Alan’s Reviews > Muhammad and the Empires of Faith: The Making of the Prophet of Islam > Status Update

We have just learned of Cædmon, the seventh-century English layman who was called into the service of God by a spirit in the night. He proceeds to utter mysteriously beautiful poetry about said god in his native tongue (English). A story so remarkably similar to that of the Prophet Muhammad's own call to prophethood—and pre-dating the Sirah–Maghazi tradition of Ibn Ishaq—that it warrants more research!

"The most curious passage in the letter is its exhortation to the emperor to embrace Islam, warning that if he does not, he "will fall into the sin of the arisiyyin ['alayka ithm al-arisiyyin]." ― p. 194–195

A fascinating discussion of the language in Muhammad's purported letter to the Roman emperor Heraclius. The word «الأريسيِّين» seems to have come from Christian Palestinian Aramaic «arīsīn» or "tenants".

So far I've learned that the Christian apostle Peter is regarded as having been given the keys to the "kingdom of heaven" by Jesus (see the book of Matthew 16:13) and that a similar motif is attributed to Muhammad: he allegedly possesses the "keys to Paradise" (mafātīḥ al-janna). Curious...

The discussion so far is very academic and I find the author's writing style a bit terse. I'll keep reading for now.

"From the sīrah-maghāzī literature, we learn mostly about how Muslims of the eight and ninth centuries C.E. wished Muhammad to be known and how they used their constructed images of him to forge their own confessional and sectarian identities, but perhaps not much else." —p. 3

I think I'm going to like this book.