapter Five, provides a brief synopsis of the early twentieth century writings on Muhammad. Yet regarding the polemical writings on Muhammad, old arguments were presented in a new form until the 1950s.

For instance, in 1977, Patricia Crone and Michael Cook published Hagarism. This work consciously avoided Muslim sources and challenged the basic outline and premises of early Muslim history and the historical existence of the figure of Muhammad (2014:11). Ali posits that many of Hagarism’s supposition have been convincingly refuted, “but the basic question it poses remains open: What can we really know about Muhammad, and how can we know it?” (2014:11). In contrast, and according to Bennett, the mid-twentieth century work of Watt is an example of reliable critical scholarship attempting to reconstruct the life of Muhammad (1998:128). Watt combines the Arabic and textual scholarship of Muir but avoids his Christian bias and assumptions that impacted his study of Muhammad (Bennett, 1998:130). In other words, Watt questioned the subjective, polemical and biased study of Muhammad’s life, and rather applied objective standards and critical scholarship to learn about him (Buaben, 1995:210).

While not really a scholarly work, but nonetheless worthy of mention in a dissertation on Western approaches to Muhammad, is Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses (1988), which was inspired in part by the life of Muhammad. The title refers to the “Satanic Verses”, a few qur’anic āyāt50 from Q. 53 (Sūrah al-Najm) that apparently allowed intercessory prayers to be made to the three pagan Arabian goddesses: Al-Lāt, Uzza and Manāt. The part of the story that deals with the “Satanic Verses” was based on accounts from the earliest Muslim historian’s Al-Wāqidī and Al-Tabarī. According to Anshuman A. Mondal the novel deviates quite markedly from the conventional historical accounts of the Sīra literature (2014: 106). A novel is not expected to strictly follow factual accounts, and indeed Rushdi’s does not have to concur with the historical records. He renames Muhammad as “Mahound”– a name used earlier by Christian writers to vilify Muhammad.51 The novel, however, was much more than the “Satanic Verses”; it was also about depicting the Prophet’s wives as prostitutes, and disparaging references to his Companions, Gabriel and other historical Islamic characters. (Kimmich, 2008; Mondal, 2014).

1.7 Conclusion

50 Āyah (plural: āyāt) means sign, token, mark, marvel, proofs, evidences, verses, lessons, revelations, etc (Wehr, 1976:36). 51 The term was also connected to the Christian belief that Muhammad was a god worshipped by pagans, or that he was a demon who inspired a false religion (Kimmich, 2008:171). 32

This chapter provided a brief overview of the historical writings of Western scholars from the seventh to the twentieth century on the life of Muhammad. These writings have appeared since the advent of Islam and have continued until the present day. Western writings on Muhammad from the medieval era were for the most part polemical, prejudiced and hostile. With the Renaissance, however, modern Western scholars were intent on discovering the earliest and most accurate information about Muhammad. The European Enlightenment with its epistemological transformation thus allowed – to an extent – modern Western scholars to challenge entrenched European perceptions and re-presentations of Muhammad. Post- enlightenment scholars then had access to the best available original Muslim sources, from which they critically evaluated the techniques of Enlightenment scholarship and Western historiography to construct their biographies on the life of Muhammad.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries C.E., secondary Arabic sources manuscripts were translated into European languages. It was from these Muslim secondary sources that modern Western scholars realised that more could be learnt about Islam and Muhammad from accessing original Muslim sources. The nineteenth century was an important period for these modern Western Orientalist scholars for several reasons. Firstly, they began to utilise the earliest original Muslim sources in their study of Islam and construct biographies on Muhammad. Secondly, “the mid-nineteenth century witnessed a new phase of intense Christian missionary activity among Muslims under European imperial domination” (Ali, 1997:viii). Thirdly, the scholarly environment and the development of Western academia from pre-modern to a modern society and the developing transition and evolution of ideas was work in progress.

However, many modern Western scholars (from after the Renaissance, through to the Religious Reformation, to the Enlightenment and post Enlightenment, i.e., to this day) continue(d) to write about Muhammad from their own political, social and cultural Weltanschauung with its entrenched bias and assumptions, as pointed out by Said, Hallaq and others. They were/are now using Muslim sources, were/are “freed” from the Christian polemics of the medieval and pre-Modern West, but were/are still very enveloped in the notion of a superior West with a neutral episteme.

The next chapter presents a detailed study of nineteenth century Western biographies of the Prophet Muhammad (the works of Weil, Sprenger and Muir mentioned earlier in this 33 chapter). As we will see, what distinguishes these nineteenth-century Western works different to earlier Western writings is their dependence on original primary Muslim sources and their explicit intention to write on the life of Muhammad through the genre of biography, not simply a written presentation.

Chapter Two

THE GENEALOGY OF BIOGRAPHICAL WORKS ON MUHAMMAD – LOCATING WILLIAM MUIR HISTORICALLY

2:0 Introduction

Chapter One was an account of perceptions and re-presentations of Muhammad in Western writing in general starting from the seventh century C.E. to the present, including biographies in the twentieth century.

This chapter focuses on Western biographical works of Muhammad marked by two factors. The first is that these were all published during the nineteenth century. The second is that they all used primary Muslim sources, including the pioneering Muslim biographical works of the Prophet such as the earliest extant Sīra and Maghāzī works of Ibn Ishāq, Al-Wāqidī, Ibn Hishām, Al-Tabarī and others. The dependence of the nineteenth century Western biographical works of Muhammad on primary sources is what distinguishes it from, say, Henry Stubbs’ seventeenth century biographical work of Muhammad, Originall & Progress of Mahometanism, which used only secondary Muslim historical works as sources. The primary earliest Muslim sources, i.e., the primary sources, were as yet not available to Western scholars.

The aim of looking at the Muslim biographical literature of Muhammad and nineteenth century Western biographies of Muhammad is to locate William Muir’s biography of the Prophet Muhammad historically. In other words, the aim here is to read his biographical work of the Prophet in light of the pre-modern Muslim literature as well as post-Enlightenment Western biographies of the Prophet of Islam. In Chapter Five, we look at Western biographies of Muhammad written after Muir’s work, thus juxtaposing his with the biographical literature that precedes his work as well as that written subsequently. In so doing, we wish to gauge the impact on and by his work, if any, and gauge similarities and differences in approach, methodologies and outcomes, looking at both objective and subjective factors that shaped Muir’s writing on Muhammad such as worldview and bias.

2.1 Muhammad in the Qur’an52

The Qur'an assigns a unique status to the Prophet, whom it charges with a “heavy responsibility” (Qur’an 33:21), and whom it invariably represents as being extremely conscious of this responsibility (Qur’an 59:7; Q. 36). For believers, he was a source of emulation, a moral-legal authority and exemplary par excellence (Qur’an 33:22; Q. 73:15). In the behaviour of the Prophet, religious authority and social relations were blended with a finesse that eludes description. Muhammad created the conditions for a universal brotherhood/sisterhood on the basis of faith by incorporating the “principles of humanitarianism, egalitarianism, social justice, economic justice, righteousness and solidarity” (Rahman, 1979:25). Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988) notes that these universal ideas followed from the Qur’an and Muhammad’s teachings (ibid.). Thus, the Qur’an did and does engender awareness, an imperative to know the life of Muhammad, itself presenting Muhammad to the believers as a source of emulation.

2.2 The Problem of Sources

Insofar as the Qur’an is a source of Muhammad’s history as man, Fred Donner has however, pointed out that a

Detailed picture of Muhammad's career is drawn not from documents or even stories dating from Muhammad's time, but from literary sources that were compiled many years-sometimes centuries later […] Perhaps many-of the incidents related in these sources are not reliable accounts of things that actually happened but rather are legends created by later generations of Muslims to affirm Muhammad's status as prophet… (2010:50-51).

Nineteenth century Western scholars were initially overwhelmed by the wealth of the original Muslim sources about the origin of Islam and the life of the Prophet (Shoemaker, 2011:257). These scholars believed that it was possible to know the life of Muhammad and learn the fluctuations, his contradictions and his weakness by critically evaluating these sources (ibid.). It was “Goldziher, Lammens and Schacht” who pointed to these original Muslim sources as being “tendentious, artificial, and even contradictory nature” (Shoemaker, 2011:258). This methodological shift gave rise to a new sceptical approach in the study of Islam and its Prophet (ibid.). “The works of John Wansbrough, Patricia Crone, Michael Cook, Suliman Bashear, Larry Conrad and Gerald Hawting (among others) have built on the insights of

52 Chapters Three and Four will provide greater detail on the Qur’an as a primary Muslim source. 36

Goldziher, Lammens and Schacht, ultimately reaching the conclusion that not only are the earliest Islamic sources unreliable as witnesses to formative Islam, but that beginnings of Islam were in fact quite different” from the traditional Muslim views (ibid.).

However, not everyone accepted the radical critique by these modern Western scholars (Shoemaker, 2011:259). For instance, scholars such as Watt used the existing Muslim traditional sources and their framework in a way that allowed them to essentially reproduce the chronology of Muhammad’s life but failed to answer legitimate doubts that were raised regarding the reliability of the traditional material (Shoemaker, 2011:261). It was Rudi Paret who proposed a different way out – who, unlike Watt that had accepted the chronological view from the Muslim traditional scholars, was willing to accept the radical conclusions reached by Goldziher and Schacht and conceded that a great deal of the early Sīra literature cannot pass the reliable historical data about the life of Muhammad (ibid.). Nonetheless, he identified a chain of transmitters that began with `Urwah ibn al-Zubayr (d. 712 C.E.), which could be trusted as reliable, thus anchoring the traditional Muslim sources securely to the end of the first Islamic century (ibid.). Paret reached into the unclear history of Islamic origins “through `Urwah’s decent from one of Muhammad’s first followers, which afforded him at least indirect access to Muhammad’s life and times” (Shoemaker, 2011:262), thus breaking through the chronological barrier that was raised regarding the reliability of traditional Muslim sources as identified by Goldziher, Lammens and Schacht.

Furthermore, according to Donner, the traditional view of Muhammad’s life became familiar to modern Western scholars because of the exposure to the Islamic sources (1981:7). He opines that it is vexing as a historian to accept the basic outline of Muhammad’s life as portrayed in traditional accounts because of the many “stubborn questions the sources leave unaddressed” (2010:52). (For example, “Why were the pagans of Medina so readily won over to Muhammad’s message, while the Quraysh of Mecca resisted it so bitterly?” and “What was Muhammad’s original status in Medina?”.) These well-founded concerns about the sources’ limitations have caused some scholars to reject these accounts (ibid.). For him, this is too extreme an action, because modern Western scholars are just getting underway today (ibid.), and therefore should “accept the traditional picture of the Islamic origins presented by the Muslim sources” – if it can “withstand critical scrutiny” (Zeitland, 2007:3). For this reason, “the overwhelming majority of surveys of Islamic history have sketched the story of

Islamic origins along lines remarkably similar to those laid down in the traditional Islamic sources” (Donner, 1998:7).

Moreover, Donner does not discard the entire chronology and geography of early Islam as other revisionist scholars mentioned above do. For him, Muhammad’s message was “both apocalyptic and ecumenical, a movement of “believers” rather than “brand-name” Muslims”53 (Ali, 2014:11). He dovetails Islam in a monotheistic context spanning the Near East and eastern Mediterranean. “He argues that Muhammad’s community only later became a separate Arabo-centric religion – capital I Islam, rather than the islam, the ongoing human phenomenon of submission to God” (ibid., 11-12). Scholars such as Donner accept that the early Muslim sources have their own complex agendas, and deliberations about the origin of Islam rages on. However, the available Muslim sources can be used as an academic specialisation to discover a reliable account on Muhammad’s life and the viability of early Islamic history.

2.3 Hadith – The Beginning of Historical Writing

According to Schoeler, the systematic collection of reports began with the first generation of successors (tābi`ūn) in the city of Medina and these activities usually took place in the mosque (2011:20). Such an effort involved deliberately questioning various people such as the surviving companions of the Prophet (sahābah). Schoeler mentions that “the reports that they gathered from various informants and passed on to inquiring fellow believers were called hadith” (ibid.).

“It was under the general rubric of Hadith54 that the basic religious sciences of Islam, including historical writing, were to develop”55 (Khalidi, 2010:17). After the death of

53 Cf., Chapter Five discusses Donner’s biography of Muhammad, Muhammad and the Believers (2010). 54 A hadith is one of various “reports describing the words, actions, or habits of the Prophet Muhammad” (Brown, 2009:3). These reports were preserved by the generation of Muslims who lived with the Prophet (his companions) reported “through some means of writings and passing these recollections on to others” (Brown, 2009:6). As a corpus or genre, it is written with a capital letter, i.e., ‘Hadith’. 55 The Hadith collections began on a small scale during Muhammad’s life. It accelerated and “a substantial corpus of written Hadith existed by at least as early as the” first half of the seventh century C.E., “while the stage of classified works was in all likelihood reached by the first half of the” eight century C.E. (Khalidi, 1996:20). “During the ninth and tenth centuries”, the Sunni hadith movement was moving at full speed, with the compilation and publication of the various traditions (Brown, 2009:34). Hadith began to complement the Qur’an in all matters (secular and spiritual) as becoming a 38

Muhammad (632 C.E.), a group of scholars began to take interest in his utterances, commands, directives, messages, admonitions and advice as sources for guidance in life as well as legislation. It was only natural that Muslims would have studied their Prophet, events of his mission and his character, both in order to emulate him and preserve these records for posterity.

Thus, the interest in Hadith began and continues to develop56 (Ul-Hasan, 2005, 9). According to Khalidi, the Muslim community had an urge to systematically collect the reports of the Prophet and to “put a certain image into a certain kind or record”. Hence, Hadith was the earliest authority as a source of the Muslim community’s early religious and historical experiences. Khalidi further cites that when the evidence is carefully weighed, by the first half of the seventh century “under the impact of political events and conflicting expectations”, little doubts remains that a substantial corpus of written Hadith existed (2010:19/20).

2.3.1 The Emergence of Maghāzī and Sīra Genre

The early Muslims also took an interest in Muhammad’s wars and military/political activities (ghazawat) accounts, bringing us the numerous original literary sources in Arabic that purport, at least, to tell us much about the earliest phase of Islamic sacred history.

The new historical mood elaborated “a three-fold division of themes or historiographical shades” of interest, “namely, sacred history, tribal history and ‘world’ history”. “Each was to secondary source of Islamic law and jurisprudence. In modern times, the debates over hadith have “echoed or recast debates that occurred in the formative period of Islamic thought” (Brown, 2009:264), which was the criticism of the Hadith literature regarding its authenticity as well as theological/philosophical critiques. “The stage for modern Muslim thought was set by two main forces Western colonialism and indigenous Islamic movement of revival and reform” (Brown, 2009:240). Therefore “the hadith tradition in particular posed two questions, in light of [modern] European historical criticism on the one hand and a revived commitment to the Prophet’s authentic legacy on the other” (Brown, 2009:243). 56 The question of the value of “hadith literature as a legitimate source is a problematic one for orientalists not only for those working on hadith, but also in other areas including Islamic law, Islamic history and the Qur’an” (Kizil, 2013). In Europe, a scholar who was to have a major impact on the Orientalist perspective of the Hadith was Goldziher. His work Muhammedanische Studien (Muslim Studies) was published between 1889 and 1890. Prior to Goldziher, Weil argued in his work Geschichte der Chaliphen (History of the Caliphs) (1846-1851) that all ahādīth in Al-Bukhārī must be rejected (ibid.) Sprenger disagreed with this view and in his work Das Leben und die Lehre des Mohammad (The Life and Doctrine of Muhammad) published between 1861 and 1865, mentions that the hadith literature contains more authentic material than fabricated events (ibid.).It is not the scope of this paper to study the various aspects of Hadith, but it suffices to say that the interest and development of hadith continues to find a place in understanding Islam. 39 spawn its own sub-divisions: the Maghāzī and Sīra of sacred history, the Ayyām (battle-days) and Ansāb (genealogies) of tribal history and the Qisas al-Anbiya (tales of the prophets) of ‘world’ history” (Khalidi, 2010:29/30). Lammens has also claimed that hadith, tafsir (Qur’an exegesis) and Maghāzī/Sīra (biography of the Prophet) share the same source material (Schoeler, 2011:3). In other words, “the life of Muhammad was according to Lammens, made up of biographical reports which was nothing other than freely invented interpretative material inspired by qur’anic allusions” (ibid.).

This study, however, looks only at the Sīra/Maghāzī, the earliest salvation history57 of Islam.

2.3.2 Transition from Hadith to History: The Sīra and Maghāzī Literature

The biography of Muhammad is primarily discussed in what is the Arabic literary genre known as the Maghāzī and Sīra. In the first centuries of Islam, most collections of Sīra text were formulated with the term maghāzī (expeditions), although they also contained texts on non-military matters (Raven, 2006:30).

Maghāzī now refers to the wars and the expeditions in which the Prophet personally participated. Although the study of Maghāzī developed independently from Hadith (Ul- Hasan, 2005:10), yet the early writers of Maghāzī were also interested in Hadith and they applied the same methods in determining the authenticity of a Maghāzī tradition (ibid.).

According to Watt, there is a basic framework of the Sīra that he calls maghāzī material (Schoeler, 2011:6). Aban ibn Ùthman ibn Àffan (d. 723), a Hadith and jurisprudence scholar, was the first compiler of maghāzī accounts (Ul-Hasan, 2005:11). He transmitted his information about the military campaigns of the Prophet to Mughira ibn Àbd-al-Rahman (d. unknown) (ibid.).

Following Aban came `Urwah and his student, `Ubaydullah ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī (d. 741). According to Khalidi,

The formalization of sacred history, i.e. the Sīra and Maghazi of the Prophet, may be examined in the work of Urwa and his student al-Zuhri […]. They are both vivid personalities, single-minded in their pursuit of historical reports and vehement in expressing their opinions on points of juristic or historical dispute. Most important of all, they are authors who speak with the historian's voice, and not mere collectors or editors (1996: 30).

57 Cf., note 8. 40

Ùrwah was interested in maghāzī and the history of the four Caliphs58 (Ul-Hasan: 2005:13). According to Ul-Hassan, Ùrwah wrote the first book of Maghāzī, of which fragments are still extant, and are found in the works of Ibn Ishāq, Al-Tabarī, Ibn Kathīr and Ibn al-Athīr (Ul-Hasan, 2005:12). In addition to the military expeditions of Muhammad, Ùrwah recorded information pertaining to other aspects of his life. He is also reputed to have quoted verses of the Qur’an and inserted poetry into his account (Ul-Hasan, 2005:12). Ùrwah’s primary source was Muhammad’s wife `Ā’ishah bint Abū Bakr (d. 678), who was also his [Ùrwah’s] maternal aunt, and other family members such as Àbd Allah al-Zubayr, his elder brother (Ul- Hasan, 2005:12-13; Schoeler, 2011:38)).

Ùrwah’s student, Al-Zuhrī (d. 741), was a collector of hadith and was also specialised in law and history, specifically maghāzī. After Ùrwah’s pioneering efforts, Al-Zuhrī gave the Sīra a distinct form and character (ibid.). According to Khalidi, the scope and content of Al-Zuhrī’s work “reveals an authoritative voice of a historian, not merely transmitting but also judging his material” (1996:32). In addition, Al-Zuhrī was interested in Arab genealogy and the early caliphs (Raven, 2006: 32). The available material from the works of Al-Zuhrī suggests that he did not confine himself only to the Maghāzī, but he also studied the entire life of Muhammad (Ul-Hasan, 2005:14). He wrote a few accounts of the pre-Islamic period pertaining to Muhammad’s life, and also narrated important events of Muhammad’s life such as the Hijra, 59the conquest of Mecca and other accounts of the life of Muhammad (Ul-Hasan, 2005:13). Elements of Isrāʾīliyyāt 60 were also found in his accounts. The work of Ùrwah and Al-Zuhrī can be considered as the earliest studies in the field of Sīra and Maghāzī literature. With the death of Al-Zuhrī, a new generation of scholars emerged, in which Musa ibn Ùqba 61 (d. 758), Ma`mar ibn Rāshid (d. 770) and Ibn Ishāq (d. 768) are mentioned.

2.4 Sīra 2.4.1 Precursors

58 The first four caliphs in Sunni Islam are: Àbd Allah ibn Abi Quhafa (d. 634), popularly known as “Abū Bakr”, Ùmar ibn al-Khattab (d. 644), Ùthman ibn Àffan (d. 656) and Àli ibn Abū Tālib (d. 661). 59 Muhammad’s emigration to the city of Yathrib and later renamed Medina. 60 This is the body of narratives originating from Jewish and Christian traditions, rather than from other well-accepted sources that quote the Islamic prophet Muhammad (Vagda, 1973:211-212). 61 Josef Horovitz (d. 1931) mentions that Sprenger was assured in Damascus that a copy of Àqaba’s work existed (Ul-Hasan, 2005:15). Ul-Hasan also cites that Ibn Sa`d has utilised Àqaba’s work through his teacher, Al-Wāqidī (2005:15). Al-Ṭabarī has also derived information from the book of Àqaba (ibid., 16). 41

The earliest surviving pioneering Sīra works began to be compiled about one hundred and fifty years after Muhammad’s death.62 (Ul-Hasan, 2005:9). Ibn Ishāq, one of Al-Zuhrī’s students, is seminal in the evolution from Hadith to history to sacred history. Rudi Paret identified the line of Ibn Isḥāq - Al-Zuhrī - `Urwah as representative of genuine teacher- student relationships, from which information could reliably be passed (Hoyland, 2007:8). Khalidi states that Ibn Ishāq had received material directly from Al-Zuhrī and indirectly from `Urwah (1996:36). Moreover, Ibn Ishāq’s work is not only a transmission, but also his own reflection as a historian on the history of prophethood (Khalidi, 1996:36). About his work, Khalidi says,

The work of Urwa and Zuhri and of other less renowned contemporaries was consummated by Muhammad ibn Ishaq, a figure styled ‘Prince of muhaddiths’ or even ‘Commander of the Believers in Hadith’ by men of his own generation. He is of pivotal importance in the transition from Hadith to history and his life and achievements have been scrutinized for a millennium or more by Muslims and for about a century by western orientalists […] Ibn Ishāq's major work goes by many titles. It has been known as the Book of the Genesis of Creation (Bad' al-khalq; also al-Mubtada’) and of the Life of Muhammad (ī) and his Military Exploits (Maghazi) – It is often called simply the Maghazi or else the Sira (1996:34-35).

According to Ul-Hasan, the original title of Ibn Ishāq’s biography on Muhammad was Kitāb al-Maghāzī, and surpassed all the previous books on this subject (2005:17). He divided the book into three parts, Al-Mubtada', Al-Mabàth, and Al-Maghāzī (Raven, 2006:33). The first part dealt with the history of prophethood, the second part dealt with the youth of Muhammad and his mission in Mecca while the last part discussed the Medina period (Ul-Hassan, 2005:18). Ibn Ishāq relied on the Qur’an, and the hadith narrated by Wahb ibn Munabbih63 (d. between 725-737 C.E.) and Àbd Allah ibn Abbas (d. 687). He also relied on Medina teachers, among whom Al-Zuhrī, Àasim ibn Ùmar (d. 689) and Àbd Allah ibn Abū Bakr (d. 632) deserve special attention (Schoeler, 2011:26). His informants also included Ùrwah’s family (two sons, two nephews, one grandnephew) (ibid.). Josef Horovitz has noted that

62 According to Raif Georges Khoury, a Sīra work of Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. 725-737) was written before the work of Ibn Ishāq (Abbot, 1977:103). This work is extant but Khoury has reconstructed much of this lost text from an early eleventh-century manuscript copy of a closely related work of Abū Rifā`ah al-Fārisī (d. 902). The text consists of two sections, the first of which relates to biblical stories. The second section relates to the Sīra and covers Muhammad’s early meetings with some of the people of Medina at Aqaba, and his subsequent flight from Mecca, the hijra, with Abū Bakr to Medina (ibid.). Wahb was considered an authority and quoted extensively by Sīra authors like Ibn Ishāq, Ibn Hishām and Al-Tabarī (Raven, 2006:31). Raven notes that some of Wahb’s work has been preserved in a ninth century papyrus that verifies the work of Khoury above. (2001:31). 63 Cf., note 61. 42

statements of Jewish and Christian scholars and traditions from Biblical text were also included (1925:176).

Schoeler writes that Ibn Ishāq’s original book has not survived but is preserved by Ibn Hishām in his work Ibn Hishām.64 Schoeler points out that the important line of transmitters was now extended from Ibn Ishāq, to Ziyād al-Bakkā`ī (d. 799), to Ibn Hishām (2011:34). According to Schoeler, Ibn Hishām’s version was first transmitted through the lecture system of the transmitters. It was from this system that he “produced a ‘fixed’ text that did not undergo any substantial modification” (Schoeler, 2011:33). However, according to Raven, Ibn Hishām to a great extent deleted the first section of the book, but a major portion was preserved in the work of Al-Tabarī (Ul-Hassan, 2005: 18), while Arabist Johan Wilhelm Fück (d. 1974) holds that fifteen students of Ibn Ishāq transmitted his book (ibid.).

Other early biographical works such as Abū Mashar al-Sindi’s (d. 776) Kitāb al-Maghāzī have been preserved in fragments by Al-Wāqidī and Ibn Sa`d (Ul-Hasan, 2005:20). Al-Sindi was from Mansura. He lived in Medina and later settled in Baghdad where he died. Musa ibn `Ukba al-Asadī (d. 758)65 was also an author of a biography that is not extant, but is referred to in Al-Tabarī’s (d. 923) Ta’rīkh al-Rusūl wa al-Mulūk or Taʾrīkh al-Tabarī66 (Annals of the Apostles and Kings) (1879-1901)67 (1923:lxxvi).

Following Ibn Ishāq is the Kitāb al-Maghāzī by Abū `Abd Allah Muhammad ibn `Umar al- Wāqidī (d. 822), who was arguably equal to the former in stature and reception. His work maintains the broad narrative outline provided by Ibn Ishāq (Faizer, 2011:xii). The first part of the text was ‘discovered’ by Alfred Kremer in Damascus and was published in Calcutta, India in 1855. Two manuscripts of the work, one complete and the other incomplete are

64 Ibn Isḥāq wrote several works. His major work is Sīrat Ibn Isḥāq: Al-Mubtada' wa-al-Mab`ath wa- al-Maghāzī. Kitāb al-Ma`bath survives in part, particularly Al-Mab`ath, in Ibn Hishām and al- Mubtada', and otherwise in substantial fragments scattered in the works of Al-Tabarī (Raven, 2006:33). 65 Al-Asadi was a student of Al-Zuhrī who wrote Kitāb al-Maghāzī, which is not known to be extant. Some of his traditions have been preserved, although their attribution to him is disputed (Raven, 2006:29-49). 66 Al-Tabarī’s work is an historical and religious chronicle concerning Muslim history of the Middle East until the year 915 C. E. It forms one of Islam's major sources and contains the biography of Muhammad from the works of Ibn Ishāq and other the early scholars. 67 An edition published under the editorship of M. J. de Goeje (d. 1909) in three series, comprising thirteen volumes, with two extra volumes containing indices, an introduction and a glossary (Leiden, 1879-1901). 43

preserved in the British Museum (Ul-Hassan, 2005:22). Al-Waqīdī collected the material from his Medina teachers. His source materials were documents, records of the edicts, treaties, poetry and commandments issued by Muhammad (Ul-Hassan, 2005:22; Schoeler, 2011:18). He was meticulous with furnishing his sources, and investigated dates of the events. He referred to qur’anic verses as a source in connection to events (Ul-Hasan, 2005:22). However, according to “Landau-Tasseron (1986) and Lecker68 (1995) and others have established that the historical material as arranged by Al-Wāqidī underwent considerable changes as a result of questionable forgeries but also through the mere process of redaction” (Schoeler, 2011:145). Nonetheless, according to Julius Wellhausen (d. 1918), “the accounts of Ibn Ishāq and Al- Wāqidī, who typified the approach of the approach of the Medina school, were relatively sober in tone, chronologically plausible, and less tainted by tribal or partisan biases, and hence were more reliable for use by modern historians” (Donner, 1981:215).

