570–632 CE · Religious and political leader; addressee of the Qur'anic revelation in the Islamic tradition
Muhammad ibn Abdullah
Discussed here strictly as a subject of historical inquiry: the earliest connected biographical narratives (sīra) about Muhammad were compiled roughly a century or more after his death, chiefly by Ibn Ishaq (d. c. 767 CE), preserved in the recension of Ibn Hisham (d. 833 CE). This chronological gap between the events described and their surviving narrative sources is a central methodological problem for historians working on this period. It is distinct from, and not resolved by, the theological status of these same events within the Islamic tradition.
Content referencing this person
- Research Paper
Islam: History, Authority and the Development of Islamic Tradition
A historical-critical review of the Qur'an and Hadith as sources of religious authority in Islam, distinguishing established fact, scholarly consensus, majority and minority opinion, disputed claims, and theological interpretation at every step.
- Research Paper
Women in Mainstream Islam: Protection, Restriction, and the Historical Development of Religious Practice
A historical-critical review testing whether practices commonly described as Islamic requirements for women — segregation, face-veiling, travel guardianship, exclusion from mosques and public office — rest on the Qur'an itself or on later hadith, jurisprudence, dynastic custom, and regional practice.
- Article
The Constitution of Medina: A Primary Source Overview
A short guide to the document known as the 'Constitution of Medina': what it says, where it comes from, and why historians treat it as unusually old despite surviving only in a much later text.
- Article
Islam: A Reader's Guide to the Qur'an, Hadith and Early Islamic History
A plain-language companion to Revert Way's academic review of the Qur'an and Hadith: the same evidence, sources, and arguments, with every technical term and historical figure introduced on first use.
- Evidence Library
The Constitution of Medina
A set of clauses, preserved in Ibn Ishaq's biography of Muhammad, establishing relations between the Emigrants, the Medinan Muslims, and Medina's Jewish tribes shortly after the hijra.