The Life of Muhammad

by Muḥammad Ibn Isḥāq, Alfred Guillaume (Translator), ʻAbd al-Malik Ibn Hishām

Alfred Guillaume's authoritative translation of the Sira of Ibn Ishaq presents in English the complete history of the life of Prophet Muhammad. No book can compare in comprehensiveness, arrangement, or systematic treatment with Ibn Ishaq's work.

Genres: Islam, Religion, History, Biography, Nonfiction, Middle East, Philosophy

860 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 767

About the author

From wikipedia:
Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Yasār ibn Khiyār (according to some sources, ibn Khabbār, or Kūmān, or Kūtān,[3] Arabic: محمد بن إسحاق بن يسار بن خيار‎, or simply ibn Isḥaq ابن إسحاق, meaning "the son of Isaac") (died 767, or 761[2]) was an Arab Muslim historian and hagiographer. Under the aegis of the 'Abbasid caliph Al-Mansur, Ibn Ishaq collected oral traditions that formed the basis of the most important biography of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Reviews

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this slowly (it runs over 600 pages) but I feel it was worthwhile, since it is the earliest actual life of Muhammad and the basis of most modern biographies.
That being so, the major facts and even some of the colorful anecdotes were in other books I had read (notably John Glubb's version, which frankly relied on Islamic tradition). But it was good to know exactly what was in the tradition. Much of the additional material in this version was not of great historical interest --for each major event (especially the battles) there would be an exchange of poetry, some probably spurious. There were also the isnads (listing the authorities for each episode). Often these were surprisingly (to me) vague for such an early source "someone whom I have no cause to suspect" etc.
I was struck by the fact that the ultimate authority for the account of the accusation of infidelity against Aisha (which Muhammad, on the basis of revelation, rejected) was Aisha herself. Overall, I must admit I as a non-Muslim did not find Muhammad as described here especially impressive. He and his followers seemed to endorse the same code of vengeance as their pagan opponents, and regarded composing a poem insulting the prophet as justifying the poet's assassination. Muhammad is also reported as having a man severely tortured (and then executed) for not revealing where a treasure was hidden. I am well aware that many Muslims today would not practice this sort of conduct, but I am bound to say that I think when the al-Qaeda types say they are following the prophet's example, they have reason. The one thing to be said for Muhammad was that he was magnanimous in victory, particularly to the people in Mecca; many who had fought bitterly against him were freely accepted into the Islamic community upon submission.

[Qas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is short and simple, yet that seems to be its downfall. We never spend enough time on any one event, oftentimes feeling like we've been thrown a list of names and places before swiftly moving on.

This can work in a nice short summary style section of a larger book, and we can see success with exactly that in Tamim Ansary's Destiny Disrupted. While this abridged translation of The Life of Muhammed isn't long enough to provide meaty details, it also fails in being short and sharp enough to act as a casual overview sort of a read.

From a general reader's point of view, there isn't much on offer here either. The functional prose is emotionless, flat, and direct. This can work in a "thrown into the moment" kind of way, but I was not once thrown into anything. This edition is just too clipped for that.

As silly as it sounds, I wanted a lot less or a lot more of this book. What I ended up reading was perfectly acceptable, but didn't really satisfy.

2.5 stars.

[Daniel]

Earliest Biography, which is still 130 yrs after Muhammad's death. 800 pages including the footnotes at the end!! many of the footnotes are stories 1/2 page or more in length. Interesting read. Lots of wars and raids. Muhammad commanded quite a few of his enemies to be killed. Very different from Jesus commanding his followers to "love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you." Matt. 5:44

[Shane Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great fount of info on this warlord founder of Islam.

[Robel · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're looking for a historical book to know a bit about the life of Muhammad this should be your first stop, not those 21st cen books which either have Muhammad as the devil himself or those which sugar coat and cover any controversial thing he does. Arguably this is a biased book since the author is a Muslim who by definition believed Muhammad was the best person who ever or will ever live.

It was a decent read though it has lots of useless stuff(for the average reader) which sound like old wives tale like poetic insults, poetic praises and poetic memorabilia but it's nice to read a Muslim scholar' perspective that's not diluted with the modern apologetic of Islam.

What surprised me was that Muslims are divided regarding this book, some find the details embarrassing and just flat out deny the credibility of the author (though he is a respected Muslim historian), some are willing to accept his transmissions.

[Tim Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

At 798 pages (including Ibn Hisham's notes) this is a long slog to finish. But for those interested in knowing more about Islam and Muhammad, it's a necessary slog. Ibn Ishaq, the author, was born a little more than 100 years after Muhammad and wrote the stories that ended up in this book in the 8th century, again, a century after the events recorded in the book. He is recording oral histories, thus most vignettes begin with a record--sometimes long--of how the story came to him. A random example: "Al Husayn b. (born) 'Abdu 'l-Rahman b 'Amr b. Sa'd b. Muadh on the authority of Mahmud b. Labid told me...". I skimmed over these quickly as they disrupt the narrative significantly but are important for the author since he is recording oral history and wants to be taken seriously.

In his recording of that history, Ibn Ishaq has an endearing way of intimating, "This is what I was told, but I'm not too sure it's true." These are his small comments after the vignette such as "so they allege..." or "God only knows the truth."

The current version of the book, was edited by Ibn Hisham, who lived in the 9th century and translated from Arabic to English by A. Guillaume in 1955. To summarize, then, the current work records oral histories some 100 years after their occurrence, then an editor compiled and recorded the actual writing another 100 years later and that work is translated to English about 1,100 years after that. The reader must understand, then, that he or she is reading the record of Muhammad's life removed by two centuries from the actual events and another 1,100 years and one language in its current form. Surely some significant meaning or understanding is lost in translation from 9th century Arabic to 2oth century English.

The work elicits much argument over the historical Muhammad and I shall not repeat or review any of that here. Rather, I'll record just two main impressions from my trip through the life of Muhammad:

First, the most fascinating part of the work to me is that, though the book is not Islamic scripture, it is the narrative overlay for the Qur'an. They must be read together to understand the context of the Qur'an and the original intent of much of what is in the Qur'an. The reader will discover this in the oft repeated phrase, "...so God sent down...", meaning, an historical event occurred and God reacted by revealing to Muhammad some portion of the Qur'an in response, or illumination, or opposition to that event which then became sacred Islamic scripture. For one raised on reading the Bible, this is odd, as the Bible contains its own narrative; its context is self-contained and requires no outside literature to illuminate what happening at the time God revealed something. In fact, the narrative itself claims to be God-revealed. This presents, in my view, a bit of conundrum in that the writing itself is sacred scripture, though the narrative context in which the scripture occurred is not.

The second impression is the stark reality of its section headings in the few years after Muhammad returned to Mecca and subdued it for Islam. At this point he had not died, but had, in some sense, "finished his work" as he, for the most part, remained in Mecca while his followers began to spread Islam to the rest of the Arabian peninsula and ultimately to the world. In that sense, it's somewhat akin to the Bible's Acts of the Apostles, not in that the record the events immediately after Muhammad's death but recording the events after Muhammad had "finished his work" per se. Here are the section titles for the final portion of the book, less the last twelve pages that record Muhammad's final illness and death:

