Sīrah

"Sīra" redirects here. For the popular genre of epic, see Sīra shaʿbiyya.

"Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya" redirects here. For other uses, see Al-Sira al-Nabawiyya (disambiguation).

Al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya (Arabic: السيرة النبوية), commonly shortened to Sīrah and translated as prophetic biography, are the traditional biographies of the Islamic prophet Muhammad written by Muslim historians, from which, in addition to the Qurʾān and ḥadīth literature, most historical information about his life and the early history of Islam is derived.

An early manuscript of Ibn Hisham's al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah^[1]: 61

The main feature of the information that formed the basis of early historiography in Islam was that this information emerged as the irregular products of storytellers (qāṣṣ, pl. quṣṣāṣ) without details.^[2] At the same time the study of the earliest periods in Islamic history is made difficult by a lack of sources.^[3] While the narratives were initially in the form of a kind of heroic epics called magāzī, details were added later, edited and transformed into sirah compilations.^[4][5] The stories were written in the form of “founding conquest stories” based on nostalgia for the golden age then. Humphrey, quoted by Antoine Borrut, explains that the stories related to this period were created according to a pact-betrayal-redemption principle.^[6] Western historians describe the purpose of these early biographies as largely to convey a message, rather than to strictly and accurately record history.^[7] Lawrence Conrad examines the early sirah books and sees that the dates of Muhammad's birth span a period of up to 85 years. Conrad defines this as "the fluidity (evolutionary process) continued even in the written period."^[8]

How the hadith and biography sources that constitute this body of information can be evaluated in Islam is a matter of debate. While traditional Islam adopts an approach that evaluates narrations -that meet certain criteria that vary according to sect and understanding- as authentic, Quranism may view these as sources of idolatry idolatry^[9][10] that must be completely rejected. Some Quranists may approve of their partial use in sermons and religious ceremonies, with more moderate approaches, except for the sections concerning belief.

Terminology

In the Arabic language the word sīrah or sīrat (Arabic: سيرة) comes from the verb sāra, which means "to travel" or "to be on a journey". A person's sīrah is that person's journey through life, or biography, encompassing their birth, events in their life, manners and characteristics, and their death. In modern usage it may also refer to a person's resume. It is sometimes written as "seerah", "sirah" or "sirat", all meaning "life" or "journey". In Islamic literature, the plural form, siyar, could also refer to the rules of war and dealing with non-Muslims.^[11]

The phrase sīrat rasūl allāh, or as-sīra al-nabawiyya, refers to the study of the life of Muhammad. The term sīrah was first linked to the biography of Muhammad by Ibn Shihab al-Zuhri (d. 124/741–2), and later popularized by the work of Ibn Hisham (d. 833). In the first two centuries of Islamic history, sīrah was more commonly known as maghāzī (literally, 'stories of military expeditions'), which is now considered to be only a subset of sīra^[11]—one that concerns the military campaigns of Muhammad.^[12]

Early works of sīrah consist of multiple historical reports, or akhbār, and each report is called a khabar.^[13] Sometimes the word tradition or hadith is used instead.

Content

The sīrah literature includes a variety of heterogeneous materials, containing mainly narratives of military expeditions undertaken by Muhammad and his companions. These stories are intended as historical accounts and are used for veneration. The sīrah also includes a number of written documents, such as political treaties (e.g., Treaty of Hudaybiyyah or Constitution of Medina), military enlistments, assignments of officials, letters to foreign rulers, and so forth. It also records some of the speeches and sermons made by Muhammad, like his speech at the Farewell Pilgrimage. Some of the sīrah accounts include verses of poetry commemorating certain events and battles.^[11]

At later periods, certain type of stories included in sīrah developed into their own separate genres. One genre is concerned with stories of prophetic miracles, called aʿlām al-nubuwa (literally, "proofs of prophethood"—the first word is sometimes substituted for amārāt or dalāʾil). Another genre, called faḍāʾil wa mathālib — tales that show the merits and faults of individual companions, enemies, and other notable contemporaries of Muhammad.^[11] Some works of sīrah also positioned the story of Muhammad as part of a narrative that includes stories of earlier prophets, Persian Kings, pre-Islamic Arab tribes, and the Rashidun.^[11]

Parts of sīrah were inspired by, or elaborate upon, events mentioned in the Qur'an. These parts were often used by writers of tafsir and asbab al-nuzul to provide background information for events mentioned in certain ayat.^[11]

Authenticity

See also: Views about Ibn Ishaq, Historicity of Muhammad, and Revisionist school of Islamic studies

For centuries, Muslim scholars have recognized the problem of authenticity of hadith. Thus they have developed sophisticated methods (see Hadith studies) of evaluating isnāds (chains of transmission). This was done in order to classify each hadith into "sound" (ṣaḥīḥ) for authentic reports, as opposed to "weak" (ḍaʿīf) for ones that are probably fabricated, in addition to other categories.^[14] Since many sīrah reports also contain isnād information and some of the sīrah compilers (akhbārīs) were themselves practicing jurists and hadīth transmitters (muḥaddiths), it was possible to apply the same methods of hadīth criticism to the sīrah reports.^[15] However, some sīrah reports were written using an imprecise form of isnād, or what modern historians call the "collective isnād" or "combined reports". The use of collective isnād meant that a report may be related on the authority of multiple persons without distinguishing the words of one person from another. This lack of precision led some hadith scholars to take any report that used a collective isnād to be lacking in authenticity.^[16]

According to Wim Raven, it is often noted that a coherent image of Muhammad cannot be formed from the literature of sīra, whose authenticity and factual value have been questioned on a number of different grounds.^[11] He lists the following arguments against the authenticity of sīra, followed here by counter arguments:

Non-Islamic testimonies about Muhammad's life describe him as the leader of the Saracens,^[17] believed to be descendants of Ishmael, that lived in the Roman-era provinces of Arabia Petraea (West) and Arabia Deserta (North).

1. Hardly any sīrah work was compiled during the first century of Islam. However, Fred Donner points out that the earliest historical writings about the origins of Islam first emerged in AH 60–70, well within the first century of Hijra (see also List of biographies of Muhammad). Furthermore, the sources now extant, dating from the second, third, and fourth centuries AH, are mostly compilations of material derived from earlier sources.^[18][19]
2. The many discrepancies exhibited in different narrations found in sīrah works. Yet, despite the lack of a single orthodoxy in Islam, there is still a marked agreement on the most general features of the traditional origins story.^[20][19]
3. Later sources claiming to know more about the time of Muhammad than earlier ones. Scholar Patricia Crone found a pattern, where the farther a commentary was removed in time from the life of Muhammad and the events in the Quran, the more information it provided, despite the fact it depended on the earlier sources for its content. Crone attributed this phenomenon to storytellers' embellishment.

   If one storyteller should happen to mention a raid, the next storyteller would know the date of this raid, while the third would know everything that an audience might wish to hear about.^[5]

   In the case of Ibn Ishaq, there are no earlier sources we can consult to see if and how much embroidering was done by him and other earlier transmitters, but, Crone argues, "it is hard to avoid the conclusion that in the three generations between the Prophet and Ibn Ishaq" fictitious details were not also added.^[5][21][19]
4. Discrepancies compared to non-Muslim sources. But there are also similarities and agreements both in information specific to Muhammad,^[22] and concerning Muslim tradition at large.^[23][19]
5. Some parts or genres of sīra, namely those dealing with miracles, do not qualify as sources for scientific historiographical information about Muhammad, except for showing the beliefs and doctrines of his community.^[19]

Nevertheless, other content of sīra, like the Constitution of Medina, are generally considered to be authentic,^[11] although it does not fulfill any of the conditions of authenticity in the Islamic recording system such as having a reliable chain of narrators up to the person who recorded it.

Comparison to hadith

In terms of structure, a hadith and a historical report (khabar) are very similar; they both contain isnads (chains of transmission). The main difference between a hadith and a khabar is that a hadith is not concerned with an event as such, and normally does not specify a time or place. Rather the purpose of hadith is to record a religious doctrine as an authoritative source of Islamic law. By contrast, while a khabar may carry some legal or theological implications, its main aim is to convey information about a certain event.^[13]

Starting from the 8th and 9th century, many scholars have devoted their efforts to both kinds of texts equally.^[13] Some historians consider the sīrah and maghāzī literature to be a subset of Hadith.^[24]

Reception

In Umayyad times, storytellers used to tell stories of Muhammad and earlier prophets in private gatherings and mosques, given they obtained permission from the authorities. Many of these storytellers are now unknown. After the Umayyad period, their reputation deteriorated because of their inclination to exaggerate and fantasize, and for relying on the Isra'iliyat. Thus they were banned from preaching at mosques.^[25] In later periods, however, works of sīrah became more prominent.

During the early centuries of Islam, the sīrah literature was taken less seriously compared to the hadiths.^[11] Today, although the orthodox Islamic approach frequently uses sirah material in its sermons, Qur'anism and the academic community (including those called hadith or khabar and whose chain of transmission are labeled as sound by their authors) approach this material with suspicion. While Yaşar Nuri Öztürk notes that the hadiths, which have now reached millions, were initially limited to a few hundred, Mehmet Özdemir (prof.dr.) draws attention to the almost non-existent number of miracles (dalāʾil al-nubuwwa) in the first records and the hundreds of additions made in later periods.^[26]

Another striking example is the Qurayza massacre, which is attributed to Muhammad by various chains of attribution in sources considered authentic; The brutality of the event led researchers skeptics of traditional sources such as İhsan Eliaçık and Mustafa İslamoğlu to think that the story of 960 Jews who destroyed themselves by refusing to surrender to the Romans in the clashes between Jews and Romans believed to have taken place at Masada was adapted to Muhammad. İhsan Eliaçık states that 3-5 Jews who were considered guilty may have been killed as a result of this incident. ^[27][28] Regarding the Qurayza massacre, Sami Aldeeb states that the incident is included in the Jewish holy texts, but according to these sources, Jews killed non-Jews.^[29]

Many Western scholars suspect that there was widespread fabrication of hadith (either entirely or by the misattribution of the views of early Muslim religious and legal thinkers to Muhammad) in the early centuries of Islam to support certain theological and legal positions.^[30] In addition to fabrication, it is possible for the meaning of a hadith to have greatly drifted from its original telling through the different interpretations and biases of its varying transmitters, even if the chain of transmission is authentic.^[31][32] While some hadith may genuinely originate from firsthand observation of Muhammad (particularly personal traits that were not of theological interest, like his fondness for tharid and sweets), Western scholars suggest that it is extraordinarily difficult if not impossible to determine which hadith accurately reflect the historical Muhammad.^[32]

More recently, western historical criticism and debate concerning sīrah have elicited a defensive attitude from some Muslims who wrote apologetic literature defending its content.^[11] Some researchers, such as Volker Popp, have gone further and argued that names such as Muhammad and Ali were not names but titles.^[33]

Early compilations of sīra

The following is a list of some of the early Hadith collectors who specialized in collecting and compiling sīrah and maghāzī reports:

• ʿUrwa ibn al-Zubayr (d. 713). He wrote letters replying to inquiries of the Umayyad caliphs, Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan and al-Walid I, involving questions about certain events that happened in the time of the Prophet. Since Abd al-Malik did not appreciate the maghāzī literature, these letters were not written in story form. He is not known to have written any books on the subject.^[25]
• Wahb ibn Munabbih (d. during 725 to 737). Several books were ascribed to him but none of them are now extant. Some of his works survive as quotations found in works by Ibn Ishaq, Ibn Hisham, Ibn Jarir al-Tabari, and Abū Nuʿaym al-Iṣfahānī.
• Ibn Shihāb al-Zuhrī (d. c. 737), a central figure in sīrah literature, who collected both ahadith and akhbār. His akhbār also contain chains of transmissions, or isnad. He was sponsored by the Umayyad court and asked to write two books, one on genealogy and another on maghāzī. The first was canceled and the one about maghāzī is either not extant or has never been written.
• Musa ibn ʿUqba, a student of al-Zuhrī, wrote Kitāb al-Maghāzī, a notebook used to teach his students. The work was lost but a manuscript of Kitab al-maghazi was recently rediscovered. Some of his traditions have been preserved, although their attribution to him is disputed.^[25]
• Muhammad ibn Ishaq (d. 767 or 761), another student of al-Zuhrī, who collected oral traditions that formed the basis of an important biography of the Prophet. His traditions survived through a number of sources, most notably Ibn Hisham and Ibn Jarir al-Tabari.

Number of prophetic biographies

Main article: List of biographies of Muhammad

The sīrah literature is important: in the Urdu language alone, a scholar from Pakistan in 2024 produced a bibliography of more than 10,000 titles, counting multivolume works as a single book and without integrating articles, short essays and unpublished manuscripts, with the researcher also precising that the literature in Arabic is even more important.^[34]

See also

• Islam portal

• Biographical evaluation (ʿIlm al-rijāl)
• Hadith
• Historiography of early Islam
• List of hadith collections
• Sunnah