Table Of ContentContents
Preface
I
NTRODUCTION
Reflections on Muhammad and Biography
T T P
HE URNING OINT
I
Muhammad in the Qur’an
T L
HE EGISLATOR
II
Muhammad in Hadith
T M N
HE ASTER ARRATIVE
III
Muhammad in the Sira
T T M
HE EACHER OF ANNERS
IV
Muhammad in Adab
T L W
HE IGHT OF THE ORLD
V
Muhammad in Shiite Biographies
T M M
HE ODEL YSTIC
VI
Muhammad in Sufi Literature
T P C
HE ROPHET ANONIZED
VII
Muhammad’s Sira in a New Canonical Age
T U M
HE NIVERSAL ODEL
VIII
Muhammad in Later Medieval Biography
T H
HE ERO
IX
Muhammad in Modern Biography
T L
HE IBERATOR
X
Muhammad in Contemporary Sira
Conclusion
Notes
Preface
This is a book that exacts a lengthy toll of apologies and disclaimers
from its author, a litany of excuses longer than the norm. Its subject is
the evolution of the images of Muhammad as portrayed by his
community across the centuries. It may be that the introduction that
follows will clarify what is meant by this, but what I thought worth
attempting was a kind of map of a literary tradition, from its origins to
the present. I also suggest that there is a certain symmetry to that
tradition. Although numerous studies exist on disparate aspects of that
biographical tradition, I know of no study that casts an eye on the
landscape as a whole. There may therefore be some value in having a
large map, even if somewhat wrinkled and inaccurate in projection.
The sources are truly vast. There is hardly any work in any branch of
Islamic studies written by Muslims, ancient or modern, that does not
refer to Muhammad and his sayings or actions. He is simply everywhere
in the literature, prose or verse, of his community. So I decided to
confine myself by and large to the genre called the Sira, that is to say the
genre of formal biography of Muhammad. Alas, here too the bulk,
especially in the premodern period, is immense, and several primary
works of the Sira will go unmentioned. I hope I have not done great
violence to the Sira in omitting them, though other students of the genre
will surely put matters right. Again, the Sira written in Arabic during the
premodern period occupies center stage in this work, although the
seminal modern contributions of Indian Muslims and Iranians are
highlighted as well.
In telling the story of the Sira, and of other portrayals of his life that
are not strictly Sira, I have kept away from historicity, from issues that
have to do with their value as a factual source of information on
Muhammad’s life, although much history can of course be learned from
historiography. Instead, I have concerned myself primarily with social
ideality, by which I mean the manner in which a religious society
gradually builds up images of ideal conduct for its central figure or
figures. I like to think of ideality as a subset of the “social imaginary,”
that which drives a religious society to construct and reconstruct the
ideal lives of its early heroes.
A question I sometimes used to set my students in early Arabic/Islamic
history and culture went as follows: “Muslims generally object to being
called ‘Muhammadans.’ With what justification?” I no longer remember
exactly what I expected from my students as an adequate answer, but
this may have included a discussion of the tension between the human
Muhammad and the Muhammad of miracle. Was he simply a messenger
of God or was he more? And if more, how much more? This book is
partially concerned with the answers to this question provided by the
Sira.
But the social ideality of Muhammad is underlain by the love of his
community. In 2006 Muhammad was the subject of a series of cartoons
in the Danish press. The furor caused by that incident, like almost all
similar furors, managed to obscure the raw nerve that these cartoons had
touched. I am referring to the fact that little was said throughout that
controversy about the love of Muhammad among his community,
although much was said about respect for religious beliefs versus the
primacy of free speech. At the heart of that incident was the love of
Muhammad, which, in the phrase of Muhammad Iqbal, “runs like blood
in the veins of his community.” It was Muhammad as comforter, friend,
intercessor, family member that these cartoons seemingly demeaned. A
cliché has gained currency in recent years to the effect that the
equivalent of Christ in Islam is not Muhammad but the Qur’an. That is
not entirely true. The images of Muhammad collected in this book, from
the Sira and other literary sources, may help to show how close the
Prophet has been to his community, how much he remains at the center
of their affection, and how vividly he still stands among them.