- Ghalib's raid on the b. Al-Mulawwah
- The raid of Zayd b. Haritha agains Judham
- Zayd b. Haritha's raid on b. Fazara and the death of Umm Qirfa
- 'Abdullah b. Rawaha's raid to kill al-Yusayr b. Rizam
- 'Abdullah b. Unay's raid to kill Khalid b. Sufyan b. Nubayh
- The raid of 'Uyayna b. His on b. al-Anbar of b. Tamim
- Ghalib b. Abdullah's raid on the land of b. Murra
- The raid of Ibn Abu Ahdrad on the valley of Adam and the killing of 'Amir b. al-Adbat al-Ashja'i
- The raid of Ibn Abu Hadrad al-Aslami on al-Ghaba to kill Rifa'a b. Qays al-Jusahmi
- 'Abdu'l Rahman b. 'Auf's raid on Dumatu'l-Jandal
- Abu 'Ubaydah b. al-Jarrah's raid to the coast
- Salim b. 'Umayr's expedition to kill Abu 'Afak
- 'Umayr b. 'Adiy's journey to kill 'Asma d Marwan
- The capture of Thumama b. Athal al-Hanafi
- The expedition of 'Alqama b. Mujazziz
- Kurz b. Jabir's expedition to kill the Bajilis who had killed Yasar
- 'Ali's raid on the Yaman
- Usama b. Zayd's mission to Palestine

There is a stark difference in the methods by which the Christianity and Islam were spread in their earliest days and the stories recorded from those eras. I should think those who claim Islam to be a religion of peace would need to wrestle some with its earliest history.

[Mark Sequeira]

ALL agree that this is THE authoritative book on the Prophet Muhammad's life and practice. PRICELESS. Don't waste your money on another Muhammad bio unless you are just starting out...This one is slow reading and not the easiest to just read your way through.

[Qb · Rating 4 out of 5]

A revealing book.

[Tim Weakley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the four stars I gave this book, three were for the written work and one was for the object itself. A good translation even if abridged, and a beautiful printing from the folio society.

[Hakim Fatehali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ibn Ishâq (d. 767) wrote one of the oldest known biographies on the prophet Muhammad. The translation of Guillaume is in many ways a fascinating work given the circumstances the biography (or "sîra" as it is usually referred to in Arabic) had to go through and its caveats:

a) Several recensions of the original exist and great parts of Ibn Ishâqs original work has survived through Tabarîs "History of Kings and Prophets" and through Ibn Hishams edition.

b) As opposed to the more stringent criteria of Hadîth selection one can observe in Bukharîs and Muslims works, Ibn Ishâq (along with other sîra-writers) have been criticized by contemporaries and latter-day scholars for not providing full narrative chains for his multitude of stories, which, often, contradict themselves on several places.

c) The editor of the chief recension that has reached us, Ibn Hisham, claims to have edited out a lot of content which he considered to be potentially upsetting, thus vastly diminishing the original text.

d) Lastly, much of the poetry of this sîra is considered to be fabricated and spurious, as later commentators point out.

The difficulties aside, Guillaume endeavored to preserve this important historical document in a readable and accessible form, which is critical for any serious study of the Prophet's life and times. One can be advised to read A.L. Tibawis critique of the translation (which in my opinion is a tad too harsh, yet important) to get a somewhat sober idea of the sort of translation flaws that inevitably come with translating such an old and long text. Attempts of transparency in the translation process in the form of footnotes with Arabic transliteration are ubiquitous - yet seldom helpful if you do not have the Arabic original available. Another issue is that the book, despite Guillaumes best efforts, cannot be read as modern prose due to the the original Arabic language and the narrative style of the time. The reader must take this into consideration before diving into the book and also accept that many stories will be fragmentary, apocryphical and outright spurious. Ibn Ishâq spared no effort in collecting many different kinds of reports and does not hide the fact that many stories are unverified.

While much of the historicity of the sîra are in question, a bit can be garnered about the Umayyad times the work was written in (and the Abbasid times it was edited in) in terms of narrative style, interest in genealogy and attitudes towards medieval brutality and warfare. Ibn Hisham is said to have censored a lot of content which he considered to be upsetting, yet that only makes the brutal passages of the book yet more remarkable. It also goes to say that ideas and notions of spirituality, philosophical legitimacy and religious affiliation differs significantly between the Muslim world-view of the authors of this work and the world-view of many Muslims today. This discrepancy cannot be addressed nor assessed without a good grasp of the earliest sources. Therefore, start here.