With Al-Wāqidī, Muhammad ibn Sa`d (d. 844) can or must be linked. The latter was the scribe of Al-Wāqidī who copied the accounts from his book (Khalidi, 1994:44). Al-Wāqidī and Ibn Sa`d were a pair, like `Urwah and Al-Zuhrī, but they were distinctly more like historians in this sense, and “the historical record is now to be set straight” (ibid.). Abū al- Faraj Muhammad ibn Ishāq al-Nadīm (d. 995 or 998), a scholar and bibliographer, mentions that Ibn Sa`d wrote a book titled Kitāb Akhbār al-Nabī (Ul-Hassan, 2005:23).

Khalidi mentions that

With Waqidi in particular, one now meets a historian whose personality and method are for the first time fully apparent. He is an historian who regards himself as a member of a community of scholars engaged in a common pursuit. That scholarly community is then detailed in the biographical ‘generations’ of Ibn Sa’d, among the earliest in what was to become a long and distinguished genre of Islamic historiography (1996:44).

Lut ibn Yahya ibn Sa`id ibn Mikhnaf Al-Kufi (Abū Mikhnaf), (d. 774), another scholar and historian interested in Sīra and Maghāzī, focussed on genealogy (ansāb). Chase F. Robinson

68 These studies can be examined in the work of E. Landau-Tasseron M. Lekker. Landau-Tasserson’s work entitled “Process of Redaction: The Case of the Tamīmite Delegation to the Prophet Muḥammad” appeared in a journal Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1986. Lekker’s work “Wāqidī’s Account on the Status of the Jews of Medina: A Study of the Combined Report” was published in the Journal of Near Eastern Studies in 1995. 44

has put Abū Mikhnaf in the same class as Ibn Ishāq and among the first Muslim historians who contributed about forty titles in historical tradition of which no fewer than thirteen titles were monographic maqtal69 works (2014: 28). His works are not extant but are referenced by Al-Tabarī and `Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā al-Balādhurī (d. 892).

Al-Balādhurī’s Kitāb Futūh al-Buldān 70 (Book of the Conquests of the Lands), and Ansāb al- Ashrāf (Lineage of the Nobles) (1936) have survived. Kitāb Futūh al-Buldān deals with the conquests of lands from West Arabia to Egypt, North Africa, Iraq, Iran, Sind and Spain. The Ansāb al-Ashrāf is a biographical work devoted to the genealogies of Arab aristocracy, from Muhammad’s time to the Umayyad and Abbāsid Caliphates. The author critically examined his material before he recorded it (Ul-Hasan, 2005:30), and depended on Al-Zuhrī, Al- Wāqidī, and the writings of other historians such as Hishām ibn Al-Kalbi (d. 819) and Abū Mikhnaf (d. 774) (Ul-Hassan, 2005:30).

The historian and exegete Al-Tabarī’s (d. 923) work Ta’rikh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk (History of the Prophets and Kings) is a voluminous work that brought the author fame in his lifetime (Khalidi, 1994:73). It is a chronicle that provides a historical account that begins with creation (in line with the qur’anic narrative) and ends with the events of 915 C.E. For Donner, it is a convenient place to identify major themes of interest to the early Islamic tradition and the issues that generate them (Donner, 1981:127). For our purposes, it is sufficient to note that the work includes the life of Muhammad and his Maghāzī. According to Khalidi, it is possible to find echoes of the works of Ibn Ishāq, Al-Wāqidī, Al-Balādhurī and Abu al-Qāsim Àbd al-Raḥman ibn Àbdullah ibn Àbd al-Hakam71 (d. 871) in this chronicle (1994:73). The work is referenced with qur’anic verses and traditions attributed to the Prophet (Khalidi, 1994:79). Al-Ṭabarī is eager to show Muhammad to Muslims as the prophetic heir of Biblical tradition and the temporal heir of Persian dominion (Khalidi, 1994:79). According to Khalidi, the biography of Muhammad began to be recorded from the earliest days of Islam. However, the Sīra of Muhammad was basically fixed in the pioneering and

69 Maqtal al-Husayn is the title of various books written by different authors throughout the centuries that narrate the story of the battle of Karbala and the death of Hussain ibn `Ali. 70 Book of the Conquests of Lands, translated by Phillip Hitti (1916) and Francis Clark Murgotten’s The Origins of the Islamic (1924). 71 Al-Hakam was an Egyptian Muslim historian who wrote a work generally known as The Conquest of Egypt and North Africa and Spain. 45

surviving works by Muhammad ibn Ishāq (d. 767), Abū Muhammad Àbd al-Malik ibn Hishām (d. 833), Abū Àbd Allah Muhammad ibn Ùmar al-Wāqidī al-Aslami (d. 822), Muhammad ibn Sa`d ibn Manī' al-Baghdadi (d. 845), Àhmad ibn Yahyā al-Balādhurī (d. 892) and Abū Ja`far Muhammad ibn Jarīr al-Tabarī (d. 923) (Khalidi, 2009:58).

Khalidi then gives an account of later works on the life and character of Muhammad, including Abū `Īsá Muḥammad ibn `Īsá as-Sulamī aḍ-Ḍarīr al-Būghī al-Tirmidhī’s (d. 892), Shamaìl Muhammadiyah (popularly known as Shamaìl al-Tirmidhi), a compilation of hadiths; Ismail ibn Kathīr’s (d. 1373) Al-Sīra al-Nabawīyyah (2004); Qadi Ìyad ibn Musa al-Yahsubi’s (d. 1149) Ash-Shifa - Muhammad Messenger of Allah (1991), which is much on qur’anic text; and Abū Muḥammad Àlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Sa`īd ibn Ḥazm’s (d. 1064) work Jawami' al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya (Epitomes of Prophetic Sīra) a short treatise72 that reconstructed Muhammad’s life using Hadith and Maghāzī literature. It is not simply an accurate history but a quest for a more reliable Sunnah73 in order to discover the Prophet’s Sunnah (precedent) (Khalidi, 2009:215).

The work of historian Abū al-Fidāˋ,74 Tā’rīkh Abi al-Fida’ (History of Abū al-Fidāˋ), dealt with pre-Islamic and Islamic history until 1329 C.E. According to Bennett, Al-Fida offers a highly stylised portrait of Muhammad and depicted him as the “last and greatest of the Prophets”. It describes the Sīra of Muhammad, his mission, his early preaching and the Hijra (1998:93). Àbd Allah al-Suhayli’s (d. 1185) work Al-Rawd al Unuf fi Tafsir al-Sīra al Nabawiyya li Ibn Hishām (Virgin Pasture: An Exegesis of the Prophetic Sīra of Ibn Hishām) is a commentary on the principle founders of the Sīra, Ibn Ishāq and Ibn Hishām. He subjects the Sīra to the kind of exegetical examination normally found in the Qur’an (Khalidi, 2009:216). Àli Ìzz al-Din Ibn al-Athīr’s (d. 1232/1233) work Al-Kamil Fi’l Tā’rīkh (The Complete History) (1231) is a history work that contains a section on the Sīra of Muhammad

72 This work exerted considerable influence on later biographies (Khalidi, 2009: 214). 73 Sunnah denotes the practices of Muhammad that he taught and practically instituted as a teacher. According to Fazlur Rahman, “Sunnah is a behavioural concept” – “whether applied to physical or mental acts” (2005:95). In other words, “Sunnah is not just a law of behaviour but a normative moral law” (ibid.). In this sense, the Sunnah of Muhammad was his actual practice during his life time and established over successive generations, thus gaining the “status of normativeness” and becoming Sunnah (2005:96). Rahman was stating that the Sunnah of Muhammad was an ideal that the early Muslims generation of Muslims sought to emulate by interpreting his example in terms of new needs and this continuous progressive reasoning was also called Sunnah (2005:112). 74 His work was translated by John Gagnier in 1723 and added considerably to what Europeans knew about Muhammad. The translation of his work began a new genre of European literature that began to make exclusive use of Muslim sources (Bennett, 1998:93). 46 that is a realpolitik analysis of major episodes of his life. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s (d. 1350) major study of the Sīra, titled Zad al-Ma`ad fi Hadiy Khayr al-`Ibad (1973) is probably the most ambitious attempt by an author to reformulate the Sīra in legal and ethical terms (Khalidi, 2009:231). Another pre-modern work, Al-Sīra al-Halabiyya (The Aleppine Sīra) by Abū al-Faraj Nur al-Din al-Halabi’s (d. 1631), delves into the minutiae of Muhammad’s life and engagements as a Prophet (Khalidi, 2009:240). This work is an impressive command of theology, hadith, history, natural science, philosophy and biblical literature and Sufism. The last pre-modern work, according to Khalidi, belong to Muhammad Baqir al-Majlisi (d. 1698), whose Bihār al-Anwār (Oceans of Light)75 (2000) is the largest single authored book in Arabic literature (2009:241). Four volumes of this work are devoted to the Sīra of Muhammad that rest on a tripod of Tafsir exegesis, Hadith and Akhbār (historical reports).

These works added “many important details and adopted very different perspectives […]” and “did not alter the basic structure first put in place by the founding fathers” (Khalidi, 2009: 58). Moreover, the actual transmissions received from various transmitters from the first generation such as `Urwah and others and from this system produced the fixed works of Ibn Isḥāq, Ibn Hishām, Al-Wāqidī, Al-Balādhurī, and Al-Tabarī (Schoeler, 2011:116). There were variants,76 but for the “most part were little different from what we would expect in normal transmission” (Schoeler, 2011:43-44). These later works began to regurgitate their antecedents and lay the groundwork for Sīra that was to last to the present day. In the process, this new recapitulation of Sīra went behind the pioneering biographers to organise the vast material accumulated to construct other biographies of Muhammad.

We now consider the Western biographies of Muhammad written just before William Muir’s work. These Western biographies include the works of Weil (d. 1889), Sprenger (d. 1893), and others within the development of the Sīra literature genre.

2.5 The Earliest Modern Western Biographies of Muhammad Using Primary Muslim Sources

75 This work of 110 volumes was completed between 1694 and 1698 C.E. 76 A study of variants in the early Sīra transmissions and their arrangements and the respective versions that differentiate them can be examined in the work of Schoeler, Gregor. 2011. The Biography of Muhammad. New York and London: Routledge. 47

The nineteenth century saw Western scholars embark on all-out endeavour to learn about the life of Muhammad through using the original and primary Muslim sources. They increasingly studied Muhammad as a historical figure and not as a diabolical deceiver driven by lust and ambition for power.

The earliest Western biography of Muhammad of the nineteenth century was arguably Gustav Weil’s, Muhammad der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre (Muhammad the Prophet, his Life and his Teachings) published in 1843 (Jeffrey, 1926:333). According to Jeffrey, Weil may have been the first person who began utilising the earliest Muslim sources. Jeffrey ascribes this scholarly approach to the study of Muhammad’s life using primary Muslim sources to an awakening interest in Oriental studies (ibid.). However, on his first attempt Weil was constrained in what he was able to do because the availability of primary Muslim resources was still limited (ibid.). He advanced his work when he translated Ibn Hishām’s recension of Ibn Ishāq’s biographical work into German, titled Leben Mohammed’s nach Muhammed ibn Isḥaḳ, Bearbeitet von Abd el-Malik ibn Hischâm (Muhammad’s Life by Muhammad ibn Ishāq, Edited by Abd al-Malik ibn Hishām), published in two volumes in 1864 (ibid.).

Weil also wrote three essays on particular aspects of Muhammad’s life with a particular Orientalist slant. The first was on Mohammed’s epilepsy, which appeared in the Journal Asiatique of July, 1842. The second was an investigation of a Supposed Lie of Mohammed, which appeared in the same journal in May, 1849, and the third addressed the question whether Muhammad could read and write. To these must be added Weil’s Historisch- Kritische Einleitung in den Koran (Historical-Critical Introduction to the Qur'an), published in 1844 with the aim of facilitating the use of the Qur’an as a basis for reconstructing history. In 1845 he published Biblische Legenden der Muselmanner (Biblical Legends of the Muslims), wherein he argues for the influence of the rabbinic legends on Islam. In 1866 he published Geschichte der Islamischen Völker von Mohammed bis zur Zeit des Sultans Selim (History of the Islamic peoples of Mohammed until the time of Sultan Selim).

Five years after Weil’s Muhammad der Prophet, sein Leben und seine Lehre, Caussin de Perceval (d. 1871) published his Essai Sur l’Histoire des Arabes (Essay on the History of Arabic) in three volumes. This work contains an account of the life and work of Muhammad based on material from Arabic sources (1926:333). Ferdinand Wüstenfeld (d. 1899) then 48

published Das Leben Muhammed's nach Muhammed Ibn Ishâk (Muhammad’s Life after Muhammad ibn Ishāq) (1857-1860) in three volumes, Genealogische Tabellen der Arabischen Stämme und Familien (Genealogical Tables of Arab Tribes and Families) (1852- l853), Geschichte der Stadt Medina (Stories of the City of Medina) (1860), Chroniken der Stadt Mekka (Chronical of the City of Mecca) in four volumes (1857-61), and Die Geschichtsschreiber der Araber und Ihre Werke (The Historians of the Arabs and Their Works) (1882), which focuses on the early history of Islam and the life of Muhammad (Jeffrey, 1926:333).

It was however, Sprenger’s biography of the Prophet, The Life of Mohammad – From Original Sources,77 published in 1851 that was the next major work after Weil’s (Jeffrey, 1926:335). In 1864 Sprenger published in German Die Leben und die Lehre des Mohammed: Nach Bisher Grösstentheils Unbenutzten Quellen Bearbeitet (The life and Doctrine of Muhammad: Worked According to Mostly Unused Sources), a detailed study of Muhammad’s life. He like Wüstenfeld, made important contributions to the study of the background of Muhammad’s life in two works Die Post und Reiserouten des Orients (The Post and Travel Route of the Orient) (1864), and Die Alte Geographic Arabiens (The Old Geographic of Arabia) (1875) (Jeffrey, 1926:333).

As more Muslim primary sources on the life of the Prophet became available to modern Western scholarship, these scholars employed them. In 1856, Alfred von Kremer edited Al- Wāqidī’s Kitāb al-Maghāzī, which was printed in Calcutta. Wellhausen published an abridged German translation of this Arabic work under the title Muhammed in Medina: Das ist Vakidi’s Kitāb al-Maghāzī in Verkürzter Deutscher Wiedergabe Herausgegeben Wiedergabe (Mohammed in Medina: Al-Wāqidī’s Kitāb al-Maghāzī), published in condensed German) in 1882. Michael Jan de Goeje (d. 1909), who was proficient in the Arabic language acted as editor for the Annals of Tabari (1879-1901), i.e., Al-Tabarī’s famous work Tā’rīkh al-Rusul wa al-Muluk, popularly known Tā’rīkh al-Tabarī or, in English, Annals of the Prophets and Kings.78

77 Sprenger before Muir categorized the material from the pioneering Muslim biographies to construct his biography of Muhammad (Qasmi, 2012:65). However, he categorised them differently from Muir (See Chapter Three for more detail). 78 This work comprises thirteen volumes, with two extra volumes containing indices, an introduction and glossary (Leiden, 1879–1901). 49

Theodore Nöldeke’s (d. 1930) Geschichte des Qorans (Story of the Qur’an) (1860) was the first critical attempt to evaluate the Qur’an as the most important Islamic source to reconstruct the life of Muhammad79 (Jeffrey, 333-334:1926). Nöldeke is thought to have built upon the work of Abraham Geiger80 (d. 1874) in Oriental studies on the Qur’an and Muhammad. Nöldeke applied his study of Biblical texts to his study of the Qur’an (Wokoeck, 2009:179). While Nöldeke and others of his era accepted the Qur’an as the foundation of Islam, they regarded it as the work and words of Muhammad (Nöldeke, 1998:36). Nöldeke is known to have encouraged contemporary Western scholars to corroborate in their study of Islam and its Prophet. It is likely that this call resulted in the works of Sprenger and Muir, which included knowledge of the Qur’an and other Muslim sources (Nöldeke, 1998:63). Nöldeke also published Das Leben Mohammeds (The Life of Muhammad) (1863), which is regarded as a careful historical judgement of Muhammad’s life. However, this work has almost become forgotten.

A number of smaller, popular works, mostly written in French and German are largely based on the work of this period, using the primary Muslim sources. The best known among such are P. De Lacy Johnstone’s Muhammad and His Power (1901); Edward Sell’s, Life of Muhammad (1913); Arthur N. Wollaston’s, Mohammed, His Life and Doctrines (1904); Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire’s Mohamet et le Coran (Muhammad and the Quran) (1865); Jules- Charles Scholl’s L'Islam et son Fondateur: Étude Morale (Islam and its Founder: Moral Study) (1874); P.-Henry Delaporte’s. Vie de Mahomet (Life of Muhammad) (1874); Albert Fua’s La Vie et la Morale de Mahomet (Life and Moral of Muhammad) (1912); Julius Reiner’s, Muhammad und der Islam (Muhammad and Islam) (1905); Hermann Reckendorf’s

79 It was also during the nineteenth century that Orientalist scholars were rearranging the text of the Qur’an “in chronological order” in order to trace what they assumed to be the gradual development of Muhammad’s ideas. They also weaved the sequence of the Qur’an to historical events to learn about the history of the era and the type of knowledge that was available. J. M. Rodwell (d. 1900) carried out this effort in his translation of The Koran (1876) to restore the traditional order of the sūrahs of the Qur’an. This line of thinking was first indicated by Nöldeke and others like Weil and Muir also took up this theme almost simultaneously (Ali, 1997:21). Rodwell’s work later influenced Richard Bell (d. 1952) to publish a translation of the Qur’an The Qur'an - Translated, with a Critical Re- arrangement of the sūrahs in two volumes between 1937 and 1939. 80Abraham Geiger’s (d. 1874) work Was Hat Mohammed aus dem Judentume Aufgenommen? (What has Muhammad taken from Judaism?), classified and discussed Jewish elements in the Qur’an. F. M. Young translated it into English in his work Judaism and Islam: A Prize Essay in 1898. Other scholars’ work on the Qur’an such as E. W. Lane’s (d. 1876) monumental Arabic-English Lexicon and his Selection from the Kur’an appeared in from 1863-1876 (vols. 1-5) and 1843 respectively. Later volumes (6-8) of the Lexicon were posthumously completed his work from notes by his great- nephew Stanley Lane-Poole (d. 1931). 50

Mohammed und die Seinen (Muhammad and his Family) (1907); and Ludolf Krehl’s Das Leben des Muhammad (The Life of Muhammad) (1884) (1926:334-335).

2.6 Conclusion

The formalisation of the Sīra literature on Muhammad, including historical writing developed from the general rubric of Hadith. Early scholars such as `Urwah and his student Al-Zuhrī were among the first and foremost to compose a historical narrative on the life of Muhammad. Their works, though now extant (except for a few fragments) are known from the biographies of Ibn Ishāq and Al-Wāqidī. The latter themselves depended on the Qur’an, Hadith and other sources to write their biographies of Muhammad. They were ultimately able to integrate Muhammad’s life into the history and hagiography of Near Eastern prophecy supported by various source materials. Al-Wāqidī and his scribe, Ibn Sa`d were historians who meticulously referenced their sources on the events in the life of Muhammad. They called on the tool of consensus (ijma) to verify the events, dating and chronology of events. Theirs was an attempt to make their historiography more systematic and accessible to official and scholarly use.

Secondary Muslim works of Abū al-Fidāˋ, Al-Athīr and others first became available in European languages during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This development enabled modern Western scholars to challenge the hitherto hostile dominant Western Christian view of Muhammad. Yet although these secondary Islamic sources offered a biography of the Prophet, it became clear to modern Western scholars that a comprehensive picture of Muhammad could only be acquired through the earliest and primary Muslim sources.

The availability of and access to the earliest primary Muslim sources occurred largely in the in the nineteenth century. Depending on the earliest primary Muslim sources, Weil, Kremer, Wellhausen, Goeje, Sprenger and Muir (the focus of this dissertation) wrote their biographies of Muhammad.

William Muir’s The Life of Mohammad: From Original Sources appeared in four volumes, between the years 1858-1861 C.E. It was the premier work on the life of Muhammad of this period. By the time that Muir began to write his biography on Muhammad the primary 51

Muslim works of Ibn Ishāq, Al-Wāqidī and Al-Tabarī were translated into European languages and were now accessible. The Qur’an was earlier translated into English and the Sunni Canons of Hadith literatures were now available. Muir, along with Sprenger, were the first modern Western scholars to categorise the material sources found in the traditional biographical works, and applied Western critical methodology and reconstruct a historically accurate life of Muhammad.

The next two chapters of this study focus entirely on Muir and his biography of Muhammad.

In Chapter Three, the dissertation will specifically look at Muir’s life and the factors that impacted on why and how he wrote about Islam and Muhammad. It will also look at his scholarly achievement and methodology, approach and dependence on primary Muslim sources to write his biography of Muhammad.

In Chapter Four, the main chapter of this study, the dissertation will evaluate Muir’s approach, dependence and utilisation of qur’anic verses as the main material source to write his biography of Muhammad.

Chapter Three

WILLIAM MUIR’S WORLDVIEW, SCHOLARLY ACHIEVEMENTS AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH FOR HIS BIOGRAPHY OF MUHAMMAD

3.0 Introduction

Chapter Two dealt with the biographical works of the Prophet Muhammad, both pre-modern Muslim biographies and modern-era Western biographies. We looked at the non-extant writings of `Urwah and his student Al-Zuhrī, the surviving pioneering works of Ibn Ishāq, Al- Wāqidī and Ibn Hishām, and later pre-modern Muslim sources. We also looked at the Western biographies of Muhammad written before William Muir published his biography of Muhammad in 1858 C.E., and focused on the methodologies and approaches of some major Western biographers of the Prophet.

This chapter seeks to locate Muir’s biography within this tradition/legacy of biographies of Muhammad in terms of methodology, approach and aims. We shall deal with his early life, i.e., family, education, social class, religion and career as a high ranking official of the British colonial administration in India. This account of Muir’s life sheds light on how he viewed and wrote about Islam and its founder, Muhammad.

3.1 Muir’s Early Life

Muir was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1815. He was educated at Kilmarnock Academy at Glasgow, Edinburgh University and at Haileybury College.81 His grandfather John William Muir senior, was a respected and an influential figure in the Kilmarnock community where he served as a local councillor from 1786 until 1806, and John Muir Senior’s (Muir’s father) second marriage to Jean Fairlie in 1780 C.E. created an immediate economic advantage for the Muirs. Jean Fairlie’s brothers, James, Mungo and William were all engaged in private trading ventures in the Caribbean and North America as well as in Bengal, India, which was

81 According to Avril A. Powell, Muir was likely to have had an education in post-Enlightenment academia. He further mentions that classical languages formed the base of the Scottish university curriculum and Muir won prizes in Latin and Greek (2010:39). Powell also mentions that Muir was engaged in the religious history of India and studied the Arabic language (2010:1). 53

under the control of the East India Company (Powell, 2010:23). The senior Muir’s relationship with the Fairlies facilitated his career in India. It was also an entry point for William and his brother, John, to the East India Company.

William Muir Sr. was the first in his family to engage with religious questions very actively and publicly. This was a consequence of the growing impact of evangelicalism in Lowland Scotland (Powell, 2010:29). According to Powell, William Senior “was in sympathy with a growing inter-denominational Protestant revival movement devoted to instilling evangelical imperatives concerning godly living” (2010:33). Muir Sr.’s commitment to evangelism influenced his family; William Jr. and his brother were drawn first “into the ‘home’” evangelical orbit, and subsequently into the ‘overseas mission’ sphere of India”. This mission was coupled with career opportunities in the administrative services of the East India Company82 in India (Powell, 2010:2, 30).

3.1.1 Education

William Muir began his education at the Kilmarnock Academy and completed secondary school at Edinburgh University in 1932 (Powell, 2010:34). From there he was sent to Haileybury College, which was acclaimed as superior to Oxford “on the grounds of its wide range of compulsory branches of knowledge, both European and Oriental” (Powell, 2010:44).

According to Clinton Bennett, it was Charles Grant (d. 1823) who founded Haileybury College. He designed it’s curriculum to produce men such as Muir who would serve the East India Company not only as civil servants but also bearers of a moral Christian religious tradition that was perceived superior to the inferior society of India they were to govern (Bennett, 1992:112). Thus, the education at Haileybury aimed at producing candidates such as Muir that were to be employed as officials of the East India Company to improve its administrative efficiency in India (Powell, 2010:58, 70). The education at Haileybury, aside from giving Muir a solid foundation for a career as an official of the East India Company, also trained him as a scholar. “Although [this] scholarship did not for most part of his life

82 The East India Company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its own private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions. The Company rule in India effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey and lasted until 1858 when, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Government of India Act 1858 led to the British Crown to assume direct control of India in the new British Raj (Carson, 2012:19; Wolpert, 1989:239-40). 54

provide him with his living, it did attract academic attraction” (1992:103). Muir was not taught Oriental Studies, though he excelled in Eastern languages such as Sanskrit, Arabic and Persian (1992:103).

3.1.2 India

Muir’s career in India was a long one, during which he encountered many new influences, including political and cultural realities that had an impact upon him and/or spurred him on in his evangelical mission. His interaction and experiences in India thus had a profound impact in shaping him.

Muir arrived in India and entered the Bengal Civil Service as an employee of the East India Company in 1837 (Powell, 2010:xvi), became part of a small but influential network of British administrators based in the North-Western Provinces of India (Powell, 2010:2). In 1840, aged twenty, he married Elizabeth Huntley Wemyss after less than three years of service at the East India Company (Powell, 2010:80). The Wemyss were a Scottish family already well-established at Kanpur in north India. The old Mughal city of Agra was Muir’s home for much of the first half of his stay in India, from 1847 to 1858 (2010:77). The decision of the British to make Agra its own provincial capital in the North-West in 1830 was to trigger an influx of British officials and Indian judicial and revenue assistants, both Hindu and Muslim. The development that followed then created a growing demand for goods and services of all kind (Powell, 2010:77).

3.1.3 Muir’s Apprenticeship as Civil Servant

From 1850 to 1853, Muir was posted to Fatehpur, described in British records as the “backwaters” of India. It was from here that Muir pursued his career as would be scholar- administrator, later rising in the ranks of the Company as he was promoted. At this stage, Muir was under the mentorship of Lieutenant-Governor James Thomason (d. 1853), a British colonial administrator and an Evangelist (Guenther, 1997:7). Thomason was the single greatest influence on Muir’s own ideas about India (Powell, 2010:79). From Thomason, Muir learnt about revenue rights, public works and the manner in which to encourage basic vernacular education. At the same time, he pursued his evangelical ambitions (Powell, 2010:79). After some years of this apprenticeship, Muir established a comfortable home in the Agra civil lines from 1847 to 1858 (Powell, 2010:77), surrounded by his family, which

increased in number. In Agra, he also had access to libraries and the works on Muslim scholars. He served the governor of the North-West Provinces and rose in the ranks to become scribe of the provincial government by 185283 (Powell, 2010:2).

3.1.4 Muir’s Educational Activities

Aside from Muir’s employment as a civil servant of the East India Company he was deeply involved in educational activities throughout his career in India (Powell, 2010:100). “Muir, working in various capacities for the Bengal Civil Service could not help but be influenced in his thoughts and writings by the position he held in the colonial government” (Guenther, 1997:45). His various roles in the service of the Empire facilitated this interest; he became involved in “educational projects and engaged in higher education as the Scribe of Government in the capital of Agra in the 1840s to 1850s particularly in examining the students of its Oriental department in Arabic” (Powell, 2010:114).

From the 1840s to the early 1850s, he was involved in the research of languages and religion. The education system that civil servants such as Muir were involved in became the most feasible means to assimilate the Indian population and retain the status quo (Sandhu, 2014:9- 10). Thus, the curriculum at the various educational institutions was essentially designed to indoctrinate the younger generations and to revere Western culture (Sandhu, 2014:9).

It was at this time that Muir began applying himself to the study of Islamic civilisation, which would result in his writings on Islam and its Prophet (Powell 2010:99). This scholarly activity would culminate in the publishing of his works on Islam from the late 1850s.

Muir’s scholarly interests must be understood within the context of economic changes and contribution of knowledge of Scottish scholars in the British colonial project. Indeed, Scottish scholars such Muir, especially historians, contributed to the expansion and character of British imperial activities during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Powell, 2010:6).

4.1.5 The Sepoy Mutiny

83 Marriage into the Wemyss family proved significant for Muir. “His mother-in-law’s English and Anglican connections seemed to secure his final weaning from his Presbyterian roots to the Anglicanism he had first experienced at Haileybury” and his wife was already evangelically inclined (Powell, 2010:81). According to Powell, Muir’s “direct assistance to missionary projects was soon very well-known during the nearly ten years spent prior to 1857 in the former Mughal capital of Agra (2010:92). 56

In 1857, the famous Sepoy Mutiny transpired. At the time, Muir was a member of the Agra revenue board of the East Indian Company, in charge of the intelligence department84 (Spear, 1990:147-148). The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny of sepoys (Indian soldiers) of the East India Company’s army in the cantonment of the town of Meerut, India. It soon spread to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, northern Madhya Pradesh and the Delhi region. During the Revolt, Muir “played an active role as an administrator” during an event “that was to have a significant impact not only on the British government in India, but also on the Muslim85 and missionary communities as well” (Guenther, 1997:7).

84 Muir was a significant observer and recorder of events during the 1857 uprising, (Powell, 2010:2), “an event that was to have a significant impact on not only the British government in India but also on the Muslim and missionary communities as well” (Guenther, 1997:7). In the following paragraph’s his personal views of this incident will be briefly considered. It was during this time that he wrote his biography on the life of Muhammad (ibid.). 85 Indian Muslim scholars such as Syed Ahmad Khan rose to prominence during the Sepoy uprising. He led those that sought accommodation with the rulers while at the same time defending the interest of the Muslim community towards its revitalisation (Guenther, 1997:8). It was the Revolt that began a new era of “increasing political confidence and growing ‘nationalist’ consciousness was heralded by the formation of the Indian Congress in 1885” (ibid.). Khan rejected this forum in favour of the Mohammedan Educational Trust Congress formed in 1886, and he also organised the United Indian Patriotic Association in 1888 to oppose the Congress (ibid.). “He was also knighted with the KCSI (Knight Commander of the Star of India) in 1888, in recognition of his service to the government” (ibid., 10). During these decades, other Muslim scholars such as Syed Ameer Ali (d. 1928) and Cherágh Ali (d. 1895) also began to write and contribute to the modernisation of Islam in India. This emerging scholarship and response to Evangelical Christian writings about Islam was also part of this study. Both, these Muslims scholars, criticised Muir for his handling of Muslim source material, especially Hadith, and attributed his negative conclusions to his incorrect assessment of the veracity of prophetic sayings compiled by the early Muslim historians. (ibid., 11). These Muslim scholars also began to clarify the specific nature of the Orientalism of the Christian scholars such as Muir and others, and provided Muslim responses to their charges of Islam and Muhammad, and to trace the changes that the encounter was producing in the thinking of both groups (ibid., 13). Nonetheless, Western scholars such as Muir were not concerned with determining the authenticity of individual prophetic sayings or authoritative law but rather used them to reconstruct an accurate history of Muhammad and early Islam. For our purposes, it is sufficient to note that the writings of Muir and the works of other colonial scholars such as Thomas P. Hughes’ (d. 1896) A Dictionary of Islam (1895) and Sells’The Faith of Islam (1880) became standard reference works in Orientalist studies in general, and in missionary circles in particular (Guenther, 1997:21). It was for these reasons, post-colonial scholars such as Said argued that much of the scholarship, which was inspired by Orientalists scholars such as Hughes, Sell’s, Muir and others were imposing their “totalizing designs on the rest of the world without check or interruption” (Guenther, 1997:22). It is important to note at this point that it is not in the scope of this dissertation to address the many modern and post-modern scholarship voices, such as those of Aijaz Ahmad, C. A. Bayly, Barbara D. Metcalf, Saurabh Dube, Geoffrey A. Oddie, Vishal Mangalwadi, John C. B. Webster, Avril Powell, Bennett, and including the work of Khan, Hughes, Sell and many others (Guenther, 1997:2031), which must be heard to demonstrate the various contributions to the development of Orientalists thought within Islam in India as this would require a more in-depth study to fully appreciate and understand the nature of the subject. However, it suffices to say that to dismiss all the writings of Orientalists as belonging to the realm of pure dishonesty on 57

Alan Guenther notes that “the Revolt of 1857 led to an outcry in Britain against the evangelistic efforts off the missionaries in India, who were blamed for the unrest of the general population”, which culminated in the rebellion (1997:8). Missionaries and their supporters defended their work, arguing that it “was the neglect of Evangelism that had led to such a deterioration of affairs in India” (ibid.). The British Crown’s proclamation of governance in India “with religious neutrality and tolerance after the Revolt was interpreted by evangelical administrators such as Sir William Muir to allow for the private support of Christian missions” (ibid.). 86

Muir was severely constrained during the events of the Sepoy revolt (Powell, 2010:174). During these months, his regular correspondence, apart from his mother, was with his brother, John. The brother’s letters to each other were concerned mostly with the uprising and events of the Sepoy mutiny (ibid.). Almost forty years later in 1898, Muir published these private letters in a book entitled Agra Correspondence During the Mutiny. Furthermore, in 1902, he also commissioned a relative to publish the records he had collected and transmitted as intelligence officer during the 1857 mutiny. According to Powell, it was Muir’s decision to publish his papers was partly to vindicate his own action and those of some fellow Agra civilians during their worst crises of 1857. He did so because “various officials and unofficial histories had blamed some Agra civilians and his Intelligence Department” for a “degree of complacency, based on misinformation, that had resulted in many deaths and a near disaster in Agra before and after the fall of Delhi to the British” (ibid.). “Charges and counter charges against individuals and families would continue until the 1870s”, but Muir “clearly hoped that when former government servants were implicated, their records would be declared clean” (Powell, 2010:185). For him, it was important, because he wished to see a positive record of his services to the East India Company and his own judgement of the Sepoy event, vindicated (Powell, 2010:185).

the basis of their origin or in strongly held religious belief is uncritical scholarship; it is therefore, judicious to make them available to critical examination and further study. 86 Interestingly, after 1885, the missionary organisations faced a major turning point when large communities of “Untouchables” (any member of a low caste Hindu group) “sought to affiliate themselves with the Christians, causing a major re-evaluation of their ministry” (Guenther, 1997:9). Another factor that altered the Christian-Muslim interaction in northern India “at the end of this period was the rise of Mirza Ghulām Ahmad (d.1908), with his declaration of prophethood in 1889” (ibid.). 58

Muir blamed the effect of the Revolt on the combination of political and religious elements in the system of Islam 87(Hardy, 1972:62-63). Although, it was generally agreed that the first spark of dissatisfaction was kindled among the Hindu sepoys (Hardy, 1972:62), in the British view it was the Muslim leadership that converted a sepoy mutiny into a political conspiracy aimed at purging the British Raj (ibid.). However, according to Mansoor Moaddel, the main factors that contributed to the Revolt was the missionaries’ attacks on Indian culture, which aroused a hostile reaction from both the Hindu and Muslim populations of India (2005:61). Their anger turned against the East India Company and almost the whole of North India was affected (ibid.). The British, however, managed to control the revolt and through brutal force, peace was restored throughout India on July 8, 1959 (Moaddel, 2005:62).

The rebellion posed a considerable threat to the East India Company’s power in that region and led to the dissolution of the Company in 1858 (Guenther, 1997:7). “The country was thereafter directly governed by the crown as the new British Raj” (Spear, 1990:148). The British reorganised the army, as well as the financial and administration systems in India, thus Muir was now an employer of the British colonial administration (Spear, 1990:145-146).

3.1.6 Muir’s Tenure in the British Raj

In 1865, Muir was made Foreign Scribe to the Indian Government. He was knighted (K.C.S.I.) in 1867, and in 1868 became Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces (Guenther, 1997:44). During this tenure as the Lieutenant-Governor, Muir served under the Governor-Generalship of John Lawrence, who referred to him (Muir) as the best authority on all questions connected with land tenures and customs of the North-Western Provinces. He also commended Muir as a first rate Oriental scholar who served his country well during the Sepoy Mutiny (Bennett, 1992:104). Muir was then appointed financial member of the Viceroy’s Council in Calcutta in 1874. He retired in 1876 and took up a seat on the Council of India in London, until 1885 (Powell, 2010:2).

87 According to a report in the Calcutta Review (1957:367), “William Muir, Secretary to the Government of North-West Provinces, firmly asserted that the revolt of 1857 was nothing more than a mutiny of troops [...] and made a country-wide move to shake it off…” (The Indian Archives. 1857). Another report in the Calcutta Review (1957:284–5), S. B. Chaudhuri, accused Muir during this period, of faulty observation and being depended on reports and not on first-hand observation amounting to a negation of his own report namely Civil Rebellion in the Indian Mutinies (1857– 1859) (Powell, 2010:192). 59

To note briefly, as indicated previously, Said later criticised the close relations between Orientalists such as Muir and the colonial authorities, because these scholars provided knowledge that aided and abetted the process of social and political control (1995:36). Said cites that such knowledge of the subject races, or Orientals (here, through colonial rule of India), is “what makes their management easy and profitable, knowledge gives power, more power requires more knowledge, and so on in an increasingly profitable dialectic of information and control” (ibid.).

Muir’s stay and position in North-West India provided him “with opportunities to pursue his study of Islam and Muslims in the Indian Sub-continent. He soon became among Britain’s foremost Orientalist scholars at a time when Continental Indology88 and Arabic scholarship, led mainly by Germans, were dominant (Powell, 2010:2). He had always taken an interest in educational matters, and it was chiefly through his own academic exertions that the central college at Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh, known as Muir College, was established. The Muir College later became a part of the Allahabad University. In 1884, Muir was elected president of the Royal Asiatic Society. In 1885 he was elected principal of Edinburgh University, a post he held until 1903, when he retired. He died in Edinburgh, in 1905.

As a leading administrator at a critical stage in the emergence of communal competition in the North-West of India around 1870 (Powell, 2010:3), Muir was at pains to persuade leaders of opinion, sometimes Hindu but mostly Muslim, to discard their distrust of the British in India. He sought to convince them that their active cooperation with British projects, particularly in education, would benefit India (Powell, 2010:5). He maintained close relations with a Hindu pandit who later converted to Christianity, was baptized as David Mohun and then ordained as a priest. Muir strongly and passionately supported Hindu and Muslim scholars who were willing to accept Christianity (Powell, 2010:6); showing that conversion of Muslims and Hindus to Christianity was part of Muir’s mission. But more importantly, Muir devoted time to learning about these other religious traditions and their seminal figures, hence, he studied the life of Prophet Muhammad. His relationship with Hindu and Muslim religious and intellectual leadership provided him with “insider” knowledge of their religious traditions.

88 Indology is the academic study of the history and cultures, languages, and literature of the Indian subcontinent (most specifically the modern-day states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal), and as such is a subset of Asian studies. 60

Very soon, he became known for his study of Islam and its Prophet Muhammad. He devoted much time and energy to learn about the details of Muslim scholars, which included teachers, court pleaders and the ulama (Muslim scholars) with whom he had contact (Powell, 2010:5).

Muir was also a close friend of Syed Ahmad Khan89 (d. 1898). Bennett speculates that his motive for this close acquaintance was probably to enhance his standing as a scholar of Islam (1998:117). However, Muir viewed Khan’s response to his work, Life of Mahomet written between 1858 and 1861, with regard to religious, cultural, historical and educational matters as a provocation (Powel, 2010:5-6). Khan was shocked and disappointed to read what he regarded as the biased and unjust approached adopted by a scholar like Muir to malign the character of Muhammad (Qasmi, 2012:77).

3.2 Muir’s Mission in India

According to Bennett, several factors that helped to create the milieu in which Muir developed his interest in Islam. The first factor was an environment in “which attitudes towards the Indian culture had become progressively more negative as British power in India became more firmly established” (1992:105). Secondly, civil servants such as Muir thought that they were “inherently superior to the ruled, for whose welfare they were responsible and whose needs they naturally knew better than the people did themselves” (ibid.). Hence, no consideration was given to the people of India and whether they could be given a share in the management of their own government (ibid.). British colonisers such as Muir had convinced themselves that they were carrying out a benevolent civilising mission of the Indian people (Sandhu, 2014:9-10). In this context, Muir brought “three different worlds: that of scholarship, that of government, and that of missions” (Guenther, 1997:46).

89 Syed Ahmad Khan (d. 1898) was a leader of a movement of Islamic modernism based at the city of Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. Despite Khan’s friendship with Muir, he opposed him on political and religious matters (Powell, 2010:5). Khan earned a reputation as a distinguished Islamic scholar while working as a jurist for the East India Company. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, he remained loyal to the British and was noted for his actions in saving European lives. Khan called upon Muslims to loyally serve the British Raj. After the rebellion, he wrote a booklet titled Asbab-e-Baghawat-e- Hind (An Essay on the Causes of the Indian Revolt), which, given the political climate, was a daring critique, at the time, of British India. He defended the Muslim community and “sought to communicate that the Revolt was not a Muslim holy war, but had arisen from genuine and perceived grievances among the Indian population” (Guenther, 1997:16). He denounced nationalist organisations such as the Indian National Congress, instead forming organisations to promote Muslim unity and pro-British attitudes and activities. Syed founded the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College (today known as Aligarh Muslim University) in 1875 with the aim of promoting social and economic development of Indian Muslims. 61

However, Said sets aside the strong impact of Muir’s faith and addresses his labours in scholarship on Islam coupled with his negative attitude of the Orient and particularly of Islam and the Arabs. For Said “the essential aspects of Orientalist theory and praxis (from which present-day Orientalism derives) can be understood not as a sudden access of objective knowledge of the Orient, but as a set of structures inherited from the past, secularized, redisposed, re-framed by such disciplines as philology, which in turn were naturalized, modernized, and laicized substitutes for (or versions of) Christian supernaturalism,” (1995: 122).

Said also writes that colonial powers such as Britain, France and others played a role as colonisers by the creation of interests that could be commercial, communicational, religious, military and cultural. Britain for example, a Christian power, felt that it had a legitimate interest in the lands that it colonised. Hence, it “developed complex apparatus for managing these interests to develop” (1995:100). It abetted organisations such as the “Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1701) were succeeded and later abetted by the Baptist Missionary Society (1792), the Church Missionary Society (1799), the British and Foreign Bible Society (1804), the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews (1808). These missions openly joined the expansion of Europe” (1995:100). Britain also organised “trading societies, learned societies, geographical exploration funds, translation funds, the implantation in the Orient of schools, missions, consular offices, factories and sometimes large European communities”, from which their “interests were defended with much zeal and expense” (Said, 1995:100).

In other words, it is fitting, therefore, to look at administrators of India such as Muir who used his colonial career and his Christian evangelical fervour as a form of power and civilising mission of the Indian population and, in particular, Muslims.90 He was also

90 According to Guenther, “the history of English Protestant missionary activity in India”, since the beginning of the 1730’s, “is closely tied to history of Evangelicals in the Indian civil society” (1997:2). For example, Charles Grant (d. 1823) spent many years in India and was an advisor to the East India Company. In 1793, he sought to introduce a bill in the British parliament to allow greater freedom for missionary activity in India (ibid.). While the bill was opposed and rejected by those in England it did not deter him to join influential groups such as the Clapham Sect (a group of evangelical Christians prominent in England from about 1790) to exercise greater influence in the British parliament (ibid.). The influence of “Charles Grant in Britain’s policies in India was considerable when he became the Director of the East India Company in 1794 and one of its Chairmen for six years during the period from 1804 to 1816” (Guenther, 1997:3). Grant and the Clapham Sect were involved in and leading such organisations as the Church Missionary Society, a mission agency with which Muir was related mostly because of their links to the work of Evangelicals 62

continuing the medieval biases and negative propaganda of Islam and its Prophet through his numerous writings and “wanted to convince Muslims that Muhammad was not worth their allegiance” (Bennett, 1998:11). Furthermore, as an Evangelical, Muir regarded religion as the defining force in society, believing that “religion must be Christianity to be truly beneficial” (Guenther, 1997:52). These were some of the reasons that Said accorded Muir a place in the genealogy of Orientalism (1995:99).

3.3 Muir’s Study of Islam

Muir very early on began studying the history of Muhammad and the early caliphate. He began writing extensively on Islam publishing many books, including The Koran: Its Composition and Teaching (1878); Annals of the Early Caliphate (1883); Mahomet and Islam (1884); The Mohammedan Controversy consists of five essays published between 1885 and 1887; The Apology of al-Kindy (1887); The Caliphate: Its Rise, Decline and Fall-From Original Sources (1888); The Beacon of Truth; or, Testimony of the Coran to the Truth of the Christian Religion (1894) and The Mameluke or Slave Dynasty of Egypt, 1260-1517 AD, End of the Caliphate (1896), as well as The Sources of Islam, A Persian Treatise by Rev. W. St. Clair-Tisdall, translated and abridged by Muir (1901). In 1888 he delivered the Rede Lectures at Cambridge University on “The Early Caliphate and Rise of Islam”.91

Some of his works on Islam are The Apology of al-Kindy (1887) and The Mohammedan Controversy (1897), which are both polemical and written from a Christian perspective. The Mahommedan Controversy was first published in 1845 in the Calcutta Review, a journal ostensibly for English readers but circulating among some Indian graduates of English- medium colleges (2010:94). According to Bennett, Muir wrote this work to attract wider

in the Indian civil service (ibid.). Guenther mentions that “it was the distinctive beliefs of the Evangelicals that were the major force shaping the world-view of those administrators such as Muir and of the missionaries interacting with Muslims in the nineteenth century (1997:4). It was the evangelicals that “began with foundational emphasis on the sinfulness an vanity of other religious paths”, and hence, were “strongly motivated to point out to them the error of their ways and the new and better way of salvation through repentance and faith in Christ”(ibid.) 91 Muir also wrote The Opium Revenue (1875); The Lord’s Supper: An Abiding Witness to the Death of Christ (1886); Sweet First-Fruits: A Tale of the Nineteenth Century, on the Truth and Virtue of the Christian Religion (1893); and James Thomason, Lieutenant-Governor N.W.P., India. (1897). Two Old Faiths: Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans, by both J. Murray Mitchell and Sir William Muir (1901). His writing on the mutiny of 1857 in India is found in Records of the Intelligence Department of the Government of the North-Western Provinces of India during the Mutiny of 1857 Including Correspondence with the Supreme Government, Delhi, Cawnpore, and Other Places (1902). 63

support for Carl Pfander’s92 (d. 1865) missionary work (1992:109). Muir was aware that Pfander was interested in making contact with learned Muslims in the Agra region for missionary purposes and he needed suitable missionary literature (Powell, 2010: 94). Powell mentions that this work is an “historical overview of centuries” of “efforts to evangelise the Muslim world, and a more detailed treatment of Jesuit missions to the Indian Mughal court and Protestant efforts in India and Persia in the early eighteenth century” (ibid.). The work consists of five essays published between 1885 and 1887, and it challenges the very foundation of theological questions on ethics, rights of women, polygamy and “the ease of divorce” in Islam. Many points raised in the book (and other works/books of Muir) were not only polemical but confrontational to Muslim family values and the tenets of Islam (Jones, 1992:196). Said’s Orientalism addresses in particular this type of nineteenth century Western scholarship (Powell, 2010:257). In his work The Apology of al-Kindy, Muir attempted to convince those Muslims “whom it proved impossible to subdue” (Bennett, 1992:110). He wrote this work “defending Christianity in a predominantly Muslim context” (Guenther, 1997:15). He was more moderate and sympathetic than his earlier counterparts, and “acknowledged Europe’s intellectual debt to Muslims during the medieval period” (ibid.) and “spoke of intimate relations between East and West (Bennett, 1992:110), he did however “believe[d] that Britain’s position in India carried special responsibilities as the enlightenment of the people of India depended on her noble vocation” (ibid.). Muir wrote that “Britain must not faint” when India’s millions “abandoned both false prophets and idol shrines and rally around the eternal truth which has brought by the Gospel” (Bennett, 1992:111). Muir here presents together the aims of colonialism and the Christian mission, seeing both as the task of civilising, and Evangelism as a national responsibility.

Muir also wrote a series of articles on the life of Muhammad published in the Calcutta Review. Pfander (d. 1865), aware of Muir’s studying the earliest Muslim sources on Muhammad’s life, first encouraged him to write an authoritative biography of Muhammad

92 Carl Gottlieb Pfander (d. 1865) was a Basel Mission missionary in Central Asia and Trans- Caucasus, and a Church Missionary Society missionary to North-Western Province, later to become the Agra Province in Uttar Pradesh. He was renowned for using controversy to win Muslims for Christ and devoted his life to the task of converting Muslims to Christianity (Anderson, 1999:532). In the early 1850s Muir reported on the correspondence between Pfander and the Muslim scholar Rahmatullah Kairanawi (d. 1918) (Moaddel, 2005:60). He described these debates in articles published by the Calcutta Review, also summarising the recent history of the Christian mission to Muslims and reviewing relevant literature. These articles were later published as the Mohammedan Controversy in 1897 (Buaben, 1995:344).

64 from a Christian perspective (Qasmi, 2012:62). According to Guenther, it was this book, The Life of Mohammad – From Original Sources, along with his [Muir’s] numerous other writings that became a chief source of information on Islam for the missionaries who were serving in India (1997:46). 93

3.4 Preparing for His Biography of Muhammad

Muir examined other contemporary Western biographical works on Muhammad. In his opinion, he found no work in English that matched the quality of the original Arabic sources, a task that he set himself henceforth. Indeed, he found Sprenger’s biography on Muhammad, The Life of Mohammad – From Original Sources, published in 1851, full of erroneous assumptions of both pre-Islamic Arabia and the character of Muhammad94 (1858:iv). He generally disagreed with Sprenger’s biographical portrayal of Muhammad.95 According to

93 Muir first wrote on Muhammad in the Calcutta Review. This journal was a convenient forum for the publications of Muir’s reviews of the writings and correspondence between Pfander and Muslim scholars between 1845 and 1852 (Guenther, 1997:14). According to Guenther, “these early essays reveal Muir’s attitudes towards interaction with Muslims on a polemical level, and his motives for developing his own approach to the original Muslim source material (ibid., 15). After his four volume biographical work of Muhammad that was completed in 1861, there were many reviews and criticism of his work by both non-Muslim and Muslims. For example, The Times newspaper (1883:2) of India cited it as propagandist writing with a Christian bias and for “odium theologicum (Powell, 2010:168 and 256). “Contemporary historian E. A. Freeman praised the book as a "great work", yet questioned its conjectural methodology, particularly the "half timid suggestion" made by Muir that Muhammad had fallen under the influence of Satanic inspiration” (British Quarterly Review, 55, 1872:106 and 119), (ibid., 168). Bennett in his Victorian Images of Islam (1992), who wrote on Muhammad, has a chapter on Muir. Contemporary Muslim scholars recently critiqued Muir’s views on Islam and Prophet Muhammad in a number of comparative studies, e.g., Buaben’s Image of the Prophet Muhammad in the West: A Study of Muir, Margoliouth and Watt (1996) and Muhammad Mohar Ali in his Sīrat al-Nabī and the Orientalists (1997). 94 Jamal Malik cited a review of Muir that appeared in the Calcutta Review (XVII, Jan.,1852:387– 421) published in 1852 entitled “Biographies of Mohammed for India”, in which Muir “reviewed the recently published ‘Lives of Muhammad’ by Sprenger and Washington Irving (d. 1859) (1850) and by various evangelical tracts and only to dismiss them as unscholarly and inaccurate” (2000:203). Malik mentions that from Muir’s review of other biographies of Muhammad it can be evaluated that he [Muir] had intensified his resolve to publish his own biography of Muhammad and from 1853 began publishing instalments of this biography in Calcutta and Britain (ibid.). Malik further states that Muir hardly “modified his views in the forty years between his first Calcutta Review article of his sources in 1853, and the last edition of his Life of Mohammed to appear during his lifetime, in 1894” (ibid.). Some of these views will be considered in Chapter Four. 95 According to Guenther, Muir in 1851, published an essay in the Calcutta Review, evaluated that other biographies, which had been published both in British and in India were deficient because they had not utilised the original Muslim sources (Guenther, 1997:6). While he praised the work of Weil and Sprenger, most of the previous attempts of modern Western scholars were full of inaccuracies because of this lack of access to original Muslim documents. He therefore, “proceeded to prepare a 65

Powell, Muir “strongly rejected Sprenger’s emphasis on the ‘spirit of the age’, indicating at the same time his disagreement with Edward Gibbon’s portrayal of conditions in Arabia prior to Muhammad’s mission” (Powell, 2010:159). It seems that post-Enlightenment scholars such as Muir utilised the work of Gibbon96 because it supported the work on Muhammad from the various efforts of the earlier seventeenth and eighteenth century scholars. However, Muir’s views remained in contrast to Gibbon, in spite of his acknowledgement of him because his strong religious preconceptions intruded into his narrative of Muhammad (Powell, 2010:144). For Muir, it was Muhammad that formed Islam and he was the workman who shaped the faith (Powell, 2010:159). However, Muir considered Sprenger’s categorisation of the various source materials from the pioneering biographies to frame his own classification of these sources to construct his biography of Muhammad.

In many ways, Sprenger had more claim to having access to both authentic and original primary sources and he had preceded Muir in writing his biography of Muhammad. Yet Sprenger and Muir had different views regarding the relative importance of these sources. For example, Sprenger considered the classical works of Arab history and the pioneering biographies as important as Hadith. For him, the Sunnah “contain more truth than falsehood and the biographies more falsehood than truth” (Qasmi, 2012:65). “This view appeared to Muir erroneous and misleading. Muir was willing to give more credit to the biographers.” It was because, in his opinion, “they were comparatively free from the biased mindset and theological constraints of the Traditionists” (Qasmi, 2012:66). In other words, he had no reason to doubt that they sought honestly to give a true picture of Muhammad.

thorough critique of the traditional Muslim method of analysing the genuineness of traditions and offer an alternative historiography” (ibid, 7). 96 According to Historian Bernard Lewis, “Gibbon names his main sources of information: three translations of the Qur’an into Latin, French, and English by [Louis] Marracci (d. 1700), [Claude- Étienne] Savary (d. 1788) and [George] Sale (d. 1736); two biographies of Muhammad by Humphrey Prideaux and the Count de Boulainvilliers; the relevant article in d’Herbelot’s Bibliotheque Orientale, and ‘the best and most authentic of our guides,’ Jean Gagnier, ‘a Frenchman by birth and professor at Oxford of the Oriental tongues’ and author of two ‘elaborate works,’ one of them an edition with Latin translation and notes of a biography of the Prophet by the Arabic author Ismaˋil Abū al-Fidāˋ, the other, Gagnier's own biography of Muhammad in three volumes. In addition to these, Gibbon made extensive use of two other important works, a treatise on the Muhammadan religion by the Dutch scholar Adrian Reland, and Edward Pococke’s most important work, the Specimen Historiae Arabum, an excerpt from an Arabic chronicle by the Syrian Christian author Bar Hebraeus (Abulfaragius is his Latin name)” (1976:91). 66

With regards to sources, Muir was also dependent on Sprenger for directing him to many rare manuscripts. In addition, Muir enriched his biography with reference to the work of his contemporaries such as Weil, Caussin de Perceval and others.

Finally, his procurement of manuscripts of Ibn Hishām (a recension of Ibn Ishāq’s biography of the Prophet), Al-Wāqidī and Al-Tabarī97 (1923:lxxx-lxxxi) was facilitated by his position as a high ranking British official in India.

Like his contemporaries, Muir realised that the initial commission of Muhammad’s prophetic mission to preach was important to any interpretation of the origins of Islam (Powell, 2010:158). His idea was to reconstruct Muhammad’s life based on the original Muslim sources to illustrate that he compromised Christianity (Powell, 2010:161).

3.4.1 Influencing Factors

Muir was a son of Western modernity (Qasmi, 2012:63) and modernity impacted writing in the West. Two major factors affected Muir’s work. Firstly, Muir’s political career in India and his evangelical zeal had a great influence on his research and writings on Islam, its early history and the life of Muhammad. He was affected by the Christian-Muslim polemical debates and academic environment of North-Western India, which only served to reinforce his view that a new approach to Islamic studies was both needed and now possible because of the progress made by modern Western scholars in this field (Powell, 2010:187).

Secondly, Muir planned to present a “true version” of the Prophets’ life and teachings by applying “Western tools of analysis to the historiography of Islamic history and the Prophets biography” (Qasmi, 2012:63). His approach was designed purposefully with the aim of accessing the original Muslim sources to write a biography of Muhammad that would allow him to find “faults and inconsistencies in the traditionally narrated accounts of the Prophets life” (ibid.).

