New Releases
The Earliest Writings on the Life of Muḥammad
The ‘Urwa Corpus and the Non-Muslim Sources
Andreas Görke, Gregor Schoeler – 2024-02
The main part of this book consists of a compilation and evaluation of the corpus of traditions about the life of Muḥammad attributed to the early scholar ‘Urwa ibn al-Zubayr (c. 643- c. 712). ‘Urwa was the nephew of the Prophet's wife ‘A’isha, who was also his most important informant. The authenticity of a large part of these traditions is certain, since they were handed down independently from each other by two or more tradents of ‘Urwa. They are thus the oldest authentic Muslim reports about the Prophet. The authors...
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Al-Tabari. A Medieval Muslim Historian and His Work
With a New Foreword by the Editor
Hugh N. Kennedy (ed.) – 2024-02
This volume provides a discussion of the works of Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Ṭabarī (d. 932 CE), the greatest historian of the early Islamic world. An international team of well-known scholars examine the life of the man, his work, the sources he used and his intellectual legacy. Grouped around four major themes - Caliphate and power, economy and society, Abbasids, and frontiers and the others - the contributions deal with the history, archaeology, architecture and literature of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond, from ...
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The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims
A Textual Analysis
Uri Rubin – 2024-02
Detailed examination of traditions about Muhammad which illustrate particular themes thought to be part of the biblical prophetic paradigm: attestation, preparation, the experience of revelation, persecution, and "salvation," this last meaning the hijra. The author analyzes the ways in which Muhammad's early biographers sought to shape the Prophet's biography through biblically based, and later Qur'anic, modes of authentication. The author has abandoned the quest for the historical Muhammad becau...
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Between Bible and Qur'an
The Children of Israel and the Islamic Self-Image
Uri Rubin – 2024-02
This book investigates the literary role played by the Bible in Islamic sources. It focuses on the tension between Biblical and Qur’anic models as revealed in Islamic texts describing contacts between the Muslims and the “Children of Israel”, as Jews and Christians are usually called in the context of world history. By adopting the method of his earlier work on the image of the Prophet Muhammad, The Eye of the Beholder: The Life of Muhammad as Viewed by the Early Muslims, Rubin examines hadith reports of the first three I...
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The "Constitution of Medina"
Muḥammad's First Legal Document
Michael Lecker – 2024-02
The ‘Constitution of Medina’ is probably the first legal document of Muḥammad and dates back to the first year after his hijra (622 CE), or “emigration”, which brought him from his hometown Mecca to the cluster of towns known as Yathrib or Medina in the Hijāz (northern Arabia) and marked the beginning of the Islamic era. Muslim historians and jurists have been familiar with this important document for centuries, and aware of its legal and theological implications for Islamic law. It was first brought to the attention of s...
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