This book was first suggested by Trace Murphy at Random House. For
his patience and constant encouragement, my heartfelt thanks. My
thanks also to Darya Porat for her able shepherding of this work and to
Maggie Carr for her perceptive and elegant copy-editing.
Two colleagues at the American University of Beirut read parts of this
work and made numerous suggestions, almost all of which I immediately
incorporated, with gratitude for their concern and critical acumen:
Maher Jarrar and Muhammad ‘Ali Khalidi. I exonerate them from any
responsibility for what remains.
It was Magda who isolated me from my surroundings while I wrote,
sent me back again and again to my labors, and firmly and lovingly
insisted that I finish what I started. This makes her the maraine of all
that follows.
T K
ARIF HALIDI
Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies
American University of Beirut
March 10, 2009
Introduction
REFLECTIONS ON MUHAMMAD AND BIOGRAPHY
The name “Muhammad” means “worthy of all praise.” For fifteen
centuries or so this name has reverberated around the world so that
today one in every five human beings calls down daily praises and
blessings upon him, feels secure in his faith and intercession, holds him
up as a model of virtue and good manners, and goes on pilgimage to the
holy sites he designated, treading the same ground he once trod. And
what of the rest of humanity? One might assume a wide range of
attitudes, all the way from curiosity to admiration to dread. This book is
not a “straight” or “objective” biography of Muhammad—there are more
than enough of these. It is instead a book about his Islamic images. To
be more precise, it is a biographical account that attempts to explore the
manner in which his life has been constructed and reconstructed,
designed and redesigned, over the last millennium and a half. How has
his community narrated his biography? And why is Muhammad still
such a commanding and fascinating figure in the twenty-first century?
To introduce the subject, I begin with the core story, which I shall
confine to one paragraph. Muhammad, son of ‘Abdullah son of ‘Abd al-
Muttalib, was born in Mecca around the year 570 A.D. He began to
receive revelations around the year 610 A.D. and shortly thereafter
started to preach his faith. During his early years as a preacher he seems
to have achieved only a limited success in his hometown, and he had
even less success in winning over converts from outside Mecca. The
turning point in his career came in the year 622 A.D., when he
abandoned Mecca for Medina, a town where he had established a small
base of converts who were ready to protect him. This move to Medina
(hijra) was later adopted by Muslims to mark the first year of the
Muslim, or Hijri, calendar. From Medina Muhammad organized and
often led a series of expeditions whose aim was ultimately to conquer
Mecca, “God’s sacred precinct,” and thereafter spread the religion of
Islam inside and outside Arabia. Mecca fell in 630, another landmark
year. His followers increased rapidly throughout his years in Medina.
The Prophet himself died in Medina in 632.
This or a similar core story would I think be accepted by the majority of
scholars, Muslim and non-Muslim, who concern themselves with
Muhammad’s life. However, the early Muslim biographical tradition
peopled this core story with thousands upon thousands of named and
often sharply drawn personalities, men and women whose life stories
were intertwined with Muhammad’s own. Muslim biographers seem
from an early date to have decided to include in their biographies of the
Prophet the names of every single man or woman whose life in some
way or another touched upon or intersected the core narrative. It is as if
some early Christian Gospel writer had decided to fill out the Sermon on
the Mount and the feeding of the five thousand with the names and life
stories of every single one of those who were present, together with
some account, long or short, of their life and subsequent fate. Until
about the nineteenth century, the traditional Muslim biographies of
Muhammad always place him within a large crowd of humanity. He
towers over these multitudes, an object of adoration, and yet does not
escape their harm, their ridicule, their disobedience, and even their
active or secret hostility. “Muhammad died but his community lives on”
is a widespread Muslim conversational phrase, invoked to stress that life
goes on, that no human being is ever indispensable. It is perhaps an echo
of that early biographical view that constructed and reconstructed his
life as part and parcel of the life of his community. This image of
Muhammad amidst his community may also be a reflection of his images
in the Qur’an, to which I shall later return.
Given this early biographical conception of a prophet embedded in his
religious community, or umma, it makes sense to try to determine what
lay behind that conception. To begin with, biography in almost all
literary traditions has been seen as the most vivid sort of history one can
write. It personalizes history, it centers history on individuals, it
encapsulates history in a number of individual lives. One might call
biography a form of synecdoche, a substitution of the part for the whole.