97 Muir mentions using an abridged edition of Ibn Hishām, written in 1307 by Ahmed ibn Ibrahim, who was from Damascus (1923:lxxx). He refers to using an edition of an Arabic text of Ibn Hishām that was made available by Ferdinand Wüstenfeld and translated into German by Weil (1923:lxxx). He also refers to the work of Al-Wāqidī that was edited by Alfred von Kremer in 1856 as well as another translation by Wellhausen (1923:lxxxi). He further obtained a rare manuscript of Al-Tabarī from the libraries of Lucknow that consisted of extracts from Ibn Ishāq and Al-Wāqidī (1923:lxxxiv- lxxxv). 67

Chapters Two and Three noted that a series of substantial editions and translations of various Muslims sources from Arabic were produced during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and in the first half of the nineteenth century, including most of the original Sīra literature. These sources were translated into English and Continental languages by Oriental scholars of Islam. As a result, nineteenth century Western scholarship had at its disposal a wide variety of this rich Muslim source material (Donner, 1998:9).

These modern Western scholars found what they considered to be contradictions in the earliest Muslim sources and thus raised doubts about the veracity of the traditional depiction of early Islam. This impacted on Muir’s own scholarship and studies of Islam. His aim was to explain and attempt to resolve contradictions between the divergent accounts to produce a trustworthy account (Donner, 1998:9). His work with the original primary Muslim sources led him to believe he could make a claim of writing a biography on the life of Muhammad that was based on authentic Muslim sources while subtly satirising various aspects of his life (Qasmi, 2012:63) In so doing, he wanted to show “intelligent” Muslims the historical evidence of their faith and its oversights as compared with Christianity (Bennett, 1998:111).

3.5 Muir’s Approach and Methodology

Muir depended on the Qur’an and Hadith as two major sources for a biography of the Prophet as well as fragments of accounts (traditions, histories) by `Urwah ibn Zubayr (d. 712) and Muhammad ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī (d. 741) that survived in the pioneering biographies of Ibn Ishāq (the transmission and edition of Ibn Hishām), Al-Wāqidī (as rendered through his scribe, Ibn Sa`d) and Al-Tabarī98 (1923:lxxvi) and Arab poetry (1923:xiv). For secondary sources, he depended on the earlier Western works on Muhammad such as that of Edward Gibbon (d. 1794), Weil, Kremer, de Perceval, Wüstenfeld, Sprenger, Wellhausen and Nöldeke.

Muir briefly discusses the style of these authors and mentions that their works are confined to the biographical subject of Muhammad and arranged in chronological order of his life. He

98 Muir was indebted to Sprenger for securing and making available manuscripts of the works of Al- Wāqidī and Ibn Hishām (1923:lxxxiv) as well as for tracing a lost volume Al-Tabarī’s work, which deals with of the early history Muhammad’s life and five years before Muhammad’s death. This work was used in editing in the completed works of Al-Tabarī and was printed at Leiden (1923:lxxxv). 68

refers to their use of various source materials, which they fuse into a uniform picture (1923: lxxvii). For example, Muir writes they begin with genealogy of Muhammad, then his birth and the various periods of his life (1923:lxxvii):

The traditional matter is confined to biographical subjects, and is arranged in chronological order. Commencing with anticipatory and genealogical notices, the work advances to the birth of Mohammad, and traces with some degree of method the various periods of his life. To each stage a separate chapter is devoted; and all traditions which have any bearing whatever on the subject, are thrown together in that chapter, and arranged with more or less of intelligible sequence (Muir, 1923:lxxvii).

3.5.1 Muir’s View of Qur’an as a Source for Muhammad’s Biography

For Muir, the Qur’an was the basis to understanding the origin of Islam and the character of Muhammad. The Qur’an, as Muslims hold, “consists exclusively of revelation or commands, which Muhammad professed, from time to time”, that he “received through the angel Gabriel”, which, for him, was “a message direct from God; and which under alleged divine direction [instruction], he delivered to those about him” (1923:xiv). For Muir, the Qur’an is the core of Muhammad’s own words recorded during his life and “extending over the course of his public career, illustrating his religious views, his public acts, and his domestic career”99 (1923: xxviii). Muir’s opinion here is not unique. Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall100 (d. 1856), among other Western scholars stated earlier, “[…] [W]e hold the Kor’an to be as surely Muhammad’s word, as the Mohammadans hold it to be the word of God” (Muir, 1923:xxviii).

Muir therefore does not accept the Muslim view of the Qur’an as God’s word; he regards the Qur’an’s arrangement as unintelligible and therefore not a compilation by God but rather by Muhammad (1923: xix). According to Muir, Sūrahs (chapters) such as 91, 100, 102, and 103 do not seem to have been intended as revelation but are rhapsodies of Muhammad (1923:xiv),

99 Francis Edward Peters also argues that there is a large gap between the sources for Muhammad’s life and those of his teachings. He therefore assumes that the designs in the Qur’an are Muhammad’s own (1991:300). A scholar of religion studies and Arabic, Alford Welch mentions that “the Qur’an is an unusual historical source” because it contains no historical narrative or description, and it does not have as its purpose the recording of history or biography (Rippin, 2000:298). Nevertheless, he finds the person of Muhammad embedded in the text. The Qur’an responds constantly and often outspokenly “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” (ibid.). 100 Hammer-Purgstall wrote prolifically over a period of fifty years on the most diverse subjects and published numerous texts and translations of Arabic, Persian and Turkish authors. 69

and as a whole, the Qur’an is a chaotic mingling of subjects disjointed with portions produced in Mecca, sometimes preceding a passage revealed in Medina (ibid.). However, what Muir did confirm, in line with Muslim tradition, is that its current sūrahs were as the Prophet left them.

Furthermore, the Qur’an, for Muir is a mirror of Muhammad’s character, thoughts and writing: “And so true a mirror is the Kor’an of Muhammad’s character, that the saying became proverbial among the early Muslims, His character is the Kor’an” (1923:xxviii).

The Qur’an for Muir represented Muhammad’s character; the words of the Qur’an, as the words of Muhammad, portrayed his thoughts, provided an historical picture of Muhammad’s character and life, and enabled Muir to enter the socio-religious and historical space of Muhammad and to gain insight thereto.

While Muir accepts that the Qur’an is as it was left by Muhammad, he contends that some verses may have been put forward or inspired by him and some were withdrawn or alterations were implied. Muir refers to the withdrawal of these verses as those that were abrogated. He, however, does not view the abrogation101 of verses as an exegetical tool as Muslim scholars did.102 For him, as we will see in Chapter Four, the abrogation of some qur’anic verses indicates inconsistencies of Muhammad’s ideas and articulations (1923: xxvi). According to Muir, the doctrine of abrogation suited Muhammad because he could change the Qur’an according to his fancy.

3.5.2 Hadith

Muir was one of the first modern Western scholars, “building on the previous work of Gustav Weil and Aloy Sprenger to prepare a thorough critique of Hadith, as well as a new system to evaluate authentic material within the prophetic traditions” (Guenther, 1997:12). His evaluation of Hadith was not an attempt to determine authoritative law but to use it as source material to reconstruct an accurate history of Muhammad and early Islam.

101 On abrogation, see note 11. 102 Āyah 2:100 [106], (Muir erroneously quotes a wrong number of the passage but the words refer to Q. 2:106 and hence, the correction) – “Whatever verses We cancel, or cause thee to forget, We give thee better in their stead, or the like thereof” (Muir, 1923:xxvii). 70

He did not always and consistently employ Hadith literature in his biography of Muhammad, unlike his use of the Sīra. According to Albert Guillaume (d. 1942), Ibn Ishāq used Hadith to confirm an event in the life of Muhammad, whereas Muir utilised hadith to support his reconstruction of the life of Muhammad (Muir, 1923:xiv).

In the history of tradition in the technical sense, that is to say in the corpus of Hadith venerated by Sunnis everywhere, I.I. [Ibn Ishāq] takes a minor position in spite of his great and obvious merits as an honest straightforward collection of all the information that was known to Muhammad […] If he (I.I) reported Muhammad’s words it was in reference to a particular event in the narrative recorded; they were evoked naturally by the circumstances (Guillaume, 1990:xxxv).

According to Qasmi, “Muir did accept the Hadith as the second most important source for the Prophet’s biography but he did not share the erroneously held view of many other Orientalists who, following the writings of the Muslim scholars, had come to adopt an uncritical view of Hadith literature” (2012:68). While Muir problematises the Hadith because as oral reports they were subject to the memory of the transmitter and therefore given to distortion. He nonetheless, was mostly “concerned about the need to prove its late growth” and thus adopted a “certain method of scrutinising the Hadith material to be able to shift genuine prophetic traditions from the vast pool of both authentic and inauthentic traditions” (ibid.). “In so doing, Muir did not refer to classical Muslim works on Hadith, based upon the criticism of the chain of transmitters, and contrived to formulate his own criteria” (ibid.). The work of these Muslim scholars on Hadith carried no significance for Muir. Hence, he does not show much “acquaintance with the works done by Muslim scholars with regard to grades of authenticity set for different Hadith collections” (ibid.). This was because he was “not concerned about the theological relevance of Hadith but rather with its values as a historical source” (ibid.). Moreover, because the Hadith contained a large component of historical truth, he used them to support his particular reading of verses of the Qur’an and thus critically evaluate the life of Muhammad.

Thus he “inquired into the origin and history of” Muhammad’s narrations and found them generally credible, trustworthy and sufficient and used them as a primary source to construct a biography of Muhammad (1923:lxxxvii). 3.5.3 Arab Poetry

Muir acknowledges the impact of poetry genealogy and tribal events. According to him, pieces of poetry recited by poets who survived Muhammad were of great value because they describe his dignity or victories. For Muir, these poems record historical events and provide insight into the history or character of Muhammad (1923:lxxv). Pioneering biographies of Ibn Ishāq and al-Wāqidī cited poetry to support events in the life of Muhammad (1923: lxxix).

3.6 Conclusion

Muir employed primary Muslim sources to construct his biography of Muhammad. From this he asserted that his own work to be authentic and methodologically sound. He confidently states that following these original Muslim sources “with sagacity, perseverance and impartiality, will enable the inquirer” of these sources “to arrive at a fair approximation of historical fact (1923:lxxxvii).

The following chapter will consider how Muir specifically utilises and examines the passages of the Qur’an to determine a portrait of Muhammad. Muir was confident that he had thoroughly examined the Qur’an, affirming it as the earliest authentic historical record of Islam (1923:lxxxvii). Furthermore, he listed the early biographical compilations of pioneering authors and regarded their works as worthy source material for his work (1923:lxxxvii). The availability and access to more than one Muslim author of the Sīra would enable him to compare and evaluate the discrepancies in their work.

Muir contextualises the work of the pioneering biographers of Muhammad’s life. His main methodological approach was that he had accessed the source materials embedded in these pioneering biographies to construct a modern biography of Muhammad. In so doing, he demonstrated not only his access to these works but also his ability to rigorously examine the veracity of their scholarship and how they utilised the various source materials to write their biography of Muhammad. Muir made a thorough study of the best available works used by the pioneering biographers of Muhammad, and he understood the difficulties that surrounded these original source materials and believed that by critically evaluating and analysing these for discussion, an inquirer could construct a biography of Muhammad. Moreover, Muir provides a brief history and background of the five earliest biographers, mentioning Ibn Hishām’s recension of Ibn Ishāq’s biography of Muhammad. Al-Wāqidī’s work through the pen of his scribe, Ibn Sa`d, and the work of the historian and exegete Al-Tabarī (1923:xl). 72

Chapter Four

MUIR’S APPROACH TO AND UTILISATION OF QUR’ANIC VERSES

4.0 Introduction

William Muir regarded the Qur’an as the master signifier of Islam and the most important key to Muhammad’s character and person. For Muir, Muhammad was the author of the Qur’an and it therefore reflects his personality and state of mind as he experienced the vicissitudes of life that were attendant upon his mission of prophethood. He states that the “Koran consists exclusively of revelation or commands which Muhammad professed, from time to time, to receive through the angel Gabriel, as a message direct from God; and which, under alleged divine direction, he delivered to those about him” (1923:xiv). Furthermore, from the first compilation of the Qur’an by Àbd Allah ibn Abī Quhāfa (Abū Bakr), the first Caliph (d. 634) to his successor Ùthman ibn Àffan’s (d. 656) edition, it was as Muhammad left it103 (1923: xxvii).104

There is no reason to doubt that several at least of the Suras are precisely the same, both in matter and order, as Mohammad left them; and that the remainder, though often resembling a mosaic of various material rudely dovetailed together, are yet composed of genuine fragments, generally of considerable length, each for most part following the connection in which it was recited in public, and committed to memory or to paper from the mouth of the Prophet by his followers. The irregular inter-position and orderless disposal of the smaller fragments have indeed frequently destroyed the sequence, and produced a perplexing confusion. Still, the fact remains, that the fragments themselves were strictly and exclusively Mohammad’s own composition, and were learned or recorded under his instructions; and this fact stamps the Kor'an, not merely as formed out of the Prophet's own words and sentences but to a large extent as his in relation to the context also (Muir, 1923:xviii-xix).105

103 `Uthman’s version conformed to the dialect of Mecca (Leaman, 2006:130-131). 104 According to Farid Esack, there are several indications of the Qur’an existing in a written form during the life of Muhammad. The Qur’an was later collected from writing material such as paper, animal skin and papyrus and complied into a fixed order referred to as the “mus’haf”. The Battle of Yamamah (633 C.E.) is regarded as the turning point in the textual gathering of the Qur’an because of the many Qur’an reciters (qurra) that were killed (2005:83). This initiative was taken by Abū Bakr and supervised by Zayd ibn Thabit (d. 660). During the period, Zayd again undertook the arrangement and editing of the suhuf (Esack, 2005:88). This edition is known as the `Uthman codex, which is generally considered the archetype of the Qur’an known today. “Copies of this new version were sent to Damascus, Basra and Kufa, and another copy was kept in Medina” (ibid.). 105 Muir has written about the Qur’an in his work The Coran: Its Composition and Teaching; and the Testimony It Bears to the Holy Scriptures (1878). However, his scholarship of the Qur’an cannot be seriously compared to the likes of modern scholars such as John Wansbrough (d. 2002) and John Burton. 73

Muir, however, was critical of how the Qur’an was arranged, writing that the order of its verses have “no intelligible arrangement” (1923:xvii), and its overall arrangement is a haphazard mixing of subjects (1923:xvii). Furthermore, he states that however retentive the Arab memory, he still “distrusted a transcript made entirely from that source” (1923:xix). For him, there was good reason to believe that Muhammad’s followers made many fragmentary copies of the Qur’an (1923:xix). He compares the different styles of writing that existed in Mecca and Medina.106 For Muir, these were “fragments compiled and put together with little or no connection of subject or date” (1923:xx). It was obvious for him that “the Sūrahs used in public worship, or for private perusal and recitation, would be those of which the greatest number existed” (1923:xx). Such, he asserts, was the condition of the text during Muhammad’s lifetime (1923:xx).

Nevertheless, for Muir the Qur’an is Muhammad’s words, recorded during his life and “extending over the course of his public career, illustrating his religious views, his public acts, and his domestic career” (Muir, 1923:xxviii). The Qur’an, for him, although no more than a collection of Muhammad’s personal musings and pragmatic political motives, thus became the groundwork and basis for inquiry into the origin of Islam (1923:xxvii).107 Muir’s aim here was to disprove that Muhammad was a messenger of God. He studied the Qur’an’s contents and images closely to argue that the simulation of divine impulses that Muhammad was experiencing could easily have been stirrings inspired by Devil (1923:44).

Muir also drew upon the Hadith literature (1923:lxxxvii). The Hadith, collected in the six Sunni canonical and other collections, contains a “large amount of historical truth” of Muhammad’s life. 108 As noted previously, he also looked at the earliest Muslim biographical works of the Prophet, which he regarded as authoritative and authentic representations of Muhammad’s life (lxxxvii). In this vein, Muir saw his study, in contrast to earlier Western historiographies of Muhammad, as a modern, objective and critical re-construction of Muhammad’s life.

106 Mecca and Medina are two cities that present a picture of Muhammad’s mission as a Prophet. For thirteen years in Mecca, Muhammad’s mission was devoted to preaching, counseling, warning people about the judgment day, and exhorting them to righteousness. At Medina, Muhammad’s mission for ten years became institutionalised and was devoted mainly to governing people and making them accept the new dispensation (Dashti, 1985:91). 107 Cf., note 89. 108 Muir mentions the general Sunni Hadith collections of Al-Bukhāri, Muslim, Al-Tirmidhī, and Abū Dawud (1923:xlii). Muir does not mention or discuss any hadith compilations of Shi’a scholars. 74

He did however acknowledge that no modern biography of Muhammad can present a comprehensive picture of the life of the Prophet of Islam.

Many Gordian knots regarding the prophet of Arabia will remain unsolved, many paradoxes still vainly excite curiosity and baffle explanation. But the groundwork of his career will be laid down with confidence the details will be substantially filled in with all reasonable amplitude; and the student will be able to determine with certainty the leading features of his life and character. (1923:lxxxvii).

This chapter, however, will examine the qur’anic verses connected to the early years of Muhammad’s mission that Muir employs in his biography of Muhammad. Muir selected “the portions of the Revelation” that he believed would shed light on the inner and external struggles that Muhammad experienced.

Moreover, although Muir employs many āyāt (verses)109 of the Qur’an in his biography of Muhammad, this chapter looks only at the following āyāt (verses): 2:87; 2:106;110 5: 82 and 116; 14:103-14; 17:73-77; 22:52; 39:38; 53:13-19; 74:23; 75:16-19; 76:23; 80:1-10 and 87:6- 8; and Sūrahs 1, 74, 93, 96, 97, 100 and 103. These āyāt are chosen to provide an indication of the early period of Muhammad’s mission.

We categorise the verses under the following themes: Jewish and Christian scholarly influence on the young Muhammad; Muhammad’s confusion and mental state; his cries for release from mental agitation; the claim to prophethood, his mission announced to a selected few; making the mission public; Muhammad’s memory lapses; contradictions in the revelation; failure of his attempt to woo the Meccan political elite, i.e., Muhammad’s political expediency; and damage control in the wake of the “Satanic Verses”.

4.1 Explanatory Model

In examining Muir’s utilisation of the qur’anic verses in his reconstruction of Muhammad’s biography, this study depends upon Vernon K. Robbins’ (1996) socio-rhetorical method of interpretation. Socio-rhetorical criticism shows that there are different factors at work in the

109 Cf., note 49. 110 Muir numbers some of the verses incorrectly. Thus, he refers to āyah 100 of sūrah 2, the correct number is 106; likewise the āyah number is not 85 as he states, but āyah number 82 of sūrah 5, and finally it is Qur’an, 22:52 not 51-52. 75

making of a text, or what Robbins calls the “textures of a text” (1996: 3). The textures are inner texture, intertexture, social and cultural texture, ideological texture, and sacred texture (Robbins, 1996:3).

“The inner texture of a text resides in the features of the language of the text itself” (Robbins: 1996:7). Hence, inner texture is the texture for the channel of interaction. “With written text, the inner texture” “resides in the texture of the language itself” (ibid.). “Intertexture is a text representation of, reference to, and the use of phenomena in the ‘world’ outside the text being interpreted” (1996: 40). This method of analysis examines varying natures of texts and seeks to confirm the historical events by comparing the text to other sources. “Social and cultural texture is the analysis of the texture a text that takes interpreters into sociological and anthropological theory. The issue here is not simply the intertexture of a text but its social and cultural nature of a text.” (Robbins, 1996:71). Furthermore, social intertexture refers to the social knowledge shared by members of the culture the text originated in and includes social roles, identities, institutions, codes and relationships. Cultural intertexture is found in words or phrases that interact with the traditions, patterns or norms of a culture (ibid.). “Ideological analysis of a text, then, is simply an agreement by various people that they will dialogue and disagree with one another with a text a guest in the conversation. This means that analysis of the ideological texture of a text exist as the opposite end of the spectrum from the analysis of the texture of the text” (1996:95). Sacred texture111 of a text is in “locating the ways the text speaks about God or gods, or talks about the realms of religious life” (Robbins, 1996:120).

Using Robbins’ socio-rhetorical interpretive framework, the study attempts to show how Muir’s social, cultural and ideological-religious convictions impacted on his reading of the pioneering Muslim biographical works of Ibn Ishāq, Al-Wāqidī, Ibn Hishām and Al-Tabarī and his writing of a biography of Muhammad. In other words, this chapter is concerned with the different textures within Muir’s biography of the Prophet. These textures are his Christian beliefs, evangelical mission, his colonial vocation in India and modernity. Coming from this background that Muir felt confident to pose a counter argument to the pioneering Muslim biographical works, challenging his Muslim adversaries through writing his own biography of Muhammad.

111 The study will not be utilising the sacred texture to evaluate Muir’s reading of the Qur’an. 76

In order to achieve these goals, “socio-rhetorical criticism approaches the text as though it were a thickly textured tapestry” – it is like weaving an intricate woven tapestry that shows that “a text contains complex patterns and images (1996:2). For example, by looking at the text from one way or angle, a text exhibits a very limited range of its texture. “By changing the interpreters angle a numbers of times, the method enables the interpreter to bring multiple textures of the text into view” (Robbins, 1996:2-3).

We now discuss the qur’anic verses as Muir employed them in his Life of Mohammad: From Original Sources.

4.2 The Qur’anic Verses 4.2.1 Jewish and Christian Scholarly Influence on the Young Muhammad

Thou shalt surely find amongst the people who profess Christianity to be the most inclined to the believers, This cometh to pass because there are priest and monks among them, and because they are not elected with pride112 (Q. 5:85 [82]).

And when God shall say: O Jesus son of Mary! Didst thou speak unto humankind, saying, “Take me and my mother for two Gods besides the Lord?” He shall answer, Praise be to thee! It is not for me to say that which I ought not (Q. 5:116).

Muir cites these two verses of the Qur’an very early in his biography. For him they indicate a relationship and interaction between Muhammad and Christians that began during Muhammad’s youth. More importantly, they indicate the impact of Christians on the young Muhammad, as well as Christianity on Islam.

To demonstrate his reading of the two verses, Muir refers to Mecca and the surrounding region’s milieu in which the young Muhammad lived. He also refers to the bloody feuds between the Quraysh and Hawāzin tribes between 580 and 590 C.E. when Muhammad was no older than twenty – probably closer to fifteen (and thus impressionable teenager). Although the young Muhammad, loyal to his family, assisted his tribe and participated against the Hawāzin, the war disturbed him. Muhammad was given to reflection, pondering and life in general. It appears therefore that the young Muhammad particularly appreciated the annual

112 The translation of the verses of the Qur’an in this study is taken directly from Muir’s biography of Muhammad. From my assessment of Asad, Fakhry and Daryābadī’s translation of the Qur’an, it seems Muir’s version is quite close to the Arabic and comparable works.

77 fair at Ukaz, which ran simultaneously with the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, with its contests of eloquence and poetry readings. Ukaz was one of the markets of Arabia. As Wael Hallaq says, “The markets of Arabia had a religious function as well. In fact, it may well have been these markets began as religious festivals, acquiring a commercial dimension with the passage of time” (2005:13).

At these fairs Muhammad listened to great masters in the art of poetry and rhetoric, which stirred his mind and imagination. It was also at these fairs, according to Muir, that he was exposed to the kaleidoscope of social and cultural influences. He listened to people such as Koss, the Bishop of Najrān,113 and Nestorian Christian and Jewish scholars who both preached a purer creed of Christianity and Judaism than that of idolatrous Mecca (1923:16). Thus, at Ukaz, there were Jews from Yathrib (Medina) and Khaybar and Christians from Southern Arabia, Yemen in particular (Hallaq, 2005:13).

Muhammad, eager to learn, listened to Jewish and Christian scholars articulating their faiths and scriptural worldviews. To Muir, then, the religious activities of these Jewish, but in particular Christian scholars, at the Ukaz fairs exercised a deep influence on the young Muhammad (1923:16), and Muir claims that Muhammad’s ideas in the Qur’an came from his early mixing with these Christian scholars.

However, according to Muir, Muhammad had a limited exposure to Christianity, resulting in an inadequate understanding of Christianity, which – again according to Muir – is reflected in the Qur’an’s rejection and rebuttal of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.

Nevertheless, for Muir, Muhammad’s interest in Biblical stories probably started as early as twelve years old during his travels to Syria with his uncle Abū Tālib ibn `Abd al-Muṭṭalib (d. 619) (1923:11). However, Muir rejects the story of Muhammad’s meeting with the monk, Bahīrā mentioned in Ibn Ishāq’s Sīra and other primary and secondary Muslim sources114 and

113 The existence of a Christian community in Najrān is attested by several historical sources of the Arabian Peninsula, where its origin is estimated in the fifth century C.E. or perhaps a century earlier. According to the Arab Muslim historian Ibn Ishāq, Najrān was the first place where Christianity took root in South Arabia (Ibn Ishāq, 1990:14). 114 Ibn Ishāq (1990:79); Muhammad Husayn Haykal (1976:4); Lings (1983:29); Barnaby Rogerson (2003:62-3) and many others mentions this story of Bahīrā. Haykal states that the monk recognised in Muhammad the signs of prophethood as told in Christian books (1976:54). 78 as claimed by most Muslims. Rather, Muir refers to Nestorius115 as the monk whom Muhammad met during one of his travels to Syria (1923:21). He also asserts that Muhammad met Syrian Christians during his travels to Syria and seized every opportunity to inquire about their practices and tenets (1923:21).

For Muir, Qur’an 5:82 illustrates the kindness and hospitality that the Syrian Christians displayed toward Muhammad. Their reception and treatment of the young Muhammad had such a positive impact on him that he reflected it in his book, i.e., the Qur’an, speaking “of them with respect, and sometimes with praise.” (1923:21). However, Muhammad had no sympathy for Christianity’s doctrine. Muir qualifies this last statement saying,

Lamentable, indeed, is the reflection that so small a portion of the fair form of Christianity was disclosed by the ecclesiastics and monks of Syria to the earnest inquirer; and that little, how altered and distorted! Instead of the simple majesty of the gospel, – as a revelation of God reconciling mankind to himself through his Son, – the sacred dogma of the Trinity was forced upon the traveller with the misleading and offensive zeal of Eutychian and Jacobite partisanship, and the worship of Mary exhibited in so gross a form as to leave the impression upon the mind of Mohammad that she was held to be a goddess, if not the third Person and consort of the Deity. It must surely have been such blasphemous extravagances that Mohammad was repelled from the true doctrine of Jesus as the ‘SON OF GOD,’ and led to regard him only as ‘Jesus, son of Mary,’ the sole title by which he is spoken of in the Kor’an. We may well mourn that the misnamed Catholicism of the Empire thus grievously misled the master mind of the age, and through him eventually so great a part of the eastern world (1923:21-22).

Muir ascribes this rejection of the Trinity by Muhammad to his learning from what he regards as the heretical Nestorian sect. Muir’s essentialism of other Christian sects is a problem that existed within the unity of the old Catholic Church. It is obvious that Muir lacked a critical evaluation of the early history of Christianity and provides an inadequate account of the unity of Christ as reminiscent of Nestorianism, which Muir regarded as a heretical sect of

115 Nestorius was Archbishop (d. 450) of Constantinople (428-431 C.E.). His teachings included a rejection of the long-used title of Theotokos (“Mother of God”) for the Virgin Mary, and were understood by many to imply that he did not believe that Christ was truly God (Kelly, 2013). However, Nestorius actually was concerned that the “Theotokos” cult was dangerously close to venerating Mary as a goddess (Bethune-Baker, 1998:58). Nestorius and his teachings were eventually condemned as heretical at the First Council of Ephesus in 431 C.E. and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 C.E., leading to the Nestorian schism in which churches supporting Nestorius broke with the rest of the Christian Church (Elliot, 1842:113). Afterward, many of Nestorius’ supporters relocated to Sassanid Persia, where they affiliated with the local Christian community, known as the Church of the East. Over the next decades, the Church of the East became increasingly Nestorian in its doctrine, leading it to be known alternately as the Nestorian Church or the Church of the East, which is part of the Syriac tradition of Eastern Christianity (Kelly, 2013). 79

Christianity (Keefe, 1971:255). According to Cynthia Stewart, a key theological debate in the early Church separated the true God and Jesus from the Christ who dwelt within him. In other words, these early Christians “continued in the Jewish tradition and usually saw Jesus” as teacher, prophet or angel but not divine in the same way as God the Father (2008:69). This issue came to a head at the First Council of Nicaea convened in 325 C.E. and the main discussion was the Christological issue – the nature of the son of God and his relationship to God the Father.116 The controversy was only settled because Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus (d. 337), the Roman Emperor, threatened to depose those who opposed. The few who stood their ground were exiled (Stewart, 2008: 73).

