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Quest for the Historical Muhammad
More than one hundred years ago Western scholars began to investigate the origins of Islam, using the highest standards of objective historical scholarship of the time. Their aim was to determine what could be known about Muhammad and the rise of early Islam quite apart from the pious and totally unobjective traditions preserved by the Muslim religious community. In some ways this research was inspired by a similar investigation of Christianity made famous by Albert Schweitzer's Quest of the Historical Jesus. Today although much has been learned about early Christianity, little comparable progress has been made in the field of Islamic Studies. Here objective historical research has long been severely handicapped both by the resistance of Muslim societies to Western analysis of their sacred traditions and by the apologetic approaches of many Western scholars, who have compromised their investigations for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities.
It is in this context that Ibn Warraq presents this important anthology of the best studies of Muhammad and early Islam ranging from the very beginnings of Islamic Studies in the nineteenth century to contemporary research. In his selection and in an introductory essay, Warraq makes it clear that some very serious scholarly controversies lie at the heart of Islam. First, the Koran itself, the Muslim sacred scripture and the foundation of Islamic culture, is called into question as the basis for objective historical knowledge of Muhammad. Some scholars have also questioned the reliability of most of the other early Arabic documents that supposedly attest to events in the life of Muhammad and his followers. Was the Koran dictated by Muhammad at all? Was it actually compiled any earlier than a hundred years after the Prophet's death? How much of Muslim sacred tradition, in the light of objective historical analysis, must be dismissed as unreliable hearsay? Were the motives of the first Muslim conquerors during the Jihad truly religious in nature or largely mercenary? These disturbing questions, long suppressed throughout the history of Islamic scholarship, are here raised again in these erudite and thoroughly researched essays by noted scholars.
It is in this context that Ibn Warraq presents this important anthology of the best studies of Muhammad and early Islam ranging from the very beginnings of Islamic Studies in the nineteenth century to contemporary research. In his selection and in an introductory essay, Warraq makes it clear that some very serious scholarly controversies lie at the heart of Islam. First, the Koran itself, the Muslim sacred scripture and the foundation of Islamic culture, is called into question as the basis for objective historical knowledge of Muhammad. Some scholars have also questioned the reliability of most of the other early Arabic documents that supposedly attest to events in the life of Muhammad and his followers. Was the Koran dictated by Muhammad at all? Was it actually compiled any earlier than a hundred years after the Prophet's death? How much of Muslim sacred tradition, in the light of objective historical analysis, must be dismissed as unreliable hearsay? Were the motives of the first Muslim conquerors during the Jihad truly religious in nature or largely mercenary? These disturbing questions, long suppressed throughout the history of Islamic scholarship, are here raised again in these erudite and thoroughly researched essays by noted scholars.
562 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2000
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253 people want to read
About the author
Ibn Warraq
22 books114 followersIbn Warraq is the pen name of an anonymous author critical of Islam. He is the founder of the Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society and used to be a senior research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, focusing on Quranic criticism. Warraq is the vice-president of the World Encounter Institute.
Warraq has written historiographies of the early centuries of the Islamic timeline and has published works which question mainstream conceptions of the period. The pen name Ibn Warraq (Arabic: ابن وراق, most literally "son of a papermaker") is used due to his concerns for his personal safety; Warraq stated, "I was afraid of becoming the second Salman Rushdie." It is a name that has been adopted by dissident authors throughout the history of Islam. The name refers to the 9th-century skeptical scholar Abu Isa al-Warraq. Warraq adopted the pseudonym in 1995 when he completed his first book, entitled Why I Am Not a Muslim.
He is the editor of several books, also including The Origins of the Koran (1998), The Quest for the Historical Muhammad (2000), What the Koran Really Says (2002) and the writer/editor Leaving Islam (2003). He is a controverisal figure among his contemporaries as many academic specialists in Islamic history consider him to be polemical, overly revisionist and lacking in expertise.
Warraq has written historiographies of the early centuries of the Islamic timeline and has published works which question mainstream conceptions of the period. The pen name Ibn Warraq (Arabic: ابن وراق, most literally "son of a papermaker") is used due to his concerns for his personal safety; Warraq stated, "I was afraid of becoming the second Salman Rushdie." It is a name that has been adopted by dissident authors throughout the history of Islam. The name refers to the 9th-century skeptical scholar Abu Isa al-Warraq. Warraq adopted the pseudonym in 1995 when he completed his first book, entitled Why I Am Not a Muslim.
He is the editor of several books, also including The Origins of the Koran (1998), The Quest for the Historical Muhammad (2000), What the Koran Really Says (2002) and the writer/editor Leaving Islam (2003). He is a controverisal figure among his contemporaries as many academic specialists in Islamic history consider him to be polemical, overly revisionist and lacking in expertise.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 9, 2007
Interesting collection of scholarly essays on the early history of Islam.
July 24, 2025
Presents many well-researched and historically-grounded criticisms of the origins of the Muhammad legend. Much more readable than "Why I am Not a Muslim."