[Arbaz Fahad · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Life Of Muhammad (Sirat Rasulallah) by Ibn Ishaq (d. 767 AD) is arguably the oldest source on the life of the Prophet. Much of Ibn Ishaq's original work is lost, but whatever of it is left, has been aptly translated by Alfred Guillaume, an Oxford scholar who specialized in Arabic language and Islamic studies.

Ibn Ishaq compiled his work by collecting oral traditions handed down by eyewitness. The striking feature in Ibn Ishaq's work is the meticulous details of events. For example, when he mentions the event of migration from Makkah to Madina, he names all those Companions of the Prophet that undertook the migration along with their tribal affiliations.

Poetry is a constant presence in Ibn Ishaq's work, most famous among them being Hind bint Utbah's fiery rhetoric, thanking Wahshi for killing the Prophet's uncle, Hamza :

"We have paid you back for Badr,
And a war that follows a war is always violent
I could not bear the loss of Utba
Nor my brother and his uncle and my first born I have slaked my vengeance and fulfilled my vow.
You, O Wahshi, have assuaged the burning in my breast.
I shall thank Wahshi as long as I live
Until my bones rot in the grave."

Poets compose verses for all important events. They lampoon each other and compete viciously against each other in the battle of wit and eloquence. It almost feels as if Medina's arch - poet Hassan bin Thabit has a more overwhelming presence in Ibn Ishaq narrative than the Prophet himself.

For all future generations, Ibn Ishaq's work was the cornerstone on which the later works of Sira were built. Ibn Ishaq has been often criticised for accepting reports that do not measure up to the standard of Hadith scholars. Early Islamic scholarship witnessed an intense tussle between the types of reports that could be accepted and those that could be disparaged. It was accepted that the standard of evaluation of Sira and Tafseer scholars were not as strict as those of their Hadith contemporaries, the rationale being that if the standard of evaluation of Hadith scholars were applied, very few reports could pass the litmus test and thus much about the Prophet would effectively remain unknown. There might be a figment of imagination or hearsay in Ibn Ishaq's work but as Uri Rubin aptly puts it , "The early Sira works are not exactly biographical per se, but rather a description of the way a community understood the life of its Prophet"

[Miroku Nemeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

If this was a complete and stand-alone translation without an such Orientalist and colonial and bigoted comments that frame the text that often are almost humorous if they weren't so insidious, I would give it an entirely different rating. This is a much-abbreviated text and it is framed in a way that shows such bias and ignorance that I cannot recommend it really except as an easy text for critical discourse analysis examining hegemony, orientalism, and the colonial mind. There are times when the text of Ibn Ishaq (and as I listened to this and Armstrong's also 1 star book on the Prophet Muhammad صلى الله عليه وسلم lately, I have to tell the readers that it is Is-Haq, not Ish-uq or whatever they are saying, but their inability to pronounce a basic and extremely common Arabic name is a sign, especially for Armstrong as she wrote and read her text, of the superficiality of their grasp of the religion and culture) shines through despite the actually polemic nature of this translation, but it takes someone with knowledge to feel this and understand it. I will be looking for better translations in the future.

[Maryam Bint · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muhammad was a minor warlord, religious leader, father and son. He was kind, brutal, forgiving, vengeful, urbane, primitive, a slave-owner, a friend, calculating, charismatic, and his words led to the slaying of untold masses.
The best way to understand a complicated figure such as this is to read about his life, and there is no better source than the original Ishaq. Writing just a few generations after the events described, Ishaq places Muhammad's life into the context of Arab norms and every day struggles, and enlightens us as to how, exactly, a mild-mannered merchant created a revolution.