It is evident that Muhammad was exposed to the Church of the East, also known as the Nestorian Church, which is a Church within the Syriac tradition of Eastern Christianity. For Muir, the Nestorians were an heretical sect117 and thus Muhammad’s erroneous and distorted understanding of the Christian doctrine resulted from the “blasphemous extravagances” of Eutychian and Jacobite Christians. More importantly, for Muir, was that it seemed that Muhammad was susceptible to being easily misled. Had Muhammad, been exposed to the putatively pure Christian “rites and doctrines, and seen more of its reforming and regenerating influences”, he would probably have accepted the faith of Jesus rather than developed his own perceptions and ideas that are now the essence of Islam (1923:21).

In this context, Muir refers to other figures in the Arabian Peninsula who sought the religion of Abraham and expected the coming of a Prophet. Among these, he says, were Waraqa ibn Nawfal (d. 614), Ùthman ibn Huwairith (d. unknown), Ùbayd Allah ibn Jahsh (d. 627) and Zayd ibn Àmr (d. 605), (1923:36). However, he rejects the view that they expected a Prophet to come from amongst the Arabs. If there were such notions, they could only be their “fond imaginations, and the manifest tendency to invent anticipatory legends” (1923:36).

Here ideology is clearly at work in Muir’s reading of Qur’an 5:82 in the form of his evangelical Christian bias.118 He displays his prejudice not only against the Qur’an, i.e.,

116 Charles Elliott examines this subject extensively in volume two of his work Delineation of Roman Catholicism: Drawn from the Authentic and Acknowledged Standards of the Church of Rome. 117 Cf., note 105. 118 Muir displays the ideological bias of his faith rather than allowing the Qur’an to speak for itself. In the words of Robbins, “ideology does just concern people; it concerns the discourse of people. The 80

Muhammad’s religion, but even against other Christians not in conformity with Scottish Protestant Evangelism. Hallaq has shown that this prejudiced view of Islam and Muhammad from the perspective of Christian theology and Western colonialist discourse is not uncommon among many Orientalists (2011:419). Hence, the Orientalists “privileged the formative and modern periods where two temporal locations where Europe, with its Greco- Roman-Judaic heritage, could instruct Islam and lend it a hand, i.e., civilise it” (Hallaq, 200:418).

Muir’s reconstruction of Muhammad’s youth from this verse thus shows either his lack of knowledge of developments of this epoch or his distortion of it. In other words, here he demonstrates either ignorance and/or a negation of the history of the Near East and changes that had begun at least a century before the birth of Muhammad (Donner, 2010:1-4). There is a clear ideological trajectory at work here in Muir’s text.

Fred Donner’s work presents a different picture from Muir of the milieu in the Near East during which Muhammad was born and lived. He lived in a period of what the scholars called “‘late antiquity’ – the period from roughly the third to the seventh or eighth centuries C.E. – during which the ‘classical’ cultures of the Greco-Roman and Iranian world underwent gradual transformation” (Donner, 2010:1) through the pursuit of literature and arts and most people, gave up “their former pagan cults for Christianity” (ibid., 3). By the sixth century, “Arabia’s political and social fragmentation was matched by its religious diversity” (ibid., 29) “in the face of gradual spread of monotheism” (ibid., 30).

Furthermore, Wael Hallaq argues that Mecca a commercial and religious centre was connected to every major tribe and locale in the Peninsula and also with the Near East. These commercial relations placed it in indirect contact with the Sasanian culture, “the Orient, India and Central Asia”, and it also “brought to Mecca elements of Roman and Byzantine cultures” because of “its close contact with Abyssinia” and “Yemen”, which “mediated its familiarity with aspects of the Indian culture” (2005:15). “Meccan society was unusual in Arabia” as “foreign merchants, African slaves, singing female slaves, wayfarers, the poor and the downtrodden found their way to the city” (ibid.)

term ‘ideology’ represents the points where power impacts upon certain utterances and inscribes itself tacitly within them” (1996:110). 81

Donner and Hallaq thus demonstrate the milieu of the setting before the appearance of Muhammad as well as during his life, showing that a “much wider cultural world embraced the lands of the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean” (Donner, 2010:3). Indeed, Muhammad lived in a period during which tremendous changes took place in the Near East. By the sixth century C.E. the region “was receding in the face of a gradual change to monotheism” (Donner, 2010:30). “Arabia’s political and social fragmentation was matched by its religious diversity on the eve of Muhammad’s Islam” (Donner, 2010:29). It was in this setting of “modest commercial activity and diverse religious ideas coming from both Arabian paganism and from the monotheistic traditions of the wider Near East that Muhammad was born and raised” (Donner, 2010:38).

Thus, contrary to Muir, Donner shows a lively tradition of active prophecy in the religious life of Arabia in the sixth century (2010:31). Jews and many Christians may have regarded prophecy119 to be a thing of the past; however, it continued in Arabia among Peninsula Arabs. Muir ignores the historical context in which questions of prophethood and other monotheistic influences were discussed and conducted during the sixth and seventh centuries C.E. in Arabia. Donner’s work clearly shows why the people of Arabia would accept Muhammad’s claim to be a prophet (2010:31).

Furthermore, Hallaq’s reference to Ukaz and other markets offers a different, but more detailed account of the markets and religious life in the Arabian Peninsula providing a viable alternative to Muir’s seemingly arbitrary conclusions. Indeed, Muir does not give sufficient attention to the complete activities of the markets including Ukaz. For him, the focus was purely the influence of Christian and Jewish scholars on Muhammad (1923:16) showing that Muir was not correct about Muhammad’s relationship with the Nestorian Christians. Muir’s reading is an ideological, biased one. His ignoring the developments in the Near East during the sixth century – in fact a whole century before the birth of Muhammad – is instructive.

119 Prophethood involves a process in which one or more messages are allegedly communicated to a prophet by a god or spirit and often are then communicated to other people. In religion, a prophet is an individual who has claimed to have been contacted by the supernatural or the divine, and to speak for them, serving as an intermediary with humanity, delivering this newfound knowledge from the supernatural entity to other people. Prophethood is not unknown to monotheistic religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In Islam, God created humankind to worship Him and lead a virtuous life based on His teachings and guidance. Thus, God has chosen for every nation at least one prophet to convey His message to people (Khan, 2000:118). 82

Muhammad may well have learned from various social and culturally diverse Christian groups, not only the Nestorians.

As Hallaq mentions, The Bedouin Arabs were certainly in close contact with each other throughout the territory that they inhabited and roamed, from Syria to Iraq, and from Najd to the Hejaz, Hadramawt and the Yemen. Concomitant with the trade routes there also existed large fairs and markets which provided excellent opportunities for the recital of poetry and for orations and tales, in addition to the exchange of goods (2005:12).

What is shown are the various connections Bedouin Arabs had with an “international” diversity that participated at markets in the Arabian Peninsula. In short, Muir’s ideological and theological bias comes at the expense of objective reporting and methodological rigour. His background, context and Christian evangelism dominated his discourse on the life of Muhammad (Robbins, 1996:96).

Furthermore, Muir’s reconstruction of Muhammad’s youth shows an Orientalist trajectory at work. This ideological position raises questions around Muir’s knowledge of Muhammad’s milieu. If he had examined the background of the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean and Arabia’s political and social fragmentation on the eve of Islam, his narrative and commentary of the two passages above would not have been framed according to Christian beliefs but rather could have contained a careful and balanced observation of Muhammad’s social and cultural location, which indeed were showing the early signs of the coming of a Prophet to the Arabs as well as the religious idea of monotheism120 (Donner, 2010: 30-31). As Wael Hallaq puts it, much of Orientalism (Western Islamic Studies)121 shows a reductionist and even condescending attitude vis-à-vis Islam, its history, Prophet and its book, the Qur’an (2011:419).

That the textual foundations as well as the originator of this religion [Islam] were studied, and indeed questioned, in terms or originality and disorderly need hardly be stressed, The Prophet’s originality was often doubted, and the Qur’an was seen

120 Ibn Ishāq in his biography of Muhammad mentions that Jewish rabbis, Christian monks and Arab soothsayers (those supposedly able to foresee the future) spoke about the coming of an apostle of God before Muhammad took up his mission as a Prophet of God (1990:90). 121 Hallaq is much more forthright in his 2002 article, The Quest for Origins and Doctrines? Islamic Legal Studies as Colonialist Discourse, wherein he clearly sees Western studies of Islamic law as being in the service of colonial rule and European cultural imperialism. 83

as no more than a poor reproduction and disorderly imitation of earlier monotheistic scriptures 122 (1992:172).

For Hallaq, Muslim sources are predominantly perceived in Orientalist discourse as borrowings from Judaism and Christianity and therefore the debt of Islam to these religions was not deemed as a hypothesis to be proved or disproved, but rather as an established fact to be taken for granted (2005:20). He asserts that “historically, there can be no doubt that Judaism and Christianity constituted the religious and historical background to Islam” (2005:20-21).

Muhammad Asad’s translation cum exegesis of the Qur’an (d. 1992), The Message of the Qur’an (1980), is helpful in its contrast to Muir’s reading of Qur’an 5:82, although it must be noted that Asad’s work is a translation of the Qur’an while Muir’s is a biography of the Prophet. Nevertheless, for Asad the significance of the verse is its concern with the attitudes of Jews, Arab polytheists and Christian priests and monk’s vis-à-vis the community of believers.

The verse shows the humility of the Christian priests and monks as opposed to the attitude of the Jews arising out of their claim of being the only recipients of God’s revelation and His chosen people. In other words, the verse’s purport is not theology or beliefs in the first place, but social character. As Asad points out here is that Christian priests and monks understand that “humility is the essence of all true faith” (1980:1960). They also “do not believe, as do the Jews, that revelation is God’s exclusive gift to the children of Israel (ibid.) For Asad, “it is noteworthy that the Qur’an does not in this context include the Christians among ‘those who are bent on ascribing divinity to aught beside God’” […] “for although, by their deification of Jesus, they are guilty of the sin of shirk (‘the ascribing of divinity to anyone or anything besides God’)” (ibid.). He further mentions that although the Christians “worship a plurality of deities in as much as, theoretically, their theology postulates belief in the One God, who is conceived as manifesting Himself in a trinity of aspects, or ‘persons’, of whom Jesus is supposed to be one” (ibid.). In other words, Asad postulates that however unacceptable “this doctrine may be to the teachings of Qur’an, their shirk is not based on conscious intent but

122 Hallaq refers to Islamic law in particular and the work of Joseph Schacht and Patricia Crone. He mentions that Schacht treated the first Islamic century as a state of void even though during the “Umayyad administrative practices were supposed to be sufficient explanation of what happened in history” (2002:16). 84

rather emerges from their ‘overstepping the bounds of truth’ in their veneration of Jesus” (ibid.).

Furthermore, Asad cites other verses of the Qur’an that would appear to give greater clarity to this verse adopting an inner textual reading as his hermeneutical approach.123 Thus, he refers to Q. 4:171; 5:77 and 6:23 stating that raising Jesus to the rank of divinity implies ascribing of divinity to other than God (1980:136, 159, 174). Asad also uses intertextual support,124 depending on other scholars and sources to gain further insight into the meaning and form of the verse being read.125 Thus, contrary to Asad, Muir misses the broader conversation the verse has with Jews, the Arab polytheists and Christians, and their attitudes of hostility, arrogance or humility towards the believers.

4.2.2 Muhammad’s Confusion and Mental state 4.2.2.1 Qur’an: Sūrahs 103, 100

These are four complete sūrahs all in the thirtieth juz (part) of the Qur’an. Although Muir discusses other sūrahs of the Qur’an as well, this study looks only at these four chapters.126 For Muir, Q. 103, 100 and 1 are windows into Muhammad’s mind and psychological state prior to his assumption of the prophetic mission at the age of forty. He believes that they represent Muhammad’s reveries in poetry that he expressed several years before assuming the mission of prophethood, writing that “[…] and he would give vent to his agitation in wild rhapsodical language […] struggling after truth” (1923:38). Muir arranged Q. 103, 100, 1 and 96:1-5 as intertextual reveries of Muhammad’s mental state that eventually entered the inner textual world of the Qur’an.

Muir describes this period of Muhammad’s life when he struggled with the light and darkness of his soul, which gradually gave way to a definite shape, as “God, the sole Creator, Ruler and Judge of men and angels; the hopeless wretchedness of his people sunk in heathenism

123 According to Robbins, “the inner texture of a text resides in features in the language of the text itself” (1996:7). 124 Primarily Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s (d. 1209) work Al-Tafsir al-Kabir (The Large Commentary) (1980:160, 174). 125 According to Robbins, “the intertexture is a text’s representation of, reference to, and uses of phenomena in the ‘world’ outside the text being interpreted” (1996:40). 126 These four sūrahs are chosen as they summarise the argument Muir is trying to make that they were Muhammad’s incoherent rhapsodies and a prayer and appeal to a “great Being” that occurred before the first revelation of Sūrah al-`Alaq (1923, 37-44). 85

and idolatry; heaven and hell; the resurrection, judgment, and recompense of good and evil in the world to come” (1923:39). For Muir, this conflict waging within Muhammad gave rise to “fragments of wild, impassioned poetry” (ibid.) and sometimes soliloquies that reflected upon the state of humankind’s condition and filled with images of terror “intended for the admonition of his fellow citizen”. These fears oppressed and distressed Muhammad, hence his fleeing to his “Maker”, seeking comfort (ibid.).

Muir treats Q. 103, 100 and 1 together, followed by a few others sūrahs,127 before he comes to Q. 96.

Q. 103

By the declining day I swear! Verily, man is in the way of ruin; Excepting such as possess Faith, And do the things which are right, And stir up one another to truth and steadfastness

Q. 100

By the rushing panting steed! Striking the fire with flashing hoof! That scour the land at early morn! And, darken it with dust, Cleave thereby the Enemy! Verily, man is to his Lord ungrateful; And he himself is witness of it. Verily he is keen after his worldly good. Ah! witteth he not that when what is in the graves shall be brought fourth, And that which is in men's breast laid bare; Verily in this day shall be the Lord informed about them

The two Sūrahs with their rhapsodical language reinforced Muir’s belief that they were incoherent oaths showing Muhammad’s inward struggling after truth. It was Muhammad’s troubled mind that produced Q. 103 and 100, where he gave vent to his agitation (1923:38).

Muir then proceeds to the opening sūrah of the Qur’an, Q.1, (Al-Fatiḥah).

4.2.3 Muhammad Cries for Release from Mental Agitation 4.2.3.1 Qur’an:1, Sūrah al-Fātihah

Q. 1

127 Q. 89, 90, 93, 94, 95, 101, 104, 105, 106, and 110. 86

Praise be to God, the Lord of creation, The most merciful, the most compassionate! Ruler of the day of Reckoning! Thee we worship, and Thee we invoke for help. Lead us in the straight path; The path of those upon whom Thou hast been gracious, Not of those against whom thy wrath is kindled, or that walk in error.

For Muir, Al-Fātihah is Muhammad’s appeal and prayer to the “great Being” for relief from his distress and anxiety, and it reflects his state of mind. Although a person prays to God for many reasons, for Muir, Muhammad seems to have prayed only for relief from his anxiety. Muhammad’s prayers to God were articulated in intense words of incoherent raptures, albeit couched with what Muir describes as a “rare force and beauty” that were eventually included in the Qur’an. Muhammad probably “gave vent to reveries in poetry for several years before he assumed the office of a divine teacher” (Muir, 1923:42). He describes the verses of the Fātihah as “petitions”, i.e., Muhammad’s prayers at that early period before the commencement of Muhammad’s claimed divine mission (Muir, 1923:38).

Muir then connects what he regards as an agitated state of Muhammad’s mind and the latter’s claim of the “One great Being” (1923:xcviii) calling him to Prophethood from his reading of Sūrah al-`Alaq.

4.2.4 Muhammad’s Claim to Prophethood – Announced to a Selected Few 4.2.4.1 Qur’an: Sūrah al-`Alaq

“Muhammad was now approaching the age of forty” and frequently sought relief in the solitude of a cave on mount Hirā near the outskirts of Mecca (1923:37). He was always pensive and troubled by the debased condition of his people (Muir, 1923:37). Moreover, “the dim and imperfect shadows of Judaism and Christianity excited doubts without satisfying them; and his soul was perplexed with uncertainty as to what was the true religion”(1923:37) However, instead of appeasing his anxiety, the solitude magnified it into a sterner shape that agitated his soul (Muir, 1923:37). According to Muir, Muhammad was waiting for a Divine commission, which would make his difficulties vanish (1923:46). It was in this context, and when Muhammad “was seated or wandering amidst the peaks of Hirā” giving “vent to his agitation and wild rhapsodical language”, “when suddenly an apparition rose before him”

(ibid.). “The heavenly Visitant [The angel Gabriel] stood clear and close beside him in a vision” (Muir, 1923:46). “Thus was Muhammad led to give forth his message”, the first five āyāt of Sūrah al-`Alaq “as proceeding direct from the Almighty” (1923:47).

Hence, Sūrah al-`Alaq, the “official” inception of Muhammad’s assumption of the divine office of prophethood, is the outcome of a troubled mind that had now found its purpose.

RECITE in the name of the Lord who created,- Created Man from nought but congealed blood;- RECITE! For thy Lord is beneficent. It is He who hath taught (to write) with the pen;- Hath taught man that which he knoweth not. . .

Hast thou not seen him that holdeth back The Servant of God when he prayeth? What thinkest thou? Had he listened to right direction, And commanded unto piety? Dost thou not see that he hath rejected the Truth and turned his back? What! Doth he not know that God seeth? Nay, verily, if he forbear not, WE shall drag him by the forelock,- The lying, sinful forelock! Then let him call his company of friends, and WE shall call the guards of Hell; Nay! submit not unto him; but worship, and draw nigh unto the Lord.

According to Muir, it was after a period of doubt and hesitancy that Muhammad himself referred to these five āyāt of Sūrah al-`Alaq as the starting point of his inspiration (1923:47). Thus, begins Islam and this chapter explains Muhammad’s love of solitude. To demonstrate his point, Muir uses expressions such as “mingled”, “supernatural inspiration” and “undivided possession of his soul”, which highlight the event and describes Muhammad’s motives and desires (1923:47).

Thus, according to Muir, the Qur’an was not from God (Muir, 1923:47), but the result of Muhammad’s confused state of mind and belief (or self-deception) in his own imagination that he was receiving revelation from God. Muhammad appropriated the tenets of Judaism and Christianity and “devised a machinery” that “gradually shaped the broken and disconnected masses of the Arab race into a body politic endowed with life and vigour” forming the basis of the new faith. Muir writes:

Such a process is that of the workman shaping his material. It is not that of the material shaping its own form, much less (as some would hold) moulding the workman himself. It was Mohammad that formed Islam; it was not Islam, or any pre-existing Muslim spirit, that moulded Mohammad (1923:xcviii).

It is evident that Muir interpreted these qur’anic verses informed by his own social and cultural location. Furthermore, by Muir lending his scholarly credential, writing his Life of Mahomet in a sense was a missionary invitation to Muslims and his conclusion about Muhammad shows his ideological lens.

A juxtaposition of Muir’s reading with both pre-modern Muslim works and the works of modern Western scholars on Muhammad’s life based on these qur’anic sūrahs is in order. We begin with the Sīra of Ibn Ishāq through the recension of Ibn Hishām, the earliest surviving written biography of the Prophet. The discrepancy between the approach and conclusions of this early Muslim biography of the Prophet and Muir’s is clear. We refer to Ibn Hishām’s work, as Muir was well acquainted with it and engaged with it (superficially in the view of this study). However, Muir preferred Al-Wāqidī’s account in this case to that of Ibn Hishām, i.e., Ibn Ishāq.

Ibn Ishāq links Q. 96 and several other qur’anic āyāt. He points to the context of the beginning of Muhammad’s mission and the revelation of Q. 96. Thus, Ibn Ishāq points to Q. 34:27[28]128 and 3:75 [81].

As an evangelist to all men (Q. 34:28).

When God made a covenant with the prophets (He said) this is the scripture and wisdom which I have given you, afterwards an apostle will come confirming what you know that you may believe in him and help him (Q. 3:81).

The two verses illustrate that God entered into a covenant with all previous Prophets and gave them scriptures that he was now confirming with Muhammad, in order to testify to His truth, believe in Him and transmit this message to everyone that believed in the earlier monotheistic religions such as Judaism and Christianity (Ibn Ishāq, 1990:104-105). Ibn Ishāq goes on to support his reading with the views of Al-Zuhrī and `Urwah, earlier biographers of the Prophet’s life (their works are not extant but appear in the works of pioneering biographies), and several hadith that explain the background to the revelation of Q. 96 (1990:105).

128 Alfred Guillaume in his translation of Ibn Hishām’s recension of Ibn Ishāq’s The Life of Muhammad, numbers some of the verses incorrectly (Guillaume, 1990:104). Thus, although he refers to verse 34:27, the correct number is 34:28; likewise, the verse number 3:75 should be 3:81. 89

Muslim scholars supported their accounts of Muhammad with the hermeneutical tool of asbāb al-nuzūl (occasion of revelation)129 to demonstrate the historicity of an event. Muir pays no attention to this important tool around the historicity of qur’anic verses. In this way, it appears that Muir traduces history by choosing to be abstract, which again reflects a particular ideological and theological approach. For example, Muir exhibits an eisegetical interpretation of the Qur’an. Robbins shows that when interpreting a text, an interpreter does not have significant insight of the text, hence Muir analyses the Qur’an from his own presupposition, dispositions and values (1996:51), which and is in contrast to Muslim traditional scholars who approached the text to write salvation history.

Ibn Ishāq further states that Muhammad hated with a passion “ecstatic” poets (1990:106). Ibn Ishāq also quotes the Bible, mentioning a passage in John, 15:23, which states “But I [God] will send you an Advocate [comforter] or [paraclete] […]. According to Ibn Ishāq, the word paraclete in Greek means Muhammad (1990:104).

The Qur’an also deals with many aspects of prayer besides Q. 1. Thus, by way of example Asad cites Q. 14:35 (1980:378), a prayer of the Prophet Abraham:

And [remember the] when Abraham spoke [thus]: O my Sustainer! Make this land secure, and preserve me and my children from ever worshipping idols – for, verily, O my Sustainer, these [false objects of worship] have led many astray

Q. 71:26, the prayer of Noah, is similar:

And Noah Prayed: O my Sutainer1 Leave not on earth any of those who deny the truth: for, behold, if Thou dost leave them, they will [always, try to] lead astray those who worship Thee, and will give birth to nothing but wickedness and stubborn ingratitude

The readings of other modern Western readings of Muhammad’s life and mission make for interesting and challenging conversations with Muir’s findings. For example, Watt (d. 2006) in his Muhammad at Mecca (1953) argues “that Muhammad’s experience as a Prophet began with ‘true visions’” (1953:42) and are “quite distinct from dreams” (ibid.). For him, there are plausible grounds for Muhammad’s prophetic mission beginning with “true visions”. He explains that from the standpoint of Muhammad’s religious development, he very early on

129 Cf., note 11. 90

practiced some sort of devotional practice. “In this frame of mind”, Muhammad “deliberately sought solitude to reflect on Divine things and to perform some acts of worship, perhaps expiation for sins” (1953:44). Thus for Watt, Muhammad’s claim that he received a vision calling him to prophethood was not strange or conspicuous because of his devotional practice for the favour of God (ibid.). More importantly, Watt emphasises Muhammad’s awareness and clarity of mind (as opposed to Muir’s depiction of agony and confusion), understanding from an early age the social and religious problems of Meccan society (1953:44). To put it differently, Watt pursued a tangible and concrete approach, i.e., the historical and social in his reading of Muhammad. Muir, on the other hand, appears to be comfortable with a positing based not on history, but an abstract framework compromising jaundiced evangelical lenses through which he read the life of Muhammad as that of a lost, agonising soul.

According to Asad, Q. 103 was revealed shortly after Q. 94 and was followed immediately by Q. 100 (1980:970-74). He makes a case for the traditional Muslim account that the first five āyāt of Q. 96 mark the very beginning of the Qur’an. To support his argument, he cites hadith from the collection of Bukhārī that support the Muslim view about the event of the first revelation to Muhammad (1980:963). He mentions that “almost identical versions of this Tradition are found in two other places in [the Sahih of] Bukhārī” “as well as in” other the collections of “Muslim, Nisā’ī and Tirmidhī” (1980:963).

For Muir, although Q. 96 marks the official announcement of Muhammad’s mission as a Prophet, it is an event that shows Muhammad’s overcoming of his anxiety, for which he pleaded to God as shown in Q. 100, 103, and 1. Thus for Muir, Chapter 96 announces Muhammad’s escape from a state of a troubled mind exposed by Q. 103, 100 and 1.130

Muir’s reading of Q. 103, 100 and 1 resembles a psycho-analytical approach. However, his approach it is not supported by psycho analysis, which was not yet a discipline or hermeneutical tool by which to read of sacred text131 (Jonte-Pace, 2009:308). Muir is therefore not convincing in his linking of Muhammad’s concern with the debased condition

130 Robbins explains that the reconfiguring of a text is to recount a situation in a manner that produces a reversal of an event or make it new to produce a different dynamic and emotions (1996:48). 131 D. Jonte-Pace mentions that psychoanalytic and philosophical studies of religion and interpreting these dynamics have entered new spaces on speaking of the subject. For her, since modern Europeans theorising about religion took shape in the eighteen and nineteen centuries, shifts in the object of enquiry have now seen to have occurred (2009:308). 91 of his people to Muhammad’s alleged anxiety (1923:37). Robbins mentions various concepts such as “conversionist”, “revolutionist”, “introversionist”, “reformist” and other perspectives to discuss specific social and cultural ways of talking about the world, which give meaning, values, traditions convictions, and beliefs to action of people (1996:72). Muir used the Qur’an with a substantive evangelical religious “colouring”, which contained his specific ideological manner of understanding and talking about Muhammad’s world. In this sense, he created a discourse that can be described as “revolutionary” because he wrote his biography of Muhammad by utilising the Qur’an to overturn Muhammad’s world (Robbins, 1996:72-73).

4.2.5 Muhammad Making the Mission Public

Q. 74

Oh thou that art covered! Arise and preach! And magnify thy Lord. Purify thy garments, and depart from all uncleanness. Leave ME and him whom I have created alone; On whom I have bestowed abundant riches, And sons dwelling before him; And disposed his affairs prosperously;-- Yet he desireth that I should add thereto. Nay! Because he is to OUR Signs an adversary, I will afflict him with fierce calamity; For he imagined and devised mischief in his heart, May he be damned! how he devised! Again may he be damned! how he devised! Then he looked, and frowned and scowled; Then he turned his back and looked contemptuously:— And he said, 'Verily, this is nought but Magic to be wrought; Verily, this is nothing but the speech of a mere mortal? Now, will I cast him into Hell-fire. And what shall cause thee to know what hell-fire is? It leaveth not, neither doth it suffer to escape, Candescent on the skin.

Q. 93

Thy Lord hath not removed from thee, neither is he displeased.

An intermission of revelation that lasted between six months and three years reportedly followed the revelation of the first five āyāt of Q. 96. Muir seizes upon this intermission to

again argue for Muhammad’s troubled mental and physical constitution and is indicative that he may have doubted the reality of his heavenly mission (1923:51).132

Martin Lings discusses the event of the first revelation from a narration of Muhammad mentioned in Bukhārī, writing instead that the Prophet was shaken by his experience (1983:43-44). Asad also mentions that after the first revelation to Muhammad there was an intermission “during which he received no revelation at all” (1980:906). “It was a time of the deepest distress for the Prophet” and this “absence of revelation almost led him to believe that his earlier experience in the cave was an illusion”. From the views of Lings and Asad it can assumed that it was natural for Muhammad to feel uncertainty and distress, especially after experiencing an event such as the first revelation after years of solitude and reflection in a cave on mount Hirā where hardly anything happened.

Here Muir cites Q. 74 and 93 of the Qur’an to show the continuation of a troubled Muhammad even after Q. 96. His reading of the “deliverance” of the two sūrahs, “containing assurances of mercy and command to preach” after the interval, is instructive. During this intermission, Muhammad remained an agitated soul and received mercy (Q. 93) to console him. Q. 74, just as the first five verses of Q. 96, provides Muhammad with a means of escape. The difference, however, is that Q. 74 allows him to go public unlike Q. 96, which merely announces the commencing of the mission as a Prophet to himself, his wife and a selected few. Muhammad used the hiatus period to create a message that would provide a suitable vehicle for his mission. In other words, going public with his mission granted Muhammad relief from an anxious state of mind that did not stop with the commencement of his self- declared prophetic mission. For Muir, Muhammad was a daydreamer with time on his hands who fashioned the Qur’an from frenzied poetry and stories borrowed from Judaism and Christianity, distorted to fit his ambition and the context (1923:78). If anything, it was indicative of Muhammad’s political acumen. Here, Muir rejects the traditional Muslim account that Q. 74 was the first call to preach.

132 This view is also mentioned by many Muslim scholars such as Martin Lings, Asad and others that it was difficult time for Muhammad and he was shaken by the event of the first revelation and the during a period that he received no revelation he was deeply distressed (Al-Bukhārī, and Asad, 1980:906). The hadith that refers to the effects of the first revelation on the Prophet is mentioned in Shahih Al-Bukhārī, 1980: Volume 1, Book 1, Number 3:2-3. 93

The tradition that this passage was the first call to preach, appears erroneous. It is not only contained in a much later Sura[h], but itself bears evidence of persecution, and of considerable progress. It was probably revealed while the Prophet with his relatives was shut up in the Quarter of Abu Talib (Muir, 1923:61).

To substantiate his reading, Muir relies on the account of traditional Muslim sources that state that Muhammad’s wife, Khadīja bint Khuwaylid (d. 620), witnessed his mental throes (1923:49).

Mohammad at this period could not have been the object of much observation from without. Khadija was almost the only witness of his earliest mental throes. 'Ali was but a boy; and it is doubtful how far Zeid [sic] and Abu Bekr [sic] were yet on sufficiently close and intimate terms with him to be made the confidants of his most secret thoughts (Muir,1923:49).

Citing Khadija in this case shows Muir’s methodology of selection and elimination. On the one hand, he rejects the traditional Muslim account of Q. 74, yet accepts the traditional Muslim account of Khadija’s description of Muhammad’s experience. Thus, Muir accepts whatever buttresses his reading and rejects whatever appears to go against his reading of Muhammad. Hence, when the traditional Muslim position is read alongside Muir’s the ideological texture of his reading and the sort of ideological/evangelical interest that he was promoting comes to the fore. Relevant here is Robbins’ discussion of power ideology in a text. He mentions that it is important to identify the means that an interpreter rationalises to gain or maintain power over other people. Hence, in his understanding, the mode that Muir is using will give a particular ideological texture to his discourse, which is intended to achieve a purpose to align the reader to his intellectual idea and estrange the person from reading his own (Robbins, 1996: 113-114).

However, the early pre-modern Muslim biographical works and exegetical literature and modern Muslim works (Haykal, Asad, Lings, Ramadan, etc.) provide a different reading of these verses – one that challenges and even refutes Muir’s reading.

Ibn Ishāq, for instance, relates various incidents during the initial years of Muhammad’s life. He ascribes these to the socio-cultural context of Arab society and the power of the Meccan aristocracy. One example is their alarm at the way in which Muhammad challenged tribal patriarchal authority, thereby disturbing the existing power structure (1990:134). Hence, they tried various means to cajole Muhammad into abandoning his mission. They offered

Muhammad power and leadership in order to preserve the existing unequal power structure. Yet Muhammad was uninterested in financial gain (1990:134). In other words, these developments caused Muhammad much consternation just as it did to reformer Prophets and revolutionaries throughout history; Muhammad’s experience was then no different from that of Jesus. The discrepancy between Ibn Ishāq’s view and Muir’s is clear. For Ibn Ishāq, it was not a simplistic case of Muhammad wanting to convince the Meccan leaders at any cost or for political aspiration.

Thus the early verses of the Qur’an that commanded Muhammad to preach changed his relationship with the people of Mecca. Initially, they had “treated his teachings as a harmless enthusiast” (1923:62). But now that Muhammad was challenging their status and beliefs, he faced their hostility and his followers were subjected to humiliation and torment. Muir suggests that Muhammad was on the back foot and now had to strategise to protect his followers. He now had to consider his social connections to support and aid the spread of the new faith.133 It was in these precarious conditions that Muhammad took possession of the house of one his followers, Al-Arqam, so that they could practice their faith with some safety (Muir, 1923:63). Muhammad’s followers were beginning to experience hostility and acts of violence (1923:63). Under these circumstances, Muir writes that Muhammad may have been anxious to win over the principal leaders of the Quraysh to afford some relief for his followers and mission (Muir, 1923:65) For Muir, Muhammad was acting with impunity as his mission had to be protected at any cost, and he now had to work even harder to convince the leaders of Mecca to accept his faith. Muir portrays Muhammad as entering a field of social relationships as well as political associations, which was natural to the development of his mission.134

It seems that Muir was not aware of the work of `Ali Ibn al-Wāhidī (d. 1075). Had he been familiar with Muslim exegetical tools, he may have developed a more temperate view of

133 Robbins mentions that “social knowledge is commonly held by all persons of a region” and it is obtained “by observing the behavior and public material”, which are accessible through general interaction with people (1926:62). 134 Robbins explains this type social challenge or response “is a sort of constant tug of war, a game of push and shove”. He mentions that “the channels are always public, and publicity of the message guarantees that the receiving individual will react in some way” (1996: 80). He further states that the challenge “is a claim to enter the social space of another” (1996:80). To enter “the social space of another would be to gain some share in that space or to gain a cooperative, mutually beneficial foothold” (1996:80). However, the person entering the space could also be dislodged or dishonoured (Robbins, 1996:82). 95

Muhammad’s life, supported by intertextual interpretations and opinions. According to Al- Wāhidī135 the classical grammarian and Qur’an exegete, the “occasion of revelation” of Q. 74 denotes a conversation between Walīd ibn al-Mughīrah (d. 623) 136 and `Amr ibn Hishām137 (d. 624). Both, despite opposing Muhammad, stated that the Qur’an (after listening to Q. 74 being recited) was not poetry nor was Muhammad a soothsayer, mad or a liar (Al-Wāhidī, 2008:75). This work presents a different picture of the Qur’an and Muhammad to that of Muir’s presentation.

According to Asad, the length of the break (between the revelation of Q. 96 and 74) also cannot be established with certainty. He does, however, suggest the same interval as Muir (1980:906), and he too mentions that this period was a time of deep distress for Muhammad, and “the absence of revelation almost led him to believe that that his earlier experience” with Q. 96 “was an illusion” (1980:906). He further states that it was “due to the moral support of his wife Khadīja” “that he did not entirely lose his courage and hope” (1980:906).

For Asad, the pivotal points of Q. 74 are “the oneness and uniqueness of God, resurrection and ultimate judgement; life after death and the allegorical nature of all descriptions relating to it; mans [humankind’s] weakness and utter dependence on God, his proneness to false pride, greed and selfishness”, purification of the heart and various other ideas (1980:906) These were to be more fully developed in later revelation (ibid.).

4.2.6 Muhammad’s Supposed Political Expediency

Q. 80:1-10 The Prophet frowned and turned aside, Because the blind man came to him. And what shall cause thee to know whether haply he may not be purified? Or whether he might not be admonished, and the admonition profit him? As for the Man that is rich, Him thou receivest graciously; And it is not thy concern that he is not purified.

135 The earliest and the most important work in this genre is undoubtedly Kitāb Asbāb al-Nuzūl (Book of Occasions of Revelation) Al-Wāhidī whose work is not only the first attempt to collect all the material regarding the occasions of revelation in one single volume, but it is also the standard upon which all subsequent works were based. 136 He was the chief of the Banū Makhzūm clan of the Quraysh Tribe. 137 `Amr ibn Hishām, or mostly known as Abū Jahl, was one of the polytheist leader of the Quraysh and known for his hostility against Muhammad and the early Muslims in Mecca. 96

But he that cometh unto thee earnestly inquiring, And trembling anxiously, Him dost thou neglect.

For Muir, the incident referred to in these verses of Q. 80 Al-`Abasa indicates a critical juncture in Muhammad’s mission as a Prophet. It shows Muhammad’s eagerness to win over the political and economic elite of Quraysh (Muir, 1923:65). For Muir, Muhammad was given to political astuteness. Here, Muhammad “was engaged in deep conversation with” an influential chief of Mecca, Al-Walīd, ardently trying to convince him of his message and convert him to the new faith (ibid.). During this conversation, Muhammad was interrupted by the blind `Abd Allah ibn Shurayh (Ibn Umm Maktum) (d. 636), and asked to elucidate certain earlier revealed passages of the Qur’an. Muhammad was seemingly annoyed by this interruption and so he frowned at the blind man and left him because he regarded the conversation with the pagan leaders more important (Muir, 1923:65-66).

Thus, for Muir, Muhammad had a vested interest in wooing the wealthy and powerful of Mecca. He ignored his vulnerable followers when conversing with the elite. His aim was to gain political leverage, so he brushed aside the poor and uninfluential (in this case the blind ibn Umm Maktum). Muhammad was thus a pragmatist driven by his political determination to succeed in his mission and fulfil his aspirations.

Muir believes that the incident exposed and embarrassed Muhammad and as many witnessed the incident, he could not easily ignore it. He realised very well the severe implications of ignoring his followers, hence the imperative of damage control. Muhammad was aware of his negative response to the blind man and demonstrated willingness to confess his fault. He therefore, Muir claims, framed these verses to appease his own mind. A consequence of not rectifying his action could be that now the wrath of the Meccan leaders would fall “upon the converted slaves and strangers, and the weak and poor and lower classes who had no patron or protector” (Muir, 1923:67).

Muhammad thus addressed the embarrassing matter in an admission of error. It came in the form of this chapter, and its opening verses. The “revelation” of this verse shows his political shrewdness; Muhammad’s aim with it was to come across as one who admits his fault and make amends on how he treated the vulnerable. He, therefore, adroitly addressed the embarrassing encounter into a social and ideological advantage. Yet Muhammad’s propensity

97 to admit to his errors, even sincerely, was for Muir essentially a political act, and therefore ultimately an outward show: he could not be seen as someone who entertains the elite and chastises the weak – it would be political suicide.

In this section, Muir replaces the third person personal pronoun “he” with the common (proper) noun “the Prophet”. This is telling. His switch from pronoun to common noun maybe stylistically in order; however, it is also a rhetorical device. It shows Muir’s obsession with identifying Muhammad with rash behaviour, which the latter will rectify soon, well aware of the political implications should he fail to do so. The point is not to dispute that the pronoun most probably refers to Muhammad; however, the concern is with Muir’s ever ideological propensity to paint a negative portrait of Muhammad.

Moreover, Asad and other English translators of the Qur’an such as Majid Fakhry (1997) Abdulhaqq and Aisha Bewley (1999) and ˋAbdul Mājid Daryābadī (2001) insist on the pronoun “he”. Thus Muir creates an impression that Muhammad is being spoken to, or even of. The words in the Qur’an did not directly mention that the person was the prophet Muhammad. Muir’s emphasises on it is in line with his ideological-polemical depicting of Muhammad

Ibn Ishāq’s refers briefly to this event. He does so, however, from the inner texture of the Qur’an (internal context of the Qur’an’s concern), and that is that Muhammad should not have pre-judged Ibn Umm Maktum because the latter wanted to be purified. He puts this verse, i.e., the event, into context with another verse of the Qur’an 13:7 that says that God sent Muhammad to be a warner and a guide. In other words, Ibn Ishāq was emphasising God’s rebuke of Muhammad, lest the message becomes withheld from those seeking it (Ibn Umm Maktum) and that the Prophet should not waste time for the sake of one high-minded aristocrat (the Meccan chief, Al-Walid) who did not want the message (1990:167).

Asad highlights that Q. 80 was “revealed at a very early stage of the Prophet’s mission” (1980:930). The incident of Muhammad with the blind Ibn Umm Maktum is recorded in many well-authenticated prophetic traditions.138 He describes this incident as “what would have been a minor act of discourtesy on the part of ordinary human beings”, but when

138 This hadith is mentioned in Shahih al-Bukhārī, 1980: Volume 6, Book 61, Number 512:480 and Al-Muwatta, 1982: Book 15, Number 15.4.8:102. 98 committed by a Prophet, it assumes “the aspect of a major sin” and therefore “deserving a divine rebuke” (ibid.). Furthermore, for him it illustrated “the objective nature of the Qur’anic revelation” “in conveying God’s reproof” to “the world at large” that Muhammad “does not speak out of his own desire” (1980:930). Furthermore, Daryābadī mentions that “this incident shows the tender and ready perception by Muhammad of the ‘slight’ that he had offered, and the magnanimity with which he could confess his fault” (2001:1078). In other words, Muhammad should be praised for his magnanimous spirit that he showed when dealing with his followers.

Muir cites this incident of Al-`Abasa to show how vulnerable Muhammad was in his social environment. He demonstrates that Muhammad was human and he made mistakes. This passage also indicates how Muhammad ideologically/strategically dealt with the wealthy and powerful and his strength of purpose was to convince them irrespective of who interrupted him. Robbins notes that “a special type of ideological analysis is its focus on the relations of individual people to groups” (1996:95). Thus, “ideology is an intergrated system of beliefs, assumptions, and values that reflects the needs and interest of a group or class at a particular time in history” (1996:96). In other words, what this integrated system proceeds to do is for the individual to understand the need in a situation and hence, “interpret to the self and others, to justify, and to control one’s place in the world” (ibid’).

Muhammad could change his decisions when he felt he was wrong and quickly strategised or remedied the situation as required. For Muir, Muhammad used social and cultural life situations to ideologically articulate his mission (Robbins, 1996:71, 95). Most Muslims scholars such as Ibn Ishāq (1990:167), Lings (1983:64), Haykal (1976:121-122) and others do not dispute Muir’s view that Muhammad made mistakes. However, they do not read into the incident, which is what Muir, with his ideological baggage and epistemological bias, did.

4.2.7 Muhammad’s Memory Lapses and Contradictions in the Revelation

Q. 76:23 The Qur’an is revealed by gradual revelation

Q. 97 Verily WE caused it to descend on the Night of power;

And what shall make thee know what the Night of power is? The Night of power excelleth a thousand months: On that night, the Angels and the Spirit descend by their Lord's command upon every errand. It is peace until the breaking of the morn.

Muir discusses the gradual lengthening of qur’anic sūrahs,139 linking it to the above verses. Then, from here he moves on to discuss what he calls the theory of inspiration.140

For Muir, the theory of inspiration allowed Muhammad to delude himself and others that God was regulating his experiences which he saw as revelations. He states that

The theory of inspiration becomes more fully developed. The Almighty, from whom revelation alone proceeds, is the sole authority also for its recitation and interpretation. On these points Mohammad must wait for heavenly guidance. He must not be hasty in its repetition, for ‘the Kor'an is revealed by a gradual revelation’ (Ixxvi. 23, [76:23]); and it is the prerogative of the Lord to prescribe what passages shall be remembered and what forgotten (Muir, 1923:71).

Muir then, from his reading of Qur’an 76:23, links what he sees as Muhammad’s delusion of being the recipient of God’s revelation to his alleged hastiness in receiving more revelation, although God instructed him to wait for heavenly guidance.

However, much as Muhammad may have been sincere in his claim that he was connected to God, he could not always remember the lengthy verses revealed (Muir, 1923:71). According to Muir, this led Muhammad to suit his revelations to the needs of the moment (ibid.). However, the result here was damaging, for the consequences of his memory lapse was the production of verses that contradicted one another. To address this problem Muhammad, according to Muir, had to find a hermeneutical tool to redress the apparent inconsistencies in the text of the Qur’an.141 Thus, he resorted to the tool of abrogation, “It led eventually to the teaching that where two passages are opposed to one another, the earlier is abrogated by the later” (1923:71-72).

139 Muir mentions that the first twenty two sūrahs “revealed contain an average of five lines each” (1923:71). The next twenty were sixteen lines each. “From this period to the Hijra” (emigration to the city Yathrib and later renamed Medina) “the average length of the sūrahs” was “about three-and-a- half pages, with one being nearly twelve pages long” (ibid.). 140 Muir explains that inspiration for Muhammad were real visions. He saw them as clearly as the morning dawn (1923:49). Muir discusses the development of this theory inspiration in many places (1923:51, 52, 54, 70, and 71). 141 Robbins explains that “reconfiguration [of intertexture] is recounting a situation in a manner that makes the later event “new” in relation to a previous event” (Robbins, 1996:50). 100

This tool came about as a result of the fact that long verses could not be remembered by Muhammad or the contexts of the verses were contradictory to other verses. For Muir, Q. 74:23 and 97:1 appeared as inconsistencies in the mind of Muhammad, and because he could not remember the verses of the Qur’an, he invented abrogation as a tool to explain the discrepancies (1923:71). This shows, according to Muir, that Muhammad, not God, was the author of the Qur’an.

However, Muir here groups together disparate ideas that give no coherent picture.

Firstly, it must be remembered that he begins with the lengthening of the sūrahs.

The connection between the lengthening of the sūrahs and the temptation that Muir ascribes to Muhammad is not clear at all. In other words, Muir does not show a definitive link between the two. Muhammad’s alleged use of the revelations in accordance to changing needs did not hinge, logically speaking, on the lengthening of sūrahs. There is nothing that prevented Muhammad from using (read “invent”, in Muir’s reading) a chapter consisting of five lines only rather than a chapter consisting of three and a half pages to suit the needs of the time. In Addition, Muir errs when he cites Q. 76:23 to show Muhammad’s hastiness. The relevant qur’anic verse in this regard is Q. 20:114.142

His evoking of the doctrine of abrogation further obfuscates his claim of the lengthening of revelation; there is again no logical link.143 That Muir discusses Q. 87:6, Q. 75:6-8 and Q. 20:13,144 which apparently indicate abrogation, to make a connection between the theory of inspiration and abrogation in a footnote and not the main text is instructive. Indeed,

142 Another verse in this regard is Qur’an 75:16. 143 According to John Burton, there are several Islamic theories of naskh. They arose independently in response to consequences to understand the Qur’an and originated in different phases of Islamic scholarship. The first response was to the text of the Qur’an itself and thus wholly exegetical in origin. This exegetical tool was used by Muslim scholars to understand the text of the Qur’an when contradictions were detected (1990:1). 144 “We shall cause thee to rehearse (the Revelation), and thou shalt not forget excepting that which the Lord shall please; for He knoweth both that which is public and that which is hid; and we shall facilitate unto thee that which is easy” (Q, 87:6) (Muir, 1923:71). “And move not thy tongue in the repetition of the Koran so that thou shouldest be hasty therewith. Verily upon Us devolveth the collection thereof; and when We shall have recited it unto thee, then follow the recitation thereof. Further, upon Us devolveth the explanation thereof” (Q, 75:16-198) (ibid.). “And be not hasty in reciting the Koran, before that the revelation thereof hath been completed” (Q. 20:114) (Muir, 1923:71). 101

Whatever verses We cancel, or cause thee to forget, We give thee better in their stead, or the like thereof (Q, 2:100 [106]).

For Muir, however, Q. 2:106 indicates abrogation (naskh); it shows the expedient cum contradictory nature of the Qur’an. He, in fact, “chastises” the Muslim theologians who “endeavour as far as possible to explain it away” (1923:xxvi).145 Moreover, Muir has another aim in mind with employing this verse and its connotation of abrogation – to show the frailty of Muhammad’s character. In addition, the abrogation of verses, or, as Muir calls it, the “convenient doctrine of abrogation”, for him expose Muhammad’s propensity for political expediency. For Muir, at a later stage of the Prophet’s mission, Muḥammad did or said something different to what he said or did earlier. However, because the earlier saying or deed was in the Qur’an it questioned Muhammad’s claim of being the recipient of revelation from God. This exposed him and left him politically vulnerable. In order to deal with the ramifications, especially political of the contradictions of his qur’anic revelations, he, according to Muir, resorted to (rather invented) the doctrine of abrogation.

For Muir, these verses unmistakeably show the turbulence in Muhammad’s life, whether frailties and inconsistencies, or cleverness and expediency of a cunning politician. Abrogation signalled a disingenuous way of dealing with the thematic development of the text of the Qur’an to support the vicissitudes and changes of Muhammad’s life. Nonetheless, for Muir, these modifications or possible corrections made by Muhammad “does not in any measure affect the value of the Kor’an [Qur’an]” (1923:xxvii) because they were an exponent of his “opinions or at least the opinions that he finally professed to hold” (1923:xxvii-xxviii). Yet Muir’s understanding of abrogation appears asymmetrical, at least when compared to other works of modern Western scholarship on the Qur’an. What is clear is the ideological element in Muir’s reading. According to many modern scholars, the theory of abrogation is a hermeneutical approach of a later era after, the demise of Muhammad, contrary to Muir’s postulates of the endeavour by Muslim “doctors” to explain abrogation away.

Burton notes, rather, that Muslim exegetes – and later, jurists – thought they detected “inconsistencies/contradiction” in the Qur’an and therefore came up with naskh to explain away the apparent contradictions (1990:18-20). For Burton, because Muhammad’s mission extended over a period of twenty three years, it is evident that the abrogation theory “is thus

145 In this regard, Muir refers to the apparently no fewer than 225 āyāt abrogated later (1923:xxvi).

102 rooted in a concept of the gradual development of the revelation(s)” (1990:20). In this regard, for example, when “a regulation is revealed, we are required to believe that it is intended to endure unless it is replaced later. When its replacement is revealed, men are obliged to revise their former belief” (ibid., 21).

Likewise, Reuven Firestone argues that obvious contradictions in the revelations were considered normative and binding for the Muslim community. Earlier material that was revealed in particular “time-bound situations, in which Muhammad and his community found themselves, would be abrogated by” a later “and eternally binding divine pronouncement” (Firestone, 1997:2-3). “This traditional solution, with slight variations between individual scholars and schools, has become common in the Islamic world today” (ibid.). Reuven further states that although “collections of ‘abrogating and abrogated’ verses were organized in a variety of ways, they, like the asbāb literature, were also largely based on a theoretical dating of revelation deriving from the biography of the Prophet, although they sometimes also relied on statements (hadith) of early Muslim religious scholars independent of the official prophetic biographies” (1997:2-3).

From Burton’s and Firestone’s arguments, it thus seem that Muir was not willing to consider the context of the revelations as experienced by Muhammad and his community and how they practised earlier material that was abrogated by later verses.146

Furthermore, Asad argues that not a single reliable narration of the Prophet exists to the effect that he “ever declared a verse of the Qur’an to have been abrogated” (1980:23). Moreover, he cites that at the “root of the so-the called ‘doctrine of abrogation’ may lie the inability of some of the early commentators to reconcile one qur’anic passage with another: a difficulty which was overcome by declaring that one of the verses in question had been ‘abrogated’” (ibid.). For him, this arbitrary procedure is the reason why there was no unanimity among

146 The “principle of naskh is acknowledged by both Sunnis and Shī'a” (Burton, 1990:95). However, among the sects of Islam that rejected the naskh were the Mu'tazila (a school of theology predisposed towards rationalism that flourished in the cities of Basra and Baghdad, during the eight to the tenth centuries), Zaidiyyah (an early sect that emerged in the eighth century out of Shī'a Islam, named after Zayd ibn `Alī, (d. 740), the grandson of Husayn ibn `Alī (d. 680)), and Qur’anists (describes any form of Islam that accepts the Qur’an as revelation, but rejects the religious authority and/or authenticity of the Hadith collections. Qur’anists follow the Qur’an alone) on the grounds that the word of God could not contain contradictions. According to Karel Steenbrink, most twentieth century modernist or reformist scholars consider the theory of abrogation “an insult to the integrity and value of the uncreated revelation of God” (2015:218). 103

these commentators. Thus, for Asad, “the doctrine of abrogation has no basis whatever in historical fact” and therefore “must be rejected” (1980:22-23). He also translated āyah 2:106 differently to mean that the abrogation, here, refers to earlier divine messages (for example, of the Bible) and not to any part of the Qur’an itself.

4.2.8 Damage Control in the Wake of “Satanic Verses”

From the outset of his mission, Muhammad attempted to convince important figures of the Meccan elite to join his mission. His hope probably was that their conversation would assist in the spread of his message. However, his efforts yielded little results. According to Muir, Muhammad’s aim was “the regeneration of his people” but instead his message had divided them further and the prospects appeared hopeless (Muir, 1923:80). For Muir, Muhammad was dispirited and longed for reconciliation, especially with the leaders of the Quraysh.

It is in light of his above conclusions that Muir discusses the story of the so-called “Satanic Verses”. According to him, Muhammad constantly attempted to reconcile with the Meccan elite. “On a certain day the chief men of Mecca, had gathered in a group beside the Ka`ba”, discussing the “affairs of the city” (1923:80). “Muhammad appeared” and seated “himself near them in a friendly manner” and “began to recite” the passage Q. 53:13-19 (An-Najm – the Unfolding).

He also saw him (Gabriel) another time, By the Lote-tree at the furthest boundary, Near to which is the Paradise of rest. When the Lote-tree covered that which it covered, His sight turned not aside, neither did it wander. And verily he beheld some of the greatest Signs of his Lord. What think ye of AL-LĀT and AL-OZZA, And MANĀT the third beside?-

Muir cites the pioneering Sīra literature of Ibn Ishāq’s Sīrat Rasūl Allāh (1990), Al-Wāqidī’s History of Muhammad’s Campaigns147 (1856) and Al-Tabarī’s Annals of the Apostles and Kings148 (1879-1901) to argue his position on the “Satanic Verses” (1923:82). He quickly

147 Muir used Kitāb al-Maghāzī – (History of Muhammad’s Campaigns) (1856), edited by Kremer and Wellhausen’s German translation of Muhammed in Medina: Das ist Vakidi’s Kitāb al-Maghāzī (“Mohammed in Medina: Al-Wāqidī’s Kitāb al-Maghāzī”) (1882). 148 Muir first acquired a manuscript of the fourth volume of Al-Tabarī’s work from Sprenger. He later acquired a complete work that was printed in Leiden (1923:lxxxv). 104 moves to rebut and refute the popular Muslim view that rejects the incident. For him the authoritative sources (the Sīra literature) are too strong to be dismissed and the concoction of the tale of such magnitude is inconceivable. By showing that the episode of the “Satanic Verses” is founded in Muslim sources, Muir argues for a pragmatic nature of Muhammad’s mission. The incident was instigated by Muhammad for his own motives and ambition. In a long discursive discussion, Muir elaborates why the incident is authentic (1923:82-86).

He also refers to a putative hadith tradition that shows the revelation of Q. 22:52 as a consolation to Muhammad following his grief for having been deceived by the devil. However, Muir fails to cite the source of this supposed hadith report.

And We have not sent before thee any Apostle, nor any Prophet, but when he longed, Satan cast suggestions into his longing. But God shall cancel that which Satan suggesteth. Then shall God establish His revelations (and God is knowing and wise); - that He may make what Satan hath suggested a trial unto those whose hearts are diseased and hardened (1923:82).

The above passage “restored his confidence and cancelled the” “Satanic Verses” and “revealed the true reading” as follows: (Muir, 1923:82).

What think ye of AL-LĀT and AL-'OZZA, And MANĀT the third beside? What! shall there be male progeny unto you, and female unto Him? That were indeed an unjust partition! They are naught but names, which ye and your fathers have invented, &c.

For Muir, Muhammad’s lapse was not a sudden event and nor was it an error committed unwittingly by him (1923:82-83). The hostilities of the Meccan leaders upon his people had affected him and he was willing to mediate by adding the form of the “Satanic Verses” (1923:83). Thus, Muir argues that Muhammad deliberately contrived the entire episode of the “Satanic Verses” in order to create a diversion because of the pressure exercised by the Meccan leaders on his followers. Muhammad strategised, by some configuration of the qur’anic text, to gain a reprieve from the hostility of the Meccan leaders (1923:80). One can imagine Muir thinking that there was in fact no devil, only the strategically orientated mind of Muhammad who was – in addition to a troubled personality – someone whose political strategy was a conscious attempt to reconcile in some way with the Meccan elite because his

105 message was not gaining ground as he had hoped.149 He furthermore, was desperate to bring relief for his persecuted followers.

According to Ibn Ishāq, this incident relates to the return of the refugees from Abyssinia, who had heard that the Meccans had accepted Islam. And when they learnt that this report was false, they entered Mecca under the protection of a citizen or by stealth so that they would not be persecuted (1990:167-168). For Muir, this compromise of Muhammad is proof of the non- divine origin of the Qur’an; Muḥammad merely claimed that he received revelation from God through the heavenly messenger, Gabriel (Muir, 1923:81).

Furthermore, Muir cites Q. 14:103-104 as encapsulating Muhammad’s renunciation of the “Satanic Verses” mistake, which was rectified by another text ascribed to God.

And when WE change one verse in place of another (and God best knoweth that which He revealeth) they say, Verily thou plainly art a fabricator. Nay! but the most of them understand not. SAY, The Holy Spirit hath brought it down from thy Lord in truth, to establish them that believe.

For Muir, the above passage firstly reflects Muhammad rescinding and rectifying his mistakes by offering new revelations. Second, it indicates that abrogation was introduced by Muhammad to rectify his earlier errors. Finally, it shows Muhammad to be a calculating, expedient politician who was skilful at adapting to changing and difficult circumstances to support his mission.

According to Muir, Muhammad’s message was time and again influenced by his own psyche. His struggle with his people was not easily managed and every situation required resolutions, creativity and craftiness to defend them from the persecution of the Meccan leaders. The about turn of Muhammad is also interesting for Muir because the Prophet now utilised the Qur’an to be more resolute against the polytheist and to strengthen his own position.

Other modern scholars differ from Muir in their reading of the so-called “Satanic Verses”. For Watt, by accepting the pagan deities, Muhammad was reducing his God to their level (Watt, 1953:105). Watt argues for a distinction between the Qur’an and the normal consciousness of Muhammad, writing that the Prophet could not have inserted verses of his

149 Robbins explains that a positive reason for entering the space of another would be to gain some share in that space or to gain a cooperative, mutually beneficial foothold (Robbins, 1996:95). 106

own composition in the Qur’an (1953:52). He further cites that even if Muhammad had done “some rearranging of revealed material”, “it is part of orthodox Muslim theory that some revelation were abrogated by others” (1953:53).150

Muhammad Husayn Haykal goes further to reject the incident all together. He cites discrepancies in the wording of the five versions of the “Satanic Verses” as well as uses linguistic factors to dismiss it.

First there is the report that the fabricated verses consist of the following words: ‘Tilka al gharānīq al ùlā; wa inna shafāàtahu-nna laturtajā.’ Others reported them as consisting of, ‘al gharāniqah alùlā: inna shafa’atahum turtaja.’ Still others reported that they consist of the following words, ‘Inna shafāàtahunna turtajā’ without mentioning the word ‘al gharānīq’ or ‘al gharāniqah’ at all. According to a fourth version, they were supposed to consist of the words: ‘Innahā lahiya al gharānīq al‘ulā.’ A fifth version reads, ‘Wa innahunnalahunna al gharānīq al’ulā wa inna shafā”atahunna lahiya allatī, turtajā.’ (1976:111).

The Meccan leaders had previously tried to compromise with Muhammad and had offered him leadership and sovereignty. At this stage of his mission it would not be in his interest to offer concessions, especially when Muhammad’s movement had grown stronger rather than weaker as Muir claimed, since powerful individuals such as ˈUmar ibn al-Khattab had converted to Islam (1923:89). By this time, a great number of people from the various clans of Quraysh had also joined Islam. It was these developments that led to the return of the immigrants from Abyssinia in 622 C.E.

Muir’s reading of the various verses above reflects his Christian bias. He claims that Muhammad was influenced by scanty knowledge of Christianity and Judaism and had an unstable state of mind before the beginning of his mission. Muir also discovered many inconsistencies of the Qur’anic text and was thus strengthened in his conviction that it was not divine but the words of Muhammad himself, and therefore, he was not a prophet of God.

4.3 Conclusion

150 Interestingly, a fourteenth century Syrian scholar Taqî ad-Dîn Aḥmad ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328) also saw the incident present “the strongest evidence of Muhammad’s veracity (sidq) and reliability as it demonstrates the Prophet’s willingness to faithfully transmit Divine revelation, even at the risk of incriminating himself by admitting to error” (Ahmed, 1998:78). 107

Muir confidently develops his biography of Muhammad by invoking the earliest original Muslim source material. He had access to three of the pioneering biographies by Ibn Hishām, Al-Wāqidī and Al-Tabarī, and utilises post-Enlightenment methodological scholarly approaches to write a biography of Muhammad.

Muir found the Qur’an to be an important and useful source through which to explicate his appreciation of the life and mission of Muhammad. For Muir, the Qur’an was not only an embodiment of Muhammad’s message but also an authentic document outlining his deepest thoughts and the condition of his mental state. Muir was cognisant of the fact that the Qur’an is not a biography of Muhammad but, by using it in conjunction with the pioneering Sīra sources, he believed that a reasonable historical portrait of Muhammad could be produced.

A close perusal of his work, however, reveals the colouring of his views of Muhammad by his Christian-evangelical prejudices. It reflects the old Western Christian maligning of Muhammad for a variety of purposes, not in the least for Muir’s evangelical mission to convert Muslims to Christianity. Hence, Muir grasped onto the idea that Muhammad already in his youth was influenced by heretic Nestorian Christians and used the opportunity to enquire and learn about their tenets and practices. Muir asserts that although Muhammad was also influenced by local biblical scholars, he only understood a small portion of their teachings. It was because of his desire for power that Muhammad not only distorted biblical teachings but also developed a faith that was from the imagination of his psyche and “darkness of his soul”. This view is very different from Muslim traditional view of the Qur’an as a divine word of God, from which Muhammad embodied his character and practices.

Muir’s attempt to write a biography of Muhammad was a slanted interpretation of what for Muslims is revelation from a transcendental source. Although, he uses the original Muslim source materials to construct a biography of Muhammad, Muir succumbs to prejudices, assumptions and his biases and worldview, producing a narrative of Muhammad along ideological arguments. He did not really critically evaluate the original Muslim sources to probe the multiple layers of the text so as to objectively engage its inner texture to understand the social and cultural influences of Muhammad’s milieu.

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Indeed, Muir’s utilisation of the original Muslim sources and his critical evaluation of these to write a biography of Muhammad may have astounded many Western scholars of the modern era such as Blachere, Margoliouth, Watt and Bennett, among others, because he showed that by critically examining these sources, alternative views can emerge from the traditional Muslim view. There are many such instances as this study has substantiated, with special reference to events such as in Sūrah al-`Abasa and the “Satanic Verses”.

Muir’s biography thus had an influence on the shaping of modern Western biographical studies of Muhammad’s life and the early history of Islam. It should be noted, however, that his work provoked controversy, which gave rise to critical responses from both Western and Muslim scholars.

The next chapter will briefly deal with post-Muir biographies of Muhammad and highlight the methodological shifts and different approaches that subsequent Western biographers used to discover the historical Muhammad.

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Chapter Five POST-MUIR WESTERN BIOGRAPHIES OF MUHAMMAD

5.0 Introduction

William Muir’s biography of the Prophet was a seminal work insofar as it was recognised, and cited by Western biographers of Muhammad. However, many post-Muir works departed significantly from both his methodology and conclusions. Indeed, with the end of the period of his mission and the demise of the British Empire, subsequent biographers were not bound to the evangelical mission nor were they employees of the colonial missions. This last factor often impacted, in a greater rather than lesser ways, on Western scholars, who were also employees of European colonial administrations’ study of non-Western cultures, traditions and personalities, as Wael Hallaq shows in the case of Joseph Schacht’s work The Origin of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (1950).151 However, we cannot say that Western or Muslim scholars who wrote biographies after Muir were completely free from their own biases and assumptions. Indeed, although it is reasonable to assume that the changes of the twentieth century (the end of colonial rule, the publication of Muslim sources unknown and/or not available in the nineteenth century, etc.) would have informed how Western scholars now wrote about the non-European world, its personalities, cultures, books, and so forth, Said reminds us that Western cultural imperialism did not disappear in the twentieth century (1995:347-354). Nonetheless, the application of Western tools that tended towards objectivity, impartiality and judiciousness are helpful in the study of religion, Islam and Muhammad.

This chapter gives a brief account of Western biographies of the Prophet after the publication of Muir’s biography. It then looks in detail at two post-Muir Western biographies of Muhammad in particular: Maxine Rodinson’s Muhammad and Fred Donner’s Muhammad and the Believers (2010). It highlights the changes in the methodologies, approaches and

151 For example, Wael Hallaq points out this issue in the case of many famous Western scholars of Islamic law such as William Jones (d. 1794), Snouck Hurgronje, Marcel Morand, Schacht and countless others. See, Hallaq, Wael. 2011. On Orientalism, Self-consciousness, and History. In, Islamic Law and Society, 18:387-439. Hallaq singles out specifically the latter, Schacht (footnote number 70, pg. 404), who is perceived to be the father of the sub-field of Islamic legal Orientalism: Hallaq, Wael. 2002-2003. The Quest for Origins or Doctrine: Islamic legal studies as colonial discourse. In, Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law, 2(1):1-31.

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tools Western biographies of Muhammad used after Muir. We will indeed note a different, arguably less biased account of Muhammad’s life. We will also see a less passionate, more removed tone, reflecting authors that do not overtly read Muhammad through a Western Christian lenses and whose subjectivities are not as stark as Muir’s.

During the second half of the nineteenth-century, no other biographies on Muhammad by Western scholars of the English world appeared after the publication of Muir’s biography. The next Western biography of Muhammad appeared in the early twentieth century. In 1905, David Samuel Margoliouth (d. 1940) published his work, Mohammed and the Rise of Islam. This work, it appears, “opened the floodgates on the English scene for active writing on Muhammad” (Buaben, 1995:145). However, “his biography is strongly negative in tone about all aspects of Muhammad’s life” (Ali, 2014:162). Margoliouth wrote that Muhammad was a charlatan who faked his religious sincerity, playing the part of a messenger of God and adjusting his performance to create an illusion of spirituality (1905:104-106). Thereafter, Leones Caetani’s (d. 1935) ten volume work Annali Dell’Islam on Islam appeared between 1905 and 1926. This work collected and arranged chronologically and sequentially all known existing primary sources and materials related to the origins of Islam and included an extensive study on the life of Muhammad and on the period after his death (Buaben, 1995:145). Caetani holds that after the rise of Islam, Arab armies conquered the surrounding fertile land because of economic stress, which was a consequence “on the gradual desiccation of Arabia” (Jeffrey, 1926:338). “Muhammad thus became the leader of this religious movement” “according to the ideas of religion in Arabia at that time, but above all he was a politician and an opportunist” (ibid.).

In 1913 Edward Sell published The Life of Muhammad. He wrote “extensively on Islam and “dwells on the ‘political factor’ in the life of the Prophet because he thought that area had been neglected by previous scholars” (Buaben, 1995:147). He further portrays Muhammad as being the perpetrator of the whole episode of confrontations with the non-Muslims and shows his lack of sympathy towards the Jews in their hostilities with him (Sell, 1913:17-4). Interestingly, Sell was from England and a missionary in India with the Church Missionary Society. He included significant sections regarding the Hadith in his writings and, according to Guenther, approached the subject “with an Orientalist and evangelical bias similar to that of Muir” (1997:91). However, he focused on “the role of Hadith in contemporary expressions of Islam rather that the history of its development as Muir had done” (ibid.). 111

Then, in 1926, Richard Bell’s (d. 1952) work The Origins of Islam in its Christian Environment followed a “reductionist approach trying to prove that Islam is a borrowed but a perverted form of Christianity” (Buaben, 1995:150). Bell’s assessment of the Qur’an was the same as Muir, i.e., that it was Muhammad’s own words. This work followed by that of Henri Lammens (d. 1937) in 1929, Islam: Beliefs and Institutions, translated from French by E. Denison Ross. He wrote extensively on Islam and especially on the Prophet and his family. Rodinson sees Lammens as a scholar who dominated European studies on Muhammad during the first third of the twentieth century (1981:26). However, Rodinson strongly criticises Lammens’ work on Islam, writing that it “was filled with a holy contempt for Islam” and condemns his polemical rhetoric that Muhammad was a pretentious and lustful Prophet, as well as his depiction of the Arabs of the desert, who in Lammens’ judgement, were cowards, swaggerers, plunderers and destroyers (1981:16).

After his work, Emile Dermengham’s (d. 1971) Life of Mahomet (1930) translated from French (La Vie de Mahomet) and Tor Andrae’s (d. 1947) Muhammad, Hans Liv Och Hans Tro (Muhammad, His Life and his Faith), which was published in Swedish, appeared in 1930. Annemarie Schimmel remarked that Andrae’s study had “tried specifically to depict Muhammad’s role in Islamic piety” (1985:7). For Andrae, the Prophet, during his vigils in the cave of Hirā, “gradually grew accustomed to think of ideas that emerged in his consciousness and the decisions matured in his soul as a direct expression of the Divine [which] will did not make him an imposter” (Ali, 2014:221). For Muir, this had been the crux of the problem: the moment when Muhammad turned from spiritual seeker to grasping striver, or when he was swayed by the desire to reform his countrymen, leading him to the false step of proclaiming himself the Apostle of God (ibid.). However, it must be noted that Andrae did agree with other modern Western scholars that Muhammad borrowed from the existing monotheistic religions of his era (Buaben, 1995:152). Nevertheless, his book remained the standard work in this area and, according to Annemarie Schimmel, has not been superseded by any other major study, and though has been complemented by random remarks in numerous modern works on Sufism (1985:7). It is, however, unfortunately too little known even among Muslim scholars (ibid.).

In 1949, Hamilton A. R Gibb’s (d. 1971) work Mohammedanism – A Historical Survey was published. Gibbs steered clear of projecting Muhammad as negatively as the earlier Christian clergy and scholars such as Muir and Margoliouth had done, but at the same time he also did

112 not want to produce apologetic literature (1949:v). In the preface of his book, he also identifies two camps in the writings of Islam and its Prophet (1949:vii). The first group consists of Muslims who produce apologetic literature that challenges the critics of Islam. The second group are mainly Christian clergy who project Islam and Muhammad as inferior (ibid.). Gibbs was a scholar who steered clear of both these groups and began to seriously evaluate Muhammad as a person and his contribution to history (ibid.). His was the type of Orientalists scholarship that was critical and productive in its intellectual inquiry (Buaben, 1995:160).

Shortly after, and according to Buaben, it was in the 1950s that a new wave of biographies on Muhammad’s life emerged (1995: 160). In 1950, the biographical French work of Regis Blachere (d. 1973) titled Le Proleme de Mahomet. Essai de biographie Critique du Fondateur de l’Islam (Muhammad Problem. Critical Essay Biography of the Founder of Islam) appeared, which, according to Rodinson, presented “a mediating position between an uncritical view of the source and a hypercritical stance” (Buaben, 1995: 160). Blachere “undertook to write a critical biography of the Prophet taking into account the sceptical conclusions of Lammens” (Ibn Warraq, 2016). Blachere utilised the Qur’an as the only reliable source and employed the work of the pioneering biographers with great caution (Buaben, 1995: 160). He was particularly pessimistic about modern Western scholars’ ability to reconstruct the life of Muhammad prior to his emigration (Hijra) in 611 C.E (Ibn Warraq, 2016).

In 1953 and 1956 respectively Watt published Muhammad at Mecca and Muhammad at Medina. Watt’s biographical works on Muhammad “have had considerable impact on the English medium students in 1961” (Buaben, 1995:162). In 1988 he then published Muhammad’s Mecca: History in the Qur'an. Watts’ biographies of Muhammad can be judged to illustrate the methodological shift within English scholarship, which figuratively shut the door in the face of the old Christendom attitude and the narrow approach to the new methods of the post-modern era (Buaben, 1995:209-211). Watt examined Islamic values in the contemporary world. He further scrutinised “the Muslim perception of Muhammad as the archetype, the paradigmatic embodiment par excellence and in some ways question the historicity of the traditions” (Buaben, 1995:209). For Watt, Muhammad was sincere, and pointed to his visionary wisdom as a statesman and skills as an administrator (Tayob, 2010:298) “From a Christian perspective, Muhammad should be credited with possessing a 113 creative imagination and, importantly, advancing the religious cause” (ibid.). Indeed, “not all the ideas he proclaimed are true and sound,” wrote Watt, “but by God’s grace he has been enabled to provide millions of men with a better religion than they had before they testified that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is the messenger of God” (1961: 240). Watt also raised an important question in the methodological problem as to how Western scholars can study Islam and whether or not they applied the strict criteria for objective academic scholarship (Buaben, 1995:210).

Watt’s account of the origin of Islam met with criticism from other scholars such as John Wansbrough of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, and Patricia Crone and Michael Cook in their book Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (1977), as well as Crone’s Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam (1987). Crone contends that although Watt has “interpreted Muhammad’s life that centres on the impact of commercial wealth on the social and moral order in Mecca”, he “devotes less than a page of his two- volume work to a discussion of the commerce and from which the wealth in question supposedly was derived” (1987:1). She further argues that the ground work on the subject was done by Lammens, who for her was a notoriously unreliable scholar but whose conclusions nonetheless appear to have been accepted by Watt (ibid.).

After Watt, modern Western biographies really began to take new turns as varied perspectives and themes emerged, such as the mystical, interfaith, comparative between the three monotheistic religions, i.e., of Islam, Christianity and Judaism. Thus, the historical- critical approach developed in ways that would ensure that biographies of Muhammad would continue to be written with authoritative scrutiny of the original Muslim sources and by reconstructing the true nature of the events the text describes (Soulen and Soulen, 2001:78- 79).

To this end, Rodinson writes about Muhammad152 and delineates the Muhammad of history from the Muhammad of faith (1996:331-335). Rodinson looks at the life of Muhammad from a materialist perspective, examining his relation with Arabian society, politics, class, economics and existing religious beliefs and practices. In this way he came to an understanding of Muhammad as a man and Islam as a movement that is grounded in history.

152 We consider Rodinson’s biography of Muhammad more in detail below in 5.2. 114

His approach was an attempt to discover what actually happened in the past. He credited Muhammad’s success to the environment, his time and his background. He also addresses the “Ideology of Islam”, which was built up from the condition of the circumstance and imposed by the condition of a situation by society (1996:319).

The growth and development of the modern Western genre of biographical works of Muhammad’s life, which began to utilise the original Muslims sources in the nineteen century, was thus gradually attuned to criticism of their own standards and, in the mid-1950s, began its methodological shift to objective critical study and evaluation, especially after the efforts of Gibb, Watt and Rodinson. These were all modern-era works, although they exhibited the bias, inner workings and assumptions of colonialist positivist thinking. The post-modern era was a departure from this reality. These new ideas and development were a reevaluation of the entire Western scholarly tradition, which included literature, architecture, and the interpretation of history, law and culture.

In 1989, Gordon Darnell Newby publish The Making of the Last Prophet – A Reconstruction of the Earliest Biography of Muhammad, a work that attempts to reconstruct, the first portion of Ibn Ishāq’s Sīra, the earliest full biography of Muhammad and an account of previous prophets. This is a critical work because it shows how the earliest biographers such as Ibn Ishāq were influenced by their context when writing his biography, and how he collected his material information for his Sīra work.

Newby shows how Ibn Ishāq collected Hadith reports of the Prophet (1989:5), examined his sources, and the elevation of Muhammad and his Sunnah 153that had a profound influence on him “because it allowed him a certain degree of accommodation to differences and variations within the community” (1989:14). Furthermore, it shows the difficulties that Ibn Ishāq experienced due to the influence of Isrāʾīliyyāt 154and assimilating biblical traditions into Islam by some of the companions of the Prophet (Newby, 1989:10). Newby suggests that the changing attitude occurred towards Isrāʾīliyyāt, which was being frowned upon by the Muslim society, had an effect on the abridgment of the Sīra and the veneration of

153 Cf., note 71. 154 Cf., note 59. 115

Muhammad became institutionalised in the Shari’ah155 (1989:12). Newby notes that two types of biography of Muhammad developed. “The one used by the jurists was the atomists Hadith reports that constituted Muhammad’s Sunnah. The other biography was the Sīra that was a narrative, popular and provided Muslims, whether scholars or not with a vivid picture of the Prophet” (Newby, 1989:14). However, Ibn Ishāq used the Hadith reports in his biography by eliminating much material that was derived from “Jews, Christians, heretics, schismatic, political misfits, and anyone ruled by the community as unworthy to participate in the development and transmission of Hadith reports legally binding on the Muslim community” (ibid.).

The historical setting of the period must also be considered to understand the reasons for the need to codify the practice deemed correct by the Muslim community into Shari’ah. It was a time when the Muslims were acquiring new land and territory and people “changed religions very slowly, even though they acknowledged the Muslims as their masters” (Newby, 1989:1). Newby’s work is important in the Sīra genre because it explains the various challenges that the early biographers had to undergo, and their work was part of the implementation of the vision of the Muslim community that would eventually become its salvation history.156 He further points out that the development in the Islamic society that privileged Muhammad and made an idealised image of him central in the Shari’ah, was raised in the theological and political conflict of early Islamic history. It was within this context that “Ibn Ishāq had much material from which to select, but the working out of a vision of Muhammad’s place in the history of the world belongs to him” (Newby, 1989:14). On this issue, Historian, Donner, argued that Muhammad had “led an ecumenical movement, which welcomed Jews and Unitarian Christians as well as poly-theistic converts to monotheism” Spoerl, 2013:87). Therefore, for Donner, Islam had not “emerged as a distinct religious confession until several generations after the death of Muhammad” (ibid.). For him, the classical Muslim biographers such as Ibn Ishāq “re-told the life of Muhammad, so as to make it seem that Muhammad led a movement of pure Muslims as professed by the classical Islam of later generations” ((ibid.). “Hence, according to Joseph Spoerl, “Donner would thus presumably dismiss Ibn Ishāq’s

155 According to `Abdur Rahman Doi (d. 1999), the term Shari’ah is a path shown by God that leads to Him, and through His messenger, Muhammad (1984:2). In this regard the Qur’an sent through Muhammad, is the first primary source of the Shari’ah (ibid, 21) and the second primary source is his Sunnah (ibid., 45). 156 Cf., note 8. 116

Sīra as a product of this later anachronistic mindset and therefore minimize the extreme and even violent tensions between Muhammad and the Jews as recounted by Ibn Ishāq (ibid.).

Moreover, Newby provides other contextual understandings of Ibn Ishāq’s Sīra and pointed to it being written for the Abbasid court where he was a tutor. “In addition, his Sīra appeared to have had a Jewish and Christian audience in mind” (Newby, 1989:21), and to show a Muslim perspective because “he lived in a time when there were numerous revolts against the newly established Abbasid (750 –1258) regime and the established Jewish authorities” (1989:21).

It is for these reasons that Newby explains that Ibn Ishāq’s writings were successful because he brought the complex interrelationship of the Qur’an, Sunnah, Hadith, Sīra and Isrāʾīliyyāt traditions into the forefront of Muslim understanding of the formation and early history of Islam (Newby, 1989:24). Moreover, he shows how Ibn Ishāq held the Qur’an as an ideal form, “to which all material could be compared” (1989:21). For the most part, Ibn Ishāq and his contemporaries and “the rest of the early Sīra works explained the history of the world in qur’anic and Muslim terms and as “salvation history”.

From Newby’s work, the reader can understand just how mistaken was Muir’s attempt to place the various original Muslim source materials that were available about the Prophet into his procrustean bed of Protestant evangelising. However, it also illustrates the different functions of biographies, and for them to be relevant, it’s important to understand the context and social cultural lived realities and experiences of the biographers.

This methodological shift can further be seen in the works of those Western scholars and Muslims living in the West who wrote biographies of Muhammad during the latter part of the twentieth century, mostly in the English language. Prominent examples are the works of Annemarie Schimmel (1985), Tariq Ramadan (2007; 2009) and Omid Safi (2009). Many non-Muslim and Muslim Western scholars such as Clinton Bennett (1998), F. E. Peters (1994), Barnaby Rogerson (2003), Kenneth Cragg (1999; 2001; 2002), Fred Donner (2010), Irving M. Zeitlin (2007), Jonathan A. C. Brown (2014), Lesley Hazelton (2013), and the very recent works of Kecia Ali (2014) had to varying extents moved away from the medieval Christian impression of Muhammad as an imposter and false prophet. It is clear that they used the original Muslims sources to construct their biographies of the Prophet. However, 117 some authors adopted Muir’s classification of the various source materials from the pioneering Sīra works in their construction of contemporary biographies of Muhammad’s life.

Two such post-1950s biographies of Muhammad by Western scholars stand out: one by Maxime Rodinson and the other by Fred Donner. Rodinson’s biography of Muhammad is chosen because he writes as a Marxist historian and an Orientalist. His is an account of Muhammad’s life that is a study of the impact of religion as an ideology upon society. It is a work that shows the universal dimensions of Muhammad’s message, influenced by specific socio-economic features of the Meccan society and its location within the geo-politics of the Near East.

Donner’s work is chosen for its usefulness in providing a historical construction of the Islamic origin from the life of Muhammad. His biography of Muhammad is from an historical perspective that critically evaluates the life of Muhammad and argues that the origin of Islam was “part of a wider cultural world that embraced the lands of the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean” (2010:1). Both these authors have also been selected to demonstrate the methodological shift from the various Western nineteen century writers in their use of original Muslim sources to construct their biographies of Muhammad.

These biographies were able to emerge later in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries because of the earlier socio-political and historical events that occurred in the same century. It was after the defeat and dissolution of the Ottoman Empire in 1924 that “Muslim attempted to find new ways to modernise in order to live in a rapidly changing world” (Feener, 2004:29). Kemal Atatürk (d. 1938) assumed control of Turkey, introducing a modern model of militarised politics and forcing secularisation on Turkish society. Other, Middle Eastern nations such as Saudi Arabia came to power in 1926. “With the discovery of oil, the Saudis found themselves with the financial means to impose a Wahhabi157 style Islam at home and export it abroad” (ibid.).

The era of formal European imperialism mostly came to an end after World War II as most Western powers were unable to reassert control of their Asian and African colonies at the end

157 This is a religious movement or branch of Sunni Islam. Wahhabism is named after an eighteenth- century preacher and scholar, Muhammad ibn ˋAbd al-Wahhab (d. 1792). 118

of the war. A number of new postcolonial Muslim states, sought to maintain some nominal recognition of Islam, even though “imported Western ideologies were the official bases for their constitutional models and state system” (Ibid., 30). It was in this setting, that a diversity of responses to modernity in different Muslim communities as well as the conception of nation states being at the heart of debates were produced. Moreover, dozens of independence and global political projects such as the Non-Aligned Movement (1961) were instrumental in the decolonising efforts of former colonies. For example, Indonesia had “culturally based programs of Islamisation” (ibid.). Pakistan, attempted to elaborate their vision of Islam in more explicit political terms when it separated from newly independent India in 1947 (ibid.). Libya, under Mu’ammar Gaddafi (d. 2011), “came to be understood as a culturally authentic source of authority” that prohibited alcohol, the closing of night clubs and the adoption in principle of Islamic punishment were used to “contain the influence of the West and its presence in the region” (Feener, 2004:33).

Some Muslims believed that the only way to become strong enough is to achieve “true” independence from the West. Thus, Islam and modernity met in a cultural political context where Islamism158 as a modern movement can be traced back to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (1928) (the Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan (1941) and the Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah (1985) were among other such movements). More revolutionary forms of these movements was the Islamic revolution of 1979 that overthrew the Pahlavi dynasty (1925- 1979), which was supported by the United States. An example of an Islamic fundamentalist movement that emerged in 1994 was the Taliban. Its leadership was drawn from the fighters of the earlier war waged between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. This war was funded and militarily supported by the United States of America, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, who acted as proxies to defeat the Soviets (Mamdani, 2004). On September 11, 2011, a terrorist attack on the United States was blamed on the Taliban, leading to a “war on terror” that had widely diverse and complex effects in the Middle East, many parts of the world and Muslims in particular.

158 Islamism can be briefly framed as Islamic revival movement that is often characterized by moral conservatism, and the attempt to implement Islamic values in all spheres of life. It is also defined as a political ideology (Feener, 2004:22) and “has come to frame a counter-hegemonic challenge to the very structures of global politics” (Strindberg and Wärn, 2011:2). 119

It was the socio-political events of the twentieth century that many people wanted to learn about Islam and its founder Muhammad. Hence, it became an obsession of Western scholars to write about Islam and its founder. These writings were efforts to learn more about him, to understand, to relate, to analyse and explore the religious, political, social and cultural dynamics of contemporary Islam. Abdulkader Tayob notes that “writing about Muhammad remains an important way for many actors to express their attitudes towards modernity, religious conflicts and the like” (2014:308). He further mentions that “the biographical process is an interpretative exercise that works at many different levels in popular and academic scholarship” (2010:307). Hence, it is an exercise that “reveals a struggle to balance a historical view of the Prophet”, “with the models and framework of biographers who approach his life to write about a biographical process in the search of the historical Muhammad and in the search for the religious context of the foundation of Islam” (ibid.).

