The Character of Muhammad in Ibn Ishāq's Biography

Arthur Jeffery, professor of Semitic languages at Columbia University, was one of the most prominent Orientalists of the early 20th century. His 1926 article, “The Quest of the Historical Mohammed,”¹ highlights the problems facing scholars who wish to construct a biography of Muhammad, and traces the endeavors of previous scholars up to his time. I recommend reading it. The following are some interesting excerpts from his article.

The earliest Life of Muhammad of which we have any trace was written by Muhammad Ibn Ishāq , who died in 768 C.E. i.e., one hundred and thirty years after the death of the Prophet.² The book of Ibn Ishāq , however, has perished, and all we know of it is what is quoted from it (and these quotations are fortunately considerable) in the works of later writers, particularly Ibn Hisham and al-Tabari. This work of Ibn Ishāq , in addition to being the earliest known attempt at biography, has a further importance in that, whether because the writer was somewhat of a free thinker, or because he had not come under the influence of later idealizing tendencies, his work contains very much infor­ma­tion of a character that is distinctly unfavorable to the Prophet. To quote Dr. Margoliouth:³

‘The character attributed to Muhammad in the biography of Ibn Ishāq is exceed­ingly unfavorable. In order to gain his ends he recoils from no expedient, and he approves of similar unscrupulousness on the part of his adherents, when exercised in his interest. He profits to the utmost from the chivalry of the Mec­cans, but rarely requites it with the like. He organizes assassinations and whole-sale massacres. His career as tyrant of Medina is that of a robber chief, whose political economy consists in securing and dividing plunder, the distribution of the latter being at times carried out on principles which fail to satisfy his followers’ ideas of justice. He is himself an unbridled libertine and encourages the same passion in his followers. For whatever he does he is prepared to plead the express authorization of the deity. It is, however, impossible to find any doctrine which he is not prepared to abandon in order to secure a political end. At different points in his career he abandons the unity of God and his claim to the title of Prophet. This is a disagreeable picture for the founder of a religion, and it cannot be pleaded that it is a picture drawn by an enemy; and though Ibn Ishāq ’s name was for some reason held in low esteem by the classical traditionalists of the third Islamic century, they make no attempt to discredit those portions of the biography which bear hardest on the character of their Prophet. (Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, volume 8, p. 878.)’⁴

It is important to underscore that Ibn Ishāq ’s biography of Muhammad is the earliest known biography of Muhammad and the best source for reconstructing his life. But if it is to be trusted, then we must conclude that Muhammad was not an “exemplary” person, as Qur’an 33:21 claims, and certainly not “a perfect man,” as later Islamic tradition claims.

Jeffery goes on to conclude his article by stating that

the scholars who are most familiar with Arabic sources and have got closest to an understanding of the life of the period, scholars such as Margoliouth, Hurgronje, Lammens, Caetini, are the most decisive against the prophetic claims of Muhammad, and one must confess that the further one goes in one’s own study of the sources the more difficult it becomes in one’s own thinking to escape the conclusions of these scholars.

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