[Nadia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Would NOT recommend. This book is a translation of the earliest biography of the Prophet Muhammad pbuh by Ibn Ishaq. The translation itself provides a somewhat fair summary of the life of the prophet, however the introduction to the book, and the additional context added in italics at various occasions throughout the book by Michael Edwards are completely inaccurate and very biased.

It's shocking to see blatant lies published about a religion and a man who's held in such high regard by people throughout the world.

For those looking to read more about the Life of Muhammad, I would recommend far better and more accurate accounts in books such as 'When the Moon Split' or 'A sealed Netar'.

[Cep Subhan KM · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thick book enriched with additional information about Ibn Ishaq's legendary text. I like the book and its hardback form but not the poor cover illustration (I read its Twentieth 2006 impression). An abridged edition of Ibn Ishaq's English translation from The Folio Society is superior in its printing (but, yeah, it is an abridged edition).

[Rumi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Earliest masterpiece on life of the most influential person in the history of mankind. A man who proved his ability in controlling spiritual, social and political authorship. Although, this contains some debatable content.

[Talha Mahmood · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main flaw according to me is that the author doesn’t tell the dates, that what happened and when it happened.

[Kimberly · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was so hard to read. It felt like it just jumped around and did not tell a continuous story.

[Rusty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tells about early history of Islam. There's a lot of poetry in it which I personally don't like but the other stuff was valuable historically

[Gerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes for an interesting backdrop in the formulation of his philosophy

[C]

This was a book read, not to rate or review, but to better understand our Muslim brothers and sisters.

[Sandra · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is truly for the scholar. After having this book recommended to me, I ordered it in hardcover - it is not available as an ebook. I should have done some more research before ordering. The book is based on a book written in the 700's. This book was apparently lost, but was extensively quoted in other books. The book that I ordered is actually written by a 20th century scholar who extracted the original from a variety of sources and translated it into English. The translation includes multiple variations from the different sources. After slogging through more than 200 pages of this 700page tome I decided to give up. For the scholar, this is an amazing resource. For the armchair historian, this maybe too much detail.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book Description
Professor Guillaume's translation of the Sira of Ibn Iss-Haq is now reissued. The translator used Ibn Hisham's abridgement and also included many additions and variants found in the writings of early authors. The book thus presents in English practically all that is known of the life of the Prophet. In the introduction, the translator discusses the character of the Sira in the light of the opinion of early Arabian scholars, noting especially the difficulties of the poetry. As the earliest monument of Arabian prose literature, the Sira remains a work of the first importance.

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)

[Omaima · Rating 4 out of 5]

ibn ishaq was the first to compile a biography of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings on him). it is a thorough and important piece of history and literature. this is somewhat difficult to read, partly because of the names and details to remember, and mainly because it is not always chronological. i suppose it would be hard to properly organise so much rich information. guillame's footnotes are really helpful. there is tons of knowledge and important details in this book.

[Bryn Hammond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a picture of a culture. Invaluable first-hand daily life, attitudes, incidents, battles, tribal politics, verse (how they loved their verse) - 800 pages' worth. Full of characters, too: warlike women, warlike men, career poets in spats with other poets, enemies turned friends and cynics turned believers in the great divide Muhammad triggered.

[O · Rating 3 out of 5]

I never before thought that a man so venerated could have so many interesting details of love affairs and from being a merchant. It's a lovely short morsel, full of change from immoral discrepancies to a state of piety and devotion to God.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a really shitty version of Dune, but compared to the Qur'an or Sahih Bukhara it is very easy reading and coherent, so I'd recommend it over the other two for someone interested in learning the tenets or mythology of Islam.

[Malika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Every second I spent in reading the poems was a torture to me.
I thought I'd learn something new, but it was Martin Lings' book in addition to a few details, and lists of people who were killed in the conquests, plus the neverending citing of the genealogy of each person and finally poetry.

[Feha-Gh · Rating 3 out of 5]

محمد
صلى الله عليه و سلم

[Craig Bolton]

The Life of Muhammad by I. Ishaq (2002)