5.2 Maxime Rodinson

Maxime Rodinson was a Marxist historian, sociologist and Orientalist, and is the author of Muhammad, a biography of the Prophet of Islam, published in 1960. Rodinson combined sociological and Marxist theories that claimed to set the Prophet in his social context. For many critics, it is an attempt at a rationalist study that seeks to explain the economic and social origins of Islam. Moreover, as a historian, Rodinson sought to delineate the “Muhammad of history from the Muhammad of faith” (Smith, 1996). According to James E. Royster, Rodinson’s biography of Muhammad is a prime example of “historicistic methodology”, which is a mode of thinking that presents Muhammad in his milieu to discover what “actually happened, rather than what later compilers would like us to believe happened” (ibid.). Indeed, Rodinson made it quite plain in his forward that he attempts to both narrate and interpret the life of the Prophet – however, he is aware that his biography is based on speculation, because the oldest available texts concerning the life of Muhammad go back to about 125 years after his death (1996:xi).

Throughout his work, Rodinson also supports his biography of Muhammad by using material from non-Muslim traditions and sources. For example, he mentions Greek sources such as Ammianus Marcellinus (d. after 391 C.E.) (1995:15, 19), Artemidorus Daldianus (who lived in the second century), Gaius Plinius Secundus (d. 79) (1995:21), Procopius (d. 528) and Cosmas (who lived in the sixth century C.E.) (1995:31). He also uses the work of a

120

Byzantium scholar known as Theophanes (who lived in the second century) (1995:256). He uses these non-Muslim sources to show how other civilizations looked at the Arabs in their social and economic structures that governed life in the desert.

In terms of Muslim sources he uses Alfred Guillaume’s translation of Ibn Hishām (1995:xx). Of Al-Waqidi’s work, he uses the Arabic text by Marsden Jones (d. 1992), Kremer and a partial translation in German by Wellhausen. For additional material he cites the works of Montgomery Watt.

Rodinson begins his biography by using these non-Muslim sources to describe the milieu in which Muhammad lived, showing that these descriptions did not always corroborate with those of the later traditional material. For example, the Greek sources show Arabia as a civilised land with a highly developed religious population, who were quite literate, and deeply imbued with Aramaic and Hellenistic culture (1995:24-25), while Muslim sources illustrate this period as an age of ignorance known as Jahiliyya. Like Donner, Rodinson also shows that Arabia was wedged between two Empires, the Byzantine and Sassanid, who “were at loggerheads” (1995:26). By so doing, Rodinson is able to develop a context for the narrative of Muhammad’s life. Rodinson explains the sources of many of Muhammad’s ideas for the development of his faith, such as Arab tradition, the sacred Jewish books, Christian Syriac literature (1995:124), devotional prayers borrowed from eastern Christians (1995:127) and the Muslim fast borrowed from the traditions of Judaism. Even the concept of paradise was borrowed from the Syrian Church (1996:244). Moreover, Rodinson ascribes Muhammad’s success to that of his environment, which favoured him because of the social unrests in Mecca and Medina. Again, like Donner, he describes the religious movement towards monotheism as well as the decline of the Byzantine and Persian empires, which allowed Muhammad’s community to expand into areas of the Near East.

Also relevant to this thesis is Rodinson’s lengthy chapter titled “The Prophet in Arms”, in which he demonstrates how private wars were part of Arab custom, and how tribal rivalries were forms of political expediency and survival (1995:162). Indeed, Rodinson explains that nothing prevented Muhammad from considering the same expediency in “indulging into such warlike activity” (1995:162). He notes that such fighting was avoided here, but as his community grew, the dangers increased. The movement itself – where Muhammad’s group of disciples were to become a definitive sect and later gave birth to a state – was threatened 121

(1995:188). The growing strength of Muhammad’s group led to circumstantial implication in events such as the battle of Badr (624 C.E.) and the battle of Uhud (625 C.E.), and by strengthening his own position in Medina, Muhammad challenged the Meccan leadership as well as the Jewish tribes such as the Qurayza and others. These issues were a constant cause of anxiety for Muhammad’s movement and his nascent community. It was thus decided that in order to ensure their survival, they had to present a show of force (1995:211). Here, Rodinson reminds non-Muslims not to forget their “gratuitous meanness” towards Muslims, and “their inveterate hatred of Islam, their constant aggression against the community of true believers and that history would appear to authenticate this explanation” (1995:325). He asserts that it is “true that the world of Islam has often been attacked”. However, he is also careful here to offer a balanced perspective, writing “that it too has often been the attacker, and that there have been periods in the history of Islamic world when at least vast areas were masters of their destiny” (1995:324].

On the Qur’an itself, Rodinson writes that the event of the revelation of the Qur’an “may be identified with reasonable certainty” (1995:83). He notes that Muslim scholars have already assembled traditions indicating the period at which that part of the Kor’an had been revealed” (ibid.). Rodinson, goes on to say that European Orientalists have, in terms of their own criteria, been able “to arrive at more accurate picture of the sequence of Qur’an and where necessary to modify it” (1995:84). Moreover, while asserting that he is an Orientalist scholar, he admonishes the community of Orientalists, writing that they sometimes were not aware of the dangers that threatened the world of Muhammad (1995:84). He also claims to be wary of such scholars “who take their own strengths for granted and who, have amassed great wealth, believe that can do just as they like regardless of anyone else” (ibid.). Interestingly, he compares this kind of haughty behaviour that exhibited by individuals in the earliest passages of the Qur’an such as Q. 90, Q. 80, Q. 75:26-27, Q. 96 whom Muhammed himself admonishes (1995:84-88).

For Rodinson, Muhammad did not have the intention of producing a work of literature. Rather, he wanted to communicate a message to his errant people, to prick their conscience and present a warning for their misdemeanour and selfish behaviour (1995:93). The Qur’an, for Rodinson, was initially a non-verbal message from the inspiration of Muhammad, which he began to communicate in an intelligent manner that became a written work (ibid.). Hence, “the moment of inspiration that had gripped Muhammad of some strong feeling is suddenly 122 seized by something ‘stronger than himself’ which thrusts him into immortality against his will” (ibid.). Rodinson notes that Muhammad was a “deeply religious person, convinced that he was in direct communication with Allah [God]” and “that the mission, which had been laid on him was essentially to bring the Arabs to a knowledge of the greatness, the oneness and the law of Allah” by surrendering to Him “would resolve all problems, make man good, just and faithful, enable them to live in harmony together in society as a perfect as human weakness would allow” (1995:216). It was for these reasons that Muhammad found himself in a political role, and thus adapted “to the interplay of political forces” and kept his “eyes on the distant objective and never lost sight of them when circumstances enforce a deviation from the direct road to the goal” (1995:215). Hence, Muhammad was able to “pursue a practical programme of action, which was bound to vary continually, in order to meet the ever-changing needs of the immediate situation” (ibid.).

Although Rodinson claims to be an atheist, he demonstrated that it is still possible to write about a religious man such as Muhammad, provided that he “totally excludes contempt, pharisaism [hypocritical observance of the letter of religious or moral law without regard for the spirit] or a sense of superiority and can understand a religious outlook” (1995:xiii). On this issue, Armstrong critiques Rodinson’s work, arguing that his writing as a secularist and concentrating only on the political and military aspects of Mohammad’s does not assist her in understanding Muhammad’s spiritual vision (1992:14). However, Bennett posits that it would seem that although Rodinson as a Marxist would have “no obvious vested interest in producing a coherent and generally sympathetic account of Muhammad”, for him “this is exactly what he does” (1998:39) However, for Bennett, Rodinson’s Marxist ideology inclines him to write on Muhammad as an “historiography free from the chains of theology’” (ibid.).

Thus, for Rodinson, the Prophet’s life and his message are intricately linked to the very specific features of Meccan society at the beginning of the seventh century C.E. and their location within the wider geopolitics and political economy of Arabia and the Near East. His was a Marxist analysis of Islam and its Prophet that moves away from the romantic conception of religion. Hence, the socio-economic and political forces were inextricably linked with the actual religious experiences, and the whole had its origin in the constant competition of groups that formed the different branches of society.

5.3 Fred Donner 123

Fred Donner is a scholar of Islam and Near Eastern History. He is the author of The Early Islamic Conquests (1981), which has been described as a major contribution to the field of early Islamic history and is used as a set text for several university courses.159 He also published a translation of one volume (Vol. 10) of the history of Al-Tabarī in 1993, as well as his biography of Muhammad, Muhammad and the Believers – At the Origins of Islam in 2010.

This biography is an interpretation of Islamic history that strikes a balance between the traditional Muslim narrative as a form of salvation160 history and the need to challenge these sources as a historian engaged in the critical study of Islam and its Prophet. Donner writes this work for the “nonspecialists, introductory students and general reader with an interest in the beginning of Islam” (2010:xvii). It also contrasts with the widespread Western scholarship since the nineteenth century, including works by Ernst Renan, Hubert Grimme (d. 1942), Leone Caetani (d. 1935), C. H. Becker (d. 1933), Bernard Lewis, Patricia Crone, I. Lapidus and others that have presented the rise of Islam as a result of non-religious factors such as political and economic convictions (2010:xii). Donner argues that from the beginning, Islam began as a religious movement that “embodied an intense concern for attaining personal salvation through righteous behavior” (2010:xii).

Donner begins his biography of Muhammad by giving a discussion of the political and cultural situation of the Near East and Arabia just before the beginning of Muhammad’s mission. He develops a picture of Arabia wedged between “two great empires – the Byzantium or Later Roman Empire in the west and the Sasanian Persian Empire in the east” (2010: 3). In this context, “Arabia’s political and fragmentation was matched by its religious diversity, although the traditional religion of Arabia was polytheism – a paganism that revered astral deities (the sun, the moon, Venus, and so on) among others, which existed in numerous variants as local cults” (2010:29). However, within the religious life in Arabia is the survival of the tradition of active prophecy (Donner, 2010:31). According to Donner, Muhammad’s movement must be understood against the backdrop of the religious trends that were current in the Near East during late antiquity. For him, Muhammad’s movement was an “ecumenical, monotheistic and religious reform movement that emphasised piety” (2010:128)

159 E.g., refer University of Oklahoma (accessed 08 October 2016). 160 Cf., note 8. 124 and “proper behaviour to ensure salvation” (Tannous, 2011:127). This does not mean that Donner accepts the traditional Muslim narrative of Islamic origins. Rather, for him it is important to understand a proper historical beginning of Islam that is “against the background of religious trends in the whole Near East and not only in an Arabian context, even though Arabia was where Muhammad live and acted” (2010:xii). Hence, he explains his narrative of Muhammad by “mixing standard views of what took place with his own revisionist interventions into the traditional narrative” (Tennous, 2011:127).

Donner accepts that the early non-Islamic sources confirm that Muhammad in fact existed and led a movement (2010:52-53). But for him, the Qur’an is the most important source for this history, as well as being a religious source (Donner, 2010:56). He rejects the views of earlier modern Western scholars such as Wansbrough that the Qur’an was of later origin, i.e., after the death of Muhammad. He cites that the “Qur’an text dates to the earliest phase of the movement inaugurated by Muhammad” (ibid.). He traces the earliest beliefs of Muhammad and his religious movement, adhering closely to the Qur’an. He argues that it was the Qur’an that presented the “ideas of monotheism, preparing for the Last Day, belief in prophecy, and revealed scripture and the observance of righteous behaviour, including prayer” (2010:68), charity (2010:63), fasting (2010:64) and a humble demeanour towards others (2010:69). This view is very different from Muir’s as Donner uses qur’anic injunctions to show the development of Muhammad’s mission that animated this movement. The early believers saw themselves as different from the sinful people around them such as the polytheists, Christians and Jews (Tennous, 2011:129). However, “Donner claims, a Jew or a Christian who had the correct standard behaviour could be part of the movement because they, too, were monotheists” (ibid.).

Donner contends that the crystallisation of an independent and concrete confessional Muslim identity to what we call “Islam” today took place decades after the Prophet’s death and under the Umayyad ruler ‘Abd al-Malik ibn Marwān (d. 705). He argues that this was due to the need for a renewed legitimacy that sought political and religious supremacy (2010:201-202). Hence, the traditional Muslim narrative of Islam’s origins gained popularity during this period, where the memories and stories of the early Believers’ movement and the Prophet were redefined to legitimise the formation of a distinct religiously confessional persuasion entrenched within the supremacy of the Umayyad dynasty.

125

Donner deals with several other characteristics of the early Believers’ movement, of which Muhammad was the leader and seen as a divinely-inspired prophet. He also outlines the militancy of the Believers’ movement, in that they were expected to do more than cultivate virtue and pious behaviour in their lives. They were to be actively promoting God’s law – even through force (Donner, 2010:85). Donner explains how Muhammad’s followers conquered large amounts of territory very rapidly and did so with very little violence. He believes that was because the Believers themselves arrived as monotheists, and were encountering monotheistic populations and asking them to believe in one God (2010:142), pay their taxes for protection, remain on their land (2014:149) and adhere to pious standards of behaviour that they themselves would have also held up as ideals.

Donner’s thesis about early Islam as a kind of “ecumenical” believers’ movement found a positive public response (Rodenbeck, 2010). Yet Crone wrote that the public response was positive only because his thesis “appeals deeply to American liberals: Here they find the nice, tolerant, and open Islam that they hanker for” (Ibid.). Rather, for Crone, Donner’s thesis is based on a weak argument, because “the only direct evidence is the qur’anic verses on the believing People of the Book; all the rest is conjecture” (Crone, 2010). She further argues that the Jacobite, Nestorian and Melkite Christians that the Muslims encountered in Syria, Egypt and Iraq were unquestionably polytheists by qur’anic standards and not monotheist as Donner contends. In fact, they disagreed about Christology,161 and their disputes were premised on Christ’s divinity (Crone, 2010). She further argues that in Donner’s intention to affirm that the Muslim conquest were relatively swift and left urban life, religious communities and complex organisations intact, he is simply affirming the conventional Muslim view (Crone, 2010).

Donner’s assertion is mostly based on the qur’anic verses and the Constitution of Medina.162 Hence, he does not look at other Muslim sources such as Hadith, pioneering biographies on Muhammad and poetry, as Muir did. His close reading of the Qur’an also does not offer a context to the verses that are revealed to Muhammad and poetry, over the course of his life. From Muir, it was ascertained that the Qur’an can evince different attitudes towards an event or subject, as discussed in Sūrah al-`Abasa and the “Satanic Verses”. In this respect,

161 Cf., note 106. 162 Donner relies on the translation of this document from Ibn Ishāq, Alfred Guillaume (d. 1965), R. B. Serjeant (d. 1993), and Michael Lecker (2010:227). 126

Donner’s biography of Muhammad is not a technical historical work as he says, but it does provide an interesting and new perspective of the origins of Islam that is skillfully told and easy to understand by any non-specialist. The main differences to Muir’s biography of Muhammad are firstly Donner’s preservation of the ecumenical character of Muhammad’s movement. Secondly, Donner also writes that the Qur’an’s strict monotheism also condemns the Christian doctrine of the Trinity as being incompatible with the idea of God’s absolute unity. Thirdly, he argues that the roots of the origin of Islam were part of a wider cultural world that embraced the lands of the Near East, the eastern Mediterranean and Arabia (2010:38, 58, 59, 204, 213).

5.4 Conclusion

The pioneering Muslim biographies gave some direction on how best to write about the life of Muhammad. Indeed, Western scholars using original Muslim sources have begun to understand that these sources comprise a very diverse body of material163 consisting of many different genres that have different origins and have been transmitted in many different ways. Hence, individual biographer’s writings about Muhammad using these sources will have different methodologies, approaches and style, thus their conclusions will vary.

In the twentieth century, we have indeed seen that not only one version of Muhammad appears in modern biographies. Both among Muslim and non-Muslim writers, various approaches to Muhammad’s life are apparent. These scholars using the works of the pioneering biographies and other early Muslim text as Muir, Sprenger and others had done are now constructing varying portraits of Muhammad’s life and character. From this perspective, no unified notion or presentation of the Prophet will be achieved. Thus, although most of these efforts are less biased than Muir’, because these modern biographies differ vastly – as we saw with the works of Gibbs, Watt, Rodinson, Donner and Armstrong and others – they illustrate a diversity, variance and timelessness that will continue in the writing of biographies on Muhammad.

163 Cf., Chapter 3. 127

CONCLUSION

Since the advent of Islam in the seventh century, Muhammad was disparaged by most Christian scholars as a false prophet. During the early Middle Ages he was frequently portrayed in European scholarship and Christian polemics as an imposter prophet, possessed by Satan and a precursor of the Antichrist. During the Renaissance, Western scholasticism began to extricate itself from the entanglement of the Christian theological apologia and senescent dogmatic structure that no longer spoke to the age. This new spirit of Enlightenment scholasticism challenged contemporaries who were Western scholars to advance new approaches to the study of historical figures such as Muhammad. In the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries modern Western scholars first used secondary Muslim sources to learn about Muhammad. In the nineteenth century it was scholars such as Weil, Kremer, Sprenger, Muir and other contemporaries that were perhaps the first modern Western scholars to access the best available pioneering Sīra literature of Ibn Ishāq (as known through Ibn Hishām), Al-Wāqidī (as rendered through his scribe Ibn S`ad) and Al- Tabarī to construct biographies of Muhammad. These scholars began to gradually translate and incorporate these original Muslim sources into English and Continental languages. From the nineteenth and into the twenty-first century, Western scholars have tried to excavate the historical Muhammad from Muslim historiographical sources. Many of these scholars have recognised that Muhammad played a significant role in religious history and should be studied from the original Muslim sources to learn more about him.

Muir, along with his contemporary Sprenger, were arguably the first modern Western scholars to meticulously research the pioneering Sīra literature, decipher and categorise the necessary source materials required to compose a biography of Muhammad’s life.164 By Muir critically laying the rules and principles for these source materials, he contributed a scholarly work based upon the techniques of post-Enlightenment historiography to construct a modern biography of Muhammad’s life. Having this knowledge was important for Muir because even Muslims could not than dispute the authenticity of his biographical work based on the authentic traditional sources, which were revered by Muslim scholars themselves (Qasmi, 2011: 61).

164 Cf., Chapter Three. 128

In this dissertation, we used Vernon K. Robbins’ socio-rhetorical interpretation method as our theoretical framework to read Muir’s biography of Muhammad. Using the socio-rhetorical tool, i.e., the texture of texts, the study was able to gauge the multiple textures operative in Muir’s biography of Muhammad. In other words, we looked at the impact of Muir’s upbringing and education in Scotland, his Christian evangelicalism, his services in the East India Company and later the British Indian civil services in India and his Eurocentric worldview of the cultural and racial superiority of Western Christians165 on his understanding and appreciation of Islam and its Prophet.

After a general introduction, this dissertation began, in Chapter One, with the earliest writings on Muhammad by Christians as early as the seventh century C.E. in the Near East, i.e., before Western Europe. It illustrated that from the advent of Islam in the seventh century, Muhammad was dismissed by many Christian scholars as a false prophet. During the early Middle Ages he was frequently portrayed in Western European scholarship and Christian polemics as an imposter prophet, possessed by Satan, and as a heretic and a precursor of the Antichrist. During the Renaissance, Western scholasticism began to extricate itself from the entanglement of the Christian theological apologia and senescent dogmatic structure that no longer spoke to the age. This new spirit of Enlightenment scholasticism challenged contemporary Western scholars to advance new approaches to the study of historical figures such as Muhammad. In the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries modern Western scholars first used secondary166 Muslim sources to learn about Muhammad. In the nineteenth century, they began to access the original Muslim sources to write about the origin of Islam and the life of Muhammad. These scholars began to gradually translate and incorporate these original Muslim sources into English and Continental languages. From the nineteenth century and into the twenty-first century, Western scholars such as Muir have tried to excavate the historical Muhammad from original Muslim historiographical sources. Many of these scholars have recognised that Muhammad played a significant role in religious history and should be studied from the original and authentic Muslim sources to learn more about him.

165 As Robbins mentions in his section on ideological texture, which defines the “ideology of power in the discourse of text” (1996:113). He briefly defines some views of Foucault’s guidelines for analysing power relationships (ibid.). He defines a “system of differentiations that allows dominant people to act upon the actions of people in a subordinate position” (ibid.). 166 Cf., Chapter One. The works of Abū al-Fidāˋ and Ibn Athīr who used primary sources but their works were not the original traditional sources. 129

Chapter Two then discussed the genealogy of biographical works on Muhammad. It placed the work of modern Western scholars such as Weil, Sprenger, Muir and others historically. The aim was to read Muir’s biography of Muhammad within the legacy of biographical works from the first Muslim works up to his work.

Chapter Three showed Muir’s worldview, scholarly achievements and the methodological approach for his biography of Muhammad. Importantly, it showed that Muir’s categorisation of the source materials from the pioneering biographies and their utilisation is what made his biography an authoritative and scholarly work. This achievement was a crucial aspect of the methodology, allowing for the later construction of modern biographies of Muhammad’s life. Muir was also astutely able to discern how to construct a biography of Muhammad using the techniques of the Enlightenment era. His handling and utilising of the various source materials from the pioneering biographies of Muhammad’s life had a far reaching impact on subsequent biographies of Muhammad. Furthermore, it is important to note that Muir began by looking at other modern Western biographical works such as that of Edward Gibbons and his contemporaries Weil, Sprenger and Washington Irving167 (1850), finding that these works did not reflect much of the pioneering Sīra works.

Chapter Four dealt with how Muir utilised and approached the verses of the Qur’an to support and construct his biography on the life of Muhammad. Muir regards “every verse” of “the Qur’an” as “the genuine and unaltered composition of” Muhammad “himself” (Qasmi, 2011: 67). He also claims that qur’anic passages are contradictory, repetitive and written as though they were a melange of incongruent fragments placed in a haphazard sequence to each other. In short, for Muir the Qur’an was Muhammad’s words and not God’s word. It is from this premise that Muir accepts the text of the Qur’an because had it been a forgery, it would have been better edited and composed.

It is evident that Muir’s approach to the original Muslim sources was not consistent with his own criteria, which was to have approached these with “sagacity, perseverance, and impartiality” (1923:lxxxvii) to uncover a fair approximation of Muhammad in history. Muir’s “impartiality” is misplaced because he is not neutral and does not reflect objectivity. Muir’s

167 Irving’s biography was drawn from secondary sources, which was from Gagnier’s translation of the Arabian historian Abū al-Fidāˋ’s (d. 1331) work of which the author found a copy in the Jesuits library of the Convent of St. Isidro in Madrid (Irving, 1850:preface page). 130

reading of the Qur’anic text through a Christian hypothesis refracted through his exclusivist Christian “sensibilities” imposes upon the conclusions of his biography of Muhammad.

Chapter Five shows how many post-Muir biographies of Muhammad began to change, both in terms of methodology and approach. By looking at these biographies, we noted different conclusions that were not as ideological or biased as Muir’s. In this chapter, two post-Muir Western biographies were looked at in some detail. The works of Rodinson and Donner both present different perspectives to Muir, while using similar traditional Muslim sources that he (Muir) used. Both these works not only show a methodological shift from the various nineteen century Western writers in their use of the original Muslim sources to construct the biographies of Muhammad, but they also, as in the case of Rodinson, Muhammad was an ideal that was achieved because of the circumstances in which people found themselves (1996:323). In this way, Rodinson’s methodology enables an interpretation of Muhammad as an exemplar of social and psychological regeneration of people and society. Donner shows a historian engaged in the critical study of Islam that was founded by Muhammad against the backdrop of the religious trends that were current in the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean during late antiquity.

The study has shown that Muir utilised the original Muslim sources to construct a rather different biography of Muhammad to Muslim historiographers. It illustrated that by Muir employing the original Muslim sources to write about Muhammad and that his context and presuppositions influenced his objective and in turn set the course for his methodology. The availability of such literature provided Muir an opportunity for a re-interpretation and questioning of the processes and authenticity of the original Muslim sources. The analysis of Muir’s biography of Muhammad shows that the major impulses that motivated him were ideological and polemical. Europe’s colonial domination of much of the Oriental world tended to underwrite assumptions of European superiority, and Muir, “a servant of the British Empire, was certainly influenced by these assumptions” (Bennett, 1998:112). Thus, Muslim scholars already in the nineteenth century challenged the picture of Muhammad that Muir presented in his biography of the Prophet of Islam. Indeed, Khan and Ameer Ali could not recognise the Muhammad “whom they revered and whose memory they cherished, and they set out to correct what they saw as Muir’s distorted picture” (Bennett, 1998:117).

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This study should be considered as a contribution towards understanding how nineteenth- century Western scholars, including Muir, constructed their biographies of the Prophet of Islam by utilising the original sources. Muir’s critical evaluation of the original Muslim sources provided a wide scope for later studies on the life of Muhammad. Furthermore, applying the socio-rhetorical interpretation method of Robbins to Muir’s biography of Muhammad and how he utilised the verses of the Qur’an invites a critical reading of Muir and the text of the Qur’an. In other words, the study was able move into the world of Muir and how he interacted with the Qur’an, which he regarded as the words of Muhammad.

Future studies would do well to examine in detail the language of the Qur’an to uncover further information about the life of Muhammad. It should also consider the many verses in the Qur’an that describe Muhammad as “mercy to the worlds” (Q. 21:107), “the shining light” (Al-Siraj al-Munir) (Q. 33: 45-47) “seal of the Prophets” (Khātim an-Nabīyīn) (Q. 33:40) and among many such others descriptions from the Qur’an that can explain variations of Muhammad’s character and life. How modern scholars will write about Muhammad from these descriptions can connect them to wider spiritual and social experiences of his life. For instance, Muhammad as a “mercy to the world” can be expressed as a mercy for created things that includes both believers and unbelievers, which has wide undercurrents for a construction of multicultural and egalitarian societies. For Christians to manifest answers from a pluralist understanding of Muhammad rather than a polemical perspective, as legitimately prophetic, rather than demonic or inferior, can present him as personality that was the original source of a new religion (Ali, 221-221).

Furthermore, Jews and Christians are directly referred to in the Qur’an and thus a narrative can be fashioned about Muhammad from a perspective that includes other monotheistic religious traditions of Judaism and Christianity. Hoyland notes that historian and Arabist scholars have continued to think of the “early Islamic civilisation as very distinct from those around it and before it and have limited their investigation of Islam with Late Antiquity (a period between the second and eight centuries C.E.) to the classic question of what Islam borrowed from Late Antique religions and traditions” (2007:12). However, in recent times, from the works of Rodinson, Donner and others there are now signs of a change of attitude and studies are focused on “not so much what Muslims borrowed directly from the other religions of the Middle East, but rather that they inhabited and were influenced by the same cultural world” (2007:12). 132

There is still a need for more studies of Muhammad’s life through the various traditions of Islam such as the Sufi, or mystical, Muhammad in Hadith, Muhammad in Shi’a traditions and Muhammad in the contemporary era that can study him as a politician, an administrator, a family person, a husband, a feminist and his relations with women, and other assessments. Ali notes that authors, today, treat Muhammad in parallel to Jesus and Buddha. By so doing, “the veneration of Muhammad is quite similar to Jesus and Buddha and countless other religious figures around the world” (2014:204). This means that each religious figure can be compared to each other and can be examined differently as models for humanity. It is important that biographers write about Muhammad not to justify particular positions but to rather relate or critically evaluate his life and the milieu that he lived. To learn more about him and why he was so successful or unsuccessful in certain cases, including the hardships that he endured, for example as a revolutionary in Mecca and a statesman in Medina. Furthermore, how his life can relate to present societies looking at models for liberation theology, decolonisation and transformation, and thus the relevance of his message. Such studies will enable a wider perspective for researchers, scholars, students, historians, anthropologists, sociologists and other academic disciplines to further critically evaluate the heritage of Islam and the life of Muhammad.

Hence, while there is a preoccupation on how both Western scholars and Muslims present the life of Muhammad, such works will continue to be written differently in each context. Moreover, in a post-modern environment where different traditions and cultures are converging, such biographies are inseparable from the issues of global power, imperialism, religious conflicts, politics and socio-economic realities of life.

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