An Overview of the Sirah Literature Mawlana Dr MAE (Ashraf) Dockrat

An Overview of the Sirah Literature Mawlana Dr MAE (Ashraf) Dockrat (Jamiah al-Ulum al-Islamiyyah) Sirah Convention-Cordoba-Linbro Park (20-22 October 2017) Introduction Until the 19th century, there are two quite distinct strands of biography of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam, written by different types of authors and geared to very different audiences. Muslims wrote by and large pious hagiography for Muslim readers. Western authors wrote in Latin or the various European vernaculars for non-Muslim readers. A long tradition, starting in the Middle Ages, presented Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam as a false prophet, heresiarch, and impostor, author of a false religion: while a few of these European authors read Arabic sources about Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam, they did so with an eye to understanding and denouncing the false religion that he founded. This began to change in the eighteenth century, when some Enlightenment writers portrayed Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam in a positive light: such is the case of Henri, Conte de Boulanvilliers, who (in order better to criticize the Catholic Church) makes the Muslim prophet into an anti-clerical hero who freed believers from a corrupt Church and reinstated a direct link between God and his faithful. In the following century, romantic writers such as Washington Irving or Thomas Carlyle made Muhammad into a hero, legislator to his people, and a “great man.” 1 We are interested principally in what happens next: starting in the nineteenth century, and increasingly until today, Muslims and non-Muslims read and react to each others’ depictions of Islam and of the prophet. This is due in part to the increased knowledge of Arabic and other eastern languages by European scholars, but is principally the result of the emergence of French and English as international languages read by millions of Muslims—be they subjects of the British and French colonial Empires, immigrants to Europe, Australia and the Americas, or simply authors expressing themselves in the emerging global common language of English. As a result, these various strands have become thoroughly entangled. This process began in the nineteenth century, when Muslims in the British and French empires started to read what European authors had written about Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam and reacted. Two of the lives of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam most widely read in English were Humphey Prideaux’s polemical True Nature of the Imposture Fully Display'd in the Life of Mahomet (1697) and the less vicious but nevertheless negative portrayal by William Muir, a Protestant missionary and a British colonial official, The Life of Mahomet from Original Sources (1878). If time permitted we could look have looked at these two works and two refutations that they sparked from Ahmed Khan (writing in Urdu and English, 1869-70) and Syed Ameer Ali (in English, 1873-91). Both authors were closely involved with the British administration in India; both sought to refute what they saw as Western Christian prejudice and misunderstanding of Islam. Khan and Syed Ameer Ali assailed both the 2 lack of objectivity of Prideaux and Muir and their failure to understand the Arabic sources. At the same time, Khan, Syed Ameer Ali and other Muslim authors writing in English (or in French) refuted the standard Western accusations against Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam: his violence, his supposed lust (manifested in his polygamy), his supposed opportunistic feigning of (some or all of) his revelations. These authors, then, had to address the concerns of their European readers and had to justify, or at least contextualize, those elements of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam’s biography that could seem strange or offensive to them. Even in biographies written by Muslims for other Muslims, this apologetical strain is increasingly found, as in a globalized world increasingly dominated by European Christians, some Muslim authors felt a need to justify and explain elements of the prophet’s life to their Muslim readers. Other European authors were called in to testify to Muhammad’s greatness: Carlyle and Irving, for example. Some Muslim authors placed the accent less on Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam’s religious calling than on his role as legislator, statesman and reformer. In the 1930s, a slew of Egyptian intellectuals, from both pious and secular points of view, wrote glowing biographies of the prophet, usually portraying him as a far-thinking political leader, lawgiver and moral model. In the mid-twentieth century Fakir Syed Waheed-ud-Din wrote a biography of Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam in Urdu in which he affirmed that the prophet was even better than Napoleon, since he combined military and political prowess with 3 religious merit. His book, translated into English as The Benefactor, became standard reading for members of the Nation of Islam in the US. For the purpose of this presentation we will make some general comments and then list some works on the subject and share a few reflections on these. I would like to begin this presentation by making readers aware of some of the issues at stake when reading the sirah. Recently the writing of sirah and the representation of the Rasul of Islam sallallahu alaihi wasallam has been the subject of several interesting studies. To mention one recent work we can quote the work of Ahmad Gunny who in his book Prophet Muhammad in French and English Literature: 1650-Present (2010) presents a pioneering study of French and European literary and theological representations of Islam in the modern period and offers a survey of over 350 years, which is both a cross cultural history and a discussion of the intellectual changes in the representation of the Prophet's life based on the examination of original published and unpublished manuscripts. “Reading a reading” of the Sirah Essentially this is what is at stake in this bibliographical study of the sirah literature. We will limit our study and examination to works in the English language. We also further limit the scope of our investigation by looking at works that are printed albeit taking cognizance of the way in which we read is fast changing. Websites and blogs as well as 4 e-books are a growing source from which people read. The other medium is audio books which also have an impressive breadth of choices. Reading the sirah is essentially what the author of any sirah does. In that sense the authors approach and ideology determines what he is going to draw and glean from the sirah. Sirah writing is not a passive and thoughtless practice. Instead it is a very deliberate attempt at using the noble biography for didactic purposes. The sirah allows us to draw conclusions and to apply lessons to our own context and circumstances. It allows the author to couch his own interpretation of the religion in the biography of the Prophet of Islam. There are multiple readings of the sirah; just as there are multiple readings of the religion itself. All of them are far from equal. Many are contradictory and many more are competing interpretations. As readers of the sirah we are essentially “reading a reading”. This makes the task not only all the more interesting and reflective (and reflexive) to the critical thinker. It also puts value to the exercise we do here this afternoon. The best work on the sirah If someone were to ask: What in your opinion is the best work on the sirah? There can be no doubt that as Muslims we can only reply by saying that it has to be the Qur’an. Undoubtedly the Qur’an serves as the best sirah of the Prophet. And just as it is paradigmatic to speak of the Prophets live as the Qur’an, it is equally true to say that the Qur’an is the best sirah of the Prophet of Allah sallallahu alaihi wasalllam. This also puts paid to the idea that a good sirah is a chronological account of the biography of the Nabi of Allah Ta’ala sallallahu alaihi wasallam. 5 Reading the Qur’an as a book of Sirah brings the Qur’an alive. It provides context and is a clarion call to recognize the place of revelation in the living and dynamic Muslim community then and by extension in our own time as well. The Sirah as literature: Literary theory, reception theory and hermeneutics As with any other literature there are essentially three considerations at play here. The author-the text-the reader. The author has an audience in mind and uses a text to convey meaning. An examination of the text allows us to derive information about the reader and the intended audience. At times there are external information that fill the gaps but we oftern have to look at the text itself. Where the horizon of the text meets the horizon of the audience meaning is achieved. Our problem is one of interpretation. Moments in Sirah Literature There are certain events in recent past which have resulted in an increase or spurt in the number of works written in the sirah genre. In this regards state patronage also plays a role. The prize for sirah writing in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia is one such impetus which has played a role. Sympathetic leaders such as the later General Zia ul-Haq who promoted these prizes were a source of inspiration to many. Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and the controversy that followed prompted Muslim writers to produce works in the sirah genre. In recent times 9/11 and the Charlie Hebdo affair had a similar effect. The number of works that are being produced in Turkey is also laudable. 6 Limiting the Genre There are a number of types or sub-genres of the sirah literature.

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