October 18, 2025
A COLLECTION OF CRITICAL ESSAYS ABOUT ISLAMIC HISTORY
Editor/translator Ibn Warraq (a pen name) wrote in the Preface to this 2000 book, “I have written the introduction to this present anthology, first, with a view to helping nonspecialists familiarize themselves with not only the names of historians… but also as many of the technical and semitechnical terms that they were likely to encounter on reading this volume… Second, I hoped to give sufficient background to put the current debates… about the origins of Islam, in their intellectual context.” (Pg. 9)
In the essay, ‘Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources,’ Ibn al-Rawandi notes, “The complete unreliability of the Muslim tradition as far as dates are concerned has been demonstrated… The uncertainty of the Muslim historians about Muhammad’s dates is just one indication that it was some time before Muslims were much interested in him at all. As we have seen, the important Islamic concept of Sunna, the right or established way of doing things, began as a generalized idea… It was not until the manufacture of Hadiths (Prophetic traditions) got under way in the second Islamic century that all these vague notions were absorbed and particularized in the detailed … Sunna of the Prophet. Likewise, it was only with the gradual emergence of the legend of Muhammad that places that had for well nigh two centuries gone unmarked and unregarded became places of reverence and honor… It is likely that Muhammad, insofar as he was remembered at all, was remembered chiefly as a political and military leader who brought the Arab tribes together and urged them to conquer in the name of their ancestral deity.” (Pg. 103)
Henri Lammens wrote in ‘The Koran and Tradition: How the Life of Muhammad Was Composed.’ “As for the wives of Muhammad, why does Tradition stop at nine? This figure was certainly exceeded and some passages of the sira speak of twenty-three wives. The choice of nine by the Tradition was, we believe, influenced by a passage in the Koran: ‘Marry two, three, or four wives.’ The sum gives us precisely the figure nine.” (Pg. 175)
In his essay, ‘The Quest for the Historical Muhammad,’ F.E. Peters states, “Quite simply, there is no contemporary and contopological setting against which to read the Koran. For early Islam there is no Josephus to provide a contemporary political context, no apocrypha for a spiritual context, and no Scrolls to illuminate a Palestinian ‘sectarian milieu.’ There is instead chiefly poetry, great masses of it, whose contemporary authenticity is somewhat suspect but that was, nonetheless, ‘the main vehicle of Arab history in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods,’ and that in any event testifies to a quite different culture… The fact is that, despite a great deal of information supplied by later Muslim literary sources, we know pitifully little for sure about the political and economic history of Muhammad’s native city of Mecca or of the religious culture from which he came.” (Pg. 446)
This book will be of great interest to those seeking “critical” reviews of the historical origins of Muhammad and Islam.
Editor/translator Ibn Warraq (a pen name) wrote in the Preface to this 2000 book, “I have written the introduction to this present anthology, first, with a view to helping nonspecialists familiarize themselves with not only the names of historians… but also as many of the technical and semitechnical terms that they were likely to encounter on reading this volume… Second, I hoped to give sufficient background to put the current debates… about the origins of Islam, in their intellectual context.” (Pg. 9)
In the essay, ‘Origins of Islam: A Critical Look at the Sources,’ Ibn al-Rawandi notes, “The complete unreliability of the Muslim tradition as far as dates are concerned has been demonstrated… The uncertainty of the Muslim historians about Muhammad’s dates is just one indication that it was some time before Muslims were much interested in him at all. As we have seen, the important Islamic concept of Sunna, the right or established way of doing things, began as a generalized idea… It was not until the manufacture of Hadiths (Prophetic traditions) got under way in the second Islamic century that all these vague notions were absorbed and particularized in the detailed … Sunna of the Prophet. Likewise, it was only with the gradual emergence of the legend of Muhammad that places that had for well nigh two centuries gone unmarked and unregarded became places of reverence and honor… It is likely that Muhammad, insofar as he was remembered at all, was remembered chiefly as a political and military leader who brought the Arab tribes together and urged them to conquer in the name of their ancestral deity.” (Pg. 103)
Henri Lammens wrote in ‘The Koran and Tradition: How the Life of Muhammad Was Composed.’ “As for the wives of Muhammad, why does Tradition stop at nine? This figure was certainly exceeded and some passages of the sira speak of twenty-three wives. The choice of nine by the Tradition was, we believe, influenced by a passage in the Koran: ‘Marry two, three, or four wives.’ The sum gives us precisely the figure nine.” (Pg. 175)
In his essay, ‘The Quest for the Historical Muhammad,’ F.E. Peters states, “Quite simply, there is no contemporary and contopological setting against which to read the Koran. For early Islam there is no Josephus to provide a contemporary political context, no apocrypha for a spiritual context, and no Scrolls to illuminate a Palestinian ‘sectarian milieu.’ There is instead chiefly poetry, great masses of it, whose contemporary authenticity is somewhat suspect but that was, nonetheless, ‘the main vehicle of Arab history in the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods,’ and that in any event testifies to a quite different culture… The fact is that, despite a great deal of information supplied by later Muslim literary sources, we know pitifully little for sure about the political and economic history of Muhammad’s native city of Mecca or of the religious culture from which he came.” (Pg. 446)
This book will be of great interest to those seeking “critical” reviews of the historical origins of Muhammad and Islam.
May 17, 2009
An excellent historian's research to the beginnings of Islam. Covers an extensive amount of research. While highly useful, it is not joy reading.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews